Category Archives: Canada

Meng Wanzhou: Huawei CFO seeks halt to extradition after Trump comments

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Lawyers fighting executive’s deportation from Canada to US say president’s comments prove case is politically motivated

Huawei’s chief financial officer intends to seek a stay on extradition proceedings, in part based on statements by Donald Trump about the case that her lawyers say disqualifies the United States from pursuing the matter in Canada.

Meng Wanzhou, 47, who faces charges related to Iran sanctions violations, was appearing at a Vancouver courthouse on Wednesday to set a timetable for her upcoming extradition hearing.

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Asia Bibi begins new life in Canada – but her ordeal may not be over

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Islamic extremists vow to pursue Christian acquitted of blasphemy in Pakistan

Asia Bibi has arrived in Canada hoping to start a new life after her years on death row. But although there is huge relief among campaigners for religious freedom that she is out of Pakistan, her ordeal may not be over.

Islamic extremists have pledged to pursue the Christian woman and kill her for the act of blasphemy of which she was accused and later acquitted. Bibi may spend the rest of her days looking over her shoulder in fear of an international assassin.

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Asia Bibi arrives in Canada after leaving Pakistan

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Christian woman freed last year after spending eight years on death row for blasphemy

Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who spent eight years on death row in Pakistan for blasphemy before she was freed last year, has flown to Canada where she has reunited with her family, her lawyer has said.

“It is a big day,” Saiful Malook told the Guardian. “Asia Bibi has left Pakistan and reached Canada. She has reunited with her family. Justice has been dispensed.”

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Bear Clan: a model of indigenous activism that’s swept across Canada

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An organisation founded in the 90s and revived in 2014 is now 1,100 volunteers who walk the streets looking for ways to help

In a small room in a Winnipeg community centre, dozens of volunteers strap on bright yellow vests and ready themselves for night patrol. Some will pick up syringes along the way, others will hand out fresh fruit and water – all under the banner of protecting the city’s most vulnerable.

“We are the boots on the ground,” said James Favel, the founder of Winnipeg’s Bear Clan. “We are the direct action that our nation has been crying for for decades.”

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Canada: extreme floods show climate threat as experts warn of further tumult

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Thousands evacuated from eastern Canada as Justin Trudeau admits urgent action necessary to improve climate preparedness

News footage showed people boating where they once walked, homes and cars filled with muddy water, volunteers searching for lost pets. Thousands of people in eastern Canada have been forced from their homes as heavy rains and meltwater cause unprecedented flood evacuations.

One of the worst-hit areas was a Montreal suburb where more than 6,000 people were evacuated after a dyke burst on Sunday. A further 3,000 people were evacuated in other parts of Quebec, and in Ontario and New Brunswick, hundreds more are waiting out the floods in hotels and shelters.

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Why we need to pause before claiming cultural appropriation | Ash Sarkar

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The debate, tied up with racial oppression and exploitation, is a difficult one. Yet not every interloper is a colonialist in disguise

Is Gordon Ramsay allowed to cook Chinese food ? Is it OK to dress up as Disney’s Moana? Can Jamie Oliver cook jollof rice despite plainly not knowing what it is? Exactly what is cultural appropriation? To take a glance at Good Morning Britain, the ITV show that never takes its finger off the pulse of Middle England’s clogged arteries, you’d think it’s a question of white people seeking permission to have fun. And in return, new media outlets have guaranteed traffic from anxious millennials by listing things that fall into the category of problematic when white people adopt them (blaccents, bindis and box braids).

Related: Gordon Ramsay defends new restaurant in cultural appropriation row

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Canada says Facebook broke privacy laws and ‘refused to act responsibly’

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Top watchdog promises to force change following Cambridge Analytica scandal as New York announces new investigation

Facebook broke Canadian privacy laws when it collected the information of some 600,000 citizens, a top watchdog in the country said on Thursday, pledging to seek a court order to force the social media company to change its practices.

Canada’s privacy commissioner, Daniel Therrien, made his comments while releasing the results of an investigation, opened a year ago, into a data sharing scandal involving Facebook and the now-defunct British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.

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Canada’s Greens eye victory on Prince Edward Island

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Party sets sights on upsetting status quo on the front line of climate change

Canadians on Prince Edward Island are preparing to vote on Tuesday in a regional election that could lead to a Green party forming a government for the first time in the country’s history.

The party leader, Peter Bevan-Baker is a Scotland-born dentist who has transformed a routine election into a closely watched race as he seeks to upend expectation and precedent on 23 April.

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Provincial election losses may help Justin Trudeau’s green agenda

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Rightwing provinces fighting his carbon tax could be a boon to embattled Canadian leader

For months, Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau has been dogged by an ever-deepening political scandal that has dragged down his popularity and threatened his re-election prospects. In yet another blow, Trudeau last week lost one of his most important allies in the country’s fight against climate change in a bitterly contested regional election in Alberta.

But for the embattled Liberal prime minister the loss might be an electoral blessing, allowing him to shift messaging in anticipation of the October federal election, deploying fresh lines of attack against an opposition with little apparent interest in tackling environmental issues.

