Democrats seek criminal charges against Trump Interior head

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee asked the Justice Department on Wednesday to investigate whether a Trump administration interior secretary engaged in possible criminal conduct while helping an Arizona developer get a crucial permit for a housing project.

The criminal referral says David Bernhardt pushed for approval of the project by developer Michael Ingram, a Republican donor and supporter of former President Donald Trump, despite a federal wildlife official's finding that it would threaten habitats for imperiled species.

Bernhardt led Interior from 2019 to 2021. In 2017, he was the No. 2 official at the department when the Fish and Wildlife Service, an Interior Department agency, reversed its opposition to the Villages at Vigneto, the proposed 28,000-home development in southern Arizona, and allowed it to move forward.

Democrat Reps. Raúl Grijalva of Arizona, the committee chairman, and Katie Porter of California, who leads a subcommittee on oversight and investigations, made the referral in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland. They said the committee has conducted an extensive investigation into the circumstances surrounding the 2017 decision.

A high-ranking interior official had said issuing a Clean Water Act permit for the project could adversely affect endangered species or critical habitat in the area. The region is home to birds such as as the southwestern willow flycatcher and yellow-billed cuckoo, as well as the northern Mexican garter snake.

In their referral, Democrats say Ingram met with Bernhardt in August 2017, two weeks before a Fish and Wildlife official received the phone call directing him to reverse the decision blocking the project. The meeting was not disclosed in Bernhardt’s public calendar or travel documents.

Two months later, Ingram made a $10,000 donation to the Trump Victory Fund. The permit was approved later that month. At least nine other donors associated with Ingram also donated to the Trump Victory Fund in the days after Ingram's donation, Democrats said.

“Evidence strongly suggests the decision was the result of a quid pro quo between Vigneto’s developer, Michael Ingram, and senior level officials in the Trump administration,'' including Bernhardt, who was then the deputy Interior secretary, the Democrats wrote.

Ingram "had frequent access to high-ranking officials across the Trump administration,'' including Bernhardt, then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and then-Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt, Democrats said. Zinke, who led Interior from March 2017 to January 2019, met with Ingram in May 2017 and April 2018, the Democrats said in documents submitted with the referral. Zinke and his staff emailed Ingram multiple times, using personal email addresses, Democrats said.

Bernhardt, now a lawyer in private practice, called the Democrats' letter “a pathetic attempt by career politicians to fabricate news.”

A Justice Department spokesman said the department received the letter and will review it.

The lawmakers asked Garland to investigate and consider bringing criminal charges against Bernhardt or other officials.

"The findings of this investigation show us yet again that the previous administration cast career staff expertise aside while they handed out federal agency decisions to Trump’s buddies and big donors on a pay-to-play basis,” Grijalva said in a statement.

Porter said that “an exchange of money for a specific government action is the clearest form of corruption there is, and Americans — Democrats, Republicans and independents — share an understanding that this kind of quid pro quo erodes our democracy.”

Lanny Davis, a lawyer for El Dorado Holdings, a company owned by Ingram, called the referral by Grijalva and Porter “false, misleading (and) unfair" and said it used "innuendo as a surrogate for fact.''

El Dorado participated in multiple meetings with the committee, "acted in full transparency and gave full cooperation without a subpoena,'' Davis said in a statement. Even so, the company was denied the opportunity to rebut the allegations in the referral or even a chance to speak to Grijalva, Davis said.

"Unfortunately, the American people have been numbed and accustomed to political attacks that have little to do with the truth, and there needs to be bipartisan outrage when this occurs,'' added Davis, a prominent Democrat who was special counsel to former President Bill Clinton.

Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the left-leaning Center for Western Priorities, called the allegations against Bernhardt “extremely serious,” adding that the Justice Department should launch a full investigation.

“We said all along that David Bernhardt was too compromised and too corrupt to be a cabinet secretary. This is damning evidence of a straight up pay-for-play favor,'' she said.

___

Associated Press writer Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.

Matthew Daly, The Associated Press

Exclusive: Senate sued for $332,500 over cancelled survey on employee harassment

Ryan Tumilty - Yesterday 

POSTMEDIA

OTTAWA – The Senate is being sued for $332,500 after it cancelled a survey of Senators and staff on workplace harassment because managers didn’t like the questions being asked.


© Provided by National PostThe Senate Chamber in Ottawa.

