Canada

QUEEN’S PARK - After resale tickets to the Blue Jays’ World Series immediately skyrocketed into the thousands of dollars, Ontario Premier Doug Ford held a press conference to place the blame solely on the total dickhead of a premier who scrapped a resale-capping law in 2019.

I've seen lots of posts about the ad, but not the ad itself. Here it is.

I can't imagine commuting with Via Rail. As someone using Via once in a while, I don't think it's more expensive than it was. If anything sometimes you can get some accepable deals if you reserve a few weeks in advance. But it sure is absolutely overpriced of you are last minute. It's $50 if I want to see my family tomorrow even if there are still seats in the train, but $25 if I plan the visit a week or two in advance.

It's the whole problem with their pricing system. They don't see themselves as a replacement for cars. You can't get a monthly pass for Via. They see themselves as a tourist attraction.

And unlike other rich countries, we don't even have regional trains. It could also help to have more than 5 trains a day. But again, they don't want to be a commuter service.

Sometimes I wish Exo and GO trains would cover Via rail routes in their respective provinces. It would be so much more convenient for everyone. And with Alto eventually coming, will Via ever be improved?

The federal housing agency just opened a public database of approved home designs. Supposedly it’s to “cut red tape” and make affordable builds faster. Are they worth the price tag? The cost estimate for Accessory Dwelling Unit 01 in Ontario is 250k for 634 sq. ft.

U.S. President Donald Trump says he is terminating all trade negotiations with Canada over an advertisement by the Ontario government that uses the late U.S. president Ronald Reagan's own words to send an anti-tariff message to American audiences. 

In a late-night post to his Truth Social platform, Trump attacked the ad, which he attributed to Canada rather than Ontario, as fraudulent and fake. 

"TARIFFS ARE VERY IMPORTANT TO THE NATIONAL SECURITY, AND ECONOMY, OF THE U.S.A." Trump wrote. "Based on their egregious behavior, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED."

So I guess CUSMA is dead?

We all know who dun it, but Hazel makes some great comedy of it. 😊

"This action follows the automakers' unacceptable decision to scale back their manufacturing presences in Canada, directly breaching their commitments to the country and Canadian workers," the government said in a late-night media release.

The production announcement comes after strong earnings for GM and a record-high stock price posted on Tuesday. The 2021 CAMI plant retooling cost $2 billion, with about $500 million coming from Ontario and Ottawa.

TC Energy has long sought to increase corporate access to CSIS intelligence, which historically has rarely been shared even with other governments.

The Calgary-based energy company retained former staffers from the office of U.S. President Donald Trump to lobby CSIS for such changes, including at an October 2023 security summit in Palo Alto, Calif.

The BC Civil Liberties Association previously filed complaints against CSIS, alleging the agency spied on environmental groups opposed to a pipeline project in northern B.C.

Jack, who works for the organization, worries allowing CSIS to share such intelligence with companies

even unclassified information

could be used to quash similar protests in the future.

"I think it's fair to assume that part of the goal here for TC Energy is to find ways to prevent protest or lessen their impact at least on their operations," Jack said.

Authors:

• Chris Hugenholtz | Professor, Geography, University of Calgary
• Coleman Vollrath | PhD Candidate in Physical Geography, University of Calgary
• Thomas Barchyn | Researcher, Geography, University of Calgary
• Zhenyu Xing | Postdoctoral Associate, University of Calgary

Governments in Canada’s major oil and gas producing provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan, have touted their efforts in recent years to reduce methane emissions.

Methane is a greenhouse gas released into the atmosphere at oil and gas facilities through leaks, vents, maintenance activities and incomplete combustion. Methane traps significantly more heat than carbon dioxide, making it a potent climate pollutant.

We set out to independently verify if government claims of decreasing oil and gas methane emissions were accurate. Our new study shows that the answer is yes — but with important caveats and valuable lessons for Canada’s energy sector.

We studied satellite observations between 2019 and 2023 to understand how methane emissions rates in Canada’s main oil-producing region were changing. We focused on the heavy oil belt near Lloydminster, Alta., where a distinctive extraction method known as CHOPS (cold heavy oil production with sand) has long been associated with notable methane emissions.

