3 men over 50 living outside in Nova Scotia have died in the past 5 weeks

In a Fox News interview posted to his personal X account on Wednesday, O’Leary appeared to vouch for Canadians, suggesting that citizens are interested in joining forces with its southern neighbours.

“I like this idea and at least half of Canadians are interested,” O’Leary said.

“The 41 million Canadians, I think most of them would trust me on this deal.”

Dozens of people are offering rent-a-friend services on Xiaohongshu, a social media platform also known as Little Red Book or China's Instagram, in cities including Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto.

Sociologists and other experts suggest the phenomenon of paid companionship is due in part to a sense of isolation among some new immigrants.

It wasn’t all dark. Just mostly.

Fox News: J.R.R. Tolkien, George R.R. Martin, Ursula Le Guin — these fantasy masters are revered for their ability to create entire new worlds. None of them hold a candle to Fox News. Dressing up like a Klingon at Comic-Con? Piss-ant stuff. The Rupert Murdoch-owned broadcast channel has managed to create an alternate universe superimposed upon our own, a world with its own facts and reality in which its viewers actually dwell. Fox News is Disneyland for chumps.

Gas prices: The single economic factor that lays bare the futility of all political action. To wit: a carbon tax combined with a rebate should leave most Canadian families no worse off, yet discourage fossil fuel use. Too complicated! “Axe the tax” is three simple words. Carbon tax aside, gas prices are for the most part outside government control. Never mind — they make motorists angry, and angry people vote. The opposition candidate is openly authoritarian and has no realistic plan to reduce gas prices anyway? Too bad. We’re pissed, so we’re voting for the apple-munching martinet, or the Project 2025 guy. Fossil fuels hold not only our climate hostage but our politics too.

Genocide: This month, Amnesty International declared that sufficient evidence has been gathered to confirm Israeli actions in Gaza amount to genocide, saying “Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity.” The Israeli foreign ministry replied that Amnesty International was “deplorable and fanatical.” The same day, the Israeli military announced that air strikes on a Palestinian tent camp that killed 21 people had been aimed at Hamas.

TORONTO — As we enter 2025, Dr. Theresa Tam has her eye on H5N1 bird flu, an emerging virus that had its first human case in Canada this year.

At the same time, Canada's chief public health officer is closely monitoring measles — a virus that was eliminated in this country more than two decades ago, but is making an accelerated resurgence.

But on the same day as The Canadian Press interview with Tam, health officials announced the first case of severe [human] illness in the U.S. — a person over 65 in Louisiana who had been in contact with sick birds in a backyard flock.

Tam said there have been close to 170 measles cases in Canada in 2024, compared to 59 cases last year. Many cases are related to a large outbreak that started in the fall in New Brunswick and has since spread through travel to people in Ontario, she said. The majority of people affected had not been vaccinated.

Measles was declared eliminated in Canada in 1998. Cases since then can generally be traced back to someone who travelled and brought in the virus from another country — then it spreads to those who aren't immunized.

Tam said one of the factors likely driving the resurgence of measles and whooping cough is the disruption to children's routine immunizations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite "catch-up" programs, "we're still not back at the pre-pandemic levels of vaccine coverage.”

The most recent projections from poll aggregator Canada338.com show that if an election were held today, the Conservatives led by Pierre Poilievre would win a crushing majority of 232 seats. The site suggests the Bloc is running a distant second with 45 seats — but ahead of the Liberals with 39, the NDP with 25, and the Greens with two.

The Bloc Québécois has formed the Official Opposition only once before, in 1993, after Lucien Bouchard left Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservatives to found the party.

CCS involves siphoning off carbon dioxide (CO2) from its source, then rendering it liquid, moving it by underground pipeline, and finally injecting it deep underground in perpetuity. Pathways Alliance, representing six of Canada’s largest oil companies, proposes to pipe CO2 from up to 20 oil and gas facilities across 400 km to a geological reservoir under Alberta’s Lakeland district. This district is home to numerous communities (St. Paul, Cold Lake, Bonnyville), many farms, and eight First Nation reserves.

