In 2019, Shelly Bruce, then-chief of the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), and David Vigneault, current director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), led a contingent of Canadian security and intelligence officials in the Ottawa Pride Parade, hoisting an LGBT rainbow banner. For those unaware, CSIS is Canada’s rough equivalent to the CIA; the contingent was made up of those tasked with keeping Canada safe from threats, both foreign and domestic.
Ukraine, which is struggling with an ammunition shortage, has for months said that Western aid is too slow to reach it and that the hold-ups have real consequences as the war against Russia enters its third year.
“At the moment, commitment does not constitute delivery,” Umerov said during a forum dedicated to the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion.
“Fifty percent of commitments are not delivered on time,” he added.
Online safety a key part of Ottawa’s new gender plan — and to world peace, says envoy
OTTAWA – Authoritarian countries are leveraging social media to set back progress for women worldwide, a Canadian special envoy says, as Ottawa refreshes its cross-government gender policy.
Canada’s ambassador for women, peace and security, Jacqueline O’Neill, says these threats require supporters of gender equality around the world to work together.
… She signalled it will also include considerations around how climate can affect women’s security.
“We’re seeing a lot of armed groups around the world taking advantage of climate disruptions to both recruit women into their forces (and) to abduct girls to be, effectively, sex slaves,” she said.
A senior Health Canada official removed mention of a “high level of impurity” in mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in an assessment done by a colleague for the department’s chief medical adviser, internal records show.
The assessment was meant as a brief on recent findings about the creation of unintended proteins by mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
Two senior Health Canada (HC) officials, including the one with final authority on vaccine authorization, expressed concerns about the conclusions written by the HC scientist tasked with producing the assessment.
Among the $3B programs announced by Trudeau in Kyiv today is one whose goal is to establish “a gender and diversity working group to promote gender-transformative mine action in Ukraine.”
No joke!
YOU’RE ALL PAYING TO PROMOTE GENDER-INCLUSIVE DEMINING IN UKRAINE! pic.twitter.com/ZyxPP5t4wx
— Maxime Bernier (@MaximeBernier) February 25, 2024
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau signed a deal in Kyiv on Saturday committing Canada to a $3.02-billion security assistance package for Ukraine, a milestone event to mark the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
He was joined by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen and Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo.
Crime has been at the top of the political agenda in Ottawa since the start of the year, and a new report card from one of Canada’s leading think tanks helps explain why.
The Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s third justice report card, released earlier this month, indeed makes for grim reading. Most alarmingly, the report shows that the narrative of increasing violent crime on our streets is not a mere figment of “if it bleeds, it leads” media sensationalism, but, in fact, is a real phenomenon backed by reams of hard data. (Disclosure: I was briefly employed by MLI as an editor last year.)
Watching American political news these days, many Canadians may be tempted to be smug — our politics isn’t that bad, at least not yet.
It might be a good idea to put that smugness on hold. Abacus Data went into the field this week for the Star with some probing questions about trust in the media and institutions, and uncovered some stark polarization emerging in Canada.
Abacus CEO David Coletto calls it troubling, and even ventures to say we could be witnessing the emergence of two Canadas. “Basically, Canada is two worlds — those who have some trust in most institutions and those who don’t.”
Peel police have issued a public safety alert to residents of Mississauga and Brampton after a 21-year-old offender was released back into the community.
Police say Oloruntimilehin Ojeikere was released from custody on Feb. 22, 2024, after being charged with sexual assault, criminal harassment, and uttering threats. Among the requirements of his house arrest are that he wear a GPS monitor, remain at home except for medical emergencies or to meet with lawyers or attend court, and not go anywhere near his victims.
… Officials say Ojeikere – who also goes by “Timi” – is staying in the Erin Mills Parkway and Brittania Road area and while he may present a safety risk to the public, they will act to protect his rights “if they are infringed upon.”
Migrants desperate to get into the US from Mexico often pay human smuggler “coyotes” thousands of dollars to help sneak across the border in high-risk operations with no guarantees of safety or success.
But for travelers from a growing number of countries, gaining legal entry into Canada is simple, which has made The Great White North — with a much larger US border and less officers patrolling it — a more attractive option for illegally entering the US.
“It’s really easy for Mexican citizens to come into Canada as visitors, and then they have the opportunity to cross illegally into the United States,” Canadian immigration consultant Fernando Torres told The Post.
Galen Weston may not be the president of grocery giant Loblaw anymore, but you wouldn’t know that based on how often his name and face appear in connection with the company: in memes, on social media, and now emblazoned across the top of a new Reddit forum dedicated to high food prices in Canada.
There were a lot of mixed feelings about Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin, but Russia’s president was right on when he took a moment to address and condemn Canada for the federal government’s full-time public relations disaster in which Justin Trudeau, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and members of the Canadian Parliament “gave a standing ovation to a WWII-era Nazi who is a veteran of the Waffen-SS.”
A malfunctioning vending machine at a Canadian university has inadvertently revealed that a number of them have been using facial recognition technology in secret.
Earlier this month, a snack dispenser at the University of Waterloo showed an error message – Invenda.Vending.FacialRecognition.App.exe – on the screen.
There was no prior indication that the machine was using the technology, nor that a camera was monitoring student movement and purchases. Users were not asked for permission for their faces to be scanned or analysed.
For Nazi hunter Abbee Corb, there are cases that stand out, like the one she calls the “baby smasher.”
A criminologist with a PhD, Corb was searching for Nazis who had resettled in Canada when she came across the file.
A witness statement written in 1945 described how a young Lithuanian woman named Klimaite had “smashed heads of Jewish children with rocks.”
The NDP says it has reached a deal with the governing Liberals to introduce the first piece of a national pharmacare program that includes coverage for birth control and diabetes medication.
The deal is a critical piece of the supply-and-confidence pact between the two parties and comes ahead of a March 1 deadline to table legislation.
