Canada

DEEP IN THE FORESTS of Algonquin Provincial Park, a few hours north of Toronto, sits a metal monster. Like the iron giant of British poet Ted Hughes’s fable, it, too, has come back to life, reassembled. Hughes’s creation saves the planet. What’s this one’s mission?

Our iron giant is a deep space radio telescope, with an antenna dish measuring forty-six metres across, the largest instrument of its kind in Canada. Starting in the 1960s, the Algonquin Radio Observatory performed a number of cutting-edge scientific projects, including joining the search for extraterrestrial intelligence’s early efforts, in the 1970s and 1980s, to find signatures of alien life—spectrum emissions from water molecules, artificial transmitter signals. No luck.

Then the ARO fell on hard times—budget cutbacks, advances in telescope technology, aged and failing equipment. Canada’s iron giant was mothballed by its operator, the National Research Council, in 1987. There it sat, silent, rusting, for two decades.

The radio telescope was leased to a scientist and entrepreneur, Brendan Quine, in 2007. Quine had come to Canada after his PhD at Oxford and helped establish a space engineering program at Toronto’s York University. To pursue more experimental and commercially ambitious projects, he co-founded Thoth Technology in 2001 and later spun off an affiliate, ThothX.

But first he had to resurrect the iron giant. He fixed the broken windows of the control station, installed new electronics, and secured the perimeter against bears. Then he had to give the instrument a new purpose. What Quine ultimately hit on speaks to our threatened times, severe geopolitical tensions, and our accelerating dependence on space platforms for critical services, including telecommunications and navigation.

Using ARO, ThothX can detect one-metre-long objects in orbit at a distance of 100,000 kilometres—about a quarter of the way to the moon. And it can do it in any weather, day or night, at a fraction of the cost of traditional systems. In military nomenclature, the objective is “space domain awareness.” SDA goes beyond tracking satellites; it’s the work of figuring out what’s out there, what it’s for, and whether it poses a threat. The threats are many: space debris, potential collisions between satellites, or deliberate attacks by hostile nations. As long ago as 2011, the Pentagon and the United States director of national intelligence laid down a warning. “Space,” they said, “is becoming increasingly congested, contested and competitive.” Fifteen years later, the alarm has grown.

People aged 14 to 20 are more often being diagnosed with psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia, compared with those born earlier, a large Ontario study examining 30 years of data suggests.

To conduct the study, published in Monday's issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), researchers looked at health administrative data from more than 12 million Ontario residents born between 1960 and 2009 to look for cases of a psychotic disorder.

In the Ontario study, those diagnosed with psychotic disorders not linked to mood disorders, such as schizophrenia, were more likely to be male, live in low-income neighbourhoods, be a long-standing resident of Canada and have received care for mental health disorders and substance use.

Why isn't known. Myran and his co-authors suggest several possible reasons for the increases: older parental age, socioeconomic- and migration-associated stress and an increase in some negative childhood experiences like abuse in more recent decades.

Myran said there likely isn't a single explanation, but he called substance use — including cannabis, stimulants, hallucinogens and synthetic drugs — a leading possibility contributing to the rising rates over 20 years.

Former chief coroner Lisa Lapointe recently criticized B.C.’s drug policies, saying the province’s approach to the ongoing toxic drug crisis is not evidence based.

Lapointe, who was B.C.’s longest-standing chief coroner and held the position for 13 years before retiring in 2024, was speaking as part of a new, ongoing webinar series, “Perspectives on 10 Years in Crisis,” hosted by the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition.

In April B.C. will have been under a public health emergency for a decade. During that time more than 18,800 British Columbians have lost their lives after being poisoned by unregulated drugs.

During her time in office, Lapointe called three death review panels, which brought together a wide range of experts and asked them to come up with recommendations for how to prevent future deaths.

The experts included health professionals specializing in addiction, members of different ministries, police, pharmacists, people with lived experience, WorkSafeBC, deputy ministers and more from across Canada, but with a provincial focus.

