Party adopting a 'stand your ground'-style policy, demands crackdown on criminal immigrants

If only the title could have ended partway through

Gaza’s health ministry has recorded more than 500 Palestinians deaths by Israeli fire since the start of the ceasefire on 10 October.

Despite Israel’s frequent killing of Palestinians in violation of the ceasefire, the deal has moved to a crucial second phase. Some of the thorniest issues are contained in this phase, which requires Hamas to disarm and hand over power to a Board of Peace organisation staffed by appointees of the US president, Donald Trump.

A recent presentation in Davos by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who is also involved in Trump’s Gaza project, showed the Trump administration’s plan for “developing Gaza”, complete with futuristic skyscrapers overlooking the Mediterranean.

Most of Gaza has been levelled and basic infrastructure remains inoperable as a result of Israeli bombing over the past two years, which has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians. Last year, a UN commission of inquiry found that Israel had committed a genocide in Gaza.

A former New Brunswick RCMP officer is facing seven more sex-related criminal charges involving youths, an independent police watchdog agency announced Friday.

Former corporal Jeremy Bastarache, 38, from Shediac River, was charged in 2024 with communicating for a sexual purpose with someone he believed was under 16.

He is now accused of two more counts of that offence, making an arrangement with a person, for the purpose of facilitating a sexual offence towards a person. One count involves someone he believed to be under 16 and another he believed was under 18, according to the Serious Incident Response Team.

The other five charges include communicating for obtaining sexual services for consideration from a person under 18 years, procuring a person under 18 for the purpose of facilitating an offence, trafficking a person under 18, as well as making and possessing child pornography.

Imperial Oil says it will end more than a century of oil production in Norman Wells later this year.

The closure has been in the works since 2022, but until now, there has been no solid timeline for the shutdown.

In a news release Friday, the company said the move is needed because of declining production at the site.

It said production is slated to end in the third quarter of 2026 "as the facility comes to the end of its lifespan."

Imperial Oil said it's working on a final closure and reclamation plan for the site. Reclamation work is not expected to start until after 2030.

The federal government is considering a proposal to establish a new hunting season for tundra swans in the Prairie provinces — a move that one hunter says could endanger trumpeter swans, a similar-looking, sensitive species.

Proposed changes to Canada's migratory bird regulations would create a new tundra swan hunting season in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Tundra swans are hunted in a handful of U.S. states, but in Canada they're currently a protected species at the federal level.

David Duncan, a hunter and retired biologist, says such a hunt could lead to people mistakenly shooting trumpeter swans, a sensitive species that can't be hunted anywhere in North America.

Lyme disease is a medically recognized infection that can cause pain, fatigue and muscle aches. But many celebrities — including Hadid, American singer Justin Timberlake and Canadian singer Justin Bieber — who claim they have Lyme appear, on a closer look, to be describing chronic Lyme disease, a condition that isn’t recognized by conventional medicine.

It's a controversial term used by some alternative practitioners to describe pain, fatigue and neurological symptoms they attribute to a persistent Lyme infection. Often, patients have never tested positive through a regulator-approved Lyme disease test.

Despite the shaky validity, identifying otherwise-unexplainable symptoms as chronic Lyme can seem like a path toward getting better, Dr. Paul Auwaerter, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, told CBC News.

“They are looking for answers to something that many times they get short shrift from their regular physicians or from consultants.”

The disease is on the rise globally, including in Canada. There were 5,809 reported cases of Lyme disease in this country in 2024, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada. It has been trending upward nationally since 2009, according to Health Canada — in part due to climate change and a greater awareness among the public and doctors.

Dennis Browne has been replaced as consumer advocate, but the usually soft-spoken and tactful St. John's lawyer is not going away quietly.

Browne was a guest on CBC Radio's The Signal on Thursday, and was heavily critical of Premier Tony Wakeham and the new PC government's handling of the Churchill Falls MOU, which was announced in late 2024 by a former Liberal government led by Andrew Furey.

Browne said Wakeham and his team have turned the issue into a "political football," are risking a deal between Newfoundland and Labrador and Quebec that has the potential to stabilize the province's finances, and described those appointed to review the MOU, specifically the chair, as "not much of a panel."

He also blasted the government for appointing lawyer Adrienne Ding, who has links to the PC Party, as the interim consumer advocate. Browne said his successor should have been selected by the Independent Appointments Commission, which was established by legislation a decade ago by another former Liberal premier, Dwight Ball.

Alternate link: https://archive.is/20260131002226/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-arlene-dickinson-amber-mac-cut-ties-canadian-startup-gander-social/#selection-2359.0-2359.88

Some excerpts:

Canadian media personalities Arlene Dickinson and Amber MacArthur were drawn last year to back an Ottawa startup called Gander Social Inc. that had a unique mission: To create a social network by and for Canadians.

At a time when social media platforms were being accused of aiding the spread of misinformation and hate, and selling user data without consent, Gander chief executive Ben Waldman promised something different. Built on the same open-source protocol as Bluesky, Gander, which is registered as a public benefit company in British Columbia, would ensure its moderation rules adhered to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, give users control over their experience, and keep their data in Canada.

