Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree faced pointed questions Tuesday about why the federal government has deported one Iranian official, despite longstanding concerns about how the regime operates in Canada and abroad.

Finding himself in the hot seat before a parliamentary committee, Anandasangaree said Canada is "aggressively trying to remove" members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — a branch of Iran's military that Canada listed as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code in 2024 — but said due process has to be followed.

The Liberal government has long faced pressure from diaspora groups and the Opposition about its treatment of former IRGC officials. That pressure has only grown since the United States and Israel's war with Iran began last month.

"There are far too many of them. You have deported one. That's it," Conservative Frank Caputo put to the minister during a meeting of the standing committee on public safety and national security.

"I want to know how many terrorists are there in Canada."

...

Calgary’s Denvr and Ottawa’s Dominion Dynamics have announced a partnership to develop a sovereign simulation environment for unmanned drones that fly alongside crewed fighter jets.

...

“We believe Canada can be a world leader in building autonomous systems that operate in extreme environments,” Eliot Pence, CEO of Dominion Dynamics said in a March 25 statement. “By partnering with Denvr, we will create a secure, Canadian-owned simulation environment to train and validate an autonomous wingman for the Canadian Armed Forces and our allied partners.”

That simulation environment is designed to assist the Royal Canadian Air Force in testing concepts of operations against different types of ACPs, according to Dominion. During simulation, operators can test things like propulsion speed, altitude, and endurance across different types of mission objectives to evaluate how the ACP systems perform.

...

“Integration with the Canadian Armed Forces is core to how the system is designed, tested, and ultimately operated,” Pence said.

The partnership between the two companies comes on the heels of Dominion’s announcement of a $50-million investment toward developing autonomous drone capabilities. The joint simulation environment will aid in the development of those capabilities and contribute to NORAD modernization, arctic defence, and Canadian Armed Forces readiness, according to Dominion.

...

There's a sense of tension that lives inside Kassy Zanjani when she's on the street or at a café — and especially if a stranger approaches with a smile and what seems like a harmless compliment.

She's on alert, asking herself the same question: Is someone filming me?

That feeling is called hypervigilance — essentially, it's your nervous system trying to protect you from an outside threat.

It's common among veterans, soldiers and first responders, but it began for Zanjani in January, after learning a stranger had secretly recorded her using smart glasses and uploaded the video to Instagram and TikTok, where it amassed more than 30,000 views in the span of a week before a friend alerted her.

*** The article offers at least a partial solution ...

In February he launched Nearby Glasses, an app that scans your surroundings, to a range of about 10 to 15 metres, for Bluetooth low-energy signatures, a feature of smart glasses.

Archived link

Yuen Pau Woo, a Canadian senator who denounced a landmark American think tank report on Chinese Communist Party influence networks in Canada as disinformation, has himself been found to head an advocacy group that the report’s researcher now classifies as a United Front Work Department-linked organization — the 576th identified in Canada.

The Jamestown Foundation study, authored by Cheryl Yu, a Fellow in China Studies at the foundation, was launched in partnership with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and reported on by The Bureau among others. It identified 575 organizations across Canada with documented links to the Chinese Communist Party’s united front influence apparatus — giving Canada the highest per-capita density of such groups among the four Western democracies studied, at nearly five times the rate of the United States. The report found that these organizations target local politicians, mobilize diaspora voters in support of Beijing’s preferred candidates, and are deployed by the Party to exert pressure on political foundations and parties.

...

Woo responded to the report under the banner of a new advocacy group he co-founded in September 2025 alongside former Conservative Senator Victor Oh — an organization whose stated purpose was to defend Canadians against what it called “false or exaggerated claims” of foreign interference.

In a post on X citing the Advocacy Group, Woo attacked the Jamestown report on February 27, writing: “Foreign Interference Alert: US Think Tank spreads disinformation, amplified by witting or unwitting Canadian agents.”

...

Woo wrote [on X] that “generalized fear mongering is a standard McCarthyist strategy” and that the Jamestown report “should be filed … under ‘bad fiction’.”

...

The Advocacy Group’s website stated that “new forms of exclusion directed at Chinese Canadians and Canadians with links to the People’s Republic of China are becoming accepted as social and political norms.” In a subsequent opinion article in the Vancouver Sun, Woo argued that the report’s methodology treats activities such as “celebrating Chinese culture, promoting Canada-China trade, and generally representing Chinese Canadian communities as conclusive evidence of co-optation by the Chinese government.”

...

