Canada

What if citizens were called to policymaking duty the way they are called to jury duty?

All over the world, ordinary people are finding out what that’s like when they’re selected by civic lottery to participate in a citizens’ assembly, a democracy innovation that may just be the antidote to the polarization of the world we need.

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According to the OECD database, environment and other long-term policy issues are the most popular topics addressed by citizens’ assemblies, and local governments are the most frequent users of these methods.

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In citizens’ assemblies, there are teenagers and octogenarians, business people and activists, people of all genders, races and abilities, individuals who have been regulars at city council and those who have never engaged in local democracy before. Inevitably there is a wide range of political leanings, lots of passion and some trepidation.

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The challenges range from giving everyone a base of technical knowledge to effectively participate in discussions — a component often missing in public consultations — to ensuring complex accessibility needs are met, something required to address the gap in effective involvement of people with disabilities in decision-making.

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The OECD estimates that roughly half of the recommendations of deliberative processes are implemented. We’ve also found that the side benefits of citizens’ assemblies, such as increased community cohesion and a sense of hope, are substantial.

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Building trust with government may be another important outcome. Research shows trust in government is significantly higher among Canadians who feel they have a say in what the government does (79 per cent compared to 21 per cent who do not).

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Inside a bustling unit at St. Michael's Hospital in downtown Toronto, one of Shirley Bell's patients was suffering from a cat bite and a fever, but otherwise appeared fine — until an alert from an AI-based early warning system showed he was sicker than he seemed.

While the nursing team usually checked blood work around noon, the technology flagged incoming results several hours beforehand. That warning showed the patient's white blood cell count was "really, really high," recalled Bell, the clinical nurse educator for the hospital's general medicine program.

The cause turned out to be cellulitis, a bacterial skin infection. Without prompt treatment, it can lead to extensive tissue damage, amputations and even death. Bell said the patient was given antibiotics quickly to avoid those worst-case scenarios, in large part thanks to the team's in-house AI technology, dubbed Chartwatch.

"There's lots and lots of other scenarios where patients' conditions are flagged earlier, and the nurse is alerted earlier, and interventions are put in earlier," she said. "It's not replacing the nurse at the bedside; it's actually enhancing your nursing care."

The first teenage girl to be sentenced in the 2022 death of Toronto homeless man Kenneth Lee will not face any more time in custody and will instead spend time on probation while participating in a community-based program for young people with mental health issues.

The girl, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was 13 at the time of the December 18, 2022 attack in downtown Toronto, was credited for 15 months of effective pre-trial custody and will serve another 15 months of probation under an Intensive Support and Supervision Program, which is designed as an alternative to custody for youth who have been diagnosed with mental health disorders.

Justice David Stewart Rose says the sentence reflects that the teen has taken accountability for her actions by pleading guilty, and experienced institutional malfeasance while in custody, such as being forced to strip naked during searches.

The year 2023 was by far the warmest in human history. Climate extremes now routinely shock in their intensity, with a direct monetary cost that borders on the unfathomable. Over $3 trillion (US) in damages to infrastructure, property, agriculture, and human health have already slammed the world economy this century, owing to extreme weather. That number will likely pale in comparison to what is coming. The World Economic Forum, hardly a hotbed of environmental activists, now reports that global damage from climate change will probably cost some $1.7 trillion to $3.1 trillion (US) per year by 2050, with the lion’s share of the damage borne by the poorest countries in the world.

And yet we fiddle.

In today’s Canada, there is deception, national in scope, coming directly from the right‑wing opposition benches in Ottawa. In 2023, the populist Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre adopted “Axe the tax” as his new mantra and has shaped his federal election campaign around that hackneyed rhyme.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's ruling Liberals, trailing badly in the polls, face a struggle on Monday to retain a once-safe seat in a special election where failure to win could boost calls for a new party leader.

The election in the Montreal parliamentary constituency of LaSalle—Emard—Verdun was called to replace a Liberal legislator who quit.

Normally Trudeau's party could count on an easy win there but surveys suggest the race is tight. If the Liberals lose, the focus will fall squarely on Trudeau, who has become increasingly unpopular after almost nine years in office.

Unusually, some Liberal legislators are breaking ranks to call for change at the top. Alexandra Mendes, a Liberal lawmaker who represents a Quebec constituency, said many of her constituents wanted Trudeau to go.

"I didn't hear it from two, three people - I heard it from dozens and dozens of people," she told public broadcaster Radio-Canada last week. "He's no longer the right leader."

A national dental care program was one of the keystones of the now-ended supply-and-confidence agreement between the Liberals and NDP, inked in 2022. It involves plans to roll out coverage especially for children, seniors, and low-income Canadians, and with remaining eligible Canadians slated to gain access in 2025.

When pressed by Kapelos on the statistic that nearly 650,000 Canadians have already accessed care, Scheer again would not directly say whether his party would scrap the program, if elected.

Air Canada and the union representing its pilots have come to terms on a labor agreement that is likely to prevent a shutdown of Canada’s largest airline.

Talks betwen the company and the Air Line Pilots Association produced a tentative, four-year collective agreement, the airline announced in a statement early Sunday.

The prospective deal recognizes the contributions of the pilots flying for Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge while setting a new framework for company growth. The terms will remain confidential until ratification by union members and approval by the airline’s board of directors over the next month, the airline said.

