Last week, the Brazilian government took the drastic step of banning X across the country. To make matters worse, Brazilians who try and circumvent the ban by using a VPN could be fined up to $12,000 CAD per day. This is the latest escalation in a free speech war between Brazilian supreme court judge Alexandre De Moraes and X owner Elon Musk. The Brazilian government has been ordering X to censor political dissidents in the country for months but Musk continues to stand his ground.
Could something similar happen in Canada? It definitely looks like the Brazilian government is living out the dreams of Justin Trudeau. Canada’s online harms bill – if passed – could imprison political dissidents for life in extreme cases for their online opinions.
Watch the latest episode of Ratio’d with Harrison Faulkner!
As footage of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau getting into a heated exchange with a unionized steelworker garnered thousands of views, the Conservative Party of Canada released a new ad aimed at expanding its effort to connect with working-class Canadians.
Composed of a video and radio advertisement, the “Dark to Dawn” campaign hones in on unions increasingly backing leader Pierre Poilievre’s common sense approach to policy and attacks NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and Trudeau.
A country is built by the people who rise when it is still dark.
The ad will be broadcast in both French and English. It acknowledges the contributions of Canadians who start their workday early and “carry the government on their backs.”
“A country is built by the people who rise when it is still dark—the servers and soldiers, the farmers and factory workers, the nurses and night shift workers,” said Poilievre in the ad.
“Now, you pay more to bring home less, if you can afford a home at all. Many live in fear of crime and chaos.”
In the video, Poilievre commits to affordable food and safe affordable housing.
“The ad campaign will run coast to coast and will start with a “Dark to Dawn” ad in French and English highlighting the extraordinary Canadians who rise when it’s still dark and who carry the government on their shoulders, as well as a radio ad pointing out Jagmeet Singh’s hypocrisy for delaying the election so he can qualify for a $2.2 million pension and continue living his luxury lifestyle on the taxpayers’ dime,” wrote the Conservatives in a press release.
Poilievre has positioned himself as a pro-worker advocate, recently earning the title of “friend of the UA” from the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry at a recent banquet.
#WATCH: PM Justin Trudeau gets confronted by an Algoma steel worker and refuses to shake Trudeau’s hand in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. pic.twitter.com/MKwfP3cScM
Over the weekend, Trudeau faced a heated confrontation during a visit to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. During a photo op at Algoma Steel, an unidentified steelworker lashed out at Trudeau, expressing frustration over high taxes and lack of healthcare access for workers.
The exchange, captured on video, has been widely circulated online.
“What about the 40% taxes I am paying? And I don’t have a doctor,” said the Algoma Steel worker during the exchange.
Trudeau touted his government’s achievements including new tariffs and the Liberal government’s dental care plan.
“I don’t believe you, not for a second,” said the worker.
Canada is stronger when unions are stronger.
The NDP is proud to be a party founded by workers who have fought Conservative attacks on workers' rights since our creation.
The NDP also launched a new ad last week, criticizing Poilievre because he “has never been a worker and never stood with workers” and portraying Singh as an ally of unions.
“I don’t think Pierre can go to a picket line because I think he knows he won’t be welcome at a picket line because Piere has never been a worker,” Laura Walton, President of the Ontario Federation of Labour, says in the NDP ad.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith decried Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s recent appointment of two senators as undemocratic and opposed to the province’s best interests.
Alberta stands alone as the only province that conducts elections for Senate nominees. However, these elections are non-binding, as the appointment of senators is ultimately determined by the Governor General of Canada, acting on the advice of the Prime Minister.
Alberta’s first senate election occurred on Oct. 16, 1989, making this year the 35th anniversary.
“Despite our province’s repeated democratic election of senators-in-waiting ready to represent Albertans’ interests, [Trudeau] has chosen to appoint left-wing partisans who will do whatever he and the Liberals order them to do,” said Smith.
During Alberta’s senate election process, electors vote for the candidates they wish to put forward to the King’s Privy Council of Canada to fill future vacancies representing Alberta in the Senate of Canada. The names are submitted to the federal government for consideration, but any recommendations are non-binding.
Each of Alberta’s Senate elections selects the top three nominees. During the most recent election in 2021, which saw over 1.1 million votes, the top three nominees were Pam Davidson, Erika Barootes, and Mykhailo Martyniouk, securing 18.2%, 17.1%, and 11.3% of the vote, respectively.
Despite this, Trudeau appointed Daryl Fridhandler and Kristopher Wells to represent Alberta. Neither candidate participated in Alberta’s previous election.
