Over the past year, The Walrus has learned that nearly a dozen people—former students and a parent—have filed multi-million-dollar lawsuits against, or are planning to sue, RLA over a series of alleged abuses that former students experienced from the 1980s to the present. The allegations include physical and emotional violence by staff, racism, withholding of food, sleep deprivation, and sexual assault by fellow students that they say the school overlooked. The Walrus has obtained numerous statements of claim; the academy has not filed statements of defence.

Martin, who requested to go by only his first name, attended RLA starting in 2006, when he was twelve years old, after struggling in school; his parents believed a place with more structure would help. In his statement of claim, Martin states that, while at RLA, an older student who was tasked with overseeing him repeatedly abused him sexually, verbally, and physically. He is suing RLA for $5 million. The school administrators, Martin alleges, failed to document his abuser’s offences, warn teachers and other students about his abuser, and put in place reporting mechanisms and counselling. “They didn’t want me to talk to my parents about it,” he told me. “I always knew I hated it [there], but I just thought I had to kind of eat shit on the whole matter for a long time.”

Staff, he notes in his statement of claim, wilfully did not see the abuse and maintained what he calls “a system . . . designed to cover-up the existence of such behaviour.” Several former students allege in statements of claim as well as in interviews that a culture of fear and abuse was enabled by the school’s founder and former headmaster, Scott Bowman, and by other teachers and administrators. In a statement to The Walrus, Robert Land Academy noted, “The safety and well-being of our students is our top priority and these alleged incidents do not reflect the values of the school, past or present,” and that the school “will not comment on the specific allegations or individuals at this time.” (I reached out to Bowman for comment via LinkedIn. He declined an interview request and told The Walrus to direct questions to RLA.)

The thrust of it is that the federal government would withhold funding to municipalities unless they meet certain home-building targets.

Critics worry that this will accelerate suburban sprawl in order to meet quotas. There are some provisions regarding rental housing and transit infrastructure, but with unrealistic time/budgeting constraints.

Several residents in Toronto's Riverdale neighbourhood say they're furious to learn their homes are being expropriated for construction of the new Ontario Line subway route — after being assured their properties would not be affected.

Peggy Leung's home is one of the 25 properties on Pape Avenue between Langley and Riverdale Avenue required by Metrolinx for the construction. Also among the properties is Riverdale Learning Loft, a brand new daycare.

Leung says the news of losing her home of 14 years has been consuming her. She grew up in Riverdale and runs her business from her home as well.

"I get a knock on the door, they say, 'We're taking your house.' Just like that," she said.

The government of Saskatchewan says it is "moving forward with constructing" a $1.15-billion irrigation project, despite having never completed or publicly released a feasibility study that was supposed to examine whether it is a good use of public money.

Earlier this year, Premier Scott Moe announced "we will begin construction of the early works" of the project in 2025.

That has critics worried that the government may be launching an ill-thought-out mega-project — spending more than a billion dollars to benefit just a handful of farmers.

Robert Halliday, a leading water resource engineer who has extensively studied the Saskatchewan river basin, says the lack of transparency has him worried.

"Faith in government is plummeting," he said. "This kind of stuff just gives government a bad name."

Canada quietly cancelled most of its high-level dialogues and bilateral engagement mechanisms with China and implemented a review process that makes creating new methods of engagement exceedingly difficult.

"Ending engagement makes sense," writes Michaela Pedersen-Macnab, a political scientist at the University of Toronto. "China’s penchant for coercive diplomacy vividly illustrated the failures of an engagement policy for Canada — as well as for other western democracies like Australia and Norway."

In Canada’s case, China arbitrarily detained Canadian citizens Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in December 2018, using the Canadians as bargaining chips to pressure Canada into releasing Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou after she was arrested by Canadian authorities acting on an American arrest warrant.

Yet there were also earlier signs diplomatic engagement was failing, including Chinese crackdowns on freedom of expression; China’s rejection of the 2016 South China Sea Arbitration; its illiberal trade practices; human rights abuses in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region; and the end to presidential term limits. These and other events should have indicated that nearly four decades of attempting to engage meaningfully with China and encourage it to embrace the rules-based international order had failed.

"Constructive dialogue on issues of common interest such as biodiversity protection and climate change governance must continue," Pedersen-Macnab says, adding that "Canada may also still find value in engaging with China on issues of profound disagreement, like human rights and foreign interference, to hold Chinese authorities accountable when their behaviour falls short of China’s obligations under international law."

A labour dispute at both Canadian National and CPKC threatens to derail not only Peretz's business, but the scores of manufacturers he supplies in a complex, just-in-time supply chain. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business has said the lockout could be devastating for small businesses that depend on rail service.

Railways carry more than $1 billion worth of goods each day, according to the Railway Association of Canada, and over half of the country's exports travel by rail.

Contract talks between the Teamsters union and the companies usually take place a year apart, but in 2022, after the federal government introduced new rules, CN requested a year-long extension to its existing deal rather than negotiate a new one.

