Canada

"Flint And Feather" is a book of poems that I picked up when visiting the author's birthplace and childhood home on the Six Nations Reserve, near Hamilton, Ontario. The house, Chiefswood, still stands as a National Historical Site which gives excellent tours during the summer.

Johnson was born in 1861 to Mohawk Head Chief Onwanonsyshon (G.H.M. Johnson) of the Six Nations, and Emily S. Howells a British woman from an established family.

Her poems reflect this mixing of worlds. She was a prolific author, having published almost 300 poems from 1883 to 1913. She wrote about both her heritages, and about Canada, having travelled extensively across the country. Her writing is fierce about her indigenous roots, and evocative about the lands she visited. Though of course, her language is a product of the time, and her Christian upbringing features in some of her work.

Tekahionwake succumbed to breast cancer in 1913 at the age of 51, in Vancouver. Her public funeral was the largest in Vancouver history at the time. Her ashes were placed in Stanley Park, where a memorial still stands.

The poetry is now in the public domain, and available online: https://pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca/flintandfeather/

Her acrostic "Canada" still rings true.

"Canada" - Tekahionwake
Crown of her, young Vancouver; crest of her, old Quebec;
Atlantic and far Pacific sweeping her, keel to deck.
North of her, ice and arctics; southward a rival's stealth;
Aloft, her Empire's pennant; below, her nation's wealth.
Daughter of men and markets, bearing with her hold,
Appraised at highest value, cargoes of grain and gold.

Op-ed by Benoit-Antoine Bacon, the University of British Columbia’s 17th president and vice-chancellor.

Archived link

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Across the country, collaborations ... are showing how universities can contribute to both economic resilience and social progress. But our innovation system remains fragmented. Partnerships between universities, industry, and government are often too ad hoc, funding cycles are short, and incentives are often misaligned. Thanks to support from provincial and federal governments, Canada’s research universities have built world-class capacity in discovery and innovation. The next step is to better align these strengths with national priorities. That means sustained public investment in research, stronger pathways to move discoveries into practice, and policies that foster long-term collaboration across sectors rather than short-term competition.

The next decade will test this country’s capacity to adapt. Whether we succeed will depend on how boldly governments and industry choose to partner with Canada’s universities, which generate the knowledge, talent, and innovation on which our prosperity and sovereignty depend.

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[Op-ed by Maria Popova and Anastasia Leshchyshyn, both researchers at McGill University.]

When Canadians think about our neighbours, we generally think only of one: the United States. But we also have a neighbour to the North: Russia, whose proximity has only been enhanced by the effects of climate change on the Arctic.

And we need to shift our assumptions quickly. With the terms of Ukraine’s future now being determined, the kind of Russia that emerges from the Russo-Ukrainian war is the one Canada will meet in the Arctic.

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However, despite our mental maps fooling us otherwise, the North does not end with us; the Russian neighbour just across the Arctic Circle is much closer than we tend to realize.

Last week’s speech by CSIS Director Daniel Rogers should jolt Canadians from their North American preoccupations and reorient our attention to Canada’s Arctic with warnings that Russia and China have “significant intelligence interests” in the region.

Word of Russian prowling in the Arctic is far from revelatory, and it has been suggested that Rogers’ address was a timely effort to shore up public support for the Carney government’s recent increases in defence spending. Yet “significant” was also the adjective selected by Rogers to describe Russia’s military presence in the Arctic, and the state itself was notably characterized as remaining “unpredictable and aggressive.”

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In a speech delivered in Kyiv on Ukraine’s Independence Day in August 2025, Prime Minister Mark Carney offered an assessment of Russia’s imperial ambitions in Ukraine: “We see this war clearly, as a horrific act of aggression, a maniacal quest to recreate a history that itself was filled with injustice, and we know that peace will only come through strength.”

Canadians are perhaps not as clearsighted in comprehending their own country’s proximity to this same aggressor, and even less so in their ability to predict or imagine how exactly Russian aggression might manifest to undermine Canadian interests.

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To call Russia our neighbour would be to recognize that the outcome of the Russo-Ukrainian war has direct implications for Canadian security, and that support for Ukraine is a direct investment in our own defence, rather than a donation to a distant cause.

To call Russia our neighbour would be to induce a shift in Canada’s broader political calculus, by illuminating the scope of our susceptibilities and expanding our understanding of what the defence of our interests entails.