WPV Corp, a human resources company that is now named AI2HR, won a competitive bid in late 2020 and signed a deal with the Senate in January 2021 to do an assessment of bullying and harassment in the workplace.

The work was done as part of new federal legislation, which requires all federal workplaces including the House of Commons and the Senate to have policies about harassment and bullying.

In the fall of 2020, the Senate awarded nearly $500,000 in compensation to employees of former senator Don Meredith who was accused of creating a toxic work environment and of harassing and sexually harassing some employees. The complaints against Meredith first emerged in 2013 and Meredith resigned from the Senate in 2017.

In its statement of claim, WPV Corp charges that public servants who help oversee the Senate told the company the survey as first drafted “would raise the objections of Senators” and that the questionnaire did not reflect the unique culture of the Senate.

The company charges that Senate staff told them the red chamber’s culture is different, because Senators “ have no leadership” and are “not accountable in the traditional sense.” While the company offered to make some changes to some questions, it told Senate staff it was not able to completely change its approach.

In the suit, the company said it planned several trips to the Ottawa area only to have meetings cancelled and that Senate staff never properly explained the unique culture and were slow to respond to requests for more information.

The company’s president Michael Rosenberg said he couldn’t comment on the lawsuit or get into any details about the dispute, but said he is proud of the company’s approach, which he said finds problems in real-time.

“We always stand behind the data our technology provides and ensure its accuracy. This protects the organization, management and all its people. Integrity is an important value to us,” he said in an email.

He said their questionnaire has been vetted through research with St. Mary’s University in Halifax and it can’t simply be tweaked to direct an outcome. The company boasts on its website of several firms large and small that have benefitted from its service.

“If an organization tries to ‘game’ the data in order to create a false impression, we cannot stand behind the data. To do so would ruin our reputation and significantly increase our own liability,” he said. “We stand behind the validity of our tools and technology and cannot change it to guarantee an outcome as that would destroy our reputation.”

The Senate’s statement of defence denies any of the company’s charges. It says the company promised a “tailor-made” questionnaire and when it failed to deliver that the contract was cancelled.

The company was paid $13,500, the first portion of what was supposed to be a $45,000 contract. The lawsuit seeks the full contract payment, plus an additional $200,000 for business the company said it lost because of the failed Senate contract and punitive damages of another $100,000.

Pam Ross, a spokesperson for the Senate, would not comment on the suit citing the ongoing litigation. In an email, she did say that the Senate retained another firm to do the assessment at a cost of $74,250.

While the contract with WPV Corp was falling apart, the Senate unveiled a new harassment policy, which passed through the Senate in March. Ross said the Senate decided to incorporate the results of that survey into its policy after it was complete.

“Although not legally required to do so, the Senate wanted an independent third party to conduct the workplace assessment but did not want this process to delay the adoption of the policy,” she said.

The new harassment policy includes a third-party provider hired to take and review complaints. Ross said that service is in place, but would not reveal how many reports it has received, citing confidentiality.

A trial date or mediation hearing on the case has yet to be set. Statements of claim and defence are legal filings and include allegations that have not been proven in court.

46% of Canadians support use of Emergencies Act: Poll

Jane Stevenson - Yesterday 
Toronto Sun

Much like everything else in life right now, Canadians are divided over whether the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa could have been dispersed without Prime Minister using the Emergencies Act.

According to a new Angus Reid poll, 46% say use of the Act was necessary to give police the manpower necessary to break up the protest while others preferred an alternative.

Along party lines, 79% of past Liberal voters and 58% of past New Democrats supporters agreed with the use of the act.

But 34% of Canadians and 51% of past CPC voters felt it was unnecessary while 15% say that they don’t think any action was necessary.

Another 45% said the Emergency Act was a good example of how other governments should do it while 44% said it set a bad precedent for future governments.

In terms of provinces, 50% of Ontario residents, 49% of B.C. residents and 49% of Atlantic Canada said the Emergencies Act was necessary while 21% of Alberta residents and 23% of Saskatchewan residents said no action was necessary.

Along gender lines, 53% of men say the use of the act is a precedent-setting concern, compared to 34% of women who thought the same while 52% of the women said it was a good example of how the Act can be effectively used, compared to 38% of men.

