Newly declassified documents obtained by CBC Indigenous confirm that the RCMP infiltrated and sought to disrupt legitimate political Indigenous organizations in the 1970s, in an extensive program of covert surveillance, informants and countersubversion.

“It’s impossible to get a single right answer that is consistent throughout each support agent,” said Sloot, who lives in Toronto.

Sloot is one of more than a dozen customers with whom Marketplace has spoken who say they are frustrated with the poor customer service they received from Canada’s big three telecoms: Rogers, Bell and Telus. Complaints include long hold times, multiple transfers and escalations, dropped calls and overall poor communication, which can make seemingly simple issues take days or weeks to get sorted.

Employees at two of the largest telecom companies, Rogers and Telus, told Marketplace that frontline customer service representatives have less incentive to help issue credits or lower bills, and said they’re measured on their abilities to increase customers’ bills.

It comes as complaints against telecoms reached an all-time high last year, with more than 23,000 complaints filed with the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS), the majority of them relating to billing issues like incorrect monthly charges and missing credits. Meanwhile, in Spain, a new law is looking to cap how long customers have to wait when addressing similar issues — and some say Canada should take note.

'The system is designed to frustrate as many people as possible'

Tenumah believes Bell is following a pattern he has seen many times before. “The system is designed to frustrate as many people as possible,” he said. “Part of the design is that people will give up so that [companies] don't have to incur that expense.”

Reps encouraged to increase customer’s bills: insiders

It’s not just consumers who are frustrated — some telecom employees are, too. Marketplace has spoken confidentially to several current employees of Telus and Rogers, whose identities we are concealing because they fear professional repercussions.

Marketplace spoke to a Rogers worker who takes escalation calls and supports frontline agents. He said those employees' ability to help customers, including by issuing credits, is "decreasing constantly."

A longtime customer service representative with Telus said similarly.

“When I first started, we listened to customers, we appreciated them. I never had any hesitation reducing someone’s bill.”

Now, she says she’s monitored on the number of credits she issues. She says credits of a certain level have to be approved by a manager, and her scorecard is affected negatively if she lowers a customer’s bill.

Another Telus employee, a technician, said he has high sales targets to meet and he’s expected to upsell customers when he arrives at their home to install or fix equipment.

Spanish law limits wait times to three minutes or face fines

In late December 2025, Spain passed a law introducing mandatory customer service standards for telecoms and other large companies with more than 250 employees. It stipulates that customer calls must be answered within three minutes, 95 per cent of the time.

“This will be a revolution, in that it's a small thing, but will change the everyday life of millions of consumers,” said Pablo Bustinduy, the Spanish consumer affairs minister.

Under the new law, which goes into effect within the next year, customer complaints must also be resolved within 15 days, or five if it involves “improper charges.” Non-compliant companies could be fined up to 100,000 euros.

Josée Bidal Thibault, commissioner and CEO of the CCTS encourages Canadians to file a complaint if they can’t get resolution through their telecom.

I've added this image-based direct link to help folks here have an easier line send a 🖕 to your service provider if they've been screwing you over.

When the CRTC, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, allowed the Rogers Shaw acquisition to go though on March 24, 2022, I knew that enshitification was inevitable at that point.

I'm hoping that enough folks are tired and frustrated with the frankly shit service that we get, enough so to bring this to Mark Carney to do something about it.

It really doesn't make sense for Canada, a first world country, to have such shit internet service.
As a Canadian Korean, I often look at South Korea and wonder just why fellow Canadians here have to deal with this hostile system when really it doesn't have to be like this. I'm tired of this and I'm hoping others feel the same.

At about 8:30 a.m. on March 17, a police officer pulled up beside an electric car and observed a driver with her eyes closed and arms crossed while travelling eastbound on Highway No. 1 in Coquitlam in slippery, rainy conditions.

“The driver appeared to be literally asleep at the wheel,” said Cpl. Michael McLaughlin with BC Highway Patrol.

“The driver said that she had ‘zoned out’ but was fully alert with her hands on the steering wheel. In-car police video did not support the driver’s claim.”

A Metro Vancouver woman, 37, was issued a ticket for allegedly driving without due care and attention under section 144(1)(a) of the B.C. Motor Vehicle Act, carrying a fine of $368.

She was also ticketed for speeding against a highway sign under section 146(3) of the Act, with a fine of $138.

Archived link

Three Quebec soldiers who fought in the war in Ukraine were honoured Saturday during a ceremony in Montreal.

Two of the soldiers never came home.

Jean-Francois Ratelle, from Joliette, was 38 when he died on the front lines in 2024.

Montrealer Emile-Antoine Roy-Sirois was 31 when he died in July 2022, a few months after the war began.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine started in February 2022, making the conflict now more than four years old.

During the ceremony, their families stood in their place to accept the Ukrainian Canadian Sacrifice Medal, which honours Canadian citizens who have been killed or wounded while serving with Ukraine’s armed forces.

