What province? Alberta, of course

One recent article referred to President Trump as “Big Tech’s Personal Lobbyist,” for his efforts to undermine U.S. state and international efforts to regulate or tax the enormous wealth of digital economy giants.

Polling shows Canadians are fed up with the constant harassment from Washington. They want our leaders to go back at Washington hard, even if it hurts us economically.

And rarely do you get the two polar opposites — the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and the United Steelworkers — both stating that it's better to have no deal than a bad deal.

~

Canada, however, has finally shown the leadership that reflects our long tradition of international justice and opposition to genocide. And for this, Trump is threatening to inflict serious damage on our economy unless we back down. What’s on the table is our right to maintain an independent foreign policy.

~

Canada and the west have lined up to support the democratic resistance in Ukraine but Trump has always lined up behind Putin. When he first heard about the invasion, Trump declared Putin a "savvy genius". He blamed President Zelensky for the war. In Trump's worldview, the oligarch empires have the arbitrary right to reduce their neighbours to vassal state conditions — by economic pressure or by force.

Text of the article:

Ford floats use of notwithstanding clause in Toronto bike lanes case

‘Let’s see what happens at the Court of Appeal,’ Premier Doug Ford told reporters

Aidan Chamandy

Aug 6, 2025 1:41 PM

Premier Doug Ford is gearing up for a fight after a judge pumped the brakes on his government’s plan to remove some Toronto bike lanes. 

On Wednesday, Ford left open the possibility of invoking the notwithstanding clause to ensure his government retains the authority to remove bike lanes it disapproves of. 

“Let's see what happens at the Court of Appeal, and then we'll go from there,” he said at an unrelated announcement in Thornhill. 

Ford criticized Justice Paul Schabas’ decision as the “most ridiculous” he’s ever seen. 

“You talk about the Charter? It’s trampling on the democratic rights of Ontarians that elected a government, just a few months before … that said they’re going to move, not eliminate … bike lanes from the main arterial roads,” Ford said. 

Ford, however, struck a confident tone and said he has confidence the Court of Appeal will rule in his government’s favour. 

Using the notwithstanding clause would allow the government to push through the removals, regardless of what the three-judge panel at the Court of Appeals says. 

In his July 30 ruling, Justice Schabas wrote “the evidence is clear” that “restoring a lane of motor vehicle traffic … will create greater risk to cyclists and to other users of the road.” 

Schabas’ decision didn’t hinge on whether he thought citizens had a right to bike lanes. Instead, it revolved around whether the government’s arguments for removing the lanes — and causing harm to non-driving road users — was based in fact. 

The government’s central point was that removing the bike lanes on Yonge Street, University Avenue and Bloor Street would reduce congestion. That, according to Schabas, was predicated on “weak anecdotal evidence and expert opinion,” which was “unsupported, unpersuasive and contrary to the consensus view of experts.”

He wrote that “there is no evidence that the government based its decision on data, manuals or expert ‘highway engineering’, or that its decision would ‘contribute to highway safety.’”

“Rather, the evidence is to the contrary,” he wrote.

Ford is no stranger to using — or threatening to use — the notwithstanding clause, a constitutional provision that was previously taboo in Ontario politics. 

He was the first premier in the province’s history to invoke the clause, which has been in place since 1982. 

In 2018, he threatened to invoke the clause to reduce the number of Toronto city council members from 47 to 25. Doing so was ultimately unnecessary because the Court of Appeal upheld Queen’s Park’s authority to make the council change.

In 2021, the Superior Court struck down Ford’s attempt to [extend third-party election spending limits](https://www.barrietoday.com/local-news/supreme-court-strikes-down-ford-governments-third-party-political-ads-law-10339531: outbound&utm_medium=referral) to 12 months, up from six months. Ford recalled the legislature and passed the bill with the notwithstanding clause — marking the first time in provincial history the clause was actually used. 

Then, in 2022, Ford [used the clause](https://www.ola.org/en/legislative-business/bills/parliament-43/session-1/bill-28: outbound&utm_medium=referral) to ban education workers from striking after contract negotiations broke down. That sparked intense public backlash and Ford repealed the bill days later.

—

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article said Ford in 2022 used the notwithstanding clause to ban teachers from striking. It was in fact used to stop education workers, like librarians, custodians and early childhood educators, from striking.

Avoid Paywall

Note, this article is from a few weeks ago

“The Canadian government appears to have pursued a strategy of rushing through a record-breaking number of arms export permit approvals to Israel prior to publicly committing to pause approving any new ones,” Arm Embargo Now explained in their report. “This was then quietly undermined by a series of exceptions and loopholes,” researchers wrote, suggesting “the government’s policy shifts were… aimed at diffusing public criticism while maintaining material support.”

With climate change, it's more likely than you think

Some gardeners may be able to grow palms and even cold-hardy citrus in parts of Canada, according to the federal government's latest Plant Hardiness Zones map — the first update since 2014.

[...]

The plant hardiness zones come with accompanying species-specific models, which provide much more in-depth information for specific plants or trees. The models look at how specific plants would do under different climate change scenarios.

If we want to advance our economy, we need to embrace EV adoption. We already invested heavily into EV supply chains.

Buildings are the third-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. In many cities, including Vancouver, Toronto and Calgary, buildings are the single highest source of emissions.

The recently launched Infrastructure for Good barometer, released by consulting firm Deloitte, suggests that Canada’s infrastructure investments already top the global list in terms of positive societal, economic and environmental benefits.

In fact, over the past 150 years, Canada has built railways, roads, clean water systems, electrical grids, pipelines and communication networks to connect and serve people across the country.

Now, there’s an opportunity to build on Canada’s impressive tradition by creating a new form of infrastructure: capturing, storing and sharing the massive amounts of heat lost from industry, electricity generation and communities, even in summer.

Just came across this video. I've never heard of him before, but he seems to focus on facts, which I always appreciate. May showed some promising results in the import/export front for Canada. Hopefully the trends continue.

Author: Gabriela Perdomo | Assistant Professor, Mount Royal University

From the newsletter:

A few weeks ago, in an overheated and packed room at the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto, several journalists took the mic to speak about their work in a powerful new book — When Genocide Wasn’t News — about how Canada’s legacy media has been responding to Israel’s intensive military campaign in Gaza.

The book features contributions from journalists — some writing under pseudonyms — who describe newsrooms gripped by fear and a misguided commitment to a notion of “objectivity” that fails to serve the public.

Today, in The Conversation Canada, an article by journalism professor Gabriela Perdoma of Mount Royal University, points out that while Palestinians in Gaza have endured over 640 days of relentless military assault by Israeli Defense Forces, including attacks on children, hospitals and aid workers, Canadian mainstream media has too often remained silent or misleading in its coverage. She says one of the issues is that “journalists who support peace efforts can easily be accused of being ‘biased’ in favour of those promoting peace.” And such accusations, she says, “can have an outsized impact on reporting and be used to silence journalists.”

Perdoma’s article challenges mainstream news narratives and calls for newsrooms to urgently reflect on how journalism in Canada must evolve, especially in times of war.