"Canada told the fossil fuel industry greenwashing was illegal, and its response was that having to be honest and transparent would make it too hard to do business. Apparently the threat worked, so now Canadians will be subjected to more false claims and have fewer ways to protect themselves against industrial disinformation, despite polling showing over 80% of Canadians want the country to do more on disinformation, not less," said Phil Newell, co-chair of Climate Action Against Disinformation.

The longtime Conservative, who served in provincial politics before being elected to the House of Commons in 2019, said Canada's challenges demand people lead "not with complaint" — a thinly veiled swipe at Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre — "but with confidence in a strong future."

The theme seems to be "reduce operating spending, increase capital spending". We'll see how that will blow over with the opposition.

The CSA Group — a not-for-profit standards organization — released for review a new draft standard on the “Selection, Use, and Care of Respirators” (CSA Z94.4:25) for workplaces, specifically including health care. This new standard is designed to ensure much better protection for health-care workers and for everyone seeking health care.

CSA Group is an independent not-for-profit standards organization with international accreditation, including from the Standards Council or Canada. Since it was founded 1919 as the Canadian Engineering Standards Association, it has helped keep Canadians safer by establishing standards for many products, including safety equipment.

From this page: https://whn.global/whn-response-to-canadas-csa-z94-4-25-respirator-standard/

Canada’s national standards body, the Canadian Standards Association (CSA), has released a public draft of CSA Z94.4-25: Selection, Use, and Care of Respirators. This standard reflects decades of science and applies airborne transmission risk assessment consistently across all workplaces, including healthcare. WHN has released the following statements to support the standard and respond to the petition in opposition.

CSA Z94.4-25 represents a long-overdue shift toward protecting healthcare workers and other professionals from airborne hazards. It incorporates modern scientific understanding, including the Source-Pathway-Receiver model, and offers a practical, scalable approach to implementing respiratory protection programs.

Author: Joel Lexchin | Associate professor, Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto; York University, Canada; University of Sydney

New drug approvals by Health Canada are based on the results of clinical trials. But before clinical trials can go ahead, they need to be approved by ethics committees known as Research Ethics Boards (REBs).

Virtually all hospitals where research is conducted have REBs, as do universities and other institutions. The REBs are supposed to ensure that patients understand the nature of the research and have given informed consent, that the trials are conducted in an ethical way that minimizes any harm to them and that the investigators are competent to do the research.

Given the crucial role they play, it’s important that REBs are not influenced by factors like financial motives, conflicts of interest or the goals of drug companies. Without oversight, these factors may encroach on the decisions made by REBs in Canada.

I want to say this loud and clear in a post here for everyone to see, but there is an issue here with people having this giant hate boner for Albertans. Not the government, not UCP voters, but Albertans.

It doesn't matter if you're politically on the same side as people elsewhere in the country, it doesn't matter if you present facts to people who are provably wrong on the most basic of things they say, it doesn't matter if you treat them with dignity and respect by mentioning things with good intentions and not insulting people. You will still get labelled as the bad guy for the very fact you're Albertan.

I made a response to a comment on this post in the community. My comment was responding to someone who called Albertans "HUGE pussies" for "giving up our rights".

In my response to said comment, I basically said that the notion that we're "simply giving up" is completely false, using the following facts:

1. Students have been staging walkouts:

• CBC: Calgary students among thousands across Alberta taking part in provincewide walkout
• Global News: Alberta students walk out of class in support of teachers forced back to work
• OkotoksOnline: High River students walkout in support of teachers

2. The AFL (Alberta Federation of Labour) has stated that they will retaliate against the back to work order with a "general strike if necessary"

• Global News: ‘General strike if necessary’: Alberta unions declare intent to bring down UCP government
• CPAC: Alberta Union Leaders Respond to Smith Government’s Back-to-Work Legislation
• CityNews Calgary: No general strike yet as Alberta labour unions mobilize against Smith government

3. The UCP has faced a dip in the polls resulting from the back-to-work order

• CTV News: Majority of Alberta Gov’t Report Card respondents feel province headed in wrong direction
• Angus Reid: Teachers’ Strike: Most Albertans side with teachers as they criticize UCP’s handling of education
• Calgary Herald: 'Reputational challenges': New poll shows public support for Smith, UCP has dipped amid teachers' strike (Yes I know it's PostMedia, it's still relevant and correct in this case)

I went ahead and said that statements like this that blanket Albertans as lazy, dumb, and inept do not help relations between the province and the rest of the country, especially when the actions being taken showcase the exact opposite.

