A Nova Scotia school fired its volunteer basketball coach last week after the coach had players run exercises for being late to practice.
Coach Brandon MacInnis told CBC News the principal and vice-principal of Hantsport School said they disapproved of his disciplinary measures, and he was fired the next day.
“They told me that it was in the best interest of the kids that I was no longer going to be needed as their head coach,” said McInnis.
After learning the school fired their coach, the junior high boys basketball team refused to play, forfeiting their first playoff game to show support for McInnis.
Parents and other players also showed support.
“My first reaction was shock followed by heartbreak,” parent Lizz Cochrane told CBC.
“I know what the boys think of Brandon and how excited they were to be playing that playoff game. There were a lot of tears and a lot of upset boys.”
The Hantsport School girls team later wore patches with “B” on their jerseys, standing for “Brandon.”
CBC wrote that after being fired, McInnis attended a team game, and was greeted by a standing ovation when he entered the school gymnasium.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is questioning the accuracy of leaked documents from Canada’s national intelligence agency, which detail China’s elaborate strategy to influence the 2021 federal election in favour of the Liberals.
One in two Canadians believes artificial intelligence may outsmart humans, according to a new poll. Just where is this issue headed?
Plus, a British Columbia secondary school is promoting a workshop teaching young teens how to access gender-affirming care which includes life altering surgeries.
Tune into The Daily Brief with Anthony Furey and Lindsay Shepherd!
To stay productive with an aging population, Canada must attract better technology, according to a new report.
A Fraser Institute report released on Friday said Canada’s aging population will slow the economy, and leaders should counteract this effect by attracting technology that boosts worker productivity.
“[There’s] likely serious implications for economic growth and living standards unless policymakers take action,” said Steven Globerman, a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute.
Leaders should make Canada more attractive to investors, he said, by changing policies that impact investors’ bottom-line.
Globerman said tax scheme adjustments could be a primary policy, allowing investors better financial opportunity, and Canadians better work technology.
According to the report, Canadians need rising productivity and wages to increase their standard-of-living, because they should be ready to soon pay more from their paychecks to provide social assistance to a large share of the population that’s aging into the 65+ bracket.
Since predictions for Canada show a growing share of dependents and a shrinking share of potential workers, Globerman said economic growth needs to come from the areas of technology and innovation. Canada set a record-high level of job vacancies last year, which a policy expert recently said was driving Canada’s recent record-low levels of unemployment.
In the middle of Black History Month, the Trudeau Liberals unveiled a new “Black justice strategy” last week to fight what they describe as the “systemic discrimination” and anti-Black racism in Canada’s criminal justice system.
In a Feb. 15 news release, the government cited a need for a plan of action because “Black communities in Canada continue to live with the effects of prejudice, discrimination, and hatred” which includes “unconscious bias” and “anti-Black hate crimes and violence.”
The announcement also outlined hopes that the newly-revealed strategy would help “modernize” the criminal justice system.
A press conference on Parliament Hill– which featured federal ministers David Lametti, Ahmed Hussen and Marci Ien, among others – announced the assembly of a nine-member steering group, the next step in implementing the proposed strategy. The committee will now begin consultations with Black communities across the country to understand different regional perspectives.
University of Toronto Associate Professor Dr. Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, CBC’s Nature of Things Co-host Anthony Morgan, Quebec-based criminal lawyer Fernando Belton, activist Mandela Kuet, Executive Director of the Black Legal Action Centre Moya Teklu, Senior Manager for the Africa Centre Sandra Muchekeza, Suzanne Taffot, Vanessa Fells and human rights lawyer Zilla Jones are members of the steering group which will facilitate development of the “Black justice strategy”.
Liberal MP Ahmed Hussen– the Minister of Housing and Diversity and Inclusion– said that Canadians need “to acknowledge the social, economic and political barriers Black communities have faced and continue to face”. The liberal politician said that the new strategy will serve as a pioneering force in finding solutions to the “disproportionately negative experiences” of Black Canadians.
