The Saskatchewan Government is stepping in to keep a police-run Human Trafficking Response Team (HTRT) operating after the federal government’s support agreement expired.

“It was unfortunate that the federal government did back away from the table with the funding of these positions,” Saskatchewan Justice Minister Tim McLeod said. “However, we were able to secure the funding through the National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence to continue these very important positions.”

The new provincial commitment of $160,000 is partnered funding between the province and the federal government, but it’s not a permanent solution as there is no confirmation of its continuation.

I think it is unconscionable for our governments not to seriously invest in eradicating human trafficking in Canada, freeing victims, and bringing perpetrators to justice. With the Pedo-in-Chief leading the country to the south of us, the West-sanctioned genocide of women and children in Palestine, and global power-brokers shrugging off a highly-publicized child-sex-trafficking ring known as the Trump-Epstein files. Are we fighting gendered violence or enabling it?

New modelling data from the Public Health Agency of Canada shows there was a 22.8 per cent increase in new HIV infections between 2022 and 2024. In 2024, an estimated 2,517 new infections occurred compared with the 2,050 infections recorded two years earlier.

In 2019, B.C. declared an end to the HIV epidemic after new AIDS cases had declined by 90 per cent and new infections were at a record low. But since then, Montaner says infection numbers have been moving in the other direction.

In May, Manitoba’s public health minister declared HIV a public health emergency after HIV rates rose sharply, becoming 3.5 times higher than the national rate. Earlier this year, Saskatchewan reported infection rates just under Manitoba’s, making theirs the second-highest rates in Canada.

“What we’re seeing is a resurgence of HIV, both new infections and AIDS, which was until two or three years ago, persistently declining — because the strategy was working,” Montaner said.

Jollimore says the face of HIV is changing in Canada. He says when the AIDS crisis began in the 1980s it was centered in big cities, mostly affecting gay men, but today, it is showing up in rural and remote communities without adequate health infrastructure and resources. He says more investment is needed to reach those people. “It tends to thrive in pockets where there’s the least connection to care,” Jollimore said. “In those communities where stigma or discrimination or racism may prevent someone from coming forth to get tested or treated.”

This week, global health leaders at the International AIDS conference in Rio de Janeiro warned that major foreign aid cuts, mostly from the United States and other high-income countries — including Canada — could unravel years of progress. UNAIDS says, in 2025, international funding for HIV testing and treatment initiatives in low- and middle-income nations plummeted by 18 per cent.

It doesn’t include any mention that it is an advertisement, in fact, and not content created by the publication.

Saanich News is owned by Black Press Media, who in turn is owned by Carpenter Media Group as of 2024.

According to the Columbia Journalism Review in January, Carpenter Media is from Alabama, is ominously buying up local news outlets, and has become the fourth-largest newspaper operator in the US.

On March 24, 2021, the House of Commons voted unanimously to officially designate August 1 Emancipation Day. It marks the actual day in 1834 that the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 came into effect across the British Empire.

Canadians are not always aware that Black and Indigenous Peoples were once enslaved on the land that is now Canada. Those who fought enslavement were pivotal in shaping our society to be as diverse as it is today.

Therefore, each August 1, Canadians are invited to reflect, educate and engage in the ongoing fight against both anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism and discrimination.

Emancipation Day celebrates the strength and perseverance of Black communities in Canada.

Cross-post: https://sh.itjust.works/post/64394346

It was clear the fix was in when Hamilton Mayor Andrea Horwath called a Special Council meeting, to be held the day before councillors would decide whether or not to pause AI data centre construction in the city.

The one-year moratorium, proposed to let the city update its rules for AI data centres, would have been the first of its kind in Canada.

Described as a “science-based” education session for Council, Horwath’s meeting was immediately called out as looking much more like a public lobbying pitch, with each presenter financially tied to the fate of data centre proposals in the city.

One presenter, Michael Schull, heads the the Digital Research Alliance of Canada. Schull, a registered lobbyist with the city, had been in town booking private chats with councillors in the lead-up to the meeting.

