Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week baton twirl ...

There seems to be a rash of cop shootings lately:

A 19-year-old will be charged with first-degree murder in the death of a Toronto police constable shot in an exchange of gunfire in the city's northwest end Thursday morning, police say.

The shooting happened as officers were conducting an investigation linked to several other incidents involving firearms around the Greater Toronto Area, Toronto police Chief Demkiw said, including one that took place at the U.S. consulate in March.

Const. Marc Pinizzotto, 43, was "a hero in life, not death," Demkiw said at a news conference outside Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. Pinizzotto was an 18-year veteran of the force who spent the last five years on the emergency task force (ETF), he said. 

"There's a very heavy sorrow in our community right now," Demkiw told reporters through tears.

Special Investigations Unit spokesperson Monica Hudon said an "exchange of gunfire" broke out while police were carrying out a search warrant at a residential building near Tretheway Drive and Black Creek Drive around 5:40 a.m.

The police watchdog is investigating the circumstances that led to the shooting and officer's death.

**

A man who witnessed a shooting that left two Mounties seriously hurt in a Saskatchewan city says the alleged gunman got into a fight with his neighbour over a shed before police arrived.

Richard Goebel says he saw the fight Sunday night in Melville, a city of about 4,500 northeast of Regina.

He says the accused gunman had painted his neighbour's shed without permission, which angered the neighbour.

"The neighbour was like, 'Why are you painting my bloody shed,'" Goebel said in a phone interview Monday. "There was pushing, shoving and arguing."

Goebel said the accused, who was wearing a mask, then walked back to his home and grabbed what looked like an "upside down" broom. The man went into his backyard, and Goebel said he heard gunshots.

The neighbour ran back into his house when the shots went off, Goebel added.

"(My wife and I) seen like eight big flashes," he said. "We heard the whistle after the bang, so we knew it was gun."

RCMP said the two Mounties were in stable condition in a Regina hospital but with serious and potentially life-altering injuries.

Police charged a 55-year-old man with 11 offences, including two counts of attempted murder. Markus Dodge of Melville was set to appear Tuesday in court in Yorkton, Sask.

**

On Monday, in Montreal’s Côte-des-Neiges neighbourhood, 25-year-old Seth Hatfield of Lethbridge, Alta., is alleged to have carried out a shooting that resulted in the deaths of an officer and a civilian before he was fatally shot by police. Initial media reports described Hatfield as an “incel” who sought to target women. Yet his 104-page manifesto is unarguably pro-communist, anti-western and anti-Zionist. It blames what he sees as the displacement of monogamy not on women, but on capitalism and consumer culture.

 

(Sidebar: see the manifesto here. Tell me which might be more shocking.)

 

The obvious violence that dare not speak its name:

The Rape Gang Inquiry Report, chaired by British MP Rupert Lowe and led by survivor Sammy Woodhouse, exposes the systematic grooming and sexual exploitation of vulnerable, overwhelmingly white British girls by predominantly Muslim Pakistani gangs in towns and cities throughout the United Kingdom.

But will political parties have the courage to act on the report’s findings, despite possible political ramifications?

The independent, 219-page report was released on June 16. A crowdfunding campaign raised 794,677 pounds from over 20,000 concerned Britons in order to produce it.

The report recounts the stories of girls who were systematically groomed by gangs when they were as young as 11. The testimonies are not for the faint of heart.

Young girls were befriended, plied with alcohol and drugs, often taken from schools and care homes and subjected to repeated rape, gang rape, trafficking and torture.

Some were filmed so they could be blackmailed, and told they were “white trash.” Those who became pregnant due to the rapes endured miscarriages, forced abortions or gave birth to children who were taken by the state. Some, the report says, were taken to the Middle East and forced into arranged marriages.

Before Woodhouse became a whistleblower who helped expose the abuse of over 1,400 girls in Rotherham, England, through an anonymous interview with the Times in 2013, she was groomed at age 14 by Arshid Hussain, then 24, the ringleader of a Pakistani-heritage child exploitation gang.

The report details the failure of numerous institutions to protect these girls, including the police, social services, the National Health Service and schools.

Perhaps worse, it suggests that whistleblowers who tried to report these rapists were sometimes accused of racism and Islamophobia.

The report lays the ultimate blame on the state for allowing these gangs to operate with impunity.

It suggests that British and Scottish political parties were afraid of being accused of racism or losing political support from certain demographics, and that these fears took “precedence over the protection of British children.”

It points to a lack of political will as the cause of the decades-long failure of the state and its institutions to deal with these grooming gangs, noting that the Labour party first flat-out refused to launch a public inquiry and only later conceded under “considerable pressure.”

The report also acknowledges that an official government inquiry into grooming gangs has recently been launched, but suggests it will take too long and expresses concern that there is “no guarantee that it will adequately address the politically sensitive ethnoreligious nature of the phenomenon.”

The government’s official Independent Inquiry into Grooming Gangs report has a budget of 65-million pounds and must be submitted no later than March 31, 2029 .

A research briefing on the inquiry says it’s required to “consider how the ethnicity, religion and culture of both perpetrators and victims may have influenced offending patterns, as well as institutional responses to abuse.”

It also acknowledges that “men of Asian ethnicity are over-represented as perpetrators in group-based child sexual exploitation.”

However, it does not provide more specifics about their ethnicity, nor does it mention any particular religion, despite the fact that it has been largely recognized that the men in these gangs have been disproportionately Pakistani and Muslim.

Birds of a feather and so on:

Prime Minister Mark Carney is saying goodbye to his British counterpart after the two met repeatedly to discuss a shared vision for western countries.

Conceding that he had lost the support of the party membership, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced Monday he will resign once his Labour Party chooses a new leader.

 "Throughout, and in the face of exceptional challenges, Keir has acted with principle, determination, and collaboration," Carney wrote on the platform X. "The world is safer and allies are more united because of his efforts."

Carney noted Starmer's work to support Ukraine by convening the Coalition of the Willing, a group of nations which has offered to safeguard a future ceasefire.

Carney also praised Starmer's work to "strengthen NATO, improve Arctic co-operation, and deepen the historic partnership between Canada and the United Kingdom."

"I am grateful for your friendship," he added.

Carney and Starmer both came into office with high popularity on a centre-left platform that included some fiscally conservative measures. The two have had several bilateral meetings in both London and Ottawa over the 15 months since Carney became prime minister.

Starmer struggled with economic promises and faced criticism for appointing scandal-linked figures. His position was undermined by dismal poll numbers and substantial losses in May elections at the local level.

One of Starmer's possible successors is former Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, who easily won a seat in the House of Commons in a recent byelection.

Burnham has promised not to raise taxes but it is not clear how he would position the U.K. in numerous areas, including foreign policy.

Starmer's resignation came the day before Britain marks the 10th anniversary of its vote to leave the European Union — a decision that continues to roil the country’s economy and politics.

