Canadian News

Saskatchewan Party Leader Scott Moe appears to have described property damage at a campaign office in Regina this week as gunshots well ahead of any police investigation.

Quebec's Court of Appeal has upheld a landmark 2022 decision that found a law permitting random traffic stops by police led to racial profiling. Read More

Traffic was affected for several hours on Wednesday as a water main break caused minor flooding on Atwater Ave. between René-Lévesque Blvd. and Ste-Catherine St. Read More

The Ottawa Convention Centre has a new identity: Rogers Centre Ottawa. Read More

QUEBEC — The Quebec government has opened an investigation into another incident of religion reappearing in a public elementary school, with Education Minister Bernard Drainville saying Quebec will not turn a blind eye to the fresh allegations. Read More

A Zamboni driver in Chelsea has been arrested on suspicion of impaired driving after a low-speed crash at a hockey rink on Monday. Read More

Two of the Ottawa Redblacks' unsung heroes were given a well-deserved moment in the spotlight on Wednesday. Read More

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says her government will review professional regulatory bodies and introduce legislation next year to limit how they can police their own members.

I still have the front page of The Gazette from Nov. 6, 2017, the morning after Valérie Plante soared to victory as the first woman elected mayor of Montreal. Read More

Encouraging people – particularly young people – to play an active role in electoral politics may seem challenging. Canadians are struggling to come to terms with a world which is battling climate crisis after climate crisis, growing inequality and more; and to engage with politics at a time like this can become discouraging. People may feel disenchanted from the entire political system. 

In this clip NDP Member of Parliament for Churchill—Keewatinook Aski Niki Ashton acknowledges the political burnout Canadians are facing and explains that, despite this, becoming involved is the key for real change. 

This is a clip from rabble’s most recent live politics panel: Off the Hill: Catching up on US and Canadian politics. Guests this month included NDP Member of Parliament for Churchill—Keewatinook Aski Niki Ashton, policy analyst Chuka Ejeckam, poet and activist El Jones and rabble’s own parliamentary reporter Karl Nerenberg. Co-hosted by Robin Browne and Libby Davies. 

Off the Hill is a fast-paced live panel on current issues of national significance, hosted by Robin Browne and Libby Davies. This series focuses on the impact politics and policy have on people and on ways to mobilize to bring about progressive change in national politics — on and off the hill. To support Off the Hill, visit rabble.ca/donate.

The post NDP MP Niki Ashton: Public pressure leads to meaningful policy changes appeared first on rabble.ca.

The Trillium Line LRT has passed its final exam, but that doesn't mean testing has finished on Ottawa's newest LRT line. Read More

A labour tribunal has dismissed Amazon's challenge of the unionization of its warehouse workers in Laval. Read More

“Premier Smith says she’s waiting on Nenshi to call Lethbridge-West by-election,” said the headline yesterday on the MyLethbridgeNow.com website. 

I’m going to give the good folks at the Southern Alberta news site the benefit of the doubt and assume someone there is having a little fun with Danielle Smith, the occupant of the top political job in Alberta, who is acting as if she doesn’t understand who gets to call by-elections in the Westminster Parliamentary system. (Hint: It’s not the unelected leader of an opposition party.)

In addition to being a premier, Smith is the beneficiary of a first-class public post-secondary education at the University of Calgary – a leading Canadian institution of higher learning, surely – which presumably involved passing a political science course or two. 

So I’m sure she understood as well as the rest of us do that when a vacancy is created in the Legislature, as occurred in the Lethbridge-West Riding last Canada Day when former NDP MLA Shannon Phillips’ resignation took effect, it is the lieutenant-governor who sets the date of the election on the “advice” of the premier. 

Since in our Parliamentary system the advice of the premier is really a command, it is therefore Smith who gets to set the date of the by-election – within a limit of six months from the day the vacancy was created, no general election pending. 

Nevertheless, as the MLN story put it more accurately than the headline, whenSmith was in Lethbridge Monday to campaign for the United Conservative Party candidate in the by-election that she has not yet called, she told reporters “she is holding off on calling an election in the riding to see where NDP leader Naheed Nenshi will be running for a legislative seat in the province.”

It would be fair to describe this as mischievous, or sophomoric, but either way it is nonsense. 

