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An especially challenging aspect of foreign interference, transnational repression occurs when overseas governments, or those acting for them, use harassment, threats and violence to silence critics abroad.

The RCMP statement did not name specific countries, but CSIS has identified China, India, Russia and Iran as the main states conducting espionage and foreign interference in Canada.

...

The B.C. Court of Appeal has overturned a lower-court ruling after finding the judge used an "arbitrary boundary" to determine a First Nation's Aboriginal title over a swath of Nootka Island off western Vancouver Island.

A three-judge panel says the B.C. Supreme Court made three legal errors when limiting the Nuchatlaht Nation's claim over a 201 square kilometre portion of the island, finding the nation had met the test for "sufficient occupation" when the British Crown asserted sovereignty.

The Nuchatlaht's lawyer, Jack Woodward, said in an interview Thursday that they are "jubilant" about the recognition of the ownership of their land.

He said Nuchatlaht is a small, remote community that has been "somewhat ignored and neglected by the rest of society for a very long time."

"They had to sit by helplessly and watch their ancestral heritage being industrialized and logged," he said.

The Liberal government's second attempt at giving police and spies easier access to Canadians' information includes what's anticipated to be costly demands on a range of private businesses to to change how they manage their data.

But the government says it doesn't yet know how much the companies — or Canadian taxpayers — would have to pay.

"The costs are potentially huge," said Michael Geist, the University of Ottawa’s Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law, and a vocal critic of the bill.

"That has competition-related effects in terms of who bears those costs. Will they exempt certain providers? It gets very messy very quickly."

The wind cuts across an empty stretch of land on the southern edge of London, Ont., where rows of small, cabin-like units sit far from bus routes, shops and the downtown core.

For Tim Magee, who spent years living in a tent in the woods, the move there was supposed to be a step forward. Instead, he says, it feels like being pushed further out.

“I’ll go back to the streets or back to the bush somewhere,” Magee said. “I’ll be more comfortable out there than here.”

Magee said he plans to leave the site, citing isolation, strict rules and the cost of staying there.

“Poverty and homelessness are constantly having rules imposed on them — how they can access things, when they can access them and in what way. In combination with isolation, that can feel too burdensome for day-to-day living.”

Magee said much of that frustration stems from the site’s location on the outskirts of the city, far from transit, services and daily amenities.

“My cheque went from $1,400 down to $466 … I can’t justify that,” he said. “Where is all this money going? I’d like to know, but we don’t get answers.”

Here is the open letter by the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project to Canadian PM Mark Carney (pdf)

The Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project (URAP) has published an open letter to Canadian PM Mark Carney to ban the import off goods made with forced labour, calling on the government to adopt a legal presumption that would treat all products from China’s Xinjiang region as tainted by forced labour unless importers can prove otherwise.

"Uyghur Forced Labour is Abhorrent to Canadian Values"

"Canadians do not want to consume goods produced by Uyghur forced labour," the letter reads.

"The gaps in Canada’s enforcement have resulted in products made by Uyghur forced labour entering Canada. This will continue to happen until Canada’s prohibition is enforced in a principled and consistent manner."

"In our view, Chinese EVs can only be sold in Canada for under $35,000 because they incorporate cheap aluminum parts from Uyghur forced labour. It will be critical for importers of EVs to Canada to demonstrate verifiably transparent supply chains that do not track the aluminum processing back to Xinjiang."

The URAP notes that "Uyghurs in China are working in slave labour conditions 12 hours a day under armed surveillance as you read this. This is of grave concern to many Canadians. Screening out such products is a measure of the extent to which Canada’s forced labour implementation is working overall. It is also a measure of the extent to which Canada can trade with China in a manner consistent with Canadian values.

"Of all the countries in the world, China is most known for forced labour. This is true for many products, including fabrics, tomato products and Chinese electric vehicles that are to be imported into Canada."

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Referring to one of Mr. Carney's recent remarks, the letter says that Canada does have legislation to prevent the import of product made by forced labour, but it is "not strong by any international comparison".

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Among the signatories are Mehmet Tohti, executive director of the URAP, and Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, senior fellow at the Institute for Science, Society and Policy at the University of Ottawa.

They detail a series of legal adjustments and secure adequate staffing and resources to enforce a stricter law.

...

I've been thinking about this for a while. If you looks at our major industries that aren't controlled by Canadian oligopolies, we let the US take over and continue to support them. For example, streaming services (Netflix, Spotify, Paramount, HBO, Disney, YouTube, etc...), fast food (McDonald's, Starbucks, Wendy's, Five Guys, Timmies, etc..), home improvement (Home Depot, Lowe's, Rona), retail (Wal-Mart, Amazon, Costco), tech (Google, Apple, Microsoft), credit payments (Visa, Mastercard), food brands (Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, print media (Postmedia Network, which controls over 130 newspapers across the country), social media (Insta, Snap, TikTok, Facebook, WhatsApp), retail gas (Esso, Ultramar, Chevron, Pioneer) are all US companies. I can keep going on (pharmaceuticals, oil and gas operations in Alberta, and entertainment).