Martytniouk said that the recent decision raises concerns about the principles of representative democracy, highlighting that Trudeau chose to disregard the democratic preference of Albertans.
“This perception that the federal government is ignoring the democratic preferences of a province will deepen divisions within Canada, particularly between Western provinces and the rest of the country,” said senator-in-waiting Martyniouk. “The Prime Minister has dramatically failed both democracy and federalism.”
The concerns were echoed by Davidson, who criticized Trudeau for appointing two “unelected men” to fill the province’s Senate vacancies.
“I remain ready to represent my province; the only person standing in the way is Justin Trudeau,” she said.
Despite not making a public statement, Barootes retweeted a post from Conservative MP Damien C. Kurek.
“In Alberta, we elect our Senators. Full Stop. Justin Trudeau doesn’t like that,” said Kurek. “Alberta and Canada deserve better than a PM that has such contempt for the democratic will of the people of the country he is supposed to be serving.”
According to Trudeau, the Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments reviews candidate submissions for the Senate and subsequently provides recommendations to him. All 86 appointments to the Senate by Trudeau have come as recommendations from the Board.
“The Board is guided in its work by public, transparent, non-partisan, and merit-based criteria to identify highly qualified candidates for the Senate,” reads the release.
Conservative Shadow Minister for Democratic Reform, Michael Cooper, said that Trudeau’s appointments serve to ram through his radical agenda and cause hurt and misery across the country.
“Justin Trudeau lied to Canadians and said he would make the Senate independent and non-partisan but the reality is that nearly every person he has appointed is in fact a Liberal Senator,” said Cooper. “And once again, Justin Trudeau can’t pass up an opportunity to insult Albertans and show exactly what he thinks of them, this time by completely ignoring Alberta’s three democratically elected Senate nominees.”
“Common sense Conservative government under Pierre Poilievre will appoint Senators who will axe the fax, build the homes, fix the budget, and stop the crime,” he added.
The Senate is responsible for reviewing and amending legislation, investigating national matters, and representing the interests of regions, provinces, territories, and minority groups.
Wells and Fridhandler both have a history of contributing to the Liberals, according to Elections Canada.
While Wells only donated $200 to the party in two separate donations in 2012, Fridhandler has donated over 100 times to various MPs and associations of the Liberal Party between 2004 and 2023, totalling nearly $80,000.
Trudeau was previously criticized for appointing Charles Adler, who has been a vocal critic of the Conservatives and once described the Senate as a “sewer” and a “barn.”Wells has faced similar backlash online for previous posts of caricatures belittling Poilievre and comparing Christians to Nazis.
Five B.C. hospital emergency rooms were closed during the long weekend due to being short staffed, according to several news releases which cited “limited physician availability.”
The Interior Health Authority announced that the emergency rooms at 100 Mile District, Nicola Valley, Lillooet, Cariboo Memorial and South Okanagan hospitals were all closed as a result of the staffing shortage, however, most have since reopened.
The closures follow a growing trend for B.C. hospitals that William Lake Coun. Scott Nelson has called a “worrisome” situation.
“Instead of [the Interior Health] posting when they’re closing, how about they just post when they’re open,” Nelson told CBC News over the long weekend.
Emergency room closures at both 100 Mile House and Williams Lake forced residents to have to travel to neighbouring communities for help, according to Nelson.
“There are 10 to 15,000 people that don’t have a doctor [in our region], so they rely on the emergency department for services,” he said.
Emergency room interruptions in the region have occurred as many as 28 times in July, with 10 of those closures happening at Cariboo Memorial Hospital in Williams Lake.
The problem extends as far back as 2022 for the province, with 13 emergency rooms in rural hospitals being closed for a combined total of four months and an additional 10 rooms were closed last year over staffing shortages.
However, it’s not B.C. alone that is suffering from this issue, Ontario hospitals are also at a breaking point due to understaffing and burnout among healthcare workers is escalating.
A study, titled “Running on Empty,” conducted in collaboration with the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions-Canadian Union of Public Employees interviewed 26 healthcare workers across the province and reviewed existing literature on the healthcare sector and the effectiveness of hospitals and their workers.
“One of the foundations of overwork is understaffing, which leads to heavier workloads, poorer care, and increased strain from health and safety risks. In turn, they are experiencing negative physical and mental effects, including stress and anxiety,” reads the study. “Burnout and negative coping strategies have also increased, and patient care is compromised.”
According to the study, Canada had seven hospital beds per 1,000 people in 1976. By 2024, that number had fallen to 2.6 beds per 1,000 people.
