It's something I started noticing recently in some standup and improv shows in Toronto, not sure if it's a new trend, or it just more noticeable now. Here are some examples I remember:

• Jokingly asking audience for their social security number. This happened in two different shows
• "I've been on dating apps for a presidential term"
• I heard zip code being mentioned in one act
• A performer shouting "fuck ICE". This was not even part of any joke, just a political statement. While I sympathize, of all the scourges of the US this one is really domestic in nature and I don't get the point bringing it up in front of a Canadian audience (unless it's part of your set)
• And not to mention using their units of measurement, which is unfortunately commonplace (thanks a lot Brian Mulroney)

Other than the "fuck ICE" performer who said about themselves that they are Turkish (which I took to mean Turkish-Canadian, but maybe I'm wrong), the others were Canadian-born. In all cases these were young people who I don't believe do comedy professionally.

I have nothing against American comedy, but this low key pretense that Canada is part of the US irks me.

Nova Scotia-based Oxford Frozen Foods has been fined $10,000 for mislabelling its blueberries as Canadian at a time when more consumers are looking to buy local in grocery stores.

The food processing company is among five businesses fined a total of $47,000 by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency since April 2025 for "inaccurate or misleading country of origin claims," the federal food regulator said in a recent news release.

Blueberries, carrots and battered appetizers are processed in Oxford, N.S. The company also has facilities in Halfway River, N.S., and in Bois-Gagnon, N.B. Storage and manufacturing also takes place in the company's Maine location.

The awakening of Banff National Park's most iconic grizzly heralds the return of bears to the Alberta landscape.

Parks Canada calls him Bear 122, but he's better known to most in Alberta — and across Canada — as The Boss.

Believed to be in his mid-to-late twenties, the Bow Valley's dominant grizzly is typically among the first bears observed in Banff National Park every spring.

"He's still super tired, walks around really slow, and he's probably sleeping about 20 hours a day right now, so he's not doing a whole lot," said Bloodoff.

The gargantuan grizzly has been estimated to weigh somewhere between 650 and 700 pounds. He's the largest bear in the Bow Valley, followed by his rival Bear 136, or Split Lip.

A 12-year-old boy, found unconscious and emaciated in a puddle before dying in hospital. Brothers, forced to sleep in a mesh tent, zip-tied to their clothes. Audio recordings and text messages from would-be adoptive parents, calling the kids "f–kface," "loser" and "dumb brat."

Chilling details have come to light in the trial of Becky Hamber and Brandy Cooney. The Burlington, Ont., couple have been charged with abusing two Indigenous brothers they were in the process of adopting and murdering the older boy, known only as L.L., who died on Dec. 21, 2022. They have pleaded not guilty to all charges.

“Sometimes when we see the headlines, we focus on the offenders’ behaviour as being so reprehensible,” said Cindy Blackstock, an Ottawa-based First Nations child advocate.

“But what we need to do is knit together these cases to see the patterns.”

There have been several high-profile cases across Canada of children dying while being followed by the youth protection system, meaning a child welfare system has received reports about the child’s safety in the past, or has previously interacted with the child and the family.

But we don’t have an official count of them across Canada — and each jurisdiction has a different way of monitoring these deaths.

CBC News reached out to every province and territory to ask if and how they track those numbers. Every province that responded said it does — but some, like Ontario, Quebec, P.E.I. and Nunavut, would not share the number of deaths in 2025. P.E.I. and Nunavut said releasing the information could mean identifying people, due to their small number of child and youth deaths. Quebec’s coroner’s office said it doesn't yet have a comprehensive picture of last year's figures. Ontario didn't answer questions about why it wasn't publicizing its 2025 data.

The Northwest Territories and Yukon did not respond to CBC's inquiries by deadline.

After the airstrikes that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iranian-Canadian Salar Gholami went to a rally in a Toronto suburb to celebrate the downfall of a leader he fiercely opposed.

