Why Canadian Medicare is better than Obamacare or Trumpcare

What if a child with a potentially fatal disease had only one option for a cure, a treatment that costs 100 million dollars. Would you expect our publicly funded medicare system in Canada or a private insurance company in the USA to pay for it, or opt to let the child die under the theory that the 100 million dollars could be better spent saving many more lives?

It's a decision worthy of Sophie's Choice, where saving one life means condemning others to certain death, a decision that no rational human would feel comfortable making.
But the reality is that these decisions are made every day by government bureaucrats here in Canada or nameless insurance actuaries in the United States and belies the truth that we cannot provide maximum healthcare to all of our citizens, regardless of whether we are American or Canadian because we do not have the financial wherewithal to pay for it.

And so painful decisions have to be made, decisions that in effect ration healthcare on the basis of cost.
It is a healthcare pie that is to be divided, wherein Canada, each of us gets an equally small sliver or in the United States when the slices are decidedly uneven.
And there is the rub.
And so debate rages here and in the United States over which system can deliver the most for the least, despite the fact that no system can or will deliver all that is ideal and that, to all members of society.

The Canadian system is called single-payer, where the government provides all services related to healthcare and funds the system through special health levys and general taxes.
Both Obamacare and Trumpcare are hybrid systems where the government pay for about half the healthcare service, while the other half is funded by employers and administered by private insurance or health care providers using private doctors and healthcare facilities.

On the face of it, the Canadian system makes a lot more sense. It is plain and simple, eliminates the profit aspect and should in theory spread out health resources (hospitals and doctors) evenly, based on need instead of profit.
But like communist or social systems, it sounds a lot better on paper than in real life and the benefits as opposed to the free market system don't necessarily pan out.
Bureaucracy and low productivity are the Achilles heel of the single-payer system, whereby layers and layers of administrators rob the system of valuable resources and where inefficiency due to poor management and oversight, coupled with low productivity are the bane of the system.

This can be best illustrated by the administration of health services in Quebec versus the rest of Canada, whereby Quebec's infamous bureaucracy and abysmally low productivity rate demonstrate how two single-payer systems operating under the exact same rules can register different results.
Let us remember that 25% of Quebecers cannot find a family doctor despite the province paying for more doctors per capita than Ontario. It is illustrative of how bureaucracy, bad management and laziness makes Quebec's healthcare system so bad as compared to other Canadian provinces, despite having equal financial resources.

At any rate, healthcare in Canada is rationed through long waiting lists for surgery and treatments, and where appointments with doctors, especially specialists, takes much too long. Certain 'exotic' treatments and expensive drugs are just not available due to the perceived poor cost/benefit ratio and so many Canadians afflicted are deprived of  essential treatments, condemned to suffer the consequences of non-treatment or forced to travel to the USA to get what they need or want, at their own expense. How many of us give up waiting in the emergency room because of the interminable hours upon hours of waiting? The societal cost of these delays is incalculable, but impactful just the same.

There is no doubt that long delays for appointments with doctors or waiting lists for surgery or treatment is not a problem in the United States, where health services are plentiful, superb and available almost on demand.
The problem here is getting in the door, where millions upon millions of Americans cannot avail themselves of these excellent services because they don't have the means to pay or the insurance to cover it.
This is the American version of rationing.

When people vaunt the benefits of the American system over the Canadian system they always point to the availability and quality of services as compared to Canada, but always fail to include the crucial aspect of access, whereby too many Americans are locked out of the medical system.

In the end no system is perfect, but let us consider that Canada spends half of what the USA does on healthcare and I can only imagine how much better our system would be versus Trumpcare or Obamacare if we had access to double our healthcare budget.

In the chart above you can see that the USA spends US$8,233 per person, per year on healthcare, while Canada spends almost half that at US$4,445, perhaps the key element in the USA/Canada debate on healthcare.