“The depletion of hospital staffing in Ontario is worse than in most of the other provinces,” reads the study, which cited that Canadian provinces average 18% more staff per capita than Ontario.
A previous report by the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that Canada had the least amount of doctors per capita among OECD countries.
In addition to B.C. and Ontario, Quebec’s healthcare system has become so strained that patients seeking urgent care are simply walking out of emergency rooms due to excessive wait times.
Between April 2023 and February 2024, a total of 3,265,349 patients visited emergency rooms in Quebec. Of those patients, 376,460, or 11.5%, left before seeing a physician.
“That amounts to 1,140 Quebecers a day who were thus abandoned by the system,” reads a study by the Montreal Economic Institute.
China is launching an anti-dumping investigation into Canadian canola imports in response to tariffs recently imposed on imports of Chinese electric vehicles, steel, aluminum and other related components last week.
The Chinese commerce ministry said in a statement released on Tuesday that Canadian canola exports, also called rapeseed, had been steadily increasing in recent years, up 170% on a year-on-year basis resulting in a “continuous decline in prices.”
China claims this was evidence of potential dumping behaviour, causing imports to cost less compared to the price on the domestic market, hurting local producers.
“Affected by unfair competition from the Canadian side, China’s domestic rapeseed-related industries continue to lose money,” it said.
The statement made it clear that the investigation was in retaliation for Ottawa’s EV tariffs, calling them “discriminatory unilateral restrictive measures.”
The communist regime went on to say that it would be taking the case to the World Trade Organization.
The Chinese communist government accused Canada of “protectionism” for imposing the EV tariffs last week, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government would be implementing a 100% tariff on Chinese EV imports and a 25% tariff on imported steel and aluminum.
The Chinese Commerce Ministry initially responded with a statement saying that the country is “strongly dissatisfied and firmly opposes this.”
China claims the tariffs will disrupt the stability of industrial and supply chains on a global scale and damage the country’s economic ties with Canada.
“Canada claims it supports free trade and the multilateral trading system based on (World Trade Organization) rules, but it blatantly violated WTO rules and announced it will take unilateral tariff measures by blindly following individual countries. It is typical trade protectionism,” reads the statement.
China called on the Trudeau government to “immediately correct its wrong practices,” stating that Beijing would take any necessary measures to secure the interests of Chinese companies.
The tariffs are slated to take effect this October.
China previously had an outright ban on Canadian canola imports, introduced in March 2019, in response to the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver on a U.S. extradition warrant.
Canada sought help from the WTO over the canola ban, however, China lifted the ban before the organization got involved.
The Canola Council of Canada estimated that $2.35 billion in revenue was lost from March 2019 to August 2020 as a result of the ban by the country’s two largest exporters alone; Richardson Int. and Viterra.
Canada exported $5 billion in canola products to China to be used for food and biofuel last year.
Canada’s contribution to the World Health Organization’s global pandemic treaty called for social media censorship of “misinformation” and a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion when fighting the next pandemic.
Plus, a senior staffer blames a $1 million ad campaign to introduce leader Kevin Falcon for BC United’s financial woes.
And a new poll reveals Canadians doubt the Liberal government’s ability to screen Gazan refugees amid rising security concerns.
Tune into The Daily Brief with Cosmin Dzsurdzsa and Noah Jarvis!
Canada’s largest school board will begin the new school year absolutely rudderless.
The board’s chairman – Rachel Chernos Lin – is on leave until November to run for a vacant seat on city council.
She has left behind leftist Neethan Shan to steer the ship. Shan, who has made a profession of running for local office, was on Toronto city council for a brief 1.5 years where he contributed nothing to the debate.
He’s been a TDSB trustee for two years.
The controversial education director – black activist Colleen Russell-Rawlins – is on her way out the door by November.
She said she’s retiring but I will forever wonder whether she was pushed out for trying — and in several cases succeeding — to turn the school board into her DEI science experiment.
At a TDSB board meeting this past Wednesday, she informed everyone it was her last meeting. Speculation is that she’s taking holidays after, of course, having the summer off.
At that meeting, the board approved the hiring of the Phelps Group at $67,500 to select the new candidate and conduct a six-month “onboarding coaching program” for whomever is selected.
Meanwhile, trustee Weidong Pei says it hasn’t been decided who will act on an interim basis or whether there will be rotating directors monthly.
But that’s not all.
Instead of having a tough education minister providing ongoing oversight to this dysfunctional board, the province is now on its third minister in three months.
In early June, Todd Smith was installed as minister when Stephen Lecce was shuffled out of the job. Smith was barely in the job for two months before he announced his departure to the private sector.
