Canada

Over the years, Live Nation has also been buying up independent local venues. The company currently owns several concert halls in Canada: the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver; Midway in Edmonton; and Budweiser Stage, Danforth Music Hall, History, RBC Echo Beach, Velvet Underground, and most recently, The Opera House in Toronto.

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Six northern First Nations have filed a court case challenging a major section of Ontario’s mining law, an attempt to strike down the existing system for how mineral claims are staked.

The case, filed at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice last week, could disrupt Premier Doug Ford’s push for a mining boom, especially in the far northern Ring of Fire. The application was filed Aug. 9 by Apitipi Anicinapek Nation, Aroland First Nation, Attawapiskat First Nation, Fort Albany First Nation, Ginoogaming First Nation and Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug. It alleges the current system, which allows miners to stake claims without consulting First Nations, violates their Treaty and Charter rights.

“The Mining Act in Ontario is racist, colonialist in very many ways, and it has to fall,” Kate Kempton, the lawyer representing the nations, told reporters at Queen’s Park Monday.

In Ontario and many other provinces and territories, the right to mine a piece of land is separate from the right to own a piece of land. Even on Indigenous territory and some private property, the province asserts that it owns the rights to explore for minerals and, eventually, take those minerals out of the ground (an assertion that is also being challenged in a separate court case). The province sells that right to companies or people who stake claims under Ontario’s Mining Act, which defines how mineral extraction can happen.

For hundreds of years, prospectors would go out onto the land and put a physical stake into the ground. But Ontario overhauled that system in 2018 when it rolled out an online portal that allows pretty much anyone to register a claim for a small fee in a matter of minutes.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will meet with his ministers in Halifax on Sunday for the annual cabinet retreat, a gathering that comes after a year of dire polling for the government and disquiet among some Liberal MPs.

Some of those MPs are now calling for big changes — and for the prime minister to publicly show signs of contrition.

Cabinet is meeting for three days and is expected to tackle pocketbook issues and seek to strengthen Canada's relationship with the United States ahead of the House of Commons' return in September.

"The number one thing I think we need to do is to remain grounded in the experience of people who live in our communities," Housing Minister Sean Fraser said Monday.

Movie star Keanu Reeves signed a one-day contract with the Ontario Hockey League's Windsor Spitfires on Thursday.

Reeves grew up in Toronto and was born in Beirut. According to NHL.com, the Matrix star was a goaltender and came close to trying out for the Spitfires when he was a teenager, but couldn't because of injury.

It was to support the Canadian Mental Health Association's Windsor-Essex branch, which will auction off signed items from the actor and all proceeds going to the organization.

Bidding is open on the Spitfires website. As of Friday afternoon, the top bid was $10,000 (now at $20,000).

The auction ends on Aug. 30.

One of western Canada’s largest rental property companies is warning tenants about a cyber security breach it says was discovered earlier this year.

In a letter to tenants on Aug. 19, also published on its website, Mainstreet Equity Corporation says on it discovered a third party had gained access to a portion of its IT infrastructure on May 21.

“Upon discovering this, we immediately undertook countermeasures to prevent any further unauthorized activity,” the company said.

“We have also retained third-party cybersecurity experts to assist with containment, remediation and to conduct a forensic investigation and we are working with external legal counsel to ensure we meet our legal obligations.”

In June, Yukon's Eagle gold mine saw what the territory's mines minister is calling a “catastrophic failure”: the release of hundreds of millions of litres of toxic cyanide solution into the environment. For many local residents, it's a wake-up call about the risks and costs of large-scale mining in the territory.

Steve Buyck walks a forest path framed by highbush cranberries, rosehips and Siberian Aster. Slung over his shoulder, a rifle. The bullet in the chamber is large enough to down a moose.

These days, however, hunting the animal doesn’t come so easily for him. Not far away from Buyck’s home, along the banks of the Stewart River in central Yukon, is the Eagle mine, the site of a “catastrophic” heap leach pad failure and cyanide spill in late June.

“Whatever I am eating in that area I am definitely going to have that in the back of my mind,” the citizen of the First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun said.

An internet search for Edgar Dewdney's name will turn up many accounts of his contributions to Saskatchewan and to Canadian history, including his role in helping establish Regina as Saskatchewan's capital city.