 

It's just (your) money:

Cabinet’s $393,000-a year Chief Science Advisor billed taxpayers for 12 business-class flights to Paris, records show. Nemer earlier told MPs she couldn’t recall flying business class while running up more than $400,000 in expenses: “What exactly are Canadian taxpayers paying you to do?”

 

The Liberals take their marching orders from China.

The Americans do not:

Foreign Minister Anita Anand yesterday could not say how cabinet’s approval for 278,989 imported Chinese battery electric cars will comply with a federal ban on slave-made goods. “I cannot confirm what will be on the list,” she said.

**

Canadian statistics show very few shipments suspected of containing goods made from forced labour have been detained and denied entry since 2020. The CBSA previously told The Epoch Times that, of the 48 shipments it detained from 2020 to late 2025, only two were prohibited entry, including a shipment of textile products in 2024 and a shipment of frozen seafood in 2025—both from China.

Comparatively, U.S. customs denied entry to nearly 23,000 shipments suspected of containing goods made from forced labour over a similar time span under its Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.

The USTR also found Canada “has not taken action to restrict the importation” of goods with a “known risk” of forced labour in regions of concern.

The CBSA said that while the country or region of origin “may serve as a risk indicator,” Canadian legislation does not allow goods to be prohibited solely on that basis.

The USTR pointed to a 2021 report by Above Ground, a Canadian human rights organization, indicating there is a “high risk” that Canadian companies are profiting from forced labour abroad.

The report notes research documenting widespread forced labour in the production of certain goods made in particular regions that are in the Canadian market, such as seafood from Thailand, coffee from Brazil, cocoa from Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, and clothing and other products made from cotton. 

 

Greed moves the Liberals in certain directions.

Nature doesn’t care about your performance virtue:

A small town west of Montreal has decided to officially recognize trees as living beings with rights of their own, in what an environmental organization describes as a first in Quebec and Canada.

A resolution adopted by Terrasse-Vaudreuil city council on June 9 declares that trees are worthy of protection, "including the right to life, to natural growth, to integrity and to regeneration."

Mayor Michel Bourdeau says Quebec filmmaker André Desrochers inspired the community to take action.

He said Desrochers' film, called "Des arbes et des arts" convinced citizens that trees are living entities that live, breathe and communicate with each other through their root systems.

"A tree is like a human being," Bourdeau said. "It breathes, it lives, it takes in water. It protects us from all sorts of things."

How it's going: 

 

Thousands of people in Montreal are without power, and some basements are inundated with water after heavy rain made its way through the region, causing flooding and outages.

According to Environment Canada, some parts of Montreal's West Island and South Shore received between 100 and 150 millimetres of rain in just a few hours on Saturday.

"The situation is extremely serious," said Jim Beis, mayor of the Montreal borough of Pierrefonds-Roxboro.

He said his community saw numbers higher than Environment Canada's report, estimating 150 to 170 mm fell in about two hours. The mayor added "several hundred" homes were severely flooded, and roads were closed in both Pierrefonds and Dollard-Des Ormeaux.

Communities in Pointe-Claire and Dorval have also been affected to certain extents, he said, according to his counterparts in those boroughs.

Hydro-Quebec said as of Sunday morning, about 4,500 addresses were still impacted by service interruptions.

 

Everybody is special:

At a B.C. town hall last week, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said there are too many federally recognized heritage months, and that it’s “kind of getting hard to keep track of which month is for what cause or for what group.”

The spur for the question appears to have been a Liberal MP’s recent attempt to have July declared as Somali Heritage Month.

In reply, Conservative MP Jamil Jivani sponsored a petition for Canada to never declare another heritage month ever again.

“End the tokenism practice of recognizing a day or month in commemoration of any ethnic or heritage group; and celebrate Canadians for the sake of being Canadian not based on ethnicity or ancestry,” reads the text.

According to the Department of Canadian Heritage, there are 17 “heritage months” that are officially observed by the Government of Canada.

This is obviously more than there are months in the calendar, meaning that some months are concurrently recognized as multiple heritage months at the same time.

The busiest single month for this happens to be the current month. Right now, Canada is officially recognizing National Indigenous History Month, Italian Heritage Month, Filipino Heritage Month and Portuguese Heritage Month.

June also used to be Pride Month, until the Department of Canadian Heritage upgraded it to the four-month-long “Pride Season,” meaning that one third of the Canadian year is now under pride observation.

In addition, the Government of Canada also recognizes five commemorative weeks, and 48 “important and commemorate days.”

This includes the traditional entries of Remembrance Day, Victoria Day, National Flag of Canada Day and Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day.

But particularly over the last decade, special days have been added to virtually every week in the Canadian calendar, ranging from Human Rights Day (December 10), to National Day of Observance for COVID-19 (March 11) to Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval (July 28), which marks the forced 1750s removal of Acadians from the Maritimes.

As to which group gets the most days, Indigenous Canadians get six. There’s National Ribbon Skirt Day, National Indigenous Languages Day, National Indigenous Peoples Day, Indigenous Veterans Day, Red Dress Day, and National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

In second place, it’s a tie between the military and transgender people, with four each.

The military has the Anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, Canadian Armed Forces Day, Remembrance Day and the aforementioned Indigenous Veterans Day.

While for transgendered Canadians, there is International Transgender Day of Visibility, Transgender Day of Remembrance and International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia and. There’s also the International Day of Pink, which an official Government of Canada write-up describes as a day of action against “transphobia and transmisogyny.”

Canada is proud to be home to one of the largest Tamil diasporas in the world. This January, we celebrate the richness of Tamil language & culture, honour the incredible contributions of Tamil communities, and recognize their courage and resilience.  #TamilHeritageMonth

Transgender Day of Remembrance is not only held shortly after conventional Remembrance Day, but it’s also the only day in the calendar to share billing with another calendar day, as November 20 was already National Child Day.

Altogether, there are now just 20 days, all of them in December, in which the Government of Canada isn’t officially commemorating something.

On December 10, the federally recognized 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence comes to an end, and Tamil Heritage Month doesn’t begin until January 1.

In the interim there is only the Anniversary of the Statute of Westminster, which is marked on December 11.

 

The proponents of the fake state of Khalistan have gotten the last laugh:

Tears streamed down Nisha Thampi’s face Tuesday as she hugged and thanked local residents here who rushed to help after Air India Flight 182 exploded over the Atlantic 41 years ago.

She met fishermen who headed out to sea hoping to aid the rescue mission. She met police officers involved in identifying the 131 victims recovered and helping families who arrived from overseas.

Thampi, an Ottawa physician, was almost six when her mother Vijaya was killed along with 328 others after a B.C.-built bomb brought the plane down 135 kilometres from here.

Despite the devastating loss, Thampi said she felt nothing but gratitude Tuesday after a moving memorial service paid tribute to the victims and the Irish impacted by the disaster.