For this, I was labelled as a conservative myself when I'm registered with the NDP provincially and federally, had myself and those around me insulted, and was told I was uneducated by someone who spewed blatantly incorrect information as they did so, and I was the one looked down upon in the entire interaction simply for where I'm from.

I suggested that in order for the NDP or Liberals, or anybody to win over Albertans, they need to address issues here. I gave the example of canola farmers suffering, and how the feds can tariff imported cooking oils to encourage consumers to choose a domestic alternative and/or have marketing campaigns to support canola farmers by increasing their domestic sales.

For this, someone insinuated that I am dumber than them simply based on what they assumed to be the school system I attended. The very same person who said this confidently made another comment where they claimed that the NDP was in charge for a "long time" before Peter Lougheed, and that Lougheed ran on diversifying the economy, and ditched the effort afterwards.

This is provably false. The NDP formed government for the first time in 2015, it was the Social Credit Party who came before Lougheed's Progressive Conservatives. Lougheed also established the Heritage Fund , which was made specifically to save money for investments in other sectors of Alberta's economy, the disaster of the fund came with the following leaders.

However, calling someone out for getting their facts wrong, and showcasing a current example of tariffs working to protect domestic goods gets you downvoted if you're Albertan, with the very people insulting your intelligence getting upvoted as they spew their nonsense.

Apparently explaining working-class issues and what left-wing parties can do to better reach those who normally vote Conservative is treating Alberta as "special" and forcing "everyone else to adapt" to us. Clearly the "majority" of people in Alberta are "hateful morons" and "insular xenophobes" .

Why do people continue to blanket me with the thoughts of a few bad apples they met? Are they more prominent here, sure, whatever, I can agree to that. I can agree that people here can be some of the worst you've met, I would know, I live here.

But me and the good, well-meaning people I know, especially those here who are marginalised or among the over 750,000 people who voted for the NDP the last election, do not appreciate having blanket statements made against us simply because we live here. I am pro-abortion, I am pro-immigration, I am pro-expanding healthcare, pro-creating public alternatives, pro-trans rights, anti-privatisation, anti-separatist, and yet sure, I'm a Conservative tip-toeing a line because my thoughts slightly deviate from the norm.

Hate the government, hate the jerks, do not hate me simply for where I'm born and the fact that I live here. I do not do this to you, I do not insult people for where they live or were born, and don't make blanket assumptions about the entire population of an area based on who's in power where they live. Why then is it seen as acceptable for this to happen to me?

I am an Albertan who doesn't want special treatment, but for fuck sake, it is reasonable to want to be treated with respect.

Edit: I don't know why the numbered lists are showing all as 1's, I have them properly numbered in the text of this post.

The Canadian government is setting up a critical minerals stockpile designating a list of six key critical minerals as strategic priorities under the Defence Production Act, a move intended to help Canadian producers compete with China by setting minimum prices for the materials and giving companies some certainty of long-term sales.

Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson made the announcement Friday on the sidelines of a G7 energy and environment ministers’ meeting in Toronto. The official statement did not identify specific critical minerals, but CBC cites copper, lithium, graphite, cobalt, nickel, and rare earths as resources for which demand could grow dramatically in the years ahead.

“We need to create the certainty of demand and the certainty pricing so that those mines and processing facilities can get built,” Hodgson told a news conference Friday. The announcement also “enables Canada to launch our own defence stockpiling regime, and to support multilateral stockpiling efforts,” he added.

On Friday, Hodgson announced an initial round of 26 “investments, partnerships, and measures” aimed at unlocking $6.4 billion worth of critical mineral development. The actual investments totalled about $120 million, along with offtake agreements, expressions of interest. or export guarantees totalling up to about $1.2 billion. Specific projects included:

• The Nouveau Monde graphite mine near Montreal;

• Rio Tinto’s scandium production demonstration site in Sorel-Tracy, Quebec;

• Ucore’s samarium and gadolinium production plant in Kingston;

• Torngat Metals’ rare earth production project in Quebec;

Vianode’s synthetic graphite plant in St. Thomas, Ontario;

• North America’s only natural graphite producer, Northern Graphite, for a project near Montreal;

• A half-dozen smaller research projects that connect Canadian firms with international partners.

...

Mining Association of Canada President Pierre Gratton said the state intervention was needed to help companies get launched. “Some commodities where China dominates, you can’t get a project off the ground. We have projects across the country that can’t get financing because they’re seen to be too vulnerable,” he said. “China can swoop in tomorrow, lower prices, and the project is dead on arrival.”

