But in recent months, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said he intends to significantly cut the number of immigrants allowed in Canada as public concern grows over inaccessible social services, high costs of living and unaffordable housing.
It is a major shift for both the country and Trudeau, who ran in 2015 on a platform of embracing multiculturalism as a key part of Canadian identity.
His government has relied on ambitious immigration targets to fuel economic growth.
In the face of criticism and plummeting approval ratings, the prime minister now says that his government miscalculated, and that Canada needs to “stabilise” its population growth so that public infrastructure can keep up.
An expansion of the criteria for medically assisted death that comes into force in March 2024 will allow Canadians like Pauli, whose sole underlying condition is mental illness, to choose medically assisted death.
Canada legalized assisted death in 2016 for people with terminal illness and expanded it in 2021 to people with incurable, but not terminal, conditions. The legal changes were precipitated by court rulings that struck down prohibitions on helping people to die.
The new mental health provision will make Canada one of the most expansive countries in the world when it comes to medical assistance in dying (MAID), according to an expert panel report to Canada’s parliament.
A disabled veteran in Canada has slammed her government for offering to euthanize her when she grew frustrated at delays in having a wheelchair lift installed in her home.
Retired Army Corporal Christine Gauthier, a former Paralympian, testified in Parliament on Thursday that a Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) caseworker made the assisted suicide offer.
After years of frustrating delays in getting the home lift, Gauthier says the caseworker told her: ‘Madam, if you are really so desperate, we can give you medical assistance in dying now.’
Xi is not wrong. It is impossible to conduct good foreign policy if leaders can’t speak frankly to each other behind closed doors.
In the video, Xi can be heard criticizing Trudeau for behaving “inappropriately” by leaking their meeting details to the media.
“The Cdn Pool cam captured a tough talk between Chinese President Xi & PM Trudeau at the G20 today. In it, Xi expressed his displeasure that everything discussed yesterday ‘has been leaked to the paper(s), that’s not appropriate… and that’s not the way the conversation was conducted,’” Oliver wrote in her post.
“Everything we decided has been leaked to the papers that’s not appropriate… and that’s not the way the conversation was conducted,” Xi said through an interpreter. “If you are sincere, we should communicate with each other in a respectful manner, otherwise it will be hard to say what the result will be like.”
OTTAWA (Reuters) -Canada’s government introduced legislation Monday to implement a “national freeze” on the sale and purchase of handguns as part of a gun control package that would also limit magazine capacities and ban some toys that look like guns.
The new legislation, which resurrects some measures that were shelved last year amid a national election, comes just a week after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers in their classroom in Uvalde, Texas.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters the new measures were needed as gun violence was increasing.
“We need only look south of the border to know that if we do not take action firmly and rapidly it gets worse and worse and gets more difficult to counter,” he said.
The handgun freeze would contain exceptions, including for elite sport shooters, Olympic athletes and security guards. Canadians who already own handguns would be allowed to keep them.
Liberal MP Shafqat Ali was panned by a Conservative party lawmaker on Friday after colleagues noticed the familiar background of the building’s washroom.
“The camera was mounted on the ledge or ridge on the wall just above the back of the toilet,” a rival MP said.
This is the second Liberal MP in two years to be caught in an embarrassing situation on a Zoom call.
Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar has come out defending an Ottawa shop owner who made a donation to the Freedom Convoy in Canada.
Omar said journalists should not be reporting and publicizing the names of people who made ‘insignificant’ donations.
Omar tweeted in response to a newspaper editor from the Ottawa Citizen who had shared a report about Stella Luna Gelato Cafe in Ottawa, which was forced to close down after receiving continual threats.
[…]
‘I fail to see why any journalist felt the need to report on a shop owner making such a insignificant donation rather than to get them harassed. It’s unconscionable and journalists need to do better,’ Omar said in the tweet on Wednesday evening.
‘I wish journalists wrote the articles they think they are writing. Sorry to say it, but your stories aren’t always balanced and often have a clear political bias. Calling it out isn’t harassment or journalist bashing. Everyone has a right to critique your story and its merits,’ Omar wrote hours later on Wednesday night.
The mayor of Canada’s capital, Ottawa, has declared a state of emergency in response to more than a week of truckers’ protests against Covid restrictions.
Jim Watson said the city was “losing this battle” and “completely out of control”.
He added the protests posed a threat to residents’ safety. There have also been reports of racial attacks.
Ottawa’s centre has been paralysed, with vehicles and tents blocking roads.
The “Freedom Convoy” was sparked by the introduction last month of a new rule that all truckers must be vaccinated to cross the US-Canada border, but the protests have morphed into broader challenges to Covid health restrictions.
The protesters have since gathered in central Ottawa near Parliament Hill, and their demands have grown to include ending all such mandates nationwide and opposing the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“The investigations into the previous fires and these two new fires are ongoing with no arrests or charges,” Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sgt Jason Bayda said.
Ontario has announced sweeping new police powers to enforce an extended stay-at-home order, in the latest sign that officials in Canada’s most populous province have lost control of the rapidly spreading coronavirus.
[…]
Police in Ontario will now have the power to stop drivers or pedestrians and ask for their address and reason for being out. Residents could face fines of up to $C750 (US$600) for refusing to comply. Checkpoints will be established on provincial borders with Manitoba and Quebec to stop non-essential travel – but not on the frontier with the US.
The U.S. attorney’s office says 21-year-old Cedrik Bourgault-Morin (bohr-GOH’ moh-RAN’) was apprehended early Wednesday after he crossed the border from Quebec along a railroad line into North Troy, Vermont.
Prosecutors say Bourgault-Morin was wearing white camouflage and Border Patrol agents were alerted to his presence when he triggered a sensor.
Prosecutors say agents found 300 vacuum-sealed bags of anti-anxiety Xanax pills in a duffel bag on the sled. They say the pills had a street value of $1.6 million.
Note how he was caught by tripping a sensor. With drones and today’s technology, we can secure our border without needing a physical wall around the entire perimeter.
It is a practice that is replicated across Quebec, whose 7,300 maple syrup producers – mostly family-run farms – produce 70% of the world’s supply, worth more than 600m Canadian dollars.
The joke is that Quebec is the Saudi Arabia of maple syrup production, such is its dominance of the global market.
The problem for Mrs Grenier, and Quebec’s other so-called “maple syrup rebels”, is that they cannot freely sell their syrup.
Instead, since 1990 they have been legally required to hand over the bulk of what they produce to the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers (which in French-speaking Quebec is abbreviated to FPAQ).
Backed by the Canadian civil courts, the federation has the monopoly for selling Quebecois maple syrup on the wholesale market, and for exporting it outside the province. It sets the price for how much it pays producers, and it charges them a 12% fee per pound of syrup.
Producers are only allowed to sell independently a very small amount of syrup, to visitors to their farm, or to their local supermarket. And then they still have to pay the 12% commission to the FPAQ.
[…]
“The federation doesn’t have to be as coercive as it is now,” he says. “Its system is totalitarian and communist. Producers don’t have space to work, that is why most of them cheat.”
