Canada

Curious also if this is Canada-wide or just in Ontario:

Recently have had two occasions where Shoppers was pushing me to have the pharmacist prescribe a renewal of something, rather than troubleshoot an error with a renewal request through 1) my family doc and 2) a specialist.

In both cases they wanted to charge me $15.

Case #1 I just said no thanks and called my family doctor, thankfully it was sorted out quickly.

Case #2, Shoppers' automated system waited until Saturday at 5pm(!) to notify me that the renewal (which I'd requested on Tuesday at 11am) had not gone through. When I called, they tried to charge me the $15 - but I successfully pressured them to give me a few days of the medication while I sorted out the issue (which is what they used to offer).

I can't help but wonder if this is the 'enshittification' of pharmacy services, where they tell you they'll take care of the automated renewal, but then - oops! - they mess it up and try to squeeze $15 out of a patient who just needs their medicine, and doesn't have time to make a bunch of calls, or trek over to the walk-in clinic or whatever.

Anyone else having similar issues? If so, it might be worth collecting people's stories and raising a fuss.

Canada’s tax and benefit system is making life harder for low-income seniors who continue working to pay the bills, according to a new report from the Montreal Economic Institute. The think tank is recommending the federal government overhaul how the Guaranteed Income Supplement, a benefit for this group of individuals, is clawed back.

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Eligible seniors can receive a little more than $13,000 a year from GIS. Once they work and earn more than $5,000, the federal government begins clawing that benefit back. For every additional dollar earned, GIS payments are reduced by 50 cents, before income tax and payroll deductions are applied.

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The clawback issue was recently flagged by another think tank. A November 2025 report from the C.D. Howe Institute found that Canadians with a modest pension income that includes CPP, as well as OAS and GIS, face some of the highest effective tax rates, often exceeding 75 per cent.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/personal-finance/retirement/article-canadas-tax-system-puts-low-income-working-seniors-at-a-disadvantage/

Alberta broke housing construction records in 2025 and led the country in housing starts per capita — a massive upswing in homebuilding that comes after a period of similarly massive population growth.

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Some of Alberta’s advantage comes down to geography. Cities in Alberta tend to be a bit more spread out, said Moffatt, which means you can build outward more easily (though that can come with its own challenges, such as the need to build new water infrastructure to service far-flung suburban neighbourhoods).

In Alberta, developers also don’t need to contend with provincial sales tax, he said, which makes it cheaper to build. 

And, generally, development policy is also friendlier at a municipal level in Alberta, said Moffatt.

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Some federal policies and programs have also helped move the needle — both in Alberta and elsewhere — such as the federal government’s removal of GST on purpose-built rental housing, and a CMHC program that offers discounted mortgage insurance on certain multi-residential projects. 

An emerging model is quietly turning Canadian patient medical records, and patients themselves, into lucrative commercial assets — often without patients’ explicit knowledge or consent. The practice, documented in a recent Health, Tech & Society Lab analysis, urgent concerns about privacy, transparency and trust in our health-care system.

The sale of de-identified and anonymized personal health information isn’t new to Canada. In the conventional business model, data brokers act as middlemen, purchasing and pooling de-identified data from clinics. Brokers then conduct analytics for third parties or sell access to the data for research, marketing or product development.

A new “vertically integrated” model is expanding and changing this practice.

Instead of third-party data brokers buying de-identified datasets from clinics, for-profit companies that own chains of medical clinics have become data brokers themselves, with access to identified data and closer control over clinical workflows. The value of patient data held by these chains is valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Because this closer integration “internalizes” patient data within the same ownership structure, data brokers have direct access to patient data as the data custodians. When using this data to develop specialized tools — such as clinical decision support tools — for third parties, companies may avoid regulatory oversight otherwise applicable if data were shared externally.

