Canada

Police in Prince Albert, Sask., say they're reviewing a video shared online that shows a security guard slapping a woman during a confrontation at the McDonald’s restaurant inside the Walmart on 15th Street East.

It shows three security guards near the woman, with a man beside her who seems to be trying to restrain her. The woman swears, stumbles and fakes a punch at one guard, then hits his face.

The guard responds by slapping her across the face.

This incident lands at a time when security guard conduct is being scrutinized more closely in Saskatchewan, after other high-profile cases.

In December, the Saskatchewan Health Authority said contracted guards involved in an incident at Prince Albert’s Victoria Hospital were no longer permitted to work at any of its sites after a video showed a First Nations man being wheeled outside in freezing temperatures.

Not too long after, in Saskatoon, the SHA found itself responding to another incident regarding the death of a patient, Trevor Dubois, after an altercation involving security at Royal University Hospital.

Canada's military police watchdog issued a scathing report on Thursday over the handling of an investigation into an air force officer who was charged with sexual assault and later took his own life in early 2022.

In the weeks leading up to his death, Maj. Cristian Hiestand told his family no one would listen to his side of the story after being charged with assaulting a woman with whom he had just ended a relationship.

The chair of the Military Police Complaints Commission (MPCC), Tammy Tremblay, in a report released Thursday, found that Hiestand did have an opportunity to speak to investigators, but declined on the advice of his lawyer.

But Tremblay found military police did not conduct an "impartial and thorough investigation" and overall the investigation suffered from a "rush to judgment and confirmation bias."

The names of the six children and two adults who died on Tuesday were released by RCMP this afternoon.

Victims found inside Tumbler Ridge Secondary School:

• Zoey Benoit, 12, a student. In a statement, her loved ones described her as "resilient, vibrant, smart, caring and the strongest little girl you could meet."
• Ticaria Lampert, 12, a student. Her mother Sarah described her daughter in an interview as a "tiki torch powered by love and happiness."
• Abel Mwansa, 12, a student. His father told CBC News he was a bright, ambitious boy with a smile everybody knew in town.
• Ezekiel Schofield, 13, a student.
• Kylie Smith, 12, a student. In a statement, her family said she was a talented artist who dreamed of one day studying in Toronto.
• Shannda Aviugana-Durand, 39, an educator. Her family declined to comment, but one student said she and other staff at the high school were heroes.

Victims found inside the home on Fellers Avenue:

• Emmett Jacobs, 11, the step-brother of the shooter.
• Jennifer Strang, 39, the mother of the shooter. Police identified her using her legal name, Jennifer Jacobs.

The powerful U.S. agriculture industry is throwing its weight behind the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement, urging the Trump administration to consider the deal's economic benefits to rural America before making any moves to rip it up.

Some 40 organizations representing farmers, ranchers, food producers and processors have launched what they call the Agricultural Coalition for USMCA, the American acronym for the three-way trade deal known in Canada as CUSMA.

Archived link

European Union defense ministers on Wednesday approved national investment plans from eight member states totaling €38 billion, clearing the way for the first disbursements under the bloc’s €150 billion Security Action for Europe (SAFE) program.

The officials also adopted a decision authorising the EU to sign the bilateral agreement between the EU and Canada on the participation of Canadian companies and products originating from Canada in procurement under the SAFE Instrument.

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SAFE is an EU financial instrument supporting member states that wish to invest in defence industrial production through common procurement, focusing on priority capabilities ... boosting production capacity, ensuring the timely availability of defence equipment, and addressing existing capability gaps.

Canada will be the first non-European country to participate in the SAFE instrument.

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Stop thinking of identity theft as a "hack." Learn how corporate negligence and data aggregation fuel the Canadian black market, and why your info is at risk.

This is part one of a Canadian series, teaching you how to fight back and react to protect your personal info and get your digital life back if you've been SIM swapped or your social media has been hacked!

The deliberate destruction of Canada’s homegrown fighter jet haunts our standoff with Washington.

Archived link

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In the early 1950s, Canada faced a strategic reality that’s easy to forget today. The shortest route for Soviet bombers carrying nuclear weapons to reach American cities ran straight over the Canadian Arctic. Canada wasn’t a junior partner in continental defence. It was the forward line, much like Ukraine or the Baltics are today.

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The [Canadian] CF-105 Arrow was not “ahead of its time” in the lazy way that phrase often gets used. It was simply advanced, full stop. The aircraft featured a large delta wing optimized for high-speed, high-altitude flight. It was designed for a two-person crew, integrated advanced avionics for its era, and was intended to carry sophisticated radar-guided weapons.

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The Arrow was so ambitious that Canada didn’t even have the facilities to test all aspects of it domestically. Avro relied on American test ranges and research infrastructure, including National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics facilities in the United States.

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Avro engineers leaned on American facilities and suppliers because that’s where the tools were. US test centres had already been built for exactly this kind of work, and American firms dominated key subsystems, from interim engines to avionics components.

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None of that implied sabotage or covert pressure in the moment. It meant that Canada was trying to build a world-class interceptor inside a North American aerospace ecosystem that was already deeply integrated, asymmetric, and tilted south.

