Heat wave continues to sizzle across Canada with weather warnings

Several parts of Canada continue to swelter under intense heat, prompting weather alerts.

Southern parts of Ontario and Quebec are entering the third day of a multi-day heat event that Environment Canada has warned could see temperatures reach highs near 40 degrees Celsius when humidity is factored in.

The weather agency says temperatures are expected to taper off in those regions by several degrees on Friday, while northern Ontario will see relief starting today.

A heat warning is also in effect in British Columbia, from the north to central coast and in the Fraser Canyon area east of Vancouver, where daytime highs between 30 and 35 degrees Celsius are expected through Sunday.

#Ontario #Quebec #BritishColumbia

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Ottawa man first to face terrorism, hate charges linked to far-right propaganda

An Ottawa man is the first ever to be charged in Canada with terrorism and hate propaganda offences for advocating a violent, far-right ideology.

RCMP say they arrested and charged 26-year-old Patrick Gordon Macdonald with participating in the activity of a terrorist group, facilitating terrorist activity and wilfully promoting hatred for a terrorist group.

The RCMP says Macdonald helped make propaganda material for a terrorist group called Atomwaffen Division.

The group, also known as AWD, is a U.S.-based neo-Nazi organization that was listed as a terrorist entity in Canada in 2021.

According to the U.S.-based Southern Poverty Law Centre, AWD's graphic designs are created by a Canadian known as "Dark Foreigner," the online screen name allegedly used by Macdonald.

A second person was arrested in Kingsey Falls, Que., as part of the RCMP's Integrated National Security Enforcement Team investigation but no charges have been laid at this point.

#Ontario #Quebec

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⚛️ World's biggest nuclear power plant being planned in Canada

The Ontario government said Wednesday Bruce Power will conduct an environmental assessment of adding as much as 4.8 GW of capacity to its plant in Canada’s most-populous province. The plant’s eight reactors currently have about 6.2 GW of capacity and supply 30% of the province’s power.

The expansion would make the site larger than Japan’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, the biggest in the world with seven reactors and more than 8 GW of capacity.

#Ontario

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🇨🇦🇺🇸🇲🇽 Canada, US and Mexico meet in Cancun to discuss trade deal

North America’s trading partners are in Cancun for two days of meetings to take stock of the last three years under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

International Trade Minister Mary Ng is sitting down with U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai and Raquel Buenrostro, Mexico’s economy secretary.

Tai’s office says the U.S. exported nearly US$790 billion in goods and services under the trade deal in 2022, 31 per cent more than in 2012.

The U.S. Department of Commerce estimates North American exports supported some 2.1 million jobs in 2021.

All three sides will likely be thinking about the agreement’s six-year review clause, which requires a comprehensive assessment of the deal by June 2026.

#US #Mexico

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Justin Trudeau tweets invitation to Taylor Swift asking her to bring tour to Canada

While Taylor Swift announced Wednesday that she is adding new stops to her international tour through Mexico, Europe, and Asia, no Canadian cities have been included so far. 

Trudeau responded to Swift's tweet with paraphrased lyrics from her own songs, posting:

"It's me, hi. I know places in Canada would love to have you. So, don't make it another cruel summer. We hope to see you soon."

Trudeau is preoccupied with really important things, as we can see.

#Trudeau

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Tantallon wildfire in Nova Scotia causes over $165m in insured damage

The devastating wildfire that ravaged Tantallon, Nova Scotia, from May 28 to June 4, 2023, has resulted in initial estimates of over $165 million in insured damage, according to Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc.

The majority of claims, approximately 90%, were related to personal property losses. Officials have now confirmed that at least 200 properties, including 151 homes, were either destroyed or damaged during the catastrophe.

Canada has experienced a significant surge in insured damage caused by severe weather events, now surpassing $2 billion annually.

#NovaScotia #wildfires

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🇨🇳 Chinese owner of Manitoba mine revives talk of draining lake to reach more cesium

The Chinese owner of the Tanco mine in eastern Manitoba has revived talk of partly draining a lake in order to extract more cesium from one of the world's few deposits of this element.

Sinomine Resource Group is musing about a long-term redevelopment of its mine it purchased in 2019 along the shore of Bernic Lake, a small Canadian Shield body of water located between Whiteshell and Nopiming provincial parks.