...

Archived link

Canada has been looking to open new markets for the commodity after China announced preliminary anti-dumping duties on Canadian canola imports in August, a year after Canada said it would levy a 100 per cent tariff on imports of Chinese electric vehicles.

In a joint statement released late on Monday, the two countries said that Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar had held a phone call with Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand on October 30, “reaffirming the strong and enduring ties between Pakistan and Canada and emphasising the importance of deepening cooperation in areas of mutual interest”.

...

“Pakistan and Canada agreed to facilitate the export of Canadian canola to Pakistan, recognising the significant potential of Pakistan’s expanding market for this Canadian commodity,” the statement said.

...

“Both sides also expressed keen interest in expanding bilateral cooperation on energy security and critical minerals, recognising the strong and growing role of Canadian companies in achieving Pakistan’s ambitious mineral development goals and harnessing its clean energy potential,” the statement said.

...

Subsequently, Anand said on X that she spoke to Canola Council of Canada and explained that “our diplomatic efforts had resulted in Pakistan’s decision to lift restrictions on imports of Canadian canola”. “This decision re-establishes a significant market for Canadian canola producers,” she said. “As Pakistan expedites regulatory approvals, for Canadian canola, I understand that import orders have already been placed,” she said.

...

When the OHIP claim for a newborn dying at a Toronto-area hospital was rejected, Dr. Jane Healey faced a difficult choice: forgo her pay or ask the grieving parents to go stand in line at Service Ontario.

The baby died of a genetic condition after 10 days, Healey said. In the end, she decided against bothering the family.

“That means that we aren't remunerated for some of that very difficult, highly emotional work that stays with you,” she told CBC Toronto.

And, Healey says she isn’t alone.

OHIP billing issues have become a sticking point for physicians as they work to finalize a new compensation deal with the province. Last month, an arbitrator directed the two sides to come up with solutions quickly.

Over 99 per cent of claims are paid automatically as submitted, “reflecting the system's productivity,” said Health Minister Sylvia Jones's spokesperson, Ema Popovic.

That’s true, the Ontario Medical Association acknowledges. But there are over 200 million claims that get processed every year — meaning about 1.16 million claims are rejected annually.

OTTAWA — Sweden is sending a large delegation of some of its most prominent people to Canada later this month as it seeks closer ties across the Arctic.

Rideau Hall says Gov. Gen. Mary Simon will welcome King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia to Canada for a visit to Ottawa and Montreal from Nov. 18 to 20.

Canada is starting a dispute resolution process against Stellantis after the automaker said last month that it’s moving jobs to the U.S.

Industry Minister Mélanie Joly told a parliamentary committee Monday that Ottawa wants to recover some of the billions it has committed to Stellantis.

Joly said Stellantis moving production of the Jeep Compass from Brampton, Ont., to Illinois is a violation of a contract.

"Today, before the close of business, the government will take the next step under the contracts to recover Canadian taxpayers’ money,” Joly said.

In August, Solomon announced the government had signed an agreement with Cohere to identify where “AI tools can improve public services.”

Cohere’s reported connection to the U.S. AI firm Palantir increases the alarm. Led by MAGA funder Peter Thiel, Palantir sees the Canadian company’s models being deployed to Palantir customers, possibly including U.S. defence and intelligence agencies.

The Ontario government is aggressively withholding key details about its large stockpile of American alcohol products, valued at approximately $79.1 million at cost, that were pulled from store shelves as an act of retaliation in the ongoing Canada-U.S. trade dispute.

In August, CBC News filed a freedom-of-information request to the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO), seeking the fate, size and disposal plans for U.S. alcohol products removed in March. The LCBO took 64 days to respond — 34 days longer than the 30-day limit allowed by law.

When the documents were finally released, they spanned 50 pages, but were heavily redacted. Most of the information about how much inventory is at risk of expiring, how much has already been destroyed and the total cost to taxpayers remains hidden.

For the first time, Health Canada has approved a new drug that can slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease and it’s giving new hope that the disease can be tackled early.

On Monday, Health Canada announced approval for lecanemab, commercially known as “Leqembi.”

The treatment has already been approved in some other countries, including the U.S., the U.K., Japan, Mexico and China. It is currently under regulatory review in 15 other countries and regions, including the European Union.

Lecanemab is meant for adults who have a clinical diagnosis of mild dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease.