Canada

ChatGPT-maker OpenAI has said it considered alerting Canadian police last year about the activities of a person who months later committed one of the worst school shootings in the country’s history.

OpenAI said last June the company identified the account of Jesse Van Rootselaar via abuse detection efforts for “furtherance of violent activities”.

The San Francisco tech company said on Friday it considered whether to refer the account to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) but determined at the time that the account activity did not meet a threshold for referral to law enforcement.

OpenAI banned the account in June 2025 for violating its usage policy.

Alberta is two and a half years removed from hearing Premier Danielle Smith declare her government looked forward optimistically to doubling the province’s population to 10 million people by 2050.

She also spent part of 2024 repeatedly musing that Red Deer, with its 106,000 residents, ought to swell to one million.

But that was then. Times have changed.

Certainly, the public mood toward immigration has changed, all over Canada, as a recent surge in newcomers (though not quite as aggressive as Smith had fancied) strained housing and some public services.

Alberta’s budget picture has changed, too — lower than expected oil prices jerking the province from an $8.3 billion surplus in Smith’s more-bullish-on-immigration days to a big deficit this year, and another bath of red ink the premier has forewarned will come in next Thursday’s budget.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/941053

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I recommend you read/skim through the article, but these paragraphs felt especially important:

Grief at this magnitude is crushing anywhere, but especially in a place so little. The numbers of dead leave a different-sized hole in the social architecture of a place where everyone knows where everyone lives. The people of Tumbler Ridge will see their streets differently now—which road has a house that is home to someone who has died or was injured or at school that day. “I will know every victim,” Mayor Darryl Krakowka told the CBC in those early hours when Tumbler Ridge waited to find out the names of the casualties.

But the way that a community responds to tragedy is a key part of their story. In La Loche, the lasting effect of the 2016 massacre is not stigma but something greater. It’s a complicated legacy: layers of sadness and anger but also love and resilience. People have “a lot of pride in their community and in the strength that it did have, even in the face of these incredibly hard things,” said Dungavell.

That’s why it matters that the mayors and residents of places like La Loche and Portapique send words of support to Tumbler Ridge. And that’s why it matters that the outpouring of support from Canadians persists long after the cameras have left. New schools will need building, and stable health care supports will be needed for years, Dungavell said.

“Right now, we’re talking about survival, but the hard work of figuring out ‘how this fits into our life story’ is going to happen in the next months and years,” she said.

Love and beauty exist after horror. That’s part of the story here, and in La Loche, Portapique, and Humboldt. In the years to come, there will still be mining and bears, a geopark, dinosaur fossils, and mountain vistas in Tumbler Ridge. But they will always look a little different.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/34370909

After years of protests and blockades, a group of Atikamekw elders and chiefs have filed a lawsuit seeking to cancel forestry permits across a vast stretch of northern Quebec.

It's lemmy.ca after all, eh!

Amid increasing scrutiny on the use of Canada’s temporary foreign worker program, the total dollar amount of fines imposed on employers who are found to violate the terms of the program has risen dramatically. 

However, some observers think changes to monitoring and enforcement of the program are still required.

As U.S. President Donald Trump looks to expand his use of tariffs to pressure Europe over Greenland, the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down previously imposed tariffs. The Supreme Court found Trump overstepped his authority when he invoked emergency powers to bring the tariffs into effect.

Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand says the final flights operated by Canadian airlines have left Cuba.

“Thank you to all Canadian airline workers who helped bring more than 27,900 travellers safely back to Canada,” a statement posted Thursday evening on X said. “If you are still in Cuba, some commercial flights remain available through international airlines.”

The question is no longer whether we support Ukraine or not, but how we do so in a world where old assumptions no longer hold.

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Four years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the war persists, but the world around it has shifted. Ukraine’s resilience has fortunately upended expectations, while Canada’s support has been steadfast. Yet, the strategic environment that shaped early allied responses now gives way to something far less stable.

Assumptions regarding deterrence and the durability of the international system are now being tested not only in Ukraine, but across the globe.

The rules-based international order that once underpinned collective responses to aggression is fraying. Enforcement is uneven, and deterrence is contested. Geopolitical competition increasingly shapes outcomes beyond norms alone. Prime Minister Mark Carney underscored this reality at Davos, speaking candidly about the role of middle powers in a fragmented world. His message was not one of retreat, but of responsibility. He posited that countries like Canada may not dictate global outcomes, but can still shape them through coalition-building and sustained engagement.

Ukraine remains the clearest test of that proposition.

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To understand what that future should look like, Operation Unifier provides an instructive starting point. What began as a security force capacity building mission prior to the invasion has now evolved rapidly to meet wartime needs. Looking ahead, its natural evolution may lie in helping Ukraine rebuild and professionalize its security institutions for the long term ... Demining and the clearance of unexploded ordnance will be another defining challenge. Ukraine is now one of the most contaminated countries in the world not only with legacy munitions, but also with the remnants of modern warfare, including drones, sensors, and fibre-optic systems scattered across civilian and agricultural lands ... This is an area where sustained Canadian leadership could save lives in the immediate and long-term, restoring livelihoods and contributing meaningfully to regional stability.

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Beyond these military commitments, there is a broader opportunity to rethink how Canada engages Ukraine on a nation-to-nation basis. NATO’s Article 2, colloquially “the Canadian Article,” reminds us that collective security also depends on economic co-operation and resilience. Energy development, defence research, and industrial collaboration can support Ukraine’s reconstruction while strengthening Canada’s own capacity when we, too, are reassessing national resilience and supply chains. Supporting the rebuilding of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure while learning from its approach to defence innovation may prove instructive for a country that is itself rebuilding industrial and energy resilience.

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Unbelievably damning results. I don't see how the CPC can continue to function as a party.

Canada needs to establish an easier pathway to permanent residency for Ukrainians who fled the Russian invasion nearly four years ago, an immigration expert says.

Evelina Shatilova, a Toronto-based immigration consultant, made the comments after Canada's immigration department said it expects Ukrainians who fled the war with Russia to return to their home country once the conflict ends.

Shatilova said many do not have homes to return to because of the conflict, which began when Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.

"We cannot just say today you are welcome and tomorrow just shut the door and deport all of them. That's also very not Canadian style," Shatilova said in an interview on Wednesday.

"They came for safety. And Canada is built on immigrants. We've always been known to support those in need," she said, adding Ukrainians who came to Canada to escape the war are contributing to the Canadian economy.

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Ukrainians have established lives here, expert says

Shatilova said she understands the CUAET visa was meant to be a temporary measure, but circumstances have changed now that most Ukrainians in Canada have established lives and begun contributing to the economy.

"It would be much easier to find a permanent residence pathway for them to to help them transition from temporary status to permanent for those who are already well established here in Canada," she said.

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