Canada

Opinion piece by Kyle Matthews is Executive Director of the Montreal Institute for Global Security and McConnell Professor of Practice at the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University.

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With Trump’s belligerent threats to Canada’s economy and sovereignty and his doubling down on annexing Greenland, the rationale seems sensible: as the United States becomes more unreliable and unstable, perhaps Canada should embrace Beijing?

That impulse is understandable. It is also dangerous.

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In this unstable moment in history, Canada cannot afford to drift between discomfort with Washington and economic engagement with Beijing. We need a foreign and security policy grounded not in hedging between these giants, but in deliberate alignment with democratic partners.

The most urgent fault line runs through Ukraine. Russia’s invasion is not only about Ukraine’s survival; it is about whether borders can be changed by force and whether authoritarian powers can dismantle the rules-based order piece by piece. A Russian success would reverberate far beyond Europe. It would validate violence as an effective tool of statecraft. China is not only watching closely with an eye on Taiwan, it is also directly supporting Putin’s war of aggression.

Beijing’s trajectory is not ambiguous. It is expanding its nuclear arsenal, modernizing its military at extraordinary speed, weaponizing supply chains, and normalizing political warfare abroad. It threatens Taiwan daily. It menaces Japan, the Philippines and Australia. And it increasingly projects power into the Arctic that directly poses a threat to Canada.

For Canada, this is not abstract geopolitics. China has interfered in our elections. It has conducted transnational repression against communities on Canadian soil. It arbitrarily detained our citizens as leverage. The Canadian government recognizes that Beijing engages in pervasive economic espionage and cyber operations.

The key lesson is that Canada cannot respond to American instability by drifting toward authoritarian China.

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Beijing is not a neutral counterweight. It is a systemic challenger working to reshape global rules in ways fundamentally hostile to Canadian interests, democratic governance, and human rights—from the mass repression of Uyghurs and Tibetans to the normalization of hostage diplomacy, political interference, and digital authoritarianism abroad.

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Like our allies in Europe and Asia, Canada needs to stay focused and treat foreign interference, cyber operations, and transnational repression as core national-security threats. It also needs industrial and innovation strategies that reinforce allied supply chains rather than deepen authoritarian dependencies.

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The choice is not between Washington and Beijing. It is between a future shaped by authoritarian leverage and one sustained by democratic cooperation. In a world coming apart, Canada’s security will not come from reviving the language of “strategic partnership” with an authoritarian power.

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China doesn’t hold the solution for Canada’s economic issues and isn’t a trustworthy partner, Taiwan’s top representative to Ottawa said following Prime Minister Mark Carney’s tariff deal with Xi Jinping.

The Canadian and Chinese leaders reached an agreement last week to lower trade barriers and rebuild ties, a milestone reset after years of poor relations.

The deal will see Canada open its market to a small number of Chinese electric vehicles at a low tariff rate, while China will reduce its import taxes on canola, an important western Canadian crop. US President Donald Trump’s high tariffs have pushed Canada to urgently try to diversify its US-dominated export markets.

“If this trip to China is genuinely looking for an economic remedy for Canada, I don’t think you can find an answer in China,” Harry Ho-jen Tseng, Taiwan’s representative in Canada, said in an interview. “If this trip to China is trying to create political leverage of some sort, domestically or internationally, I don’t know — it’s another matter.”

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A free trade deal is “unachievable between Canada and China, simply because China is not a market economy,” with many restrictions on aspects of its own market, the former deputy foreign minister for Taiwan said.

“The contraction or the expansion of their market is actually a result of political calculation,” he said. “Those who come to buy from Canada will be from the state-owned enterprises. It is not the consumers,” meaning “the state can stop buying at any time.”

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The Canadian government’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, published in late 2022 when Justin Trudeau was still prime minister, called China “an increasingly disruptive global power” that disregards international rules and norms. That document is a “very good road map,” Ho-jen Tseng said.

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Ho-jen Tseng also said it was “totally unnecessary” that Canadian lawmakers from Carney’s Liberal Party cut short a trip to Taiwan last week to avoid overlapping with Carney’s visit to Beijing.

