Canada

When Robert Laboucan pictured his son taking his first steps he imagined it would be at home, maybe even in front of a camera in their living room. Instead, the one-year-old first walked in the hallway of the Flamingo Inn in High Level, the tiny Alberta town where the family have been living for more than a year after escaping the massive wildfires that devastated the Indigenous-owned Fox Lake Reserve.

“It was really hard,” said Laboucan, a member of the Little Red River Cree Nation.

Laboucan, his partner Jennifer, and their five children, aged one-16, are among dozens of fire evacuees still living at the hotel. While they will not get an exact replacement of the home they lost, Laboucan has been told that a new home will be ready for the family by July – approximately 14 months after the 2023 Paskwa fire tore through the Little Red River Cree Nation.

And a year later, as Canada braces for another hot summer, many Indigenous communities in the northern parts of the western provinces are still displaced.

Among those criticizing the new law are the BC and Canadian Civil Liberties Associations, the Canadian Association of University Teachers, the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, Amnesty International, the Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Council and Independent Jewish Voices Canada.

In a joint statement, they say C-70 “will likely have significant impacts — both directly and in the form of a chilling effect — on freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, and on privacy, and it could well be used to profile people on political, racial, religious, or nationality grounds. The law will allow the undermining of academic freedom, freedom of the press, the right to protest and engage in dissent, and efforts at international cooperation and solidarity.”

CSIS has parroted US intelligence agencies allegations regarding China for the past five years, refusing to heed warnings about threat exaggeration from US senator Bernie Sanders, economist Jeffrey Sachs, or Congresswoman Judy Chu.

Mainstream media unfortunately have been hammering the theme of foreign interference. For example, the Globe and Mail has been campaigning for a foreign influence registry for over a year. Likewise, its reporters have unabashedly used CSIS leaks to engage in sensationalist reporting, failing to verify CSIS information. This has created a political maelstrom to the benefit of CSIS.

The video shows an old, low-ceilinged basement, the dirt floor flooded with black and brown sludge. A broken cast-iron pipe is visible — the source of a leak spewing raw sewage into the basement of a home in New Glasgow, N.S., for about a year.

Tricia Gallant, 38, was living upstairs in one of the three rental units, experiencing nausea, dizzy spells, sinus infections and brain fog.

She had an inkling there was a problem, but didn't realize her home was dangerous.

"When I moved into that place, I was living in my car," Gallant said in an interview. "So I thought it was going to save me, when in reality it just made me sick."

Gallant's living conditions are an extreme example of how low-income tenants stuck in unfit housing can suffer physically and psychologically as they struggle to get repairs and keep a roof over their head. A recent CBC News investigation found renters living in dangerous, dilapidated housing are up against unresponsive landlords and a lack of protective bylaws.

The publicly funded society that provides independent legal aid for low-income Albertans says its contract with the government has expired, and the provincial government has decided not to renew it.

In a release, Legal Aid Alberta (LAA), says it has been negotiating a new governance agreement with the Ministry of Justice and the Law Society of Alberta for several months, but the ministry suddenly halted negotiations and terminated the agreement.

The society's current governance agreement expired on June 30.

LAA says the agreement is necessary to deliver its services to Albertans, and that without it, the society will no longer be able to issue certificates — the process used to assign defence lawyers to cases — past July 9.

"Without a governance agreement in place, our ability to conduct business is compromised," reads the release.

Hundreds of pages of documents written by experts for two class-action lawsuits paint a picture of Ontario's corrections system as inhumane and poorly managed.

The two class actions against the province take aim at the use of lockdowns in Ontario correctional facilities as a way to deal with staffing shortages from 2009 to 2017. One lawsuit seeks damages for inmates during that time, while the other asks for damages for immigration detainees, who are sometimes held in such facilities. The attorney general of Canada is also named as a defendant in that lawsuit.

Data obtained by CBC Toronto through a freedom of information request reveals there were an average of 440 full facility staffing-related lockdowns reported across the province each year between 2010 and 2017. That's on top of hundreds more "partial" lockdowns, where only certain sections of a facility were affected. The reporting requirements were different for 2009.