“It’s incredibly healing to be surrounded by community,” Thampi said. “There’s a learning here, which is about seeing humanity in others and caring for others in their deepest, darkest hours.”

She now has a better understanding of what the local people, as well as first responders, went through at the time.

“This affected way more than the families of 329 people. It affected a community, multiple communities, generations of those communities.”

Thampi and representatives of two other victims’ families stood around a sundial monument on the stunning rocky shore for a minute of silence at 8:12 a.m. — the moment the flight exploded on June 23, 1985.

Canadian investigators said B.C.’s Babbar Khalsa separatist group targeted Air India to hit the Indian government, which owned the airline at the time. Another B.C. suitcase bomb exploded the same day at Japan’s Narita Airport, killing two baggage handlers.

Two B.C. men were eventually charged in the bombings, which remain Canada’s deadliest terrorist attack. But they were acquitted in 2005. A third pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

It's Just An Economy

Nothing to worry about:

A new study from the Fraser Institute says that every Canadian this year will pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars to service the interest on federal and provincial debt, with Newfoundlanders and Manitobans paying the most, and Albertans the least.

“For more than a decade, deficit spending and growing government debt have become a trend for many Canadian governments,” says the report, authored by Jake Fuss, director of Fiscal Studies at the Fraser Institute. “In 2025/26, the federal government and all ten provinces are projected to record deficits.”

It notes that combined federal and provincial net debt is expected to reach a record high $2.4 trillion in 2025/26. “It is expected this trend will continue for the foreseeable future, as every province and the federal government project that they will continue running deficits in 2026/27.”

This amounts to an expected $94.4 billion spent on interest payments in 2025/26 by the federal and provincial governments.

“Residents in Newfoundland & Labrador face by far the highest combined federal-provincial interest payments per person: $3,348,” the report notes. “Manitoba is the next highest at $2,816 per person.” The lowest amount is in Alberta, where it amounts to $1,845.

More than half of those costs come from the federal government, which will spend a projected $54 billion on debt servicing charges in 2025/26, roughly equivalent to the $54.7 billion the government will spend on the Canada Health Transfer, and far more than it spends on childcare benefits ($38.1 billion).

Fuss told National Post that those kinds of comparisons are useful to illustrate to Canadians the size of the problem of government debt payments.

“If we’re spending this money on interest costs, that’s money that’s not going towards those programs you care about, like education, health care, pensions, things like that,” he said. “And ultimately we are basically spending the same amount or more on interest costs than we are spending on K-to-12 education, for instance.”

The report notes specifics for several provinces. In Ontario, where every citizen will pay $2,282 to cover debt interest payments, the provincial government is projected to spend $16 billion on interest costs.

“This is $2 billion more than what the province spends on post-secondary education,” the report notes.

It adds: “According to the 2026 Ontario budget, interest costs are projected to grow at an average annual rate of 7.1 per cent between 2025/26 and 2028/29. In contrast, the annual growth rate on spending for health care is expected to be 2.9 per cent. Put simply, interest costs are one of the fastest growing line items in the Ontario budget.”

Meanwhile, B.C. is expected to spend $5 billion on provincial interest payments in 2025/26, more than the $4.5 billion it spends on child welfare. And in Alberta, spending on provincial interest payments ($2.9 billion) is nearly twice the amount the province expects to spend on the Department of Children and Family Services ($1.6 billion).

**

In the 1983–1989 era, a median Canadian home cost roughly three times the median household income. Today it costs eight times that much. That ratio has deteriorated in every single era without exception, under every government of every partisan stripe. Housing affordability is not a recent problem. It is a 40-year process of slow exclusion from the primary vehicle through which ordinary Canadian families built intergenerational wealth.

The real GDP per capita figure tells an equally sobering story. Canada grew at roughly 2.8 percent per capita in the 1980s recovery. That figure has declined in every subsequent era, reaching an almost negligible 0.3 percent in 2020–2025—and that number is itself flattering, distorted upward by the COVID-19 recovery bounce and by the fact that Canada’s rapid population growth through immigration diluted per capita output even as headline GDP appeared to grow. In plain terms, the average Canadian got significantly poorer on a per-person basis in the most recent era even as the economy appeared to expand.

**

Budget deficits and increasing debt have become serious fiscal challenges facing the federal and many provincial governments. Since 2007/08, combined federal and provincial net debt (inflation-adjusted) has nearly doubled from $1.24 trillion to a projected $2.44 trillion in 2025/26.

Between 2019/20 (the last year before COVID) and 2025/26, the combined federal-provincial debt-to-GDP ratio is expected to grow from 65.9 percent to 75.4 percent. Moreover, the federal and provincial governments are on track to have collectively accumulated $603.7 billion (inflation-adjusted) in total net debt between 2019/20 and 2025/26, an increase of 32.8 percent.

Among the provinces, Manitoba has the highest combined federal-provincial debt-to-GDP ratio (91.3 percent), while Alberta has the lowest (43.4 percent). Newfoundland and Labrador has the highest combined debt per person ($71,611), followed by Ontario ($63,574) and Quebec ($63,488). In contrast, Alberta has the lowest debt per person in the country with $42,368.

Interest payments are a major consequence of debt accumulation. Governments must make interest payments on their debt similar to households that must pay interest on borrowing related to mortgages, vehicles, or credit card spending. Revenues directed towards interest payments mean that in the future there will be less money available for tax cuts or government programs such as health care, education, and social services.

The federal and provincial governments must develop long-term plans to meaningfully address the growing debt problem in Canada.

**

According to the MEI, the gap between Canadian investment abroad and foreign investment in Canada was roughly 14% in 2014. In other words, Canadians invested slightly more abroad that year compared to what foreigners invested in Canada. By 2025, that gap had more than doubled. Canadian investment abroad is now roughly 33% more than foreign investment here in Canada.

Canadian firms and pension funds investing abroad can be a sign of global competitiveness.

(Sidebar: you don’t say.)

But it raises important questions: Why are returns consistently perceived to be stronger abroad than they are in Canada? Why are Canadian companies investing abroad so much more than foreign companies are investing here?

Ultimately, it’s a question of public policy. Companies don’t have the confidence to invest in Canada because of high taxes, overregulation, and deteriorating government finances. If public policies don’t change soon, the gap between Canadian investment abroad and foreign investment in Canada will only continue to grow.

**

First Nations in British Columbia received more than $27 billion from the federal government over a 23-year period, a new report finds.

The report from the Aristotle Foundation published on June 16 highlights the scale of government financial transfers to indigenous communities in B.C. between fiscal years 2001-2002 and 2024-2025. It determined that, after adjusting for inflation, the average annual amount equalled $1.2 billion annually for a total of $27.2 billion.