“Building a more equitable and inclusive country takes hard work and thoughtful engagement, especially when it comes to improving the reality of Black communities across our country,” he said. “I thank the steering group for the challenge it is about to take on as we move toward building a more inclusive and equitable Canada where no one is left behind.”
The Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth, Marci Ien, said events south of the border served as a wake-up call to Canada, spurring the development of new approaches to fight racism.
“The murder of George Floyd was a painful awakening to the realities of systemic racism, to the realities of anti-black racism, a reality that black communities across this great country of ours know all too well,” she said.
The Liberals campaigned on the promise of creating a strategy that would address “anti-black racism” in the criminal justice system.
Supporting Black communities has been a focus of the Trudeau government. In 2021, they committed $200 million for a Black-led Philanthropic Endowment Fund which would service “black-focused,” “black-led” and “black-serving” non-profit organizations. Applications closed last fall.
Those hoping the Public Order Emergency Commission’s report on the use of the Emergencies Act would be a silver bullet of truth undoubtedly felt a bit of a gut punch last Friday.
The long-awaited report found that Justin Trudeau’s government was justified in invoking the Emergencies Act to clamp down on the Freedom Convoy just over a year ago.
Despite Commissioner Paul Rouleau’s caveat that a reasonable person might reach a different conclusion than he did, his report defends Trudeau’s use of the act, and most of the tools he gave himself under it.
I’ve long held the view that optimism is a dangerous characteristic when awaiting a judicial (or quasi-judicial, in this case) decision. It’s easy to read evidence and hear testimony in a way that affirms your pre-existing bias and then be surprised when a judge finds the opposite.
Even so, the battle over whether the Emergencies Act was justified came down to whether a threshold that is clearly spelled out in the legislation was met. The government had to be facing a threat to the security of Canada so severe it could not effectively be dealt with by any other existing laws in Canada.
Canadians who watched the weeks of commission hearings last fall heard law enforcement officials testify that the Emergencies Act wasn’t necessary. They heard claims of “violence” reduced to hearsay or vague feelings of violence. They heard the government of Canada build its case based on a technical interpretation of the statute rather than any set of facts supporting the idea that the Freedom Convoy constituted an emergency of any kind, let alone one so dire as to require wartime legislation.
Canadians who followed this closely were particularly blindsided by Rouleau’s report. As a result, there’s been a wave of criticism of Rouleau, much of it accusing him of being biased, corrupt, or partisan.
One of the more pervasive bits of misinformation swirling is that Rouleau was related by marriage to Justin Trudeau. The conclusion hinges on the premise that Rouleau has a brother named Pierre who was married to Trudeau’s aunt Suzette.
Trudeau’s aunt (Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s sister) did marry a Pierre Rouleau, but he has no relation to Paul Rouleau (nor does the latter have a brother named Pierre).
Another claim is that Rouleau is a long-time Liberal donor. There is a Paul Rouleau from Port Colborne, Ont. who appears in Elections Canada’s records as a Liberal donor, but this, as Brian Lilley confirmed, is a different man from the Public Order Emergency Commissioner.
Rouleau the commissioner does have Liberal pedigree: he worked for Liberal leader John Turner and helped select Turner’s short-lived cabinet back in the 1980s. Whether Rouleau votes Liberal today I have no idea, though the most brazen claims of active Liberal ties do not hold up under scrutiny.
These claims may be a convenient way for people to make sense of a report that seems so at odds with the facts and the law, but there is a far easier explanation: it’s a bad report.
Canada is a country in which expecting good judicial decisions almost always leads to let-down, so why should the Public Order Emergency Commission be any different? It’s unnecessary to create a conspiracy theory to explain away a judge taking a deferential approach to a government’s abuse of rights and freedoms.
As Joanna Baron of the Canadian Constitution Foundation wrote, Rouleau’s report “implies an extraordinary amount of deference to assiduously shielded government decision-making.”
Rouleau leaned heavily on the Emergencies Act’s requirement that cabinet believes there to be a national emergency, even in the absence of cabinet ponying up the legal opinion used to justify reaching such a conclusion.
