True North

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced that Huawei’s donation of masks to Canada will not influence whether or not the company will get access to Canada’s 5G network. 

During Tuesday’s daily coronavirus briefing, Trudeau was asked about a Globe and Mail report that revealed the Chinese company was sending millions of masks Canada as Canada’s essential medical supplies dwindle. 

“We are not expecting these donations to have any impact on our decisions. In fact, they will not affect our decisions on any issues,” said Trudeau in French. 

“Receiving goods from a particular company won’t necessarily imply at all that we regard different situations with that company any differently in the future.”

According to the Globe and Mail, Huawei has plans to give Canada six million masks, some of which are N95 respirators. 

The coronavirus pandemic has temporarily suspended Trudeau’s decision as to whether the company will be involved in Canada’s upcoming 5G network.

Huawei officials have been lobbying the federal government for some time now in order to gain access to the network. 

The company has employed a “diplomatically forceful” campaign by targeting specific members in Trudeau’s government. 

Among the Liberal cabinet ministers listed by the company as lobbying targets include Finance Minister Bill Morneau, Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne and Industry Minister Navdeep Bains.

“There’s always going to be naysayers that they don’t want to meet with you…[but] there are a lot of smart parliamentarians who were either re-elected or newly elected,” said Huawei Canada vice-president of government affairs Morgan Elliott.

Both American and Canadian intelligence experts have warned the Trudeau government that granting the company access could jeopardize intelligence-sharing relationships between the two countries and install a backdoor for espionage by Beijing.

“It gives the Chinese the ability, if they choose to use it, to access all kinds of information. Civilian intelligence, military, that could be very, very compromising,” said former US national security advisor Susan Rice. 

“That will throw the Five Eyes collaboration, which serves the security interests of every Canadian and every American, into jeopardy. It just can’t be done.”

$200,000 worth of surgical masks intended to protect citizens from the coronavirus are being recalled by the City of Toronto after failing to meet safety standards. 

“The City of Toronto discovered yesterday that a recently-purchased order of more than $200,000 worth of surgical masks do not meet the specifications the City requires for such masks and took immediate action, recalling these masks,” claimed a news release by Toronto’s Media Relations. 

“Four-thousand boxes containing 50 masks per box were received, and 1,252 boxes, or 62,600 masks, were distributed to the City’s long-term care homes on March 28.”

The masks sent to the nursing homes were reportedly ripping while being used. 

“The loss of this inventory makes for a significant shortfall of surgical masks for the city,” said the news release. 

While the vendor has agreed to refund the city for the costs, the name of the company will not be released due to potential “legal recourse” according to Toronto spokesperson Brad Ross. 

The loss is forcing the city to dip into a backup stockpile while it places a new order for replacements. 

Canada has been plagued by a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) due to a lack of stockpiling.

According to Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam, Canada is looking into disinfecting and reusing masks as a last resort to combat supply shortages. 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on Saturday that Canada would be receiving “millions” of masks from China to distribute to healthcare workers. 

Ontario’s emergency shutdown won’t disrupt the Easter Bunny’s delivery schedule, Ontario Premier Doug Ford confirmed.

Ford issued a directive Tuesday afternoon assuring Ontarians that as a delivery service provider, the Easter Bunny is exempt from the mandatory closures affecting most Ontario industries.

“I hereby confirm that the Easter Bunny is an essential service provider and authorized to deliver Easter chocolate, candy and related treats to the children of Ontario,” Ford’s confirmation of essential service said.

The directive comes the same day the Tooth Fairy evaded shutdown in neighbouring Quebec.

Premier Francois Legault assured Quebeckers that the Tooth Fairy was added to the essential services list.

“For the children asking, I can confirm that the Tooth Fairy is now included in essential services and is immune from Coronavirus,” said Legault. 

Both provinces decided in March to shut down all non-essential services in order to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Canada’s latest foreign aid announcement includes funding for abortions overseas and financial assistance for an organization with connections to Hamas.

On Sunday, the federal government announced $109.5 million in additional global coronavirus assistance, bringing the total funding promised to $159.5 million.

The federal government stated that an unspecified amount of coronavirus funding will go towards “women’s reproductive health.”

“Canada’s investment also aims to ensure that its international partners can maintain their services for vulnerable populations where possible, including support for sexual and reproductive health and rights,” stated a Global Affairs Canada press release. 