Despite the risks, the Alberta government and the Alberta Energy Regulator have denied the request for an environmental impact assessment made by the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and by environmental groups.

The greatest CO2 emission disaster occurred in Cameroon in 1986, as a result of a massive natural release from a volcanic lake; it killed about 1,700 people and thousands of animals.

In the USA alone, at least 75 other CO2 pipeline incidents have been reported since 2010.

However, the practice of injecting fluids deep underground is an established source of induced earthquakes which can cause structural and environmental damage. CO2 in aquifers may leach heavy metals into drinking water; this past May, a CCS project in Australia was nixed due to this risk.

Injected CO2 can and has seeped to the surface, either through natural faults, or through inadequately capped wells, common in storage areas. A high school in Wyoming had to be closed for most of the school year due to such a leak.

The Pathways Alliance CCS plan envisions its pipeline routes and storage on both private and public land. Storage sites would require close monitoring — forever. The technology for CCS storage and monitoring, especially for the long term, is immature, and research on risks to human health and safety is limited.

The industrial process of CCS requires energy, producing more emissions and thus contributes to climate change. Although CCS is presented as a technological solution to mitigate climate change, it risks becoming a distraction from the urgent need to reduce emissions at their source.

CCS gives permission to polluters to continue operating as usual, perpetuating reliance on fossil fuels rather than transitioning to cleaner alternatives and improving energy efficiency.

“I was really disappointed by Canada's position,” said David Boyd, an associate professor with the University of British Columbia and former UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment. “I mean Canada lined up with Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United States — basically these major emitters are making the argument that the only legal obligations they have are the obligations set forth in [those agreements].”

“By saying that the only things that apply are the Paris Agreement and the 1992 framework convention, Canada went on to reject the principles of prevention, international generational equity, reject the principle of polluter pays, [and] reject the right to a healthy environment,” he said. “[It’s] saying none of these principles are part of customary international law, so they just don't apply.”

~

In an interview with Canada’s National Observer last year at the UN climate summit in Dubai, Regenvanu said increasingly petrostates, like Canada, are viewed as “rogue states.”

“The message from the Pacific small island developing states … is that Canada has to immediately stop any further expansion of fossil fuel production,” he said at the time. “It has to do that now if it's going to be faithful to the science. We all know that.”

A study from Oil Change International published last year found Canada is on track to be the second-largest fossil fuel expander, behind only the U.S., by 2050. On its own, Canada’s planned fossil fuel expansion represents 10 per cent of the world’s expansion plans, creating the equivalent greenhouse gas emissions of 117 coal plants run for decades.

Health Canada says Chinese-made Mother and Baby Plush Toys — including animals like pandas, elephants, lions, tigers and giraffes — don't meet Canadian safety standards and hard plastic eyes could come loose and be swallowed by a young child.

The affected toys have a universal product code (UPC) of 81402-39986 and item number of P273585.

A reminder of a year you’d like to forget.

AOC. The first person to gain a million followers on social media channel Bluesky. Can we just hurry up and give Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez the keys to the Democratic party already?

As if Dem leadership will let their party be so progressive.

BC Conservatives They’re new! They’re hot! And they are already at each other’s throats.

Fresh from the party’s election success that gave them a caucus of 44, 13 BC Conservative MLAs recently sent a letter to party leader John Rustad demanding that he discipline fellow Conservative MLA Elenore Sturko.

Sturko’s alleged crime? In a CBC interview, she agreed that Comfort Sakoma-Fadugba was right to resign as vice-chair of the Vancouver Police Board. Sakoma-Fadugba had posted online comments that, among other things, attacked Diwali celebrations as a means of “erasing Christian values from the lives of our children.”

