Canada

Made this video a couple of years back, now it’s on PeerTube.

For a supposed hotbed of antisemitism, the scene at McGill’s Gaza protest encampment was distinctly Jewish: giant bottles of kosher grape juice and matzah bread piled on the ground, the fixings for a Passover dinner.

On Sunday, when I visited the university’s campus, now the source of daily national headlines, a large group of students were settling in for this religious ritual.

This environment—of respect, curiosity, and support for freedom, apparent at Passover and through the rest of the camp—is what B’nai Brith claimed this week represents a “horrifying normalization of antisemitism on university campuses.”

It’s what the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs claimed was a “toxic” situation full of “calls for violence and antisemitic slogans.”

I witnessed no such thing.

Since the start of Ottawa’s $10-a-day program, Sandra Christian has had many families leave her private child-care centre in B.C. for a spot in a subsidized centre.

But that’s not what worries her — child-care services are in high demand so empty spots get filled quickly.

What worries her and her office manager, Carley Babiarz, is some of these families have said the money they’ve saved on child care has helped them buy a second property.

“We don't believe that that's the intention of the [$10-a-day] program,” said Babiarz, who works at the Creative Kids Learning Centers, which has nine locations in Surrey, Langley and Chilliwack, B.C. “It doesn't best suit our low-income… families.”

Many other child-care workers shared the same opinion at the first national conference for child-care operators, hosted by the Association of Alberta Childcare Entrepreneurs on Tuesday.

Even with interest rates due to ease up later this year, people have still been extremely hesitant to purchase real estate in Toronto — especially ...

The bridge had just gone through extensive renovations and updates with construction finished late summer of 2023.

https://www.blogto.com/city/2024/05/driver-lodged-truck-bridge-downtown-toronto/

In 2022, Global News said the quiet part out loud: poverty is driving disabled Canadians to consider MAiD. Those “some” who are driven to assisted death because of poverty or an inability to access adequate care deserve to live with dignity and with the resources they need to live as they wish. They should never, ever feel the pressure to choose to die because our social welfare institutions are starved and our health care system has been vandalized through years of austerity and poor management.

Given the way our institutions and economic and political elite create and perpetuate poverty in Canada, particularly among disabled people, we should be particularly sensitive to the implications of the country’s MaiD regime for those who are often ignored when warning about the dangers of the law.

...

While MAiD may be defensible as a means for individuals to exercise personal choice in how they live and how they die when facing illness and pain, it is plainly indefensible when state-induced austerity and mismanagement leads to people choosing to end their lives that have been made unnecessarily miserable. In short, we are killing people for being poor and disabled, which is horrifying.

The recent deadly crash near Toronto — in which four people were killed after police chased a suspect through oncoming traffic on a major highway — highlights the challenges officers face when deciding whether to pursue a suspect.

But it also raises questions about whether the policies covering police chases need to be beefed up, and if officers are sufficiently trained when confronted with these incidents.

... Christian Leuprecht, a professor of political science at Royal Military College of Canada, says he believes there's too much emphasis on tactical training. There should be more scenario training, in which officers must decide under what circumstances they would want to engage in a pursuit and how they weigh the risks, he says.

"These are, like, classic issues where your heart wants to chase after the guy but your brain should have all sorts of red signals [to], stop right now."

They raised almost $5,000 to help South Africans fight racial discrimination.

Source

Is anyone else boycotting Loblaws? I don't have many alternatives, but I'm doing my best to take my business elsewhere.

US regulators have found evidence that TD's anti-money laundering fraud detection is insufficient

For months, analysts have predicted a fine in the range of US$500-million to US$1-billion, but that’s now jumped. “We believe cumulative fines could easily hit $2-billion,” Mr. Dechaine wrote.

Meanwhile, in Canada, TD is facing record fines (archive) from Canadian regulators.

https://archive.is/e0SGA

The link is a 4:03-minute embedded YT video and transcript. It's informative, inspiring, and a home-run piece by The Breach imo.

Piped link for video: https://piped.video/watch?v=Of8hV24Q8iA

Sarah Shamy, Palestinian Youth Movement Montreal: We’re really seeing the student movement be on the front lines of this movement, which is for Palestinian Liberation. Columbia University really sparked the initial fire that really kind of erupted and became a movement on its own, where students have been answering the call to set up encampments.

Miriam Liben, IJV Concordia: There was a video that we saw this morning of children in refugee camps in Gaza, holding up signs being like “thank you for your solidarity,” with McGill and Columbia and different names of different universities. I think that felt incredibly powerful.

Text: The media have also repeated McGill’s administration’s suggestion that antisemitism is rife in the encampment.

Mara Thompson, [Independent Jewish Voices] (IJV) McGill: I feel that McGill has played a really dangerous game and an irresponsible game by conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism. I feel that their consultation with the Jewish student body is totally incomplete. They disregard student referendums, and student testimonies and groups like IJV who are publicly anti-Zionist and still very rooted in their Jewish values. I think that conflating the two risks diluting what we understand antisemitism to be, which I think is really dangerous in the long term, since antisemitism is a threat.

"Their frustration is understandable, but this kind of expectation betrays a misunderstanding of what's actually driving food prices higher in this country."

On today’s Big Take podcast: What happens when rapid immigration meets slow housing production.

Toronto and area condo market rents recorded a major downturn marked by the largest six-month drop in prices in the past 15 years. Read on.

A veteran Bay Street economist says the Canadian economy has slowed more than enough to justify an interest rate cut by the Bank of Canada, and that underlying inflation may be lower than the central bank thinks.