The Arrow rolled out publicly in October 1957.

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On February 20, 1959, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker’s government cancelled the Arrow and the Iroquois engine program. That date is still known as “Black Friday” in Canadian aerospace circles ... The reasons were not mysterious, even if they remain controversial.

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The Arrow was expensive. Canada was also being asked to invest in missile defence systems and to integrate more deeply into NORAD, which had just been formalized with the United States. At the same time, strategic thinking in Washington was shifting toward intercontinental ballistic missiles as the dominant threat, reducing the perceived value of manned interceptors in some circles.

Canada could not afford everything. The Diefenbaker government chose a path that favoured missiles, alliance integration, and cost control over domestic aerospace ambition.

That decision alone would have been painful but survivable. What followed was something else entirely.

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Thousands of skilled workers lost their jobs overnight. Many left Canada entirely. A significant number went on to work in the United States, including on National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) programs.

Canada didn’t just lose a jet. It lost a generation of aerospace momentum. And it lost confidence, temporarily.

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But make no mistake; the Arrow still matters in 2026, and Canadians should be proud. If the Arrow were just an old jet, it would be a museum piece. Instead, it keeps coming back because Canada never replaced what it lost.

France did. Sweden did. France chose to preserve an independent combat aircraft capability through programs like Mirage, Rafale, and now its Future Combat Air System ambitions. Sweden evolved its Gripen line, through the Draken, accepting trade-offs but retaining control.

Canada walked away from that path in 1959 and never returned. Every fighter since has been imported. Every decision has involved trade-offs between capability, cost, and political alignment.

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That choice [of cancelling the Arrow] echoes. Every time Canada debates whether it can say no to Washington, the answer is shaped by what Canada can and cannot build on its own. Sovereignty isn’t just flags and borders. It’s industrial capability, supply chains, and the ability to absorb political friction without losing operational control.

Canada gave that up in 1959. The Arrow wasn’t stolen. It wasn’t smuggled away in the night. It wasn’t quietly dismantled by American agents. It was surrendered, cleanly and decisively, by a government that chose the path of least resistance and paid a price it didn’t fully understand at the time.

That price is still being paid, one procurement cycle at a time. And that’s why, every time Canada’s fighter future becomes a bargaining chip, the Arrow rises from the wreckage and asks the same question it’s been asking for sixty-six years. Who really controls Canada’s skies?

CANADA DOESN’T TALK about the Avro Arrow because it’s nostalgic. It talks about the Arrow because it’s unfinished business. Every time Ottawa finds itself boxed in on defence procurement, every time the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) tries to remind Canada who it thinks really owns North American air power, the Arrow reappears. It doesn’t show up as an engineering debate or a budget line. It shows up as a question of sovereignty.

Who decides what flies over Canada, who maintains it, who upgrades it, and who gets the final say when politics intrudes on defence?

Right now, that question is back on the table. Canada is reviewing whether to proceed with the full purchase of eighty-eight F-35s, having paid for only the first sixteen. Alternatives are being openly discussed. Saab’s Gripen is back in the conversation. France’s Rafale lurks on the margins. And hovering above all of it is an unmistakable warning from Washington: if Canada walks away from the F-35, the United States will “fill the gaps,” even if that means American fighters flying more often in Canadian airspace and changes to NORAD itself.

That’s why the current F-35 debate feels different. It’s not just about whether the jet is good. It’s about whether Canada is comfortable with the level of dependence that comes with it. The F-35 is not just an aircraft. It’s a system of systems. Software updates, mission data files, sustainment logistics, and upgrade pathways are all tightly controlled within an American-led ecosystem.

Archived link

Reflecting on the preliminary agreement between Canada and China to address economic and trade issues, China’s ambassador to Canada Wang Di says that we “should advance co-ordination across all sectors … In a spirit of mutual understanding and friendly consultation.”

Canadians should hear the pitch politely — and then read the fine print.

“Co-ordination” and “friendly consultation” sound perfectly amicable. They suggest predictable rules, neutral tribunals and commerce insulated from politics. But Beijing’s operating assumption is different. For Beijing, increased trade is not a destination. It is leverage — banked for the next dispute.

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Beijing’s ambassador is asking Canadians to imagine a version of China that behaves like a normal trading partner. The record suggests caution.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s report on the Chinese Communist Party’s coercive diplomacy tracked 152 cases over a decade and notes Canada among the more frequently targeted countries. The pattern is familiar: pressure is applied, the political link is denied and the target is invited back into the warm light of “good relations” if it makes the right gestures.

Canadians don’t need to look far for what this feels like in practice. When relationships sour, the pain is rarely spread evenly across the economy. It lands where it can generate domestic pressure — farmers, exporters, universities or a single marquee firm that can be singled out and made an example.

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China is simply not built to uphold international agreements in the ways Western nations still too often expect. Its party state can fuse economic policy, internal security and propaganda in a single campaign. Beijing treats narratives and markets as connected instruments of national power.

