Your middle-of-the-week walk in the sun ...
We don't have to trade with China:
Hong Kong’s national security police on Wednesday arrested Cardinal Joseph Zen, one of the most senior Catholic clerics in Asia, and four others who helped run a now-disbanded humanitarian fund for protesters, media reported.
One legal source familiar with the matter told Reuters that five people had been arrested including Zen, 90; senior barrister Margaret Ng, 74; activist and pop singer Denise Ho; former lawmaker Cyd Ho; and former academic Hui Po-keung.
Zen has long been an advocate of democratic causes in Hong Kong and China, and has spoken out against China’s growing authoritarianism under President Xi Jinping.
Hui had already been arrested at the airport on Tuesday night for alleged “collusion with foreign forces” according to media reports, while Ho is already in prison for a separate case.
Zen and the others faced the same charge, media said.
Liar, liar! Sweatpants on fire!:
Police never asked cabinet to invoke the Emergencies Act, the RCMP said last night. The Mounties contradicted repeated claims by Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino that cabinet was “acting on the advice of law enforcement” in taking emergency measures against the Freedom Convoy: “We’re not in the position to provide influence on the government.”**
Handed a list of clients who were allegedly connected to the truckers’ Freedom Convoy protest rally in downtown Ottawa the banks, along with other financial services companies, dutifully froze the accounts in question without ever publicly questioning the authority of the order, or the legitimacy of the list. Neither did they challenge the constitutionality of the directive in court, or at the very least seek legal clarity, as one might expect from institutions whose very business model involves safeguarding other people’s money. They didn’t even demand to see written instructions.
And when the Trudeau government deceptively claimed it was the banks themselves that decided which accounts to freeze – a fiction necessary to claim these actions complied with Canadians’ Charter rights – the banks abided. Even after the fact, the industry is still supporting Ottawa’s narrative by claiming that upending their customer’s financial lives without due process didn’t raise a stir at the local branches.
I'll believe it when I see it, Pierre:
"Canadians believe they've lost control of their lives," said Poilievre in his opening statements, pointing to things such as Trudeau's "big, bossy government" that has "taken their money and told them what to do, leaving the country desperate and divided."
"I'm running for prime minister to give you back control of your life by making Canada the freest nation on earth. Freedom means you should be free to choose your own medical decisions, free from vaccine mandates imposed on you by the state. Freedom means you control your own money, free from government-induced inflation that has made housing, food and gas unaffordable.
"Freedom means expressing yourself without fear, and freedom of the press by defunding the CBC and giving every Canadian the liberty to speak without fear," he said.
Let's see you do it.
Also:
Let’s start with the Section 2 provisions. Canadians will recall that Bill C-10 originally excluded regulating individual users as broadcasters (section 2.1). That provision remains in place:
(2.1) A person who uses a social media service to upload programs for transmission over the Internet and reception by other users of the service – and who is not the provider of the service or the provider’s affiliate, or the agent or mandatary of either of them – does not, by the fact of that use, carry on a broadcasting undertaking for the purposes of this Act.
This section is the source of the government claims that users are not directly regulated by the Act. Section 2.2 provides an additional exclusion for social media services and programming control and Section 2.3 excludes certain Internet transmissions, such as schools, libraries, and museums. These provisions address who is regulated (or more accurately who is not regulated), but do not address what content is regulated.
Gerretsen also points to Section 3(a), which requires that the Act be construed in a manner “consistent with freedom of expression and journalistic, creative and programming independence.” The provision is fine, but doesn’t move the needle given that failure to construe the law in a manner consistent with freedom of expression would make it vulnerable to a constitutional challenge.
Notwithstanding those provisions, the real concern involves regulating user content. Section 4.1(1) addresses the regulation of programs on social media services with the following exclusion:
This Act does not apply in respect of a program that is uploaded to an online undertaking that provides a social media service by a user of the service for transmission over the Internet and reception by other users of the service.
Section 4.1(1) was the provision the government removed from then Bill C-10 last year which opened the door to regulating user generated content. As discussed below, these regulations included discoverability requirements that would allow the CRTC to require platforms to prioritize certain content (and effectively de-prioritize other content). Bill C-11 restores the Section 4.1(1) exception for treating user content as programs subject to potential regulation has been restored.
If the government had stopped there, it could plausibly claim to have excluded user generated content. But instead it added 4.1 (2), which creates an exception to the exception. That exception to the exception – in effect a rule that does allow for regulation of content uploaded to a social media service – says that the Act applies to programs as prescribed by regulations that may be created by the CRTC. The bill continues with Section 4.2, which gives the CRTC the instructions for creating those regulations. I’ve described the result as a legislative pretzel, where the government twists itself around trying to regulate certain content. In particular, it says the CRTC can create regulations that treat content uploaded to social media services as programs by considering three factors:
- whether the program that is uploaded to a social media service directly or indirectly generates revenue
- if the program has been broadcast by a broadcast undertaking that is either licensed or registered with the CRTC
- if the program has been assigned a unique identifier under an international standards system
The law does not tell the CRTC how to weigh these factors. Moreover, these instructions are narrowed by further exclusions for content in which neither the user nor the copyright owner receives revenue (Section 4(3)(a)) as well as for visual images only (Section 4(3)(b).
All of this may seem complicated, but the bottom line is the CRTC is empowered to create regulations applicable to user content uploaded to social media services as programs with three criteria to consider (Rodriguez described it as a “sandbox”). Non-commercial user generated content is out, but user generated content that generates even indirect revenue is subject to potential inclusion within the regulations.
