Ukraine enlists Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland as lobbyist

That's according to a trio of Globe and Mail professional journos, which reminds me of a certain Newfie joke involving a light-bulb and a ladder.

Here's the context, from today's paper. Fife, Curry, and Chase insinuate that the reason the budget is late and most likely lame, is because Chrystia has been distracted by the crisis in her homeland.

Ukraine had enlisted Ms. Freeland, who speaks fluent Ukrainian and Russian, to plead the case among allies to target the Central Bank of the Russian Federation by cutting off access to its massive foreign exchange reserves, which Moscow could use to offset the impact of Western sanctions. 

They enlisted Agent Frida to lobby on their behalf because she speaks fluent Russian and Ukrainian? Is that what they speak in those allied nations to which she is pleading Ukraine's case?

Obviously that's BS. They enlisted Chrystia because she is a loyal Ukrainian partisan.

Doesn't she have a job in Canada?

How does this brazen conflict of interest get a pass?

Life lessons from The Korean

When I drove into town today to pick up my Saturday Globe, I found The Korean's wife and mother-in-law out in the parking lot putting up a tent.

I made a lame joke about it being shitty weather for camping. They laughed.

The Korean is a bit of a joker himself. He scans the bar-code on my paper and announces "five hundred and twenty-five dollar please!"

Ha ha... not enough good news in the world for that price, I tell him.

He settles for $5.25.

Have to say the paper was on the thin side today.

Big feature in the Focus section on condo flippers messing up the Toronto real estate market. That might be mildly interesting if you don't already have multiple friends and relatives milking that for all it's worth. You view them with a mix of envy and contempt; envy because at some level you wish you'd jumped into the game when the jumping was good.

Contempt because they're one of the reasons your children will never own property in Toronto.

But their children will.

Interesting, but nothing like the tour de force Cathal Kelly had on view a couple of weeks ago.

"Too drunk to fuck" indeed!

There's a couple of stories that cast well-deserved aspersions on Justin's captaincy of the ship of state. On page B-1 unpaid intern Rachelle Younglai has a story about shrinking paycheques for the working and middle classes.

On page A-4 Bill Curry has a story about how Justin's infrastructure initiatives are being massaged by the very people who will "ultimately own and manage infrastructure assets."

Public money, private profits; that's hardly a news story.

One thing I'd like to see more of in the Globe is coverage of the Supreme Court case that Rocco Galati has been pursuing for years now on behalf of COMER, the Committee for Monetary and Economic Reform. Follow that story and you soon realize there's no reason whatsoever for our infrastructure assets to end up in the pockets of Black Rock or the multitude of like-minded hedgies and finance sharpies.

But that's not a story the Globe is keen to spread around.

Elsewhere, Liz Renzetti uses her A-2 slot to let us know she's still pouty about Hillary's very bad and awfully terrible day six months ago. Apparently it wasn't just Russian interference in America's democratic process that sunk Hillary, although the Ruskies do get several shout-outs in her column.

No, it was even worse than that, if such a thing can be imagined.

There was a "pink elephant" in the room.

That would be sexism, for those too stunned to figure it out.

Well... sure.

Maybe.

I'd hazard a guess that the pink elephants were bigger when Golda became PM in the sixties or Maggie became PM in the seventies, but maybe Liz isn't old enough to remember those days.

Hillary lost because she and her army of consultants and advisers were outworked and outsmarted at every turn by a condo salesman from Manhattan.

Best story by far in today's paper was the profile of Toronto restauranteur Jen Agg. A far more palatable role model for young women than Hillary, if you ask me.

She's kicking the shit out of pink elephants every day, and may God bless her for it.

Anyway, I've come to accept that The Korean isn't responsible for what's in the newspaper he sells me.

His wife and mother-in-law were putting up that tent to protect the plants that all the Korean variety stores have on offer this time of year.

The weather channel is suggesting we'll get snow tonight.

So the flowers are camping tonight, I offer.

Yes! We must be prepared, he says.

Sound advice from The Korean.

Be prepared.

Up the working class! Trudeau to roll out red carpet for more temporary foreign workers

My national newspaper of record has a front pager today titled Ottawa prepares to ease rules on temporary foreign workers by Bill Curry. Bill provides a quote from Immigration Minister John McCallum which succinctly captures the Trudeau government's commitment to working people in Canada, almost 1.5 million of whom are at this very moment officially unemployed;

We're also going to reduce some of the barriers and the silly rules... in order to give companies the freedom to bring in the best and the brightest.

Yup, that's why Canadians voted in Justin and his Liberal Party; to give the corporate sector more freedom.

So it's back to business as usual after the Harperites were shamed into tightening up the scandalous TFW program a couple of years back. All those Timmies stores across the west can resume importing the best and the brightest coffee servers from Mexico and the Philippines, folks delighted to work for minimum wage.

The fish processing plants on the east coast can bring in the best and the brightest fish plant workers and continue to pay starvation wages. After all, who needs to pay a living wage when some desperate foreigner is happy to work for next to nothing?

There you go, corporate sector, Justin's not such a scary guy after all, is he?