“Cancel Culture”

In March 2019, Caylan Ford was considered a star candidate for the United Conservative Party in Alberta as the NDP government under Rachel Notley called a general election. Despite her young age, Ford had a formidable resumé, including a master’s degree from Oxford University and a record of employment with the Canadian foreign ministry as an international affairs specialist. As a young, accomplished woman, she tempered the list of UCP candidates, which was predominantly conservative men.

Before the end of that month, however, Ford was abruptly forced to resign as a candidate and became a political pariah. She had been struck by cancel culture, and there was no recovering politically.

Europeans Turned into ‘Second Class’ Citizens

December 15. France. Two men, Jacques Baud and Xavier Moreau, who commented online about the war in Ukraine, discovered that they were among 12 people being sanctioned by the European Union for allegedly spreading propaganda for the Russian government. Some of the 12 people are propagandists, just not them. No evidence so far has proven that they had any ties with either the Russian government or Russian intelligence agencies.

Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon says Canada isn’t considering a ban of the social media platform X, though his office says discussions about X’s deepfake controversy are under way.

The platform, which is owned by Elon Musk, has drawn global criticism over sexualized deepfakes created by X’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok, which have proliferated in recent weeks.

OTTAWA – The cancellation of a planned event at York University has led some Conservative MPs to accuse students there of attacking free speech.

Conservative MP Garnett Genuis says he was denied permission to hold an event on campus on Friday.

But the York University Student Centre says its decision was “not politically motivated in any way” and the event simply didn’t meet its requirements.

British comedian Ricky Gervais is standing up to the transgender mob and pushing back against criticism of his jokes about transgender people, among other topics.

I didn’t suspect, when I became a nurse, that I was entering a profession wherein I would be unable to express my political views, in my private life, without being fired and put through interminable legal hell. But that’s what I got, in British Columbia.

This is from a story about the scalping of British settlers and militia by Mi’kmaq warriors in what became known as the “Dartmouth Massacre” on May 13, 1751, from John Wilson’s eyewitness account: “These Indians chain the unfortunate prisoner to a large thick tree, and bind his hands and his feet, then beginning from the middle of the craneum, they cut quite round towards the neck; this being done, they then tear off the skin, leaving the skull bare; an inflammation quickly follows, the patient fevers, and dies in the most exquisite tortures.”

Sometimes I read the news and wonder if we’ve all lost our footing. A few weeks ago, the Vancouver Park Board apologized to the 2SLGBTQ+ community for allowing a Harry Potter event in Stanley Park. The apology caught the attention of J.K. Rowling herself, who joked she hadn’t realized Vancouver had “avowed” her, so the disavowal wasn’t much of a blow.