The lawsuits are seeking a combined $1.5 billion in damages for negligence.

While Canada lags behind in solar adoption, many places including Germany, China, Japan and even the United States are moving quickly.

In fact, on certain days, some places are generating so much energy, the price to purchase it is dropping below zero, prompting concerns about storage capacity for the abundant power source.

A lesbian couple in Halifax, Canada was assaulted by a group of men who were shouting homophobic slurs at them.

Emma MacLean and her girlfriend, Tori, were walking down the street celebrating one of their birthdays when a group of men made a rude comment at MacLean, CTV News reports.

“A group of men walking in the other direction and they made a comment to me,” said Emma MacLean. “My girlfriend, Tori, said, ‘Hey that’s my girlfriend.’”

This response led to the men making explicitly homophobic remarks at the two, taunting them both.

“They continued walking and then Tori followed them to basically verbally be like, ‘That is not okay,’” MacLean said.

That’s when the men started attacking Tori.

“I see Tori being pushed on the stairs right in front of the BMO Centre and they are cement stairs and she’s on her back, that’s when all the men started punching and kicking her,” she continued.

MacLean said that she yelled for them to stop before she got involved in the fight to protect her girlfriend.

“The fight or flight came in. Basically jumped on one of their backs and put them in a chokehold, trying to restrain them.”

A bystander alerted police shortly after the fight ended. They spoke with one of the men involved in the incident, and he told them that it was the two women who had initiated the fight. The rest of the men refused to cooperate and give IDs, however.

There are currently no charges as police are investigating the situation.

Both MacLean and Tori suffered injuries. Tori had bruises covering her body, while MacLean had a chipped tooth, a broken nose, and many bruises as well.

MacLean said, “I felt punches and kicks and then I felt it on my nose and there was blood. I just thought this needs to stop now. I went to emerge the night of and they basically said it was too swollen for surgery.”

“I’m terrified to go downtown again in Halifax. I just feel like it’s so out of your control on what could happen. It’s overwhelming. I didn’t expect something like this to happen, especially with it happening during Pride Month as well.”

I didn't see it posted so I thought I should.

I'm Indigenous, full blooded Ojibway/Cree from northern Ontario. Both my parents survived the residential school system in the 50s and I attended the last vestiges of Christianized schooling when I was growing up. We saw a lot of discrimination against us in my family and we were always made to feel less than every other Canadian we ever knew.

Even with all that ..... my dad always enjoyed celebrating this holiday because he just thought it was fun and a good time to celebrate with family and friends. Maybe he just didn't know but whenever this time of year comes around, all I can think of is how much he enjoyed just having a bit of fun today in the middle of summer.

In my own experience, I've travelled the world to 34 countries so I got see and compare how our country compares to the rest of the world. With all its shortcomings and blemishes .... this is still a great country and a prime example of decent democracy. It isn't perfect and it is very problematic and unequal in many ways ... but its on the top of the pile of mostly or more democratic places on the planet. I may be wrong on that but that is just my opinion.

So with all that said .... to all my Native, non-Native, nation born, immigrant, brown, white, black, and every shade in between ....

Happy Canada Day to all of you.

Greg Fertuck was the type of man who solved his problems through "intimidation, threats and violence."

Evidence at his murder trial showed he had to have his way — or else.

"When [his wife Sheree] would not comply by his own admission he went to his truck, got his rifle, shot her in the shoulder, then coldly shot her in the head. He killed her in cold blood," wrote Justice Richard Danyliuk in his trial decision.

Danyliuk found Greg guilty of first-degree murder on June 14, 2024, after a lengthy and complicated trial at Saskatoon's Court of King's Bench.

Greg was also found guilty of indecently interfering with Sheree's remains because he hid her body in a secluded area near some poplar trees after the murder. Her remains have never been found.

