Canada

Eat only what you need. Repurpose what you don’t. Less wasted food means fewer emissions, less cooking and more easy, tasty leftovers.  

Eliminate or reduce your beef consumption—43 per cent of food-related emissions from the average Canadian come from beef alone. We could have had our beef and eaten it too if we’d followed the agreements laid out in the Kyoto Protocol, but we’re now at a point where food emissions also need to fall to avoid the worst of climate change.

Vote with your fork. This is a first step to demand change from your political leaders. The more we talk about our own dietary changes and what matters to us, the more politicians will begin to care about policies that bring positive changes to our food systems.

Carney vs. Poilievre -- Here in Canada, there will be two big political changes in the coming year. The Liberals will become a majority government after more disgruntled Conservative MPs inevitably defect to the government side.

Why inevitably?

As 2025 showed, Pierre Poilievre is terminally unpopular. Loss after loss. A lot of Conservative MPs have realized that dear leader simply doesn’t have the royal jelly to become prime minister. Why else would they have agreed to give him a $3-million makeover? Pretty clear proof that they knew that “as is,” Poilievre was lacking something needed to lead them to victory.

Trump and Putin -- The biggest story in the world will be unfolding in the United States. How fast and how far will the Orange Octogenarian carry his unconstitutional agenda in what was once the world’s greatest democracy?

Belligerent fascism has already landed in America. So far, there have been bombs for Iran and Nigeria; missile strikes and summary execution for over 100 people denounced without proof by President Donald Trump as “narco-terrorists”; a quarter of the U.S. navy deployed off the coast of Venezuela; and Trump sending the National Guard into U.S. cities, even though that violates the country’s constitution.

With Trump’s poll numbers tanking and two-thirds of Americans disapproving of his handling of the economy, the Republican party is headed for the wood chipper in the 2026 midterm elections.

The voluntary grocery code of conduct for grocers, suppliers, wholesalers and primary producers in Canada is set to fully roll out on Thursday.

The grocery code is intended to promote fair dealings between grocers and their suppliers, including in the application of penalties and fees. It was set up in an effort to bring more transparency, fairness and predictability to the industry as a whole.

The code, governed by the Office of the Grocery Sector Code of Conduct, includes trade rule provisions, a governance model and an adjudication and dispute resolution process.

Canada's five largest grocers — Empire, Loblaw, Metro, Walmart Canada and Costco Canada — have now formally registered.

Happy New Years, hope next year is kind to everyone :)

I'm happy to edit in any other live streams / feeds / links into this post

The year that saw the remains of two First Nations women brought home from a Manitoba landfill and a search get underway for the remains of a third showed how far reconciliation efforts have come — and how far they still need to go, the families say

Melissa Robinson, whose cousin Morgan Harris’s remains were among those recovered earlier this year, says she feels at peace now that the chapter of her life focused on searching the Prairie Green landfill outside Winnipeg is over.

Robinson said after having an initially tense relationship with Winnipeg police when they decided not to search for her cousin’s remains, her family feels they’ve now built trust with new police Chief Gene Bowers, who she says listens and has shown he’s “committed to the families.”

From April 2020 to June 2022, Masse received more than $41,000 in government benefits — only to later get a letter from the Canada Revenue Agency saying he wasn't eligible for the money, and that he had to pay it back.

According to the CRA, Masse did not meet the minimum net earnings of $5,000.

"I was stunned. I couldn't believe it," said Masse. "I would have never applied for anything that I did not qualify for."

In early 2024, after months of back and forth, the CRA agreed he was entitled to some of the money. But he remains on the hook for about $27,000.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Saturday announced an additional $2.5 billion of economic aid for Ukraine.

The assistance will help Ukraine unlock financing from the International Monetary Fund, Carney said during an appearance with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

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As Prime Minister Mark Carney puts trade and security at the centre of Canada’s foreign policy, observers say Ottawa is also shifting how it asserts its values on the world stage.

The Liberals insist they are still standing up for human rights globally while seeking investment from China, India and Gulf countries. But a change in priorities is prompting some criticism — and changing how Canada trains its diplomats.

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Canada should be doing this too or maybe start accepting Euros to pay taxes. We have to get away from control of US institutions controling our lives.

Sitting in Ottawa's Rainbow Bistro, preparing for his band to play a gig, former MP Charlie Angus was reflecting on the past year. His plan to quietly retire and write a book turned into creating viral videos viewed around the world and a cross-Canada tour to fight Donald Trump.

A few months ago, Angus was preparing to wrap up a run of nearly 21 years as NDP MP for the northern Ontario riding of Timmins-James Bay and had begun researching the 1930's era in towns like Timmins, Kirkland Lake and Rouyn-Noranda for a book. He had just gotten to the end of 1938 and the rise of fascism when U.S. President Donald Trump was re-elected.

"I think I was one of the first people to come out and start using terms like the fascist threat," Angus recalled. "I've been living this in my research and suddenly it was there before me."

Angus knew that his time in Parliament was coming to an end so he decided to use his final speeches to talk about the threat he saw to democracy.

"I decided very quickly that I wasn't going to spend any more time in Parliament. I didn't know how much time I had, but I wasn't going to spend another minute asking dumb questions about bills that nobody was paying attention to. I was going to start to try and put on the record what was happening because I felt the threat was very, very serious, given what was happening with Putin, given what was happening in Europe, and then Trump."

Op-ed by Lloyd Axworthy, former Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1996 to 2000. He is former Chair of the World Refugee and Migration Council.

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For nearly three decades, the [Arctic] Council helped insulate the Arctic from great-power rivalry. It created a space where Arctic states — including Russia and the United States— and Indigenous Peoples could collaborate on science, environmental protection, and sustainable development. It proved that sovereignty could be strengthened through cooperation, not diminished by it.

Today, that same bargain leaves us exposed.

The renewed U.S. focus on Greenland brings this tension into sharp relief. Washington insists it respects Greenland’s sovereignty, yet its actions—special envoys, strategic rhetoric, and policies framed in terms of “national security necessity”— point to a more assertive, unilateral understanding of sovereignty.

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What troubles me equally is the response of other Arctic states, Canada included. We have rightly affirmed Greenland’s sovereignty but have said little about how to protect it through collective mechanisms. There has been scant appetite to think creatively about strengthening Arctic cooperation as the old rules strain. We have not yet rallied the Arctic Council or imagined new forms of collaboration to reinforce decades-old norms.

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The answer is not to abandon the Council, but to build alongside it. Canada should lead a diplomatic initiative with the Nordic states—Denmark (including Greenland), Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland—to create a complementary forum focused on strategic stability, civilian security, and reinforcing norms. This would not be a military alliance or a NATO substitute.

It would be a platform where Arctic states committed to a liberal international order can speak with one voice, name destabilizing actions, and reaffirm a foundational principle: that sovereignty in the Arctic is best protected through cooperation, transparency, and law—not through pressure and rhetoric.

Crucially, this new forum must carry forward the Council’s seminal innovation: institutionalized Indigenous participation as Permanent Participants. If we learned anything in Luleå, it is that legitimacy in the Arctic flows from inclusion. Narrowly defined state security misses the point. Human security—the safety, rights, and voice of Arctic peoples—is what gives sovereignty its enduring meaning.

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