Canada

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/48982152

The Vancouver Society in Support of Democratic Movement signed an open letter and to stand with members of the Canadian Coalition on Human Rights in China.

"We wish to express our deep concern regarding Prime Minister Carney’s forthcoming visit to China," a statement reads

At a time of escalating human rights abuses and transnational repression, we believe it is imperative that Canada’s highest political leadership place human rights at the forefront of all high-level engagement with the Chinese government.

Canadian PM Mark Carney is on a state visit in China. Back in April, Mr. Carney said China is the largest threats with respect to foreign interference in Canada and is an emerging threat in the Arctic.

I'm sorry! I'm a technology writer, which means I'm supposed to be encouraging you to throw hundreds of billions of dollars at the money-losingest technology in human history, AI. No one has ever lost as much money as the AI companies.

There is no way to operate one of Nvidia's big AI-optimized GPUs without losing money. The owners of these GPUs who have lost the least money are the ones who rushed into buying GPUs without ensuring they'd have electricity to power them, and have been forced to leave their GPUs to age in warehouses. The minute they plug in those GPUs, they'll start losing money, and the more they use them, the more money they'll lose.

. . .

I don't have any advice for how to do that. I'm sorry!

As Canada contemplates our response to the collapse of the American empire and its alliances with the world, the cornerstone of our current strategy is sacrificing our dollars, water and energy in order to become more dependent on America, in a weird and improbable bet that we will figure out how to make millions of Canadians unemployed. I'm sorry, that just doesn't sound like a great idea to me.

If I can beg your indulgence, I'd like to propose an alternative.

The federal privacy watchdog has found Staples Canada did not fully remove personal information from returned laptops that it later resold.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada says its staff recently analyzed laptops returned by customers to four Ontario Staples stores and found 23 per cent of the devices had personal information, including names, email addresses, account information, email fragments and partial images of faces.

The privacy commissioner gave Staples nine months to develop clear standards for wiping devices, improve staff training and hire an independent third party to conduct an annual spot check on returned devices.

The commissioner started looking into the retailer's data policies after a former Staples sales associate alleged laptops were not always wiped following their return.

Q: The premier of Greenland said today, 'We prefer to stay with Denmark.'

TRUMP: Who said that?

Q: The premier of Greenland

TRUMP: Well, that's their problem. I disagree with him. I don't know who he is. Don't know anything about him. But that's gonna be a big problem for him.

Will Carney defend Greenland?

U.S. President Donald Trump says the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement on trade is "irrelevant" to him and Americans don't need Canadian products.

While touring a Ford plant in Michigan, Trump said he wants to see more cars built in the United States and the U.S. doesn't need vehicles made in Canada or Mexico.

Asked if he will renegotiate CUSMA, which is up for review this year, Trump said "we can have it or not."

When U.S. President Donald Trump’s top trade representative outlined conditions Canada would need to meet with a mandatory review of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) looming, familiar issues like dairy supply management made the list.

Less familiar was a pointed reference to Alberta’s electricity system, with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer telling Congress that Alberta must revisit its “unfair treatment of electrical power distribution providers in Montana.”

In the view of representatives of Big Sky Country, Alberta’s rules sometimes block Montana electricity from being sold into Alberta, which they say hurts their power producers and discourages cross-border transmission investment. Alberta, meanwhile, says it isn’t treating Montana any differently than it does its Canadian neighbours.

Last year, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative listed Alberta's non-profit electrical grid operator, the Alberta Electricity System Operator, or AESO, as a trade irritant.

When Meera Falyouna applied for a Canadian graduate program in December 2023, she was living in a tent.

Displaced by war, frequently without electricity or internet access, and unsure of what the next day would bring, the 26-year-old industrial engineering graduate from Gaza completed the application over several days — walking through rubble to find a signal so she could work on it.

Months later, Falyouna was accepted into the industrial engineering masters program at the University of Regina, with funding tied to a research project and a supervisor prepared to welcome her to Canada.

