Tag: canada

The Very Illegal Cafe Where You Can Take Shrooms and Chew Coca

“Cops and raids can’t keep us down,” reads a sign outside of the Coca Leaf Cafe and Medicinal Mushroom Dispensary in downtown Vancouver, Canada. In November last year, the emporium – which sells not just Bolivian coca (from which cocaine derives) and hallucinogenic mushrooms, but all manner of psychedelics – was raided by the police for the first time since opening in 2020, along with two other dispensaries under the same ownership. Thousands of dollars in cash and drugs worth tens of thousands were seized.

Owner Dana Larsen was arrested and held in custody for seven hours, but he reopened the cafe the next day after being released without any immediate charges. Staff at his other two outlets greeted psychonauts, microdosers and the psychedelic-curious once more a few days later. The immediate reopening was a brazen move, even for Larsen, a 52-year-old veteran of entrepreneurial drug law reform activism, who was chewing coca leaves when we first met. His next play was even more audacious.

For Christmas, he sent festive cards to the addresses of all 87 members of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, and gifted each of the politicians a coca leaf and one gram of Golden Teacher magic mushrooms. In the card, he wished them “the happiest of holidays”, lauded the plants’ “beneficial therapeutic properties”, and included a membership form for the dispensary. Larsen told local media: “I encourage them to try the mushroom in a safe and responsible setting and to have that experience – it can be very beneficial.” It’s unclear whether any of them took him up on the offer; in fact, some of them called the police.

Keep reading

Canada halts controversial assisted suicide program for mentally ill due to lack of doctors willing to participate

Canada has delayed the extension of its assisted suicide program to people suffering solely from mental illness, health officials announced Monday. 

Canada offers medically assisted death to terminally and chronically ill people, but the plan to extend the program to people with mental illnesses has divided Canadians, the New York Times reported.

Some critics attribute the problem to a lack of adequate psychiatric care in the country.

The controversial policy would allow anyone in Canada with an incurable medical condition to apply for assisted suicide, even if the disease is not terminal, which makes the law one of the most liberal assisted suicide programs in the world. 

Canada introduced medically assisted dying after its Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that requiring people to cope with intolerable suffering infringed on fundamental rights to liberty and security.

The law was expanded in 2021 to include people experiencing “grievous and irremediable” conditions, such as depression and other mental health issues. 

Over 13,000 Canadians were euthanized as part of the program in 2022, the Daily Mail reported. 

When the program was announced last year, one conservative lawmaker “charged that the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is promoting a ‘culture of death.’”

Keep reading

Trudeau invited former SS officer, Yaroslav Hunka, to a ‘special event’ in Toronto

Rebel News has learned that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invited a former Nazi to a ‘special event’ in Toronto, Ontario amid a visit from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

On September 22, 2023, all House parties, Senate groups and foreign dignitaries rose to applaud Yaroslav Hunka, 98, for fighting the Russians during WWII.

The House Speaker recognized Hunka for his supposed service in the ‘First Division’ of the Ukrainian National Army before immigrating to Canada. “He’s a Ukrainian hero — a Canadian hero — and we thank him for all his service,” claimed Rota at the time.

But in the days that followed, Canadians learned that Hunka fought for a voluntary Nazi paramilitary unit, forcing Rota to issue an apology and later resign from his post. 

“On Friday, September 22, in my remarks following the address of the President of Ukraine, I recognized an individual in the gallery,” he said. “I have subsequently become aware of more information which causes me to regret my decision to do so.”

Keep reading

Why is a full-grown man competing against teenage girls in swimming?

First they let men compete in women’s sports. Now they’re letting adult men compete against teenage girls – and wander into their changing rooms.

As hard as it might be to believe, in Canada a 50-year-old man really is being allowed to compete in swimming competitions alongside 13- and 14-year-old girls. Melody Wiseheart, formerly Nicholas Cepeda, is a professor of psychology and behavioural science at York University in Toronto, specialising in children and young people.