The largest transfers were from the departments of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Indigenous Services Canada, which totalled $24.6 billion, according to the report. Next was the department of health at $1.3 billion, followed by the department of Employment and Social Development Canada at $746.3 million. The smallest transfer was reported by the ministry of justice, which contributed $11.4 million during the entire reporting period.

The figures used in the report were compiled using federal data from Indigenous Services Canada and its predecessor departments.

The data also showed that federal funding for B.C. First Nations experienced distinct phases of growth, dropping in 2004-2005, just prior to the Liberal Party losing the 2006 federal election to the Conservatives, before rebounding to $917 million.

Transfers averaged just over $1 billion annually from 2006 to 2015 under Stephen Harper’s Tory government but saw a substantial increase after Justin Trudeau’s Liberals assumed office, the report found. The transfers averaged more than $1.4 billion over nine years under the Trudeau Liberals, but reached a peak of $2.74 billion in the 2022-2023 fiscal year, representing a 240 percent increase compared to the average annual transfer over the previous 20 years.

Say the Quiet Part Loud

Oops:

The look on Carney’s face when someone obviously signals to him to shut up because he’s on a hot mic.

Lolz. 😆 pic.twitter.com/Zeg03Qa4Js pic.twitter.com/3hN1oMWs8B

— Stacey (@StaceyMonette27) June 22, 2026

**

Prime Minister Mark Carney has once again been caught on a live microphone, this time appearing to tell the Croatian prime minister that his MPs are just “useful for votes.”

The comments were overheard by a media camera pool in Ottawa on Monday when Carney welcomed Croatian leader Andrej Plenković during his first-ever visit to Canada.

Before the two leaders announced a new commercial deal between Canada’s Remote Robotic and Croatia’s Orqa to expand drone manufacturing in Canada, they could be seen making small talk about the differences between their respective political systems.

“You just have MPs, and they’re not ... they’re useful for votes,” Carney said, before laughing.

“No, but your model is the British system. If you’re not elected, you couldn’t be the PM,” Plenković responded.

“Yep, yep, yep,” Carney replied, appearing to backtrack.

“Same with all the cabinet members, exactly.”

The exchange quickly circulated online, with critics arguing it reflected a dismissive view of elected MPs.

 

Remember – he was supposed to be smarter than Justin.

Follow the Money

Yet another crooked deal:

When Mark Carney and David Eby and Gregor Robertson stood together in South Vancouver’s River District this month, a short drive from the Richmond casino that gave the world the phrase “Vancouver Model,” they did so flanked by condo towers where empty two-bedroom units are marketed at close to $1.1 million.

It was a fitting backdrop.

The Prime Minister and the Premier had come to announce up to $3.2 billion in measures to lower developers’ costs and, in the plan’s most striking provision, to convert more than 2,200 vacant condominium units into affordable homes. Many of the unsold units sit in this corridor of South Vancouver, Richmond and Burnaby — markets shaped for decades by offshore demand from China and Hong Kong. Within hours the word for Carney’s “innovative” plan had been chosen, and it has stuck: a bailout.

Carney did not dispute the core of it. “Developers are stuck,” he said at the announcement. “They don’t want to sell at a loss.” Pierre Poilievre flew to the city, after a social-media firestorm led by market analysts, to say the government wants to “privatize the profit and socialize the losses.” But the most damaging questions are not partisan.

British Columbia is facing a glut of empty condos, with some developers sliding toward insolvency, and even sympathetic experts are uneasy. Andy Yan, the urban planner who directs Simon Fraser University’s City Program, asked aloud whether the plan was really “a bailout in terms of bad business decisions by some of these developers.” The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation counts 4,376 completed condos sitting empty in Metro Vancouver, a 76 percent jump in a year, and Yan’s own analysis finds a third of them priced above $1 million — which sharpens his central question, how deep a discount the governments could possibly negotiate to make such units affordable.

Strip away the political noise and a more interesting question surfaces. If the public is being asked to clear thousands of unsold condos off developers’ books, what exactly are Canadian taxpayers preserving, and who built it?

Asked directly by Business in Vancouver whether he would like to see Metro Vancouver prices fall further, Carney declined to answer the question he was asked, pivoting instead to housing “that works relative to what people’s incomes are.”

He has been consistent in this evasion.

When he made Gregor Robertson his housing minister in May 2025 — Robertson having presided as Vancouver’s mayor over a near-doubling of home prices — a reporter asked whether the appointment signaled that the government did not want prices to come down. “You would be very hard-pressed to make that conclusion,” Carney replied. The plan’s own language gives the game away. The Prime Minister described it as a way to “clear off on the books, this overhang.” This is not a program built to let an inflated market fall toward what Canadians earn. It is a program built to hold a price level in place by moving developers’ unsold inventory onto the public balance sheet.

To understand whose price level it is, follow the connective figure in Vancouver’s real-estate politics for the past two decades: the condo marketer Bob Rennie, the man the industry called its king. Rennie sold the pre-sale towers that define the skyline. He was the British Columbia Liberals’ top fundraiser, the broker who made property developers the party’s leading donors. In 2012 he was appointed to the board of BC Housing, the very Crown agency now being used to absorb unsold condos. And in 2014, as the affordability crisis deepened, I reported in The Province that Rennie had organized an exclusive $25,000-a-plate lunch giving developers a private audience with Mayor Robertson.

Rennie’s role is not confined to the past. In March 2025, weeks before the federal election, he told an industry panel that he was “working with Carney” on a plan to use federal housing-agency financing to bring foreign buyers back into the condo market — “let’s allow foreign buyers to buy it,” he said, so as to “show the world we are open for business.” The condo king lobbied, by his own account, to reopen Vancouver’s towers to offshore capital; when that capital did not return and the towers sat empty, the same Carney government he named is now buying the inventory at public expense.

Rennie was not alone in pressing to reopen the door. During the same campaign, a Vancouver Liberal candidate — a realtor who had spent years marketing British Columbia homes to luxury buyers at property shows in China — also reportedly called for weakening the foreign-buyer ban. Confronted by Global News with the charge that his China marketing made local housing less affordable, he was unrepentant: “I don’t think I’m creating a problem at all. I think I’m creating solutions.”

Which returns us to the market structure.

In 2015, Andy Yan analyzed six months of sales in three of the city’s most expensive west-side neighborhoods and found that two-thirds of buyers were signing with non-anglicized Chinese names. Gregor Robertson — now Mark Carney’s housing minister, who stood beside Eby and Carney at the South Vancouver bailout announcement last week — was then Vancouver’s mayor. Robertson, like a number of Vancouver developers, suggested that Yan’s study of the dominance of mortgages from mainland China in Vancouver real estate was racist. “This can’t be about race, it can’t be about dividing people,” he said. Yan, who is Chinese-Canadian, answered that it was never about the messenger but about the message.