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Ancestry pulls ad that appears to romanticize slavery after backlash

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In the genealogy company’s commercial, a white man gives a black woman a ring and says they can ‘escape to the north’

Ancestry.ca, the Canadian outpost of the genealogy site Ancestry.com, has taken down an ad that was criticized for appearing to romanticize slavery. It was deemed an irresponsible retelling of an already reprehensible history.

ooooh my god LMAOOO who approved this ancestry commercial??? pic.twitter.com/Isy0k4HTMA

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Three mountaineers killed in avalanche in Canada

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Parks service says no chance of finding David Lama, Hansjörg Auer and Jess Roskelley alive

Three of the world’s most accomplished and well known mountaineers have been killed after an avalanche in the Canadian Rockies.

The two Austrian climbers, David Lama and Hansjörg Auer, and the American Jess Roskelley, had been missing since going to attempt a climb on a remote face of Mount Howse in Alberta’s Banff national park earlier this week.

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Trump’s new Cuba crackdown puts US at odds with Canada and Europe

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US will allow lawsuits against firms using property nationalised by the revolution, cap remittances and restrict ‘non-family’ travel

Donald Trump has taken another step towards reversing Barack Obama’s historic rapprochement with Cuba with a measure that earned swift criticism from allies in Canada and Europe.

The US announced on Wednesday that it would enable lawsuits against foreign companies that use properties nationalised by the communist government after Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution.

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Canada’s legal weed struggles to light up as smokers stick to black market

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Six months after legalisation, licensed producers are unable to keep up with the demand or quality of neighborhood dealers

When Melissa, a resident of Halifax, Nova Scotia, went to one of Canada’s first government cannabis stores, she wasn’t impressed. “You can’t look at what they have. You can’t smell the product,” she said. “It’s too expensive.”

And so she, like tens of thousand of other Canadians, went back to their old habits: buying from neighbourhood dealers.

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Canada: police hunt fake deliveryman who shot woman with crossbow

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Suspect injured woman with a crossbow in a ‘premeditated, targeted’ attack, police say, in November 2018

Police in Canada are hunting a suspected hitman who they say disguised himself as a delivery person to carry out a “premeditated, targeted and isolated attack” on a woman, gravely injuring her with a crossbow.

Details of a brazen murder attempt were released to the public Monday morning by police in Mississauga, Ontario. The attack on the 44-year-old woman occurred late on 7 November 2018 in an area north of Toronto.

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Alberta election is key test for Rachel Notley and Canada’s carbon tax

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The Liberal party ended 40 years of conservative rule in the oil-rich province four years ago but an energy crisis could change that

When Canada’s leftwing New Democratic party launched a manifesto promising carbon taxes, coal plant closures and welfare spending in the heartland of country’s oil industry, few thought they could win.

But in 2015, the party ended 40 years of conservative rule in the province of Alberta with an unexpected victory that seemed to mark a seismic shift in Canadian politics.

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Who polices the cultural appropriation gatekeepers? | Kenan Malik

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Indigenous musicians in Canada are at one another’s throats over the Cree artist Cikwes’s use of a traditional Inuit singing technique

Another week, another row over cultural appropriation. But this one is different. It’s not a white artist being accused of appropriating the cultural forms of a minority community but an Indigenous Canadian artist being condemned for using the musical style of another Indigenous community.

Connie LeGrande, who performs under the name Cikwes, was nominated at the Canadian Indigenous Music awards in the best folk album category. LeGrande is a Nehiyaw, or Cree, one of Canada’s First Nations. On her album Isko, she uses katajjaq, a style of throat singing culturally and historically linked to Inuit groups. First Nations are Indigenous groups south of the Arctic Circle, Inuits those who live in the Arctic.

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Canada may regulate social media companies to avoid election meddling

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Firms are not doing enough to combat potential interference, minister said after report found foreign meddling is ‘very likely’

The world’s major social media companies are not doing enough to help Canada combat potential foreign meddling in this October’s elections and the government might have to regulate them, the cabinet minister in charge of ensuring a fair vote has said.

The democratic institutions minister, Karina Gould, spoke shortly after Canada’s electronic signals spy agency said it was very likely that foreign actors will try to meddle in the election.

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Canada: ex-cabinet members expelled from Liberal party amid scandal

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Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott ousted after bribery controversy, as Trudeau says ‘trust has been broken’

Two former Canadian cabinet ministers have been expelled from their party after Justin Trudeau said they could no longer be trusted, as a bitter political scandal continues to inflict political damage on the ruling Liberal party.

Jody Wilson-Raybould, the country’s former justice minister and attorney general, and Jane Philpott, the former president of the treasury board, were expelled on Tuesday, following a vote by members.

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‘It’s no longer free to pollute’: Canada imposes carbon tax on four provinces

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Trudeau cited international commitments to fight global warning as premiers to say they would challenge the measure

Canada has imposed a landmark carbon tax on four provinces which had defied Ottawa’s push to combat climate change, prompting unhappy premiers to say they would challenge the measure.

Related: How to make a carbon tax popular? Give the proceeds to the people

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