Hard Pass

This week saw the news that Rideau Cottage, “temporary” home of the prime minister, is “inadequate.” The house is small and insufficiently secure for a head of government.

While I’m not inclined to argue that politicians ought to be living large at taxpayer expense as a rule, I’m embarrassed that the country routinely wrings its hands over where the prime minister lives and how he travels. Politicians need certain tools to do the job of governing a contemporary mass state. Debates about housing or travel, such as they are, don’t reflect serious disagreements over public policy or even our shared or disputed values. Instead, they’re occasions for nitpicking, pettiness, and supreme displays of insecurity. They’re silly and bad for us.

Today, Prime Minister Mark Carney is living at Rideau Cottage, just as Justin Trudeau did before him. He’s there because the official residence of the prime minister, 24 Sussex Drive, is a mess. It’s literally uninhabitable. The good news is that, in February 2024, the home was declared rodent and asbestos free. The bad news is that’s a declaration one hopes a G7 country wouldn’t have to make. It’s the sort of thing that ought to be implicit. Does your head of government live in a house full of carcinogens and rat droppings? Of course not! Why would you even ask? For a long time, Canada did have to ask the question, and the answer speaks to a national smallness that ought to be understood as a big shame.

The lone supervised drug consumption sites in Calgary and Lethbridge will close at the end of June, the provincial government announced on Friday.

Calgary's supervised consumption site (SCS) was the first of its kind to open in Alberta in 2017. It has been lauded by advocates as providing a life-saving service, but also targeted with criticism from people who blame it for public drug use and calls to police in its vicinity.

As the UCP government shifted its addiction services from a focus on harm reduction to more recovery-oriented care, the province first announced it planned to close Calgary’s SCS at the Sheldon M. Chumir Health Centre nearly five years ago. In December, Alberta's Mental Health and Addiction ministry renewed its promise to shutter the site.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has blocked a Pentagon policy that sought to limit what journalists are able to report about the U.S. military, ruling in favor of The New York Times in a case that raised fundamental questions about the freedom of the press.

The Pentagon policy, unveiled last September, required media organizations to pledge not to gather information unless officials from the Department of Defense formally authorized its release. The policy extended beyond classified information, and included a prohibition on reporting even unclassified material without the approval of Pentagon officials.

The policy prompted widespread condemnation from press freedom groups, and led multiple news organizations to forfeit their Pentagon press passes, rather than comply. NPR is among the organizations that turned in its press passes, but has continued vigorous reporting on the Pentagon.

The regulator for Alberta’s lawyers says it will no longer mandate Indigenous cultural competency training in advance of what Alberta Premier Danielle Smith calls the “Peterson law” coming into force.

The Law Society of Alberta will also cut its equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) committee in response to the government’s Bill 13, the Regulated Professions Neutrality Act, introduced last November.

Under the new provincial rules, regulators can’t "make cultural competency, unconscious bias, or diversity, equity, and inclusion training mandatory."

A very quiet queue has formed in Europe where some of Canada's long-standing, closest allies are seeking shelter under France's small but robust nuclear umbrella.

The initiative of French President Emmanuel Macron, who declared the next 50 years to be the "era of nuclear weapons," is — on paper — intended to add another layer of deterrence to NATO's American-backed security guarantees.

Once again — on paper — Russia is the adversary that needs deterring.

But with U.S. President Donald Trump once again trash-talking NATO allies over their reluctance to join his war in the Middle East and the sensational — but hardly surprising — Financial Times report that Denmark was preparing to put up a fight to defend Greenland against American annexation, a whole new dimension emerges to the French advanced nuclear deterrence strategy.

Don't know if anyone uses it, but I use it a LOT. It's the main way i consume media. It's no longer maintained as of a month ago. Hopefully someone forks it.

A Violent Israeli immigrant to Canada threatens Canadian protesters in their own country with a nail gun shouting "Every f*cking Palestinian will die!" But then they tell us to fear Muslims. Gives truth to saying every “accusation is a confession”

The company is reducing Copilot entry points on Windows, starting with Photos, Widgets, Notepad, and other apps.