...

Denis Perrier survived the conflict. He was 55 when he made the decision to go to war and said he couldn’t ignore the sense of obligation.

“So I saw that war can destroy family and child kill people,” said Perrier, who was injured while he was on the ground. He spent 10 days in hospital.

It’s not clear how many Quebec soldiers are still fighting in Ukraine.

Michael Shwec, president of the Quebec Provincial Council of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, said he was thankful for the volunteers who have put their lives at risk.

“The values of Ukrainians and the values of Quebecers are very, very similar. They value life, they value family, and they are willing to fight for it,” Shwec said.

...

It's interesting to perspectives from elsewhere. The Netherlands is also facing a housing crisis, and they're also talking about significant increases in construction. Part of that will be to limit local control.

Interestingly, they're also talking about changing the type of construction: fewer rooms.

There isn't quite enough context to explain why that would help, but it's something I haven't really heard politicians saying here in Canada.

What changes would you make to speed up housing growth here?

The House of Commons public safety committee is planning an inquiry this spring to examine "systemic discrimination and organizational culture" within Canada's border agency.

In recent months, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) has been facing growing complaints of stonewalling investigations and a toxic work environment from current and former employees — some of whom have formed a network to help support border officers with their cases.

CBC News revealed this month that several female employees were subjected to degrading comments and behaviour of a sexual nature at the CBSA, often by superiors or more experienced colleagues.

"[The CBSA] is discriminatory and toxic for everyone ... but it does seem disproportionately discriminatory against women," said Conservative MP Rhonda Kirkland, the committee member who has been spearheading calls for an inquiry after hearing from one of her constituents.

Full Testimony (PDF).

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s much criticized ambiguity about the role of international law regarding U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran is more than an excusable stumble by an inexperienced politician operating in a challenging environment.

Carney is building a foreign policy “doctrine” that increasingly warrants a closer look.

Last October, Carney lavished praise on U.S. President Donald Trump for supposedly “disabling Iran as a force of terror” with U.S. strikes months earlier. While the prime minister has softened — but not withdrawn — his support for the current military campaign that began in spite of progress on peace talks, he has not explained why he has long disagreed with intelligence assessments that Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapon.

Nor has Carney or his ministers refused to rule out some form of participation in the conflict that is rapidly extending to other Persian Gulf states.

An opportunity to provide clarity on such issues was rebuffed when Carney skipped an emergency debate in Parliament on the growing crisis. Meanwhile, the war continues to unleash enormous human suffering and chaos.

Under the guise of preserving secularism, this law allows the exclusion of people based on their religious identity.

A federal minister has stepped in to temporarily stop the deportation of a Montreal father and son, a last-minute decision the family's lawyer says underscores growing concerns that Canadian authorities are increasingly and abruptly separating the families of recognized refugees.

The intervention came Saturday, just days before the father, Ravi Chauhan, and son were scheduled to be removed from Canada Monday evening. Their lawyer says the one-month deferral will give officials time to review the situation and consider longer-term options to allow the family to remain together. CBC News reported Chauhan and his family's story Friday.

Immigration lawyer Stewart Istvanffy welcomed the decision, crediting Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree for stepping in, but said the case raises concerns about how such removals are being pursued in the first place.

Six men began their abuse of young orphans on one coast of Canada, then by a travesty of justice were sent to the opposite side of the country, where they allegedly abused more boys — as many as 200.

This month the offer of a $30-million class-action settlement to the second set of alleged victims to be paid by the Roman Catholic archbishop of Vancouver and two Lower Mainland Catholic schools adds another chapter to this tragic saga — a cycle of pain that a half-century later continues to ripple outward.

It’s worth retracing that dark circle to remind how the powerful who claim to shepherd and protect can instead shield the guilty. And to mark the wholly avoidable further suffering such conspiracies enable.

The “Mount Cashel Six” were members of the Christian Brothers of Ireland who were transferred by their order from Newfoundland after they abused their charges at Mount Cashel Orphanage in St. John’s. They were sent to British Columbia to work at St. Thomas More Collegiate in Burnaby and Vancouver College, also run by the Christian Brothers.

Ford had tried to have the Toronto Al Quds event cancelled altogether by asking the Ontario Attorney General to file a court injunction against the event, a motion that was denied by a judge of Ontario’s Superior Court on the day of the event, March 14, allowing it to go ahead.

Other groups like the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) called out the premier for trying to violate the Charter Rights of Canadian citizens through his attempt to stop the Al-Quds day event.

“Seeking to shut down an entire protest before it has even begun is an extraordinary and dangerous step. It is a pre-emptive attack on freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly, both of which are fundamental Charter-protected freedoms in a democratic society,” a statement from the CCLA reads.

$210m is only $175k/home for construction. Meanwhile, the rent supplement for the next twenty years is $3,750/unit per year.

Apparently there are 366k homes in New Brunswick. So that represents a .3% increase.

Gotta start somewhere.