In the absence of these important policy proposals, there is evidently some apprehension among Canadians. Half (46%) say they are “fearful” of the CPC forming government, while fewer (35%) anticipate it with hope. A majority (54%) suspect Poilievre and the CPC have a “hidden agenda” that won’t be revealed until after the party wins the elections.

There is also some doubt that a Poilievre-led government can balance the budget and lower income taxes as promised, even if most view them to be “good things”. More than two-in-five (45%) say neither will happen.

The Conservative strategy was clear: attack the New Democrats, whom a significant number of east Winnipeg voters have always liked, by going even harder on the Liberals, who have never enjoyed better than middling support in this corner of the city.

Running against one party by tying them to another was a novel strategy, U of M political studies professor Royce Koop said earlier this month.

"The Liberals are very unpopular. They're certainly not competitive in that seat," and so an attempt to tie the NDP to them "makes some sense," he said.

"But you don't see that all the time."

After what happened on Monday night in Elmwood-Transcona, you may never see it again.

Investigators concluded Beijing's influence attempt didn't break elections law

Pathetic fucking cowards. Big talk but no fucking balls. If you're not willing to repeat what you said to his face then you need to keep your Russian cock sucking hole closed in the first place.

The Alberta government has officially handed back more than $137 million to the federal government after running out of time to spend the cash to clean up old oil and natural gas wells.

Questions remain about why the provincial government was unable to use the much-needed funding, considering there are tens of thousands of inactive wells.

Many companies are also disappointed that the full amount wasn't spent because of the loss of reclamation work it would have created.

Amber Joseph says when she arrived on the scene just after her brother Steven Dedam was shot by the RCMP, she was shocked.

“When I came in they didn’t have compression on him,” she told APTN News. “He was shot three times. The first thing they did was handcuff him and say he was ‘under arrest.’

“He was shot in the chest.”

The government’s intervention in the rail dispute is especially troubling for a number of reasons.

For starters, this was an employer lockout imposed in an effort to extract concessions that rail workers argue will make both themselves and the broader public less safe.

Larry Hubich, former president of the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour, in fact argues that the rail employers, along with other companies who are members of FETCO (Federally Regulated Employers – Transportation and Communications), were trying to cause enough economic disruption through the lockout to force the government to curtail rail and federal workers’ rights to strike. It seems the government largely obliged.

What if citizens were called to policymaking duty the way they are called to jury duty?

All over the world, ordinary people are finding out what that’s like when they’re selected by civic lottery to participate in a citizens’ assembly, a democracy innovation that may just be the antidote to the polarization of the world we need.

[...]

According to the OECD database, environment and other long-term policy issues are the most popular topics addressed by citizens’ assemblies, and local governments are the most frequent users of these methods.

[...]

In citizens’ assemblies, there are teenagers and octogenarians, business people and activists, people of all genders, races and abilities, individuals who have been regulars at city council and those who have never engaged in local democracy before. Inevitably there is a wide range of political leanings, lots of passion and some trepidation.

[...]

The challenges range from giving everyone a base of technical knowledge to effectively participate in discussions — a component often missing in public consultations — to ensuring complex accessibility needs are met, something required to address the gap in effective involvement of people with disabilities in decision-making.

[...]

The OECD estimates that roughly half of the recommendations of deliberative processes are implemented. We’ve also found that the side benefits of citizens’ assemblies, such as increased community cohesion and a sense of hope, are substantial.

[...]

Building trust with government may be another important outcome. Research shows trust in government is significantly higher among Canadians who feel they have a say in what the government does (79 per cent compared to 21 per cent who do not).

[...]

The first teenage girl to be sentenced in the 2022 death of Toronto homeless man Kenneth Lee will not face any more time in custody and will instead spend time on probation while participating in a community-based program for young people with mental health issues.

The girl, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was 13 at the time of the December 18, 2022 attack in downtown Toronto, was credited for 15 months of effective pre-trial custody and will serve another 15 months of probation under an Intensive Support and Supervision Program, which is designed as an alternative to custody for youth who have been diagnosed with mental health disorders.

Justice David Stewart Rose says the sentence reflects that the teen has taken accountability for her actions by pleading guilty, and experienced institutional malfeasance while in custody, such as being forced to strip naked during searches.

Inside a bustling unit at St. Michael's Hospital in downtown Toronto, one of Shirley Bell's patients was suffering from a cat bite and a fever, but otherwise appeared fine — until an alert from an AI-based early warning system showed he was sicker than he seemed.

While the nursing team usually checked blood work around noon, the technology flagged incoming results several hours beforehand. That warning showed the patient's white blood cell count was "really, really high," recalled Bell, the clinical nurse educator for the hospital's general medicine program.

The cause turned out to be cellulitis, a bacterial skin infection. Without prompt treatment, it can lead to extensive tissue damage, amputations and even death. Bell said the patient was given antibiotics quickly to avoid those worst-case scenarios, in large part thanks to the team's in-house AI technology, dubbed Chartwatch.

"There's lots and lots of other scenarios where patients' conditions are flagged earlier, and the nurse is alerted earlier, and interventions are put in earlier," she said. "It's not replacing the nurse at the bedside; it's actually enhancing your nursing care."

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's ruling Liberals, trailing badly in the polls, face a struggle on Monday to retain a once-safe seat in a special election where failure to win could boost calls for a new party leader.