Parliamentary visits to Taiwan have been a normal practice for years and are the best way for Canadian lawmakers to understand the island nation’s challenges, the diplomat said. Canada should also sign a trade cooperation framework agreement it has drafted with Taiwan “as early as possible,” he said.

Police are reanimating years-old injunctions to threaten activists, casting a chill over protests and free speech

Thaioronióhte Dan David, a renowned Kanien’kehá:ka journalist who helped establish the news department of the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, has died.

His sister Marie David said he died Jan. 12 after a long struggle with cancer. He was 73.

Pugliese said David helped found APTN News in 2000 — then called InVision News — to transform the way Indigenous stories are told. He witnessed news reports of his own community of Kanehsatà:ke, in southwestern Quebec, being distorted by mainstream media during the siege of Kanehsatà:ke, commonly referred to as the Oka Crisis, in the summer of 1990.

"Some of his family were involved in the land protection there at the time when the army came in. And there was Dan, with all the sources and all the connections, and he wasn't allowed to report on it because he was considered biased," Pugliese said.

Soon after, David was asked by his boss and mentor at CBC to help launch the South African Broadcasting Corporation in post-apartheid South Africa.

"In South Africa, he was working with journalists from all walks of life, including those who had been on opposite sides of the apartheid years. He was very affected by that," Pindera said.

That experience gave him the tools and knowledge to establish APTN's news department.

An independent police watchdog says it is investigating the death of a man shot and killed by RCMP responding to a domestic disturbance in Neqotkuk First Nation in northwestern New Brunswick early Sunday evening.

Investigators are now in the community, formerly known as Tobique, about 180 kilometres northwest of Fredericton, the Serious Incident Response Team said Monday afternoon.

Neqotkuk First Nation Chief Ross Perley and council have identified the victim as community member Bronson Paul — "a son, father, brother, partner, nephew and so much more."

"We understand that our community members are angry, confused, scared and shocked. We share that sentiment," they said in a news release on social media late Sunday night, about an hour after the watchdog agency, known as SIRT, announced the fatal "police-involved shooting."

If it is clear where you are, you'll probably have nice northern lights tonight across all of Canada.

If you're a licensed gun owner and own the gun legally demand a jury trial. The Crown will tell you that you can't have one but you can. They have no hope of empanelling a jury that will convict someone for returning fire while they are under fire as long as they are licensed and own the gun legally.

Premier Doug Ford says Prime Minister Mark Carney's deal with China on electric vehicles has hurt Ontarians and the two have not spoken since.

Ford says he was disappointed Carney did not give him a heads-up about a potential deal before the prime minister's trip to China last week.

Carney struck a deal with China last week to allow up to 49,000 electric vehicles to receive a vastly reduced tariff rate of 6.1 per cent as they come into Canada in exchange for dropping tariffs on Canadian canola and some seafood.

Ford and Carney became fast friends after the latter's win to become prime minister in the spring.

The Supreme Court of Canada is hearing arguments today on a Quebec case that could have far-reaching implications on policing across Canada.

Quebec’s attorney general is set to argue against a lower court decision that invalidated random police traffic stops, finding that they led to racial profiling and violated Quebecers’ rights.

Joseph-Christopher Luamba, the young man at the origin of this case, was pulled over by police nearly a dozen times without reason in the 18 months after he got his driver’s licence.

He told Quebec Superior Court in 2022 that when he sees a police cruiser, he gets ready to pull over.

Luamba, who is Black, said he believes he was racially profiled during the traffic stops — none of which resulted in a ticket.

"I was frustrated," he told the court back then. "Why was I stopped? I followed the rules. I didn't commit any infractions."

An Ontario woman who regularly shared her experiences as a sexual assault survivor at police training courses says she’s ending her relationship with the Ontario Police College and is raising concerns about what she and several experts say are harmful biases among some officers and a lack of accountability from the college.

It comes after she received anonymous comments from two officers last year that she says left her feeling "mortified" and "humiliated."

For several years, she has volunteered her time by speaking at training organized by the college for sexual assault investigators. CBC News is protecting her identity because she is a sexual assault survivor.

Experts say the comments, which include calling her “damaged,” accusing her of being too critical of police and presuming a mental illness diagnosis, are not only hurtful but also show a concerning bias that could affect the integrity of sexual assault investigations.

