Canada

Swedish aerospace manufacturer Saab has proposed that a hypothetical Gripen production line in Canada would be large enough to also serve export customers besides making planes for the Canadian Air Force.

The statement is the latest effort by Saab in sweetening the pot for Canada to give the Swedish company a slice of its fighter jet business.

“We need to ramp up our [fighter jet] production capabilities, to a level where it’s not only for Canada – we do see that [the potential line] will produce for export as well,” Mikael Franzén, chief marketing officer for the Gripen at Saab, told reporters at the Singapore Airshow here.

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Canada condemned the killing of protesters and use of violence by Iranian authorities after a video shared by Iran International showed an armored vehicle operated by Iranian security force running over demonstrators in Ardabil, northwest of Iran.

The video shows the incident taking place at Yahyavi Square during protests on January 8 and 9. At least one woman is believed to have been killed and three others injured.

“Canada strongly condemns the killing of protestors, the use of violence, arbitrary arrests, and intimidation tactics by the Iranian regime against its own people,” Canada’s foreign ministry said in a written response to Iran International.

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The ministry added that Canada “will continue to hold Iran accountable for its violations of human rights,” citing measures taken over the past two years to maintain pressure on Tehran and its allies.

It noted that Canada listed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization in June 2024.

Canada has further designated Iran as a foreign state supporter of terrorism, a designation the government reconfirmed in December 2025, it said.

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This leadership race is about far more than choosing the next leader of the NDP. After the so-called Red Wave allowed the Liberals to cling to power, the party has been effectively dead in the water. The race has become a conduit for members to express their desire to rebuild the party—to renew and transform it.

And yet, the decision to bar Mugyenyi suggests the opposite: this is not a party genuinely interested in renewal. By preventing a candidate from even clearing the vetting stage, the NDP leadership constricts who is allowed to participate, which ideas may be debated, and which political tendencies are kept safely out of the spotlight.

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/58531110

Sixty-one per cent of respondents supported allowing more Chinese electric vehicles into the Canadian market, including 24 per cent who strongly backed the decision and 38 per cent who somewhat supported it.

The poll, which was conducted online and can’t be assigned a margin of error, surveyed 1,570 people from Jan. 30 to Feb. 2.

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Up to $5,000 business or lease incentives coming for EVs

The government is unveiling its new national automotive strategy aimed at protecting Canada’s auto sector and jobs in the face the U.S. President Donald Trump's desire to move vehicle production to the U.S. Ottawa is also trying to jump-start the country's battery-powered vehicle industry.

Carney expects his new emissions system will lead to 75 per cent of new cars sold in Canada being electric by 2035 — an ambitious goal, but still less than the previous mandate that Carney is ditching.

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Carney announced the Liberal government is also launching a new $2.3-billion program to offer consumers and businesses purchase or lease incentives of up to $5,000 for EVs and up to $2,500 for plug-in hybrids.

Plug-in vehicles must be under $50,000 to qualify and be made by countries Canada has free trade agreements with, which would exclude any vehicles made in China. The price cap will not apply to Canadian-made vehicles.

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New Democrats say the federal government should immediately cancel the order for 88 American F-35 fighter jets and instead buy Swedish-built Gripen planes “to defend the Arctic in partnership with like-minded allied countries.”

“We are here today to send a clear message to Prime Minister Mark Carney. If he meant what he said in Davos, then Canada cannot buy a single F-35. We do not come to this decision lightly,” NDP defence critic Lori Idlout (Nunavut) told reporters at a Feb. 4 press conference in Ottawa.

NDP interim leader Don Davies (Vancouver Kingsway, B.C.) said in the same conference that they are calling on the government to “move swiftly” to negotiate an agreement with Saab to purchase 88 Gripen aircraft instead.

The 2023 deal with American defence contractor Lockheed Martin for 88 jets has a projected cost of $19-billion, while the project's total life-cycle cost is expected to reach $70-billion. The first four jets are slated to be delivered in 2026, with the full fleet to be complete by 2032. The new jets would replace this country's aging CF-18s. Canada has made a legal commitment of funds for the first 16 jets.

“At a time when the Trump administration is threatening our sovereignty, attacking Canadian workers, increasing tariffs on our industries, and interfering in our domestic and foreign policies, going through with any F-35 orders is simply unacceptable,” Davies told reporters.

Taiwan's representative in Canada says he is concerned the Liberal government may be deliberately delaying the signing of a trade agreement with Taipei to preserve its relationship with China.

Harry Tseng, the head of the Taipei's Economic and Cultural Office in Canada, told Radio-Canada that the negotiating teams from Ottawa and Taipei have initialed every page of the trade co-operation framework agreement and it has been ready for final signatures since April.