The province declined to implement most of the recommendations, and deaths continued to rise until 2023, when a record high of 2,589 British Columbians lost their lives. Deaths have been decreasing since then but still remain high. In the first 10 months of 2025, 1,538 people died due to toxic drugs, according to the most recent information available from the BC Coroners Service.

Lapointe said B.C.’s response to the ongoing crisis, which has focused on building treatment and recovery beds, is not evidence based.

B.C. has halted work on a strategy aimed at ensuring taxpayers don’t bear the massive cleanup costs arising from abandoned industrial sites and disasters like the Mount Polley mine breach.

The province initiated its Public Interest Bonding Strategy amid an unfolding environmental catastrophe at the Port Alice pulp mill on northern Vancouver Island. The mill’s owners abandoned the site with toxic waste flowing directly into a sensitive estuarine inlet. After $170 million in public spending, the site remains dangerous and unstable.

Port Alice is a “symptom of a wider problem,” provincial officials admitted internally in a 2021 briefing note. The province has no powers to compel companies to close and clean up their industrial sites or to collect funds to compensate taxpayers if they go bankrupt.

The Public Interest Bonding Strategy was designed to fix that, then-environment minister George Heyman said in 2023.

“We’re long overdue to reduce unnecessary environmental cleanup liability to the government, also known as the taxpayers of British Columbia,” Heyman told the legislature as he introduced the strategy’s first legal amendments in the legislature. The amendments would allow the government to require cleanup and collect bonding insurance from industrial sites for the first time.

The new laws required regulations to take effect, but those regulations never arrived.

Last week, the province told official interveners that it had indefinitely paused the strategy. The government has not announced the pause publicly, but in an email to The Tyee, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Environment and Parks confirmed that work had been halted.

The campaign by Alberta’s United Conservative Party to remake the province’s health-care system has created chaos with patients dying in overcrowded hospital emergency rooms.

But there has also been a steep financial cost to the overhaul. A Tyee analysis of Alberta Health financial data found at least $30 million has been paid out in severance between 2019 and June 2025.

The data shows the government paid out about $29.45 million between 2019 and June 2025 to 150 former employees. But that figure doesn’t account for payouts made in the second half of 2025, nor does it capture the payouts for executives and others who opted out of the public reporting of their severance.

A third of that amount — nearly $10 million — was paid out in 2023 to 33 people as Smith made good on an election campaign promise to eliminate what she characterized as a bloated bureaucracy and ineffective executive managers.

Smith had made no secret of her animus toward officials at Alberta Health Services, or AHS, whom she accused of underperforming and of mismanaging the COVID pandemic by too stringently applying mandates.

https://archive.ph/Sl75I

We talked about the possibility of an election, likelyhood and risk in another thread yesterday. With party and leader numbers like these... maybe it's more likely than I thought.

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Chinese tariffs imposed mid-August had an immediate effect on canola seed exports to China, falling effectively to zero in September and October 20251. They fell 60% from January through October last year compared to 2024.

However, not all the decline in canola product exports reflects weaker shipments to China. Roughly one-third of the overall drop in canola products came from lower exports of canola oil, primarily to U.S. buyers.

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There were already signs Canadian exporters were finding alternative markets for canola seed directly impacted by China’s tariffs. Exports of canola seed to countries other than the U.S. and China more than doubled in 2025 to October from a year earlier, helping to partially offset export losses from the Chinese market.

Interestingly, the share of total Canadian canola seed exports to China had already fallen from just under 80% in September 2024 to less than 50% in the months following Canadian tariffs on Chinese EVs and metals—suggesting crop marketers (correctly) were anticipating increased risks that tariffs on canola could follow.

Exports to China for other tariffed goods, including seafood and pork, have also declined materially – by 31% and 19%, respectively, in 2025 up to October from a year earlier. But, export losses for these goods have been offset by stronger exports to other markets.

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Canadian canola competes in a global marketplace—and it is still not clear that a buyer in China will be more willing to pay a 15% tariff than a 75.8% tariff when canola is available from other countries on tidewater at global prices without tariffs. But, early evidence is positive that alternative markets can be found for displaced Canadian canola, and potentially quite quickly.