“Canada’s investment in these programs is in line with its feminist international assistance approach, since this global crisis has the potential to exacerbate inequalities and reverse development gains.”

In July 2019, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he would be spending $14 billion over the next ten years on reproductive health services around the world, largely centred around safe access to abortion.

Besides funding abortions, the foreign aid announced Sunday also promises funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), an organization with a sordid history.

The UNRWA, a UN agency that provides relief for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, has a long history of aiding terrorists in the region.

UNRWA staff have been caught using its vehicles to smuggle weapons to terrorists, and in 2014 UNRWA buildings were being used to store rockets for the terrorist group Hamas for use against Israel.

In 2019 the head of UNRWA was accused of nepotism and financial mismanagement.

While the United States, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands have all suspended funding for UNRWA, Canada remains a committed donor.

Construction has begun on the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline at a border crossing in northern Montana, according to a spokesperson for TC Energy. 

The 1,930-kilometre pipeline will carry 830,000 barrels of Canadian crude oil to the Gulf of Mexico, where the product will be refined. 

100 workers are involved in the early phases of constructing the pipeline, but that number will jump to several thousand in the near future. 

According to TC Energy, workers are having their temperatures checked before arriving on-site and are being told to social distance while working.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney announced a $1.5 billion investment to fast track the project last month. The investment also included a $6 billion loan to TC Energy. 

“We cannot wait for the end of the pandemic and the global recession to act,” said Kenney. 

“There are steps we must make now to build our future focused on jobs, the economy, and pipelines. Today we are moving forward with a project that is essential to our future prosperity.”

The project is estimated to employ 6,800 people directly or indirectly and will be a profitable investment for the struggling province, according to Kenney.

“After construction is complete, we will be able to sell our shares at profit. In addition, the project will have a net return of over $30 billion to the Alberta taxpayer through royalties and higher prices for Alberta oil in the next 20 years,” said Kenney. 

An oil price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia has wreaked havoc on Alberta’s once-booming oil industry. 

The price for Western Canada Select plummeted to a shocking $3.82 a barrel at the end of March but has since recuperated to $12.94 a barrel as of April 6. 

Researchers at the University of Toronto have raised questions about the cybersecurity of the popular teleconference app Zoom and its links to China. 

Employees, teachers and students around the world have been forced to work remotely due to the coronavirus pandemic and Zoom has benefitted financially from this massive shift towards videoconferencing. 

While other companies falter on the stock market, Zoom Video shares have skyrocketed by up to 84% this year. 

A research report by Bill Marczak and John Scott-Railton from the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab highlighted several issues surrounding Zoom’s encryption methods and discovered that some calls were being routed through China. 

“A company primarily catering to North American clients that sometimes distributes encryption keys through servers in China is potentially concerning, given that Zoom may be legally obligated to disclose these keys to authorities in China,” wrote Marczak and Scott-Railton. 

According to the report, the Zoom app is developed by three Chinese companies, all called “Ruanshi Software.” While two of the companies are in fact owned by Zoom, one is owned by a Chinese company called  “American Cloud Video Software Technology Co., Ltd.”

As of June 2017, the Cybersecurity Law of the People’s Republic of China legally requires companies to collaborate with government intelligence operations. Other Chinese tech companies like Huawei and TikTok have been scrutinized in the past due to their potential adherence to the law. 

Marczak and Scott-Railton point out that the wide-spread use of teleconferencing has attracted state actors with the prospect of cyberespionage. 

“Zoom’s success has led it to attract conversations that are of high priority interest to multiple governments. We suspect that this makes Zoom a high priority target for signals intelligence (SIGINT) gathering and targeted intrusion operations,” claim Marczak and Scott-Railton. 

The New York City Department of Education has already decided to ban the software after the security flaws were exposed and calls were subject to intrusion by hackers and trolls. 

Zoom has since admitted that some calls on the platform were “mistakenly” routed through Chinese servers. 

“In our urgency to come to the aid of people around the world during this unprecedented pandemic, we added server capacity and deployed it quickly — starting in China, where the outbreak began,” said Zoom CEO Eric Yuan. 

“In that process, we failed to fully implement our usual geo-fencing best practices. As a result, it is possible certain meetings were allowed to connect to systems in China, where they should not have been able to connect.”