Concerned parents tipped off Rebel News, a right-wing website, about Wiseheart in October last year. He was spotted swimming in a competition at the Markham Pan Am recreation centre, representing the Orangeville Otters swimming club.

The next week, to try to stand up the story, Rebel News reporter Davide Menzies confronted several staff members at the recreation centre. Its competition coordinator initially said he could not recall seeing ‘a 50-year-old man’ competing alongside teenage girls. Menzies then presented him with the competition schedule, which showed Wiseheart’s name and age alongside those of nine teenage girls. Only then did the coordinator admit that Wiseheart had indeed been allowed to take part. The Daily Mail alleges that Wiseheart has been competing against teenage girls since 2019.

According to the competition coordinator, Wiseheart has the right to compete in girls’ competitions under Swimming Canada’s ‘trans inclusion’ rules. He has registered himself as female and is thus treated as female. And although the competitions he swims in consist almost exclusively of teenage girls, this is simply a matter of convention. It seems that, since no adult had ever tried to enter a teenagers’ race before, there had been no need to draw up explicit rules. In other words, Wiseheart did not even need to ‘identify’ as a 13-year-old girl to assert his ‘right’ to enter the girls’ competition.

Keep reading

UFO reports from pilots include ‘intense’ and ‘unusual’ lights over Canada in 2023

Early on Feb. 12, 2023, at least three different flights over Quebec reported(opens in a new tab) “seeing very strange lights in the sky, high above the flight paths” that were “moving in a rapid and irregular way.”

“It looks like it’s more than one and sort of circling,” a crew member aboard a cargo flight from Chicago to Luxembourg told air traffic controllers in Canada, according to audio obtained by CTVNews.ca(opens in a new tab). “It’s a bit weird.”

CTVNews.ca has identified at least 17 reports like these from 2023 in an online aviation incident database(opens in a new tab) maintained by Transport Canada, the federal transportation department. Those reports come from across the country and involve pilots and crew with WestJet(opens in a new tab), Air France(opens in a new tab), British Airways(opens in a new tab) and more(opens in a new tab). You can read all of the reports in an exclusive interactive map(opens in a new tab).

Keep reading

Vaccine-injured Canadians have received $11.2 million in compensation for COVID jabs

Vaccine injured Canadians have been compensated more than $11 million after suffering adverse reactions from the COVID jab.

The Vaccine Injury Support Program (VISP) processes claims in which “the injury is serious and permanent or has resulted in death,” it said. They accepted 1,825 of 2,233 claims for processing as of December 1, 2023.

VISP defines a serious or permanent injury as “a severe, life-threatening, or life-altering injury that may require in-person hospitalization or a prolongation of existing hospitalization, resulting in persistent or significant disability or incapacity, or where the outcome is a congenital malformation or death.”

It began accepting claims in June 2021 after the federal government announced the program the previous December. A doctor applies on behalf of a claimant, and then a VISP doctor reviews it and requests further medical records as required. 

Of those claims, the Medical Review Board approved 138 for compensation, totalling $11,236,314, reported Blacklock’s Reporter.

Keep reading

Four Toronto-area school boards reschedule upcoming PA days due to solar eclipse risks

The 2024 total solar eclipse and its potential risks have forced at least four school boards west of Toronto to reschedule their professional activity days in April, according to officials.

In announcements published this week, Peel District School Board and Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board said the previously planned PA day on May 17 will now take place on April 8, when the celestial event will blot out the sun across eastern Canada for a few minutes.

“…There are risks associated with viewing a solar eclipse,” the school boards said in matching news releases, citing the Canadian Space Agency’s guidance. “Looking directly at the sun, without appropriate protection, can lead to severe eye damage or loss of eyesight, even during an eclipse.”

The boards said that because the eclipse will occur around the same time students are dismissed, moving the PA day to April 8 will “ensure that students will not be outdoors during” that time.

