Canada

I got in some hot water a while back for admitting I was relatively unconcerned with Republican villainy these days compared to other worries. This Canada Online Harms Act, whose details I missed earlier (apologies to Public and Yuri Bezmenov!), perfectly embodies the kind of thing that keeps me up at night now.

Whatever else Republicans have been up to, they haven’t been scheduling nuclear bomb runs over the whole concept of individual rights (although they’re trying to catch up with moves like the antisemitism bill). People will focus on the cartoon wokeness of Justin Trudeau’s bill, but that’s not what makes it scary — he’s trying to create a full-blown surveillance state, complete with a giant citizen army of paid snitches, with one stroke. Things not even imaginable a few years ago, like pre-emptive punishment for crimes not even committed or life sentences for what Canada’s former Chief Justice called “some words,” would be reality with this bill. Genuine political dissent would become logistically impossible, and virtual mob rule a certainty.

People misunderstood the content of stories like the Twitter Files to be solely about censorship. The real issue was the creation of huge extrademocratic bureaucracies that use digital levers to manipulate political life and whose growth is difficult-to-impossible to check. The way this bill casually dismisses things like the right to face your accuser or due process or protection from ex post facto law shows the utter contempt for democracy. These ideas have a lot of support in elite circles in America and I’m sorry, they’re operating on a completely different level of scary than something like the Trump movement even. Do people just not believe this stuff is happening, or do they think it’s okay? I don’t get it.

I don't have a better source than NatPo. If anyone's aware of a better one, post it.

Quebec's labour tribunal has given union accreditation to workers at an Amazon warehouse in Laval, Que., a first in Canada.

Workers at the DXT4 warehouse, located in Laval, a suburb north of Montreal, had been working toward unionizing with the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN) for two years.

The CSN filed an application with Quebec's Administrative Labour Tribunal on April 19 to represent some 200 employees. The decision came down Friday.

Caroline Senneville, the CSN's president, said employees were dissatisfied with what they described as a hectic work pace, low wages, and inadequate health and safety measures.

Guanghu Cui was poring over his TD Bank statements in March, preparing to pay taxes for his small immigration consulting firm in Oakville, Ont., when he noticed a $1.50 fee for sending an e-transfer.

It was surprising, because when he'd opened his business account three years ago, his financial adviser told him the plan included five free transactions a month and he'd never exceeded that number.

Cui complained and eventually TD said it would reimburse him for the fees and compensate him for his "frustration and inconvenience."

But when the paperwork arrived for Cui to sign, it included a condition saying he must "keep it confidential." While he could speak about the dispute, he would not be allowed to tell anyone that TD had offered compensation.

Cui emailed TD to say he wouldn't take the offer if the bank didn't drop the gag order.

"I was told the offer is final and there's no room for negotiation… take it or leave it," said Cui. "That is just unfair. And that is unethical."

The CRA now employs 59,000 people. The US' tax agency employs 79,000 despite serving a population ten times the size

The Landlord and Tenant Board found the landlord's conduct 'deplorable,' saying they clearly took advantage of a vulnerable tenant.

One of the most polarizing figures to gain notoriety during what became known as the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa more than two years ago will stand trial Monday, signalling the tail end of criminal proceedings that have dogged hundreds of individuals who participated in the historic protest.

Pat King, from Red Deer, Alta., is facing charges of mischief, intimidation, obstructing police, disobeying a court order and other offences for his role in the protest that gridlocked downtown for nearly a month in early 2022.

Arrested and jailed for five months before his release that summer, King is unlikely to serve more time behind bars if he is found guilty, given laws around credit from time served.

Like other prominent convoy leaders, King's trial is expected to draw a sizeable crowd outside the Ottawa Courthouse.

The season's first major wildfires have spread to roughly 8,000 hectares across Western Canada on Sunday as authorities issued an evacuation order for a community in British Columbia and warned of poor air quality across provinces.

In British Columbia, thousands of residents in Northern Rockies Regional Municipality and Fort Nelson First Nations were evacuated as the nearby blaze spread to 2,483 hectares.

Northern Rockies Regional Municipality Mayor Rob Fraser in a TV interview said most of the 3,500 residents in and around Fort Nelson had been evacuated.

Across the border in Alberta, residents of Fort McMurray, an oil hub in that faced extensive damage from wildfires in 2016, were asked to prepare to leave.

Nine million Canadians worry about where their next meal will come from.

Condo sales numbers in and around Toronto have taken a drastic tumble so far this year, and now that the market is starting to lean towards buyers ...

On the face of it, Friday's jobs report was a good one – we added 90,000 jobs in April and the unemployment rate held steady at 6.1%.

The Business Council of Alberta calls for a "prosperity-driven immigration system" and points out distortions in the current scoring arrangement.

A Shoppers Drug Mart in Ontario is being accused of price gouging on social media after one customer shared a photo of the store's exorbitant peanu...

Homicide investigators in B.C. say murder charges have been laid against a fourth Indian national in connection to the killing of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar outside a Surrey gurdwara last year.

Students and academics at the University of Alberta reacted with outrage on Saturday after Edmonton police dismantled a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus, describing the operation as violent and contesting assertions that demonstrators were breaking the law.

Organizers said police fired tear gas and wielded batons and bicycles against students at the university’s north campus quad shortly after arriving at 4:30 a.m., resulting in one hospitalization.

In January 2023, Canada spent $400 million to send an American air-defence system to Ukraine, which Blair says is still being manufactured.

Nurse practitioners could help fill the void, advocates for the profession say, if more provinces would adopt policies to integrate them into primary care and pay them fairly for their work. Some physicians’ organizations have pushed back against that approach, arguing that NPs don’t have as much training or education as family doctors and therefore should only be funded publicly when they’re embedded in interdisciplinary teams with MDs.

Aren't these the same organizations that have been dragging their feet on recognizing foreign credentials?

I've been seeing a nurse practitioner for the last couple of years. So far, she's provided the same level of care I'm used to from family doctors: prescriptions, forwarding me to specialists when appropriate, providing the usual advice during checkups. It's fine.

https://archive.is/PkAdd

Edit: took out my grumbly summary, since our healthcare spending seems to be middle of the pack, compared to peer countries.

Instead of sending in the troops to deal with what promises to be another dangerous wildfire season, Public Safety Canada is testing the capabilities of civilian-led first responders and relief providers.

Emergency Preparedness Minister Harjit Sajjan said the new program will be deployed during this wildfire season in British Columbia and the Northwest Territories.

Sajjan, a former defence minister, added that the Canadian Armed Forces is "not the best resource to deal with a lot of emergencies," including wildfires.

The federal government is expanding its existing Humanitarian Workforce Program — which supports non-governmental organizations responding to natural disasters and other large-scale emergencies — to support its 2024 wildfire response and other emergency services through pilot programs in British Columbia and the Northwest Territories.