There are "no negotiations left. Not only [is it] initialed — we have three versions of the text ready: English, French and Mandarin," said Tseng. "That tells you how close we are to the final signature. This is a result of very long-term synergy and it is there, readily available."

He said the initialed pages are a sign that the document is complete.

"You need to honour that," he said.

Taiwan — a de facto autonomous island that China considers to be one of its provinces — is Canada's sixth-largest trading partner in Asia.

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Among the areas of collaboration defined in the framework agreement are online commerce, energy, net-zero transition and supply chain resilience — particularly for semiconductors. Last June, a similar agreement was concluded between the United Kingdom and Taiwan.

Tseng says Canada has left Taiwan with the impression, intentionally or not, that it wants to improve its relations with China at the expense of Canada's relationship with Taiwan. He said he sees a contradiction between Prime Minister Mark Carney's speech in Davos, Switzerland, which called for trade diversification and was critical of superpowers, and his reluctance to sign an agreement with Taiwan.

"We are trading with every country. We are trading with China as well. Why on earth can China stop any countries from trading with Taiwan?" Tseng said.

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Carney dismissed Tseng's concerns Wednesday, insisting his government is capable of conducting trade with both Taiwan and China.

"I'm never, never afraid. We have trade relations with Taiwan. But we're focusing on strengthening our trade relations with China. We're making a lot of progress. For families in the automotive and clean energy sectors, it's been a great success," Carney said.

In an email, Global Affairs Canada confirmed to Radio-Canada that a trade co-operation framework agreement had indeed been concluded with Taiwan in March 2025, and that a review of the next steps is underway.

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A few days before that visit, the government asked two Liberal MPs to cut short their parliamentary trip to Taiwan. MPs Marie-France Lalonde and Helena Jaczek said that they wanted to avoid any confusion with Canada's foreign policy.

Bloc Québécois MP Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, who himself visited Taiwan on a parliamentary visit in 2022, said recalling those MPs and delaying the signing of the trade agreement were both likely done to appease China.

"I see no other reason," Savard-Tremblay, the Bloc's international trade critic, said.

"We keep saying we need to diversify, that we need reliable partners. In the case we're currently discussing, Taiwan is a democracy. It's a market economy."

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The Canadian government's Indo-Pacific strategy, launched in 2022, also aims to continue developing economic and people-to-people ties with Taiwan while supporting its resilience.

Beijing refuses to have official diplomatic relations with any country that openly recognizes Taiwan as a separate state.

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A few days after Carney's China visit in January, Wang Di, China's ambassador to Canada, published an op-ed in the Canadian media outlet The Hill Times (here is an archived version).

Referring to Carney's visit, the Chinese envoy emphasized that "Canada reaffirmed its long-standing commitment to the one-China policy," and to "respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity."

He did not mention Taiwan explicitly, but it seems the first faint sparks of coercion are already here.

Don't fucking let "us" touch the courts, Canada.

Lobbyists and anti-abortion activists on influential body are a contrast to Conservative Party’s public messaging

One session included 37 MPs and focused on police funding and “hate speech” policy.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/46886810

The American president has invited Canada to become his country's "51st state," an idea that has infuriated most of Canada's 40 million citizens.

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Hence this suggestion: Why not expand the EU to include Canada? Is that so far-fetched an idea? In any case, Canadians have actually considered the question themselves. In February 2025, a survey conducted by Abacus Data on a sample of 1,500 people found that 44% of those polled supported the idea, compared to 34% who opposed it. Better the 28th EU country than the 51st US state!

One might object: Canada is not European, as required for EU membership by Article 49 of the EU Treaty. But what does "European" actually mean? The word cannot be understood in a strictly geographic sense, or Cyprus, closer to Asia, would not be part of the EU. So the term must be understood in a cultural sense.

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As [Canadian Prime Minister Mark] Carney said in Paris, in March: Thanks to its French and British roots, Canada is "the most European of non-European countries." He speaks from experience, having served as governor of the Bank of England (a post that is assigned based on merit, not nationality). Culturally and ideologically, Canada is close to European democracies: It shares the same belief in the welfare state, the same commitment to multilateralism and the same rejection of the death penalty or uncontrolled firearms.

Moreover, Canada is a Commonwealth monarchy that shares a king with the United Kingdom.

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Even short of a formal application, it would be wiser for Ottawa to strengthen its ties with European democracies rather than with the Chinese regime. The temptation is there: Just before heading to Davos, Carney signed an agreement with Beijing to lower tariffs on electric vehicles imported from China.

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