A majority of Canadians think federal and provincial governments are doing a bad job of tackling crime and addressing public safety. Two-thirds of Canadians, according to one recent poll, say they feel less safe than they did even a few years ago. True North’s Andrew Lawton says the crime wave shouldn’t come as a surprise after government pushed people to the brink during the pandemic.
Also, Calgary Sun columnist Lorne Gunter joins to discuss the column of his that the Trudeau government wanted social media companies to censor. A sign of things to come?
Another teenager has died as a result of a violent attack while taking transit in Canada.
This time a 17-year-old victim in Surrey, British Columbia died after suffering serious wounds on Tuesday night.
According to Surrey RCMP, the stabbing took place on a bus passing close to King George SkyTrain station.
Authorities believe the attack was an “isolated incident” and the victim appeared to have been targeted.
The teen was attacked just before 9:30 p.m. following an altercation with the suspect.
The RCMP’s Integrated Homicide Investigation Team has taken over the file.
No suspects have been arrested to date.
The incident comes after a series of attacks and stabbings on transit in British Columbia. On April 1, a passenger had his throat slashed in a random violent attack.
Police arrested suspect Abdul Aziz Kawam as a result of the attack.
Initially charged with attempted murder, the attack is now being investigated as a terror attack inspired by ISIS.
Last month, 16-year-old Gabriel Magalhaes lost his life after being randomly stabbed in an unprovoked attack while waiting at a Toronto subway station.
22-year-old Jordan O’Brien-Tolbin was arrested and charged with first-degree murder.
Police authorities and transit unions have called on all levels of government to step in and address the rising wave of violent random attacks across Canada.
Members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) voted in favour of a strike for employees in administrative, technical, educational and operational services Wednesday morning.
“An overwhelming majority of our members have told us they can’t wait any longer and they are prepared to strike to secure a fair deal that won’t see them fall behind,” said PSCA president Chris Aylward. “Our members don’t take the decision to strike lightly. Their bills can’t wait, their families can’t wait and their futures can’t wait.”
“Our members have been without a contract since 2021,” Aylward told reporters. “Together with our members from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), they represent 155,000 federal public sector workers.”
PSAC represents thousands of clerks, maintenance workers, tradespeople, coast guard workers, teachers, firefighters, cooks, Employment Insurance and Immigration workers.
The union hopes to reach a deal with the federal government in the coming days before 35,000 CRA employees will be in a legal position to strike on Friday.
A spokesperson for Treasury Board President Mona Fortier said in a statement Wednesday afternoon their goal is to reach a deal at the bargaining table as soon as possible, and they believe “significant headway” has been made in the last week.
Legally, the union said it now starts a 60-day window to call a strike, which runs until June 10.
“These are not high-paid senior executives,” said Aylward. “The majority of our members are women making between $40,000 and $60,000.”
“Our members’ wages have been stuck in neutral as the cost of living has continued to soar.”
On Wednesday afternoon, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters in Winnipeg that the government applauds the work that public servants did during the pandemic processing financial aid to Canadians.
“We’re going to continue to engage in a constructive way at the bargaining table,” said Trudeau about negotiations.
“When the federal government, Canada’s largest employer by far, suppresses wages for its workers, what they’re really doing is pushing down wages for all workers,” said Aylward.
Negotiations between PSAC and Treasury Board reached an impasse in May of last year. In December both parties met again, but all recommendations were non-binding.
The Union of Taxation Employees (UTE) requested a 14-month backdated pay raise of 4.5%, a 2-month backdated pay raise of 8%, a future pay raise of 8% and a one-time pay increase of 9%
Famed psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson says Alberta should separate from Canada if the federal government tries to take control over its provincial resources.
Prairie provinces have full control over resource development as enshrined in the 1930s Natural Resource Transfer Agreement — which federal Justice Minister David Lammetti said he would look at rescinding earlier this week.
In response, Peterson told Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to separate, if necessary.
“Reject. Rebel. Separate if necessary,” Peterson wrote on Twitter.
— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) April 11, 2023
In a joint statement, Smith, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe and Manitoba Premier Heather Stefenson said the rights have been fundamental to the people and the economic autonomy of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta for nearly 100 years.
“The federal government cannot unilaterally change the Constitution. It should not even be considering stripping resource rights away from the three Prairie provinces,” the trio said.