What Yan had glimpsed was not a caricature of buyers arriving with suitcases of cash. It was quieter and more consequential. The money was not bypassing the banking system; it was flowing through it. “It wasn’t bags of cash that were being used to purchase Vancouver homes outright,” Yan told me when we revisited his work. “They were loans being used.”

How those loans were approved is the part of the story I have spent years documenting. In a 2024 investigation for The Bureau, a Toronto-area bank whistleblower described mortgage files in which casino workers and part-time hairdressers were recorded as earning several hundred thousand dollars a year from remote jobs in China, incomes that secured seven-figure loans. Canada’s financial-intelligence agency, studying some 48,000 diaspora transactions in 2023, found professional launderers routing wire transfers through Hong Kong, with mortgage payments, in its words, “sourced from incoming funds from China.” This is the casino-and-real-estate apparatus that British Columbia’s Cullen Commission spent years examining — the same system through which $1.2 billion in cash moved through provincial casinos in a single year, the Vancouver Model that gave a decade of inquiry its name.

What the evidence supports — from Yan’s land titles to the bank documents to the laundering apparatus the Cullen Commission mapped — is not that any one developer’s tower was intentionally built on dirty money. It is that murky offshore flows were part of Vancouver’s substrate; they were its real-estate structure, amplifying the prices that everyone else, earning local incomes, then had to meet.

Strip the Carney announcement to its logic and this is what remains. A price level inflated over a decade by capital the city refused to trace is to be held in place at public expense, by leaders who were present when the warnings were dismissed and when they were confirmed, on the advice of an industry whose powerful figures are working to let that capital back in.

The buyer this program claims to rescue — the Canadian whose income cannot reach a million-dollar two-bedroom — is precisely the person the bailout ensures will keep getting priced out.

The answer to a market distorted by money no one will trace back to China, is not to make the public the buyer of last resort. It is to let the price fall to what the people who actually live in Canada, can pay.

**

Remember Carney secured a Bank of China bailout on Brookfield’s falling Shanghai real
estate portfolio in 2024. China’s condo bubble (shadow banking) popped and Vancouver’s offshore condo sale bubble popped alongside it. The ‘end buyer’ of these units in Burnaby and Richmond is… https://t.co/s40qirt5MP

— Sam Cooper (@scoopercooper) June 22, 2026

**

🤔 pic.twitter.com/4GpkyMOZm1

— CrazyCanuk (@CanukCrazy) June 22, 2026

 **

This bailout underscores exactly why British Columbians need strong, independent leadership.

Instead of addressing the money laundering that has distorted our housing market and funded organized crime, Ottawa and the NDP are once again propping up the system that benefits… https://t.co/LQdLpwdoqj pic.twitter.com/TfGRxR36M9

— Kerry-Lynne Findlay (@KerryLynneFindl) June 20, 2026

Oh, good luck getting to the bottom of this in the equivalent of several feudal townships ruled over by robber-barons, which sums up Canada, really.

Poll Suggests Canadians Favour the Death Penalty

We already kill the unborn and grandmothers.

Why not kill people who have it coming?:

A growing number of Canadians say they support the return of the death penalty in this country for convicted murderers, a new poll has found, although that percentage drops when people are given the opportunity to choose life imprisonment with no chance of parole.

Data from Research Co., a Vancouver-based market research and public opinion polling firm, found that 60 per cent of Canadians said they would support reinstating the death penalty for murder in Canada, a six-point increase compared to when the same question was asked in February 2025. A further 30 per cent said they were opposed (a two-point drop), while 10 per cent were unsure.

Omitting the undecided respondents leaves Canadians in favour by a two-to-one margin. When the firm began tracking perceptions of Canadians on the death penalty in 2020, it found that 51 per cent of citizens expressed a desire to bring back capital punishment for murder cases.

Canada abolished the death penalty in 1976, although the last execution in Canada was the double hanging of Arthur Lucas and Ronald Turpin in 1962, for the murder of a police informant and a police officer, respectively.

A separate question asked: “All things considered, which of these two approaches would you prefer as a punishment for convicted murderers in Canada? Life imprisonment without the possibility of parole (or) the death penalty?”

With the possibility of no parole on the table, the percentage in favour of the death penalty dropped to 49 per cent, while those choosing life imprisonment stood at 39 per cent, with the remaining 12 per cent undecided.

When those in favour were asked why they supported reinstating the death penalty for murder in Canada, more than half (56 per cent) said that a convicted murderer has taken a life, so the death penalty fits the crime.

Additionally, 52 per cent agreed that the death penalty would serve as a deterrent for potential murderers, while 49 per cent said the death penalty would provide closure to the families of murder victims. (Multiple responses means the total is more than 100 per cent.)

There was also support for the idea that the death penalty would save taxpayers the cost of having murderers in prison (46 per cent) and the notion that murderers cannot be rehabilitated (31 per cent).

 

Let's not be sanguine about the matter, but let's use a few common arguments used for more acceptable state-sanctioned killing.

Why waste resources on a convicted killer who shows no remorse, will only re-offended, and would only die of boredom in a prison cell anyway?

Bill C-9 Passes

Canada went full Nazi, something one should never do:

The Commons yesterday by a 189 to 128 vote passed into law new hate crimes legislation. The cabinet bill written to counter anti-Semitic public disorder drew contentious amendments unrelated to safety of Canadian Jews: “It is less sober second thought and more quick hot takes.”

 

To wit:

Bill C-9 has removed the “good faith religious expression defence” from convictions for criminal hate speech.

It is illegal under section 319(1) of the Criminal Code to publicly incite hatred by “communicating statements in any public place (that) incites hatred against any identifiable group where such incitement is likely to lead to a breach of the peace.”

(Sidebar: no committees or debate in the House of Commons have demonstrated where the quoting of Biblical passages led to crimes of any kind.)

It is also illegal under section 319(2) of the Criminal Code to communicate statements, “other than in private conversation” that “wilfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group,” and under 319(2.1) to wilfully promote antisemitism by “communicating statements, other than in private conversation… condoning, denying or downplaying the Holocaust.”

 

Interesting.

Now about that:

The Liberal government sought to erase from the record of the House of Commons the celebration of a Nazi war veteran during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit last Friday but that request was denied by the Conservatives who say to do so is “absolutely wrong.”

Government House leader Karina Gould stood up on Monday afternoon to ask for unanimous consent to adopt a motion calling to strike “from the appendix of the House of Commons debates” and from “any House multimedia recording” the recognition made by Speaker Anthony Rota of Yaroslav Hunka, 98, whom he described as “a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero.”

Rota has apologized but is now facing calls for his resignation by two of the four recognized parties in the House since it was revealed that Hunka was in fact serving in the First Ukrainian Division, also known as the Waffen-SS Galicia Division or the SS 14th Waffen Division which was a voluntary unit that was under the command of the Nazis during the Second World War.

**

Nearly one-third of Canadians believe that antisemitism or anti-Jewish attitudes are becoming more acceptable in the country, according to a new poll.

The Leger survey, conducted on behalf of the Association for Canadian Studies, found that 31 per cent held that view, while the highest level of agreement was concentrated among university students (37 per cent), men (38 per cent) and Canadians between the ages of 18 and 34 (35 per cent). English speakers were more than twice (35 per cent) as likely to agree with the statement as opposed to just 16 per cent of Francophones.

Slightly over a fifth (22 per cent) of Canadians agreed that “Israel’s military actions in Gaza justify negative attitudes toward Jewish people in Canada,” as opposed to nearly half (49 per cent) of respondents who disagreed. Canadians aged 18 to 34 (26 per cent) and men (29 per cent) were most likely to agree with the statement.

“The findings suggest that condemnation alone has not been enough. While many leaders have denounced antisemitism since October 7, the survey shows that a significant minority of Canadians still believe that events in the Middle East justify negative attitudes toward Jewish Canadians,” Jack Jedwab, president of the Association for Canadian Studies, told National Post in a written statement.

Roughly one-sixth (17 per cent) of Canadians surveyed agreed that they have become more negative toward Jews since the October 7 terrorist attacks on Israel, while a majority (62 per cent) disagreed with the statement. Women (68 per cent), college students (66 per cent) and Canadians over 55 (69 per cent) were the most likely to disagree with the statement. Those born outside of Canada were more likely to agree (24 per cent) than respondents born in the country (16 per cent).

A similar split was seen on the question of whether “Jews in Canada are responsible for the actions of the Israeli government.” Nine per cent of all respondents and eight per cent of people born in Canada agreed, while nearly twice the number of respondents born outside of the country (15 per cent) agreed. Strong majorities of respondents born in Canada (73 per cent) and outside the country (62 per cent) disagreed with the statement.

**

A Nova Scotia high school has asked students to return their new yearbooks after a Holocaust denial reference was found inside.

“6 million? Nah, 271k” a screenshot of a West Bedford High School yearbook shared on Facebook reads, a reference that 271,000 Jews were killed in the Holocaust and not the generally accepted figure of six million. …

The yearbook quote generated mixed reactions among members of the Halifax Share Anything group on Facebook, with some suggesting it was innocuous and others saying it did not clearly amount to Holocaust denial.

“Am I missing something, where did they deny the holocaust?” one wrote. “I see them claiming a different number, not that it didn’t happen.”

“I would have not known without your context that this was holocaust denial,” another wrote. “I hope that it slipped through because the yearbook committee and staff involved also didn’t get the reference. I would be contacting the school’s admin right away.”

 

 

Further:

The penalties for these crimes are up to two years in prison. …

The Supreme Court of Canada has defined hatred as the most extreme forms of the emotions described by vilification and detestation. The Court has said “detestation tend[s] to inspire enmity and extreme ill-will … which goes beyond mere disdain or dislike.” The Court has said vilification will “seek to abuse, denigrate or delegitimize (a group)… (or) render them lawless, dangerous, unworthy or unacceptable in the eyes of the audience.” The Court added that this type of speech “goes far beyond merely discrediting, humiliating or offending the victims.” The Court has not defined antisemitism.

 The Court has also said that hatred can be identified by looking for “hallmarks of hatred” including speech that:

“vilifies the targeted group by blaming its members for the current problems in society”

“alleg(es) that members of a group are a “powerful menace”

“accuses a group of carrying out secret conspiracies to gain global control or that they are plotting to destroy western civilization”

“suggests members are illegal or unlawful,” such as by labelling them “liars, cheats, criminals and thugs”

calls people “pure evil”

(Sidebar: that could be any part of the Bible in which working-class prophets point out the corruption of their leadership. It also sounds a hell of a lot like demonising of anyone who isn’t Liberal or Democrat. Yet the latter is not banned. How strange.)

“equates the targeted group with groups traditionally reviled in society, such as child abusers, pedophiles or deviant criminals who prey on children”

describes members of a group as “animals or as subhuman”

“calls into question whether group members qualify as human beings” or

refers to them as “horrible creatures who ought not to be allowed to live,” “incognizant primates,” “genetically inferior,” “lesser beasts” or “sub-human filth.” …

 

Really?:

5:60 Say, "Shall I inform you of [what is] worse than that as penalty from Allah? [It is that of] those whom Allah has cursed and with whom He became angry and made of them apes and pigs and slaves of Taghut. Those are worse in position and further astray from the sound way."

**

Say (O Muhammad SAW to the people of the Scripture): "Shall I inform you of something worse than that, regarding the recompense from Allah: those (Jews) who incurred the Curse of Allah and His Wrath, those of whom (some) He transformed into monkeys and swines, those who worshipped Taghut (false deities); such are worse in rank (on the Day of Resurrection in the Hell-fire), and far more astray from the Right Path (in the life of this world)."

 

Does the Koran fall under the Bill C-9 ban?

 

Further:

Bill C-9 creates a new hate crime of wilfully promoting hatred by displaying certain symbols in a public place, including specific symbols associated with Nazism, such as the swastika, nooses (which are associated with anti-Black racism) and symbols associated with terrorist groups such as Hamas or Hezbollah flags. Context is important; there must be an intent to promote hatred.

Banning symbols and flags does nothing to reduce hatred or terrorism. In fact, it may make it more difficult to identify members of hate and terrorist groups.

These bans also violate the free speech principle that governments should not censor speech based on its content. If the government can ban one flag or symbol, it can easily ban another.

 

The above is the swastika, a symbol of Buddhism. It is meant to symbolise the seal of Buddha's heart. 

None of this was about preventing or countering anti-semitism. It certainly won’t do anything about the churches that have been vandalised and/or burned to the ground.

It is not meant to.

The Liberals have succeeded in a coup against the Canadian public and free expression by pretending to care about the plight of Canadian Jews (who are now leaving Canada) when, in fact, all they wanted was an excuse to ban not just any book but the Bible.

Consider that in order not to hear the allegedly offensive phrases from a book not many have read, certainly not understood, nor proven to be detrimental, it is not possible to have ombudsmen or police at every house of worship or private collection. It would be easier simply to seize these books.

If one thinks that will never happen, no one thought that they would be locked in their houses for two years, either.

 

 

Also:

 

Alphabet Inc.’s Google said Canada’s changes to a proposed law that would help police obtain citizen data from private companies don’t resolve many of its concerns.

“We believe the government can support law enforcement without resorting to secret ministerial orders that put Canadians at risk,” a Google spokesperson said in an email, adding that the company would continue engaging on the issue.

In a marathon session late Wednesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals pushed through amendments to Bill C-22, known as the Lawful Access Act, in an effort to address heavy criticism from technology firms including Alphabet, Apple Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc.

