Any suggestion racism played a part in Sgt. Andrew Harnett’s traffic stop of a Calgary teen charged with the officer’s murder was a figment of the accused killer’s imagination, a prosecutor said Thursday.
Crown lawyer Mike Ewenson said there was nothing in the conduct of Harnett and two other officers who arrived on the scene to show the teen feared he was being racially profiled.
“Actually, I love Calgary.” This is the sort of statement that, when uttered to other Toronto-based millennials, used to earn me blank stares and dubious eye rolls. Most could never see themselves leaving the city for nearby Hamilton, let alone Alberta. I might as well have professed my fondness for Saturn’s third ring.
The most senior intelligence officer in charge of covert operations at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service went to Ankara in March, 2015, to persuade Turkish authorities to stay silent about the agency’s recruitment of a Syrian human smuggler who trafficked three British teenage girls to Islamic State militants, according to three sources.
The sources said the officer, Jeffrey Yaworski, who was at the time CSIS’s deputy director of operations, was carrying out a discreet but high-level campaign to prevent the spy agency from being publicly blamed for using the smuggler as an operative. The Globe is not identifying the sources because they were not authorized to discuss national security matters.
Newly formulated bivalent booster shots that target Omicron variants of COVID-19 are being rolled out around the world, including in Canada, where Moderna has made 12 million doses available.
But Canadians should not be under the mistaken impression that they are receiving the same sort of bivalent shots as those being administered in the United States and Europe.
Canada has urged its citizens to “avoid all travel” to Indian regions within 10km of the border with neighbouring Pakistan, citing the “presence of landmines and unexploded ordnance”.
The travel advisory, updated on Wednesday by the Canadian government, urges its citizens to “exercise a high degree of caution” due to the “threat of terrorist attacks throughout the country”.
The travel advisory comes days after the Indian government urged its own nationals and students visiting Canada to “exercise due caution and remain vigilant” amid a “sharp increase” in hate crimes and sectarian violence there.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is demanding an end to the vaccine mandate for military members, but his health critic suggested the situation might need a more nuanced approach.
Last week, Poilievre called for an end to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for members of the Canadian Armed Forces, saying it was “obviously unscientific and contradictory” to keep that rule in place while ending the requirement for those crossing the border into Canada.
Jeremy Mackenzie, a far-right livestreamer and founder of the de-facto group “Diagolon,” has been arrested on a Canada-wide warrant, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia RCMP have confirmed to Global News.
Mackenzie made headlines this week after he allegedly made a joke about sexually assaulting Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s wife, Anaida Poilievre, and his livestreams have faced close scrutiny by extremism researchers — some of whom have raised the alarm about the content.
The Modi government has issued its sharpest statement yet over what it calls “anti-India activities” originating from Canada, expressing its concern and disappointment over Ottawa’s apparent lack of action on the matter.
It comes after thousands of Canadian Sikhs took part in an unofficial voting exercise earlier this week dubbed the “Khalistan referendum”, expressing their support for a separate Sikh nation-state to split away from New Delhi in northern India.
While the Canadian authorities have defended this as an exercise in freedom of speech, the Indian foreign ministry has accused Canada of allowing extremists to carry out “deeply objectionable” and “politically-motivated exercises” that represent a threat to the integrity of India.
A beauty queen from Myanmar who sought refuge in Thailand after criticising the military junta in her homeland has been granted asylum in Canada.
Han Lay, 23, made headlines around the world last year when she used a pageant speech to call for help for the people of Myanmar amid a military crackdown. She faced being sent back to her home country after Thai officials stopped her at an airport in Bangkok last week because of an issue with her passport.
The proportion of Canadians who believe Prime Minister Justin Trudeau deserves to remain in power appears to be slightly lower than it was one year ago amid the federal election, a new poll suggests.
Polling done by Ipsos exclusively for Global News indicates 33 per cent of Canadians say Trudeau deserves to be re-elected, which is a drop of four per cent compared to polling done last fall.
IF AN ELECTION WAS HELD TOMORROW, THE CONSERVATIVES WOULD WIN
Among respondents, 37 per cent said they would vote Conservative in the next election, against just 30 per cent who would Liberal. Given that the Liberals won the last federal election with just 32.62 per cent of the vote, these results would be more than enough to put Poilievre in the prime minister’s office.
But it could be 2025 before we see an election. Poilievre vs. Freeland or Joly would be great fun, not to mention the Max factor. This assumes the sociopath resigns which is unlikely to happen.
The Royal Canadian Navy is struggling with what its commander says is a personnel “crisis” as hundreds of positions sit vacant.
Vice-Admiral Angus Topshee says he needs nearly 1,400 sailors to reach full strength, which is about 17 percent of the navy’s total ranks.
It doesn’t seem so long ago that you could say “social justice” bears the same relationship to “justice” as “social worker” does to “worker,” and warn that integrating female soldiers into front-line combat would devastate military effectiveness. Nowadays such things are taboo. But the Canadian military’s recruiting crisis suggests a lingering gap between “social justice warrior” and “warrior.”
Defence is the first duty of government. Without it nothing else matters, not even civil liberties, because of the old rule that there will be an army in your country, so it better be yours. And Canada’s armed forces are far too small.
Ford needs to make his gas tax cut permanent to avoid being the Grinch.
If Ontario Premier Doug Ford doesn’t want to be the Grinch who stole Christmas, he’ll start working on a plan to make Ontario’s temporary gas tax cut permanent.
Governments love taxes.
Thanksgiving dinner will come with a hefty price tag for Canadians this year, according to data compiled by Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab.
Sylvain Charlebois, who teaches food policy at the university and directs the lab, explains prices for some Thanksgiving dinner staples have increased by as much as 26 per cent compared to March 2020 and 22 per cent compared to this time last year. Statistics Canada reported on Sept. 20 that across all retail food items, inflation is up 10.8 per cent.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is denouncing a video in which two men joke about sexually assaulting his wife, calling the pair “dirtbags” and indicating his office has referred the matter to the RCMP.
Mr. Poilievre was responding to comments made in a livestream that appeared on social media on the weekend. In it, Jeremy Mackenzie, founder of Diagolon, says he wants to rape Anaida Poilievre; Morgan May laughs in response.