Angus Reid conducted an online survey from May 4-6 of 1,992 Canadian adults with a margin of error of +/- 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

White House, senators have 'sympathy' for Canada's position on Line 5, says Wilkinson

WASHINGTON — White House officials, Capitol Hill lawmakers and the U.S. secretary of energy have all expressed "significant sympathy" for the plight of Canada's Line 5 pipeline, Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said Thursday after a day of meetings in the U.S. capital.



President Joe Biden's administration understands the cross-border pipeline's ongoing role in securing North American energy security, even with both countries building a carbon-free future, Wilkinson said during a phone-in news conference from the Canadian Embassy in D.C.

But the 65-year-old pipeline, a vital energy artery for border states in the U.S. Midwest as well as Ontario and Quebec, is facing a pair of existential legal challenges — one from the government of Michigan, the other from an Indigenous group in neighbouring Wisconsin.

"I certainly did raise … that this is part of enhancing North American energy security, that it's ensuring that we are not taking steps that are going to take us backwards," Wilkinson said after a panel discussion with Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.

"In the meetings with Secretary Granholm, in the meetings with the White House and certainly in the meetings that I had with a number of senators, I think there was a significant sympathy for the Canadian position."

That position — first expressed by Wilkinson's predecessor Seamus O'Regan, and reiterated by Wilkinson himself last week — is that the continued operation of the pipeline is "non-negotiable."

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, long a political ally of Biden, has been trying to shut down Line 5 since November 2020, fearing a catastrophic rupture in the ecologically sensitive Straits of Mackinac, where the twin lines cross the Great Lakes.

And a fresh threat has emerged in Wisconsin, where the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa is urging a federal judge to close the pipeline amid a dispute over easements on Indigenous territory that the band argues expired in 2013.

While Canada remains "very focused" on avoiding such a decision, Wilkinson allowed Thursday that Ottawa has been giving some thought to what it would do otherwise, though he did not elaborate on what strategies are in play.

"In the remote eventuality that there is an issue that we need to address, of course it's prudent for us to be thinking about what might be done," he said. "But our primary focus continues to be on ensuring that this pipeline remains open."

The Michigan case eventually prompted Canada's federal government to file a so-called amicus brief — an argument from a "friend of the court" in favour of Calgary-based Enbridge Inc., the defendant in both cases and Line 5's owner and operator.

Ottawa has also invoked a 1977 pipelines treaty, originally sought by the U.S. government in an effort to avoid interruptions to the cross-border flow of energy, and those talks between the two countries have been ongoing.

Canada won't be filing an amicus brief in the Wisconsin case on the advice of lawyers who warned it could be "counterproductive" to efforts to resolve the dispute in Michigan, Wilkinson said. And he expressed hope that the treaty talks could encompass the issues in play in both cases.

"It's certainly possible that it can be part of the same process," he said.

"Ultimately, what we are looking for is a resolution to all of these issues, so the discussions that will be going on will relate to Line 5 more generally. My hope is that it could be resolved through the same process."

In their panel discussion, hosted by the D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, Wilkinson and Granholm agreed that the crisis in Ukraine and pressure on supply chains have helped to bring the two countries closer together on the issue of energy security.

That discussion was more focused on the future than the present, but the Vancouver-born Granholm sounded bullish on the idea of working closely with Canada to develop a green energy future.

"To me, the opportunity is just so powerful to have a North American powerhouse of an alignment on clean energy deployment and technology development," she said, suggesting former prime minister Lester Pearson's dream of "peace in the world" could be realized by ending dependence on fossil fuels.

And she acknowledged the potential Canada offers as a partner to the U.S. on the extraction and production of critical minerals and rare earth metals, a linchpin component of the global push toward electric vehicles and away from the internal combustion engine.

"Canada has got some best practices that we should be looking at; we shouldn't be afraid of extraction, if it's done in a responsible way," she said. "There's lessons, but there's also real partnerships that we can be doing on areas where we really need help."

Granholm also indicated that the Biden administration is taking steps to "bust through" regional and state-level opposition to projects designed to allow the U.S. to import clean hydroelectricity generated in Quebec and elsewhere north of the border.

In 2020, voters in Maine pointedly rejected a fully approved proposal to run transmission lines through their state that would have linked a billion-dollar Hydro-Québec energy generation project with markets in Massachusetts, as well as Vermont and New York.

