Canada

We all know who dun it, but Hazel makes some great comedy of it. 😊

"This action follows the automakers' unacceptable decision to scale back their manufacturing presences in Canada, directly breaching their commitments to the country and Canadian workers," the government said in a late-night media release.

The production announcement comes after strong earnings for GM and a record-high stock price posted on Tuesday. The 2021 CAMI plant retooling cost $2 billion, with about $500 million coming from Ontario and Ottawa.

TC Energy has long sought to increase corporate access to CSIS intelligence, which historically has rarely been shared even with other governments.

The Calgary-based energy company retained former staffers from the office of U.S. President Donald Trump to lobby CSIS for such changes, including at an October 2023 security summit in Palo Alto, Calif.

The BC Civil Liberties Association previously filed complaints against CSIS, alleging the agency spied on environmental groups opposed to a pipeline project in northern B.C.

Jack, who works for the organization, worries allowing CSIS to share such intelligence with companies

even unclassified information

could be used to quash similar protests in the future.

"I think it's fair to assume that part of the goal here for TC Energy is to find ways to prevent protest or lessen their impact at least on their operations," Jack said.

Authors:

• Chris Hugenholtz | Professor, Geography, University of Calgary
• Coleman Vollrath | PhD Candidate in Physical Geography, University of Calgary
• Thomas Barchyn | Researcher, Geography, University of Calgary
• Zhenyu Xing | Postdoctoral Associate, University of Calgary

Governments in Canada’s major oil and gas producing provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan, have touted their efforts in recent years to reduce methane emissions.

Methane is a greenhouse gas released into the atmosphere at oil and gas facilities through leaks, vents, maintenance activities and incomplete combustion. Methane traps significantly more heat than carbon dioxide, making it a potent climate pollutant.

We set out to independently verify if government claims of decreasing oil and gas methane emissions were accurate. Our new study shows that the answer is yes — but with important caveats and valuable lessons for Canada’s energy sector.

We studied satellite observations between 2019 and 2023 to understand how methane emissions rates in Canada’s main oil-producing region were changing. We focused on the heavy oil belt near Lloydminster, Alta., where a distinctive extraction method known as CHOPS (cold heavy oil production with sand) has long been associated with notable methane emissions.

CHOPS brings a mix of oil, water, sand and gas to the surface. The oil is collected, but the co-produced gas — which is mainly methane — has historically been vented or flared.

Michael McGrath, the EU commissioner for democracy, justice, the rule of law and consumer protection, is visiting Canada as the Liberal government pursues an AI policy that puts less emphasis on regulation and more on adoption.

Speaking at a conference in Montreal Thursday, he outlined upcoming legislation that will tackle issues such as addictive design, unfair personalization and holding influencers accountable.

Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon has cited the U.S.’s anti-regulation stance as a reason to go easy on regulatory efforts, saying Canada would be wasting its time by going it alone.

Federal Energy Minister Tim Hodgson hailed the decision — just hours after B.C. issued an approval — as an example of the federal government's "one project, one review" system in which it relied on the province for its assessment.

But the Metlakatla First Nation says in court documents that the decision relied on "speculative economic concepts" to justify the project's adverse impacts, while ignoring "mounting evidence" that it's not economically feasible.

Ontario and the federal government are spending a collective $3 billion to build Canada’s first small modular reactors, a new nuclear energy technology to be built next door to the Darlington power plant.

The Darlington SMRs are moving ahead. Seeing that this train has left the station, I hope someone's planning domestic uranium enrichment capacity.

“Being a queer, non-binary person in India is not the easiest,” Adi Khaitan told me. “The place I grew up was very, very conservative.” Khaitan’s memory of their childhood is “a little bit foggy,” and they declined to share many details about their life in India, only that they were an only child and something happened that resulted in their being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

After graduating from high school, Khaitan started to apply to universities overseas. Of the thirty North American schools that sent them acceptance letters, twenty-eight were from the United States and two from Canada: Lakehead University and Memorial University of Newfoundland. Khaitan decided that the political situation in the US didn’t suit them and accepted the offer from MUN. Their parents didn’t even know Khaitan was applying for universities abroad but agreed to pay for their tuition if they covered all their other expenses.

Photos:

The new NL Health Services facility is in the former Costco building at 28 Stavanger Drive in St. John's. (Laura Howells/CBC)

A new health-care facility in the former Costco building in St. John's is opening this week, offering several outpatient services that were relocated from city hospitals.