Then, in the early hours of March 1, someone fired 17 shots at his boxing gym, which was empty at the time but is often full of children he teaches to fight.

The bullet holes, marked by numbered police tape, were still visible outside the building in Richmond Hill on a rainy morning three weeks after the shooting, which has drawn renewed attention to the alleged presence of Iranian government officials inside Canada, including members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Gholami is a physically imposing former competitive fighter aged 32 who describes himself as an activist within Canada's large Iranian diaspora. He wants the Tehran government brought down.

...

Toronto, and the large suburban communities that surround it, are home to one of the world's largest Iranian diaspora communities -- some jokingly refer to Canada's largest city as "Teheranto."

Concern about Iranian government presence grew after June 2024, when Canada listed the IRGC as a "terrorist entity."

...

The CBSA [Canada Border Services Agency] told AFP that as of March 5 it had reviewed about 17,800 visa applications over possible inadmissibility to Canada due to involvement with the Tehran government.

From that group, 239 issued visas were cancelled -- individuals who never came to Canada.

Regarding people in Canada, dozens of investigations are ongoing but 32 people have already been ordered to leave "for being a senior official in the Iranian regime," the CBSA said.

Four left voluntarily after learning Canada intended to remove them, one was deported, and immigration proceedings are ongoing against others.

...

[Edit typo.]

Archived link

A Twitter/X post published on the official account of the Chinese Embassy in Canada exploits Liberal MP Michael Ma’s questioning the use of forced labour to build Chinese electric vehicles during a Parliamentary hearing, to deny the otherwise well document abuse of ethnic Uyghurs and forced labour. The post is a classic case of authoritarian state denial messaging: critics are cast as “anti-China,” human-rights evidence is reframed as a fabrication, and trade cooperation is presented as the real victim. This Chinese government post matters because it tries to neutralize documented Xinjiang forced-labour concerns at the exact moment Canada is debating Chinese EV access and a Canadian MP’s remarks on the issue.

THE CLAIM:

The Chinese embassy in Canada post claims allegations of “forced labor” in Chinese EV production are a “blatant lie” spread by “a handful of anti-China politicians and media in Canada,” and argues that such allegations are being used to sabotage mutually beneficial Canada-China EV cooperation.

THE FACTS:

• Ottawa’s own position contradicts the embassy’s blanket denial. Global Affairs Canada says there is evidence and reporting of forced labour, mass transfers of Uyghur workers, and enough risk to justify an import ban on goods made wholly or partly by forced labour plus Xinjiang-related due-diligence requirements for Canadian companies.
• UN bodies are treating forced labour in China seriously. Canada said the OHCHR Xinjiang assessment reflected “credible accounts of grave human rights violations,” and UN experts said in January 2026 there is a “persistent pattern” of alleged state-imposed forced labour that may amount to enslavement as a crime against humanity.
• Reuters has reported that Human Rights Watch found Xinjiang aluminum linked to automotive parts sold to global carmakers, and Reuters also reported U.S. authorities were scrutinizing batteries, tires, aluminum, steel and other auto components under forced-labour rules.

...

This narrative fits a *standard PRC denial playbook:

• re-cast documented abuses as anti-China fabrication,
• paint critics as ideologically hostile, and
• redefine the issue as unjust interference with mutually beneficial trade.

The strategic objective is to blunt scrutiny of Xinjiang abuses and protect a politically useful Canada-China EV thaw. Chinese embassy messaging has already been framing cooperation as something that should not be “hijacked by ideological biases”; this post applies that frame directly to forced-labour criticism.

...

This is not new. Chinese embassy and MFA channels have used near-identical language since at least 2021, calling Xinjiang forced-labour claims “rumors and lies fabricated by anti-China forces.” In 2024, the MFA again said “forced labor” was a lie meant to destabilize Xinjiang and contain China. The current Ottawa post simply localizes that long-running denial script to a Canadian EV-policy dispute.