While most Americans have been frightened away from the concept of Canadian style single-payer system by the entrenched healthcare and insurance industry who constantly 'trump' up the negative aspects of our system, the reality is that only a fraction of Canadians would opt for Trumpcare or Obamacare care, despite the shortcomings of our system.

But before we get too full of ourselves, we shouldn't be too proud of our medicare system and ask ourselves the important question, how it is that countries like France, Great Britain, Germany and others, all have better healthcare systems than ours, while spending considerably less.

New Bloc Leader Already Working on Her Pension

My least favorite politician is Martine Ouellet, the newly minted leader of the Bloc Quebecois who is, although a double university graduate, one of the dumbest people to ever grace the halls of the National Assembly.

She is the absolute definition of of an idiot, spouting off utter separatist nonsense that only fanatical supporters can buy.
According to her, Quebec contributes more in taxes to Ottawa than it receives in benefits and that every province is favoured over Quebec.
She is opposed of course to the Energy East pipeline on the grounds that it is “the biggest threat to potable water in Quebec.”
"She called on sovereignists to rally behind her to protect the “green jewel” that is Quebec and put an end to tax havens and the loss of corporate headquarters from the province."

Quebec as a "green jewel" Really???

She pledges to shut down the world's tax havens and to force companies to keep their head offices in Quebec. I'm not kidding. She says all this with a straight face.

The Parti Quebecois was thrilled to dump her and her claim that the PQ was conspiring against her is the one thing which she repeats that is 100% believable. 

For those new to the blog, I want to cite this interview that I translated a while back where a Radio-Canada interviewer tries to keep a straight face, but clearly astounded at her stupidity.

Yup, the new leader of the Bloc Quebecois thinks that by Ottawa guaranteeing Newfoundland's $900 million loan, it costs taxpayers $900 million.
Someone should have explained it to her in terms she might understand, so here goes.

Your brother goes to the bank to get a car loan, but since he has bad credit, the bank wants to charge a much higher interest rate. But the banker says that if you (the sister with  the good credit) guarantees the loan, the bank will offer the lower interest rate instead.
Now Martine, listen to this..... If you brother repays the loan without defaulting the guarantee COSTS NOTHING!!!!

This is the same woman that is promising to nationalize the internet.

At any rate, let's talk about the fact that she is not giving up her Quebec National Assembly seat where she now sits as an independent, a situation that hasn't gone over big with any of the political parties who view the idea of holding down two full time jobs rather deceitful. Taking advantage of a loophole that allows members of the National Assembly to have a second job, the situation is somewhat of an embarrassment to the institution.

Now the two years salary she'll collect from the National assembly while she is leader of the Bloc Quebecois has a much larger effect on her income than you can imagine.

Ouellet  will be 48 next month and that number is important because in two years she is eligible for a National Assembly pension. There is a provision that an ex-MNA can receive her pension at fifty years instead of sixty, with a 25% penalty.

Now MNAs earn a 4% indexed credit on their salary for each year they serve.
Simply put, if a MNA has served ten years in the Assembly and made $100,000 in each of those years, she'd be entitled to a $40,000 pension at 60 years old or a $30,000 a year pension if retiring early at fifty years old.
The two years that Ouellet will sit in the National Assembly while leader of the BQ, will earn her another six or eight thousand dollars in pension for life.

Ouellet will be pension eligible just about the time she'll be out of a job in Quebec and ready to run federally as a BQ candidate.
If she wins a seat in Ottawa, she can start working on a federal pension and delay until sixty years old, her indexed $40,000 Quebec pension.

For her ten years of tenure in Quebec's National Assembly, she can collect a lifetime indexed pension which could run thirty or forty years and which would cost Quebec taxpayers over a million present dollars.
But readers, that's not the end of it. No sireee!
Let us consider Ouellet winning a seat in Ottawa where she can start working on an even more lucrative Parliamentary pension, one which she'd be eligible for in six years.
But should she be defeated, after say, five years all is not lost.