The Gang of 13 says Sturko is a cancel culture cop. The 13 signees include Brent Chapman, the Surrey South MLA who once suggested mass shootings might be a hoax and called Palestinians “inbred.”

The BC Conservatives appear to be following the path forged by the Republican caucus in the U.S. Congress, with an extremist faction emerging to attack the faction that would qualify as extreme, if not for the existence of the more extreme faction.

Eric Trump, the son of U.S. president-elect Donald Trump, shared an image of his dad ‘buying’ Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal on Amazon. The post on X follows several recent comments made by Donald Trump about Canada becoming the U.S.’s 51st state

https://youtu.be/cjb1k6vIesE

Cross posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/17749474

Hong Kong police have offered rewards of HK$1m (£103,000; $129,000) for information leading to the arrests of six pro-democracy activists living in the UK and Canada.

Among them is Tony Chung, the former leader of a pro-independence group who fled to the UK last year.

The group - which includes a former district councillor, an actor, and a YouTuber - have been lobbying for more democracy in the territory.

[...]

Also on the wanted list is former district councillor Carmen Lau and activist Chloe Cheung. Both are based in the UK and lobby on behalf of two NGOs calling for more democracy in Hong Kong.

[...]

Ms Lau posted on [social media] that the warrant would not stop her advocacy work. She called on the UK, US and EU governments to impose sanctions on "Hong Kong human rights perpetrators".

She also asked the British Labour government to "seriously reconsider its strategies for tackling transnational repression targeting Hong Kongers" and to look at blocking plans for a new Chinese embassy in Tower Hill.

Through iconic and entertaining pop culture images, and a rocking Native American soundtrack, Red Fever looks at the roots of how and why Native American cultures have been revered, romanticized, and appropriated; in the process, it uncovers the truth about the profound impact of Indigenous peoples on western culture, including fashion, sports, politics, and the environment.

On Dec. 23, the bureau opened consultations on its greenwashing guidelines. Interested parties can submit feedback to the Competition Bureau by email until Feb. 28, 2025, and submissions will be posted publicly.

The Competition Act is a law designed to prevent anti-competitive practices like price-fixing, false marketing and other deceptions. The law was amended in June to specifically address greenwashing. There was swift and strong pushback from oil and gas industry players and some politicians.

Tl;dr: plant-based food options are on the rise at Canadian universities.

I'm skeptical of some universities' self-reported #s though, particularly "York University hit 60 per cent vegan offerings in 2024."

Amidst shifting political winds, we consider seven once common, now preventable diseases.

There’s a concerning trend emerging in Canada and the United States when it comes to vaccine hesitancy.

In the United States, a key legal adviser to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the man tapped to be the next U.S. health secretary, is working to get rid of polio and hepatitis B vaccines in America, according to the New York Times. Kennedy himself has vocally opposed vaccines for years.

On Canada’s East Coast, where vaccinations are readily available, three out of every 10 kids are not vaccinated against measles.

It’s not too different on the West Coast. Wong said that last year only around 69 per cent of two-year-olds in B.C. were up to date on all recommended vaccines, down from 74 per cent in 2017. By seven years old, that percentage falls to 66 per cent, which is down from 73 per cent in 2021, Wong added.

China said on Sunday it was taking countermeasures against two Canadian institutions and 20 people involved in human rights issues concerning the Uyghurs and Tibet.

The measures, which took effect on Saturday, include asset freezes and bans on entry and the targets include Canada's Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project and the Canada-Tibet Committee, China's foreign ministry announces on its website.

Rights groups accuse Beijing of widespread abuses of Uyghurs, a mainly Muslim ethnic minority that numbers around 10 million in the western region of Xinjiang, including the mass use of forced labour in camps. Beijing denies any abuses.

China seized control of Tibet in 1950 in what it describes as a "peaceful liberation" from feudalistic serfdom. International human rights groups and exiles, however, have routinely condemned what they call China's oppressive rule in Tibetan areas.