...

https://archive.ph/7Goav

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“So to leadership candidates, my best piece of advice? Win,” Kinew said to cheers from the crowd at the RBC Convention Centre. “It’s way better than the alternative.”

cross-posted from: https://thecanadian.social/ap/users/116156929904576299/statuses/116307641300917264

@manitoba Wab Kinew: “Let the Epstein class fight the Epstein war”

"Not a single Canadian should ever be put in harm's way to defend Donald Trump's foolish Iranian war," he [Kinew] said at the conference Friday.

"I'll go a step further, and I'll say no American either," Kinew said. "No American child from the blue collar or the middle class should have to die in Iran. Let the Epstein class fight the Epstein war.”

Full article here: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/wab-kinew-iran-war-mark-carney-9.7145251

#cdnpoli #iran #manitoba

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

“This (law) is the most significant rollback of refugee rights in Canada in over a decade,” said Adam Sadinsky of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers. “It’s disappointing that Canada has joined other countries in a race to the bottom in terms of protection of rights for migrants and vulnerable people.”

According to the most recent federal figures, of the 326,230 deaths registered in Canada in 2024, 16,499 were medically assisted. That year, Ontario reported 4,944, and British Columbia 2,997. Quebec registered the highest rate of medical assistance in dying, or MAID, by any jurisdiction in the world, contributing 36.3 percent of medically assisted deaths that occurred in the country.

If one were to classify MAID as a cause of death in Canada, in 2024 it would have been the fourth after cancer, heart conditions, and accidents, and ahead of cerebrovascular diseases. Consistent with previous years, the vast majority of medically assisted deaths in 2024 were for people of a median age of seventy-eight whose natural deaths were considered reasonably foreseeable, with 4.4 percent for people of a median age of seventy-six who might otherwise live indefinitely (albeit intolerably).

In Canada, how people die with medical assistance varies legally: legislation defined eligibility criteria but not how the death was to occur. Trends emerged: 99.99 percent of medically assisted deaths in Canada have been instances of active euthanasia—for obvious reasons. Whereas assisted suicide usually involves an anti-nauseant, the passage of an hour, and drinking half a cup of lethal liquid with or without observation, active euthanasia—directly administered by a medical or nurse practitioner—consists of the three-drug cocktail midazolam (an anxiolytic), propofol (a coma-inducing sedative), and rocuronium (a paralytic) injected in this sequence. It has a near-zero failure rate, and death typically occurs within minutes.

Born in Ottawa, Ian Michael Ball is an associate professor in the Division of Critical Care Medicine and the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Western University, a trauma physician with the London Health Sciences Centre Trauma Program, and the Critical Care Medicine lead for Southwestern Ontario. He was among the first physicians in Canada to administer MAID. With an LHSC ethicist, Ball was instrumental in developing a step-by-step procedural guide for hospitals across the country establishing MAID programs.

🤡

Archived link

The Conservatives have written to the Prime Minister to demand that he clarify his position on the forced labour of the mainly Muslim Uyghur minority in China after a Liberal MP was accused of attempting to cast doubt on the existence of the practice.

Michael Chong, the Conservative foreign affairs critic, wrote to Mark Carney Friday asking him if his assessment is “that Uyghur forced labour has and is being used” in China.

He also asked him to clarify if, during his official visit to China in January, he pro-actively raised the issue of human rights. Mr. Chong also asked if Mr. Carney is committed to upholding trade agreements that require Ottawa to prevent the importation of products produced using forced labour.

...

Michael Ma, a Liberal MP who crossed the floor from the Conservatives in December, has been under fire for questions he asked of an expert during a meeting of the Commons Industry Committee on Thursday.

...

Rushan Abbas, Washington-based founder and executive director of the two-time Nobel Peace Prize nominated Campaign for Uyghurs, said Uyghur forced labour is well documented and UN experts said this year that the conditions may amount to enslavement.