To what might this apply?
TikTok videos are uploaded to the service and may generate indirect revenue, the content is available on licensed or registered services, and the music likely has a unique identifier. The same is true for many Youtube or Instagram videos. Twitch streams may potentially meet the requirements. Podcasts, which can generate revenue, are often available on registered platforms, and may feature an identifier could be caught by the rules.
And:
We recently discovered that the Trudeau government had spied on Canadians far more than previously believed. The government was tracking trips to liquor store and marijuana dispensaries, grocery stores, and much more.
(Sidebar: ahem -
The Government of Canada (via the Public Health Agency of Canada) signed a contract with a company (their first ever) that monitors communicable disease outbreaks using mobility data a month before there was public knowledge of a pandemic.
— The Real Andy Lee Show (@RealAndyLeeShow) May 10, 2022
Yes, you read that right. https://t.co/TpezC6WaRm pic.twitter.com/rNkEOkgy1F
At every step of the way over the past two years, governments have sought to exploit the fear of the population in order to expand their own power.
Often, they have abused their power.
Imagine then what they will do with the power to be the final arbiter of misinformation?
We can be certain that this power will be increasingly turned against their opponents.
Executives at a company that produced millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses attempted to hide evidence that some of the doses were contaminated, according to a congressional report released on May 10.
Emergent BioSolutions “took repeated steps to conceal its quality failures from the federal government and other third parties by limiting access to Bayview, tampering with drug-substance labels to impede FDA oversight, and strategizing to withhold information from HHS following the cross-contamination event in March 2021,” a report from the House Oversight Committee and the Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis concluded.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), identified deficiencies in the manufacturing process at Emergent’s Baltimore, Maryland facility—known as Bayview—in 2020.
In early 2021, Johnson & Johnson announced that up to 15 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine at the facility became contaminated.
Documents obtained by the committees showed that Emergent rejected requests from Johnson & Johnson to visit the site around that time ahead of a follow-up FDA inspection.
One email from a consultant hired by Emergent indicated that employees removed quality-assurance tags from containers of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine drug substance just before inspectors began their tour and put them back into place after inspectors left. The tags alerted employees that portions of the batches were potentially unable to be used.
Several days later, the consultant said that the tags were removed to “avoid drawing attention” to the potential quality issue.
Internal communications obtained by lawmakers show top executives at Emergent were aware of what happened.
The Liberals wet their shorts after the Alberta Court of Appeal rules that Bill C-69, the over-reaching environmental assessments law, is unconstitutional:
Cabinet will ask the Supreme Court to save a 2019 law on environmental impact assessments, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said yesterday. The Alberta Court of Appeal struck down Bill C-69 as unconstitutional: “We will be appealing this decision.”
Do as you're told, Supreme Court.
Also:
Department of Environment electric charging stations go months without seeing a single user, records show. New data confirm a 2019 audit at the Department of Natural Resources that public charging stations average as few as one or two cars daily: “I don’t own an electric vehicle.”
It's just money:
The Public Health Agency cited for pandemic mismanagement paid five-figure bonuses to executives last year, records show. No manager was fired despite an internal audit that found the Agency lacked “needed breadth and expertise to lead.”
Who did you vote for, Canadians?:
Inflation is forcing Canadians to take on second jobs, postpone retirement and cancel vacations, says in-house research by the Privy Council Office. Canadians in federal focus groups said they also feared rising interest rates will throw the housing market into disarray: “Inflationary circumstances had prompted some to delay their retirement or return to the labour force.”
I'm sure it's nothing to be concerned with:
Windsor is losing out on a $2.5-billion plant from LG Chem as the region can't support the amount of electricity needed for the facility, according to the head of Invest WindsorEssex.
The supply plant, according to Invest Windsor-Essex CEO Stephen MacKenzie, could have brought 1,000 to 1,500 jobs to the region, adding on to the economic growth that the city has seen in recent weeks. He said the company is "annoyed that something as basic as electricity infrastructure is hindering the further expansion of our automobility cluster."
"We need to keep fighting for investment, we need the approvals, all players have a role to play, the province has to push for the build out of infrastructure in anticipation of demand and the companies have to build the infrastructure," he said.
MacKenzie told CBC News that this does not impact the recently announced $4.9 billion electric vehicle (EV) battery plant that is set to be operational in Windsor by 2024.
He said the electricity supply to fuel the EV battery plant is secured.
Oh, I'm sure.
You're going to need a bigger boat:
One of the world’s biggest great white sharks, measuring over 12ft, has been spotted prowling close to the United States coast.
The gigantic creature, known as Ironbound, measures up at 12ft 4in and is reported to weigh roughly 452kg (71st).
The shark, named after West Ironbound Island near Lunenburg, was tagged in October 2019 in waters around Nova Scotia, Canada, and has travelled an estimated 13,000 miles since then.
Ironbound’s tracker was fitted by the marine research group Ocearch. It pings whenever the dorsal fin breaks the water surface.
In recent weeks, the great white shark has been located on the US coast and its tracker last pinged off the coast of New Jersey at about 10.30pm on 28 April.
Three days earlier, the shark pinged off the North Carolina coast in a sign that he is migrating north.
“They’re moving north to the very rich feeding grounds off of Canada and the northeastern US,” said Bob Hueter, chief scientist at Ocearch.
“Mating season is over, we think, and Ironbound is on his way north to get into some good feeding ground and bulk up again for the next year.”
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