“It’s been several years, but it’s exciting to see that now, Tuesday, we’re going to have patients walking through the door,” said Kim Pike, clinical planner with Capital Planning and Engineering.

“We have a beautiful space here that patients can easily navigate.”

The two-story Unity Health Centre at 28 Stavanger Drive was open for public tours on Sunday, with dozens of people arriving for a first look. Patients will start coming on Tuesday.

Seats fill the spacious waiting areas on both floors, with brightly coloured signage for the different clinics. The centre has free parking, large murals on the walls, and will eventually house a coffee shop and drug store.

Pike says patients will be able to easily get around the new space, and “don't have the maze of our large and intimidating acute care hospital.”

For people accessing health care, she thinks "this is going to be a much calmer and pleasant experience." Patients will have shorter distances to walk, she said, as well as central waiting areas and better signage.

A number of outpatient services from the Health Sciences Centre, the Janeway and St. Clare’s Hospital have moved to the new centre, with more opening later.

Clinics opening Tuesday include the medicine and surgery specialty clinics, eye clinic, bariatric and total joint assessment, plastic surgery outpatient, endocrine, thrombosis, general medicine, cardiac diagnostics, orthopedics, audiology, and X-rays, among others.

More services will open in December, including blood collection, physiotherapy and occupational therapy, ultrasound appointments, pre-admission clinic, and a pain clinic. Two MRI machines will be added to the building in January.

An urgent care centre will also open at the site later this year.

N.L. Health Services is leasing the space, which was a big draw to the area when it housed Costco, before it moved in 2019.

“We’ve repurposed, revitalized an area in the city that was once kind of a desert town,” said Pike.

Caliss que l’on est gourverné par des envies de chier

The FTC acknowledges its suit is based in large part on revelations from a 2018 CBC News/Toronto Star investigation, in which reporters went undercover posing as "ticket brokers" and exposed how Ticketmaster recruited mass scalpers and knowingly let them use hundreds of fake accounts to circumvent ticket-buying limits.

Authors:

• Dr. Andrea Wagner | Associate Professor, Political Science, MacEwan University
• Anna Brigevich | Associate Professor of European Studies, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Excerpt:

The rise of populist leaders has drawn significant attention over the past two decades. Around the world, they have reshaped politics, from Donald Trump in the United States to Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Marine Le Pen in France, Giorgia Meloni in Italy, Santiago Abascal in Spain and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.

These leaders often rise to power by promising to speak for “the people” against the established “corrupt elites.” But our recent research shows that not all populist voters want the same things.

Our study examined public opinion data from nine countries to better understand what drives support for “strongman” populist leaders. The findings reveal that there are two very different kinds of populist attitudes, and the authoritarian variety most strongly predicts whether people will support a leader who is willing to bend the rules.

The article is short, and worth a read if you are curious about the results of the study or which country fell into which category. I started copying in more excerpts into this post and ended up copying 90% of the article.

Archived link

...

State immunity — an international legal principle that normally protects states from having their assets seized — is often cited as a legal barrier. But experts say this is a flimsy argument.

“Russia normally is entitled to state immunity over those assets,” said Robert Currie, a professor of international and transnational criminal law at Dalhousie University.

“But Russia is breaching an international law norm … Other states are entitled to roll off the immunity [attached to those assets] temporarily while Russia continues its illegal invasion of Ukraine.”

...

Since mid-2024, Europe has used a limited workaround to redirect some Russian money to Ukraine. Its Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration scheme has enabled it to send €50 billion in interest accrued on lapsed Russian bonds to Ukraine.

But the scheme depends on the EU renewing sanctions against Russia every six months.

Anton Moiseienko, a senior law lecturer at Australian National University who grew up in Ukraine, says the scheme is vulnerable.

If a single EU member state were to veto the sanctions — as Hungary’s pro-Russian leader Victor Orban could do — it could unravel the scheme.

...

As a non-EU member, Canada does not face the same constraints of collective decision-making. Experts say Canada could set an important international precedent by taking the lead in sending its frozen Russian assets to Ukraine.

“Canada … is a single state … and one that’s shown leadership in supporting Ukraine,” said Moiseienko, of the Australian National University.

...

And Canada already has the tools to do so.