She could invoke the buy-back clause in her Quebec National Assembly pension plan whereby ex-MNA members who leave and take another designated eligible job, can continue contributing to their Quebec MNA pension, or can make a lump sum payment to come up to speed. And by the way, sitting as an MP in Ottawa is considered an eligible job.
So by contributing a lump sum  amount, equal to what she would have paid into the Quebec plan had she remained a member of the National Assembly instead of sitting in Ottawa, she could add those five years to her Quebec pension.
A fantastic deal when one considers that the lump sum payment is a fraction of what the pension is worth.
It's calculated that in Ottawa, taxpayers pay $25 for every $1 contributed by the beneficiary of a Parliamentary pension.

Quebec is not as bad as that, but pretty bad just the same.
In the ten years that Martine Ouellet sat as a member of the National Assembly, she contributed about $100,000 herself total towards her pension, a pension which is worth roughly about a million dollars over her projected retirement life. It means that taxpayers are paying about $10 for each dollar she contributed. Yikes!!!

Good luck Martine!!!!

Snowstorm Traffic Fail Underlines Quebec Bureaucracy Nightmare

It's not like snowstorms are something new to Quebec and even the size of the one that hit us this week is not something we shouldn't have been able to handle.

Of course there would be the anticipated traffic delays but considering that we had a few days warning of what was to come, the disaster on Highway 13 in Montreal, where 300 odd vehicles and their occupants were immobilized overnight in freezing weather was a dangerous and unacceptable failure by civil defence authorities, the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Transport, all of whom were unable to cope with the difficult but not particularly extraordinary situation.

“With opposition calls for heads to roll, Premier Philippe Couillard has launched an external inquiry into how 300 motorists ended up stranded overnight Tuesday on Highway 13 during a blizzard”......
....“Moving to get the political storm over Transport Quebec’s bungling of the storm under control, Couillard announced it has named former deputy minister of transport Florent Gagné as head of a formal external inquiry into the events”. Montreal Gazette

And so things are running true to form, the politicians hand-wringing and apologizing profususly, but of course refusing to point fingers or assign blame.
So as usual, the government is going to its tried and true formula of calling an inquiry in order to delay accountability until the public's rage has subsided with time.
The result of that inquiry?
Nobody in particular will be held responsible for the dangerous mess, nobody will be fired or sanctioned and a collective responsibility will be invoked insuring no politician or bureaucrat will suffer any consequences.
It is the Quebec way.

I am reminded of this mindset at Quebec's illustrious UQAM university where future leaders are being formed and where collective irresponsibility is taught early and often.
Many courses are graded on the ridiculous notion of 'collective class work,' where every student is given the exact same passing mark, where good students are punished and bad students rewarded.
Everybody passes and everybody is rewarded equally, regardless of talent or devotion making for ideal future politicians and government employees.

By the way, the Journal de Montreal published an organizational flow chart that detailed the 94 steps to be taken by the Ministry of Transport in relation to intervening in a disaster or serious situation.
It is perhaps the best example of why Quebec failed to deal with the situation adequately.
Layer upon layer of bureaucracy that was and is a recipe for failure, followed by collective irresponsibility.

Even if you don't understand French, you certainly get the gist of what idiotic bureaucracy is going on here.

As a society, Quebec has been gripped with the sovereignty debate for over forty years and so little room remains in the public form for debate over the nightmare of bureaucracy and collective irresponsibility.

In Quebec we have more doctors per capita than Ontario, yet 25% of citizens cannot find a family doctor.
The bloated amount of bureaucrats involved in running our health care and school systems is staggering and is directly the cause of inferior performance.
Yet the bureaucrats are firmly in charge and fiercely protective of their entrenched positions.
Recently a government inspector swooped down on a run-down school where volunteer parents were painting the school at their own entire cost and labour, charging the volunteers with illegally working without a permit or qualification and threatening two hundred dollar fines each.

The Quebec government is incredibly bloated and lazy with the guarantee of lifetime job security poisoning  the workplace with a 'can't be fired' mentality that leads to abysmal productivity.
This last week I read a story in La Presse about a Quebec civil  servant who is paid but does not work.