"If Hydro-Québec wants to make sure that they are able to deliver hydropower and a state votes against it, and that state is a critical state to be able to make that connection to the northeast, It's extremely frustrating," she said.

"We should take local interests into account, but sometimes those local interests are funded by bigger interests that don't have necessarily the big goal of getting to 100 per cent clean electricity in mind."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 12, 2022.

James McCarten, The Canadian Press

New Zealand targets supply management system to get better access to Canada's dairy market

LONG READ

Janyce McGregor - Yesterday 

Canada's dairy industry will soon be defending a new front in its ongoing battle to preserve its supply management system in the face of international trade challenges.

On Thursday, New Zealand's minister for trade and export growth, Damien O'Connor, announced his government has initiated dispute settlement proceedings under the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). It's the first time consultations have been triggered in an attempt to resolve differences between signatories of the eight-member Pacific Rim trading bloc.

The CPTPP came into effect at the end of 2018, with Canada and New Zealand among its original six members. New Zealand is an aggressive global exporter of dairy products, putting it on a collision course with Canada's relatively closed domestic market both during the original negotiations, and as the deal has been implemented.

"Our priority is to ensure that New Zealand exporters have meaningful access to the benefits negotiated under CPTPP, and that all parties fulfil the commitments they have made to each other under the agreement," O'Connor said in a release.

While New Zealand's relationship with Canada is "excellent," the minister said, the two countries have engaged on this issue "over a number of years and these proceedings will not come as any surprise to them.

"Occasionally even good friends disagree, and it's for that reason dispute settlement mechanisms in free trade agreements such as CPTPP exist to provide a neutral forum for settling such disputes when they arise," O'Connor said.


© Blair Gable/Reuters

The federal government, and Minister of International Trade Mary Ng, have seven days to respond to New Zealand's dispute resolution request.

Canada was notified Thursday, the New Zealand government release said. Canada has seven days to respond, after which the two countries will begin formal consultations. If those don't resolve their differences, New Zealand can request a panel to adjudicate the dispute, according to the provisions found in Chapter 28 of the agreement.

International Trade Minister Mary Ng's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CBC News.
Latest in a line of disputes

It's not the first time Canada's system for controlling the importation of dairy products has been targeted by trading partners and criticized as unfairly protectionist. Similar issues emerged with cheese imports under the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with the European Union, although, so far formal arbitration has not been required.

To stabilize domestic prices and maintain a consistent national supply of cow's milk and other processed dairy products, the federal government uses prohibitively high tariffs to discourage any imports beyond the minimum levels required by the World Trade Organization and negotiated trade agreements with specific partners.

The CPTPP guaranteed member countries a specific amount of tariff-free access to Canada's market in 20 different categories of dairy, egg and poultry products — all sectors that are part of Canada's supply management system.

In order to import these named products tariff-free, interested businesses must apply to Global Affairs Canada for a share of the annual quota for the specific commodity. The ultimate decision over who gets to hold how much quota for a given year rests with the trade minister

Less than a month before the CPTPP came into effect, the Liberal government announced it would allocate between 80 and 90 per cent of the import licences to domestic dairy processors, with a much smaller share available for dairy distributors. Grocery retailers — businesses that directly import and sell food products to consumers — were shut out entirely.


© Nick Perry/AP

Damien O’Connor, New Zealand’s minister for trade and export growth, said his country's relationship with Canada remains 'excellent' despite their issues with dairy trade.

For Canada's dairy sector, it was a form of compensation for the market share they stood to lose to foreign competitors. Processors already active in the market, industry spokespeople argued, would know best what kind of complementary foreign imports could fill market gaps for consumers.

Retailers, not to mention foreign producers, called foul, pointing out that domestic processors have no incentive to import goods that compete with their own. They warned Canada may not import as much foreign dairy as the agreement specified, although the federal government put rules in place to supposedly prevent importers from applying but then not fully exercising their right to import tariff-free.
Fill rates suggest unused quota

Import data posted on the Global Affairs website suggests New Zealand's concerns may be founded, at least for some products. Although Canada was close to importing the full quota negotiated for butter under the CPTPP last year, the data for cheese and other commodities show a much bigger gap between what was bargained at the negotiating table and what's been realized at the border.

That data doesn't specify how many of those imports came from New Zealand. Decisions over what to import from which CPTPP countries rest with the holder of the import licence. The other major dairy exporter among current CPTPP partners is Australia.