Since 1992, Canada’s Special Economic Measures Act has allowed the federal government to freeze assets belonging to foreign states and connected individuals.

Following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Parliament amended this act to permit Ottawa to seek a court order authorizing the forfeiture and repurposing of frozen assets. The move made Canada the first G7 country to explicitly allow forfeiture of sanctioned assets.

...

In May, [Canadian] Senator Donna Dasko introduced Bill S-214, a law that would amend the Special Economic Measures Act to allow for this.

“[Bill] S-214, would remove the uncertainty on the particularities of Canadian law,” said Currie. “[It would give] clear parliamentary authorization to do this, and Parliament’s feeling would be we are not breaching international law.”

The bill is awaiting second reading in the Senate.

“I hope we can get the bill to committee by early spring, but Senate public bills move slowly,” Dasko [said].

...

Michael Cholod, executive director of The Peace Coalition, a non-profit coordinating international efforts to rebuild Ukraine, told Canadian Affairs during a recent meeting in Kyiv that he supports the change Bill S-214 aims to bring about.

But he favours the proposed amendments being fast-tracked into law. Parliament could do so, he says, by embedding them into the Budget Implementation Act, which will accompany the Nov. 4 federal budget.

...

Cholod says using an executive order to seize Russian assets would be an appropriately targeted measure.

“If you’re just a regular slob, I’m not taking your money. This law isn’t for that,” he said. “If you are a genocidal maniac who’s already been convicted of breaking all of the UN Charter of Human Rights — yeah, you deserve to have your stuff taken.”

Canada has already committed nearly $22 billion in multi-faceted assistance to Ukraine since 2022.

“Now, the Canadian taxpayer doesn’t pay the next $22 billion worth of aid to Ukraine,” said Cholod.

“It comes out of Russia’s bank.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/53878258

The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) is hosting a worker-first forum with official NDP leadership candidates. The forum will bring together Avi Lewis, Heather McPherson, Rob Ashton, Tanille Johnston, and Tony McQuail for a series of moderated discussions focused on their vision and leadership approach for Canada’s NDP.

The audio is low for the host's introduction, but gets better when the candidates are on the stage.

The Department of National Defence is refusing to answer questions about the scheduled training sessions.

A half-hour doc on life in the West Bank by the CBC. Posting it here in case you need a doc from a Canadian source on the topic to show other fellow Canadians. Most of us here are likely already familiar with the material.

If you are living in Canada or are a Canadian citizen living anywhere in the world, is it a terribly bad idea to inform yourself about important issues that promise to significantly negatively impact you and your loved ones?

Too Long; Didn't Read: At stake are multiple issues regarding Canada's treatment of human rights, constitutional rights, and privacy rights. Help in signing 2 petitions against Bill C-2, one on the House of Commons website and another one from Greenpeace. Help in creating new petitions on the House of Commons website to address many of the same concerns from Bill C-2 that were simply repackaged as Bills C-12, C-8, and C-9. Use linked online tools to express concerns to your Members of Parliament. Use links to contact details for Parliamentary Committees to write directly to those who can make amendments.

Omnibus legislation skips the normal Parliamentary procedure in multiple ways:

1. It hastens the process, meaning that the typical time allotted is greatly reduced. The activities which get unduly rushed include listening to informed statements from expert witnesses, having healthy debate amongst Members of Parliament, proposing well-written amendments, and generally improving legislation to make it better for Canadians.

2. It also means grouping together many different parts of legislation together into one package. A suitable witness for one portion of the legislation may not get heard due to not having broad knowledge of all of the topics, meaning that valuable and relevant information does not get heard and considered.

3. It further means pressuring Members of Parliament to unduly vote the legislation through. Normally, there is much more time and effort allocated to improving legislation and normally, Members of Parliament have more of an opportunity to reject legislation if sufficient improvements cannot be made.

4. It also means that the knowledge and experience of many Members of Parliament who serve as experts on various Parliamentary Committees will not be properly employed. Instead of assigning each portion of the legislation to the corresponding experts amongst our Members of Parliament, one Parliamentary Committee will have to act as generalists on all of these combined issues.

"What does that mean for me?"

One piece of omnibus legislation, known as Bill C-2, attempts to make significant changes to a wide variety of topics--too many topics for any one person to be able to act as an expert on the entirety of the changes.