“We'll call him Gilles, because if we give his real name, surely Gilles will find himself in a real mess with his boss, the Quebec government. Gilles is a bureaucrat in Quebec City. But Gilles does not work.
No joke. He doesn't work.
Gilles is paid. He has an office. He has a title.
But he doesn't work and is paid a salary of $130,000”  La Presse {Fr}

Apparently his bosses don't like him or want to work with him and so he is left to do nothing and collect his guaranteed salary. This is Quebec.

Every aspect of Quebec public life is affected with the poison of bloated bureaucracy that is more reminiscent of an old-time communist regime, than a modern western society.
And so Quebecers, even outside government work less days and hundreds less hours per year than Canadians in other provinces.
Laziness, bureaucracy and inefficiency is hallmark of Quebec society, leading us to become the province with the least amount of disposable income in Canada.
What do our leaders say about that?

"It's our choice how we live and organize society."

...Yes it is.

****************** U P D A T E ******************  

 As predicted, apologies flowed profusely by the Liberal ministers without anyone accepting responsibility.

Let me remind them of the code of Ministerial Responsibility as detailed on the National Assembly website (which I've translated from the French)

"Ministers are individually responsible for the management of their departments. They must present the policies and defend the actions taken by their ministry. Before the Assembly, a minister must answer not only his own actions, but also those of his officials. He may even be forced to resign due to an important case of mismanagement....

Quebecers shouldn't  hold their breath waiting for a ministerial resignation despite the code. 

It isn't the Quebec way.

Petition for Bilingual Road Signs Deposited...Good Luck

There's a reason that there was a Facebook  group dedicated to the creation of a 'sarcasm' font because as we all know the use of irony to mock or convey contempt is particularly difficult to reproduce in print.
As to the petition to require English on Quebec road signs deposited in the National Assembly today it is with that measure of sadness that I say....     Yah...Good Luck with that.

I want to congratulate Harold Stavis, the author of the petition on his hard work and dedication but with all the good intentions in the world,  the petition hasn't got a snowball's chance in Hell of being implemented.
I was going to describe the effort to get English or pictograms added to Quebec road signs as a Herculium task, but on a sober second thought would sadly describe the effort as a Sisyphean Task.

 "The French Language Charter allows safety signs to be in English as well as French, however, it’s up to the discretion of the Transport Ministry. The government said it won’t comment until it’s had time to study the petition but a spokesperson for the transport minister said 90 per cent of Quebec road signs are pictographs. He added that signage near the border is bilingual."  Link to Global
 
For over forty years it has been the policy of every single Quebec government, separatist or federalist, to eliminate English where it could and humiliate it where it could not.
That policy has become so ingrained that it permeates our entire Quebec society and where almost all businesses have also adopted what I like to refer to as an "eliminate or humiliate" attitude.

 This Loblaw's grocery sign is exactly what I mean when I say humiliate. With the English language displayed in an unreadably small font, words that were probably translated by Google and with nary a soul bothering to correct the obvious translation blunder.
And this by the way is representative of all signage in the company's Quebec stores, where English is displayed in just such a humiliating and slapdash manner, where the entire store is filled with signs with nonsense English translations and syntax. This from the mightiest of grocery chains in Canada.
I wonder how long a French sign with such obvious errors would be permitted.
 It is simply pitiful to see giant companies like Loblaws who are based outside Quebec scramble to get on board with the spirit, not just the letter of the language law.

And so where English can be used, many businesses don't bother because it's cheaper to operate in one language and only knuckle under when language rights activists rise up in local markets where Anglophones are a substantial part of the clientele.

The elimination and humiliation of English has really nothing to do with communication and everything to do with the Francophone elitists obsession with bullying its English minority as punishment for perceived historical injustice towards francophones in general and the French language in particular by English Canada.

