Canada Politics

This goes over the indigenous land rights issue in BC.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/60715626

Unbelievably damning results. I don't see how the CPC can continue to function as a party.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/7181724

Archived link

Reflecting on the preliminary agreement between Canada and China to address economic and trade issues, China’s ambassador to Canada Wang Di says that we “should advance co-ordination across all sectors … In a spirit of mutual understanding and friendly consultation.”

Canadians should hear the pitch politely — and then read the fine print.

“Co-ordination” and “friendly consultation” sound perfectly amicable. They suggest predictable rules, neutral tribunals and commerce insulated from politics. But Beijing’s operating assumption is different. For Beijing, increased trade is not a destination. It is leverage — banked for the next dispute.

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Beijing’s ambassador is asking Canadians to imagine a version of China that behaves like a normal trading partner. The record suggests caution.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s report on the Chinese Communist Party’s coercive diplomacy tracked 152 cases over a decade and notes Canada among the more frequently targeted countries. The pattern is familiar: pressure is applied, the political link is denied and the target is invited back into the warm light of “good relations” if it makes the right gestures.

Canadians don’t need to look far for what this feels like in practice. When relationships sour, the pain is rarely spread evenly across the economy. It lands where it can generate domestic pressure — farmers, exporters, universities or a single marquee firm that can be singled out and made an example.

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China is simply not built to uphold international agreements in the ways Western nations still too often expect. Its party state can fuse economic policy, internal security and propaganda in a single campaign. Beijing treats narratives and markets as connected instruments of national power.

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We [Canada] need selective engagement and hard guardrails. Keep channels open for consular cases and narrow commercial issues, while tightening rules on critical minerals, sensitive data, advanced research and dual use technology. If Beijing wants deeper access, it can start by proving reciprocity and predictability.

Then we need strategic coalitions before concessions. Carney’s “variable geometry” is applicable: build resilience with like minded partners first — Japan, the EU, Korea, Australia — then engage China from a position where “no” is credible and costs are shareable.

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Finally, we [Canada] need to view domestic national security resilience as part of our broader economic policy. Transparency rules, foreign interference defences and research security are not side issues. They are the entry fee for doing business in a world where economics and politics are braided together.

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Unacknowledged, the genocide of Palestinians continues unabated. Bombings, repeated displacement, inadequate shelter and loss of infrastructure in Gaza; torture and killings in Israeli prisons; and the brutal takeover of land in the West Bank. All of this while Canada looks the other way. I am ashamed of my country.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/54606213

WHEN DOES A SEPARATIST movement become a threat to Canada’s national security?

This is a question hanging in the air in Alberta. People are asking how it can possibly be that the very same individuals who are leading the separatist movement can also be three meetings deep into a relationship with senior officials of the Donald Trump administration in Washington, with a fourth scheduled for this month.

It is, as we know, entirely legal in Canada to advocate and campaign in support of a province or territory leaving Confederation. This is covered by the Clarity Act but also by the Charter, which protects the rights of citizens to free expression, assembly, and association.

Any organic political movement that is based in a genuine desire to achieve an outcome of their design is free to pursue that through whatever lawful means are available to them. Foreign interference in such movements, however, is where the line between lawful advocacy and dissent crosses into territory that constitutes a threat to Canada’s national security.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act is clear on this. CSIS itself does not have a mandate to investigate “lawful advocacy, protest or dissent” unless these forms of activity are carried on in conjunction with the range of activities which the act defines as threats to the security of Canada.

Those threats include espionage or sabotage harmful to Canada’s interests; covert or deceptive foreign-influenced activities that undermine Canada or threaten individuals; support for or direction of serious violence against people or property to achieve political, religious, or ideological goals; and covert, unlawful acts aimed at undermining, overthrowing, or destroying Canada’s constitutionally established system of government through violence. In short, the act draws a clear line between protected democratic activity and conduct that involves foreign interference, secrecy, violence, or efforts to subvert the state itself.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/54492792

Party adopting a 'stand your ground'-style policy, demands crackdown on criminal immigrants

If only the title could have ended partway through

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/57833787

The proposal complements the campaign’s other policy plans in housing, health care and the environment.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/56424420

A recent report, co-authored by the Palestinian Youth Movement, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, Arms Embargo Now and World Beyond War, identified hundreds of shipments of Canadian-made F-35 fighter jet components, other aircraft parts, and explosives and flammable materials to U.S. facilities that supply the Israeli military. The report also highlighted 433 shipments of Polish-made TNT routed through the Port Saguenay, Quebec to U.S. army ammunition plants that make bombs used by Israel in Gaza.

The report stated that “by deliberately exempting U.S.-bound arms from export regulation and allowing Canadian infrastructure to transport weapons, Canada is circumventing its obligations under international law.”

Archive: https://archive.is/GldMU

For anyone who hasn't seen it, this is the video that caused Trump to break off negotiations with Canada.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/5003261

Here is an Invidious link for a video (34min) and the original YT link.

Beijing is seeking to court Canadians with trade deals. But it is simultaneously punishing Canada for adopting anti-Chinese trade laws, which – as the Chinese are quick to point out – were implemented by Canada in response to American pressure to crack down on unfair Chinese trade practices.

Now, we’re seeing growing numbers of Canadians twisting the logic of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” They’re taking this to mean that the enemy of Canada is the United States, and by that logic, the People’s Republic of China must be Canada's friend.

To offer his perspective on how Canadians should view these developments, Dr. Stephen Nagy joins Inside Policy Talks. Nagy is a professor at Tokyo’s International Christian University, and a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. He’s studied and written extensively about China and its influence operations in the West.

On the podcast, he tells Jamie Tronnes, executive director of the Center for North American Prosperity and Security (CNAPS), that the Chinese government has "invested very heavily" in a strategy of "elite capture" focused on political and business leaders, "giving them preferred access to the Chinese market."

"This is to lock them into a kind of dependent relationship," says Nagy. "And I think that this has made Canada have tremendous challenges in terms of confronting a country that really wants to change the global order in a way that is contrary to Canadian interests."

Among Dr. Nagy's analyses is, As US-Canada ties unravel, Beijing pulls the threads:

While current Canada-US tensions create immediate policy challenges, the documented pattern of Chinese influence operations reveals a systematic effort to exploit these frictions for long-term strategic advantage.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/49941845

Canada’s recent progressive record stands in stark contrast to other countries of the Americas. While Canadians ask “Why doesn’t Canada already have a stronger relationship with Mexico?” what they may not realize is how several years of progressive governance in Mexico has left Canada behind. Mexico’s Minister of Women Citlalli Hernandez Mora pointed to 2025 being the “Year of the Indigenous Woman” with the Sheinbaum government coordinating states and municipalities to implement water and sanitation programs in Indigenous communities. Meanwhile in Canada, Minister of Women and Gender Equality Rechie Valdez looks to make cuts of over 80 per cent to her department and First Nations raise alarms over the Carney government’s lack of consultation on infrastructure projects.

The strategy of President Sheinbaum’s daily Mañanera del Pueblo livestreams on YouTube reaches more than 1.3 million subscribers daily was also discussed as a powerful tool to reach the country’s working-class. On fighting misinformation in the media, President Lula da Silva’s government in Brazil is taking on US big tech—in Canada, we put our elbows down on the Digital Services Tax without a fight.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/37094102

Canadian Conservatives are discussing how to emulate Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency north of the border should they win the upcoming federal election — and they think they can make cuts even more quickly than the Trump administration has.