Canada

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While most Canadians support developing the country’s critical minerals, they don’t want to see it done by foreign companies, according to a new survey by the Angus Reid Institute.

Nearly 60 per cent of respondents said they considered losing sovereignty over such resources to be a larger threat to Canada than “missing out on development and jobs because of a lack of investment.”

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“Three-in-five (60 per cent) Canadians believe Canada should limit foreign investment; one-quarter (25 per cent) would welcome it, in general. But even among those who welcome foreign ownership only one-third (35 per cent) say they would do so without restricting what resources are available for investment,” reads the study.

“There are also many countries Canadians would ban from ownership in critical resources outright. The top of the list are countries already under various levels of global embargoes – Russia (69 per cent would restrict ownership), North Korea (67 per cent) and Iran (60 per cent), as well as China (59 per cent), where investment has been discouraged by Ottawa in key areas for a number of years.”

Over a third of Canadians would also “bar the U.S. from investing in critical resources in Canada” at 37 per cent, even as the trade war persists between the two countries.

However, 66 per cent of Canadians said they would “prioritize lowering tariffs and guaranteeing value-added jobs (64 per cent) in exchange for U.S. access to critical minerals.”

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Five of the 11 nation-building projects announced by Prime Minister Mark Carney for fast-tracking include critical minerals, such as nickel, graphite, and copper.

If approved by the Major Projects Office, the projects would be funded by both public and private dollars, with the majority coming from the private sector

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Explosive new allegations of Chinese interference in Prince Edward Island show Canada’s institutions may already be compromised and Ottawa has been slow to respond.

The revelations came out in August in a book entitled “Canada Under Siege: How PEI Became a Forward Operating Base for the Chinese Communist Party.” It was co-authored by former national director of the RCMP’s proceeds of crime program Garry Clement, who conducted an investigation with CSIS intelligence officer Michel Juneau-Katsuya.

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P.E.I.’s Provincial Nominee Program allows provinces to recommend immigrants for permanent residence based on local economic needs. It seems the program was exploited by wealthy applicants linked to Beijing to gain permanent residence in exchange for investments that often never materialized. It was all part of “money laundering, corruption, and elite capture at the highest levels.”

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Hundreds of thousands of dollars came in crisp hundred-dollar bills on given weekends, amounting to millions over time. A monastery called Blessed Wisdom had set up a network of “corporations, land transfers, land flips, and citizens being paid under the table, cash for residences and property,” as was often done by organized crime.

Clement even called the Chinese government “the largest transnational organized crime group in the history of the world.” If true, the allegation raises an obvious question: how much of this activity has gone unnoticed or unchallenged by Canadian authorities, and why?

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Dean Baxendale, CEO of the China Democracy Fund and Optimum Publishing International, published the book after five years of investigations.

“We followed the money, we followed the networks, and we followed the silence,” Baxendale said. “What we found were clear signs of elite capture, failed oversight and infiltration of Canadian institutions and political parties at the municipal, provincial and federal levels by actors aligned with the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, the Ministry of State Security. In some cases, political donations have come from members of organized crime groups in our country and have certainly influenced political decision making over the years.”

For readers unfamiliar with them, the United Front Work Department is a Chinese Communist Party organization responsible for influence operations abroad, while the Ministry of State Security is China’s main civilian intelligence agency. Their involvement underscores the gravity of the allegations.

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One example Baxendale highlighted involved a PEI hotel. “We explore how a PEI hotel housed over 500 Chinese nationals, all allegedly trying to reclaim their $25,000 residency deposits, but who used a single hotel as their home address. The owner was charged by the CBSA, only to have the trial shut down by the federal government itself,” he said. The case became a key test of whether Canadian authorities were willing to pursue foreign interference through the courts.

The press conference came 476 days after Bill C-70 was passed to address foreign interference. The bill included the creation of Canada’s first foreign agent registry. Former MP Kevin Vuong rightly asked why the registry had not been authorized by cabinet. The delay raises doubts about Ottawa’s willingness to confront the problem directly.

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Archive: [ https://archive.is/Sqy0g ]

Anyone who’s tried to get resale tickets to a major event in recent years will know the pain, frustration and, most of all, cost of the secondary market.

Tickets on StubHub, a popular third-party reseller, have gone for as much as $80,000, and are currently going for over $2,000 a pop at minimum. It’s not a new problem — ask any Swiftie about the Eras Tour’s Toronto stop and there was the Blue Jays’ run to the World Series — and it’s made worse by Ontario’s resale laws.

In 2019, Doug Ford’s government scrapped part of a law that capped ticket resales at 50 per cent above the original price, allowing sites like Ticketmaster, StubHub and SeatGeek to set whatever price they think people will pay.

It’s an issue Ford, backpedalling from 2019, said this year he would like to review. The change of heart came after World Series tickets in Toronto sold out almost immediately, only for resale tickets to pop up for sale shortly after, well above face value.

Opinion piece by David McLaughlin. a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government.

It’s time to embrace “peace, order and good government” as the governing leitmotif for the turbulent year ahead.

It was the British Empire of the day that granted us this phrase. Today we are confronted by three contemporary strands of imperialism that threaten this notion for Canada in the form of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping. Their imperialistic grasps are purveying intercontinental economic and military insecurity and disruption to friends and enemies alike.

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In the narcissistic personality cult [Trump] inhabits, compromise is impossible. The man who names a class of naval warship after himself while attaching his own name to garner the lustre of a beloved president’s cultural icon, is not one to go quietly into the night.