Nearly two years later, she’s still waiting in the war-torn region.

Biometrics — fingerprints and photographs required for Canadian visas — can only be collected outside Gaza, typically in Egypt or the West Bank.

Before the war, Palestinians regularly travelled through the Rafah crossing to complete the process in Egypt. But that route has remained closed for months, despite ongoing rumours that it may reopen.

Legitimate point, that kind of applies to Lemmy here too. It's not helpful to just dunk on Americans for being Americans. To beat fascism, we need to be allies.

“‘This obsession with bike lanes is, frankly, not helping anyone. And if, instead, the government stayed in its lane and focused on things like helping cities with transit, that would be a real improvement for Torontonians.’ Longfield said the money could be used to fix growing pains in opening Toronto’s new Line 6 Finch West or to finally open the long-promised Eglinton Crosstown LRT, both of which are under the jurisdiction of the province’s Metrolinx corporation.” — Ethan Lang, CBC News

Debt writeoffs by the federal government climbed above the $5-billion mark during the last fiscal year, according to figures reviewed by The Globe and Mail, adding to a debate over Ottawa’s practice of keeping the identities of those who benefit from such debt relief secret.

...

The upward trend in writeoffs inspired Conservative MP Adam Chambers to introduce a private member’s bill, C-230, that would require Ottawa to publicly disclose all corporate writeoffs worth $1-million or more.

...

“This is a great legislative initiative,” said Liberal MP Ryan Turnbull, the parliamentary secretary to François-Philippe Champagne, the Minister of Finance and National Revenue, during the debate on the bill.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-ottawas-debt-writeoffs-climb-above-5-billion-mark/

Unions in the least labour-friendly province boost wages, protect vulnerable workers and shrink inequality.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/53308292

Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree is heralding the test run of the government's marquee gun control policy as a success — despite the pilot receiving low uptake. 

Since 2020 Ottawa has banned some 2,500 types of firearms. The government has argued the makes and models on its list are for warfare — not hunters and sport shooters. 

The policy has faced opposition from the Conservatives and firearm-rights groups who argue the move punishes law-abiding gun owners instead of going after criminals. 

In response, the government promised to buy back those firearms as a way to fairly compensate owners.

A test run of the buyback program had little pickup. At the outset Ottawa had hoped to collect 200 firearms during a six-week pilot in Cape Breton, N.S. — instead just 25 were surrendered from 16 people.

The results, made public last week, are raising questions how the more than $700-million program will work when it's rolled out coast to coast.

"As an overall pilot, I believe it is successful," said Anandasangaree during a news conference on Monday.

"We wanted to test the capabilities that we have to both be able to register as well as recover the firearms that people wanted to voluntarily hand over to us."

Anandasangaree maintained the pilot wasn't about "quantitative" results.

"When we roll out the program in its full form in the upcoming weeks, we do anticipate much greater uptake," he said. 

"We were able to correct a number of issues that people had identified, both on the online portal and in other means. And I believe we're well poised to be able to launch the program in the coming weeks."

His department would not say which makes and models were returned during the pilot. 

Some provinces vowing pushback 

Low uptake isn't the only problem facing the program. Few provinces and police forces have officially signed on.

Alberta's government released a detailed plan in December to fight the program, calling it an unconstitutional attack on its citizens' rights.

Under proposed legislation, Alberta said it will take all reasonable steps to ensure that neither the government, nor any "provincial entity" participates in the implementation or enforcement of the federal policy.

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe has also vowed to fight the program while Ontario Premier Doug Ford has said he doesn't want provincial money funding the collection. 

So far Ottawa has announced one agreement to support the program: a $12.4-million deal with Quebec.

The RCMP and Quebec provincial police, along with the Cape Breton, Halifax and Winnipeg police services, have also agreed to take part. 

Public Safety Canada said it didn't have an estimate of how many guns it intends to collect during the national rollout.

The amnesty period for possessing a banned firearm comes to an end later this year. Owners have until Oct. 30 to dispose or deactivate their listed firearms or face legal consequences.