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At first glance, the scale of the concession appears relatively modest. At a quota of 49,000 units, Chinese EVs would account for slightly less than 3% of vehicle registrations in the year ending Q3 2025. If the quota rises to around 70,000 units over the next five years, imports will still represent less than 4% of total annual vehicle sales.

But, the reduction in tariffs serves as a reminder the Canadian manufacturing sector does not only face threats from U.S. trade disruptions, but also from competitive pressures from offshore manufacturing powerhouses like China.

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The proposed truce is expected to deliver near-term relief for some Canadian exporters, but tariffs on canola meal, lobster, crab, and peas are only guaranteed through the end of 2026, raising questions about the durability of the move. Tariff removals on canola oil or pork products were also notably absent from the announcement.

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Red-light cameras in Ontario have been catching civilians for years, but some police officers who rush to emergencies say they’re unfairly being penalized by the same technology.

Under Ontario's Highway Traffic Act, police are allowed to go through a red light, with lights and sirens activated, after coming to a stop and when it’s safe to do so.

There have been instances in other parts of Canada when first responders were found to be responsible for causing a crash while going through a red light.

For instance, in 2024, a Winnipeg police officer pleaded guilty after causing a two-vehicle crash at an intersection when responding to an emergency.

Rice said there are forms of accountability that officers face when that happens — including internal reviews, and scrutiny by Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit and the Law Enforcement Complaints Agency.

“That’s the goal of it. The officer has to come up [to the intersection] — they use discretion and judgment,” said Rice.

More than 400 members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were accused of misconduct in 2024, leading to at least 20 dismissals and resignations.

According to the RCMP, it logged 443 cases of alleged misconduct in 2024 involving 408 employees. Nearly one quarter of these cases resulted in “serious” disciplinary measures, such as being declared ineligible for promotion or being forced to forfeit more than 80 hours of pay. Ten RCMP employees were also demoted to a lower rank or level, which was more than double the number of demotions made over the previous two years.

Five per cent of the misconduct cases, or approximately 22, resulted in termination or direction to resign, which was the most severe consequence. Over 70 per cent of cases led to remedial or corrective measures such as special training, close supervision or deferred promotions.

The misconduct cases were revealed in the RCMP’s Report on the Management of the RCMP Conduct Process, which was quietly released on Jan. 21. The report from Canada’s federal police force covers the 2024 calendar year.

Former prime ministers Stephen Harper and Jean Chretien sat down for a fireside chat in Ottawa to discuss the topic of “Canada and the World,” moderated by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society (RCGS).

Ahead of the conversation, Harper received an RCGS Gold Medal at a ceremony in Ottawa, in recognition of his “distinguished career in public service,” according to the organization.

Harper on nationalism

“We are living in an age of nationalism,” Harper says, adding that Canada has no reason to not being nationalist. “We have a lot to be proud of.”

Austerity undermines the foundation for a fairer economy that is less dependent on the United States.

WHEN DOES A SEPARATIST movement become a threat to Canada’s national security?

This is a question hanging in the air in Alberta. People are asking how it can possibly be that the very same individuals who are leading the separatist movement can also be three meetings deep into a relationship with senior officials of the Donald Trump administration in Washington, with a fourth scheduled for this month.

It is, as we know, entirely legal in Canada to advocate and campaign in support of a province or territory leaving Confederation. This is covered by the Clarity Act but also by the Charter, which protects the rights of citizens to free expression, assembly, and association.

Any organic political movement that is based in a genuine desire to achieve an outcome of their design is free to pursue that through whatever lawful means are available to them. Foreign interference in such movements, however, is where the line between lawful advocacy and dissent crosses into territory that constitutes a threat to Canada’s national security.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act is clear on this. CSIS itself does not have a mandate to investigate “lawful advocacy, protest or dissent” unless these forms of activity are carried on in conjunction with the range of activities which the act defines as threats to the security of Canada.