The quota volumes set for CPTPP partners predate the departure of the United States from the agreement following the election of former U.S. president Donald Trump, and the subsequent renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), in which the U.S. also successfully negotiated additional tariff-free access to Canada's dairy market in a long list of product categories.

Once the Americans left, not all of the CPTPP categories, which include fresh products, remained practical and competitive for producers farther away to fill, especially after international shipping took a hit during the COVID-19 pandemic and remains significantly more expensive as supply chains continue to strain amid disruptive geo-political events like the war in Ukraine.

The United Kingdom is in the early stages of talks to join the CPTPP in the future. Depending on how those accession negotiations go, the U.K. could compete for this market share in the future.

Thursday's challenge shows New Zealand hasn't forgotten about its grievances. And it may be seeing fresh momentum for its side of the argument, following a decision by a panel established under the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement, CUSMA, the successor agreement to NAFTA, that found Canada's administration of similar import licences wasn't consistent with what the Americans believed they had signed onto when NAFTA was renegotiated.

In early March, Canada announced changes to its CUSMA quota allocation policies, eliminating the pool reserved only for processors. However, the CUSMA panel decision maintained the right of the trade minister to make the final decision. The end implications of these changes remain unclear.

The U.S., for its part, is still sounding skeptical.

During a visit to Ottawa last week, United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai called access issues with Canada's dairy market a "source of great frustration." While she and Ng are still "talking and thrashing out the details for how we might be able to make some progress," Tai said "it's been a thorny issue for decades, for sure."

Canada's dairy industry remains bitter for having to take a succession of hits to its market in order for Canada to land several subsequent trade deals under the Liberals. In return for taking these hits for the team, they've demanded compensation from Canadian taxpayers.

On top of benefits from the way import licences are allocated, Canadian farmers are receiving up to $1.75 billion in direct payments over the first four years of the implementation of both the CPTPP and Canada's trade agreement with the European Union. The owner of a farm with 80 dairy cows, for example, was awarded approximately $38,000 each year.

The 2021 federal budget also established a $292.5 million investment fund for domestic dairy processors, to help them compete.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said in her spring budget that her department will include additional domestic dairy sector compensation for losses attributable to CUSMA in next fall's economic statement.

Mathieu Frigon, the president of the Dairy Processors Association of Canada, told CBC News he's aware of New Zealand's request for consultations and his organization is committed to working collaboratively with the federal government "to defend our country's ability to design and implement tariff-rate quota allocation mechanisms that meet its trade obligations and support its domestic production."

CANADA; RIGHT WING MEDIA PRAISES LEADER OF SOCIALIST PARTY

Toronto Sun
EDITORIAL: Some wise words from Jagmeet Singh

Postmedia News - Yesterday 

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh 

Federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh responded admirably to an ugly incident outside the office of Ontario NDP candidate Jen Deck in Peterborough on Tuesday.

When he visited her to support her campaign, he was surrounded by a small group of protesters yelling at him that he was a “traitor,” a “liar” and that he wasn’t welcome in the city, along with swearing at him and using obscene gestures.

While describing it as one of his “worst experiences” in politics — noting, “some folks were saying ‘hope you die’ and things along that nature” — he sought to defuse tensions rather than escalate them.

In a tweet referring to what happened Singh wrote:

“Thank you to everyone who has reached out to me after yesterday’s incident in Peterborough.

“To those who have asked, I’m in Chardi Kala — rising spirits.

“I want to especially say to the people of Peterborough — I have visited many times and I know your community is filled with good people who want the best for each other … Peterborough, I love you. Don’t worry — I’ll (be) back.”

Perhaps he was mindful of a recent story in the Peterborough Examiner noting the city in 2020, “had the highest rate per capita of police-reported hate crimes of all census metropolitan areas in the country … according to new data from Statistics Canada, with local rates far outstripping those of big cities such as Toronto and Montreal.”

Whether he was, Singh showed how to de-escalate political tensions, correctly noting “polarization and disinformation are real dangers to our society.

“While disagreements are fundamental to a thriving democracy,” he wrote, “hatred, violence and wishing death upon others threaten it.”

We understand many Canadians are angry about the deal he made with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to keep the Liberals in power until 2025. We’re not fans of it, either.

