shar

[shar @SNeisteter]

Do you remember when you joined X? I do! #MyXAnniversary

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am the Director of National Sentiment Alignment at Tim Hortons.

Canada just dropped to 25th in the World Happiness Report. Fifth in 2014. Twenty-fifth in 2026.

We had an emergency meeting. Fourteen people. A PowerPoint called "Double Double Down: Reclaiming Joy."

Slide one was a graph. Canada's happiness ranking over the past decade. Slide two was a graph. Tim Hortons' customer satisfaction over the past decade.

They are the same graph.

Nobody mentioned this.

Slide three said "Tim Hortons IS Canadian Happiness." We all nodded. Our brand value is $7.5 billion. Sixth most valuable restaurant brand on Earth. The happiness of 40 million people is, technically, our department.

In 2014, a Brazilian private equity firm acquired us for $12.5 billion. That same year, Canada was the 5th happiest country in the world. By 2018, we were 7th. By 2023, 12th. By 2024, 18th. Now, 25th.

Completely unrelated, in 2014 we also moved donut production to a centralized factory. Flash-frozen. Shipped to stores. Finished in ovens. The phrase "par-baked" was used. The word "fresh" was not.

Our slogan was "Always Fresh." We quietly retired it. Freshness, like happiness, is easier to claim than to measure. So we stopped measuring both.

The researchers at Oxford blamed social media for the decline. We also blamed social media. Not the frozen donuts. Not the franchise lawsuits. Not the fact that a medium coffee now costs what a large used to cost, and a large costs what a therapy session should.

Finland has been the happiest country for nine years straight. Finland does not have a Tim Hortons.

We see this as an untapped market.

The Americans are 23rd. Happier than us. The country that invented "thoughts and prayers" as a complete healthcare policy is now measurably happier than the country that invented "sorry." We have 5,700 locations in Canada. The Americans have better pastries. These two facts are also unrelated.

Quebec alone would rank 5th in the world. Canada without Quebec drops to 35th. Quebec has high-quality independent bakeries. We did not include this slide in the PowerPoint.

Our franchisees filed a class-action lawsuit. They said production costs tripled. From six cents a donut to eighteen. They needed new freezers. New microwaves. To heat the frozen donuts we told the public were fresh.

That's optimization. Optimization is a form of progress.

We created Roll Up The Rim in 1986. A physical cup. You rolled it. Sometimes you won a donut. An entire country organized its morning around this. In 2020, we made it digital. An app. You tap a screen. The country did not organize its morning around this. Participation declined. We called it a "digital transformation."

Our CEO proposed a "Happiness Combo." Medium coffee. One donut. $4.99. The cup reads: "You're Doing Great, Canada." The focus group cried.

Not from happiness.

Our parent company, Restaurant Brands International, plans to open 300 to 400 new locations a year through 2028. The theory is: if you cannot make a country happy, make sure it cannot drive three blocks without seeing your logo. That's proximity. Proximity is a type of happiness.

We measured it.

In the lobby of our Oakville headquarters, there is a framed poster from 2013. It shows a smiling woman holding a fresh donut. Below it, in Helvetica, it says: "Made Fresh. Every Day. In Every Store."

None of these things are true anymore. The poster is still there.

Canada was the 5th happiest country in the world the year we were acquired. We are now worth $7.5 billion. Canada is now 25th.

One graph goes up. One graph goes down. Every quarter, we present the one that goes up.

As long as the shareholders are happy, someone in Canada is.

[shar @SNeisteter]

Counting is not a prerequisite for Olympic referees?!?

[shar @SNeisteter]

THIS

[Bruce McGonigal @bruce_mcgonigal]

🇨🇦🙏🪶 : Conservative MP Scott Anderson has flown back to BC to meet with Universal Ostrich Farm owners and to demand answers.

Below is the text in his post on Facebook. Link provided at the bottom of post.

"Ostrich update

I flew in from Ottawa Saturday morning and made the two hour drive out from Vernon to Edgewood in the afternoon, as my Chief of Staff already has a few times this week.

It is increasingly clear to me and everyone else that the Ministers of Agriculture and Health need to intervene and either declare these birds research subjects or explain to Canadians why they are allowing the slaughter without testing. If you’re reading this Ministers, please tell Canadians why you’re allowing this? We’d all like to know.

How the Liberals allowed this drama to become a moral, political and scientific fiasco of international proportions is beyond me. Sorry to be partisan, but I’m angry.

These Liberals have had a decade to change the country, and as a result we’re so far behind everyone else now in the G7 that it’s tragic. And on this issue, as with so many, they are lost. My office is receiving upwards of 1000 communications a day on every medium, and other MPs tell me some of theirs are from as far away as Europe and Australia.

The out-of-control Liberals have already made us economically poor, socially confused, and all-round angry at each other, and now they’re making us into an international laughingstock and a national pariah all at once. And all over a herd of ostriches. Well done, Mr. “elbows.”

