Canada

Lobbyists and anti-abortion activists on influential body are a contrast to Conservative Party’s public messaging

One session included 37 MPs and focused on police funding and “hate speech” policy.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/46886810

The American president has invited Canada to become his country's "51st state," an idea that has infuriated most of Canada's 40 million citizens.

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Hence this suggestion: Why not expand the EU to include Canada? Is that so far-fetched an idea? In any case, Canadians have actually considered the question themselves. In February 2025, a survey conducted by Abacus Data on a sample of 1,500 people found that 44% of those polled supported the idea, compared to 34% who opposed it. Better the 28th EU country than the 51st US state!

One might object: Canada is not European, as required for EU membership by Article 49 of the EU Treaty. But what does "European" actually mean? The word cannot be understood in a strictly geographic sense, or Cyprus, closer to Asia, would not be part of the EU. So the term must be understood in a cultural sense.

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As [Canadian Prime Minister Mark] Carney said in Paris, in March: Thanks to its French and British roots, Canada is "the most European of non-European countries." He speaks from experience, having served as governor of the Bank of England (a post that is assigned based on merit, not nationality). Culturally and ideologically, Canada is close to European democracies: It shares the same belief in the welfare state, the same commitment to multilateralism and the same rejection of the death penalty or uncontrolled firearms.

Moreover, Canada is a Commonwealth monarchy that shares a king with the United Kingdom.

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Even short of a formal application, it would be wiser for Ottawa to strengthen its ties with European democracies rather than with the Chinese regime. The temptation is there: Just before heading to Davos, Carney signed an agreement with Beijing to lower tariffs on electric vehicles imported from China.

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Archive link

Mississauga Mayor Carolyn Parrish has sent another letter to the province urging that the transfer of regional roads from Peel Region to the city remain on schedule.

In her Jan. 28 letter to Ontario’s Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Rob Flack, Parrish called for the July 1, 2026, transfer date to be maintained, rather than postponed to newly proposed July 1, 2027.

She also highlighted the financial impact on Mississauga taxpayers, noting the city has been subsidizing Caledon’s regional roads for decades.

Parrish estimated Mississauga spends about $25 million to $30 million annually to subsidize Caledon’s regional roads.

“For 50 years it has been a significant burden borne mostly by Mississauga property taxpayers. The current arrangement is patently unfair,” she wrote.

The letter comes after reports that Caledon Mayor Annette Groves supports delaying the transfer to 2027, citing the town’s limited financial capacity to maintain the roads, which she estimates would cost between $35 million and $40 million per year. Parrish said she agrees the costs are significant, but questioned why Caledon is raising concerns only now.

Parrish asked the province to provide funding to offset Caledon’s costs and to remove the long-standing financial burden on Mississauga property taxpayers. She also requested access to reports prepared by the Peel Transition Board on regional road transfers.

Jivani is longtime friends with U.S. Vice-President JD Vance

Conservative MP Jamil Jivani says he met with Trump administration officials on Wednesday as he visits the United States capital on an independent trip billed as an effort to improve Canada-U.S. trade relations.

Jivani said U.S. President Donald Trump gave him a message to share with fellow Canadians.

"Productive meetings today with the White House and State Department. The President asked me to pass along a message: 'Tell the Canadians I love them.' I'll have much more to say later," the Ontario MP said in a post on X.

We need to show we don't care what he says or thinks.

Archive: [ https://archive.is/Ljy3w ]

Author: James Horncastle | Assistant Professor and Edward and Emily McWhinney Professor in International Relations, Simon Fraser University

Intro:

As the Donald Trump administration in the United States continues to threaten Canadian sovereignty — including a recent suggestion that Alberta could secede from Canada and join the U.S. — Canadians, like many others in the world, finds themselves in a period of extreme uncertainty.

Trump’s continued violations of the rules-based international order means Canada can no longer rely on its partners to the same extent as it has in the past.

The world must, as Prime Minister Mark Carney recently noted, accept the current climate as it is, rather than looking to the past.

To do so, Canada must develop a defence policy that can meet the country’s needs. The Canadian government’s recent budget envisions a significant increase in defence spending over the next several years. The problem Canada faces, however, is one that all middle powers face: an inability to compete with great powers in a conventional war.

The Canadian government must therefore pursue non-conventional means to overcome conventional weakness. Simultaneously, the country must be cognizant of the implications of alternative defence policies. The former Yugoslavia provides a harrowing example.

An excerpt:

The biggest vulnerability is the enemy eliminating their command-and-control functions early in the conflict. The U.S., as seen in Iraq in 1991, excels at these types of operations. Russia, while not as effective, attempted to do the same against Ukraine in the early phases of its full-fledged invasion.

For a smaller country to survive such an attack, it needs to ensure that resistance can continue regardless if centralized command is compromised.

Under the theory of total national defence, countries decentralize command and control functions to prevent them being eliminated.

The extent to which countries do so varies. Individual units may operate at the local level without centralized guidance to maintain the struggle against an opponent. In short, even if an opponent succeeds in eliminating the central command of a state, its army and people can continue the struggle.

Seven Toronto police officers, four of whom have been suspended without pay, have been arrested and charged in connection with what York Regional Police (YRP) are calling a “lengthy investigation into organized crime and corruption,” multiple sources have told CP24 and CTV News Toronto.

Sources told CP24 that the Toronto officers charged worked in 11 and 12 Divisions as well as the Guns and Gangs Unit.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/54743577

Officers are accused of trafficking, leaking addresses to hitmen, leaking police officer addresses and conspiring to kill a unit commander at the Toronto South Detention Centre, sources say. Toronto police declined to comment Wednesday night.

From mining critical minerals, making batteries, recycling batteries, and even software, the electric vehicle (EV) supply chain is a wide-open sandbox. The only question is, where will Canada build its castle?

The Electric Vehicle Innovation Ontario (EVIO) program is trying to find out. The program launched in December with $2.5 million in federal funding from FedDev Ontario to embed 37 graduate researchers from Ontario universities into 20 of the province’s EV and mobility companies over nearly three years.

The thrust, as scientific director and University of Toronto professor Arvind Gupta explained to BetaKit in an interview on Monday, is to match the right academic mind to an EV company’s research and development project.

“If I was in a company and I was trying to solve some part of the problem, and I had to hunt around in 97 universities to find the right person, that’s a really tough proposition,” Gupta said. “But if we can make that match happen faster, get people in there faster, get the technology developed faster, it just increases your odds of success.”

sub-headline:

Lobbyists and anti-abortion activists on influential body are a contrast to Conservative Party’s public messaging

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/ice-canada-offices-9.7073273

Alberta MP calls on Canada to shut down U.S. immigration and customs operations north of border

As U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continues to draw widespread criticism for its deportation crackdown in the States, there’s concern brewing about the agency's presence north of the border.

The U.S. government’s website lists ICE offices in five Canadian cities: Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal and Ottawa.

In an emailed statement to CBC News, an ICE spokesperson confirmed its criminal investigative law enforcement component — Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) — conducts work at the U.S. embassy in the country’s capital, and at consulates in the other four cities.

HSI personnel are separate from the ICE arm at the forefront of the immigration crackdowns making headlines in cities like Minneapolis, known as Enforcement and Removal Operations.

According to the government website, HSI has over 93 offices in more than 50 countries, with a mandate to identify and stop crime “before it reaches the United States.”

Not new, but I looked it up today and thought you might find it interesting.