This meant both companies' labour agreements expired at the end of 2023 and talks have been ongoing since.

The trial for two central figures in the Freedom Convoy will continue Tuesday with defence lawyers challenging the prosecution's portrayal of the three-week Ottawa protest as a single event under the sole direction of Tamara Lich and Chris Barber.

The two have pleaded not guilty to charges of mischief, intimidation, obstruction and other offences related to the February 2022 protests against COVID-19 mandates that saw trucks block downtown streets in Ottawa's core.

At issue is whether Barber and Lich crossed the line into committing crimes and encouraged others to come to the city.

Prosecutors are attempting to link Lich and Barber as co-conspirators who worked together to finance, fuel, promote and organize the Freedom Convoy, asserting evidence against one should apply to the other.

The Conservative Party of Canada has deleted a video that was meant to promote its Canadian values but featured images of what the Defence Minister's office says are Russian fighter jets.

The party acknowledged on Monday that mistakes happen, while also pointing out that the Liberals have dealt with a stock image backlash in the past.

The video in question was posted by the party on X on Saturday with the slogan "Canada. Our Home" and featured a speech delivered by leader Pierre Poilievre from the Calgary Stampede.

In the video, Poilievre describes a Canadian man driving on a highway on his way to work after dropping off his kid at school, and spots a brand new fighter jet in the sky.

Buying a home in Canada became slightly easier in July, according to a new report that cites dropping mortgage rates and lowering average home prices.

The minimum income required to purchase a home dipped last month across the 13 major cities studied by Ratehub.ca, according to their recent blog post.

That salary threshold dropped by more than $5,000 in Canada’s two priciest markets of Toronto and Vancouver, and it was overall lower across the board.

One factor in the drop was average home prices, which went down month-over-month in Canada’s largest markets.

London woman stopped to help man who'd collapsed at in the sidewalk at Richmond and Oxford

But what made her challenge particularly difficult was that the drivers trying to get through the intersection honked with impatience and anger, swerving around her and darting through the intersection as she tried to help the man.

"They were acting like I was a delinquent and I was just trying to help someone," she said. "Drivers will stop for Canada geese but you've got a man in distress and no one cares."

Paramedics arrived shortly after and took the man who'd been struggling to hospital. Litsas doesn't know what caused him to collapse or how he's doing now.

After the ordeal, she posted on the social media site Reddit about how some of the drivers chose to honk instead of help.

"I was frustrated, I was a bit shaken up just having the traffic whiz by you and it's just an unnerving position to be in," she said.

The purpose behind her post is to ask that drivers show some patience and empathy if a pedestrian appears to be struggling.

"Stop, put your hazards on," she said. "It's a car against a human being and I'm not going to win against a five-tonne vehicle."

It's interesting, isn't it, that canceling those hundreds of renewable energy projects when he was first elected was estimated to cost Ontario $230 million which is exactly the same amount that canceling the gas fired power plants cost us under Kathleen Wynne. I hope this is remembered as the Doug Ford Renewable Energy Scandal.

He hasn't shifted his position because he now supports green energy. He has shifted his position because renewables are now FAR more affordable than fossil fuel or nuclear. It's purely economic.

Cancelling those projects was an act of pure right wing virtue signalling. The $230 million is only the tip of the iceberg.

What you have to ask yourself is this:

1. How much money would Ontario families have saved since 2018 if we had had cheaper, cleaner renewable energy on the grid?

2. How much more is it going to cost to build those projects in 2025 and 2026 than it would have to build them in 2018 and 2019?

3. How far has this put Ontario behind Europe and Asia where they are all in on renewable energy?

The $230 million act of extremist right wing political theater is going to cost Ontario billions of dollars over the coming years and has put us a decade behind the rest of the world (other than the US, of course.)

Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island are the only provinces that offer post-secondary students free vaccination against meningitis B, a rare but deadly bacterial infection.

With Canadian universities and colleges about to welcome thousands of freshmen in September, more provinces are being urged to cover the vaccines, which can cost $300 or more for two required doses.

"Meningococci can kill within hours," Meningitis Foundation Canada medical adviser Dr. Ronlad Gold told CTVNews.ca. "The best protection is vaccination."

Meningitis B, or MenB for short, is caused by Group B meningococcus bacteria. While most Canadian children receive a vaccine that covers four other strains of meningitis – groups A, C, W and Y – the comparatively new shots for group B are not part of any routine vaccination program in Canada.

A building near Toronto’s Kensington Market that was partially demolished Saturday after it leaned over the sidewalk(opens in a new tab) was deemed “unsafe” by the city a decade ago, publicly-accessible records show.

According to a July 15, 2014 inspection of the building on Dundas Street near Augusta Avenue(opens in a new tab), the property owner was issued an “order to remedy unsafe building,” the status of which is listed as “not resolved.”

“The building (or part of) was deemed to be unsafe; steps must be taken to render the building safe,” the order read.