Canada

First Nations leaders say hotels in Winnipeg and other major Manitoba cities are largely booked up as they continue to seek temporary housing for evacuees fleeing communities surrounded by wildfires.

Manitoba First Nations leaders gathered in Winnipeg on Saturday to call on the federal, provincial and Winnipeg municipal governments to direct city hotels to make space for their community members.

"Our families are displaced. Right now, we have people that are evacuating to different urban areas: Winnipeg, Brandon, Thompson. And in the city of Winnipeg right now, there are absolutely no accommodations within any of the hotels within the city," said Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs Grand Chief Kyra Wilson during the Saturday press conference, calling for an "all hands on deck" approach to providing shelter.

"If you're that 20, to 25, to 30 year [age], you're experiencing something that we've never really experienced before." Laroque said the question of whether this year is abnormal is relative. "It's in the more recent past, this is normal," Laroque said. "This is our new normal."

He said if he were to ask someone his grandfather's age, or his father's age, they would find it "very unusual" to have forest fires this early. "These are things that we traditionally saw more in June, July and later summer, when everything dried out and then the fires took off," Laroque said.

Saskatchewan is making its way out of a relatively dry period. Few places had snow for long periods of time over winter. In the past, "snowpacks" would take time to fully melt and trickle into the ground as it warmed up. This would recharge the moisture of the soil. "What's happening the last few years is that we go from a relatively cold period of time and one or two days later it's plus 22 [C]," Laroque explained. The extreme back-and-forth causes the snow to melt rapidly while the ground stays frozen, not allowing the snow to fully sink into the soil. Laroque said most of the snow ends up evaporating, causing "instant drought," similar to what the province experienced in spring 2024.

A few years ago, Li-Cycle was one of the biggest players in electric vehicle battery recycling in North America, providing a roadmap to a circular, sustainable economy for electric vehicles.

But just last month, the Toronto-based company filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S. and Canada after years of struggling to get a facility off the ground in Rochester, N.Y. The company said the planned hub would have been able to extract lithium and other critical minerals from recycled material to actually build new EV batteries — a crucial step that North American recyclers haven't achieved on a commercial scale yet.

The bankruptcy is a sign, some experts say, that the market can't sustain the industry without proper government regulation providing incentives and structure.

Archived version

Op-ed by Karen K. Christensen-Dalsgaard, Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, MacEwan University.

The recent threats of tariffs and deteriorating relations with the United States have led to increasing interest from Canadian governments and the public in boosting the country’s self-reliance.

Politicians have called on the public to “buy Canadian,” provinces have ordered American products removed from shelves and Canadian retailers have seen a surge in domestic sales. Yet the importance of agricultural adaptations for achieving greater Canadian self-reliance has largely been overlooked.

The federal government’s plan for building a stronger agrifood sector is mainly based on financial safeguards and loan options for impacted farmers and supply-chain management of existing products. The broad topic of agricultural innovation is barely mentioned at all.

At a time of changing geopolitical and physical environments, we must ensure the long-term resilience of Canada’s farms. An important step towards achieving this complex and multifaceted goal would be to diversify the country’s crop production.

...

Most farmers do not have the resources to retool their farms for new crops and assume the risks. Many face financial struggles and rising debt. This is due in part to higher production costs and lower commodity prices caused by large corporations controlling both the sales of farm supplies and the purchase of agricultural products.

Skilled labour shortages and issues retaining younger workers may also undermine the willingness and ability to diversify with new crops. Qualified migrant workers with agricultural backgrounds could help, but restrictive immigration policies make finding workers challenging.

Reactive government assistance that just keeps farmers above water will not address the challenges of a changing global trade environment and climate. To sustain momentum, the government needs to proactively fund targeted, large-scale feasibility studies and provide training, recruitment and transition funding for those interested in novel crop systems.

Agriculture is part of the foundation for our society. We have become accustomed to having access to plenty of fresh food, but this is not the global or historical norm.

Canada’s food supply is maintained by farmers both at home and abroad who, for generations, have worked long days at low wages to feed us. If they do not receive the support required to adapt to our changing world, we might all discover how valuable food really is.

During Covid, there was a strong movement towards firms allowing their workers to work at home, especially in the IT industry.