But it is irresponsible and dangerous to suggest Singh is a “traitor” for having done so. His agreement with Trudeau is constitutional. Similar deals have been made in the past — including in Ontario.

We also agree with Singh’s caution to politicians that they “must remember the consequences when they stoke fear and division.”

We’d simply add that applies equally to government and opposition MPs, at every level, including party leaders.

Immigration minister says getting refugees out of Afghanistan a major challenge

Ryan Tumilty - Yesterday 

POSTMEDIA

OTTAWA – Canada’s immigration minister pledged to reduce backlogs across his department caused by the COVID-19 pandemic before the end of the year, but said getting refugees out of Afghanistan will continue to be a major challenge.


© Provided by National Post

Afghans in Islamabad plea for help. Canada's immigration minister Sean Fraser pledges to reduce the backlog by end of the year.

“I’m actually quite confident the vast majority of our lines of business will be back to about the service standard by the end of the year,” Immigration Minister Sean Fraser told MPs at a parliamentary committee on Tuesday

Fraser said that should include permanent residents and family reunification, as well as the government’s commitment to bring 40,000 Afghan refugees to Canada by the end of this year.

The Liberal government made that pledge last summer during the election when the Afghanistan swiftly fell to Taliban forces. The government got some refugees out of the country before the Taliban took complete control, but thousands of people with ties to Canada were left behind.

Canada promised to take in 20,000-40,000 Afghan refugees. Where are they?

Only 2,385 Afghan nationals who assisted CAF mission relocated to Canada

Fraser said getting Afghans who have fled to other countries to Canada should be relatively straightforward, but for those living in Afghanistan it’s difficult.

“I am confident we can still do that but I don’t want to breeze over the fact that the territory is controlled by the Taliban,” he said. “I don’t want to sugarcoat things. It is really challenging to move people through Afghanistan and the stories are the most heartbreaking things.”

Conservative MP Jasraj Hallan said he heard from frustrated refugees that the government appeared to consider them security threats and are insisting on time-consuming and detailed checks.

Fraser said that isn’t the case.

“There’s not an internally held view that there is a class of people that have served Canada that pose a security threat to our national interest.”

NDP MP Jenny Kwan told Fraser the delays that Afghan refugees have seen are unacceptable and urged him to do more to address the problems.



Related video: Protest erupts outside Canada's embassy in Pakistan over delays in processing Afghan refugees (cbc.ca)

“Afghan interpreters with enduring relationships to Canada are being captured by the Taliban and are being tortured. Every second of the day counts for the lives of these individuals so I am absolutely astounded with the process here,” she said. “Maybe the minister should think about the option of engaging the military and asking them for help to bring people out of Afghanistan.”

Outside of Afghan refugees, Fraser said he hopes to alleviate the long waits that grew while COVID-related travel restrictions delayed the system.

During the pandemic, the government shifted the immigration focus to offering permanent residency to people who were already in Canada. Through a temporary resident-to-permanent resident program, they extended offers to student visa holders and people already in the country on work permits.

The government is still processing applications for people who applied through that program and will only start draws for economic immigrants abroad in July. On top of that, Canada has made large commitments on Afghan refugees and Ukrainians looking to flee the war.

The backlog across the system is so long that the department has put restrictions on the number of enquiries it will take from even MPs offices.

Fraser said he wants to eliminate that rule soon, but it’s a result of the large number of cases waiting in the backlog. He said every public servant responding to individual MPs is a public servant not helping to clear that backlog.

Conservative MP Garnett Genuis said Fraser should be focusing on the larger issue.

“We’re not the problem. We’re a symptom of another problem, but insofar as that problem exists people need to go to their members of parliament and seek their support and advocacy,” he said.

Fraser was also asked about Ukranians fleeing the war. The government has rejected calls to provide visa-free travel to people fleeing Ukraine, instead creating a new program that allows Ukranians to come to Canada and work for up to three years.

But the program comes with an application process that includes biometric scanning and other measures for many applicants. Fraser said more than 200,000 people have applied through the program and approximately half of those have been approved to come to Canada, but only about 25,000 have actually made the trip here so far.

He said he is confident that the number of approvals will catch up with the applicants soon.

“Our capacity to process people exceeds the demand that’s being put onto the system, so the numbers in the inventory will continue to come down if that remains the case,” he said.

He said, during a recent trip to Europe, he found many people fleeing Ukraine want to be able to return to their home country and are getting Canadian travel approvals as more of a safety net.

“The people are, largely speaking, wanting to stay as close to Ukraine as possible.”

Twitter: RyanTumilty
Email: rtumilty@postmedia.com

Fraser pressed on why Immigration has not approved 2,900 Afghans who helped Canada

Tuesday
The Canadian Press


OTTAWA — NDP caucus chair Jenny Kwan says she is seeking urgent answers about what has happened to the applications of 2,900 Afghans who helped the Canadian military.

Kwan is demanding Immigration Minister Sean Fraser explain why the Afghans, whose credentials were checked and verified by Canada's military, have not had their applications to come to Canada approved.

Defence chief Gen. Wayne Eyre told a parliamentary committee Monday night that the Defence Department had checked and verified the credentials of 3,800 Afghans, including interpreters, who supported the Canadian military.

But the committee heard from Eyre and Bill Matthews, deputy defence minister, that only 900 of them have had their applications to come to Canada accepted so far by the Immigration Department.

The government has committed tobringing18,000 Afghans and their families to Canada who served as interpreters for the Canadian Armed Forces, or worked at the Embassy of Canada, or had some other enduring or significant ties with Canada.

Kwan said she is planning to pursue the matter vigorously with the department as the lives of Afghans who helped Canadian troops are in danger from the Taliban.

She also plans to ask if the Immigration Department has lost files of Afghan interpreters who want to come to Canada, saying the government has "betrayed them."

"With every single passing day, the risks are heightened for Afghans," Kwan said. "And for those who served this country and their loved ones, it is wrong that the government has left them behind."

A spokesperson from the minister's office said the department plans to extend more invitations to Afghans who have a confirmed relationship with Canada in the coming weeks.

After Global Affairs Canada and the Department of National Defence confirm an Afghan's ties to Canada, their name is passed on to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, press secretary Aidan Strickland said in a statement Tuesday.

IRCC then sends an email to the people on that list inviting them to apply, she said. Only people who receive an invitation are able to apply for the special program.

"We have already received applications for more than 14,905 Afghan refugees under the Special immigration program for Afghans who assisted the Government of Canada and approved over 10,000 applications. IRCC continues to process applications as quickly as possible," Strickland said.

More than 6,200 Afghans have arrived through the special program, she said.

Kwan said the Taliban is hunting down interpreters and their families, and she wants Canada to issue a one-time travel document so vulnerable Afghans do not have to raise their heads to apply for passports.

It is dangerous for Afghans who helped Canadian Forces to apply to the Taliban authorities for passports, Kwan said.

"When you are being hunted down and you are trying to hide from the Taliban, you can't just walk into the office run by the Taliban and say, 'Can you issue travel documents, issue passports for my entire family?'" she said.

"The minute you do that, you are putting a red flag right on top of your head to be targeted."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 10, 2022

Marie Wolfe and Laura Osman, The Canadian Press

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. An earlier version reported that 3,100 Afghans had not yet been approved to come to Canada.

FIVE EYES

CSE cybersecurity centre's new boss says job has been 'dizzying' experience of responding to multiple major cyber incidents

Christopher Nardi - CBC

The new head of Canada’s cybersecurity centre says his first months on the job have been a “dizzying” experience of responding to one major incident after another, including a cyberattack from a hostile state against a federal government department in recent months.



“The last eight months have been somewhat a dizzying experience of a number of cyber incidents and managing all these cyber incidents,” Sami Khoury, who was named head of the Communications Security Establishment’s (CSE) Canadian Centre for Cyber Security last August, told the audience at the Cyber UK conference Wednesday.

“Day one of the job, the federal election is called,” he began listing, noting that the government suddenly was responsible for defending the entire country at a time of particular interest for foreign states looking to interfere in Canada’s affairs.

Then, just as the election ended, Newfoundland suffered a major cyber attack that crippled the province’s health care system for weeks and led to 200,000 files being stolen. That required CSE to deploy a team to help the province essentially rebuilding its IT systems, Khoury told conference attendees.

Shortly after, CSE scrambled to help cyber defenders address a major vulnerability, known as Log4j, in a nearly ubiquitous software library that hackers quickly tried to abuse. At the time, it was qualified as of the single most critical vulnerabilities in the last decade.