Last week, Halton District School Board and Halton Catholic District School Board also jointly announced that they were moving their scheduled April 22 PA Day to April 8. The boards said the decision was made in consultation with student transportation services.

“By rescheduling the PA Day to coincide with the eclipse, we mitigate possible student​​​ transportation and safety concerns and challenges for families that could arise as a result of the darkness that would be experienced while students are being dismissed from school,” the boards said in a statement.

Keep reading

Trudeau’s Orwellian Attack On Canadian Truckers Declared Unconstitutional

Canada’s Federal Court ruled on Tuesday that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act in 2022 to punish protesting truckers was both unreasonable and unconstitutional.

“I have concluded that the decision to issue the Proclamation does not bear the hallmarks of reasonableness — justification, transparency and intelligibility — and was not justified in relation to the relevant factual and legal constraints that were required to be taken into consideration,” wrote Justice Richard G. Mosley in his ruling.

The decision follows an application for judicial review requested by the Canadian Constitution Foundation, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and various other applicants who cried foul over the use of emergency measures to quell Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa, which allowed the government to freeze the bank accounts of protesters,  conscript tow truck drivers, and arrest people for participating in assemblies deemed illegal by Trudeau’s government.

Keep reading

US tourist shocked when he was asked to sign ‘release form’ after ordering hamburger cooked medium at Toronto Hilton

Is there anything more disconcerting than being asked to sign a waiver before tucking into a hamburger?

An American visitor to Toronto shocked hundreds of Reddit users last week by sharing that he was asked to sign a waiver when he ordered a medium-cooked hamburger at a Hilton hotel restaurant.

“I ordered my burger medium and the waiter took it with no question or comment,” he wrote in a post captioned “Toronto burger came with a release form.”

“She brought it and it looked great! When I had my first bite she brought me a release form and said we always make our burgers well done, but since you wanted it medium … you should sign this.”

The poster said that upon the special “medium” request, the waiter informed the man that the only burger option was well done and requested them to sign the form.

The form stated it would clear the hotel restaurant against any claims for damages related to any foodborne illnesses arising from the medium-cooked burger.

Keep reading

Canadian man who claimed wildfires were a federal conspiracy admits arson

A Canadian man who claimed forest fires were the result of a government conspiracy has pleaded guilty to lighting more than a dozen blazes during the country’s record-breaking wildfire season, as nearly 100 fires persist in drought-stricken regions.

Brian Paré admitted to 13 counts of arson and one count of arson with disregard for human life at the courthouse in central Quebec, an act that drew away key firefighting resources from nearly 700 fires in the province last summer.

Those blazes, which required the aid of international fire crews, charred more than 4.5m hectares of boreal landscape. Virtually all of those fires were caused by lightning strikes, the Quebec’s fire service says.

But at the courthouse in the town of Chibougamau, prosecutor Marie-Philippe Charron said on Monday two of the 14 fires lit by Paré forced the evacuation of 500 homes, the Canadian Press reported. The largest fire lit by Paré consumed nearly 873 hectares of forest.

Fire officials investigated a string of five blazes in June that had no possible natural cause and broke out days after the province had implemented a fire ban. The 38-year-old Paré quickly became a suspect when he was spotted in the location of the fires and “demonstrated a certain interest in fires” after an interview with police, said Charron.

In June police began watching his social media posts, which frequently focused on the province’s wildfires. He shared content suggesting the record-breaking fire season was the result of government intervention, not climate change. The prosecution said police specialists developed a suspect profile based on the fires – and increasingly, Paré’s seemed a match.

Police later obtained a warrant to install a tracking device on Paré’s vehicle and found he travelled to locations where other fires were started.

After he was arrested in September, he admitted to starting nine fires and “claimed he was doing tests to find out whether the forest was really dry or not”, Charron told the court.

Despite a string of conspiratorial theories over the summer, amplified by Alberta’s premier, nearly all of Canada’s fires were caused by lightning striking the tinder-like condition of forests.

Keep reading