Bill C-2 makes significant changes to many of Canada's laws and procedures in various areas:

A] Adding the ability to revoke immigration status for entire groups of people without the normal legal hearing process

B] Disappearing doctor/lawyer/accountant privilege of your information

C] Women's rights

D] Authorizing other people to open and read our confidential letter mail, which Canada Post employees have faithfully protected against happening since the time of Confederation

E] Impacting the ability to protest against important issues, such as wars or environmental concerns

F] A disappearance of decades' worth of protections offered to Canadians by the wise jurisprudence of our Supreme Court

G] Information about Canadians that is stored safely and separately in various government departments will be amalgamated into comprehensive profiles about Canadians and made available to a much greater number of eyes

H] Sensitive data about Canadians being prepared to be shared with foreign entities

I] Multiple old pieces of legislation that had previously failed the Parliamentary process due to well-debated and well-supported reasons now becoming reintroduced as a part of this bill

J] Introducing the possibility to break encryption on our encrypted communications

K] Violating Canada's commitments to international human rights law

"That's way too complicated. Simplify it for me."

Okay, here it is: The legislation is too complicated! So, Canadians are asking the government to withdraw the legislation in its current form and break it up into its individual components. Members of Parliament would then be able to give those individual components the normal Parliamentary process, including having each of: relevant expert witnesses, sufficient time for informed debate, the proper expert Parliamentary Committees being assigned, and sufficient time to put in proper amendments.

In short, Canadians want the government to do things by the book, and follow the normal and proper Parliamentary procedures for all of these issues, one-at-a-time.

"Make it even simpler for me."

Some people have put together a petition. Other people have created tools for sending messages to our Members of Parliament. Provide your name and contact information, verify your email address, and that's it.

A petition exists on a Government of Canada website: https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Sign/e-6627

a) You must be a Canadian citizen or a resident of Canada.

b) You will need to provide your name, your email address, your phone number, and your partial address.

c) Your partial address consists of your postal code plus province or else just your country if you are living outside of Canada.

d) There is no minimum age requirement for anyone signing a petition, but each person must have a unique email address. Check out https://tuta.com/ if your family member needs a new email account.

e) Even "a Member [of Parliament] may sign a petition." https://www.ourcommons.ca/procedure/procedure-and-practice-3/ch_22_2-e.html

f) Do not submit fake information, since doing so "may be dealt with as a breach of privilege."

g) The prayer request of this Petition e-6627 is to withdraw Bill C-2, allowing the legislation to be properly broken down, so that each individual component may receive proper due diligence. If you agree with this goal, please sign the petition.

Open Media offers a tool for expressing your concerns: https://action.openmedia.org/page/173242/action/1

a) You must provide your name, your email address, and a Canadian mailing address.

The International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group offers a tool for expressing your concerns: https://iclmg.ca/stop-bill-c-2/

a) You must provide your name, your email address, and your location.

"Where's the news on this topic? I like to read news!"

Here you go: https://www.redreview.ca/p/bill-c-2-would-align-canadas-security

https://amnesty.ca/human-rights-news/bill-c-2-canada-attack-right-to-seek-asylum/

https://migrantrights.ca/actionslist/stopc2/

https://ccla.org/privacy/ccla-joins-calls-for-withdrawal-of-bill-c-2/

https://www.osler.com/en/insights/updates/beyond-borders-government-grants-itself-powerful-access-to-data-reduced-oversight/

https://act.greenpeace.ca/en-ca/stop-strong-borders-act

https://citizenlab.ca/2025/06/a-preliminary-analysis-of-bill-c-2/

"What else can I do?"

You can send a link to this message to anyone else on your list of contacts who is living in Canada or who is a Canadian citizen living anywhere in the world.

C-2's omnibus legislation builds atop of 2024's C-70 omnibus legislation. If you have a group of friends who care about saving Canada, would it be really difficult to take over the task of raising a new corresponding petition for 2024's C-70 omnibus legislation? For the proposed text to use, see https://mander.xyz/post/26444218

Archived link

This is a Q&A session with Charles Burton, senior fellow at Sinopsis.cz and former diplomat at Canada’s embassy in Beijing. It's podacst with a transcript available at the linked site.

• China is using economic coercion to pressure Canada on trade policy: Burton says Beijing has imposed arbitrary tariffs on Canadian canola exports—a $12 billion annual industry—in retaliation for Canada’s 100 percent tariff on Chinese EVs (electric vehicles).