The woman wants to know if those officers are working as sexual assault investigators, but more than four months after taking her concerns to the college, she still has no answers.

Manitoba RCMP are investigating after a seven-year-old girl was coerced into sending nude photos to a man over Snapchat — an example of what experts and police warn is a growing trend of children under 13 being sexually exploited through social media.

The images and videos being sent through the online messaging app were discovered after the girl's mother went into the child's room. The girl quickly put down a cellphone when her mother came in, according to a production order document obtained by CBC.

When the mother became suspicious and took the phone, she learned the girl had been chatting with an older man.

The mother found pictures of a penis within those chats and contacted RCMP. She gave them the phone for analysis, according to the document.

Police say they found explicit conversations over Snapchat between a man from the United Kingdom and the seven-year-old, as well as images and video shared between the two.

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Former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig — who was detained by China for more than 1,000 days between 2018 and 2021 — says Prime Minister Mark Carney’s tone and messaging during his trip to China were “worrisome.”

In a bid to reset relations with China and counter trade threats from the United States, Carney became the first Canadian prime minister to travel to the Asian country in eight years this week.

During the trip, Carney took meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Chinese Premier Li Qiang, and stated progress in Canada-China relations is “(setting) up well for the new world order,” comments which drew widespread reaction, including from Kovrig.

“Diplomacy is necessary, grinning is optional, and looking like a supplicant is undignified,” Kovrig said in an interview airing Sunday on CTV’s Question Period. “That’s not a good look. So, the optics could have been better.”

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Kovrig added he thought the prime minister’s statement about the “new world order” was a “very worrisome way to express things.”

He said Carney “standing and grinning” while shaking Xi’s hand made him uncomfortable, and that “intoning about a new world order,” surrounded by top Chinese officials, “really carries some very Orwellian overtones.”

“It’s a deeply unsettling message, and it’s a very dangerous game,” Kovrig told host Vassy Kapelos, adding it risks endorsing Chinese narratives that are “deeply problematic.”

During the English-language leaders’ debate ahead of last April’s federal election, Carney pointed to China as the biggest security threat facing Canada.

Speaking to reporters in Beijing on Friday, however, when asked whether he still believes that to be true, Carney answered that “the security landscape continues to change.”

“In a world that’s more dangerous and divided, we face many threats,” he said. “That’s the reality. And the job, my responsibilities as prime minister, the job of the government, is to manage those threats.”

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Kovrig has warned against lifting the tariffs on Chinese EVs in the past, calling it a “mistake,” and telling Kapelos last September that it could give China too much leverage in future negotiations and domestic policymaking.

Kovrig, who’s now a senior advisor with the International Crisis Group, said the deal sets a precedent in dealing with China that will have “huge implications for Canada’s industrial policy.”

“You need to free the hostages, and so there needed to be some way of releasing some of that pain. And that matters,” Kovrig said of the pressure from Canadian Prairie provinces for relief from China’s agriculture-sector tariffs. “Those tariffs were painful and politically targeted, but the relief is time-limited and reversible. Beijing kept the leverage.”

“What did Canada give up? Canada broke ranks with the U.S. on Chinese electric vehicles,” he added. “Even with quotas, the signal’s big: market access is negotiable under pressure. That teaches the Chinese Communist Party that pressure works, and it’s likely to test that again.”

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Original post below:

cross-posted from: https://jlai.lu/post/31822192

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Explanation:

Lemmyvision is an annual song contest that's held here on the threadiverse, with the name inspired by "Eurovision". Instances nominate and choose songs to send into the contest on behalf of their country/region/niche, and then there's another round of voting to choose the winner. We've participated twice so far, articles about those times here:

• https://fedecan.ca/en/announcements/2024-04-08_lemmyvision-2024
• https://fedecan.ca/en/announcements/2025-04-10_lemmyvision-2025

Here is what the contest community has in their sidebar:

Welcome to the Lemmyvision Song Contest where communities and instances of Lemmy submit a song and vote on their favourites!

The aim is to promote different languages and cultures from around the world, to share more between our online communities across Lemmy, and discover songs from lesser known artists.

The second edition of Lemmyvision ran from March 1st to April 8th, stay tuned for the next event ! 🎶