Canada

Airlines in Canada could soon be under pressure from customers to improve their services as the federal government opens its skies to more competition from the Middle East.

Ottawa is loosening restrictions on the number of flights coming from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates after past diplomatic spats had limited flights.

Aviation expert John Gradek said airlines from the Middle East are considered the "envy of the world" because of the services they offer, which will force Canadian airlines to do more if they want to go head-to-head with these foreign carriers.

"Canadian carriers are going to have to up the ante and up their game to be able to compete," said Gradek, who is a lecturer of aviation management at McGill University.

We have a separatist movement in Alberta, that is fueled by a sycophantic and borderline treasonous Premier and UCP, multiple NGOs and special interest groups some of whom have already been fined for hiding their funding, and a think tank that gets more than 10% of their reported and direct funding from the US (ignoring funding that comes from the US but goes through one hop in Canada, thus legitimizing it).

Is it too much to ask that someone do some fucking investigation? Dig in and make sure the funding is all legitimate before we give up our whole country to a demonstrated enemy whose main mode of attack is division, propaganda and disinformation??

The federal government has proposed fining people and organizations up to $1 million for failing to comply with the requirements of its planned foreign influence transparency registry.

Newly published draft regulations are another step toward establishing the registry, which was set out in legislation passed in 2024 as part of a package of measures to counter foreign interference.

The proposed regulations define key terms and describe the information individuals and entities would have to provide when entering into arrangements with foreign principals, which are entities owned or directed by foreign governments, to influence Canadian political or government activities.

Ottawa says the registry is needed because countries engaging in foreign interference to advance political goals might employ people to act on their behalf without disclosing those ties.

The chief of Pimicikamak Cree Nation says hundreds of homes have been "severely compromised" in the aftermath of a days-long power outage that damaged a water treatment plant and plumbing systems, and about 4,000 people have been evacuated from the northern Manitoba First Nation.

Residents in Pimicikamak, about 530 kilometres north of Winnipeg, started reporting burst pipes, leaks and sewer backups after power restoration began on Thursday. All power was back on as of Friday afternoon, Manitoba Hydro said.

The power to the First Nation, which has an on-reserve population of around 7,000, went out last Sunday night after a power line that crosses the Nelson River snapped, and pipes froze in the extreme cold, as temperatures dropped well below the –20 C mark.

About 200 homes have been damaged by leaking pipes, Chief David Monias said during a news conference on Saturday. Those homes are no longer safe to live in, he said.

Canadians: Greenland must be the line in the sand. Non negotiable.

Seems like somebody should start fast-tracking that after the Saturday the world has been having.

Here's an MSN scrape of the article. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/the-oil-sector-s-biggest-winners-and-losers-from-venezuela-regime-change/ar-AA1TvD1p

In comments today, President Donald Trump says the sanctions on Venezuelan oil remain in place, but he also said that the U.S. intends to be “very involved” in Venezuela’s oil sector, which he says requires billions of dollars fix the “badly broken” oil infrastructure.

The administration frames this as a reclamation project, suggesting companies will be ‘reimbursed’ through direct access to the crude.

Long Term Losers: Heavy Canadian Crude Producers

Venezuela’s long absence from Western markets helped entrench Canadian heavy crude as the dominant supplier to U.S. refineries configured for heavy barrels. Canada currently exports about 3.3 million barrels a day of crude to the U.S., and Canadian oil accounts for roughly a quarter of U.S. refinery throughput. Much of that volume is heavy oil sands crude flowing primarily to the U.S. Midwest and Gulf Coast, where refineries were originally built to process Venezuelan and Mexican heavy grades.

I wanted to see how Venezuelans were talking about the attack today, so I looked for news from Venezuela. I found a site called telesurenglish.net and it loaded fine at first.

But when I clicked on a link ( https://www.telesurenglish.net/us-military-intervention-in-venezuela/ ), the page gave me a “413 Payload Too Large” error – something I’ve never seen before.

To test it, I opened the same link while using a VPN, and it loaded without any problem. When I turned the VPN off, the error came back.

Can anyone else confirm whether the site only works when you’re connected through a VPN?

Edit: it does work on my cellphone provider, no VPN required. So It appear that my provider is adding stuff to my requests sent to the server? I'm not competent to figure out what tough.

Not sure how to link the exact episode about a "possible" invasion of Venezuela. If somebody knows I'll edit.

We'll see how it plays out. I'm still not sure they're actually planning to send 200,000 troops, but Trump said they're going to "run it" somehow.

Edit: Moving to invidious.

Original Gem link: https://gem.cbc.ca/about-that-with-andrew-chang

https://338canada.com/alberta/

With each passing decade since the mid-1980s, Canadians have been spending less and less time with their friends. Just 19 per cent said they hung out with friends on an average day in 2022, down from 48 per cent in 1986, according to Statistics Canada.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/social-trends/article-canadians-spending-less-time-friends-inventive-stay-close/