CSIS and law enforcement officials, as well as the thousands of Canadians who visited Ottawa themselves, saw there was no threat to the security of Canada, let alone any of the other constituent parts of a national emergency.
A lawyer for the Public Order Emergency Commission even chided the government for creating a “black box around what has turned out to be a central issue before the hearing,” which is to say the aforementioned legal advice, which Attorney General David Lametti refused to disclose, citing solicitor-client privilege.
At one point, Rouleau asked Lametti if the commission should just “presume good faith,” which he apparently did in his report.
Other holes in Rouleau’s report include his conclusion that existing laws were insufficient to deal with the convoy, despite all police witnesses saying the opposite.
Rouleau’s report carries no civil or criminal weight, but will undoubtedly be used to inform and influence future use of the Emergencies Act, and possible amendments to the act.
It was never going to be the undoing of Trudeau, even if it had been a scathing indictment of his use of the Emergencies Act.
But Canadians need not place it in a context of corruption when the real culprit, yet another deferential judge, is readily on display.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said international students can expect high tuition fees to continue as the government prioritizes Canadians.
At a Dalhousie University town-hall meeting on Thursday, a student asked Trudeau what the plan was to address high tuition costs faced by international students.
Trudeau said there was no plan.
“What we are focused on is making sure that education is as affordable as possible for all Canadians,” said Trudeau.
“That’s why of all the international students who could potentially come to Canada […] we allow ourselves to say ‘they’re gonna have to be the ones who can pay for it.’”
At a Dalhousie University town-hall meeting on Thursday, a student asked Trudeau what the plan was to address high tuition costs faced by international students.
Trudeau told the room of a hundred people there is a fundamental difference between Canadians who are committed to the country – those who can expect the majority of subsidies – and students who come from abroad.
“Government is not paying for [international students] with the tax dollars that Canadians contribute […] for people who, presumably, grew up in Canada or […] will contribute to this country for decades to come,” he said.
“That has to be our priority.”
The student said Canada is subsidizing its education system with pricey international student fees. Trudeau did not dispute the claim, but said the government is focused on affordable education for Canadians, and those who are committed to Canada.
It has been another week to forget for Justin Trudeau. On Friday, the Globe and Mail reported that the Chinese government significantly interfered in the last federal election. China sought a return to a Liberal minority government and that is exactly what happened. In response, Trudeau has fixed his sights on the CSIS whistleblower and not the Chinese Communist Party.
Then in an effort to try and curtail plummeting poll numbers, Trudeau held a town hall event in the GTA where he told constructions workers that increasing immigration levels will actually take stress off the immigration system.
Tune in to the latest episode of Ratio’d with Harrison Faulkner.
The appointment of Amira Elghawaby as Canada’s first Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia stirred up controversy for a number of reasons. One of the biggest questions Canadians had was – why was this position needed in the first place? Is there really a crisis of Islamophobia in Canada?
On Part 2 of Rupa’s interview with the President of the Council of Muslims Facing Tomorrow Raheel Raza and freelance columnist Rahim Mohamed, they continue their discussion about Islam in Canada, combatting extremism and how Islamophobia has been politicized in recent years.
University of British Columbia medicine professor Dr. Amy Tan says that not wearing masks is an act of racism, ableism and classism.
The B.C. scholar, physician, and self-described anti-racism consultant made the comments on Twitter Tuesday when quote tweeting a user sharing similar sentiments.
Screenshot of a previously public tweet by Dr. Amy Tan published on Feb. 21 2023.
That user claimed that not wearing masks was racist because “BIPOC are the worst impacted in this pandemic, the majority of the very few people (she sees) still wearing masks are BIPOC, Asian countries have been wearing masks during flu seasons pre-2020, (and because there’s an) increase of anti-Asian hate/violence.”
once again and always – white people, you do not get to say what is or isn't racist. stop speaking for and over BIPOC. learn your place, sit down, shut up, and listen to us.
your white saviorism is killing us. whiteness is a problem. oof.
