David Johnston was appointed special rapporteur by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in March to look into allegations of Chinese interference in Canada’s election process. The former governor general has apparently met with Trudeau, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, and Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-François Blanchet to discuss his role and mandate.
No such meeting will be taking place with Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, however.
As he surveyed the scene of the Normandy landings on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, Ronald Reagan set out the “bitter lesson” the US took from the Second World War: “It is better to be here ready to protect the peace than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost,” he said on June 6, 1984. “We’ve learnt that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.”
For all the lip service paid by today’s Republican leaders to the party’s most popular modern president, their foreign policy approach could not be more different.
Claims of wind power being pro-environment often do not consider the damaging effects these projects can have on wildlife and ecosystems, thus hiding the “true cost” of such initiatives.
Wind power projects can threaten birds that fly within their vicinity and trigger a decline in their population; it can harm marine life due to noise pollution, and affect the growth of plants in the region where it is located. Driven by subsidies granted by the federal government, the growth of wind projects has triggered concerns about the cumulative impacts they have on the environment.
As the Russian president congratulated his army and Wagner mercenaries, Volodymyr Zelensky denied the city had been captured
Vladimir Putin has claimed his first battlefield victory in a year with the capture of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
The Russian president congratulated Wagner troops as well as the regular Russian army for seizing the ruined city, which has been the site of the longest and bloodiest battle of the entire war.
Ukraine has denied that Bakhmut has fallen but Russian propagandists have started celebrating “one of the greatest battle victories in the 21st century”.
#Ukraine: A Ukrainian Zil-131 with a ZU-23-2 23mm autocannon was destroyed by two Russian FPV loitering munitions in #Donetsk Oblast. pic.twitter.com/BrK9ZnOVUJ
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) May 21, 2023
If you had to choose, among corporate giants, a champion environmental villain of the last 20 years, Volkswagen, the world’s largest automaker, would be hard to beat.
It was less than eight years ago when the world learned that, instead of working on making their vehicles less polluting, the very brightest minds in German engineering were conspiring to commit a massive global fraud.
Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc says the Conservatives’ personal attacks against former governor general David Johnston — who is set to reveal Tuesday whether he believes a public inquiry into foreign interference is necessary — are “unseemly.”
LeBlanc, who is also the minister responsible for overseeing democratic institutions, told CTV’s Question Period host Vassy Kapelos, in an interview airing Sunday, that Johnston is a “senior statesman in public affairs and public service and the law,” and Canadians should judge him for his report, rather than being “unduly agitated by (Conservative Leader Pierre) Poilievre’s negativity.”
This person uses we/us pronouns cuz we’re all inherently connected and she’s on a collective level of consciousness pic.twitter.com/sMtfNgB1MW
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 19, 2023
Jeffrey Epstein discovered that Bill Gates had an affair with a Russian bridge player and later appeared to use his knowledge to threaten one of the world’s richest men, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Microsoft co-founder met the woman around 2010, when she was in her 20s. Epstein met her in 2013 and later paid for her to attend software coding school. In 2017, Epstein emailed Gates and asked to be reimbursed for the cost of the course, according to the people familiar with the matter.
Shortly before the coronation of Charles III, a group of indigenous leaders from around the commonwealth released a statement. They called on the King ‘to acknowledge the horrific impacts on and legacy of genocide and colonisation of the indigenous and enslaved peoples,’ including ‘the oppression of our peoples, plundering of our resources, (and) denigration of our culture.’ Charles was told to ‘redistribute the wealth that underpins the crown back to the peoples from whom it was stolen.’ Yet the argument that Britain should pony up for its historical sins is based on a number of rickety assumptions.
Billions in spending have failed to solve California’s massive—and worsening—homelessness crisis.
Ask the average Californian his take on homelessness, and he’ll say that it’s gotten much worse. Back in the early 2000s, a visitor to Los Angeles’s Skid Row or San Francisco’s Tenderloin would have witnessed scenes of misery that seemed scarcely capable of further deterioration. Intense reaction against street conditions back then gave rise, in many California cities, to campaigns to end homelessness, prompting billions in new spending. But no California city ended homelessness; the average Californian’s impression is correct. According to the best data available, homelessness in California grew during the 2010s and is still growing.
The NAACP issued a travel advisory discouraging tourists from visiting Florida to protest Gov. Ron DeSantis’ policies, which the civil rights group claim are “hostile to black Americans” — just days before he’s expected to announce his candidacy for president.
“On a seeming quest to silence African-American voices, the Governor and the State of Florida have shown that African Americans are not welcome in the State of Florida,” the stunning travel advisory released Saturday said.
Almost exactly a year ago, when the last Ukrainian defenders left the shattered city of Mariupol, many analysts believed that the war triggered by Vladimir Putin would be heading towards an end with a Russian victory.
That belief was based on a number of assumptions that have since proven wrong. The first was that the 80-day battle for Mariupol could not be repeated in other Ukrainian towns and villages under Russian attack. In Mariupol, resistance was led by a hard-core of Ukrainian nationalists ready, if not eager, to fight to the very end. Most were workers in the country’s largest steel mill and had developed an esprit de corps worthy of military gradation. That combination of reasons for resistance could not be repeated elsewhere in Ukraine.
Ahead of June’s so-called “Pride month,” the retail giant Target is displaying some options being referred to as trans-friendly for customers, including a line of swimsuits with “tuck-friendly construction.”
Seriously, when are we Canadians going to stop letting our buffoon of a prime minister represent us on the international stage?