What it illustrates above all else is that the UCP since Smith took over as premier sees itself, and often acts, as if it were the Opposition. That is a job, of course, in which the premier has some experience. 

Without a doubt, she and her advisers have a childish desire to needle Nenshi for being in no hurry to set foot inside the Chamber of the Legislature, his non-member status bestowing certain political advantages on him in the short term, among them freedom to campaign full-time and no need to ask a sitting member of his party to give up a seat. 

“I’m kind of waiting for the Leader of the official Opposition,” the premier told the reporters. 

Of course, for the time being, the leader of the official Opposition is Edmonton-Mill Woods MLA Christina Gray, which should only be slightly confusing to a premier even though Nenshi is nevertheless the leader of the Opposition party. Readers of this blog, who follow politics closely, will instinctively grasp the difference. 

For his part, Nenshi responded by advising the premier to fire one of her cabinet ministers to open a seat in Calgary for him to run in, a suggestion that is genuinely amusing.

The MLN story, which followed the outline of the Canadian Press account of the same event with a little local colour tossed in, continued: “Smith says for the interest of taxpayers it would be nice to hold both by-elections at the same time and with Nenshi having been elected leader of the party back in June she thought by now one of his caucus members would have stepped down for him.”

She argued, The CP reported, that it would be “in the best interests of taxpayers to have both byelections at the same time.”

Readers with longish memories will recall that in October 2022 Smith took a completely opposite position when it was convenient to her, refusing to call a by election in the Calgary-Elbow riding, which was known to be leaning toward the NDP after the resignation of MLA Doug Schweitzer, when she wanted to a safe seat in the Legislature for herself.

In the event, she induced a rural MLA to step aside and ran in Brooks-Medicine Hat without calling an election in Calgary-Elbow. Smith’s justification for that outrageous and fundamentally undemocratic plan to treat voters in different locations in dramatically different ways was, in her own words, that it would cost too much to hold two by-elections!

“I think it’s important for me to be there to introduce my legislation and so we’re going to try to limit the expense by having it, the only one by-election,” she told the CBC at the time.

I wasn’t making that up two years ago, and I’m not making it up now!

“Hypocrisy, thy name is Danielle,” Nenshi, Calgary’s former mayor, commented Monday. 

Well, as has been noted in this space before, Alberta’s premier, like Oscar Wilde, believes consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. 

The Irish playwright and poet, possibly the greatest wit of the 19th Century, was kidding. It’s not clear Smith is, though.

The post AB Premier playing chicken with Nenshi in Lethbridge appeared first on rabble.ca.

Some of Ottawa's independent child-care providers are set to close Thursday to protest the way the national $10-a-day daycare plan has been implemented. Read More

Premier-designate Susan Holt says she will adopt the gender-identity school policy recommended by New Brunswick's child and youth advocate Kelly Lamrock when the Liberals take charge of government.

Mayor Valérie Plante's announcement that she will not run again has cast open the door to an array of candidates rumoured or confirmed to be interested in becoming the next leader of Montreal. From business heads to real estate developers to former mayors, here are some of the possible hopefuls. Read More

Tuesday evening at the Bell Centre was the perfect encapsulation of the modern-day Canadiens. Read More

Abousfian Abdelrazik told a court today about the roller-coaster of emotions he experienced during the tense days of early 2009 when he awaited the green light to return to Canada from Sudan.

The trial for a man accused of raping vulnerable women in and around the Calgary area has been derailed after he fired his lawyer a second time.

In a recent newsletter, The Canadian Biotechnology Action Network (CBAN), informed its network of a global independent media investigation uncovering a “massive international corporate operation of undercover activities” that downplays the risks of pesticides and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and designed to discredit environmentalists in Africa, Europe and North America.

CBAN members include farmer associations, environmental and social justice organizations, and regional coalitions of grassroots groups. It brings together 15 groups to research, monitor and raise awareness about issues relating to food security and sustainability and genetic engineering in food and farming. So the revelation of undercover activities by corporate interests trying to downplay the risks of pesticides and genetically modified organisms struck home.