The goal is to reach cesium that can not be mined right now because it's embedded in vertical columns that hold up the roof of the underground mine.

The push to mine what's left of Tanco's cesium stems from the worldwide scarcity of the element, which is used in drilling fluids for oil and gas wells, medical imaging and maintaining time in atomic clocks, among other uses.

All of this suggests that there will be no investigation into foreign interference. Who would want to fight when there is big money at stake?

#Manitoba #China

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A man was seriously injured after getting into a fight with a man armed with a knife on a Toronto subway today.

Video recorded by an unknown passenger shows a bleeding man being chased through the train. He pleads for help but people run away. This happened as the train was approaching Eglinton station.

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CRA investigates 600 employees for CERB fraud

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) announced it fired 20 employees—and is investigating upwards of 600 others—who improperly received the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) during the pandemic.

The agency will discipline employees it discovers inappropriately accepted CERB payments on a case-by-case basis, and penalties include revocation of employees’ reliability status, which is a condition of employment.

In the wake of the pandemic, the CERB program was rolled out to support Canadians who lost their jobs or had been furloughed with up to $2,000 monthly. However, late last year, Canada’s auditor general estimated the federal government overpaid Canadians by $4.6 billion.

The CERB program is estimated to have distributed $211 billion in taxpayer funds during the pandemic.

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Canada's unemployment rate rose to 5.4% in June, economy adds 60,000 jobs

Statistics Canada says the unemployment rate rose to 5.4 per cent in June — the highest it's been in over a year.

That's up from 5.2 per cent in May and the highest it's been in over a year. It also marked the second month in a row the unemployment rate has risen as economists watch for softening in the labour market amid high interest rates.

The increase came as the Canadian economy added 60,000 jobs for the month, far more than was estimated by economists and driven by gains in full-time work.

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Canada agrees to $11bn subsidy to save Ontario battery plant

The Canadian government has agreed to provide a subsidy of US$11.2bn to restart work on a stalled battery factory in the city of Windsor, Ontario.

The project is being undertaken by NextStar Energy, a joint venture between South Korean battery maker LG Energy and automaker Stellantis, the Amsterdam-based company formed by the 2021 merger between Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot.

They propose a plant with an annual production capacity of 45GWh, employing 2,500 workers when it begins production in 2024. However, the two companies halted the project in May and demanded that the Canadian government provide state aid equal to that offered by the US government under its Inflation Reduction Act.

NextStar Energy announced yesterday that the Canadian government had signed an agreement to provide the subsidies demanded.

#Ontario

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B.C. port strike enters day 7

The strike by thousands of workers at more than 30 B.C. ports has entered its seventh day, as their union and the association representing B.C. maritime employers trade barbs about the stalled contract negotiations.

The president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Canada, which represents about 7,400 striking workers, told a solidarity rally on Thursday that the B.C. Maritime Employers Association has walked away from the table three times.

The B.C. Maritime Employers Association later issued a statement saying it has learned of layoffs in related industries due to the job action and the strike has potentially disrupted $4.6 billion worth of cargo.

Dock workers have been off the job since Canada Day to back demands for improved wages and provisions against contracting out and automation, but negotiations stalled Monday over maintenance issues.

#BritishColumbia

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Nearly 1 in 4 Canadians won’t be able to pay their bills

A large share of Canadians aren’t confident in their ability to repay their bills.

🔹Nearly a quarter (23%) of households said they will be unable to make the full payments on at least one bill. While most are confident (77%) in their ability to cover their payments, that’s still a lot of people that are getting buried by an overindulgence in credit.

🔹Fading confidence is also seen in the expectations of household finances. Only 55% of consumers felt their finances are going as planned in Q1 2023, down 5 points from the previous quarter. Over 2 in 5 households are uneasy about the way their finances are heading.

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🏠 Canada ranked 1st in global housing vulnerability

Five criteria were used to assess developed world economies’ sensitivity to rising interest rates: a weighted average of private sector credit growth and nominal home price appreciation since 2020, housing price to income, year-over-year change in mortgage rate and percentage of mortgages with terms less than five years.