But there's a dark truth behind that history — Dewdney also played a major part in early policy around the reserve system in Canada, and used starvation tactics against First Nations and Métis people in Saskatchewan in the 19th century.

Despite that, Dewdney is still honoured with a major avenue stretching across Regina named after him.

This is a new development.

At 10:00 a.m. eastern today, the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference served CN with a strike notice effective Monday, August 26, at 10:00 a.m.

As meetings with the CIRB continue, the Board has yet to make a ruling that would force binding arbitration or end any work stoppage.

To protect workers’ right to collectively bargain and frustrate CN’s attempt to force arbitration, the union will take strike action to pressure CN into negotiating an agreement.

“By sidestepping the collective bargaining process and ordering binding arbitration, the federal government has undermined the foundation on which labour unions work to improve wages and working conditions for all Canadians. Bargaining is also the primary way our union fights for rail safety—all considerations that outweigh short-term economic concerns,” said Paul Boucher, President of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference.

The parties held a case management conference with the CIRB last night, and hearings are currently underway today to address preliminary issues. The timeline for a decision from the CIRB regarding the Minister’s referrals is still unclear at this time. The union is prepared to appeal to the federal court if necessary.

Context from CN and CPKC Begin Lockout

The main obstacles to reaching an agreement remain the companies’ demands, not union proposals.

Neither CN nor CPKC has relented on their push to weaken protections around rest periods and scheduling, increasing the risk of fatigue-related safety issues. CN also continues to demand a forced relocation scheme, which could see workers ordered to move across the country, tearing families apart in the process.

The main obstacles to reaching an agreement remain the companies’ demands, not union proposals.

Neither CN nor CPKC has relented on their push to weaken protections around rest periods and scheduling, increasing the risk of fatigue-related safety issues. CN also continues to demand a forced relocation scheme, which could see workers ordered to move across the country, tearing families apart in the process.

On Aug. 22, the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) announced Imperial Oil must pay a $50,000 administrative penalty related to tailings water leaking from the Kearl oilsands facilities in northern Alberta, about 137 kilometres northeast of Fort McMurray.

Last year, it came to light that toxic tailings had been seeping from the Imperial Oil-owned site for nine months and downstream communities were not properly notified. It took a massive spill of 5.3 million litres in February for the long-term seepage, which Imperial Oil first noticed in May 2022, to be made public through an environmental protection order. This sparked outrage from Indigenous communities, the public and politicians.

“A $50,000 penalty for a company that made $20 billion in profits over 2022 and 2023, to me, is a feeble slap on the wrist from an industry-captured regulator,” Liberal MP Patrick Weiler told Canada’s National Observer in a phone interview.

For a company like Imperial Oil, $50,000 is “pocket change,” said Aliénor Rougeot, program manager of climate and energy at Environmental Defence, in an interview with Canada’s National Observer. “I don't even know that they would notice that. It's probably a rounding error,” Rougeot said.

In the second quarter of 2024, Imperial Oil reported $1.13 billion in profit.

The Teamsters union has served Canadian National Railway (CN) with a 72-hour strike notice, hours after saying it was taking down picket lines and workers were returning to the job.

Wow, people taking advantage of discrimination-based government programs... who could have possibly seen this coming?

This intervention, a direction to the Canada Industrial Labour Relations Board (CILRB), requires the two railway companies and the union to enter into binding arbitration and requires workers to go back to work and restart the railway operations.

In July, the arms-length organization that oversees Alberta’s electricity grid announced the sudden departure of its CEO, Mike Law.

At the same time, Alberta is undertaking a massive overhaul of its electricity system and market — an overhaul the Alberta government has been keen to influence.

As a new CEO with a background more in line with the United Conservative Party government’s goals takes the reins, questions remain about Law’s departure and the transition in leadership.

On July 4, the Alberta Electric System Operator’s government-appointed board announced one of its own members, Aaron Engen, would replace Law. Engen has a background investing in technologies including small modular reactors, hydrogen, carbon capture and storage and “renewable natural gas.”

What is clear is there was deep consternation within the organization Law oversaw around aggressive moves by the provincial government to significantly change the electricity market and the technologies that drive it — including support for technologies in which Engen has a financial background.