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Putin faces literally deadly choices in his war against Ukraine next year. Does he continue to try to grind Ukraine down at extraordinary costs to his people and economy or does he settle for a ceasefire and perhaps even a U.S.-imposed peace agreement?

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Xi Jinping shows no signs of abating his own ‘China Shock’ [as he] is relentlessly pursuing state-sponsored dominance in the domains of advanced technology, AI, patents, biotechnology, batteries, and critical minerals. Leveraging a deliberately undervalued Yuan currency, Chinese exports continue to grow at the expense of domestic manufacturing in the U.S., Europe and Canada. Xi keeps investing heavily in the People’s Liberation Army, building its capacity and lethality. He has refused to moderate China’s military posture against Taiwan and other nations in the South China Sea.

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Canada has its own share of bellicose politicians. They are not imperialists trying to grow their country but separatists trying to shrink theirs. The threat is no less potent, though. There will be a Quebec election in 2026 with a resurgent Parti Québécois likely to win. It is led by a hardliner committed to a flat-out independence referendum.

In Alberta, a citizens-initiated referendum question on secession has been approved by Elections Alberta, asking, “Do you agree that the province of Alberta should cease to be a part of Canada to become an independent state?” It now moves to the next step of gathering sufficient signatures to become official, all but guaranteeing a separation referendum in the province.

The coming year offers too many inflection points for things to go wrong, for Canadians to be complacent or comfortable. Secessionist referendums will sap our internal strength. Trade wars will sap our economic strength. Military threats will sap our financial strength. We are not suitably prepared for any.

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A middle power caught in the middle, Canada cannot acquire the resilience it needs to persevere by indulging in political games abetting more economic risk and social upheaval. Yet, we are inviting just that. Steadiness of purpose — national purpose — is required to get us through this moment. Take the temperature down and lift the country up is what Canada needs. Citizens need to ask this of their governments and leaders and, frankly, of each other.

We could do worse than demand a little more “peace, order and good government” in these troubling times and embrace the new year in true Canadian style.

[Edit for adding "Opinion" to the headline.]

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The federal government’s new “Buy Canadian" policy for procurement is a good step forward, but the fine print points to a risk where companies only appear Canadian on paper and reap the rewards, failing to deliver the intended outcomes for the country, say observers.

Daniel Perry, director of federal affairs at the Canadian Council of Innovators, says the government should sharpen its definition of what's Canadian.

“Companies with a real footprint in Canada, those that invest here, employ Canadians, and innovate domestically will receive a clear advantage when bidding on federal contracts,” Government Transformation, Public Works, and Procurement Minister Joël Lightbound (Louis-Hébert, Que.) told reporters during a Dec. 16 policy rollout announcement in Longueuil, Que.

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The new policy sets a mandate for federal departments to prioritize Canadian suppliers and Canadian content when they are buying goods and services. The policy applies to key procurements valued at $25-million and more, and will be extended to contracts valued at $5-million or more by the spring of 2026.

Under the new rules, Canadian suppliers will be awarded additional points during the bid-evaluation process, and will earn more points based on the amount of Canadian content they offer, which includes domestic manufacturing, and research and development.

This policy also requires the use of Canadian-produced steel, aluminum, and wood products in large federal construction and defence contracts valued at $25-million or more, where at least $250,000 worth of these materials are required and a Canadian source of supply is available. Materials must be manufactured or processed in Canada, not simply sold by Canadian companies, says the government.

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“Being a Canadian firm, or a product cannot just mean having a mailbox in Canada or having provisional staff identified as your Canadian leader for a product that is obviously sourced from elsewhere… So there will be work required of the government, working with us and others, to make sure that they are substantively Canadian and not just in name only,” he said.

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“The policy gives explicit weight to Canadian value added alongside price and technical merit. That’s a shift. It moves procurement away from being purely transactional and toward something more strategic, where companies that build and grow in Canada have a real advantage, not just a paper presence,” Perry told The Hill Times.

According to Perry, the government’s definition of what is Canadian is “extremely broad” as it applies to any company that has a Canadian address, some local employees, and pays taxes in Canada. That definition needs to be “sharpened” to clearly benefit companies that retain their intellectual property (IP) in Canada, and are domestically owned, he argued.

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Without proper verification and enforcement, procurement dollars can end up supporting companies whose profits and IP still leave the country, limiting the policy’s real impact, said Perry.

“In a world where our allies are competing on ownership and control of technology, that means the economic upside and IP created through procurement can still flow out of Canada.”

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Contrary to concerns about cataclysmic traffic if the intersection of Portage and Main was opened to pedestrians, the actual impact was, well, almost nil.

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That fear made the intersection focus of countless newspaper columns, radio shows and bar-stool discussions. It made it an issue in the mayoral election of 2014, and the subject of an unsuccessful plebiscite in 2018.

The theme through these years was that change was too risky. Nothing happened until maintenance costs associated with the concourse under the intersection made the status quo too expensive. This past summer, traffic lights were installed in spite of the fear.

And in early December, about six months later, the city reported that … the traffic is fine.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-cities-reform-change-winnipeg-portage-main-toronto-bike-lanes/

The Public Health Agency of Canada is reporting a fifth hospitalization in an E. coli outbreak linked to recalled Pillsbury brand Pizza Pops.

The federal agency says 23 people in seven provinces got sick with the bacterial illness after eating or handling certain flavours of the frozen snack between early October and late November.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency recalled several pepperoni and bacon Pizza Pops on Sunday due to an E. coli contamination that is under investigation.

The outbreak has now reached Alberta, Ontario, British Columbia, New Brunswick, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador.