Residents of two suburbs in Victoria woke up Sunday to find someone had put notes on their cars shaming them for contributing to climate change.

The notes, left on cars throughout the communities of Oak Bay and Fairfield-Gonzales, put the blame on working-class Victorians for damaging the environment — by driving.

“Yes, this is a climate crisis. Yes, you are the problem,” the flyer reads.

“While thousands of us are walking or riding bikes to work everyday in an effort to minimize our carbon footprint, you have clearly missed the memo or don’t care.”

Residents of the community were not impressed by the flyer: one mother took to social media to share her disappointment.

“This sort of shame-based propaganda has never ever converted a person to its cause, as it immediately puts the recipient on the defensive. Anyone else in Oak Bay wake up to this handbill on their car? Incredibly ignorant and condescending,” Chantal Branson wrote on Facebook.

Branson told local media about her experience waking up to the offensive flyers.

“My neighbour texted me to ask me if I had a note left on my windshield – her young son found, and read the one left on their car,” she said.

Branson took particular offence to a latter passage that suggests that she hates her children for driving a gas-powered vehicle.

“For me, as a single parent, I don’t have the means to upgrade our family vehicle to an electric or hybrid, especially not one that can transport the number of people we do, as we often carpool and transport children on field trips and to sporting events,” she said.

Compared to the rest of the world, Canada’s carbon emissions are minuscule. China produces 19 times more carbon dioxide than Canada, while the United States produces ten times more.

Despite this, Canada is one of the few countries which puts a carbon tax on ordinary people who produce emissions through activities like driving cars.

British Columbia, which has had a carbon tax for ten years, has barely made an impact on its carbon emissions.

Similar acts of climate-shaming have sprung up around the world since environmental activist Greta Thunberg began shaming people for using airplanes in her native Sweden.

The person or persons who spread the flyers have not been identified.

The grocery chain Foody Mart is hoping to implement Chinese face recognition technology to process payments for customers in B.C. and Ontario. 

The owner of the company, Wei Chengyi, has close ties with the Chinese government as the honorary chair of the Confederation of Toronto Chinese Canadian Organizations. Earlier this year, Chengyi attended an event with China’s President Xi Jinping while he was visiting Beijing.

“He was gratefully received by the General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee and President Xi Jinping. President Xi Jinping and Wei Chengyi cordially shook hands and greeted him,” writes a news release about the visit.

The Confederation has been praised by China’s Overseas Affairs Office for defending the government’s actions and interests abroad. 

The group’s activities have included attempting to establish a Confucius Institute affiliate in Toronto. The institute has been opposed in the past by professors at the University of Manitoba for being a front for the Chinese government to spy on students.

Chengyi is considering implementing the technology by acquiring it from Toronto company Snap Pay, who works with Chinese companies Alibaba Group and Tencent, to introduce facial recognition payment systems into North America. 

Facial recognition systems are the latest front in a debate about whether Canada should adopt Chinese technology, including allowing Huawei into the country’s 5G network. Justin Trudeau has postponed the decision until 2020, as the country is currently involved in an extradition dispute over the company’s CFO Meng Wanzhou. 

American lawmakers have warned Canada not to allow Huawei in the Canadian network over concerns about compromising shared intelligence operations.

“Our telecom networks are totally meshed together and if there was a vulnerability in the Canadian system, it would make America vulnerable. And vice-versa,” said Democratic Senator and Chair of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner.

The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) is no longer accepting complaints about three broadcasts related to Don Cherry’s firing after receiving a “large number” of them to date. 

The complaints have been about three separate incidents: last Saturday’s Coach’s Corner segment, Cherry’s firing by Sportsnet, and more recently, Tuesday’s episode of The Social in which co-host Jessica Allen made disparaging comments about “white boys” who played hockey.

“The CBSC has received a large number of very similar complaints concerning comments made about hockey on CTV’s The Social on November 12, 2019,” writes a message on the council’s complaint page.

Allen’s comments about hockey players were widely panned on social media.

“They all tended to be white boys who weren’t, let’s say very nice, they were not generally thoughtful, they were often bullies. Their parents were able to afford to spend $5,000 a year on hockey,” she said about the “certain type of person” that Cherry represents. 