Major changes to the bill include explicitly stating it will not require decryption of encrypted information — an industry concern — and reducing the metadata retention period to six months, instead of one year. Google had recommended that metadata not be kept at all.

Apple, Meta and Google had slammed the legislation during consultations last month, citing privacy and security issues. And in a May interview with the Globe and Mail newspaper, encrypted messaging app Signal threatened to pull out of Canada if the law forced them to compromise user privacy.

The amendments made Wednesday improve clarity and address feedback raised during the consultation process, a spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree said in a statement.

Canadian VPN company Tailscale Inc. welcomed the changes, but said they didn’t go far enough. “C-22 can still pressure secure services to retain data they otherwise wouldn’t keep, and to build technical access systems they otherwise wouldn’t deploy,” Chief Executive Officer Avery Pennarun said in an email. “We oppose laws that make secure infrastructure harder to build.”

Apple, Meta and Signal didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Canada is the only Group of Seven country without legislation requiring electronic service providers to maintain and develop lawful access capabilities, Carney has said. The government previously rejected claims that the law would enable surveillance of Canadians through everyday devices.

The bill has been fast-tracked for Senate review in the fall.

Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week jump in a rain puddle ...

 

That sounds like something a tyrant would say:

Nobody has the right to own a home.

I can’t shake this comment from an Ottawa mandarin, made during an unguarded moment at a Bay Street event where it spilled into a casual conversation about affordable homes for families.

As Canadians do, I grinned, walked away with a drink in hand and stewed. What can families expect for the billions of taxpayer dollars being spent on housing by all levels of government?

Not much, not even suitable family-oriented rentals with the space children need to thrive. Recent announcements out of Ottawa and Ontario’s Queen’s Park are case studies in housing malpractice. They emphasize spending and unit numbers but neglect the detail of outcomes: Building affordable family-friendly rentals.

Take the June 8 announcement by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. “Today, the federal government announced over $112-million in funding to help build 217 secure rental homes in Toronto.” The CMHC claims the project is “designed for families.”

Is it? The 15-storey rental apartment building in Toronto’s tony Leaside neighbourhood could be. Yet asking for details from the office of the federal Minister of Housing, Gregor Robertson, proved futile.

CMHC was good enough to reply. But it had no idea how many two- and three-bedroom family units would be for rent, or the size of such apartments. CMHC directed me to the developer, who, like the Minister’s office, didn’t respond.

We know a lot about what kind of housing supports family formation and what does not. We’ve known for more than a century. The Bain Apartments Co-operative in downtown Toronto is the classic example of what works for families, 260 townhouse-style units with lots of green space.

Yet we bankroll skyscrapers with taxpayer-backed loans. The Ryerson City Building Institute, now City Building TMU, documented in Density Done Right why tall doesn’t support family formation.

Building tall leads to a “lack of units suitable for larger households, overburdened infrastructure systems, and a mismatch between population density and the provision of services, such as transit, schools, health and community services, parks and recreation.”

The goal here is lip service and limiting the population to single workers and not families.

 

 

Are we sure we want to alienate Alberta?:

Canadian income taxpayers would have to pay, on average, an additional $1,000 every year to maintain Ottawa’s current spending levels if it were not for Alberta’s contribution to federal finances, a new report by the Fraser Institute has found.

A study released Monday by the think tank says Alberta’s relatively high employment rates, higher average incomes, and younger population mean the province makes an outsized contribution, paying more to federal revenues and national programs than it receives in transfers and federal spending.

From 2007-2008 to 2026-2027 Albertans’ net contribution is a projected $321.9 billion, according to the research — nearly four times British Columbia’s at $87.8 billion and more than five times Ontario’s at $59.6 billion.

The other seven provinces were net recipients during that time period, which means they received more money back from Ottawa than the amount of revenue they sent.

According to the study, Alberta’s large net contribution helps fund federal programs across the country and reduces the tax burden that would otherwise fall on taxpayers elsewhere. It concludes that maintaining federal spending levels without Albertans’ net fiscal contribution over the time period would require taxpayers in other provinces to pay an additional $1,007 per year on average.

“Many Canadians don’t realize what a sizeable contribution Albertans make to federal finances and how taxpayers in other provinces benefit from it,” said Tegan Hill, director of Alberta policy at the Fraser Institute and co-author of the research.

“As Canadian federalism increasingly takes centre stage in many of the country’s important policy discussions, it is important that all Canadians and policymakers understand the significant contribution Albertans make every year to federal finances and how Canadians in other provinces benefit from that.”

Previous research from the Fraser Institute found that the combined federal and provincial net debt, adjusted for inflation, has nearly doubled from $1.24 trillion in 2007-08 to a projected $2.44 trillion this fiscal year, a growth of 97.7 per cent.

The Fraser Institute’s latest study comes days after research found half a million Canadians migrated to Alberta over the past 30 years, making it the country’s most popular province.

Data from the past three decades showed Alberta had the largest net gain in migration from other provinces, gaining 538,824 more people than it lost. This was the largest net gain in the country, and more than double British Columbia’s at 214,883.

 

 

 

Canada has become unliveable and we all know it:

A record number of people left Canada in 2025, according to new Statistics Canada data.

Statistics Canada’s latest international migration estimates show 120,640 people emigrated from Canada last year breaking the previous record of 118,409 set the year prior .

Ontario led the country in number of departures, with 56,266 people leaving, nearly half (47%) of all emigration from Canada, disproportionately higher than Ontario’s share of the country’s population (39%).

British Columbia recorded the second-highest number of departures at 25,145, followed by Quebec at 15,913 and Alberta at 14,690.

British Columbia posted the highest emigration rate per capita, with approximately 442 emigrants per 100,000 residents.

That was well above the national average of roughly 290 per 100,000 people.

Together, Ontario and British Columbia accounted for about two-thirds of all Canadians who left the country in 2025.

The figures also show Quebec experienced its highest level of emigration since 1971, while Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta all recorded the highest annual totals on record.

The increase comes amid ongoing concerns about housing affordability, cost-of-living pressures and economic uncertainty.

 

 

I think he meant to say that Cuba needs foreigners to exploit the people there:

Canada is soon welcoming a “high level delegation” from Cuba, says the chair of the Senate foreign affairs committee. “Cuba needs friends,” said Senator Peter Boehm (Ont.), who singled out the United States for criticism.

 

Would China use nuclear weapons?:

Russia and China have made it clear they are partners, something the pair has repeatedly affirmed. Although the U.S. does not need to maintain parity in warheads with all adversaries to maintain deterrence, a serious imbalance is nonetheless dangerous because it can embolden these bad actors.

The combined number of China's and Russia's nukes — not to mention North Korea's — is beginning to create the imbalance that could lead to horrible consequences.

As SIPRI writes about those consequences, "States are increasingly relying on nuclear weapons as instruments of national power—reversing decades of efforts to reduce the numbers and role of nuclear weapons—even as the risk of miscalculation and escalation are rising."

