Danielle Smith is working hand-in-glove with private insurers to push health privatization in Alberta—and it could spread across Canada

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/58741108

Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s government is planning to skip public hearings to pass its omnibus budget bill that contains a retroactive clampdown on access to his cellphone records.

The retroactive FOI law would shield Ford and cabinet members — along with their offices — from public access to documents, with Ford admitting that part of the rationale is to kill a request from Global News to obtain his cellphone records.

This isn't just an Ontario story. Rumors are that Yazdani was fired for her reporting. Rogers isn't known for standing with their journalists, so a firing due to political pressure seems possible.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/58729139

Renters from across Toronto are set to gather this weekend to launch a citywide tenants union.

The founding convention of the Toronto Tenant Union will take place Saturday. It will bring together tenant groups, associations and individual renters aiming to coordinate efforts to improve living conditions.

Sharlene Henry is co-chair of the York South-Weston Tenant Union, one of the groups involved in organizing the event.

“We want folks to be able to live with dignity and unfortunately that’s not happening for a lot of people,” she told CBC Toronto. “We’re coming together to push this movement forward.”

Caylan Ford is hoping a Calgary courtroom will deliver her justice seven years after her private Facebook messages were leaked to media outlets, a move she says branded her a white supremacist and devastated her life.

"I'm very pleased that I was able to finally bring this to trial," Ford, a former candidate for the United Conservative Party in Alberta, told CBC News in an email response. "Although there has been minimal media or public attention, it is a profound cathartic relief that there is finally a venue in which the truth can be aired in full," she said.

"I was wrongly defamed and lied about, and suffered very significant harms as a result. And I don't believe that such lies should be allowed to stand."

One of the messages from Ford, according to the PressProgress story, included a statement she allegedly made in reference to white supremacist riots in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017.

"When the perpetrator is an Islamist, the denunciations are intermingled with breathless assurances that they do not represent Islam, that Islam is a religion of peace, etc.," Ford allegedly wrote.

"When the terrorists are white supremacists, that kind of soul-searching or attempts to understand the sources of their radicalization or their perverse moral reasoning is beyond the pale."

Hey all,

I want to start being more active with signing petitions that I agree with that are open for signatures on the Our Commons website. The annoying thing is, while I do want to be active and be on top of things, I also don't want to have to check the website every day to see if anything new has popped up.

I've checked the site to see if there's an email subscription to be made aware of new petitions available, or if there's an RSS feed available there, but neither seems to be the case. Does anybody know off hand how I can be notified of new petitions, or am I SOL?

Doug Ford's gravy plane era is here. Here's my breakdown and thoughts.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/42980

The orphan wells trace back to a tangled web of foreign investors, a company based in the British Virgin Islands and a last-ditch effort to sell to a Chinese company for $22M

From The Narwhal via This RSS Feed.

Two Hamilton teens are wondering why the city's plan to build a much needed basketball court in Gage Park is going to take 25 years.

"I don't know about you, but I will be 41 when this court is supposed to be built," Norrie King, 16, told councillors at Monday's Public Works Committee meeting.

"And I'm just speaking from seeing my parents that I will probably be more focused on back pain than playing recreational basketball," she added, causing councillors to laugh inside council chambers.

King and her friend Julia Neven, also 16, spoke to councillors on Monday asking the city that the court, which was supposed to be built by 2051, be done and ready to play on next year.

Several attacks involving OpenAI’s chatbot—including Tumbler Ridge and FSU—raise urgent questions about the technology.

“From the outside, it looks like OpenAI had the opportunity to prevent this horrific loss of life, to prevent there from being dead children,” said BC Premier David Eby after the Journal reported on the shooter’s ChatGPT use. “I’m angry about that. I’m trying hard not to rush to judgment.” Canadian authorities demanded accountability and vowed to create new national requirements for tech companies to report threats brewing on their platforms.

OpenAI told Canadian government leaders in late February that under the company’s newly revised protocols, the shooter’s account from June 2025, if discovered today, would be flagged to law enforcement. “Mental health and behavioural experts now help us assess difficult cases, and we have made our referral criteria more flexible to account for the fact that a user may not discuss the target, means, and timing of planned violence in a ChatGPT conversation but that there may be potential risk of imminent violence,” VP of Global Policy Ann O’Leary stated in an open letter