Sometimes, policymakers and analysts see the world as they wish it was, rather than as it is. This can lead to bad decisions. In politics, it can lead to defeat at the polls.
Earlier this year, a team led by David Gordon, an urban studies professor at Queen’s University, released the latest version of the Canada Suburbs Atlas.
Using census data, satellite and street images and information from local experts, the team plotted growth patterns for 41 Canadian cities between 2016 and 2021.
Russia, China and the West are scrambling for control over the frozen tundra.
The Arctic Circle runs for nearly 10,000 miles. Inside it, just four million people live on this vast, desolate expanse of land, sea and ice. Comprising four per cent of the Earth’s surface, the Arctic is fiercely inhospitable and mostly still untouched.
Much of the Arctic consists of the northern reaches of eight sovereign states. Norway borders Russia in the Arctic, but only at its easternmost tip in the north. Finland has a much longer, 830-mile border with Russia, the northern part of which lies inside the Arctic Circle. Russia itself boasts half of the Arctic Ocean’s coastline and half of the Arctic’s population. Then there is Sweden, Denmark (which owns Greenland), Iceland, Canada and the US, whose Alaskan territory is separated from Russia by the 55-mile-wide Bering Strait.
During a 2015 visit to China, MP Han Dong was photographed wearing a red scarf, which is a symbol of the Young Pioneers, a youth organization under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The photo, released by the Chinese Consulate in Toronto, also featured former Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne. Both were photographed wearing the scarves alongside children at a Shanghai public school as part of an Ontario business delegation. At the time, Mr. Dong was a member of provincial parliament in Ms. Wynne’s Liberal government.
A new study on Canadian social class and political identity defies familiar stereotypes about the ideological alignment of rich people versus poor people.
It also offers a new perspective on that most popular of all social classes, to which all decent people think they belong, sometimes despite strong evidence to the contrary, and to whom all politicians most fervently pitch — the middle class.
As attention finally shifted away from the pandemic, 2023 saw everything from the rise and fall of political fortunes, to consequential pieces of legislation being introduced or passed, to a heightened focus on Chinese interference, and much more.
It’s hard to have faith in the public inquiry into foreign election interference when the judge in charge is acting the way she is.
Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue has denied the Conservative Party full standing at the inquiry twice now and warned them against complaining too much.
“… This may surprise the average Canadian given that so much of the government is noticeably threadbare and underfunded. Canadians are dying in hospital waiting rooms due to unprecedented shortages in health care. The navy’s so strapped for cash that it can only deploy one offshore patrol vessel at a time. The RCMP’s federal policing is so under-resourced that Parliamentarians are now calling it a threat to national security. And even $600 billion in cumulative debt hasn’t been enough for the Liberals to honour their 2015 campaign promise to ensure universal clean water on First Nations reserves.”
Canada already has one of the most liberal assisted death laws in the world, offering the practice to terminally and chronically ill Canadians.
But under a law scheduled to take effect in March assisted dying would also become accessible to people whose only medical condition is mental illness, making Canada one of about half a dozen countries to permit the procedure for that category of people.
That move has divided Canadians, some of whom view it as a sign that the country’s public health care system is not offering adequate psychiatric care, which is notoriously underfunded and in high demand.
Good news for Trudeau voters!
Justin Trudeau’s government awards MEDAL to ‘champion of diversity’ trans activist who got Canada’s oldest rape shelter defunded for refusing to house transgender women
A transgender activist who had city funding stripped from Canada’s oldest rape shelter has been awarded a medal as a ‘champion of diversity’.
Morgane Oger, a transgender woman, was given a Meritorious Service Medal by Canadian Governor-General Mary Simon on December 7.
Official photos show her receiving the award alongside dozens of other Canadians honored for their ‘exceptional deeds’.
About two months ago, following the New Democrats’ national convention, I predicted a federal election was in the offing for 2024. While the NDP rank-and-file voted 81% confidence in their leader, Jagmeet Singh, they also showed impatience with their party’s submission to the Trudeau Liberals.
The NDP is hoping to translate policy success into political success when some key elements of their supply-and-confidence agreement with the Liberals roll out in 2024 — but one polling analyst says the party’s numbers don’t seem to be budging.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh told CBC News Network’s Power & Politics that his main goal is to push for policies that help Canadians. But he conceded that he hopes the NDP can get some credit for some of the government’s recent policy moves.
Canada issued a travel advisory for the United States over LGBT-related laws last summer at the prompting of concerned Health Canada staff, access to information records obtained by the National Post show.
That travel advisory, which remains in effect since it was issued Aug. 29, reads: “Some states have enacted laws and policies that may affect 2SLGBTQI+ persons. Check relevant state and local laws.” Following outcry, Deputy Prime Minster Chrystia Freeland said the move was initiated by the public service and was in no way politically motivated.
Canada’s bureaucrats and their unions need to be crushed.
h/t Mauser
So there sat Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and National Post columnist Rex Murphy in a cinderblock hallway that looked like one of the nation’s better prisons or lesser university dorms, a blue tinsel Christmas tree beside them.
You knew you were in for a treat when Mr. Murphy started out with this: “You’ve had in this particular year, the greatest – to some people surprising – acceleration both in your popular standing and in the sway of your politics, and – I’d like to say so – your performance in the House. What is it that came together that convinced enough people that you were more than a viable candidate for the next prime ministership?”
Federal Ballot: CPC 41, LPC 27, NDP 18, BQ 7, GPC 5, PPC 1 – Poilievre hits a 10-year Conservative leader high on preferred PM tracking (Nanos)
A government bill to restrict underage access to pornography may hinder the privacy of Canadians and give Ottawa stronger online censorship control, according to an internet expert.
Law professor and Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-Commerce Law Michael Geist recently raised concerns about the enforcement measures tucked into Bill S-210.
Deep down, everyone who has not been driven mad by religious obscurantism or some other ideology understands the value of peace. Ordinary people want to meet partners, secure fulfilling jobs, live in comfort and find good schools for their children. In their spare time, they like to meet with friends, play sports, go to the cinema or practice obscure hobbies. They want — like Candide — to cultivate their gardens, and they recognize that this modest wish would be imperilled by war.
