Dear Weekend Jolter,
Who’s up for a round of armchair sociology?
Say the world is struck by a calamity unprecedented in the modern age, and, in response, good citizens are instructed to work from home if possible and keep their children home from school; college grads are allowed to pause student-loan payments; and landlords are told not to evict tenants for falling behind on rent.
Rebel farmers have long complaned about the federation that sets Canada’s prices. Now their bitter dispute has descended into vengeance and conspiracy theories
When the federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers announced that stocks of its strategic reserve were running low, Gabriel Jort saw it as a plot. The “cartel”, as he calls the group, was up to its usual dirty tricks.
“It’s a mafia, there’s no other way to put it,” claimed the farmer, 44, who makes about 35,000 litres of maple syrup a year. “There’s been so many weird things, shady things, it’s hard to really believe anything they say.”
Just off a country road in rural Ontario, a short drive from Barrie, Kerry McLaven’s decades-old machinery is revving up for the summer.
The “machines” are trees — rows of white pines, cut and grafted from the best trees McLaven and her predecessors could find, now put to work in this eight hectare plot near Lisle, Ont.
“They are beautiful and they provide a habitat … but their real role is to produce seed and so they are seed machines,” said McLaven, CEO of Forest Gene Conservation Association of Ontario, which manages this seed orchard.
Trudeau lies to everyone, friend or foe.
I joined the federal Liberal Party 20 years ago this spring because I deeply admired the party’s commitment to fiscal discipline, human rights and national unity as exemplified by the governments of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin.
My involvement in Liberal politics has shaped my career and personal life in ways I could never have imagined when I first showed up at my local MP’s campaign office in 2004.
From Montreal to Vancouver, some residents are losing faith in a longstanding social safety net that is central to the country’s identity.
Canada has long prided itself on its social programs, meant to reduce poverty and equalize access to what are seen as core rights like health care, education, food and shelter. It spends hundreds of billions of dollars a year on social safety supports that are a major reason millions of people want to move to the northern nation.
But key parts of its safety net are fraying — in some cases badly. In 2013, Canada ranked 13th out of 170 countries in meeting the basic needs of citizens, according to data tracked by Social Progress Imperative. By 2023, it had fallen to 39th, in large part because of a lack of affordable housing.
Last year, British Columbia (BC) became the first province in Canada to decriminalise the use of hard drugs as part of its efforts to tackle a deadly opioids crisis. But the policy is facing pushback, leaving its future uncertain.
Every Monday, former Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart would receive an email listing all the people who had died in the city from a drug overdose the previous week.
One day, three years ago, that list included the name of a relative – his brother-in-law’s sister, Susan Havelock.
Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police are warning that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s policies have been so disastrous that its citizens may soon engage in a violent, populist revolt. When you pair this news with a recent video of Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s powerful ‘Minister of Everything’ twitching and smirking at a political event, it’s enough to suggest that we really need to start worrying about our northern neighbor.
Canada’s Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland appears completely out of it as she displays erratic body movements and bizarre facial expressions during a press conference. pic.twitter.com/4EZDX7Hkyo
— Mats Nilsson (@mazzenilsson) March 29, 2024
Imagine one day you discover that your adult daughter, who still lives with you, wants to be euthanised. As far as you are aware, she is healthy. She suffers from autism and ADHD, but no physical illnesses or disabilities that you know of. You know that she has faced many difficulties in her life, but you love her and desperately want to prevent her death. You are left fighting against her doctors, who encourage her decision and are perfectly happy to help her go through with this. To make this nightmare even worse, no one will even tell you why your daughter has been approved to die.
The Alberta government has about 14 active and proposed legal challenges against the federal government alleging constitutional overreach, Premier Danielle Smith said Thursday.
Appearing virtually before a federal parliamentary committee Thursday morning, where she was invited to explain her opposition to the federal carbon tax, Smith said the number of ongoing legal challenges her government has against the federal Liberal government illustrates the degree of federal meddling.
“That should give you an indication of how often we think the federal government violated the spirit of the constitution,” Smith told reporters later at an unrelated news conference.
WINNIPEG — Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Thursday he supports Manitoba’s request for an exemption from the federally imposed carbon tax.
“The fact is that Manitoba produces a phenomenal amount of green energy through its hydroelectricity, and a carbon tax will come nowhere near the environmental benefit of expanding that energy,” Poilievre told reporters following a meeting with Premier Wab Kinew at the legislature.
Lax membership criteria in major political parties, such as allowing international students and foreign nationals to join, leave Canada vulnerable to foreign interference and could potentially impact the selection of prime ministers, a recent study says.
“Foreign actors could also influence the selection process of party leadership, and hence the prime ministership, simply by purchasing party memberships that hand out ballots in leadership races without verifying the identities of new members,” said the study “Beyond General Elections“ published by Sage Journals on March 18.
Police are searching for four men wanted in a violent road rage incident in Brampton on Wednesday night.
Investigators say there was an interaction between a car travelling on Torbram Road near Eagleridge Drive and the four occupants of a gold-coloured Hyundai Sonata. The four men in the car confronted the victim, threatened them and damaged their vehicle before fleeing the area.
A new poll indicates 51 per cent of Canadians support banning the social media app TikTok, after a U.S. bill aiming to do just that passed in the House of Representatives.
Canada has ordered its own national security review of TikTok, something the Liberal government revealed following passage of the U.S. bill earlier this month.
Canada’s China class will ensure that TikTok is not banned.
… Lawyer Elizabeth Kim, who only works on immigration refugee cases, said it can take anywhere from six months to two years, from the beginning of the process to a decision. She called it a “last resort” to apply, and said lawyers often look to see if other options exist.
“If your goal is to remain in Canada, the last thing you want to do is take the course of action that’s going to give you a removal order automatically issued,” Kim said.
She said there appears to be a misunderstanding that people applying for asylum would simply prefer to stay in Canada. Instead, she said it’s that they cannot return to their home.
“I personally haven’t seen a lot of meritless claims where they’re just looking to [stay in Canada]. I don’t think I’ve seen any,” Kim said.
After a year of declining poll numbers, failed resets and embarrassing scandals, Justin Trudeau’s government is now experiencing a slow-motion collapse, a kind of political “slow heat death”.
Usually, leaders who have stayed in power for nearly a decade, as Trudeau has, can look forward to leaving behind a legacy in the form of a signature policy that will endure beyond their own political lives. But the Canadian PM may not even have that, because on 1 April Canada’s federal carbon tax is set to increase, and what had been a relatively uncontroversial measure when it was introduced nearly five years ago has become nothing short of a political firestorm.