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If Ukraine is defeated, Canada risks dealing with an emboldened, expansionist neighbour — and not just the one to our south.

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The plaque beside this landing pad starts to say; As mankind stands on the threshold of intergalactic travel, let us not forget our failures on Earth. That part of the story I found interesting. Click the link to read more.https://flippen.ca/st-paul-alberta-ufo-landing-pad/

After years of pressure from labour, there will finally be a strict certification program to ensure workers are protected.

L’ex-ministre de l’Environnement Steven Guilbeault juge sévèrement l’entente sur l’énergie récemment conclue entre son patron, Mark Carney, et la première ministre de l’Alberta, Danielle Smith.

Did the premier of Alberta attack the constitutional role of the courts in Canada’s democracy? Yes, she did, and in no uncertain terms.

“The will of Albertans is not expressed by a single judge appointed by Justin Trudeau and never faces any kind of recall campaign, never faces any kind of election,” stated Danielle Smith on Dec. 6.

She continued by saying, “The people have told us through our consultation, through our elections, the kinds of things they want us to do, and then we go and do them, and then the court can override it. And again, most of the judges are appointed by Ottawa and not by us. An unelected judge is not synonymous with democracy. Democracy is when elected officials who have to face the electorate every four years get to make decisions. That’s what democracy is.”

If you listened only to Smith, you’d think Canada is ruled by a shadowy cabal of “unelected judges” bent on bending “the people” to their progressive whims.

The family of a 15-year-old boy who was fatally shot by police on Montreal’s South Shore in September will hold a news conference this morning.

This comes as the investigation, conducted by the Bureau des enquêtes indépendante (BEI), continues into its third month.

Nooran Rezayi, a high school student, was shot and killed after police responded to a 911 call reporting a group of armed people in a Longueuil neighbourhood.

His family says he was unarmed and carrying only a backpack filled with school books. The BEI has since confirmed that no firearm was recovered from the teen.

Since its creation in 2016, the BEI has opened more than 450 investigations, including 52 involving fatal police shootings.

Only two cases have ever resulted in charges of any kind, and none of the fatal shooting files have led to criminal prosecution so far. The BEI has faced criticism for the near-zero charge rate resulting from its investigations.

Web archive link

Here is the official release by the Canadian government and the EU's official statement.

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Canada's Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation Evan Solomon held two press conferences on the first day of the two-day meeting in Montreal — one on a new partnership with Germany and the other on a new agreement with the European Union.

The agreement with Germany is meant to increase collaboration on AI, quantum technology, digital sovereignty and infrastructure. Solomon also announced the signing of two agreements with the EU — one focusing on adoption and responsible development of AI and the other on co-operation on digital credentials.

The European Union has been a proponent of AI regulation, while the United States under the Trump administration has opposed regulation. In Montreal, Solomon faced questions from reporters about that dynamic.

"Canada and Europe have both very much been aligned on finding a place where we have the balance between privacy, safety, and AI safety, not just with AI, whether it's with deep fakes and other issues, but also making sure we don't constrain innovation," Solomon said.

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At the press conference with [executive vice-president of the European Commission for technological sovereignty, security and democracy, Henna] Virkkunen, he said one of Canada's goals is to broaden trade relationships, including digital trade relationships with Europe. He noted Canada's digital partnership with the EU began in 2023.

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When Solomon was first named artificial intelligence minister, he said Canada would not "over-index" on regulation and cited U.S. and Chinese disinterest in such efforts.

A month ago, at the Govern or Be Governed conference in Montreal, the European Union’s democracy commissioner said he wouldn't "lecture" Canada or any other country as the EU pushes ahead on regulating tech platforms and artificial intelligence. AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio told the same conference Canada should partner with allies like the European Union.

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Archived

Chinese government circulated sexually explicit deepfakes of dissident Yao Zhang.

Yao Zhang says she doesn’t have any friends, yet every week, thousands of her 175,000 YouTube subscribers tune in to her channel to listen to her live takes on Chinese current affairs.

“China isn’t a democratic country. Everyone suffers in that regime,” Zhang told Radio-Canada during an interview held somewhere between Montreal and Quebec City.

Concerned for her safety, the 39-year-old guards any information that could give away her location.

And for good reason: the Quebec YouTuber, who refuses to be silenced, has been the target of an intimidation campaign by the Chinese government for over a year.

“I have to be very, very careful,” she said. “I stopped all communications with the Chinese community because I don’t know who I can trust.”