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We [Canada] need selective engagement and hard guardrails. Keep channels open for consular cases and narrow commercial issues, while tightening rules on critical minerals, sensitive data, advanced research and dual use technology. If Beijing wants deeper access, it can start by proving reciprocity and predictability.

Then we need strategic coalitions before concessions. Carney’s “variable geometry” is applicable: build resilience with like minded partners first — Japan, the EU, Korea, Australia — then engage China from a position where “no” is credible and costs are shareable.

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Finally, we [Canada] need to view domestic national security resilience as part of our broader economic policy. Transparency rules, foreign interference defences and research security are not side issues. They are the entry fee for doing business in a world where economics and politics are braided together.

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Archive article: https://archive.is/QHfcr

Half a dozen House Republicans voted with the majority of Democrats on Wednesday to overturn President Trump's tariffs on Canada.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/42910331

Canada is playing hardball with a $40bn submarine contract as it tries to turbocharge investment in civilian sectors ranging from steel and cars to energy and mining, and boost its economic independence from the US.

The U.S. House voted Wednesday to slap back Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada, a rare, if largely symbolic, rebuke of the White House agenda.

The U.S. House voted Wednesday to slap back U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada, a rare, if largely symbolic, rebuke of the White House agenda as Republicans joined Democrats over the objections of GOP leadership.

The tally, 219-211, was among the first times the House, controlled by Republicans, has confronted the president over a signature policy.

The resolution seeks to end the national emergency Trump declared to impose the tariffs, though actually undoing the policy would require support from Trump himself, which is highly unlikely. The resolution next goes to the Senate.

MBFC
Archive

This is not going to stop my boycott.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/55180105

Geopolitical tensions around Greenland and Russian activity in the North have refocused political attention on Arctic Canada, exposing long-standing infrastructure gaps that are undermining community well-being and national security, the president of Canada’s national Inuit organization said.

"Many times the rhetoric completely excludes Indigenous peoples and Inuit in our homeland," Natan Obed, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, said in an interview Wednesday in Tromsø, Norway.

Rather than investing in stand-alone military installations, Obed said, Ottawa should invest in dual-use infrastructure such as airstrips and ports that would serve northern communities and also support Canada’s military when needed.

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Obed contrasted Canada’s approach with Greenland, where Inuit political leaders take part directly alongside Denmark in international security and diplomatic discussions, citing Greenland’s Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt joining Denmark’s foreign minister in Washington D.C. in January during talks aimed at easing tensions over Greenland.

"In Canada, we would never see Foreign Affairs Minister (Anita) Anand walk into a room in the United States with a democratically elected Indigenous leader as her equal," he said. "That’s the type of thing that needs to change."

Obed said that exclusion also overlooks one of the Inuit’s core contributions to Arctic sovereignty, the long-standing pan-Inuit ties across the Arctic despite national borders.

"We’re very fortunate that we have mobilized together across Greenland, Canada, Alaska, and the Chukotka region of Russia through the Inuit Circumpolar Council," he said.

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Archived link

Bell Canada and SAP Canada announced a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to jointly deliver a comprehensive Canadian‑operated cloud solution designed to meet high data protection standards and strengthen Canada’s digital sovereignty.

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The partnership will combine Bell AI Fabric’s secure national network, compute, and data center footprint with SAP’s Sovereign Cloud On-Site (SCOS) solution and Canadian‑based operations team. Together, the companies aim to deliver a trusted, fully-Canadian, isolated cloud alternative for the public sector and regulated industries that require strict control over sensitive information and mission-critical workloads.

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The solution intends to ensure sensitive government, citizen, and organizational data remain within Canadian borders, shielded from extra-territorial access. Delivered by security-credentialed personnel in specialized facilities, the platform aims to support compliance with data residency and sovereignty requirements while helping customers modernize applications, adopt cloud services, and drive innovation and AI adoption.

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SAP Canada is also integrating Cohere’s leading enterprise-grade AI platform into SAP Sovereign Cloud to deliver a unique integrated sovereign offering. Along with Bell AI Fabric, Cohere empowers Canadian organizations to harness the power of AI while ensuring their sensitive information, AI models, and agents stay firmly within their control.

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A new type of employee ownership comes at a time when the country is facing a wave of baby boomer entrepreneurs nearing retirement and an increased focus on strengthening the national economy in the face of a trade war with the U.S.

Different types of employee ownership have existed in Canada for decades, but in 2024, the federal government amended the Income Tax Act to introduce a new option called an employee ownership trust (EOT).

Canada’s second-largest pension fund said it would halt future deals with Dubai’s DP World following revelations of ties between the logistics company’s chief executive Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

La Caisse, Quebec’s state pension fund, which has invested billions of dollars in port projects around the world with the group, said it was “pausing additional capital deployment alongside the company”.

The fund is the first of DP World’s global partners to halt deals with the logistics group following the publication of messages between Sulayem and Epstein, which were included in the US Department of Justice’s release of documents related to the disgraced financier.

The C$496bn (US$366bn) pension fund said it had “made it clear to the company that we expect it to shed light on the situation and take the necessary actions”, stressing it was “important to distinguish the company, DP World, from the individual, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem”.