Canada

No fucking thanks.

This is the third time I'm seeing this type of political smear ad run via Google Ads, specifically through Google News on my phone's "Google Now" screen. The ads are supposedly paid for by Indian companies with nondescript names like "Thiess India Private Limited". The ad usually features an AI-generated image of a left-leaning politician appearing injured or in handcuffs. I've seen doctored images of Jagmeet Singh and Mark Carney so far. This particular ad pointed to a fake website setup to look identical to a CBC News article, with more misinformation. I've reported this to Google, CBC, and The Walrus.

Hundreds of thousands of Highway Traffic Act (HTA) charges that were dropped last year are a sign Ontario’s justice system is failing to live up to its basic functions and puts Ontario on the road to “lawlessness,” said the province’s opposition justice critic.

NDP MPP Kristyn Wong-Tam urged that the provincial government provide more funding of the court system at a news conference outside the Toronto courthouses on Monday, to avoid further impacting road safety.

“Ontario’s justice system is failing its basic promises of fairness, timeliness, and public safety,” Wong-Tam said. “If there are no consequences to offenses, if there are no consequences to crimes committed, we become a land of lawlessness.”

Wong-Tam was responding to numbers uncovered in a CTV News and W5 investigation where more than one in ten HTA charges were dropped before trial.

That number rose from about 57,000 charges withdrawn in 2019 to about 253,000 charges withdrawn in 2024 – around 10 per cent of all charges.

In her news conference, Wong-Tam also added in charges that were dropped at trial for a grand total of 338,000, amounting to 13 per cent of all charges laid under the Act.

Some serious charges were withdrawn at greater rates, including: about 8,924 careless driving charges withdrawn, around 31 per cent of the total; 9,302 driving while suspended charges, or about 32 per cent of the total; and 5,464 stunt driving, nearly 42 per cent of the total.

One of the charges dropped include a driver running a stop sign on Shaw Street in Toronto and colliding with a cyclist. That such incident was caught on video with clear evidence, said Biking Lawyer David Shellnutt.

“The simple slap on the wrist of the Highway Traffic Act ticket and penalty is not even administered. How crushing is that to somebody who remains off work after being injured by someone?,” he said at the news conference.

Another of Shellnutt’s clients, Anna Pratt, said she had been hit while on her bike in 2022.

“I was really badly hurt. I had multiple fractures to my pelvis, in my sacrum, (and) I had a concussion,” Pratt said.

Pratt said she followed the charges laid closely, representing a “sliver of justice that was really important.” But the charges were dropped, she said, without warning.

“I really was beyond disappointed. I was upset. I was angry. And I really felt that I had been completely, completely ignored by the system.”

Trish MacKenzie, the CUPE Local 79 representative for the city’s prosecutors, said part of the problem is a “staffing crisis” in the prosecutors’ offices.

“We’re very concerned about this,” MacKenzie said, adding that there are unnecessary barriers to hiring more people.

“It’s been devastating to the morale of the office. Of course, people feel extremely burdened and overworked and stressed out. There has been difficulty with being able to simply get all the work done.”

An Ontario court judge also pointed the finger at a lack of a file management system to keep track of the volume of cases, saying that was why the system is in “shambles.”

A tale of memory loss and adventure, Sarah Louise Butler's Rufous and Calliope is available now

A tale of memory loss and adventure, Sarah Louise Butler's Rufous and Calliope is available now

By 1998, vaccination rates were already high enough that Canada declared measles eliminated, meaning the virus could still be brought in from abroad but no longer spread within our borders. That happened because a strong majority of people here were immune: when more than 85 percent of people are vaccinated, community-level outbreaks can typically be controlled; if more than 95 percent are vaccinated, few if any measles outbreaks will happen at all.

But over time, vaccination rates began dropping. In 2015, 87 percent of kids in Alberta had received their first dose of the measles vaccine by age two, and 81 percent had received their second dose by age seven; by 2024, those numbers had dropped to 80 and 72 percent respectively—well below the so-called herd immunity rate.

That Alberta’s vaccine uptake reportedly remains among the lowest in Canada is not surprising. The province has become a case study in declining trust in science at the highest levels. Alberta was a hotspot for resistance to vaccines and public health restrictions during the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. Church services, rodeos, and protests were common here. In July 2021, Health Canada reported that 60 percent of Albertans had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. The province was tied with Saskatchewan for second lowest rate in the country, ahead of only Nunavut’s 53 percent; Newfoundland and Labrador led the pack with 73 percent.

Archived

Canada’s largest private sector union is calling on Ottawa to keep its 100 per cent surtax on electric vehicles imported from China, warning that removing it would threaten auto jobs across the country.

Unifor submitted its position to the federal government’s Section 53 review of the tariff, saying Chinese automakers enjoy unfair advantages through state subsidies, weak labour standards and carbon-intensive production.

“Lifting tariffs on China will make a bad situation far worse, if Canada becomes a dumping ground for cheap, unfairly subsidized imports,” said Unifor national president Lana Payne. “It would be nothing short of a self-inflicted wound at a time when one-third of our members at Detroit Three facilities in Canada are on layoff, with three automobile assembly plants sitting idle.”

The union said lifting the surtax now would risk undoing recent investments in vehicle assembly, battery production and critical minerals. It is asking Ottawa to extend the surtax for at least 24 months, broaden it to include EV and battery components, and reinstate federal EV rebates restricted to Canadian and North American-built vehicles. The union also wants stronger enforcement against goods made with forced labour.

Unifor said Canada should align its approach with the United States and Mexico. The U.S. has combined tariffs of 127.5 per cent on Chinese EVs and plans to restrict connected car technology by 2027, while Mexico raised its EV import tariffs to 50 per cent this year after Chinese vehicles surged to 70 per cent of its market.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/47362136

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/post/1337448