[...]

Trained in accounting at McGill University, Zhang did a 180 during the pandemic and began offering news commentary on YouTube, which she continues to do today. The Communist Party of China and president Xi Jinping are often the subjects of her criticisms.

“I’m with Taiwan, I’m with the Uyghurs, I’m with Hong Kong. I’m against the Chinese government,” said the pro-democracy activist.

It was in September 2024 that Zhang first noticed sexually explicit AI-generated images of herself circulating online.

“It wasn’t just one photo. There were many, many of them,” she remembered with disgust.

Shared by anonymous accounts, the images were published on social media under posts of official accounts belonging to the Canadian government and then prime minister Justin Trudeau.

[...]

For the YouTuber, there was no doubt the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was behind what she was seeing. And she was right.

In March, Global Affairs Canada (GAC) released a statement blaming the PRC for a new "spamouflage" campaign using sexually explicit AI-generated images to target individuals in Canada. Zhang says the government told her she is the first documented case of the campaign.

“This new campaign employs various tactics to intimidate, belittle and harass individuals based in Canada who are critical of the PRC,” reads the statement.

Notably, Zhang and members of her family have been doxed. Her date of birth, phone and passport numbers all appear on a doxing website that labels her as a “traitor.” The site, which is still accessible to this day, also uses degrading language to spread defamatory sexually explicit statements about her.

[...]

Though the YouTuber benefits from a certain degree of protection in Canada, she can’t say the same for her family in China.

In 2024, after a trip to Taiwan to support the island’s independence, Zhang said China's national police put pressure on her aunt and grandmother living there in an attempt to silence her.

The strategy is a well known one, detailed in a report published earlier this year by the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions.

“[The PRC] employs a wide range of tradecraft to carry out its activities, one of which is to use a person’s family and friends living in the PRC as leverage against them,” it reads.

[...]

Zhang says she’s received death threats against her and her family and is worried about retribution if she were to ever return to China.

“I’ll go to prison,” she said. “I’ll be like all those who have wanted to change China.”

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Transnational repression is a “genuine scourge” in the country, concluded Marie-Josée Hogue, who presided over the public inquiry into foreign interference. The threat it poses “is real and growing,” adds the report.

The former Canadian ambassador to China, Guy Saint-Jacques, who occupied the function from 2012 to 2016, says budgets allocated to cracking down on dissent “increased substantially” after Xi came to power in 2012.

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Notably, an Enquête investigation revealed that a Chinese dissident found dead in British Columbia in 2022, Hua Yong, was the target of an espionnage operation led by the Chinese secret police.

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Zhang says she is at peace and hopes that more Chinese people in Canada and elsewhere in the world will speak out.

“I am using my life for something very important,” she says.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/46972708

[...]

A man who spent a decade and a half working as a Chinese spy has shared details of some of his missions with Radio-Canada, including what he knows about a Chinese dissident who died in B.C., Canada, in 2022.

"From 2008 to 2023, my real job was to work for China's secret police. It's a means for political repression," said "Eric," who was interviewed in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. "Its main targets are dissidents who criticize the Chinese Communist Party."

Eric shared a variety of documents — including financial records, secret money transfers and the names of spies — with journalists from the Australian Broadcasting Corp. and the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, of which CBC/Radio-Canada is a partner.

The records give an unprecedented glimpse at the inner workings of China's overseas spy operations.

[...]

For 15 years, Eric worked for the 1st Bureau at China's Ministry of Public Security, a unit that specializes in surveillance of dissidents abroad. He previously told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that he spied on a Japanese-based cartoonist and a YouTuber exiled in Australia. Often, he said, his cover was working for real companies in the countries where he was deployed — companies that collaborated with China's secret police.

[...]

In 2020, Eric said he was tasked with snooping on a dissident named Hua Yong, an artist and hardcore opponent of China's Communist Party who eventually ended up on B.C.'s Sunshine Coast.

[...]

After several failed attempts to flee China, Eric finally succeeded in 2023. The former spy wanted to go to Canada to claim asylum but ended up in Australia because he was able to get a tourist visa there.

The world has a right to know what China's secret police are up to, Eric said, adding that revealing it publicly actually buys him a measure of protection.

Meanwhile, the police investigation into Hua's death isn't officially closed because three years later, the B.C. Coroners Service still hasn't completed its report, which normally takes about 16 months.

