Canada

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TL;DR

• 298,000 Ukrainian refugees have arrived in Canada under the CUAET (Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel) programme. However, data on how many may have already left the country isn't publicly available.
• 80 per cent of recently arrived Ukrainians are employed. It is still difficult, however, to assess their career and whether they are working in the same industry and occupation as in Ukraine, as labour market integration takes time.
• Around 92 per cent of those who arrived express a desire to apply for permanent residency and consequently stay in Canada permanently. Ukrainian refugees are not legally recognized as refugees or asylum seekers in Canada. Instead, they hold temporary resident status under the CUAET programme, meaning they must obtain permanent residency through economic pathway or family reunification.
• As the war and, consequently, insecurity in Ukraine continue, Ukrainian diaspora organizations – particularly the Ukrainian World Congress – are calling for pathways to permanent residency for Ukrainian refugees.

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As a side note, there are Canadian people working in Ukraine, as April Huggett, a Canadian combat medic supporting the Ukrainian Forces.

[Edit typo.]

Archived link

As Prime Minister Mark Carney gears up for a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week – the first visit to the country by a sitting prime minister since 2017 – an expert warns that the stakes are high and hypervigilance is advised.

Carney announced the trip last week, saying that the decision was made because Canada is looking to build a “competitive, sustainable and independent economy.”

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Vina Nadjibulla, the vice-president of research and strategy at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, called this meeting a significant test of Carney’s “pragmatic diplomacy.”

“He will have to strike a difficult balance between pursuing economic engagement with China, especially in sectors like energy, with the serious national security and economic securities that we still have to manage when it comes to China,” Nadjibulla told CTV News Channel on Monday.

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Nadjibulla, an expert on international security and peace-building, emphasized that the prime minister must find a way to avoid strategic dependence on this single trading partner.

“With China, we have a history of economic coercion,” Nadjibulla added. “China uses economic dependence, like in the case of canola, for political leverage.”

While Nadjibulla says it is important that Carney engages with China pragmatically, she points out that it will be “interesting” to see how he will navigate the conversation surrounding both Canada’s national and economic security.

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We should not confuse economic engagement with trust or with strategic alignment,” Nadjibulla said, calling Canada’s relationship with China “complex.” She added there are several economic opportunities to explore like oil, gas and agriculture.

“Pragmatic engagement is fine. Diplomatic amnesia would be a mistake,” she said.

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[Nadjibulla] says that despite this being Carney’s attempt to diversify Canada’s economic engagement, it is imperative to keep in mind that most of the Asia and the Indo-Pacific exists outside China.

“We need see China as part of that broader Indo-Pacific strategy, rather than as the totality of our engagement with Asia,” Nadjibulla said.

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Looks like someone is taking a vacation to play one of the many victim's of cancel culture.... While they tour the country doing speaking engagements and podcasts!

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.