A new research report says federal cybersecurity legislation is so flawed it would allow authoritarian governments around the world to justify their own repressive laws.
The report by Christopher Parsons of the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab makes 29 recommendations to bolster transparency and accountability of the proposed measures introduced in June by the Liberal government.
The Prime Minister’s Office knew about an anti-racism consultant’s derogatory tweets about “Jewish white supremacists” a month before the government cancelled a $133,000 contract in which he played a key role.
The consultant, Laith Marouf, is an expert for the Community Media Advocacy Centre (CMAC), a non-profit that was awarded the contract earlier this year. Mr. Marouf’s tweets also derided francophones and Black and Indigenous public figures.
OPEC kicked the United States, the West, and the world’s poorest nations in the teeth recently with oil production cuts that will raise prices to help finance Russia’s war against Ukraine and Europe. And what has Canada done to help allay this situation, given that it is a country with one of the biggest oil and gas reserves on the planet?
… The Liberals don’t want the public looking too closely at their flimsy case for invoking the Emergencies Act to oust the Freedom Convoy last February. In the spring, they refused to allow the Conservatives, the official Opposition, to chair or vice-chair the parliamentary committee studying the use of the act, as is common practice for committees. The government has also used cabinet confidentiality to deny requests in court to outline the specific information supposedly used to back up claims that there was a genuine national security threat.
OTTAWA – The City of Ottawa received clear warnings several days before the event that Freedom Convoy protesters were planning to stay for weeks, and in much bigger numbers than the city planned for, according to emails and testimony at the Public Order Emergency Commission.
Gov. Gen. Mary Simon says media’s portrayal of trip expenses was ‘unfair’ but changes could be in the works
Simon argues her travel includes important discussions about world peace
Governor General Mary Simon says that while she thinks the way catering expenses for her trip to the Middle East in March were portrayed in the media was “unfair,” a review is underway to minimize the cost of future voyages.
“I don’t even know what the orders are for meals. But I do know one thing — our meals are not very extravagant on these trips. They’re pretty much like airline meals and the way they were portrayed in the media was pretty unfair, I thought,” Simon said in an interview on CBC’s The House airing Saturday.
Bad idea, Governor General. Bryan is one of those annoying people slavishly devoted to facts. https://t.co/vHygNqZc6x
— Lorrie Goldstein (@sunlorrie) October 16, 2022
In his opening statement at the public inquiry into the feds’ use of the Emergencies Act last week, the lawyer representing the Ontario Provincial Police said the OPP didn’t need an emergency declaration to clear the convoy protests.
Two of the highest-profile convoy protest sites were in the OPP’s jurisdiction: Ottawa, ground zero of the protests, and the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, arguably the costliest of all blockades due to the high volume of goods traded between Canada and the United States over the bridge each day.
OTTAWA – Internal documents show the RCMP refused to release the badge numbers of officers who cleared “Freedom Convoy” protesters from the Ambassador Bridge last winter, citing a risk of violence from their supporters.
The situation was detailed in a briefing note and threat assessment prepared for RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki, who was asked to approve the decision because the force recognized it raised questions around transparency.
RCMP sent Freedom Convoy blacklist to lobbyists
Records show an RCMP blacklist of bank account holders identified as part of the Freedom Convoy movement was sent by email to lobbyists, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.
… The records show the RCMP distributed names, birth dates, phone numbers and more by unencrypted email and neither police nor Cabinet ensured the blacklist was accurate or confidential.
The Canadian Catholic church and its members, many of whom are Indigenous or immigrants, were last year buffeted by a horrendous 260 per cent spike in hate crimes.
Catholics were subject to a far higher escalation in police-reported hate incidents than any other religious or racial group, according to a Statistics Canada study.
MONTREAL—Federalism as usual or constitutional crisis in the making? What is one to make of the fighting words coming out of various provincial capitals these days?
To separate the wheat from the chaff — and there is quite a bit of the latter — the place to start may be the state of play in some top-of-mind files.
All involve, at least to some degree, the notion of provincial autonomy within the federation, but they are each playing out on distinct scenes and will likely be resolved in different venues.
Healthcare? Enough to topple Trudeau?
Whatever else the public inquiry into the Trudeau government’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act to end the chaos in downtown Ottawa earlier this year may or may not determine, it has already triumphantly vindicated one thing: the Emergencies Act itself.
The inquiry, formally known as the Public Order Emergency Commission, was not struck at the government’s discretion, but was explicitly mandated by the act, as was the joint parliamentary committee that is already holding hearings. The government will not be able to avail itself of the “if you knew what we knew” defence, beloved of tyrants everywhere: After the commission has finished its work, we will know what they knew.
Ottawa slams Google-backed survey criticizing Canada’s online news bill as an attempt to ‘avoid accountability’
OTTAWA—A national survey commissioned by Google painting Ottawa’s online news bill as flawed and a potential vehicle for misinformation has been slammed by the federal government as an attempt to “avoid accountability.”
Abacus Data on Friday published a report on Canadians’ views about Bill C-18, a piece of legislation that would compel online platforms like Google and Facebook to share some of the revenues they generate from posting news content on their sites with the outlets that produce the stories. The bill, known as the Online News Act, is now being studied by the House of Commons heritage committee.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland outlined a realistic vision for Canada’s foreign policy last week, with one fundamental flaw.
The realistic vision she outlined to an American think tank was centred on the realization that China and Russia are enemies of the West and that liberal democracies need to help each other — “friend shoring” as she called it — to minimize that threat.
Ministers are facing questions on the whereabouts of almost 500 foreign criminals facing deportation, including offenders convicted of multiple sexual offences.
Among them are around 30 offenders guilty of serious crimes including culpable homicide and other violent offences.
Canada Border Services Agency says that, as of December last year, the “whereabouts are unknown” of 29,719 people facing removal from Canada, including 469 facing deportation “for criminality or criminal convictions in Canada.”
It should come as no surprise that the federal government can’t give the opposition parties any details on sanctions enforcement, since it has no idea how many of those on the sanctions list actually hold assets in Canada.
