Canada

Ukrainians around the world will mark four years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. What was meant to break Ukraine in days has instead become a defining chapter of resilience, resistance, and unwavering determination.

Web archive link

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/47440588

Canada's François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Finance and National Revenue, will be in Brussels, Belgium, on February 16 to reinforce Canada’s commitment to shared economic prosperity and strengthened collaboration on both sides of the Atlantic.

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This marks a milestone as it is the first time a Canadian Finance Minister has been invited to participate in a meeting of the Eurogroup. The Eurogroup is an informal body that ensures close coordination of economic policies among the euro area member states and promotes conditions for stronger economic growth. It provides a key platform for Canada to align on growth strategies with its closest allies.

The Minister will take this opportunity to continue engaging his counterparts on the Defence, Security, and Resilience Bank (DSRB)—an initiative that brings together likeminded partners, mobilizes capital and support collective security. He will also highlight Canada’s plan to rebuild, rearm, and reinvest in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), and reiterate Canada’s commitment to invest 5% of its GDP in defence by 2035, as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) Defence Investment Pledge.

The Minister will also hold bilateral meetings with his European counterparts and European Commission leaders, and meet with European business leaders to discuss the importance of stable rules-based trade.

This visit builds on Minister Champagne’s recent visits to France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark and Italy, as Canada and Europe enter a new era of partnership focusing on a shared future of security, resilience, and clean growth.

Ontario will keep Crown Royal on the shelves in the province’s liquor stores, it says, after parent company Diageo agreed to almost $23 million in spending in the alcohol and agriculture sectors.

But the deal won't help people losing their jobs at the end of the month, the town's mayor and the union representing workers said.

According to a statement Friday, the province said it had reached the agreement with the company after months of negotiations.

While some of the investment is going to Amherstburg, most of the money is earmarked for the alcohol and agriculture sectors elsewhere in the province.

Former deputy prime minister and cabinet minister Chrystia Freeland violated election rules during a 2024 byelection, the Commissioner of Canada Elections said on Friday.

The violation stemmed from comments Freeland made in response to reporter questions following a government announcement, a report from Commissioner Caroline Simard's office said.

Freeland, who was finance minister at the time, was making the announcement in Toronto prior to the byelection in Toronto-St. Paul's.

When asked by reporters about the upcoming vote, Freeland offered "supportive remarks" about Liberal candidate Leslie Church, the report said.

Offering support for a political candidate while using government resources could constitute a contribution to Church's campaign.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/55306229

When the Israeli prime minister travelled to the U.S. on Sept. 25, 2025, Wing of Zion took a number of detours as it crossed the Mediterranean in order to stay mostly over water, and entered the Atlantic through the Strait of Gibraltar.

The flight route followed by Netanyahu's plane on Tuesday was a classic Great Circle route (the shortest possible distance) from Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.

But Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, the Bloc candidate, called on the courts to annul the results and call a new election after CBC News reported that a voter had their mail-in ballot returned to them due to a misprint on the return envelope.

Elections Canada acknowledged the error but said the results had already been finalized.

I always thought this was pretty wild that they just shrugged their shoulders and said too bad.

Elections Canada fucked up and it impacted the election. This shouldn't have had to go to the supreme court to fix IMO.

Ukrainians demonstrate the highest level of "positive attitude" towards Great Britain, Canada, France and Germany. Negative attitudes are highest towards Russia.

These are the findings of the survey commissioned by the Kyiv Security Forum and conducted by The Razumkov Center on the eve of the Munich Security Conference, which will take place on February 13-15.

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The respondents were most positive toward Great Britain, with a balance of +94.3% (the difference between positive and negative assessments). Compared to September 2025, positive attitudes towards Britain have increased - at that time, the balance was +78%.

Canada (92.3%), France (87.5%) and Germany (83.5%) also received positive assessments. The positive balance of attitudes towards these countries has also increased compared to September last year.

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Ukrainians also have a predominantly positive attitude towards "international institutions". The balance of trust in the EU remains steady at "+79.5%".

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Ukrainians have a predominantly negative attitude towards "China" - the balance is minus 51%. Twenty-five per cent of respondents have a positive attitude towards this country (5.7% are completely positive, 14.8% are mostly positive), while 71.5% have a negative attitude (37.1% are mostly negative, 34.4% are completely negative).

The lowest level of positive attitude was recorded towards Russia - the balance is minus 98.1%.

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[Edit typo.]

Internet blackout, currency collapse causing financial, emotional strain.

For three weeks in January, Carleton University student Maryam Mansouri had no idea whether her mother was dead or alive.

The last Mansouri had heard, her mother was about to join thousands of Iranians in the streets of Tehran in protests that quickly turned deadly. That same day, Iranian authorities severed phone and internet access, effectively cutting the country off from the outside world.

"I was zooming in on [news] footage to find the body of my mom and my best friends," Mansouri recalled. To her relief, her mother was safe, but the internet shut down created other problems. She couldn't access the funds she needed from back home to pay the overdue tuition of more than $20,000 for her final semester at Carleton.