Jill Dunlop, former colleges and universities minister, has been in the job just a few weeks, barely time to get up to speed on any school board or policy let alone the TDSB—although she did reinforce the province’s cellphone ban in Ontario classrooms earlier in the week.
As parents we all know the impact of distractions, like cellphones, in classrooms.
Now as Minister of Education I’m ready to work with everyone – students, parents, teachers, educators – to ensure our classes can focus on getting back to the basics.https://t.co/CNNnhwzrJEpic.twitter.com/DTq2j8ZKWE
Still, it will take some time to undo the damage done by the departing education director— if that ever happens considering the mindless woke trustees on the board.
Between installing like-minded sycophants on her executive team — many selected for the colour of their skin instead of competence — dumbing down the curriculum and creating a lottery system for entry to specialized programs (instead of basing selection on merit) Russell-Rawlins has turned the board into a DEI nightmare.
Black students have been given preferential treatment with mentorships and events curated just for them.
A freedom of information request done by True North shows the education director’s prints are all over the sole-sourced hiring of Kike Ojo-Thompson for DEI sessions. An FOI found that the board paid $115,000 to Ojo-Thompson just for 18 months between 2020 and 2021.
Ojo-Thompson was the equity trainer who harassed and bullied much-loved former principal Richard Bilkzsto during two of those sessions in the spring of 2021.
Tragically Bilkzsto committed suicide last summer — the result of what appears to be the abuse he took at those sessions together with the treatment by Russell-Rawlins’ anti-black racism lieutenants, who cancelled his contracts and sidelined him.
One year later there has been no word on the review announced by the outgoing director in the wake of his death. She likely will slip out the door not having to account for her actions.
There’s not been any word either from the education ministry which launched its own review a year ago.
A spokesman for Save our Schools TDSB (SOSTDSB) says they will continue to press for answers about the review.
Under the departing director, there has been a tremendous weakening of consequences for bad behaviour. Suspensions are rarely meted out and expulsions almost never — leading to the sanctioning of violence, vaping and the use of drugs within TDSB schools.
Russell-Rawlins and her anti-black racism sycophants have also turned a blind eye to the rampant anti-Semitism in schools. Shockingly the Jew hatred is not just perpetuated by students but by some teachers, administrators and certain trustees as well.
Meanwhile the anti-Semitic union members are diligently working to push anti-Palestinian racism policies this fall. As a spokesman for SOSTDSB says, there is “no data or evidence that this is even an issue” and could lead to an even bigger spike in Jew hatred.
Even the cellphone ban — which comes into place on the first day of school — will be hard to implement given the lack of consequences for bad behaviour at the board.
The ban prevents K-6 students from having their phones in class. Grades 7-12 students can keep their phones but they must be put away and kept on silent.
I suspect many teachers will have a difficult time administering this, especially with visible minority students for fear they will be reported for being racist.
Read Rodney Clifton’s full article on C2CJournal here.
If the far-left activists who have hijacked the Indigenous relations debate between the government and First Nations communities had their way, Rodney Clifton would be criminally charged with “residential school denialism.”
Rodney, who lived in a residential school in the 1960s, has been calling out the inaccuracies in the modern description of residential schools and highlighting the benefits that the school system implemented.
Rodney joined The Faulkner Show to discuss the facts about residential schools and the push from the far-left to criminalize “denialism.”
U.S. government officials are taking steps towards a potential legal challenge against Canada’s digital services tax on big tech companies which operate under the North American free trade deal.
US Trade Representative Katherine Tai has requested dispute settlement consultations with Canada under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which came into effect in 2020, replacing the North American Free Trade Agreement.
“The United States opposes unilateral digital service taxes that discriminate against US companies,” said Tai in a statement Friday, which her office referred to as “Canada’s discriminatory policies.”
If the two nations are unable to resolve the dispute through negotiations in the next 75 days, the US may request a dispute settlement panel under the USMCA.
On Friday, the Canadian government released a statement in response to the Americans, claiming Canada is “hopeful that a solution towards international tax fairness can be reached in due course.”
“The use of the new NAFTA is an appropriate forum to allow for further dialogue. These consultations are a reflection of the unique and collaborative economic partnership between Canada and the United States and we look forward to demonstrating how Canada is meeting its trade obligations,” Ministers Freeland and Ng wrote.
The U.S. has taken issue with Canada’s 3% levy on digital services revenue from companies that make over $20 million in a calendar year.
The digital services tax is a levy placed on tech companies that provide a digital service to Canadians, granted they earn at least $1.1 billion in annual global revenues and at least $20 million annually in Canada.
