Tag: canada

Toronto wants to expand drug decriminalization to cover all ages and substances

Toronto updated its 14-month-old decriminalization request to the federal government Friday, clarifying it wants a Health Canada exemption to cover young people as well as adults, and all drugs for personal use.

The city’s submission, an update to its initial January 2022 request, indicates Toronto wants the federal agency to go further than the exemption it recently granted to British Columbia under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

It makes clear the city wants its exemption to apply to all drugs for personal use and shield young people from criminalization, a departure from the B.C. exemption, which only applies to adults and lists a select number of substances. 

Medical Officer of Health Dr. Eileen de Villa says the submission sent to Health Canada, co-signed by the city’s police chief and city manager, is a “made-in-Toronto” model reflective of a months-long consultation process. 

“We’re talking about a matter of health and a matter of human rights, not one that really is meant to be addressed or is best addressed with a criminal justice approach,” she said in an interview. “That’s why we’re pursuing this route.” 

B.C.’s three-year exemption under the Act was granted in June and came into force Jan. 31. While that exemption caps possession at 2.5 grams, the Toronto submission does not outline a specific threshold for what constitutes personal use.

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Why so many Canadians pretend to be indigenous

‘Pretendians’ must be among the fastest growing cultural groups in Canada. A Pretendian is someone with little or no indigenous background who pretends to be indigenous. The latest to be uncovered is Vianne Timmons, president of Memorial University of Newfoundland. Last week, Timmons was forced to apologise for misrepresenting her background and is now taking a leave of absence.

Timmons claimed in CVs and elsewhere that she was descended from Mi’kmaq First Nations peoples. A recent CBC News report questioned whether or not Timmons actually had any First Nations ancestry at all. Looking at her family tree, the report found that she is probably only one-1024th to one-2048th indigenous.

Timmons’ story is noteworthy because she is a high-profile academic. She is director on the board of Universities Canada. She was named as one of Canada’s Top 100 most-powerful women in 2008 and was the 2013 winner of the Saskatchewan Humanitarian Award from the Red Cross. In 2017, she was even named an Officer of the Order of Canada for her lifetime contributions to inclusive education, family literacy, indigenous post-secondary education and women’s leadership.

Timmons even accepted an Indspire trophy – ‘the highest honour the indigenous community bestows upon its own people’ – while holding an eagle feather. At that ceremony, she claimed that her father once told her: ‘We’re Mi’kmaq, but I was raised to be ashamed of it so I hid it, all my life.’ In 2021, Timmons spoke about ‘discovering’ her indigenous roots: ‘It’s like trying to find your story that somebody hid from you, not just hid from you, but changed for you.’

Timmons is far from the only high-profile academic to have claimed minority status on dubious grounds. In 2016, author Joseph Boyden, an award-winning author of fiction and non-fiction about First Nations Canadians, faced doubts about his claims to indigenous ancestry. A 2020 CBC investigation raised similar concerns about filmmaker Michelle Latimer, whose film, Inconvenient Indian, won the People’s Choice Award for Documentaries and the award for Best Canadian Film at the Toronto International Film Festival. In 2021, the CBC revealed that Carrie Bourassa, Canada’s leading indigenous health scientist, appeared to be of entirely European ancestry. She had to resign her position at the University of Saskatchewan. Last year, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond – a former judge, scholar and another recipient of the Order of Canada – was also found to have made inconsistent claims about her heritage.

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The QAnon Queen Is Printing Her Own Currency Now

Flanked by two of her closest followers, the QAnon Queen of Canada gave a gracious thank you to her followers who—with their hard-earned, real-world cash—funded her most recent venture: so-called “loyalty” money. 

“Thank you to those who sent money to help print your loyalty money,” the self-proclaimed queen Romana Didulo said in a Telegram live stream in late January, when she introduced the bills and proudly presented them to her followers. “Everyone, continue to send money so that we can continue to print.”

The bills, which say 100,000 on them referring to an unknown currency, are white and feature her emblem in the middle flanked by two flags. Larger than normal cash, they have the look of a novelty check or board game money. Despite their cheap look, Didulo promised her fans they have interdimensional security devices on them. 

In chat rooms dedicated to Didulo, her fans celebrated the false hope given to them. One person said that he’s going to attempt to pay his utility bills with the money, and another said she’s excited because they’ve been living in their car and this could get a roof over their heads. 

“I am so hopeful that the loyalty money will allow me to purchase a prefab home or one of those tiny homes,” she wrote. “How wonderful that would be for me and many others like me around Canada.”

“I can’t wait to hear when or how I can use this loyalty money for this purpose.” 

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Canadian Government Launches UFO Study

Taking a page from the United States, the Canadian government has launched their own official study on UFOs in the hopes of getting a better understanding of the mysterious phenomenon. The intriguing effort has reportedly been dubbed the ‘Sky Canada Project’ and will be overseen by the country’s Chief Science Advisor. Believed to be the first government-sponsored UFO research project in almost three decades, the endeavor is similar in scope to studies currently being conducted in America wherein determining how reports of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) are being collected by the government is at the center of the work rather than answering the question of what these objects might be.

To that end, an official document detailing the creation of the study stresses that “it is not meant to prove or deny the existence of extraterrestrial life or extraterrestrial visitors.” On the contrary, the project will seek to “identify the key Canadian players and how they deal with UAP observations.” As such, researchers will be seeking input from various government departments within Canada including the country’s space agency as well as the Royal Mounted Police. The project will also consult with American counterparts in the US Department of Defense and NASA who are also examining the UAP issue. Ultimately, they aim to issue a public report on the study sometime next year.