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Mansouri is one of thousands of international students from Iran struggling with both the emotional and financial toll of the turmoil back home.

"I know that people … think that international students are rich … but many of them, like me, they are coming from countries in danger of regime changes and uprisings," she said.

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While the country has seen waves of mass protests in recent years, Dena Abtahi, a research associate with the Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP), says the latest government crackdown, coupled with the economic collapse, is having a profound effect on Iranians around the world.

"There is no purchasing power to actually make ends meet within Iran,” said Abtahi, a former international student.

For students like Mansouri who rely on financial support from their family back home, those contributions have become "essentially worthless," Abtahi said.

On top of Mansouri's full-time course load, the fourth-year journalism student works two part-time jobs to try to cover her living expenses. She said she uses a food bank and has been able to cover her rent thanks to help from members of the Iranian community in Ottawa.

Stories like Mansouri’s are common, according to Abtahi, who’s heard from others who have had to change their visa status from a study permit to a work permit to afford basic necessities.

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The consultation format was widely criticized for its prioritization of business interests, its lack of attention to human rights and labour concerns related to AI, and its disregard for deliberative public dialogue: the short, 30-day time window and specialized knowledge required to meaningfully answer many of the survey questions posed barriers to public participation.

In response, over 150 individuals and organizations signed an open letter urging Solomon to extend the consultation timeline, reconstitute the AI task force into a more equitable structure, and re-write the survey to better represent the concerns of a broader range of stakeholders.

cross-posted from: https://reddthat.com/post/60207520

Air Transat is cancelling its last two flights into Florida as of this spring, suspending all of its business into the United States.

cross-posted from: https://zirk.us/users/JazzyKindaFella/statuses/116063802333754119

🇨🇦 At Davos, Prime Minister
#MarkCarney declared that #Canada will "apply the same standards to allies and rivals".

In 2022 Canada barred #Russia n aircraft from Canadian airspace.

Two days ago, an Israeli plane transporting the war criminal Netanyahu flew through Canadian airspace.

https://x.com/dimitrilascaris/status/2022131495570485539

#politics #hypocrisy #Ottawa
#Palestine @palestine@lemmy.ml @palestine@a.gup.pe #elbowsup #cdnpol #quebec #ontario #toronto #montreal @ledevoir @torontostar #winnipeg @winnipegfreepress @pivot @TheBreach

Archived link

• Focus Graphite's Lac Knife project in Quebec features 15% graphitic carbon content, approximately 3x higher than the industry average of 3-5%, providing significant cost advantages in a North American operating environment
• The company has secured $14 million in non-dilutive funding from Natural Resources Canada's Global Partner Initiative, with total cash position of $18 million and minimal near-term dilution requirements
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• Focus is developing specialty large-flake graphite for military, defense, and aerospace applications, leveraging unique purification technology that preserves flake integrity without chemicals
• The company is in final stages of environmental permitting (ESIA completion expected within 3-4 months) and has already demonstrated material in missile applications, positioning for production in 2-3 years

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Archived link

Canadian volunteer Brittney Shki-Giizis left the Canadian military to fight in Ukraine. A former tank instructor, she explains why she chose to come to the front, how she learned Ukrainian to serve in a Ukrainian unit, and how the war’s shift toward drones led her to become an FPV (first-person view) drone pilot. She also reflects on being a woman in the Ukrainian military, the realities behind drone warfare, the cost of losing comrades, and why she believes any ceasefire without security guarantees would only delay Russia’s next attack.

Here is an Invidious link to watch the interview (22 min, original TY link is here).

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Immigration Minister Lena Diab has acknowledged many of these visa holders are no longer here temporarily — but the government has no concrete solution yet to their plight.

Now, her government is under new pressure to open a permanent residency pathway for the nearly 300,000 Ukrainians like Kryshtanovych who came to Canada through the emergency visa program.

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Launched in 2022, the Canada-Ukraine authorization for emergency travel, or CUAET, offered a three-year work or study permit to people fleeing the war.

With the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion fast approaching, many Ukrainians face limited options for seeking permanent residency.

Diab told The Canadian Press in January the government is aware some people on CUAET visas are here to stay.

“We now know it’s not temporary. They’ve been here for X number of years, and for the most part, people are working, they’re building a life, you know, they have children and so on. So I understand that,” she said.

“What I’ve been able to do so far as the minister is extend their status in Canada, whether it’s work or study, while we figure out what to do.”

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Ontario Liberal MP Yvan Baker has sponsored a parliamentary petition calling for a temporary permanent residency pathway for CUAET visa holders. That petition has gathered just over 45,000 signatures and is scheduled to close on Thursday.

Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine will enter its fourth year later this month, followed shortly after by the 12th anniversary of Russia annexing the Crimean peninsula.