Canada ranked first. Canada’s 136.3 per cent housing price to income ratio was the highest in the developed world, challenged only by New Zealand’s 131.9 per cent and the U.S.’s 133.0 per cent. The 1.9 percentage point increase in shorter-term mortgage rates was largely in line with the G10 average.

The domestic house price rise of 16.4 per cent was below Australia’s 22.1 per cent, U.K.’s 26.4 per cent and New Zealand’s 26.9 per cent.

#housing

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Canadians are choosing to spend less on summer travel or not travel at all over financial concerns

More Canadians are planning on spending less on summer travel or putting their vacation plans on hold completely compared to previous years, according to a new survey conducted by Nanos Research.

🔹This year, 38 per cent of Canadians say they are more likely to spend less on their summer travel plans, an increase from 31 per cent reported in 2015. Additionally, 57 per cent of Canadians say they have no interest in travelling internationally this year.

🔹Across Canada, 51.1 per cent of residents in the Atlantic provinces said they will be spending less on their summer vacation plans than they usually would, followed by Quebec with 43.2 per cent, the Prairies with 40.6 per cent, B.C. with 35.3 per cent and Ontario with 33.6 per cent.

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Hundreds rally in Vancouver to support striking B.C. port workers

Hundreds of people gathered in Vancouver on Sunday for a rally to support striking British Columbia port workers as their job action stretches into its second week.

About 7,400 members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Canada employed at more than 30 B.C. ports have been on strike since Canada Day.

ILWU Canada vice president Pat Bolen told the crowd the collective agreement lays out "very clearly" that anything to do with the movement of cargo on docks or ships is the jurisdiction of the union, but says those powers have eroded over several years as more contractors with "no skin in the game" have been brought in.

Bolen says that while the union can't prevent automation from being used at the ports, it should fall to union members to make repairs if robots break.

The BC Maritime Employers Association has accused the union of trying to "aggressively expand" its control of maintenance duties far beyond what the association says has been established for decades.

#BritishColumbia

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Over half of Canadians want Trudeau, Poilievre replaced as party leaders before next election

Just over half of Canadians believe the federal Liberals and Conservatives need new leaders heading into the next federal election, according to a new Nanos Research poll.

🔹The poll found 53 per cent of respondents were in favour of Justin Trudeau being replaced as Liberal Leader, while 51 per cent say Pierre Poilievre should not lead the Conservatives into the next election.

People have less trust in the current government.

#Trudeau #Poilievre

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🇯🇵 Canadian teen accused of vandalizing 1,200-year-old Japanese temple

A Canadian teen has been accused of carving a name into a UNESCO World Heritage site in Japan and was questioned by police, according to local media.

The 17-year-old boy allegedly carved the name "Julian" with his nails into a pillar at the Toshodaiji Temple in Nara prefecture, the Kyodo News Agency reported on Friday citing local police.

The report said staff at the Buddhist temple were alerted by a Japanese tourist who witnessed the alleged vandalism, and the teen was subsequently questioned by authorities on suspicion of violating the cultural properties protection law.

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🇨🇦🇱🇻 Trudeau says Canada will more than double military presence in Latvia

Trudeau held a joint press conference with Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins at the Ādaži military base outside Riga on Monday, where he also greeted some of the 800 Canadian Armed Forces members currently deployed to the mission.

Trudeau revealed plans to grow a multinational NATO battle group in Latvia.

Both sides signed a document, which sets out three phases for the work, which will eventually involve as many as 2,200 persistently deployed Canadian troops plus the ability to add hundreds of additional Armed Forces members as needed. It states that brigade buildup will be completed in 2025, and that Latvia will work to build new infrastructure.

While the government is making ambitious plans, things are not going so well on the ground. There have been earlier reports that Canadian troops in Latvia were in need of equipment, which they often had to purchase at their own expense.

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🇨🇦🇨🇳 Canada probes Nike, Dynasty Gold over alleged use of forced labor in China

Canada's corporate ethics watchdog on Tuesday launched separate investigations into Nike Canada and Dynasty Gold to probe allegations the companies used or benefited from forced labor in their supply chains and operations in China.

The companies are alleged to have or have had supply chains or operations in China identified as using or benefiting from the use of Uyghur forced labor, the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise said in a statement.

#China

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