However, after Woo’s public attacks on the Jamestown methodology [Jamestown study author] Yu [...] confirmed that Woo’s Advocacy Group meets the evidentiary criteria applied consistently across the study. A founding director of Woo’s Advocacy Group attended multiple World Chinese Media Forums organized by China News Service. The Jamestown report documents that China News Service operates under the direct oversight of the United Front Work Department and maintains dozens of bureaus overseas. Participation in its organized forums is, by the study’s own methodology, a documented connection to the united front system — the same standard applied to all 575 organizations identified in Canada before Woo’s Advocacy Group became the 576th.

...

Woo co-founded the Advocacy Group in the wake of the Hogue Commission into foreign interference and a unanimous vote in Parliament to implement a foreign agent registry. Before that vote, in 2023, along with a Toronto community leader subsequently named in the Jamestown Foundation study, Senators Woo and Oh had rallied on Parliament Hill against the registry, at an event that advanced similar arguments about the exclusion and stigmatization of Chinese Canadians.

...

At that same rally appeared an individual publicly linked to an alleged confrontation with pro-democracy activist Yao Zhang on Parliament Hill ... Zhang subsequently became the target of an artificial intelligence-generated sexually explicit deepfake imagery campaign that Global Affairs Canada attributed to a People’s Republic of China Spamouflage operation.

...

According to the Jamestown study, Harnessing the People: Mapping Overseas United Front Work in Democratic States (open pdf), cited in this article, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has created a global network of individuals and organizations as part of its united front system. In four democratic states—the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany—this network includes more than 2,000 organizations. These constitute latent capacity that the Party can mobilize to advance the Party’s agenda abroad.

...

Toronto police say they are creating a counter-terrorism unit and a specialized task force that will see officers with semi-automatic rifles stationed at key locations in the city.

The locations include places of worship, tourist attractions, high traffic public spaces and critical infrastructure, police told reporters at a news conference Tuesday.

Police Chief Myron Demkiw said the dedicated counter-terrorism security unit and "task force guardian" are not being set up in response to any one threat but are security measures to "prevent, detect and disrupt" extremism violence and terrorism.

“We know that visible police presence matters when it comes to deterring violence and reassuring our communities,” Demkiw said.

The family of Nash Prystie has identified him as the man who died in an Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) shooting earlier this month north of Kenora, and is calling for more and quicker help for people with mental health challenges.

Ontario's Special Investigations Unit (SIU) is investigating the death of the 39-year-old, who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He was born in Winnipeg and had strong ties to Kenora.

CBC News has been in contact with Prystie's family, who described him as an avid outdoorsman with an infectious laugh and gentle strength that inspired people around him.

Around 6 p.m. on March 9, officers responded to a call about a person in crisis at a property in the Ena Lake area.

They tried to negotiate with the man, who had an “edged weapon,” the SIU said in a news release March 10.

A report of fraud tied to a walleye derby is under investigation after Montreal Lake Cree Nation said a participant allegedly violated derby rules and was asked to leave the fishing area.

Waskesiu RCMP said no charges have been laid.

The 18th annual Montreal Lake Walleye Derby offered a $100,000 grand prize. The First Nation said the matter has been referred to RCMP and the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency. Montreal Lake Cree Nation said there have been no known incidents of fraud in previous years.

“The U.S. wants to achieve energy dominance. We support you in that view,” Hodgson said. “We will win this race.”

Hodgson told POLITICO that energy dominance could be achieved if the U.S. and Canada work together as “Fortress North America.”

(apologies for the paywall - I figured the quote was shareworthy enough on its own, but if anyone is able to share the article's full text please lmk and I'll add it to this section)

Provincial sales taxes will be removed from more grocery store items under Manitoba's next budget, and one researcher says the province may be the first to do so.

Currently, Manitobans pay provincial sales tax (PST) on prepared food and drinks sold for immediate consumption.

That includes "rotisserie chickens, salads, a case of Bubly — all the stuff that you're grabbing on the way home when you're in a rush and you gotta try and put a meal on the table for the family," Premier Wab Kinew announced in a post on social media Tuesday.

"After our budget passes — assuming it passes by July 1 — that will all be tax free," Kinew said.

It's a "bold move" that will relieve some pressure on Manitobans at the grocery store, says Sylvain Charlebois, director of Dalhousie University's Agri-Food Analytics Lab in Nova Scotia.

Manitoba may be the first Canadian province to eliminate the tax at the grocery store, he said.

"I think it should be welcome news for the rest of Canada, as far as I'm concerned, [and] I think perhaps other provinces should follow suit," Charlebois told CBC News.

Canada can protect rules-based international trade and resist pressure from superpowers by working more with the Americas, shoring up supply chains and strengthening economic ties, Costa Rica’s trade minister said on a recent visit to Ottawa.