At the previous session of Council, reps from McMaster University — another data centre proponent and Special meeting presenter — were openly feeding misleading talking points via text message to the lone councillor who voted “no” in a 15-1 decision to advance the moratorium, which has overwhelming public support.

Related, from the UN in Jan '26: World enters era of ‘global water bankruptcy’

We, the undersigned, call upon the Governor General of Canada to publicly condemn Tobias Lütke’s recent anti-democratic remarks, refer his conduct to the Civil Advisory Committee for formal review, and cancel or annul his Meritorious Service Cross.

Tobias Lütke, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Shopify, received the Meritorious Service Cross in 2018 for his entrepreneurship and his contributions to Canada’s technology industry.

Recent public statements attributed to Mr. Lütke are fundamentally incompatible with the democratic equality and respect for citizenship that Canadian honours should represent.

Responding to a discussion about public opposition to development projects, Mr. Lütke reportedly described people attending community meetings as:

“Retired, Unemployed, Unemployable, and useful idiots.”

He subsequently proposed that people receiving pensions should be regarded as dependants and deprived of their voting rights:

“New deal: when you get your pension deal it’s locked in and guaranteed. But now you are a dependent and that means no voting … let people with a stake in the future decide.”

When another person proposed allocating votes according to the amount of income tax paid—giving no vote to those paying no income tax and as many as five votes to wealthy taxpayers—Mr. Lütke reportedly replied:

“Good system.”

Under existing legislation, employers can terminate group benefit plans for employees aged 65 and older and those workers are shifted onto the province’s health-care plan.

With the legislative change, however, employers will no longer be allowed to terminate benefits for any employee “solely on the basis of age” and will have to cover health-care and benefit costs for those over 65 themselves.

“So it means that Alberta employers and their employees are going to be looking at the possibility of premium costs going up over time, as those plans are responsible for paying for more health care,” she said in an interview.

“Employers have to find that money somewhere or they start, you know, trimming back a little bit the generosity of their insurance coverage.”

Bold mine. Between her, Carney, and the CBC, she’s the only one making sense, representing Canadians, and speaking clearly. Don’t you love “Netflix tax?” There needs to be a study done on “carbon tax” and similar rhetorical terms. Framing something that only benefits everyday Canadians and asks billionaires to pay closer to their fair share as a silly tax that burdens everyday people is crazy-effective propaganda.

The federal government will “eliminate” the financial contribution requirement for streamers set by the CRTC and replace it with government funding, it said in a court document.

The government also said at the time it would instead provide the industry with $600 million in annual funding.

Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc is in Washington this week after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened new tariffs on an array of Canadian goods.

On Tuesday, LeBlanc attended a baseball game between the Washington Nationals and Toronto Blue Jays. The “Canada-U.S. Friendship Day” event was sponsored by Google, Netflix and Amazon.

At a news conference on Wednesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney was asked about the decision on streamer contributions.

“We made that decision two months ago,” Carney said, interrupting the question. He said the government made that move because of concerns about affordability.

In an emailed statement, NDP MP Heather McPherson said the Liberals are “cancelling the fees charged to U.S. companies, forcing Canadians to subsidize the U.S. tech and media companies that directly compete with Canadian media.”

“This is nothing more than an act of appeasement to placate Donald Trump and his tech billionaire supporters and it threatens the future of Canadian media and content,” she said.

Even as fossil fuel corporations have record profits at their back, it is the federal government largely underwriting the expansion of oil and gas development, while removing barriers intended to protect the public interest and lower greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, clean energy has landed as a viable, scalable alternative, suggesting Canada wants to become the wrong kind of energy superpower.

If anything, President Trump’s Iran war, and the vulnerability of supplies through the Strait of Hormuz, has also changed the calculus for Asian countries—upon whose purchases future Canadian oil and gas growth depends—to invest heavily in renewable technologies to become more self-reliant. Even before the Iran war, this overhang of uncertainty explains why no private sector proponent wants to build the pipeline given its massive price tag.

Canada shifting into full-blown petro state mode is painful to watch for those of us who’ve been working on clean energy and climate policy for (in my case, 17!) years. How much of the future must we sacrifice for the sake of the present? The real lost opportunity is that this massive fiscal effort could alternatively transition Canada to a fully renewable, circular economy, build housing for all and make other investments that would raise our collective standard of living.