A December 2022 Angus Reid poll found that Indigenous people were less likely than caucasians to wear masks indoors, and that caucasians were more concerned about COVID-19 than visible minorities and Indigenous peoples.
Tan is currently a Clinical Associate Professor in Palliative Care and Family Practice at UBC’s Faculty of Medicine and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Calgary. She is also an anti-racism support program faculty mentor at UBC.
Her bio on UBC’s website describes her as “an advocate for health equity and an anti-racism educator and consultant,” and notes that her medical education and research expertise includes the providing of “culturally-safe and anti-oppressive care with patients and families.”
During the pandemic, Tan made several appearances on media outlets, and participated in a COVID-19 vaccine roundtable with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Like other progressive doctors, she has built a large Twitter following, with almost 20,000 followers.
Screenshot of a previously public tweet by Dr. Amy Tan published on Feb. 18 2023.
Tan also has a personal blog that features “reflections on COVID-19, anti-racism, health equity & justice, grief, palliative care, healthcare communication.” In one of her blog posts, she states that “as a Chinese, heterosexual, settler of colour, second-generation Canadian, cis-gender female with more than one disability, I want to use my privilege and be part of the solution.”
Tan is not the only scholar to publish controversial social media posts regarding masks.
As previously reported by True North, University of Ottawa law and epidemiology professor Amir Attaran faced international backlash this summer after he shamed a maskless United Airlines flight attendant on Twitter.
Attaran has also said that those who do not believe in Covid vaccinations are “antisocial crazies deserve nothing less than to be mocked and shamed”, and referred to the group as racist, low life trash, losers, stupid, village idiots, homophobic and anti-Semetic.
Meanwhile, Ottawa physician and school trustee Dr. Nili Kaplan Myrth, who has co-authored articles with Tan, claimed on a TVO panel that the word “normal” is a language used by the far-right and ableists.
Ottawa District School Board Trustee candidate Nili Kaplan-Myrth says the use of the word “normal” is the “far-right language of anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers.” #cdnpolipic.twitter.com/VUZxZee0C9
A British Columbia secondary school is promoting a workshop this week for students between 14-year-olds to 19-year-olds on how to access “gender affirming care,” which includes life-altering surgeries.
As part of its Gender Junction Workshops series, Revelstoke Secondary School will hold a Zoom conference on Feb. 25 advertised to “gender diverse and gender creative youth.”
The workshop will cover a range of topics including “navigating coming out, transitioning and accessing gender affirming care, acquiring gender affirming gear, self advocacy and where to direct your parents, caregivers and teachers for support.”
“Gender affirming care” is a range of interventions designed to affirm a person’s chosen gender identity.
As per BC’s Provincial Health Services Authority, the controversial practice includes medical and surgical procedures such as testosterone or estrogen hormone treatment, vaginoplasty, breast implants, orchiectomy (teste removal) and hysterectomies (uterus removal).
Non-profit organization Trans Connect (ANKORS) coordinator Nicola Hare will be facilitating the workshop for students. The group advocates for more access to “hormones, surgeries, gender-affirming garments, and other trans-positive healthcare options.”
“(We offer) community support groups and events for LGBTQ2IA+ youth and trans, two spirit, intersex, and gender diverse community members of all ages to support togetherness and health,” its website states.
While also serving as a community hub for transgender youth, the website includes a variety of resources on “safe drug use” including a publication titled The Meth Booklet.
One of the sections of the booklet is an explicit guide on how to have “Chemsex” which refers to the use of “drugs to enhance and sustain sexual encounters.”
On Mar. 2. Revelstoke Secondary will also host a similar event designed for parents and family members of “gender diverse youth.”
“You may have a lot of questions about supporting a young person who is gender creative, trans, or questioning. What is the difference between gender identity, expression and sexual orientation?” the event description explains.
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect the fact that Revelstoke Secondary School is not hosting the workshop. Instead, they are promoting the workshop to students 14-year-olds to 19-year-olds on how to access “gender affirming care.”