Here is an article written by William Johnson  who is by far the finest and most eloquent defender of English rights in Quebec.
The piece entitled Quand le ciel linguistique est menacé was published in French  a couple of months ago and I know of no English translation, which is a pity because it is remarkable, blowing apart the long-held mantra that Bill 101 was based on the fragility of the French language. If you read French, please do Le Devoir the courtesy of reading the article there.  Le Devoir

Here is my translation with apologies for any defeciencies.

According to the Leger poll released on January 23, 2017 in Le Devoir, 66% of Francophones believe that French is threatened. Nothing new. It is a dogma inscribed in our collective consciousness.In 1972-73, the Commission of Inquiry into the Situation of the French Language and Linguistic Rights in Quebec, chaired by linguist Jean-Denis Gendron, delivered its report after several years of public meetings and sociological studies. There was then a consensus among the witnesses who appeared before the Commission that French was under threat. For example, the Montreal Catholic School Board submitted a memorandum in 1968 stating: "Quebecers do not feel that they want to speak 'good' French because they are aware that, on the one hand, using the bastardized version, the message will be understood anyways and that, on the other hand, this 'correct' language which would be imposed upon them is of little use in  the workplace where the influence of English dominates. "
 A still more sombre view was affirmed in a book published in 1971 by the Association of French Teachers in Quebec titled The Black Book... The impossibility (almost absolute) of teaching French in Quebec. The following findings were made;

"What can be left of French life when one speaks English at work, when one reads English on the way back home, when one listens to English radio or television in the evening at home? A language that isn't a language of communication is destined to disappear ..."Bilingualism is a step towards English unilingualism in Quebec. Who said that? All serious linguists.. 

Bilingualism always plays in favor of the stronger, it destroys the language of the minority. It kills it slowly, it consumes the weakest ...
 Bilingualism always ends up giving birth to a bastard people."

 An opinion poll commissioned by the Gendron commission was soon to confirm that the people of Quebec believed what intellectuals and teachers were telling them, that they were almost all working in English and that French was more or less confined to family life. The survey asked: "It is said that the French Canadian has to work in English, while outside his work he lives in French. In your opinion, what proportion of French Canadians is in this situation? "
 To this question, 78% of respondents in the Montreal region said that French Canadians worked "overwhelmingly or in the majority" in English. Only 3% believed that "the very small minority" had to work in English.So what are the facts? The Gendron commission engaged sociologists to provide a detailed description of the language of work. Surprise! The researchers found that on average, Francophones in Montreal worked in French, 19.1 days out of 20. So they used English on average less than one day out of 20.

Outside of Montreal, according to the experts' report, Francophone workers worked in French on average 19.6 days a week. The research director for the Gendron commission, sociologist Pierre-Étienne Laporte, commented on these results: "We believe that we can say that the preponderance  of French among Francophone workers is stronger than we had anticipated. As we know, there is a climate of opinion in French Quebec that the majority of French Canadians are in the sad situation of "living in French and working in English" ... Our investigation revealed the extent to which the linguistic situation of Francophones at work is better than the general public believes. "Has this serious work, led by credible researchers, succeeded in enlightening public opinion? Not at all. On April 1, 1977, the government of René Lévesque published a white paper to announce and explain the Charter of the French language that was to follow. This white paper was presented as a summary of all previous research on language. In fact, it was rather a summary of all the myths received about the desperate situation of French. One did not even hesitate to lie deliberately.The following assertion was presented as having been made by the Gendron Commission: "English is clearly dominant in general communications at work: 82% of all communications are in English throughout Quebec, 85% in Montreal and 70% in the province. English is also predominant in more specific modes of communication. "
 Having previously read the report of the Gendron commission, I was amazed by this statement and went to verify it. Indeed, I found these figures, but they did not say what the white paper wanted them to say. This section dealt with the working conditions of Anglophones only, not all workers in Quebec, let alone Francophone workers. It should be noted that the other statements in the White Paper were supported by a reference to the source from which the information was derived. But there was no reference to this statement, which radically distorted the real situation of French in the world of work. I concluded that the misinformation was deliberate.