“The prime minister needs to immediately retract these dangerous and divisive comments by his justice minister.”
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said, “Trudeau’s Justice Minister David Lametti threatened to overturn the constitution and take federal control over provincial resources.”
“I’ll never allow this attack by the costly coalition on our prairie resource workers.”
Lametti responded online, saying he didn’t commit Ottawa “to reviewing areas of provincial jurisdiction.”
The backlash arose after Grand Chief Brian Hardlotte of the Prince Albert Grand Council and Chief Donald Maracle of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte called on the federal government to rescind the Natural Resources Transfer Act.
“Canada exports natural resources to other countries. They earn trillions of dollars in revenues from those resources,” Maracle said.
“Those resources were given to the provinces without ever asking one Indian if it was okay to do that, or what benefits would the First Nations expect to receive by Canada consenting to that arrangement.”
Lametti said he would commit to looking into the issue.
“It won’t be uncontroversial, is the only thing I would say, with a bit of a smile,” he added.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is calling on Twitter to list all accounts owned by the CBC as government-funded media.
Plus, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave Canadians some questionable financial advice after he suggested Canadians use their credit cards to pay for large purchases such as tuition and home renovations.
And Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is confident a new investigation launched by Alberta’s ethics commissioner into whether the premier interfered in the judicial system will uncover no wrongdoing.
Tune into The Daily Brief with Rachel Emmanuel and Cosmin Dzsurdzsa.
The Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRB) formally requested Facebook and Twitter to delete a Toronto Sun article claiming it contained errors, according to documents acquired by The Canadian Press.
Facebook and Twitter denied the request, stating the article was not the government’s original content.
Department staff pressured companies to take down the article believing it contained “serious errors of fact and a risk to undermining public confidence in the integrity of the refugee determination system.”
The documents reveal 214 instances of federal staff members asking companies to remove content on social media between January 2020 and February 2023. Nearly half of the requests were granted.
Among the granted requests to pull content from social media were those relating to private taxpayer information and impersonation of federal employees, including one claiming to be then RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki.
According to Toronto Sun columnist Lorne Gunter, who wrote the article in question, the IRB first asked Sun editors to take down the article before asking social media platforms.
“Thankfully, Facebook and Twitter told the federal government to pound sand,” writes Gunter. “My column continued to be shared despite being what the government considered dangerous “misinformation.”
The original Sun article from September 2021 revealed drafted plans to expand Canada’s refugee and immigration system to cut barriers for those wishing to enter the country and become citizens.
New proposed regulations included a more lenient review of refugees claiming gender or racial discrimination or being part of the LGBTQ community.
Last month, the Liberal government struck down debate in the House of Commons on Bill C-11 to ram the legislation through Parliament. The third reading of Bill C-11 was completed on February 2, 2023 and is close to becoming law.
Legacy media outlets are putting out rave reviews about a recent film that glorifies terrorist attacks on critical infrastructure in the name of radical environmentalism.
The film “How to Blow Up a Pipeline,” which airs in theatres on April 14, was produced by the Oscar-winning company Elevation Pictures. It was first aired last year at the Toronto International Film Festival and also received an airing at the Vancouver International Film Festival.
According to director Daniel Goldhaber, the intention behind the film was to create “a big old propaganda piece.”
“I was very much in a place of anger and feeling very powerless and I was like, ‘Let’s make a big old propaganda piece,’” Goldhaber told the Associated Press, which called the movie an exploration of “vigilante eco-sabotage.”
The Globe and Mail recently branded the movie a “critic’s pick” with film reviewer Berry Hertz calling the movie a “gleeful provocation.”
According to a plot description, the film follows a group of young radical environmental activists in a heist as they prepare to sabotage an oil pipeline.
“It will quicken your pulse, raise your blood pressure and trigger your fight-or-flight response. And you’ll be a better, and a more entertained, person for it,” wrote Hertz.
“Is it controversial, even dangerous, to make a movie unambiguously urging illegal action? No more so than the thousands of films that squeal over wholesale murder or whose politics push the agendas of the American military,” he continued.
“Whether you walk out of it radicalized or not might say more about you than the film.”
The film was based on a nonfiction book of the same name by Marxist author Andreas Malm which argues for the use of sabotage and property damage for the purposes of advancing environmental goals.
