“Cancel Culture”

The city council of Pickering, Ont., has voted to sanction one of its members for the third time in just over a year.

Coun. Lisa Robinson was given a 90-day pay penalty last month, which comes after she was given a 60-day penalty in October 2023, following a previous 30-day suspension in September 2023. It is the most severe penalty the council can impose.

Mount Royal University’s decision to fire a controversial tenured professor in 2021 was disproportionate, even if her conduct did warrant discipline, an arbitrator has ruled.

The decision, which runs more than 300 pages, was delivered in July. It concerns 10 grievances filed by the professor, Frances Widdowson, and the Mount Royal Faculty Association, tied to Widdowson’s dismissal on Dec. 20, 2021.

The hearing’s main focus was not on comments from Widdowson that made headlines in 2020, when she suggested there were educational benefits to Canada’s residential school system and complained the Black Lives Matter movement had “destroyed” MRU — though she now says the statement about BLM was intended to be hyperbolic.

The only controversy here was the insane reaction of the university and her colleagues.

The fact that I have been required to undergo an open-ended course of re-education in social media use by the body that regulates my profession in Ontario, the College of Psychologists and Behavioural Analysts, is both a matter of public record and something that has become relatively well known. Recently, however, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that I had no right to appeal that decision. That decision exhausted the legal avenues open to me concerning this matter.

“It is almost four years old now. The madly insane efforts to silence the album are somehow indications of its power,” Morrissey tells me. “Otherwise, who would bother to get so overheated about an inconspicuous recluse?”

“The album” in question is Bonfire of Teenagers, the former Smiths singer’s 14th solo album that he completed back in May 2021, when Britain was emerging from its third Covid lockdown, but has yet to see the light of day. The lost album was set to feature contributions from craggy rocker Iggy Pop, half of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and, tantalisingly, Tennessee pop superstar Miley Cyrus. The “inconspicuous recluse” is Morrissey himself. He’s being disingenuous, of course.

A U.S. comedian forced to end his show early in Regina by a diversity advocate has promised a “Banned in Canada Comedy Special” soon as an “American middle finger” to the “cold weather dictator” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Not so long ago, I left my phone behind in a taxi late one night. Drink had been taken and it took me a while to notice my loss, by which time the cab in question was many miles away. I phoned my phone more out of form than hope that it wouldn’t already have been re-SIMmed and heading to an exciting new life. To my surprise and delight, a very well-spoken young man picked it up, and invited me to come to collect it the next morning from Walthamstow in east London.

PICKERING, ONT. – The mayor of an eastern Ontario city and five out of six municipal councillors are condemning the last member of the group for appearing on an online show they say promotes hate speech and extremist views, arguing her increasingly controversial history has “created an environment of fear and intimidation” on council.

In a scathing press release published on Wednesday, Pickering Mayor Kevin Ashe and the rest of Coun. Lisa Robinson’s fellow council members sounded the alarm over her recent appearance on the Kevin J. Johnston show hosted on Rumble, which they call “a far-right video platform.”

They said the show host called the council members “pedophiles” and “Nazis” and said they “deserve a baseball bat to the face” among other pointed remarks, asserting Robinson smiled or nodded instead of refuting Johnston’s comments.

It’s not OK to yell “fire” in a crowded theater. But what about tweeting “civil war” during a moment of U.K. unrest on your social-media platform X?

That’s the question for Elon Musk this past week.

The chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX has fashioned himself as something of a modern day Larry Flynt: a rich guy willing to spend his own fortune as a defender of free speech even if it is offensive to many.