“We share the same vision of the type of world that we would like to live in,” Manuel Tovar Rivera said in an interview with The Canadian Press. “Canada has enormous opportunities in our hemisphere.”

Costa Rica is on track to become the first Central American state to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP, a trading bloc of 12 countries across the Pacific Rim, North and South America that will soon include the U.K.

...

Costa Rica, a country of just five million roughly the size of Nova Scotia, is an important partner for Ottawa on initiatives like feminist approaches to economic growth and promoting anticorruption practices.

In 2021, with Canada’s support, Costa Rica became the first Central American country to join the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, a group of 38 rich democracies. The country is powered almost entirely by renewables and hydroelectricity.

Costa Rica’s move to join the CPTPP bloc might expand trade with Canada in services, investment and government procurement, which were not part of the bilateral agreement both countries signed in 2002.

That could mean more Canadian exports of wheat and sugar to Costa Rica, according to an industry consultation led by Ottawa. It could also lead to a boost in Canadian tourism.

But joining the bloc is also about trying to uphold global rules-based systems, Tovar Rivera said.

...

The Canadian Council for the Americas made the same point last November in a report that urged Ottawa to seize on the economic and diplomatic potential of South and Central America, largely by using existing relationships and trade deals.

The report said that requires a shift beyond thinking of Latin America as a group of commodity markets, and demands instead a focus on building processing capacity for agricultural goods, selling Canadian expertise in cybersecurity and beefing up policing at Canadian ports used to traffic narcotics.

...

Justice Minister Sean Fraser says he has no plans to change how judges are appointed in Canada despite four premiers (Ford, Legault, Moe and Smith) writing to Prime Minister Mark Carney to ask for more of a say in the process.

"We haven't changed our point of view that we believe that the judicial appointments process is functioning," Fraser said Tuesday on his way into a cabinet meeting.

Fraser said there is already a mechanism by which the provinces can consult with the federal government over judicial appointments, and that process is working.

"If provinces want a greater role, we welcome them to take part in that consultation process when we reach out," he said.

Archived link

Hong Kong Watch’s Advocacy Officer Landson Chan testified before the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development (SDIR) at a hearing titled “Global Impact of Transnational Repression”. This follows Hong Kong Watch’s ongoing advocacy with Canadian parliamentarians on transnational repression targeting the Hong Kong diaspora.

Mr Chan opened his testimony by stating that Hong Kong Watch has documented cases revealing how transnational repression is affecting the Hong Kong diaspora in Canada, including harassment, intimidation, and surveillance. He then detailed select cases, including individuals receiving anonymous threats linked to pro-democracy activities, doxxing of personal and workplace information, and intimidation involving family members. Community leaders and organizers have been targeted with surveillance and threats of physical harm, while even non-activists have faced workplace harassment simply for attending community events.

...

Notably, Joe Tay was targeted during Canada’s 2025 election with online “wanted-style” campaigns and safety threats, while Anna Kwok’s case highlights how repression extends to family members, with her father prosecuted and sentenced in Hong Kong after attempting to cancel her insurance policy following her departure. ...

Despite Canada’s robust legislative response to foreign interference in 2024, including by passing Bill C-70 into law, gaps remain in enforcement and protection, contributing to ongoing concerns about safety, accountability, and foreign interference. Hong Kong Watch urges the Canadian Parliament to adopt a comprehensive approach to transnational repression focused on prevention, protection, and accountability. This includes expediting the foreign influence transparency registry, strengthening protections for high-risk individuals, and implementing diplomatic measures and targeted sanctions against responsible foreign actors.

...

You can watch the full hearing here.

...

As an addition: If you happen to be in Vancouver on Sunday, April 19, 2026, there is public forum examining foreign interference, Canada–China relations, and the future of Hong Kong.

Canada’s largest AI data centre starts construction this spring in Saskatchewan. It’s one of many being built or proposed across the country. Today, a look at these centres’ controversial track record.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford's cellphone records took centre stage as the provincial legislature resumed sitting Monday for the first time since December, with the opposition accusing the premier of having something to hide.

One of the many pieces of legislation the government has signalled it will introduce during the spring sitting is a bill to exempt records of the premier, cabinet ministers, their staff and parliamentary assistants from disclosure under freedom-of-information laws.

Ford, who has often boasted about his government's transparency, said it just follows what other provinces have already done.

"We should have moved a lot quicker on this," Ford said during question period.

"There are two groups that are concerned about it. The opposition — they should talk to their federal partners — and the media. Everyone else is focused on something else. They're focused on the economy, about jobs, fighting President Trump."