It’s disheartening to know that our provincial and federal governments are willing to prioritize finances and economic riches to develop the so-called Ring of Fire mining region and dedicate years of research, planning and organization to this development, yet spend little to no time in preparing for natural disasters that endanger the lives of the people who live in these same areas. Plenty of experts and spokespeople have pointed out that governments have not done enough over the past few years to prepare for forest fire emergencies or to properly address this danger.

In a Globe and Mail article, Noah Freedman, vice-president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union local 703 and a ten-year veteran of the provincial wildland fire service, stated that the province’s number of fire crews is fewer than what was available decades ago. Compared with past years, fewer fire crews are dealing with forest fires across a massive area that is twice the size of France. Freedman also pointed out that the province lacks aircraft and equipment, giving the example that even though there are nine large water bomber aircraft, two were reported as being grounded for repairs.

First Nation leaders and citizens everywhere can easily see what the different levels of government prioritize in the north.

In a CBC news story, Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler of Nishnawbe-Aski Nation (NAN), commented that “In their haste to extract our resources in our territories, both Ontario and Canada are ignoring the immediate threats our communities are facing because of climate change.”

Mark Carney’s Liberal government is looking to cash in under the new right-wing presidency of Keiko Fujimori in Peru.

According to Global Affairs Canada (GAC), Robert Oliphant, parliamentary secretary to the minister of foreign affairs, is attending Fujimori’s inauguration in Lima today with the goal to “unlock new opportunities.”

Fujimori is the daughter of former Peruvian president Alberto, who was arrested in Chile in 2005 for serious human rights abuses, including allegations of mass killings and forced disappearances of left-wing rebels.

He was extradited to Peru in 2007, where he was ultimately convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

After winning Peru’s presidential election by a razor-thin margin last month, some Peruvians fear Fujimori will repeat some of her father’s authoritarian abuses.

Fujimori’s loyalists in congress have recommended criminal charges be brought against one of Peru’s top investigative journalists, in a move that critics have decried as sinister and absurd.

Fujimori’s ascent to the presidency follows years of political instability in Peru, including a period in which the country’s security forces cracked down heavily on Indigenous-led protests in late 2022 and 2023 following the ouster of left-wing president Pedro Castillo.

Nearly a year after Air Canada flight attendants forced unpaid work in the airline industry onto the national agenda, the issue is once again at the centre of a brewing labour dispute.

More than 4,400 WestJet flight attendants, represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 8125, have delivered an unmistakable rebuke to the company. On July 15, the union announced that 99.4 per cent of workers voted to authorize a strike, with a turnout of 97.3 per cent. As was the case with Air Canada flight attendants last summer, this is one of the strongest strike mandates in recent Canadian labour history.

The vote does not automatically trigger a walkout at WestJet, but it does authorize the union to call a strike with 72 hours of notice following a statutory “cooling-off” period. This puts the union in a position to hit the picket lines as early as August 2, over one of the busiest holiday weekends for air travel.

Israel’s ongoing genocide is the fascists’ blueprint for the world they seek to construct

Published July 2, 2026

The campaign against the Canadian Museum for Human Rights’ Nakba exhibition shows why arm’s-length cultural institutions must be protected.

Canada ranks near the bottom of OECD countries—28 out of 35—for its relatively low share of public health care spending compared to the private share of total health care spending

Private health care spending grew nearly twice as fast as public spending in Canada, per person, from 2021 to 2023 (8.1 per cent vs. 4.3 per cent)

Most private spending is on only a few things, with more than three-quarters of private health care spending (out-of-pocket and private insurance) going towards non-physician professionals, drugs, and long-term care

The Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador (AFNQL) has joined leaders of Indigenous communities in Alberta in defending treaty rights from a burgeoning separatism movement in that province.

Alberta’s premier, Danielle Smith, announced in May that the province would move forward with a non-binding referendum question relating to separating from Canada, even after an Alberta judge quashed a petition for a similar, albeit more direct, referendum, citing a failure to consult First Nations.