 

 

“Do as I say,” says noted hypocrite and liar:

Supreme Court Chief Justice Richard Wagner yesterday said Canadians deserve a judiciary free of politics, but would not discuss his own criticism of the Freedom Convoy. Wagner declined to recuse himself from sitting in judgment on protestors he described as anarchists and hostage takers, though none were charged with either offence: “Can you explain why you will not recuse yourself?”

 

 

Read a g-d- book:

Their responses were reasonably unsurprising, but tickling nonetheless.

"Can you please put your hands up, those of you who welcome the ban," the reporter asked of the handful of students, all aged 11 to 14 years old.

None, it seemed liked the idea — with not one student inspired to raise their hands.

The reporter spoke to one student in particular, Isabella, whose answer baffled commenters. She told the reporter her screen time over the weekend was nine hours.

Pointing out the hours of extra time the student would soon have, the reporter then asked what her what she would soon do instead.

"Stare at a wall," Isabella responded deadpan.

 

Your parents must be so proud of you and your vapidity.

Also:

Australia’s legislation “specifically prohibits platforms from compelling Australians to provide a government-issued ID or use an Australian Government accredited digital ID service to prove their age.” To comply with the law, platforms have implemented widespread use of behavioural analysis, device signals, and facial age estimation scans. By mid-December 2025, platforms had already removed access to approximately 4.7 million suspected under-16 accounts.

But large numbers of teenagers quickly found workarounds. Surveys conducted in early 2026 show that more than 60 percent of under-16s who had accounts before the ban continue to access at least one restricted platform. Common methods include using borrowed phones or parents’ ID, fake age declarations, VPNs, and printed mesh masks to fool facial recognition.

Without robust age verification systems, therefore, a meaningful ban doesn’t exist. It might initially remove under 16s, but millions of ineligible minors will find a way to return to these platforms, as has taken place in Australia.

This begs an important question: What is the point of an age verification system that is only half effective? This would create a new set of problems including the loss of privacy rights for everyone, without actually solving the underlying problem the legalization is reportedly designed to fix.

Canada is aware of this conundrum. What would Canada do, then, to both kick minors off the platforms and keep them off the platforms? There is no reason to think that parental oversight or enforcement will be any different here than across the Pacific.

One possibility is social media users must submit verification of identity every time they log in to the platform. The most obvious way to do this would be a government-mediated login system. This would essentially grant government an immense amount of metadata about who logs in to what, how often, etc.

Another possibility would be for social media platforms themselves to monitors users’ data, either by periodically scanning faces and matching it to submitted photo ID, or by evaluating user behaviour (i.e., what content is being accessed and predicting the age of users). This would give an immense amount of data to social media companies that, if retained, could lead to significant privacy violations. Imagine a camera monitoring you every time you use Instagram or Facebook. Think about the fact that biometric technology can already be used to predict age based on wrinkles, skin texture and elasticity, facial proportions, eye shape, hairline, and bone structure. Researchers have even found statistical correlations between typing speed, error patterns, touch pressure, and age.

In this latter possibility, Canadians would be handing highly sensitive biometric data (faces, fingerprints, typing style, etc.) to foreign corporations that are subject to foreign laws (U.S. CLOUD Act, Chinese national intelligence law, etc.). These companies can be compelled by their own governments to hand over your personal and identifiable data. This type of data is also permanent. If it gets hacked, leaked, or demanded by a foreign government, you cannot change it like a password.

Finally, a mandatory social media ban for minors under 16 would significantly restrict their ability to access information about the world. Freedom of expression under the Charter section 2(b) includes not only the right to speak, but also the right to receive information. Canadian courts have recognized this in several cases. Social media platforms have become one of the primary ways many young people receive news, public debates, educational content, and diverse viewpoints.

One doesn’t have to be an absolutist to value freedom and privacy, but the fact of the matter is we have not tried alternative strategies that would minimally impair this fundamental freedom of privacy for everyone, and freedom of speech for minors. Yes, facial recognition is already used voluntarily on some platforms (such as dating apps). And a driver’s licence is often required from gambling sites to ensure compliance with the law. But there is a profound difference between choosing to use one of these sites and being required by law to submit biometric data to participate in modern public discourse. The scale is also vastly different.

We should pursue less invasive strategies instead of choosing between an ineffective ban or a robust and draconian one. Aggressive cultural campaigns against early smartphone use, phone-free schools until at least Grade 9 or 10, and better parental control tools have all shown meaningful results for youth mental health in multiple studies. Stronger platform liability for addictive design specifically aimed at children could also be pursued.

At the end of the day, parents are responsible for their children’s social media use with or without a law that requires everyone share their digital data. In other words, even if a robust law existed, parents would still be responsible to ensure their children avoid workarounds.

 

 

It’s called grooming:

"Another email sent to parents earlier in the month said the school would be welcoming Adrianna Exposée." A drag performer.

 Notably, before cancelling the event, principal Sandy Miller and vice-principal Marc Laliberté told parents the presentation was “intended to promote literacy and themes of equity, diversity and visibility in a unique and memorable way,” according to correspondence obtained by CTV News Ottawa.

The event was not merely proposed; it had already been approved, organized, scheduled, and communicated to families.

In other words, the school had already decided the event was appropriate enough to place on its calendar.

That fact raises an obvious question: If the event lacked curriculum alignment, why was it approved in the first place?

Why did the parents approve of it?

Some People Are "Special"

How would you determine this?

How would you dispute a ticket? With Ancestry.ca?:

As part of their stated commitment to “decolonization & Indigenization” in health care, the Yukon is debuting Indigenous-only parking spaces at all its three hospitals.

In a social media post last week, Yukon Hospitals announced that the territory’s hospitals would henceforth feature reserved parking spots marked “Respectfully Reserved for Elders.”

Reserved exclusively for “First Nation, Inuit, and Métis Elders,” the spaces are marked with signs featuring commissioned art from two Yukon-based Indigenous artists; one prepared a stylized image of two elders, while another prepared the accompanying text reading “respectfully reserved for elders.”

“These spaces are one way we are showing our commitment to Truth & Reconciliation, Decolonization & Indigenization,” reads a description by Yukon Hospitals.

The elder spots are set to be installed at the territory’s main hospital in Whitehorse, as well as at the Dawson City Community Hospital and the Watson Lake Community Hospital. Parking for everyone at all three hospitals is free.

They will be placed in lots whose only other designated parking is currently for staff or disabled users. Although the Whitehorse General Hospital notably has designated RV parking; a service for patients from distant communities driving in for scheduled procedures.

Yukon Hospitals, like many Canadian government and health-care authorities, has publicly embraced the notion that its facilities are shot through with “systemic racism” that can only be alleviated via differential treatment for marginalized groups.

 

Do these elders even drive?

Do they have a special sticker on their driver's licenses?