The election in the Montreal parliamentary constituency of LaSalle—Emard—Verdun was called to replace a Liberal legislator who quit.

Normally Trudeau's party could count on an easy win there but surveys suggest the race is tight. If the Liberals lose, the focus will fall squarely on Trudeau, who has become increasingly unpopular after almost nine years in office.

Unusually, some Liberal legislators are breaking ranks to call for change at the top. Alexandra Mendes, a Liberal lawmaker who represents a Quebec constituency, said many of her constituents wanted Trudeau to go.

"I didn't hear it from two, three people - I heard it from dozens and dozens of people," she told public broadcaster Radio-Canada last week. "He's no longer the right leader."

The year 2023 was by far the warmest in human history. Climate extremes now routinely shock in their intensity, with a direct monetary cost that borders on the unfathomable. Over $3 trillion (US) in damages to infrastructure, property, agriculture, and human health have already slammed the world economy this century, owing to extreme weather. That number will likely pale in comparison to what is coming. The World Economic Forum, hardly a hotbed of environmental activists, now reports that global damage from climate change will probably cost some $1.7 trillion to $3.1 trillion (US) per year by 2050, with the lion’s share of the damage borne by the poorest countries in the world.

And yet we fiddle.

In today’s Canada, there is deception, national in scope, coming directly from the right‑wing opposition benches in Ottawa. In 2023, the populist Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre adopted “Axe the tax” as his new mantra and has shaped his federal election campaign around that hackneyed rhyme.

A national dental care program was one of the keystones of the now-ended supply-and-confidence agreement between the Liberals and NDP, inked in 2022. It involves plans to roll out coverage especially for children, seniors, and low-income Canadians, and with remaining eligible Canadians slated to gain access in 2025.

When pressed by Kapelos on the statistic that nearly 650,000 Canadians have already accessed care, Scheer again would not directly say whether his party would scrap the program, if elected.

As schools turn to university students and graduates without a teachers' degree to cope with a shortage, a certified teacher from Dieppe says she's been trying to find full-time work without success.

Dieppe resident Allie Fanjoy was hired as a supply teacher for the coming school year in late August, but she says the process was slow and frustrating.

More frustrating, she says, was learning that schools in the anglophone system are still short by 32 teachers — and three districts of the four are relying on 132 people on local permit contracts.

Local permit contracts enable school districts to hire people without teaching degrees, and some with no university degree at all.

Air Canada and the union representing its pilots have come to terms on a labor agreement that is likely to prevent a shutdown of Canada’s largest airline.

Talks betwen the company and the Air Line Pilots Association produced a tentative, four-year collective agreement, the airline announced in a statement early Sunday.

The prospective deal recognizes the contributions of the pilots flying for Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge while setting a new framework for company growth. The terms will remain confidential until ratification by union members and approval by the airline’s board of directors over the next month, the airline said.

cross-posted from: /c/britishcolumbia

In 2008, as the-then B.C. Liberal government was poised to bring in Canada's first carbon tax, the B.C. NDP staunchly opposed it, saying a climate plan should not tax consumers but target major industrial producers such as the gas, oil, cement and aluminum industries.

Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon met both the company and the union on Thursday. Both sides are still far apart on the question of wages.

MacKinnon has broad powers to tackle disputes and last month intervened within 24 hours to end a stoppage at the country's two largest railway companies, Canadian Pacific Kansas City and Canadian National Railway.

Air Canada says this set a precedent. But while Ottawa has intervened several times in labor disputes over the last few decades, it has only done so after stoppages have begun, not before.

"We are not going to interfere, we are not going to take action before it really becomes very clear that there is no goodwill at the negotiating table," said Trudeau.

The Business Council of Canada, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce issued a joint statement on Friday calling on Ottawa to intervene to prevent a strike before it began.

There are important geopolitical and cultural factors that influence Canadian support for Israel and help explain Saini's hostility to divesting, as the university recently did with fossil fuels and Russia. But the most pressing element is a remarkably empowered victim narrative.

"Jews at McGill: 'We feel alone'", blared the cover of Saturday's National Post, linking to a two-page spread that included the spurious claim students organized a "Kristallnacht-themed rally" in November. (73 Postmedia outlets reportedly ran the story). The New York based Jewish Forward published a similar commentary headlined "For Jewish students at McGill like me, our return to campus is filled with dread".

On Friday McGill students organized a walkout and some ripped up the grass where the encampment was demolished. Those who see little problem with destroying everything in Gaza were outraged grass had been damaged.

A brand of yogurt sold at Costco has been recalled due to mould, says the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).

The federal agency's notification affects 24-packs of Greek yogurt under Costco's Kirkland Signature brand with the best before date of Aug. 10, 2024, marked as "2024 AU 10." The printed UPC code is "0 96619 22215 5."

The agency says the microbial contamination is not harmful, though stores and consumers are told not to use, sell, serve or distribute the affected product.

A cabinet minister who serves as the federal Liberals' national campaign co-chair told MPs at the party's recent caucus retreat that they need to "change their attitudes" if they want to turn around their dismal polling numbers, sources tell CBC News.

Three (MPs) said Tourism Minister Soraya Martinez Ferrada, national campaign co-chair, told them during her presentation that if they "want something to change" in their political prospects, they should change their "attitudes" first.

Two of those three MPs said the comment was poorly received by caucus members in the room. One said the statement was particularly galling because backbench MPs have been bearing the brunt of voters' dissatisfaction with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government.