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Pilots Say Lake Huron ‘Octagonal’ Object is ‘Not Balloon’ in Just-Released Cockpit Audio

Cockpit audio of pilots trying to figure out what the unidentified object over Lake Huron has been released.

The audio was authenticated by the US Airforce.

The US military decommissioned another “object” over Lake Huron on Sunday.

The Pentagon said the ‘octagon-shaped’ object shot down on Sunday likely fell into Canadian waters on Lake Huron.

No debris has been recovered.

“I wouldn’t really call it a balloon… I don’t know what… I can see it outside with my eyes,” one pilot said. “It’s so slow and so small you can’t see it.”

“It’s just some kind of dark object. You can see some strings or something hanging down below it. I can’t tell if it’s holding anything,” the pilot said.

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Canada Deploys Air Force to Search for Downed Object’s Debris in ‘Complex Alpine Terrain’

Canada’s Royal Air Force has deployed multiple aircraft to search for debris from an object that was shot down over the Yukon Territory on Feb. 11, Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand has said.

A CC-130H Hercules, two CC-138 Twin Otters, a CH-148 Cyclone, and a CH-149 Cormorant aircraft were deployed by the Royal Canadian Air Force to help recover the debris, Anand said on Twitter on Monday.

“Additional support is being provided from units forward deployed to Whitehorse, and Dawson City, Yukon Territory,” she said. “The debris is located in a remote location northeast of Dawson City, in complex alpine terrain that is prone to challenging northern weather conditions.”

Dawson city is a small town about 40 miles east of Canada’s border with Alaska.

Anand told CNN earlier in the day that the object was “cylindrical” and “smaller” than the “object shot down over the United States East Coast” the day before, citing “visuals” she and other officials have seen.

“But it would be imprudent for me to speculate at this time until we gather the debris and until we do the analysis. The FBI is involved in that analysis as is the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) here in Canada,” the minister added.

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Systemic Racism Makes Animals Abandon Black Neighborhoods, Researchers Say

White neighborhoods have greater abundance and diversity of animal life, and Canadian researchers say racism is to blame. 

“Systemic racism alters the demography of urban wildlife populations in ways that generally limit population sizes and negatively affect their chances of persistence,” write the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg’s Chloé Schmidt and Colin J. Garroway in a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  

In a study that examined 39 terrestrial vertebrate species in 268 urban locations across the United States, the researchers found “generally consistent patterns of reduced genetic diversity and decreased connectivity in neighborhoods with fewer White residents.” 

Schmidt and Garroway say racial segregation practices during the 1950s suburb boom played a major role, as they blocked racial and ethnic minorities from more desirable neighborhoods. This had the effect of sending white families in to the suburbs and concentrating blacks and other minorities in urban cores that grew increasingly dense. The effect was compounded by physical barriers, such as railroad tracks and highways.   

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Canada passes online censorship bill

Canada’s Senate has passed Bill C-11 (Online Streaming Act), which critics refer to as “the internet censorship bill,” along with several amendments.

The bill passed in the third reading with 43 votes in favor and 15 against, which means it is now inching ever closer to becoming law since in the next step it goes back to the House of Commons, which will consider the amendments.

The government proposed the bill as a way to amend the Broadcasting Act by modifying Canada’s broadcasting policy, and give the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) new powers as a regulator.

Opponents of the bill, including Conservative politicians and advocacy groups, however, see it as a way to increase the government’s ability to censor online speech it dislikes.

The effort to bring this legislation to life in Canada has quite a story behind it: initially, the Online Streaming Act, then known as Bill C-10, passed in the House of Commons in June 2021 but failed in the Senate.

It made a comeback as Bill C-11 in February 2022, got cleared by the House in June, and finally last week made it through the Senate.

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Canadian Government Forces Dairy Farmer to Dump 30,000 Liters of Milk Because He Exceeded His Quota

A dairy farmer from Southern Ontario, Canada has spoken out about how the Canadian government makes farms dump thousands of liters of fresh milk because they have gone over the quota.

In a video shared on TikTok by Travis Huigen, Canadian dairy farmer Jerry Human expresses his outrage at the Canadian government and the Dairy Farmers of Ontario (DFO) for wasting hundreds of liters of fresh milk despite inflation.

“Right now, during the winter months, you milk quite a bit more milk because the feed is very consistent. And if you do a good job, you will produce quite a bit of milk. But right now, we’re over our quota, and it’s regulated by the government, and [implemented] by the DFO,” said Human.

“Look at this milk running away. It’s the end of the month [and] I dump 30,000 liters of milk and it breaks my heart. This year Canadian milk is $7 a liter.”

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Canadian Court: Govt Justified in Denying Unemployment Benefits to Unvaccinated Man

A Canadian court has ruled that it was justified for the federal government to deny a fired hospital worker unemployment benefits because he refused to take the coronavirus vaccine.

A Federal Court judge has ruled that the Canadian government was correct to deny Anthony Cecchetto employment insurance benefits after he lost his job at a Toronto-area group of hospitals in 2021 because he refused to take the coronavirus vaccine or an antigen test.

Employment Insurance (EI) had been denied initially to Cecchetto because the agency determined that he had been fired for misconduct, a judgement that the federal judge agreed with, the National Post newspaper reports.

“It is likely that (he) will find this result frustrating because my reasons do not deal with the fundamental legal, ethical, and factual questions he is raising,” Federal Court Justice William Pentney said.

“That is because many of these questions are simply beyond the scope of this case.”

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