These include tech companies Meta, which operates Facebook and Instagram, as well as Google, Amazon, Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Netflix, and Spotify.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government implemented its digital services tax in June, despite years of repeated warnings that the US would retaliate against such a move.
The first year of its implementation will cover taxable revenues earned since Jan. 1, 2022.
The cost of this tax is likely to fall on Canadians, however, argues the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, who told True North earlier this month that other countries which have imposed similar taxes only increased the cost of living, hitting consumers directly.
“Trudeau should be doing everything he can to make life more affordable, but this digital services tax will mean higher prices for ordinary Canadians,” said Terrazzano. “The feds need to stop dreaming up new taxes and new ways to make life more expensive.”
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland previously said that the government would not impose the tax if the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development implemented a global tax treaty, however, the US has yet to ratify it.
According to Tai, the US has pursued consultations on the matter and will continue to support the Treasury Department in OECD-led negotiations to arrive at a “comprehensive solution.”
However, under USMCA, Canada is not permitted to treat U.S. companies less favourably than domestic ones, a commitment that Tai argues has been violated by the Liberals’ digital services tax.
The United States Chamber of Commerce told the Trudeau government ahead of its implementation that the tax violated USMCA rules, as it views the tax as a tariff.
“Now that Canada is poised to pass this legislation, in the face of broad U.S. opposition, it is clear that a more robust response is called for—a response reliant on the trade tools you recently endorsed,” said the chamber of commerce in a July statement.
Canada’s healthcare system is poised to be strained even further in the coming years as the country’s baby boomer demographic continues to age, provincial governments are headed for a dire financial crisis ahead.
The C.D. Howe Institute, a top Canadian think tank, published a report called Another Day Older and Deeper in Debt: Fiscal Implications of Demographic Change for Canadian Governments on Thursday with a stark outlook for the country’s healthcare infrastructure.
The report estimates a coming financial shortfall of $2 trillion for Canada’s healthcare system, which has been struggling for some time now.
“The fiscal impact of demographic change – in particular, the costs of providing publicly funded healthcare to an aging population that will financially stress Canadian governments – is sometimes compared to a glacier,” reads the report.
“The implication is that the changes, being gradual, require no dramatic reforms to healthcare or public policies more generally. As these projections indicate, however, the cumulative impact of even modest annual changes over time is not small – especially when the impact of aging on the revenue side is factored in.”
The report was co-authored by institute president William B.P. Robson and senior policy analyst Parisa Mahboubi, who noted that healthcare costs as a percentage of GDP will likely double by 2067, citing Ontario’s costs as going from 7.7% to 12.6% over that period.
“The projected growth of healthcare and other demographically sensitive spending represents an implicit liability much larger than provincial debts – which themselves are, as they ought to be, sources of concern,” reads the report.
The think tank is calling for new measures to “raise economic growth and restrain spending,” however, it did advocate for “selective prefunding” as a means to stave off these future financial strains brought on by the impending demographic change.
Atlantic Canada and other regions where populations are older on average will naturally be affected by this shift the most, which the report said may need to increase taxes now in preparation.
The report noted that for Ontario, “the prospective increase in the aggregate tax rate needed to cover all these program outlays – which mainly reflects the rising cost of healthcare – over the next 45 years has a present value of $723 billion.”
“This figure is about 70% of Ontario’s GDP or about $48,000 per Ontarian – not far short of twice the level of Ontario’s net public debt,” it said.
The authors noted that while the idea may be tempting, they warned against provinces seeking subsidies from the federal government for these increased costs.
“While higher federal transfers will likely be part of our reaction to these pressures, the reality of a common tax base and the need for clear accountability mean that they cannot be our only reaction,” it said.
“The fundamental problem with that approach is that all senior governments in Canada tax essentially the same bases: personal incomes, corporate profits and consumption spending. Much of the money Ottawa already transfers to the provinces simply reflects differences in how the federal and provincial governments tax these bases,” reads the report.
“This imbalance blurs accountability: when citizens of a given province have concerns about their publicly funded healthcare, for example, each level of government can – and often does – blame the other.”
The report claims that utilizing this practice has “proved disappointing” in the past “with respect to information and enforcement.”
Another burgeoning issue is that the number of seniors drastically outpaces the working-age population over the projected period, even with immigration, ‘albeit at a slower pace during the 2030s and 2040s.”
“The ratio of people older than 64 to those ages 18-64 – rises from its recent value of about 30%, or fewer than one senior for every three potential workers, to 45%, or almost one senior for every two potential workers, by the end of the projection period despite relatively high immigration,” reads the report.
