VICE: Muslim students speak out about being targeted by Canadian spy agency. Members of many Muslim Students’ Associations across Canada have described strange encounters with CSIS and the RCMP in recent years. A member of the Muslim Students’ Association (MSA) at the University of Regina said a friend told him to avoid the club, as it was common for members to be contacted by the national spy agency. The student, who wishes to remain anonymous, dismissed his friend as paranoid—until the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) called him over the summer, asking to meet up at a coffee shop to chat (…). The coffee shop invitation is a common tactic used by CSIS, according to Leila Nasr, the communications coordinator for the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), to get information out of young Muslims on their friends or other MSA members they suspect might be radicalized (…). In the last four years the NCCM has dealt with cases at the University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, York University, Dalhousie University and Carleton University (…). In a statement to VICE, CSIS said it emphasizes that discussions are voluntary and ensures their approach is “lawful, ethical, necessary, and proportionate.” By Jack Hauen.
New York Times: How China has defied expectations, in Canada and around the globe. (…) While President Trump has attacked China and launched a trade war against it, Canada has taken an opposing track. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said repeatedly that his government is moving toward a full-scale free trade agreement with China, though that movement’s progress has been stately, at best. And Mr. Trudeau’s government continues to rebuff American security warnings about allowing equipment made from Huawei Technologies, the Chinese telecommunications company with research operations in Canada, into the coming upgrade of Canada’s wireless networks. Can Canadians, or should they, trust China? By Ian Austen.
The Guardian: ‘We’ve never seen this’: massive Canadian glaciers shrinking rapidly. Glaciers in the Yukon territory are retreating even faster than expected in a warming climate, scientists warn. Scientists in Canada have warned that massive glaciers in the Yukon territory are shrinking even faster than would be expected from a warming climate – and bringing dramatic changes to the region. After a string of recent reports chronicling the demise of the ice fields, researchers hope that greater awareness will help the public better understand the rapid pace of climate change. The rate of warming in the north is double that of the average global temperature increase, concluded the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in its annual Arctic Report Card, which called the warming “unprecedented”.
BBC: Syrian man stranded in Malaysia airport coming to Canada. A Syrian man who spent some seven months living in an airport in Malaysia has been granted asylum in Canada. Hassan al-Kontar’s plight garnered global attention when he began posting regular videos from Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Mr Kontar, 37, has spent the last two months in a Malaysian detention centre and his Canadian sponsors sought to have his case expedited. Two organisations, the British Columbia Muslim Association and Canada Caring Society, sponsored him to come to Canada as a refugee.
The New Zealand Herald: Dr Benedikt Fischer: Canada provides lessons on legal cannabis. New Zealand is debating its cannabis policy, a process that led to legalisation of cannabis use and supply in Canada just last month. Since the two countries share many traits and values – and high cannabis use rates – they have many insights to share on these matters. In Canada, where cannabis reform had been discussed for decades, legalisation was advanced not principally to further the freedom to use drugs. Rather, the rationale included recognition that cannabis prohibition had done more harm than good, and that only through legalisation could cannabis be better controlled and regulated towards protecting public health and safety. Based on Canadian science and policy here is a – certainly incomplete and subjective – list of shared thoughts as New Zealand searches for its own path. By Dr Benedikt Fischer.
SeeNews.net: EU says it has new proposal to reform WTO, jointly with Australia, Canada, China. European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström said in a statement that she hoped the proposal would contribute to breaking the deadlock in the WTO dispute settlement. The European Union has announced it has a new proposal to reform the World Trade Organisation, jointly with Australia, Canada, China, India, Mexico and other countries, the statement said. “Together with a broad coalition of WTO members, we are presenting our most concrete proposals yet for WTO reform. I hope that this will contribute to breaking the current deadlock and that all WTO members will take responsibility equally,” European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said in a statement. The package, co-authored by Australia, Canada, China, Iceland, India, New Zealand, Mexico, Norway, Singapore, South Korea and Switzerland, will streamline the appointment of new judges, currently blocked by the United States. This has led to a backlog in the cases heard.
Russia Today: Canada’s crude crisis is accelerating. Canadian oil producers are in an increasingly tough predicament. With high and increasing oil demand around the globe over the last year, Canadian oil production has increased accordingly. All of this is simple and predictable economics, but now Canadian oil has hit a massive roadblock. Producers have the supply, and they have more than enough demand, but they don’t have the means to make the connection. Canadian export pipelines simply don’t have the capacity to keep up with either the supply or the demand. Canadian oil producers have now maxed out their storage capacity, and the Canadian glut continues to grow while they wait for a solution to the pipeline problem to materialize. As pipeline space is at a premium and storage has hit maximum capacity, oil prices have fallen dramatically, and the differentials that had previously been hitting heavy oil hard in Canada (now at below $18 a barrel for the first time since 2016) have now spread to light oil and upgraded synthetic oil sands crude as well, leaving overall Canadian oil prices at record lows.
Sputnik News: GM reportedly plans to close its factory in Oshawa, Canada, leaving 2500 jobless. General Motors Canada will be announcing the closure of all operations in Oshawa, Canada on 26 November, multiple anonymous sources told CTV News Toronto. If the report is true, the move will affect at least some 2,500 workers, plus others in related spheres, such as auto parts productions. Unifor, a union, which represents workers at the GM plant, said in a statement that it received a notification from GM about an upcoming major announcement regarding the Oshawa plant, which is to take place on 26 November. Unifor doesn’t know the details of the announcement, but noted that no product production has been planned at the plant beyond December 2019.
RFI: Canada suspends temporarily expulsions of Haitians. Canada suspended until 25 November the expulsions of Haitians, due to the violence currently taking place in Haiti. The Border services agency has confirmed a rumor that has been running since last week. Some people were not aware of the suspension of their deportation from Canada until they arrived at the airport. Worried about the current situation in Haiti asylum-seekers ‘ advocacy agencies are calling for Canada to stop expulsions. In 2017, more than 7 000 Haitians, from the United States where their status was questioned, tried their luck in Canada. Some of them, accompanied by a large number of children, see their refugee claim rejected, for lack of a well-written file or due to missing papers. Many them find themselves in a detention centre in Montreal, where the Non-status Action Committee denounces the conditions of reception and treatment.