In late September several investigative reports were published in media outlets around the world detailing how the US government funded a US-based international public relations firm to gather and provide information on thousands of individuals in an effort to counteract global resistance to pesticides. This funding by the US government and corporate clients of the public relations firm helped to create an underground social network created to weaken global environmental efforts.

It would likely be naive in this day and age to think that the global corporate pesticide lobby would not actively engage in methods and strategies to discredit environmental and organic farming movements. But it is stunning to read that these efforts were in part funded by the United States government to profile its own citizens, to influence legislation and anti-pesticide policies in other countries, and to create misleading if not deliberate misinformation, related to the dangers of pesticide use.

These independent international media investigations outline how v-Fluence, a PR firm based in Missouri which prides itself on strategies that promote reputational and risk management, worked to create online content and “profile” scientists, lawyers, environments, and activists in any way critical of the agro-chemical industry. The public relations firm actively worked to provide “intelligence” to discourage governments from adopting policies to ban pesticides. The campaign worked to encourage, for example, the use of paraquat in Kenya, and worked to derail legislation and conferences that could provide alternatives to the use of pesticides across Europe, Africa, and North America.  In the process thousands of individuals were profiled and personal information shared with corporate clients and individuals working in government, for example the department of agriculture in the US.

It is indeed eye-opening to have the impact of this corporate misinformation campaign chronicled in such great detail by major well-respected international news outlets. In fact, the collection of data on thousands of individuals around the world includes scientists, journalists, lawyers, United Nations employees, as well as individuals such US food writers Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman, the Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva, and the Nigerian activist Nnimmo Bassey, among others.

The collection of this data, both personal and public, breaches privacy laws in many countries, according to the report, and at the very least is unethical and suspect in many others. The data on individuals was distributed via a private social network managed by an entity called Bonus Eventus. Bonus Eventus is an offspring of the public relations firm v-Fluence, which denies reports of any wrongdoing in the methods used to provide “stakeholder intelligence” to its clients.

The website, launched in 2014, is the brainchild of former Monsanto director of corporate communications Jay Byrne, and provides a media-monitoring service for chemical company executives and chemical lobby groups. But its darker side is the collection of “dirt files” on thousands of individuals who have been critical of agro-chemical products.

A Canadian professor and researcher interviewed by The Guardian had this to say: “Collecting personal information about individuals who oppose the industry goes way beyond regular lobbying efforts,” said Dan Antonowicz, an associate professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, who researches and lectures about corporate conduct. “There is a lot to be concerned about here.”

The article in the The Guardian (US) provides detail on the impact of this covert campaign. The Guardian article also includes information on a lawsuit filed in the US against the public relations firm v-Fluence and the transnational Syngenta, alleging collusion to purposefully cover-up the links between Parkinson’s disease and the use of the pesticide Paraquat.

The hub of this investigation is Lighthouse Reports, a pioneer in collaborative journalism that works with leading media organizations to “deliver deeply rooted public interest investigations”. This particular investigation was a result of  collaboration with The Guardian US, Africa Uncensored, Le Monde, the New Lede, The New Humanitarian, The Continent, ABC News Australia, and the Wire.

This article provides links to the exposés published by newspapers around the world, highlighting activities in the different countries: https://www.lighthousereports.com/investigation/poison-pr/

You can also link to these published reports for more information.

 Co-publications from this investigation

• The Guardian: Revealed: the US government-funded ‘private social network’ attacking pesticide critics
• Le Monde: Revelations on the large-scale profiling of personalities embarrassing the agrochemical industry
• The New Lede: “Defend or be damned” – How a US company uses government funds to suppress pesticide opposition around the world
• ABC News: Former Monsanto exec’s invite-only social network reveals the dark tactics of the pro-chemical lobby
• The New Humanitarian: How the US agrochemical lobby is meddling in the future of Kenyan farming
• Le Monde: Diving into the black box of global pesticide propaganda
• The Wire: How a US-Based PR Firm Is Profiling Activists, Scientists Opposing Pesticides and GMO
• Le Monde: How Trump’s administration tried to torpedo the EU Green Deal using influence and misinformation campaigns
• Africa Uncensored: The Secret Network Keeping Harmful Herbicides On Sale – Part 1
• Africa Uncensored: The Secret Network Keeping Harmful Herbicides On Sale – Part 2

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