Again, the media shouted that the language sky was falling, even if the census data said the opposite.

As the petition for English signage is deposited in Quebec's National Assembly I am wondering what will be the reaction.
Will it be politely received and then ignored.
Will it be fiercely and loudly rejected by French language nationalists .
Or both.

One thing that I'm sure of is that we won't be getting any new English road signs.

Islamophobia-phobia Grips Canadian Media

Imagine you attend church one Sunday morning and in the sermon  a guest priest unleashes a blistering attack on Muslims.

“kill them one by one” and “make their children orphans and their women widows.”

I can imagine certain congregants placing their hands over their children's ears and many others rushing the exits. More importantly I imagine the furious reaction of the congregants who didn't come to church to hear that type of hate speech.
And I doubt seriously that a video of the sermon would survive two years online without someone raising a red flag.
I've no doubt that it wouldn't take more than a day for someone to complain to police about the hate-tirade and I can imagine the haste with which the police would react.
After all, in today's Canada, Islamophobia is more important than antisemitism or Christophobia, our Prime Minister and his Parliament tells us so.

You all know that I'm alluding to the imam who preached just such hate against Jews in a Montreal mosque without any of the congregants or mosque officials breathing a word of reproach.
In fact mosque officials tried to spin the speech, telling reporters that the call to 'kill Jews' was taken out of context. Out of context...Really???
And that is a direct knock on the Muslim community in general who tell us that radical elements among them enjoy no popular support.

How on Earth did nobody in the Muslim congregation denounce and report the flagrant antisemitic screed to the police and how is it that a Jewish watchdog group was the only entity that raised an alarm.
An isolated incident? I think not.
In Toronto 's Masjid Toronto mosque another sermon prayed to Allah for;

"[O Allah!] Give us victory over the disbelieving people… O Allah! Give victory to Islam and raise the standing the Muslims. And humiliate the polytheism and polytheists.

....O Allah! Purify Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews!

It went on and on ..... Link  
None of the faithful attending that service deemed the sermon offensive enough to report any of it to the police.
That particular sermon happened in 2016 and was not reported until 2017, again by another Jewish watchdog group. Only then did the mosque apologize, something the Montreal mosque never did..... I suppose that's progress.

Now readers, when in your lifetime did you hear of a Christian preacher in Canada offer a sermon from the pulpit extolling God or congregants to kill Jews or Muslims. For that matter In which Canadian synagogue did a Rabbi call for the deaths of Muslims?
Are the two above mentioned incidents an aberration or are other similar incidents occurring in Canadian mosques? It certainly begs the question and we cannot be branded anti-Muslim for asking.
 The mantra of Prime Minister Trudeau is that Islam is a peaceful and benevolent religion where the extremists within who preach and conduct violence are an insignificant minority enjoying no support in the overall Canadian Muslim community. 
The underlying message of the Parliamentary motion condemning Islamophobia is that anyone who doesn't agree with that gentle interpretation and who question any aspect of Islam's violent, antisemitic, homophobic and misogynistic aspects is racist.
It is a dangerous, naive and patently false interpretation of reality, foisted upon the Canadian public by apologists who see the world as they would like it to be, rather than what it is in reality.

“Needless to say, there are people who hate Arabs, Somalis, and other immigrants from predominantly Muslim societies for racist reasons. But if you can’t distinguish that sort of blind bigotry from a hatred and concern for dangerous, divisive, and irrational ideas — like a belief in martyrdom, or a notion of male ‘honor’ that entails the virtual enslavement of women and girls — you are doing real harm to our public conversation. Everything I have ever said about Islam refers to the content and consequences of its doctrine. And, again, I have always emphasized that its primary victims are innocent Muslims — especially women and girls. ”  - Sam Harris