In response to the comments, the hashtag #FireJessAllen trended on Twitter. Allen eventually addressed her statements on Wednesday afternoon’s show, where she claimed she was only speaking about her “negative experiences” with certain white hockey players. 

“I was speaking about my own lived experiences, often negative experiences with those who’ve played the sport and how they’ve led to me being conflicted, really conflicted about how hockey is so closely bound to our national identity,” said Allen. 

Since being fired from his spot on Hockey Night in Canada, Cherry has stood by his comments calling on everybody to wear poppies for Remembrance Day, and saying that people took his words out of context. 

The Conservatives need to bring down the Liberal minority government as quickly as possible, a Conservative MP tells True North.

Speaking with True North’s Andrew Lawton in Alberta, Peace River—Westlock member of parliament Arnold Viersen said conservatism needs to “take over” the country in the wake of Trudeau’s re-election.

“Is the goal basically to — in a minority situation — bring the government down as quickly as possible, at the earliest opportunity?” Lawton asked in the interview.

“That’s my perception of it for sure,” said Viersen. 

“I know that Albertans are looking for their way into this and in order to do that we need to ensure that we take over the rest of the country. And if conservatism is born in Alberta, we’ve got to bring it to the rest of the country.” 

In the 2019 election, the Liberals hung onto power by securing a minority government while the Conservative party made substantial gains in the west. The Conservatives won every seat in Saskatchewan and all but one – Edmonton Strathcona, which the NDP held – in Alberta.

According to Viersen, the Conservative gains will give the opposition more leeway on committees.

“We now have total control of the committee work, where before we had to roll over and die because there was nothing we could do in a majority vote situation, now if we can get the other people on side with the Bloc and the NDP we could be able to control the tables at the committee and be able to stop things we don’t like,” said Viersen.  

Viersen, who was first elected in 2015, won re-election with 80.6 per cent of the vote.

The collapse of the Liberal vote in the west even led to longtime MP and cabinet minister Ralph Goodale losing his seat to Conservative newcomer Michael Kram.

Colorado Avalanche player and the first-ever Muslim to play for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Nazem Kadri, defended Don Cherry after he was fired from Sportsnet over comments Cherry says were taken “out of context.”

“I know Grapes and I don’t think it came across like everyone is making it sound. I think with what he said, it was maybe just said incorrectly. People maybe took it out of context a little bit. I know Grapes is a great person and am sad to see him go,” said Kadri about the former Coach’s Corner host. 

While playing for the Leafs, Kadri and Cherry shared a heartwarming moment on screen where Cherry planted a kiss on the young hockey player’s cheek.

“I don’t hate it. I don’t hate it,” said Kadri laughing in the video. 

Over the past week, leftist activists and the mainstream media have hounded Cherry for calling on Canadians to wear poppies for Remembrance Day during the November 9th segment of Coach’s Corner. The mobbing resulted in Sportsnet severing ties with the Canadian icon and thirty-year-long sports commentator.

Cherry has since spoken out about the decision saying he has “no problem” with being let go by the channel and still stands by his comments. 

“[Cherry] has been there for so long, it’s going to be hard to see [the show] without him, that’s definitely unfortunate,” said Kadri.

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Jessica Allen addressed comments she made about how young hockey players were “white boy bullies” on Wednesday afternoon’s airing of CTV’s The Social. 

The comments which were spoken during a discussion on the firing of Don Cherry by Sportsnet sparked outrage from Canadians online and the hashtag #FireJessAllen was trending as a result. 

“They all tended to be white boys who weren’t, let’s say very nice, they were not generally thoughtful, they were often bullies. Their parents were able to afford to spend $5,000 a year on hockey,” said Allen yesterday afternoon. 

Earlier today, Allen spoke at length about her comments saying that she was only speaking about “personal experiences with specific people, who were hockey players, white, not typically kind or thoughtful and often bullies from affluent families.”

“I was speaking about my own lived experiences, often negative experiences with those who’ve played the sport and how they’ve led to me being conflicted, really conflicted about how hockey is so closely bound to our national identity,” said Allen.

The other hosts came to Allen’s defense saying that they will continue to talk about “controversial topics” on the show. 

“Jess, I want you to know that we and the entire team here in this building and beyond support you one hundred percent,” said fellow host Melissa Grelo.  

Since being fired from the Coach’s Corner, Cherry has stood by his comments saying that they were taken out of context.