As for the Rolling Stone, it called the film an ideal date movie.
“You’ll leave the theater buzzing as if from a shockwave, but also carrying a sense of how sexy the end of the world can be,” wrote the outlet.
1. the principle of separation of the state from religious institutions:
“he believes that secularism means no discrimination against anybody in the name of religion”
In the hard shadow of Bill 21, Quebec Premier Francois Legault was accused of hypocrisy on Easter Monday for tweeting a line from a Journal de Montréal column crediting Catholicism for “(engendering) in us a culture of solidarity that distinguishes us on a continental scale.”
What was he thinking when he quoted from a Mathieu Bock-Cote column titled “Praise of our old Catholic background?”
The premier’s post drew criticism from those on both sides of the secularism debate, given Quebec’s controversial Bill 21, which bans most government employees from wearing religious symbols at work.
Those who take issue with Bill 21 have pointed out that the law disproportionately affects Muslim women, raising concerns about whether the ban is meant to target specific religions.
“See, they would’ve had some plausible deniability on the religious headwear ban if he didn’t tweet this out,” one Twitter user wrote in response to Legault’s tweet.
Le catholicisme a aussi engendré chez nous une culture de la solidarité qui nous distingue à l’échelle continentale.https://t.co/Et3mqiFgyd
By 12:30 p.m., according to the Montreal Gazette, Legault’s tweet had more than 335,000 views, 550 responses and 300 retweets, including 250 quote-tweets. The attention prompted him to respond to his original post with: “We must distinguish between secularism and our heritage.”
In addition to citizens, several politicians had weighed in on his post. Marwah Rizqy, Liberal MNA for Saint-Laurent and spokesperson for education, responded by saying, “we all write tweets we regret.”
“You have a duty of reserve and neutrality as premier of all Quebecers in our secular state,” Rizqy wrote.
Quebec comedian Sugar Sammy also commented.
“Secularism is important except once on Twitter,” he wrote.
The passage of Bill 21, as expected, did not go smoothly. The bill was initially criticized by the opposition parties, such as the Quebec Liberal Party and Quebec Solidaire.
The legislation was finally passed in 2019 under closure — by limiting debate. The bill received 73 votes in favour from members of the Coalition Avenir Quebec and the Parti Québécois, while 35 members from the Quebec Liberal Party and Québec Solidaire voted against it.
The two former commissioners who authored the Bouchard-Taylor report did not support this legislation. Gerard Bouchard asserted, among other things, that the bill was “radical” and unjustified. A number of academics also denounced the new law.
Moreover, humanitarian organizations like Amnesty International publicly opposed Bill 21.
Bill 21 was even criticized during the 2021 federal election campaign (during the party leaders’ English-language debate).
Shachi Kurl,the president of the Angus Reid Institute and moderator of the debate, caused quite an uproar by asking Yves-Francois Blanchet, the leader of the Bloc Quebecois, why his party supported “discriminatory” legislation, such as Bill 21, regarding the laicity of the state.
The public, however, appeared to broadly support this new law. A survey conducted by the Government of Quebec several days before the introduction of Bill 21 showed that a majority of the population was in favour of prohibiting the wearing of religious symbols by civil service employees in positions of authority.
The strongest criticism, however, was that Bill-21 was racist.
Bill 21 showed that three years after Quebec’s secularism law was adopted, religious minorities in the province were still feeling increasingly alienated and hopeless.
“Religious minority communities are encountering — at levels that are disturbing — a reflection of disdain, hate, mistrust and aggression,” Miriam Taylor, lead researcher and the director of publications and partnerships at the Association for Canadian Studies told CBC in an interview.
“We even saw threats and physical violence,” Taylor said.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is calling on Twitter to list all accounts owned by the CBC as being government-funded media.
“I believe that Twitter should apply the Government-funded Media label to the CBC’s various news-related accounts, including @CBC, @CBCNews and @CBCAlerts,” wrote Poilievre in a letter addressed to the tech giant.
“Twitter’s Platform Use Guidelines refer to a source that describes the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (the “CBC”) as a publicly-funded broadcaster.”
In the letter, Poilievre links the CBC’s 2020-2021 annual report showing the broadcaster received nearly $1.24 billion in public funding.
Twitter’s Platform Use Guidelines describe “Government-funded Media” as outlets where the government provides some or all of the outlet’s funding and may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content.