"It's no secret that Saskatchewan has the highest rate of police-reported intimate partner violence among the provinces in Canada," Dusel said. "Saskatchewan also has the highest per capita rate of intimate partner homicides."

I’ve been at this university for the past three years and I’ve been pretty limited in my engagement with other disciplines. I tend to speak to the same people who take the same classes as me. This is one of the first times that I feel myself engaging with the academic community here. I’ve witnessed people put their studies to use: engineering students have stopped our canopies from leaking when it rains, urban planning students organized the setup of our tents, and philosophy and humanities students created a beautiful library space and held reading circles. It feels as if we have taken our classes and put them into practice.

Being at the Circle is one of the only times on campus I have felt a Palestinian presence. This university has a habit of alienating Palestinians, especially in the last eight months. There is an active genocide going on and academic departments refuse to acknowledge it. I have watched my professors get more and more uncomfortable when people bring up Palestine. They act as if senior administrators will pop in at any time and fire them on the spot.

The Circle is the only place on campus where I feel we can talk about Palestine for what it is and what it can be.

A secretive committee within the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General has given “politically-motivated” backing to the Toronto police’s targeting of pro-Palestine activism, a Breach investigation can reveal.

The committee has attempted to impose more severe criminal charges against individuals involved in peaceful protests since Oct. 7, or thwart the dropping of charges, multiple lawyers told The Breach.

Known as the Hate Crime Working Group and formed in 2019, it is composed of nearly two dozen Crown prosecutors, some of whose public comments show pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian bias.

The committee’s chair has said she is “committed” to the state of Israel, while another member described a pro-Palestinian activist as a “terrorist” and collaborated with a group of lawyers that aggressively defend Israel’s assault on Gaza, which has killed 38,000 Palestinians.

A man in St. John's rents office space, but he doesn't have an office job.

He's an electrician, driving from gig to gig all day. The office is where he sleeps at night, secretly, because he couldn't afford to rent an apartment anywhere in the city. For two months during the frigid Newfoundland and Labrador winter, he lived in his truck. Then, in February, he found an office listed for $450 per month.

"I'm 100 per cent doing this clandestinely," the 37-year-old told CBC News. "I basically have given up on finding anything else."

The average asking price for rent in Canada hit an all-time high of $2,202 per month in May, according to a June report from listing website Rentals.ca.

A consumer group is urgently calling on the federal government to follow other jurisdictions in the U.S and Europe and bring in legislation to stem the slide toward a cashless society.

Only 10 per cent of transactions in Canada today are done using cash, according to Carlos Castiblanco, an economist with the group Option Consommateurs.

"There is a need to protect cash right now before more merchants start refusing [it]," Castiblanco recently told CBC Radio's Ontario Today.

It's critical to act now, he added, before retailers begin removing all the infrastructure required to store and maintain physical money.

Some police services in Canada are using facial recognition technology to help solve crimes, while other police forces say human rights and privacy concerns are holding them back from employing the powerful digital tools.

It's this uneven application of the technology — and the loose rules governing its use — that has legal and AI experts calling on the federal government to set national standards.

"Until there's a better handle on the risks involved with the use of this technology, there ought to be a moratorium or a range of prohibitions on how and where it can be used," says Kristen Thomasen, law professor at the University of British Columbia.

As well, the patchwork of regulations on emerging biometric technologies has created situations in which some citizens' privacy rights are more protected than others.

Despite more than $239-million in provincial and federal funding committed to help rebuild, so far only five homes in the village that was home to around 250 people are close to completion, and about 15 building permits have been approved.

Only a handful of people have returned to the village after a catastrophic fire reduced Lytton, B.C., to ash on June 30, 2024.

According to the press secretary for the Minster of Indigenous Services Patty Hajdu, more than $120 million of that money went to Lytton First Nation to support recovery, plus an additional $1.3 million to fast-track 20 homes and help construct more than 175 homes using the Housing Accelerator Fund.

B.C. Auditor General Michael Pickup is investigating how provincial recovery money — more than $41 million — was spent and why the rebuild is taking so long. That report is due Sept. 1.