Richard Martineau is a columnist for the Journal de Montreal who writes extensively on organized religion and who is without a doubt, not a fan.
He is an equal opportunity disparager, taking aim at Judaism, Christianity and Islam. His columns offer the opinion of an atheist who sees all manner of organized religion as a negative force in society. Fair enough.
He generally points out the absurdities and excesses that he sees in religion, but cannot in any way be considered a racist, unless you consider someone to be a racist because he thinks religion is bad.
But for a doctoral student at UQAM (where else) Martineau by his many criticisms of Islam contributes to Islamophobia in Quebec. The insignificant and patently stupid essay was given exposure by none other than Radio-Canada who embraces the notion that any discussion or criticism of Islam is Islamophobia. And so ultra-Liberals rush to condemn any discussion of Islam as Islamophobic, with the very real effect of sending a chill in the mainstream media so fearful of being branded Islamophobic that it is intimidated into silence.
The effect is called Islamophobia-phobia.

“For decades, Muslims around the world have rightly complained about the Israeli government labeling even legitimate criticism of its policies "anti-Semitic," effectively shielding itself from accountability. Today, Muslim organizations like CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) have borrowed a page from their playbook with the "Islamophobia" label — and taken it even further.
In addition to calling out prejudice against Muslims (a people), the term "Islamophobia" seeks to shield Islam itself (an ideology) from criticism. It's as if every time you said smoking was a filthy habit, you were perceived to be calling all smokers filthy people.

The phobia of being called "Islamophobic" is on the rise — and it's becoming much more rampant, powerful, and dangerous than Islamophobia itself.” Link

So deep is this chill in the Canadian mainstream media that the reporting of the arrest of a suspect in the bomb threat against Muslims in Montreal was completely tainted.

Not one mainstream media outlet including the CBC, CTV, Global, national newspapers mentioned the very pertinent fact that the hoaxer in the Montreal bomb hoax targeting Muslims, was an Arab and very likely a Muslim himself.
I reached out to an editor and asked why he didn't feel it germane to the story and he told me that there was not 100% confirmation that the hoaxer was indeed Muslim.
Really??? Let me see.
An Arab from Lebanon with the very Muslim given name of Hisham.

Hisham is an indirect Quranic name for boys that means “noble”, “gracious”, “honorable”. It is a Sahabi name. It is derived from the H26-Sh-M (to break something, to be humble) root which is used in a number of places in the Quran.  Link

If a bearded and kippah wearing Israeli civilian named Moishe Klein  shot up a mosque, near an Israel settlement, I think the media would have no problem identifying him as a Jew.

The fact that the hoaxer is an Arab and most likely a Muslim is central to the debate over the incident. Too many apologists were jumping to the conclusion that it was the evil islamophobic Quebec society responsible for the threat.
Is Hisham Saadi an Arab (likely a Muslim) with a particular and personal hatred of Muslims?
Is he just a nutcase or mentally ill?
Did he make the hoax as a false flag in order to bolster the notion that Muslims are innocent victims of a hostile Quebec society?
Our media is too intimidated to ask any of these questions.
There are other questions that the media won't address, the publication ban over court proceedings is one of them. Are there other factors, like security concerns because others are  involved or is the court itself suffering from Islamophobia-phobia and fearful of stirring the pot?

The bomb threat letter sent to the media was so well written that it begs the question as to whether a non-native English speaker could have written it alone. If in fact Hisham Saadi did write the letter himself it shows an extreme high level of intelligence. Read the letter

And so, many, many question surround this affair, but because of the journalistic chill engendered by Islamophobia charges, our media is too frightened to report on it.

Gutless reporting. Thank you Prime Minister Trudeau for frightening the media into silence.
Shame, Shame,  Shame ....

There is a difference between hating all Muslims and debating the very possible threat that radical Islam represents to Canada and the world.
Canadians know the difference and I imagine that while most of us are concerned with the threat to our society, only a tiny minority of us hate Muslims for being Muslims.

Islamophobia-phobia is more dangerous than Islamophobia.