The longer the war stretches on, the harder it is for [Ukrainian refugess like Roksolana] Kryshtanovych to envision a future living outside of Canada.

“I have friends here. I have work here. I see my life here,” she said.

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Archived link

Someone builds a dangerous new device and asks you to trust them and everyone else who will use it in the coming years. You don’t know who will get to use this device, or to what end. This information is provided on page 300 of a 600-page document. Deeply worried? So are we.

Introduced in Bill C-15, a budget-implementation legislation, that “device” is an unprecedented power given to federal ministers to exempt virtually any entity from all federal laws and regulations—except the Criminal Code. In other words, “no one is above the law”…unless a federal minister decides otherwise.

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The federal government is trying to downplay concerns by comparing this extraordinary new power to the use of so-called “regulatory sandboxes.” Regulatory sandboxes are targeted, highly transparent, tightly controlled and temporary environments for testing new technology to better understand their implications without facing strict legal liability. They have been precisely designed this way in Canada, Europe, South America, and elsewhere to be used in specific areas of public policy such as fintech, vehicle safety, aeronautics, innovative legal services and privacy protection.

Alas, the federal government is not identifying a list of specific regulatory hurdles that are ill-adapted to a new set of technologies and can be waived to allow small-scale pilots. Instead, the government is giving itself the sweeping power to sideline almost all federal laws and regulations, including the Canada Labour Code, our two federal privacy laws, the Hazardous Products Act and the Explosives Act.

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While Bill C-15’s new power is temporary—it has a six-year cap—it has none of the other essential characteristics of a regulatory sandbox, nor is it limited to innovation.

Far from creating a regulatory sandbox, the federal government is designing a potentially boundless desert where any person, company, or individual, private or public, of any size, in any industry, in any sector, could seek authorization to bypass federal laws in the name of “competitiveness” or “economic growth.”

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Laws adopted by democratically elected officials should not be seen as an inconvenience. Some of them are the result of hundreds of years of advocacy, debate, and hard-won reform. While laws must be capable of adapting as values evolve and as new challenges emerge, they also need to remain grounded in collective experience and respect values that have long defined the social contract—such as justice, dignity, and fairness. Canada’s core fabric, including its economy, climate action, health and environment are all at risk if the laws that structure and protect them can so easily be set aside by the executive branch of government.

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Long ago, the people of Canada decided that a small group of people in a position of power should not make decisions behind closed doors that benefit the select few who have their ear. Division 5 of Bill C-15’s Part 5 directly threatens this fundamental principle. For the sake of our democracy, and for as many reasons as we have laws, this division must be removed from Bill C-15.

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Archive link

Here is the open letter (pdf).

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The NGO Hong Kong Watch and nine other Hong Kong diaspora organizations have raised serious concerns over the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on law enforcement cooperation signed between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Ministry of Public Security of the People’s Republic of China.

While recognizing the importance of combating transnational crime, the groups warn that the lack of transparency surrounding the agreement has created fear and uncertainty within Hong Kong diaspora communities in Canada. Many Hong Kongers fled repression by Chinese authorities and now fear that closer cooperation with China’s internal security apparatus could undermine their safety, privacy, and willingness to engage with Canadian law enforcement.

The organizations urge the Government of Canada to release the full text of the MoU, clarify its scope and safeguards, and demonstrate that cooperation on crime will not expose diaspora communities to intimidation, surveillance, or transnational repression. They also call on lawmakers and the media to treat diaspora safety and trust in Canadian institutions as matters of public interest and national importance.

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A highly regarded theoretical physicist is stepping away from the Ontario institute he helped found, after his ties to the late American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were revealed in recently released files.

Lee Smolin, an American Canadian professor of physics and philosophy, has "agreed to pause his working relationship" with the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ont., according to an email on Thursday from Perimeter's executive director, Marcela Carena.

Smolin was a founding faculty member of the independent research centre, which is known around the world for pioneering work in quantum theory and got much of its initial funding from BlackBerry co-founder Mike Lazaridis.

Smolin was working at the Perimeter Institute part time and also has academic appointments at the University of Waterloo and University of Toronto.

There are moments when words are inadequate.

What happened in Tumbler Ridge is a tragedy. Lives were lost. Families were shattered. A small community is now carrying a soul-crushing grief that will live long after the headlines fade. That is where our attention should begin, and where it should remain.

Yet almost immediately, the tragedy was pulled into the public domain and repackaged. Not to support the grieving or help a traumatized community heal, but to advance ideological positions and turn suffering into rage farming.

That is not reflection. It is exploitation! Full stop! The shooter has been identified as a transgender individual with severe mental health challenges. Those facts have been selectively seized upon by some to promote ideological claims that have nothing to do with the lives lost in Tumbler Ridge. It is opportunism.

To be clear, this tragedy is not “about trans people.” Just as acts of violence are not “about” race, religion, or sexuality simply because a perpetrator belongs to a particular group. Violence is not explained by identity labels, and grief is not eased by scapegoating.