The most financially lucrative application of this model comes from pharmaceutical companies which pay clinic-owning data brokers to develop algorithms that identify patients who may be eligible for their drugs. These algorithms, called clinical decision support tools, are then embedded into the electronic medical records systems used in broker-owned clinics, shaping how clinicians prescribe. This is occurring without the explicit consent of patients, relying instead on the permission of physicians and clinics alone. Many physicians may not fully appreciate the risks this poses.

As Canada finds its sovereignty repeatedly threatened by the United States, it’s Donald Trump who plays the villain. The president seizes the spotlight by openly proclaiming the United States must dominate its geographic “sphere” that includes all of North America.

But it is Big Tech that truly rules the world and poses its own threat to Canadian sovereignty. And nothing the Mark Carney government has proposed to date is likely to blunt its efforts.

Yes, Carney has named the battlefront by declaring that Canada must have its own, sovereign, Canadian data infrastructure. What could that mean? That Canada has control over the chips, algorithms, data centres, models and data that comprise cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

There’s good reason for Canadian data infrastructure to be a priority. We don’t want a menacing United States snooping on our private information, and we don’t want our digital systems to be vulnerable to being scrambled or unplugged by a tantrum-throwing president.

Unfortunately, there are also good reasons that establishing data sovereignty has not yet become an actual project to be supported by the Carney government’s Major Projects Office. Many obstacles stand in the way.

Most major tech companies in Canada are U.S. owned and controlled and subject to U.S. laws. Sixty per cent of cloud capacity is owned by three hyperscalers (large-scale cloud service providers that operate massive data centres to offer vast computing power, storage and networking capabilities to large customers): Amazon Web Services or AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. A third of Canada’s nearly 300 data centres are U.S. owned.

Daniel Martell, the stepfather of two Nova Scotia children who disappeared nearly nine months ago, has been charged with sexual assault, assault and forcible confinement, CBC News has learned.

Nova Scotia RCMP confirmed that Martell was arrested on Monday and is facing three charges involving an adult complainant.

Martell is due in Pictou provincial court on March 2.

Martell, 34, was living with Lilly and Jack Sullivan and their mother at the time of their disappearance from his family home in Lansdowne, N.S., last May.

https://theijf.org/brief/spacex-former-liberal-staffer-lobbying

Following a year of public controversy and cancelled contracts, Elon Musk’s SpaceX has hired a former Liberal staffer to handle the company’s communications with the Government of Canada.

Sharan Kaur, principal at public relations firm Navigator Ltd., is now a consultant for SpaceX, according to a lobbyist registration filed on Jan. 26. Kaur was previously the deputy chief of staff to former finance minister Bill Morneau.

Though she hasn’t held a public office since September 2020, Kaur has continued to work on the campaigns of several federal Liberal election candidates. In the 2025 federal election, Kaur provided “counsel to several high-profile candidates,” and was the campaign manager for Evan Solomon, MP for Toronto Centre and minister of artificial intelligence and digital innovation.

Kaur joined Navigator in June 2025.

SpaceX’s renewed lobbying efforts target 14 government institutions, including the Prime Minister’s Office, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, and Public Safety. Lobbying records show the company intends to meet with officials to discuss “Satellite and ground station policies and regulations in relation to an application for a Foreign Satellite Authorization and broadband service.”

Several provinces have contracts with SpaceX’s satellite network subsidiary Starlink to provide internet access in rural and remote areas. But after U.S. President Donald Trump’s unpredictable tariff threats, and billionaire Musk’s influence within the Trump administration, governments have been increasingly looking to limit their reliance on Starlink.

In March 2025, Ontario announced it was cancelling a $100-million contract with Starlink, with Premier Doug Ford saying at the time, “We won't award contracts to people who enable and encourage economic attacks on our province ... and our country.”

After a report disclosed that SaskPower had paid more than $100,000 to Starlink for internet services, Saskatchewan NDP MLA Erika Ritchie also questioned why the Crown corporation was contracting “allies and supporters of the Trump administration.”