Canadians need to be able to trust our institutions, and to do that we need transparency. Our institutions are supposed to translate law into action, so if the CFIA is following its mandate only the Liberal Minister responsible can stop it.

If it’s overstepping its mandate then we have an even bigger problem, but I can’t imagine that. If the slaughter goes ahead, it is because the Liberal Ministers allowed it.

If they allow it they should tell Canadians why they allowed it and not mumble some polysyllabic Latin cliché ending in the well-worn English word “safety.” The Ministers should tell Canadians clearly and emphatically why the ostriches have to die, because whoever is supposed to tell Canadians what’s going on is on vacation.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is operating what appears to be a completely unnecessary communications nightmare in Edgewood and the Liberals are letting it.

Together they have managed to hand conspiracy theorists a near perfect scenario: a mysterious operation with high levels of secrecy including a heavy police presence, a sinister-looking construction, a tight-lipped refusal to release any information to Canadians, and a vague statement on their website using bureaucratic weasel words like “associated with” and “possible,” all salted with dire warnings about “health.”

The camera feeds to the house have been cut and the cameras covered over. Drones periodically buzz overhead as robotic surveillance. On the way back to Vernon we passed 14 police vehicles, both logoed and ghost, in convoy on the way to the farm, presumably for shift change.

Far away from the front gate of the farm, in a field in the middle distance but visible from the highway, a fenced compound has been erected, covered in black tarping and surrounded by another fence. On two sides ramparts of stacked bails of straw or hay stand inside the fence…a rumour is that atop them the CFIA will stand and shoot down into the ostriches, but I have no confirmation of that and many rumours are flying. The small crowd on the highway thinks it’s the killing chamber too. Police observation posts are set up every few hundred yards around the perimeter, about 100 meters outside the enclosure walls.

It sounds like the set for a sci-fi movie about Area 51 in the US, except this is actually happening in Edgewood, a small town on the other side of the Monashee mountains along the evergreen-wooded Arrow Lake system in my riding of Vernon-Lake Country-Monashee.

Videos are circulating that show CFIA personnel wandering around the ostriches with no personal protective equipment (PPE) and none of the police are wearing PPE either. After being asked about it, the CFIA kitted up in hazmat suits, but floating around on social media are comic operatic videos showing things like CFIA workers in hazmat suits being driven around by RCMP officers in pickup trucks with no PPE and the windows rolled down. How can this make sense to rational Canadians? Is there a danger to humans or not? Are they putting police officers’ lives in danger or is the CFIA putting on a show to cover their collective butts?

The night before I visited there was a fire in the bales that was reported as having started under suspicious circumstances. Three hours later there was another fire in the bales. Sunday morning a third fire broke out…the idea that someone could sneak in and start a fire and then sneak out undetected in broad daylight under the noses of police pickets is utterly fantastic. Nearby farmers say that the CFIA had piled the bales wrong, and that given the moisture content and condition of the hay and weather, it wasn't surprising that the hay combusted three times. I don't believe the second or third fires were reported as being suspicious by the RCMP.

In an effort to dispel rumours and weird theories and try to ensure calm in the crowd at the gate, my Chief of Staff visited the farm and asked the police if she could speak to someone from the CFIA to get a quick briefing. The police transmitted the message to the CFIA but my CoS waited four hours to no avail. I went personally on Saturday and waited around for an hour after asking to speak with someone from the CFIA, but no one showed up. The police liaison told me he delivered my request to the CFIA and I believe him. Since the CFIA won’t talk to the media, or the scientists, or even the local federal Member of Parliament, I’m left wondering what the hell is going on as well.

If the Liberal government had actually set out to make people distrust them, they couldn’t have done a better job than this bungling gong show. It’s both tragic and ridiculous. Is it any wonder under these conditions that conspiracy theories are rampant? Is there a rational answer as to why the CFIA won’t test the ostriches?

They claim all sorts of things from two high cycle PCR tests on dead birds back in January, but refuse to test a herd of apparently healthy birds eight months later before slaughtering them? In what universe does this make sense if the object is to save humans? And if it’s not that, what is it? If they won’t talk to a federal Member of Parliament, is there anyone they WILL talk to?

No wonder so many rational people are able see and support a bogeyman theory…because people will always fill the unknown with the suspected. It’s a rational response to this kind of secrecy, obfuscation and bureaucraspeak. Even if the CFIA discovers that the birds are sick, at this point who will believe they didn’t make the birds sick themselves? The Liberal Ministers have to step in…if they are even able to.

I have only good things to say about the RCMP. They don't want to be there any more than the protesters wants them there, but they are professional and polite and doing what they’re paid to do. It's easy to say they have a choice not to, but those of you who have a family to feed and whose family's wellbeing depends on your career, not job, but the career you trained for, look deeply into a mirror.

These police are just like us but they don't put their lives on the line every day as a member of a paramilitary force just to flounce when things get uncomfortable. They signed up to protect the law, and the law says the CFIA can slaughter the birds. The RCMP are doing exactly what they promised to do when they joined: defend the law and keep the peace.