“I am deeply alarmed by the remarks of Canadian MP Michael Ma, suggesting that if one has not personally seen forced labor in China, it cannot be true,” she said in a statement. “By that logic, every dictatorship could erase its crimes simply by hiding them well enough.”

...

The [Canadian] House of Commons in 2021 passed a motion recognizing a Uyghur “genocide.”

Mehmet Tohti, executive director of the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project, said in a text message that Mr. Ma has either “not done his homework or completely ignored the fact of atrocity crimes that Uyghurs are facing, including ongoing genocide, ongoing forced labour and transnational repression.”

...

Canada-Hong Kong Link, a non-profit organization, said in a statement that Mr. Ma’s call for “first-hand” testimony, when there are strict access restrictions imposed by the Chinese Communist Party, “reflects an approach often used to undermine credible human rights evidence and avoid accountability.”

...

Ms. McCuaig-Johnston had testified before MPs that Chinese electric vehicles are being manufactured with parts from aluminum made by slave labourers in Xinjiang. She referred to research by Human Rights Watch and gave Mr. Ma a report to read after the committee meeting.

She said in an e-mail Friday that bauxite is shipped from other parts of China to Xinjiang where it is processed into aluminum by Uyghurs. That aluminum is sent to vehicle and parts companies in Xinjiang and other parts of the country to be put into the cars.

Ms. McCuaig-Johnston, a former senior federal public servant, said since December, 2024, she has been sanctioned by China for being a member of the Advisory Board of the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project.

...

The massive Site C work camp near Fort St. John is getting a second life instead of heading to a landfill.

B.C. Hydro said Friday it will relocate most of the 1,700-person camp to house workers building the North Coast Transmission Line across northwest B.C.

B.C. Energy Minister Adrian Dix says the decision follows a year of pressure from local communities concerned the facility would be demolished and fill up the region's landfill.

"What to do with it was a significant question in particular for people in Fort St. John," Dix said.

"There was concern that too much of it was going to end up as some sort of landfill. That was a concern and we want to use it. It's an excellent facility that can be reused."

...

Inside the country, Iranians have been blocked by the Iranian regime from accessing the global internet. It’s now been nearly a month since the internet blackout began.

Internet access in the country remains shut down since the United States and Israel launched attacks on the country.

[Irainian-Canadian] Parsaei’s parents, two brothers and countless cousins are currently living in Iran.

“It impacts our families a lot,” she said. “I found that myself, I am just overwhelmed, but I try to be strong to fight for our people.”

Parsaei spoke with her brother last week for the Persian New Year, but it was only for a couple of minutes.

She doesn’t know when she’ll be able to talk with her family next.

...

Earlier this year, Iran’s government restricted internet access during widespread protests.

Tech analyst Carmi Levy says there are creative ways folks inside Iran have been communicating with people outside of the country.

“For example, there have been an estimated 50,000 Starlink terminals that have been smuggled into the country and those are being used for intermittent connectivity,” he said.

“There are what we call Bluetooth mesh networks, so apps like Bitchat that allow connectivity without using the internet and the more people who use them, the greater the range and that allows messages to get in and out under the radar of the regime.”

...

Levy says virtual private networks (VPN) are also often a go-to for communicating when you don’t want the government to be able to see what you’re talking about.

He said although there are ways to communicate with the outside world, it does come at a risk.

“The government is looking for this activity and is punishing this activity,” he said. “When you are trying to communicate with someone back home, recognize it’s not going to be an hour-long FaceTime or video conference call, it’s going to be short text messages simply to confirm that everything is okay.”

...

As for Parsaei, she says she will do everything she can to get in touch with her family more often, but notes it’s virtually impossible.

She said she’s taking things day by day.

“It seems that we are having two lives now,” she said. “We have here our children, our work, our family, everything that we need to take care of ourselves here. At the same time, we are worried about back home, our family there.”

“Iranian people don’t have any voice. We are trying to be their voice here. We are fighting.”