• Chinese EVs pose potential national security risks beyond just economic competition: These vehicles could serve as surveillance tools and contain software that could be remotely disabled during conflicts, similar to concerns raised about Huawei telecommunications equipment.

• Any trade concessions to China will likely require sacrifices: Beijing expects Canada to “set aside differences” on issues like espionage investigations, a promised foreign agent registry, and support for Taiwan in exchange for market access.

• China views Canada primarily as a raw materials supplier within its global strategy: Beijing’s approach aligns with Xi Jinping’s vision of remaking the world order, with China as the dominant civilizational force by 2050.

• In the case of Canola, clearly Canada put too many, too much of our Canola into one market: Canada should be trying to diversify so that when China engages in arbitrary tariff measures to leverage on other issues, the country would be able take the hit more readily.

• Xi Jinping now faces irregular internal challenges from China’s military leadership: Nine top military officials have been removed this month, suggesting potential concerns about China’s economic decline under Xi’s policies.

...

Charles Burton: ... [Imposing tariffs on Canadian canola is a significant] move by China to leverage us by using economic coercion because there are 40,000 prairie farmers involved in the production of canola seeds. And it’s a $12 billion a year business. And last year, before China imposed these punitive tariffs, we sold over 4 billion to China. So it’s a big, big market. The Chinese did this in retaliation for our imposing 100% tariff on electric vehicles. The reason that we did that was that China heavily subsidizes these things, and so they would devastate our own market if they came into Canada. It’s a superior product, better battery technology, much cheaper. But the other concern which I expressed in Parliament is the potential for espionage by these machines. They’re similar to Huawei Telecoms.

...

China won’t let the Teslas go anywhere near sensitive sites. I mean, they gather terrific amount of information of where they go and on the people who are driving them. And there’s also like the neptech technology that we decided not to use for scanners in Canadian embassies and consulates around the world, they have software updates which come from the manufacturer. So if there was conflict between Canada and China, it’s possible that, conceivable under current conditions, that China could cripple them. So we’d really have to address those serious issues before it would be a good idea to bring them in

...

If we do get them to take off the tariffs on the canola, it doesn’t solve the problem, because next time China wants to leverage us to prevent us from, say, expelling agents of espionage or other concerns over Taiwan or the South China Sea or, you know, any number of things that, that we have going on with China, they can simply engage in this economic coercion on something else. They could declare our pulp and paper products are dumped, for example. So when you have a country that doesn’t respect the agreements and, and falsifies some reasons for barring Canadian products from the Chinese market, it’s sort of like whack a mole. You saw one, it’s quite likely that they would use another.

...

And what they want back [in exchange for reducing tariffs on canola] is what they refer to as some seek common ground while setting aside differences. So they don’t want us to pursue Chinese espionage, you know, the transfer of dual use military technologies to the Chinese state. They definitely don’t want us to enact the Foreign Influence Registry that came into law in Canada in June 2024 with Bill C70.

...

China I think would like us to be a supplier of raw materials for China. They’d like access to our northern resources Their, you know, their idea of China being a near Arctic state and more and more present in the Northwest Passage, I think is a concern to us overall.

...

China is an integrated party state, industrial military complex ... it’s all dominated by the Chinese Communist Party, which some people say is like God invisible, but everywhere present. And so, you know, when we look at how China relates with Africa, countries that they’ve been investing in in the Belt and Road and supporting enabling dictators with surveillance technologies and so on, are typically countries that have favorable port facilities that China could use for future blue water, navy and submarines.

...

Within Canada, you see a similar process of China gradually attempting to achieve a comprehensive influence in our country.

Not just the elections, but, you know, the attempts to subvert policymakers and to have investment in Canada that they can then leverage for their geostrategic purposes. You know, would we continue to deny China access to mining resources in the north if they would respond by punishing us economically? So I think the key here is that we shouldn’t be too dependent on the Chinese export market. So in the case of Canola, clearly we put too many, too much of our Canola into one market. And we should be trying to diversify so that when China engages in arbitrary tariff measures to leverage on other issues, that we can take the hit more readily.

...

One of the wildest things I've read in a while. I've heard of people fighting off cougars, which is crazy but a goddamn Grizzly Bear?!? It even had his head in its mouth!

I figured this was too groovy not to share, apologies if this isn't quite the right community for it.