CHOPS brings a mix of oil, water, sand and gas to the surface. The oil is collected, but the co-produced gas — which is mainly methane — has historically been vented or flared.

Michael McGrath, the EU commissioner for democracy, justice, the rule of law and consumer protection, is visiting Canada as the Liberal government pursues an AI policy that puts less emphasis on regulation and more on adoption.

Speaking at a conference in Montreal Thursday, he outlined upcoming legislation that will tackle issues such as addictive design, unfair personalization and holding influencers accountable.

Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon has cited the U.S.’s anti-regulation stance as a reason to go easy on regulatory efforts, saying Canada would be wasting its time by going it alone.

Federal Energy Minister Tim Hodgson hailed the decision — just hours after B.C. issued an approval — as an example of the federal government's "one project, one review" system in which it relied on the province for its assessment.

But the Metlakatla First Nation says in court documents that the decision relied on "speculative economic concepts" to justify the project's adverse impacts, while ignoring "mounting evidence" that it's not economically feasible.

Ontario and the federal government are spending a collective $3 billion to build Canada’s first small modular reactors, a new nuclear energy technology to be built next door to the Darlington power plant.

The Darlington SMRs are moving ahead. Seeing that this train has left the station, I hope someone's planning domestic uranium enrichment capacity.

“Being a queer, non-binary person in India is not the easiest,” Adi Khaitan told me. “The place I grew up was very, very conservative.” Khaitan’s memory of their childhood is “a little bit foggy,” and they declined to share many details about their life in India, only that they were an only child and something happened that resulted in their being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

After graduating from high school, Khaitan started to apply to universities overseas. Of the thirty North American schools that sent them acceptance letters, twenty-eight were from the United States and two from Canada: Lakehead University and Memorial University of Newfoundland. Khaitan decided that the political situation in the US didn’t suit them and accepted the offer from MUN. Their parents didn’t even know Khaitan was applying for universities abroad but agreed to pay for their tuition if they covered all their other expenses.

Photos:

The new NL Health Services facility is in the former Costco building at 28 Stavanger Drive in St. John's. (Laura Howells/CBC)

A new health-care facility in the former Costco building in St. John's is opening this week, offering several outpatient services that were relocated from city hospitals.

“It’s been several years, but it’s exciting to see that now, Tuesday, we’re going to have patients walking through the door,” said Kim Pike, clinical planner with Capital Planning and Engineering.

“We have a beautiful space here that patients can easily navigate.”

The two-story Unity Health Centre at 28 Stavanger Drive was open for public tours on Sunday, with dozens of people arriving for a first look. Patients will start coming on Tuesday.

Seats fill the spacious waiting areas on both floors, with brightly coloured signage for the different clinics. The centre has free parking, large murals on the walls, and will eventually house a coffee shop and drug store.

Pike says patients will be able to easily get around the new space, and “don't have the maze of our large and intimidating acute care hospital.”

For people accessing health care, she thinks "this is going to be a much calmer and pleasant experience." Patients will have shorter distances to walk, she said, as well as central waiting areas and better signage.

A number of outpatient services from the Health Sciences Centre, the Janeway and St. Clare’s Hospital have moved to the new centre, with more opening later.

Clinics opening Tuesday include the medicine and surgery specialty clinics, eye clinic, bariatric and total joint assessment, plastic surgery outpatient, endocrine, thrombosis, general medicine, cardiac diagnostics, orthopedics, audiology, and X-rays, among others.

More services will open in December, including blood collection, physiotherapy and occupational therapy, ultrasound appointments, pre-admission clinic, and a pain clinic. Two MRI machines will be added to the building in January.

An urgent care centre will also open at the site later this year.

N.L. Health Services is leasing the space, which was a big draw to the area when it housed Costco, before it moved in 2019.

“We’ve repurposed, revitalized an area in the city that was once kind of a desert town,” said Pike.

Caliss que l’on est gourverné par des envies de chier

The FTC acknowledges its suit is based in large part on revelations from a 2018 CBC News/Toronto Star investigation, in which reporters went undercover posing as "ticket brokers" and exposed how Ticketmaster recruited mass scalpers and knowingly let them use hundreds of fake accounts to circumvent ticket-buying limits.