Last June, Ms. Dickinson, a venture capitalist who stars on Dragons’ Den, told The Globe and Mail she was “both an investor and adviser,” drawn to a “timely, smart opportunity” that “has the value of Canadians.” Ms. MacArthur, host of The AmberMac Show on SiriusXM, wanted to support a company committed to online safety that was “better for Canadians.” She told The Globe she was “in the middle of getting the information and signing the documents” to invest. “Some of the details are still getting figured out.”

They never were. On Thursday, the pair announced on social media they were cutting all ties to Gander. Not only did they never sign advisory agreements, they also never invested, despite what Ms. Dickinson had said. In one post Thursday, Ms. Dickinson said she had been “in late stage discussions about an advisory role and a potential investment, which is why I spoke about it publicly. It became clear that my involvement was being treated as an endorsement more than a substantive advisory role.”

Ms. MacArthur interviewed Mr. Waldman on her show in January, telling listeners she’d been an adviser for months. On Thursday, she posted on Facebook: “We’ve had some disagreements on how things are being managed,” adding in a LinkedIn post: “I am pretty devastated that I’ve been left with no option but to leave” the advisory role. “I won’t back something that isn’t capable of meeting this need with total integrity and excellence.” Both wished Gander well.

Ms. Dickinson, Ms. MacArthur and Mr. Waldman told The Globe that after agreeing to invest in an earlier financing – called a “simple agreement for future equity, or SAFE – and join as advisers, delays ensued in formalizing both arrangements due to back-and-forth changes to the advisory deal’s terms and language. “It was dragging out, Ms. Dickinson said. “It was more busy-ness on both sides. I was late, he was late” but both intended to conclude the deal.

Ms. MacArthur and Ms. Dickinson had another concern. As advisers, they expected to view a prototype of the platform as it was being developed and to be involved in shaping how it would function and what protocols would govern it. “We kept asking for that,” Ms. Dickinson said, but to no avail.

Ms. MacArthur added: “Over the past few weeks it’s been pretty clear I wasn’t necessarily advising on anything because there was no product to look at. From my perspective, they have not been actively in touch with advisers along the way. That begs the question why you need advisers if you’re not getting them to advise.”

Without seeing the product, “it’s really hard to tell people they should continue to support and invest in this,” Ms. MacArthur said.

The F-35 is a poison pill for Canadian defence sovereignty against a hostile America. We cannot win against an invasion, but with the Gripen we can make it a phyrric victory for them.

Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab proudly announced earlier this month that the federal government had exceeded last year’s “ambitious” immigration target for francophones outside of Quebec. What she didn’t say, however, is that this strategy of passing over better-qualified applicants who don’t speak French will likely harm Canada’s economic growth.

It’s one in a series of policies that has upended Canada’s successful economic immigration program by watering it down to meet other objectives.

Francophones are now the highest priority group of skilled workers, with their numbers surpassing those with Canadian work experience, or expertise in health care, education or trades.

The cut-off scores for francophone immigrants, based on factors such as age, education and work experience, are substantially lower than those for other skilled workers offered permanent residence. The lowest cut-off score for French speakers last year was 379; it was 462 for health care workers and 515 for applicants with Canadian experience. According to research from C.D. Howe’s Christopher Worswick and other economists, lower-scoring workers are more likely to struggle economically and make less money. Bringing them in over more highly skilled workers hurts productivity and reduces tax revenue.

...

The government’s rationale, according to last year’s policy paper from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, is the “urgent need” to address the decline of francophone and Acadian communities. The government aims to restore their demographic weight to 1971 levels, when it was 6.1 per cent of the population outside Quebec, from 3.5 per cent in 2021.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-canada-has-gutted-its-economic-migration-program/

Séoul et Ottawa s’entendent pour améliorer « la prospérité économique et la résilience des chaînes d’approvisionnement ».

Alberta’s greenhouse industry says a new federal tax program could make expansion easier, but it might not help to lower food prices.

Ottawa announced Monday it will allow producers who buy or build new facilities to more quickly write off the cost of capital expansions on their taxes — a change from the current rules that limit write-offs to 10 per cent each year.

That could improve cash flow projections, perhaps tipping the scale in a project’s business case.

But tomato, cucumber and pepper producers stress that operating costs have a bigger impact on food prices than capital costs.

Documents reveal that Epstein visited Canada in 2014, despite having a criminal record that made him inadmissible to the country.

[...]

The latest files reveal Epstein was denied entry into Canada in 2018 due to his criminal record, but that he was allowed into the country for a TED conference in Vancouver after his conviction.

Just to provide context that the narrative Trump conveys is fake as usual and extremely hypocritical. America by sheer numbers trades more with China but even by percentage:

Source: https://youtu.be/eQKmPACbKQA?t=911

Source Source: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/exports-by-country

https://archive.is/TZcTG

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/59551152

“I know China very well, President Xi is a friend of mine, I know him very well…The first thing they’re going to do is say you are not allowed to play ice hockey anymore. That’s not good. Canada’s not going to like that,” the president added.

Archive article: https://archive.ph/JAX75#selection-1443.0-1443.242