As schools turn to university students and graduates without a teachers' degree to cope with a shortage, a certified teacher from Dieppe says she's been trying to find full-time work without success.

Dieppe resident Allie Fanjoy was hired as a supply teacher for the coming school year in late August, but she says the process was slow and frustrating.

More frustrating, she says, was learning that schools in the anglophone system are still short by 32 teachers — and three districts of the four are relying on 132 people on local permit contracts.

Local permit contracts enable school districts to hire people without teaching degrees, and some with no university degree at all.

Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon met both the company and the union on Thursday. Both sides are still far apart on the question of wages.

MacKinnon has broad powers to tackle disputes and last month intervened within 24 hours to end a stoppage at the country's two largest railway companies, Canadian Pacific Kansas City and Canadian National Railway.

Air Canada says this set a precedent. But while Ottawa has intervened several times in labor disputes over the last few decades, it has only done so after stoppages have begun, not before.

"We are not going to interfere, we are not going to take action before it really becomes very clear that there is no goodwill at the negotiating table," said Trudeau.

The Business Council of Canada, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce issued a joint statement on Friday calling on Ottawa to intervene to prevent a strike before it began.

cross-posted from: /c/britishcolumbia

In 2008, as the-then B.C. Liberal government was poised to bring in Canada's first carbon tax, the B.C. NDP staunchly opposed it, saying a climate plan should not tax consumers but target major industrial producers such as the gas, oil, cement and aluminum industries.

There are important geopolitical and cultural factors that influence Canadian support for Israel and help explain Saini's hostility to divesting, as the university recently did with fossil fuels and Russia. But the most pressing element is a remarkably empowered victim narrative.

"Jews at McGill: 'We feel alone'", blared the cover of Saturday's National Post, linking to a two-page spread that included the spurious claim students organized a "Kristallnacht-themed rally" in November. (73 Postmedia outlets reportedly ran the story). The New York based Jewish Forward published a similar commentary headlined "For Jewish students at McGill like me, our return to campus is filled with dread".

On Friday McGill students organized a walkout and some ripped up the grass where the encampment was demolished. Those who see little problem with destroying everything in Gaza were outraged grass had been damaged.

A brand of yogurt sold at Costco has been recalled due to mould, says the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).

The federal agency's notification affects 24-packs of Greek yogurt under Costco's Kirkland Signature brand with the best before date of Aug. 10, 2024, marked as "2024 AU 10." The printed UPC code is "0 96619 22215 5."

The agency says the microbial contamination is not harmful, though stores and consumers are told not to use, sell, serve or distribute the affected product.

In 2013, Reynolds and Alcoa agreed to pay nearly US$20 million to tribal, state and federal authorities to help remediate the damage. The Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe independently pursued settlements from Monsanto and its corporate successors — including Bayer, which bought the company in 2018 — alleging that polychlorinated biphenyls exposure led to increased risks of cancer and other diseases among tribal members.

David Carpenter, 87, is a physician and director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany, in New York state.

Over the years, Carpenter witnessed an increasingly wide range of serious harms linked to polychlorinated biphenyls — including heart disease, infertility and diabetes. According to the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne, the rate of diabetes in the community is 30 per cent, more than three times the Canadian prevalence of nine per cent. On the American side of the border, the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe and Health Services reports that diabetes affects 16 per cent of Mohawks living in Akwesasne, compared to eight per cent of the state population.

“Everybody thinks that diabetes is a function of being obese. I don’t think it is. It’s much more related to [polychlorinated biphenyls] and other environmental exposures than it is to obesity,” Carpenter says, pointing out the high rate of diabetes in Akwesasne affects both the young and the old.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has firmly stated that Ukraine should be allowed to conduct long-range strikes inside Russian territory, despite threats from Moscow.

This stance comes in the wake of Ukrainian forces occupying parts of Russian territory for the first time since World War II, and Ukrainian officialls asking Western partners to remove restrictions on the use of Western long-range weapons so that Ukraine can degrade Russia’s logistics and airfields in the rear and bring the war to an end faster.

“Canada fully supports Ukraine using long-range weaponry to prevent and interdict Russia’s continued ability to degrade Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure, and mostly to kill innocent civilians in their unjust war,” Trudeau declared at a news conference in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec.

MBFC

Canada is looking for a bigger security role in Asia and has made forging deeper ties with Japan and South Korea a priority. As its defence commitments expand at home and overseas the country is expanding military spending.

"Next year, my defence budget will rise by 27% over this year, and, frankly, in the next three or four years, our defence spending will triple," Blair said.

Story involves black bears of Canada and the monarchy that is part of the political system.

But researchers say focusing on the environmental impacts and potential health harms of the finished products alone hides their actual environmental impact. Manufacturing Teflon and other fluoropolymers uses other, more dangerous PFAS chemicals. These compounds are known to contaminate the environment surrounding manufacturing facilities, said Rainer Lohmann, a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island.

"Basically, anywhere where there's a major fluoropolymer producer, they seem to have succeeded in contaminating the entire region with their production process," he said.

The ministry's move to remove fluoropolymers from its proposed rules suggests those industry lobbying efforts have worked, MacDonald said. Using a study with self-declared ties to the chemical industry to back up the ministry's decision to exclude fluoropolymers "just kind of shows a little bit of what's happening behind the scenes in terms of where the government is taking the industry's word," she said.