Eric said he's had no contact with Canadian police but that he did confidentially send some documents to the Hogue commission, Canada's public inquiry into foreign interference.

"There are some strange aspects to this case that demand further investigation," he said.

Archive: [ https://archive.is/j4Eak ]

Archive: [ https://archive.ph/8OuhA ]

The new CTO stood out to me. Based on his LinkedIn posts, he sounds like a business guy who's going to shove AI into everything. Not exactly a reassuring change for a bank.

Last week, the United Kingdom did something all too rare: it chose leadership by backing science and prioritizing public safety. The Labour government announced it would ban new oil and gas licences in the North Sea, strengthen a windfall tax and accelerate phasing out of fossil-fuel subsidies.

These are not symbolic gestures. They are an acknowledgment that the global energy system is shifting and that mature economies must shift with it.

And they came in the same week that catastrophic floods swept across south-east Asia, killing more than 1,000 people and displacing over a million. The real-world imperative to transition off fossil fuels has never been so urgent.

But, at the exact moment the UK stepped forward, Canada stepped back.

Ottawa signed a new Memorandum of Understanding with Alberta to support a new oil sands pipeline that would facilitate increased production of fossil fuels. The deal would delay methane regulations, cancel an oil and gas emissions cap and exempt the province from clean electricity rules. All this comes as leaders are lifting environmental-assessment requirements for major projects, preparing to weaken greenwashing laws and suspending Canada’s electric vehicle sales mandate. The MP Steven Guilbeault resigned from Mark Carney’s cabinet rather than defend the retreat.

The contrast could not be sharper: while climate effects intensify and economies pivot, Canada is reinforcing the very industries driving the crisis.

Internationally, the commitment is crystal clear. At COP28, in Dubai in 2023, Canada, the UK, and 190 countries agreed for the first time to transition away from fossil fuels. You do not “phase out” something by building more of it. A pipeline enabling 1m additional barrels a day pushes Canada in the opposite direction of what it has already promised.

Carney built his reputation by warning that climate inaction threatens economic stability and that finance must align with the reality of a warming world. Instead, he is overseeing decisions that deepen Canada’s dependence on an industry whose expansion directly fuels the disasters already devastating communities.

Tzeporah Berman [author] is a Canadian environmental activist, campaigner and writer

A TABLE OUTLINING AN internal Royal Canadian Air Force 2021 study on the F-35 fighter jet versus Sweden’s Gripen has magically shown up in the press at just the very moment it might most influence the choice about to be made. The confidential internal document lands as Ottawa continues to review its deal of purchasing the full contingent of eighty-eight American-built F-35s following United States president Donald Trump’s threats to Canadian sovereignty—a process now bogged down by concerns inside the RCAF that the purchase is becoming harder to justify.

Using bright colours to drive the message home for the hard of thinking, the table—which was reportedly obtained by Radio-Canada—shows that the F-35 (represented in very nice and inviting green) is head and shoulders above the poor Gripen (represented mostly in a forbidding and dangerous red). Supporters of the F-35 have made much of the table; I mean, how can you argue with actual numbers?

Well, colour me skeptical. The table compares the two aircraft according to broad criteria such as: “Mission Performance,” “Upgradability,” “Sustainment,” and others. But no explanation is provided as to what these categories mean or how the numbers for each aircraft were arrived at. This raises questions.

For example, did the study compare the actual capability of the F-35 as it was in 2021, or the envisaged capability when its latest upgrade (known as “Block 4”) is applied? This is important, because it is the Block 4 F-35 which has the capabilities the RCAF envisages for the airplane it will eventually acquire.

The problem is, the Block 4 upgrade is, according to a September 2025 study by the US government’s General Accounting Office (GAO), more than five years behind schedule and over $6 billion (US) over cost—and counting.

Joshua Wright says a yellow cedar tree he photographed last year was "incredible," the largest he'd ever seen in a decade of hiking around Vancouver Island.

The monumental cedar stood in what was one of the few intact or nearly intact old-growth valleys left on the island, says Wright, an advocate who also recorded the sounds of marbled murrelet birds — a threatened species under federal law — within the same forest.

Wright measured the cedar's diameter at 2.79 metres, a size that should have ensured protection for the tree, along with a one-hectare logging buffer under provincial law.

But when he returned to the area south of Gold River in June, Wright says the tree had been felled as part of a logging operation approved by the province.