“As a result, and in the interest of transparency, I believe that Twitter should apply the Government-funded Media label to the CBC’s various news-related accounts,” wrote Poilievre.
Twitter made waves on the weekend by applying the label to several BBC properties. While BBC is funded by mandatory license fees, CBC is directly subsidized by the government.
As a core promise of his leadership campaign, Poilievre promised that he would defund the CBC.
In February, Poilievre accused CBC president Catherine Tait of smearing his name and called the broadcaster openly biased.
“We need to go around the CBC and other Liberal pamphleteers, and get our message out to millions of Canadians,” Poilieivre wrote in a fundraising email. “That’s why I need your help.”
Poilievre was referring to a recent interview between Tait and The Globe and Mail, where Tait said Canada’s state broadcaster is under fire.
“There’s a lot of CBC bashing going on – somewhat stoked by the Leader of the Opposition,” said Tait. “I think they feel that CBC is a mouthpiece for the Liberal government.”
Conservative Party of Quebec leader Eric Duhaime has come out against drag queen story hours in public libraries – saying taxpayers should not be funding these events.
J’adore les drag queens: dans un bar (un lieu privé), devant des adultes, en fin de soirée… Pas dans une garderie, une école ou une bibliothèque publique, ni sans le consentement des parents.https://t.co/E5ArxRG35a
As reported byLe Soleil, Duhaime’s comments come amid the Quebec National Assembly unanimously adopting a motion from the left-wing Quebec Solidaire (QS) party denouncing opposition to child drag shows.
“Drag queens should not, under any circumstances, face violent insults, intolerance and hatred for their participation in children’s storytelling,” said the motion adopted by the province’s legislature.
When asked about the motion in a press conference last week, Duhaime, who is openly gay, said public funds should not go towards such events.
“I really appreciate drag queens. But it’s up to the parent to decide if they want Grandma or a drag queen to read a story to their child. It’s not up to the state. (The state) should be neutral,” said Duhaime
“When we’re in a library, in a school, we’re talking about a public place,” he added.
Duhaime says the controversy surrounding the events comes amid left-wingers importing “a reality from the United States” into Quebec. “We have to stop imposing our virtue.”
The Conservative leader does not, however, believe that drag queen story hours should be made illegal – saying people have the right to host and attend private events. He also says he does not have a problem with parents organizing and paying for a drag queen story hour in a library, as long as taxpayer resources are not being used.
Duhaime reiterated his sentiments on Twitter and criticized the labelling of parents opposed to drag queens reading gender ideology to children as “far right intolerants” by activists. He also plans to launch a petition tomorrow calling for the defunding of child drag events.
LA priorité dans les garderies du Québec présentement devrait être de trouver des places aux dizaines de milliers de parents qui en cherchent une, plutôt que de faire entrer des drag queen pour lire des contes aux enfants.
Quand une drague queen débarque dans une garderie, une école ou une bibliothèque publique pour lire des contes sur la diversité ou expliquer la théorie des genres, payés par vos taxes, la gauche caricature les parents qui s’y opposent comme étant des intolérants d’extrême-droite.
The pro-drag QS motion in the national assembly came after a planned story hour in a suburb of Montreal with prominent drag queen Barbada, who is the persona of school elementary school teacher Sebastien Potvin, faced protests.
According to Le Soleil, protestors blocked the entrance to the venue – resulting in organizers relocating the event. True North previously exclusively interviewed Potvin, who defended his story hours, claiming they are age appropriate.
Child drag shows have also been the subject of controversy and protest in the rest of Canada.
Earlier this year, Alberta Pastor Derek Reimer was arrested after protesting a drag queen story hour in a Calgary library. He currently faces numerous charges. Calgary City Council has since approved a bylaw that limits drag queen story hours protests, citing an increase in “transphobia and homophobia.”
MPP @kristynwongtam will be tabling an important bill this afternoon to protect 2SLGBTQI+ communities and drag performers from rising hate crimes.
For months, we’ve been calling on the Ford Conservatives to take action – but they haven’t lifted a finger. Time for action. #onpolipic.twitter.com/b6pTqTzrUW
Last week, the Ontario NDP held a press conference with several drag performers and other queer activists to announce a private members bill that aims to restrict protests against drag queen story times in order to “protect 2SLGBTQI communities.”