The protesters themselves have organized a sort of security/PR to stop any signs of trouble and ask the culprits to leave, as you’ll see in a video attached here. At the time of my visit there was a minimum of tension between the crowd and police. The police are friendly and seem to be getting along well with the crowd, but the CFIA are staying well away. I can glimpse them in the background walking in hazmat suits among the uniformed police.

It should never have come to this. We apparently can’t make either the CFIA or the Liberals talk, but I can't help wondering why? The national embarrassment of this macabre deathwatch is both tragic and inane, brought to us yet again by Liberal befuddlement at the rudder of the ship of state.

Please Ministers, answer four questions:

1 Do these birds pose a threat to human life?
2 Why not test them?
3 Is culling actually necessary?
4 Why not tell Canadians what the hell is going on out there in Edgewood?"

https://t.co/ZmmKfsgW8s

[shar @SNeisteter]

@brianlilley Says a lot, doesn’t it.

[shar @SNeisteter]

@Martyupnorth_2 Don’t forget store aisles!

[shar @SNeisteter]

@DC_Draino Sorry! On behalf of my fellow citizens.

[shar @SNeisteter]

@TRHLofficial Pretty!

[shar @SNeisteter]

Best thread I’ve read in a long time. Take the time to read it. All of it.

[Rachael Wong @RachaelWongAus]

WHY TRUMP WON/HARRIS LOST: A 🧵

I, like many others, have my concerns about Trump. But I, like many others, am happy that he won.

To those who can't fathom why Trump won, here are some good reasons – feel free to add others!

Spoiler alert: they aren't racist, sexist or stupid.

[shar @SNeisteter]

@harryjsisson Wut?

[shar @SNeisteter]

@Sassafrass_84 North Dakota too.

[Scott Adams @ScottAdamsSays]

Harris wants "equity" in outcomes, not just equal opportunities.

If you are not good with math, or economics, or history, or psychology, or thinking in general, let me explain what that means.

It means that if you do everything right, and work hard to build an average or above average life, Harris wants to take that from you and your family and give it to people who didn't earn it the way you did.

It also means the complete destruction of the economic system over a short period of time. History is emphatic about that.

[shar @SNeisteter]

@AreOhEssEyeEe I thought he was assembled with parts from Cuba but his software was from China?

[Sheldon Yakiwchuk @YakkStack]

To make your life more affordable, you are being forced to pay for:

- Pharmaceuticals that you don't take;
- An experimental vaccine that nobody wants;
- Illicit Narcotics for addicts;
- Legacy News that nobody watches;
- Tampons in mens washrooms;
- A tax to fix the weather;
- Funding fixing the weather in tropical climates;
- Heat pumps for people in other provinces;
- Daycare that nobody can find;
- Healthcare that you can't use;
- A dental program that no dentists want a part of;
- An App that segregated society based on medical information;
- Unaffordable and unsustainable energy programs;
- Batteries that nobody needs that go into cars that nobody can afford and are impractical in Canada;
- A war in Ukraine that nobody even talks about anymore;
- Abortions in countries that you couldn't locate on a map;
- Diversity and equity programs that are the absolute inverse of being inclusive or in offering equity;
- The accommodations and food for millions of people to be brought, penniless, into Canada;

This message is approved by the Liberal/NDP Coalition.

[shar @SNeisteter]

@SundanceConstr1 Looking forward to reading them!

[Lance Neilson @CattleNeilson]

I went to @TuckerCarlson last night in Edmonton. @jordanbpeterson , Conrad Black, and @ABDanielleSmith were also on stage.

The point of the event was to encourage personal responsibility to speak out for what you know is right. Don’t stay silent. Speak what you know is true because if you don’t, who will?

I made the trip with 5 others from the Stettler area, which is also very encouraging to know there are other motivated people in our community. When one person publicly speaks out it encourages others. The fear that can come with taking a clear stand goes away with numbers.

[David Vance @DavidVance]

Poignant. 💔

[shar @SNeisteter]

“What I’m wondering, though, is why sensitivity and inclusivity work just one way? How about some sensitivity for those Canadians, especially veterans, whose spiritual lives include a little prayer?

Why are only the feelings of those who aren’t prayerful important?”

[Pierre Poilievre @PierrePoilievre]

Our veterans don’t have a prayer under Trudeau.

Now his government is banning Muslim, Jewish and Christian military chaplains from praying at Remembrance Day ceremonies.

I will reverse this insanity when I am Prime Minister.

https://t.co/BUIHIZZDpa

[Pierre Poilievre @PierrePoilievre]

Our veterans don’t have a prayer under Trudeau.

Now his government is banning Muslim, Jewish and Christian military chaplains from praying at Remembrance Day ceremonies.

I will reverse this insanity when I am Prime Minister.

https://t.co/BUIHIZZDpa