Those threats include espionage or sabotage harmful to Canada’s interests; covert or deceptive foreign-influenced activities that undermine Canada or threaten individuals; support for or direction of serious violence against people or property to achieve political, religious, or ideological goals; and covert, unlawful acts aimed at undermining, overthrowing, or destroying Canada’s constitutionally established system of government through violence. In short, the act draws a clear line between protected democratic activity and conduct that involves foreign interference, secrecy, violence, or efforts to subvert the state itself.

Dr. Michael Antil moved from North Carolina to Toronto in July 2023, seeking a more diverse and broad-minded environment for his family and a universal health-care system in which to practice. But three years later, despite Canada's well-documented doctor shortage and so many theoretical routes to citizenship for skilled workers like himself, he still doesn't have permanent residency.

Antil came to Canada with over two decades' experience in the States — and he is now adeptly managing an above-average load of over 2,000 patients at a Toronto clinic. Yet he and his wife (an ESL teacher) are still living by dint of temporary work permits, their children are facing international student fees for post-secondary education, and he had to cough up an additional 25 per cent foreign buyers' tax on his house.

Rifling through an inches-tall stack of paperwork, the 50-year-old told White Coat, Black Art host Dr. Brian Goldman about all the hoops, hurdles and red tape he’s come up against since first applying for permanent residency in 2023.

He has been rejected three times on various technicalities even though, he says with a rueful laugh, "Ontario needs doctors.”

Over 2.5 million Ontarians are without a family doctor, according to the Ontario Medical Association. Across Canada that number sits at around 5.9 million.

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Michael Ma has recently attended events with Chinese consulate officials, leaders of a group called CTCCO, and the Toronto “Hongmen,” where diaspora community leaders and Chinese diplomats advocated Beijing’s push to subordinate Taiwan. These same entities have also appeared alongside Canadian politicians at a “Nanjing” memorial in Toronto.

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Michael Ma’s crossover to the Liberal Party may be completely legitimate, although numerous observers have noted oddities in the timing, messaging, and execution surrounding Ma’s move, which brings Mark Carney within one seat of majority rule.

There is no evidence of wrongdoing.

But from a law enforcement and national security perspective, that is beside the point. Counterintelligence is not about proving guilt after the fact; it is about identifying vulnerabilities before damage is done — and about recognizing when a situation creates avoidable exposure in a known threat environment.

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Open-source records also show that the same Toronto Chinese Freemasons and leaders Ma has met from a group called CTCCO sponsored and supported Ontario’s “Nanjing Massacre Commemorative Day” initiative (Bill 79) — a campaign celebrated in Chinese state and Party-aligned media, alongside public praise from PRC consular officials in Canada.

[The Chinese state-controlled propaganda outlet] China Daily reported in 2018 that the Nanjing memorial was jointly sponsored by CTCCO and the Chinese Freemasons of Canada (Toronto), supported by more than $180,000 in community donations.

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Canada’s intelligence community has been clear.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has repeatedly identified the People’s Republic of China as the most active and persistent foreign interference threat facing Canada. These warnings are not abstract. They are rooted in investigations, human intelligence, and allied reporting shared across the Five Eyes intelligence alliance.

At the center of Beijing’s approach is the United Front Work Department — a Chinese Communist Party entity tasked with influencing foreign political systems, cultivating elites, and shaping narratives abroad. In policing terms, it functions as an influence and access network: operating legally where possible, covertly where necessary, and always in service of the Party’s strategic objectives.

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Under China’s National Intelligence Law, Chinese citizens and organizations can be compelled to support state intelligence work and to keep that cooperation secret. In practical terms, that creates an inherent vulnerability for democratic societies: coercive leverage — applied through family, travel, business interests, community pressure, and fear.

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That is why transparency matters. When political figures engage with representatives of an authoritarian state known for interference operations, the burden is not on the public to “prove” concern is justified. The burden is on officials to explain why there is none — and to demonstrate that basic safeguards are in place.

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Canada’s hesitation to address United Front networks is not due to lack of information. It is due to lack of resolve.

From a law enforcement perspective, this is troubling. You do not wait for a successful compromise before tightening security. You act when the indicators are present — especially when your own intelligence agencies are sounding the alarm.

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