Now, we read that many of them are demanding their workers return to the office.

I have discovered one very real reason for this. Nothing to do with productivity or staff cohesion or supervisory efficiency.

The following newsletter article from WealthSimple spells it out.

https://tldr-archive.wealthsimple.com/archive/33-%F0%9F%8C%AE-trump-vs-tacos

The second article. North Korean operatives are applying remotely for these IT jobs, and succeeding in getting them. Once they obtain this job (in large part, through AI manipulation in the employment interview process), not only do the salaries paid to these employees go back to North Korea, but North Korean operatives gain full back door insider employee access to all of the data of that company. An interesting twist on insider hacking -instead of hacking the account of a legitimate employee, the agents ARE the employee. It is apparently prevalent and widespread in major American firms. If the company never sees the employee, exactly how do they know the employee is resident in Canada? Only way to be really sure, is to require them to regularly show up in person at the office.

Although the article is mainly about this phenomena in America, it is also undoubtedly happening in Canada.

As far as we can tell, Canada hasn’t arrested any laptop farmers yet, but we tend to be a step behind the Americans on these sorts of things.

I can easily see why firms would not want to be open about these security breaches, but one just has to wonder if many of the 'insider' data breaches that have been publicly acknowledged by some Canadian corporations and government organizations were not the result of these North Korean laptop farms? Especially the ones that are heavily involved in the 'work at home' culture, or have a large exposure to US-based cloud data services.

TIL: There was a Republic of Canada for like 1 month

Prime Minister Mark Carney's main focus will be on project development as he sits down with provincial and territorial premiers this week.

Carney told CBC's Power & Politics in an exclusive interview last week that "major projects" will be his main agenda item for Monday's meeting.

"We need to move on these nation-building projects. So projects that bring Canada together, projects that diversify our economy, projects that help us export to new markets and really move this economy forward," Carney told host David Cochrane.

"The ask of provinces, the ask of the private sector is: Which projects do you have that reach those criteria? What we're going to do is fast-track the approval, truly fast-track the approval, of those projects."

A family of raccoons recently broke into an Airbus factory in Canada, adding an unusual headache to the planemaker's more familiar troubles with parts shortages and supply chain snags.

Five of the baby mammals were found inside the plant near Montreal, which produces A220 airliners, sources told Reuters, after their mother was spotted climbing the landing gear of a jet being produced for a European airline.

A second source said damage included urine and chewed wires.

Workers on the overstretched assembly line had to be pulled off normal jobs to undertake the time-consuming task of quarantining the first jet and inspecting for damage from the furry intruders, which are known for foraging in trash cans for food.

The official provider is once again Flobikes - as shitty of a company as ever existed.

Even if they weren't so terrible, they charge $210/year, and that's the minimum subscription window.

So VPNs? Restreaming? Or do we just ignore the greatest bike race on earth again?

The extreme heat caused illness, death, crop losses, and strained energy and health care systems, according to the analysis from World Weather Attribution, Climate Central and the Red Cross.

“Although floods and cyclones often dominate headlines, heat is arguably the deadliest extreme event,” the report said. Many heat-related deaths are unreported or are mislabeled by other conditions like heart disease or kidney failure.

Caribbean islands were among the hardest hit by additional extreme heat days. Puerto Rico, a territory of the United States, endured 161 days of extreme heat. Without climate change, only 48 would have occurred.

This is exactly how the marginalized are 'pushed out' of society. Not by direct legislation, but by legislation that targets them nonetheless.

It's so emblematic of the moment we're in, the Who Cares Era, where completely disposable things are shoddily produced for people to mostly ignore.

There exists no coherent notion of what AI is or could be, and no meaningful effort to coalesce around a set of practices, because to do so would be to reduce the opportunity for grift.

What AI is is an ideology—a system of ideas that has swept up not only the tech industry but huge parts of government on both sides of the aisle, a supermajority of everyone with assets in the millions and up, and a seemingly growing sector of the journalism class. The ideology itself is nothing new—it is the age-old system of supremacy, granting care and comfort to some while relegating others to servitude and penury—but the wrappings have been updated for the late capital, late digital age, a gaudy new cloak for today’s would-be emperors.