The Quebec government opted not to renew its $130-million contract with Starlink when it expired in June 2025. The government’s initiative gave customers in remote areas a $40-a-month subsidy as well as free Starlink receivers. Though the Quebec government has said it is pursuing a strategy to build “connectivity sovereignty” in the province, it also awarded a new $826,007 contract to Starlink last year for high-speed satellite internet in courthouses in remote regions, citing a lack of alternative providers.

In addition to Kaur and Navigator, lobbying records show SpaceX is also employing consultant Sean Webster, managing director of Chelsea Strategy Group and former deputy chief of staff to Premier Ford.

Communication reports show Webster met with policy advisors from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada on behalf of SpaceX in November, as well as the director of policy to Minister of Industry and Economic Development for Quebec Mélanie Joly.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/59483837

“Very, very senior” officials in the Trump administration have had secret meetings with far-right Canadian separatists trying to shake the foundations of the country. The covert meetings between high-ranking U.S. officials and the Alberta Prosperity Project come as a widening rift appears between Canadian leadership and the White House. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney used a speech in Davos, Switzerland, last week to call out President Trump for creating a “rupture” in the existing world order.

Archive article: https://archive.is/9FsBL#selection-723.0-727.336

L’entreprise Hanwha Ocean mise sur la création de 15 000 emplois par an au Canada jusqu’en 2040.

Archived link

Here is the link to a poll from last year: Canadians rank the European Union (EU) as Canada's second most important economic partner behind the US (43% in favor of EU), followed by the UK (40%), Mexico (33%), and China (27%).

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Aside from the obvious fact that Canada’s only physical border with the EU is the 1.2 kilometre one on Greenland’s tiny Hans Island in the Nares Strait, Canada maintains an open trade regime and could, from a technical standpoint, transition relatively smoothly into the EU’s tariff-free internal market.

The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), the Canada-EU Security and Defence Partnership signed last June in Brussels, and the participation of Canada in the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) procurement program secured in December, attest to both trade synergies and the confluence of interests more broadly.

Canada is a resource-rich country with a sophisticated, diversified economy, comparable to Europe in terms of innovation, market size, and human capital. It ranks ahead of many EU states in higher education quality, corporate research and development spending, patent registrations, and the diffusion of advanced technologies —from broadband infrastructure to digital services.

In short, Canada already behaves like a de facto member of the club in all but name.

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Article 49 of the Treaty on European Union limits eligibility for EU membership to “any European State” that respects and commits to the Union’s core values. That geographic requirement, however, is not immutable: the Treaty can be amended under Article 48, through unanimous agreement of all Member States and ratification in accordance with their constitutional procedures.

Canada’s membership would immediately expand the EU’s global footprint and underscore its identity as a values-based institutional order rather than a regional bloc.

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https://leadership.ndp.ca/faq

Yukon's coroner has named the man shot and killed by RCMP on Tuesday, south of Whitehorse.

In a news release on Wednesday, the Yukon Coroner Service identified the deceased man as Christopher John Delaney, 55, of Whitehorse.

The shooting happened on Tuesday at approximately 1 p.m. near the McClintock River Bridge in Marsh Lake, about 50 kilometres southeast of Whitehorse, police said in an earlier news release.

RCMP said a warrant had been issued for the man's arrest in relation to a firearms incident over the weekend. They had earlier asked for the public's help to find Delaney, saying he was facing several weapons-related charges.

During the interaction with Delaney on Tuesday, "a police-involved shooting occurred, resulting in the death of the individual," the statement read.

Toronto-based FrontFundr reported strong financial results on Wednesday, thanks in large part to a high-profile quest to fund a Canadian social media company through its crowdfunding platform.

FrontFundr released its financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2026 on Wednesday. They show the company added nearly 6,500 new users, growing the platform’s community by 10 percent in a single quarter. The new users came alongside almost 3,000 completed investments through its platform in the quarter, which covered Oct. 1 to Dec. 31, 2025. That figure is two-thirds of the investor activity FrontFundr saw in its entire fiscal year in 2025.