It's ironic when I see Canadians hating on immigrants for not being "Canadian", yet those Canadians copy Americans like no tomorrow. And now we have separatists in Alberta simping for the US and politicians that vocally support Trump (Doug Ford, Danielle Smith, and PP). Wtf is going on?

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/61883281

Invidious

Doug Ford quoted in this article:

“I’ll never forget when I met [Carney] the first time, the first words out of his mouth: ‘I’m more conservative than you.’ And I said: ‘well that sounds good.’”

Health Canada has slapped new terms and conditions on all of a company's paid plasma centres after multiple failed inspections where the regulator found "recurring, systemic deficiencies."

This comes after two people died in Winnipeg less than four months apart after giving their plasma at different Grifols locations in the city.

It also comes after the company's Canadian head office in Oakville, Ont., failed its January inspection. The head office doesn’t collect plasma, but the federal health regulator said it oversees all 16 Canadian collection sites.

On Wednesday, a Health Canada spokesperson said they conducted a virtual inspection of the head office. The inspection found Grifols wasn't accurately assessing a donor's suitability, did not thoroughly investigate errors and accidents, and didn't have enough properly trained staff members.

The inspection also found operating procedures were not always followed and that Grifols was allowing people to give plasma even when information shows "the safety of blood could be affected."

As U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration moves to expand immigration detention capacity, Montreal-based GardaWorld is poised to profit.

GardaWorld Federal Services, the U.S. subsidiary of the private security firm headquartered in Montreal, won a $313-million US contract earlier this month to convert a warehouse into a detention centre in Surprise, Ariz., a fast-growing suburb outside Phoenix. The contract could potentially be worth $704 million US — nearly $1 billion Cdn.

The company already helps operate a notorious detention facility in Florida, dubbed Alligator Alcatraz, which is facing legal challenges for alleged human rights abuses.

GardaWorld has not been named as a defendant in any of those lawsuits and there is no evidence of their involvement in alleged wrongdoing at Alligator Alcatraz.

But human rights activists say the contracts and the company’s association with the United States’ Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raises accountability questions back home, after GardaWorld got financial backing from the Quebec government in 2022.

Alberta separatists aren’t just enthused by the fact they have apparently surpassed the necessary 177,000 signatures to force their referendum onto ballots — they’re also celebrating when they reached the target.

Stay Free Alberta claimed that accomplishment a week before a judge in Edmonton hears a First Nation’s injunction bid against the citizen’s initiative on April 7, arguing that the independence bid would violate Indigenous treaties.

A casual legal/political observer might puzzle over this logic. After all, it might not matter that enough signatures were collected if Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation gets its injunction, because that would likely freeze the whole Elections Alberta process of vetting and approving the petition.

However, this could set up a Plan B for separatist leader Mitch Sylvestre: appeal directly to Premier Danielle Smith to put the referendum to leave Canada on October’s ballot, regardless of what the court had just said.

“Let's get the signatures first before the 7th, before they can go to court over it, and just say: all right, we've done our share,” Sylvestre told CBC News. “We've followed the rules up to now.”

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney generated considerable international praise for his 20 January speech at Davos. He called for intermediate powers such as Canada to work together to build a new world order based on values like respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity.

His speech was given against the backdrop of a rupture in the rules-based order that Canada has long supported. This was caused by the United States appearing to abandon the order it helped build, by threatening to annex territory from western allies, including Canada itself.

Carney warned about the need for middle powers to work together for mutual protection in a global system where there are seemingly no constraints on the actions of great powers. He suggested they should build something bigger, better, stronger and more just together.

Why, then, did his government immediately support the illegal US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran just a month later?

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s unwillingness to condemn forced labor in China risks reducing pressure on the Chinese government to end its repression of ethnic Uyghurs.

Responding to Member of Parliament Michael Ma’s comments casting doubts on reports of forced labor in China, Carney told the media on March 30 that Canada “takes issues of forced labor and child labor incredibly seriously.” But when asked directly whether forced labor is present in China, Carney said that “there are parts of China that are higher risk.”

Carney’s remarks ignore extensive and consistent documentation of state-imposed forced labor involving Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in China’s supply chains, including cotton, automotive, solar, and critical minerals. The United Nations, Human Rights Watch, and others have for several years reported on crimes against humanity by Chinese authorities in the Xinjiang region.

Carney’s comments also divert from past Canadian government statements expressing concern at forced labor in Xinjiang. In January 2021, Canada’s Global Affairs Ministry issued an advisory warning businesses of forced labor risks there.

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Carney’s government [...] has so far failed to adequately enforce legislation blocking products made with forced labor and has not acted on a proposed supply chain due diligence law modeled in part on legislation in the European Union.

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As Prime Minister Carney takes Canada forward in a multipolar world, he should make clear that Canada’s foreign and trade policy will be grounded in human rights, including by unequivocally condemning Uyghur forced labor.

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