At the same time, Khoury said CSE was trying to handle “a number” of ransomware incidents, which he has frequently qualified as one of the biggest cyber threats Canada faces right now.

In 2021, 304 ransomware attacks were reported to CSE, a 151 per cent increase on the previous year but still likely a drop in the bucket compared to the real number because the problem remains “way, way underreported,” he said.

Canada the target of 'thousands' of cyber attacks every day, CSIS reveals

CSE responded to more than 2,200 cyber attacks in 2020

Khoury said that by the beginning of 2022, “we thought we would celebrate a quiet New Year,” he told conference attendees.

But that hope was dashed by a previously undisclosed “nation-state incident against one of our federal government departments.” He did not specify which hostile state was behind the attack, nor which department it targeted.

The only known incident around that time is a significant cyber attack against Global Affairs Canada (GAC) that was first detected on Jan. 19. The incident forced the department to shut down a host of internal programs for days and sometimes weeks to prevent further damage.

In an interview after his panel (but before it was made available publicly online ), Khoury declined to say who was behind the GAC attack but noted that it was a “sophisticated incident.”

He also confirmed that there was no private or sensitive government information that was either compromised or stolen during the GAC incident.

“We have not come out publicly with anything that points fingers at who’s behind this,” he told National Post.

Then, Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, creating significant concerns of increased attacks from the country that is repeatedly listed as a key hostile cyber threat to Canada. Khoury also spoke of “another incident we had to manage,” but did not provide any more detail.

But despite the fears of a looming cyber war with Russia since its invasion of Ukraine, the head of Canada’s Cyber Security Centre says that Canadian organizations have been targeted by Russian cyber criminals … yet, he specified in an interview.

“We haven’t seen anything in Canada that we can find a fingerprint that, ‘this is Russia turning its sights to Canada’ at this point,” he said, noting that most of the country’s cyber attacks have focused on Ukrainian targets.

But “we want Canadian businesses to be ready for when that happens,” he added, because the issue is serious and the threat is real. “Russia is throwing everything and the kitchen sink in the Ukraine conflict.”

But it’s not because Canada isn’t directly targeted by Russia yet that CSE isn’t watching what it’s doing to Ukraine and using that as a warning of what could be to come here.

“In the early days of the Russia campaign, we saw that we saw them go against Ukrainian banks. So then we issued an advisory about trying to protect your web-facing servers,” Khoury detailed.

“Then we saw them flood the airwaves with misinformation and disinformation. And we issued another bulletin with that information,” he continued.

“Then we saw them deploy very nasty, destructive malware in the Ukraine,” he said. “It’s a bit of a game of cat and mouse … Every time we observed something to Ukraine, we turned around and updated Canadian guidance or made it a little bit more customized.”

Khoury says the last months have been so intense for cyber defenders across the country that he’s now concerned they may be slowly getting burnt out.

“I am concerned about the energy level … and pacing ourselves. There are humans that manage these cyber incidents and it’s important to make sure that our teams have a bit of time to breathe, to catch their breath,” he said.

“The last eight months have taught me that it’s going to be a busy few years. We are not out of a job. It’s going to keep us busy,” he added.

More evidence emerges of N.S. mass shooter's long history of domestic abuse

Among other things, the public inquiry’s mandate includes investigating the role of gender-based violence.


HALIFAX — The former wife of the man responsible for the 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia says he once pinned her to the floor during a fit of rage, confirming that the killer’s violence towards women extended back to the 1990s.


The woman, who is not named in documents recently released by a public inquiry into the mass shooting, talked to police on April 29, 2020 — 10 days after the killer’s rampage claimed 22 lives in northern and central Nova Scotia.

The woman’s statement, which includes details about a second violent outburst, is now part of a growing narrative detailing Gabriel Wortman's decades-long pattern of violence towards women.

That chronology includes a statement from a former neighbour who said she told RCMP that the man attacked his spouse, Lisa Banfield, when they were living in Portapique, N.S., in 2013.

Some lawyers are calling on the inquiry to ask the neighbour, Brenda Forbes, to provide in-person witness testimony as the commission explores the role gender-based violence played in the tragedy.

In the case of the killer's first wife, the interview with police also includes her description of incidents in the 1990s when her husband’s drinking would contribute to violent rages.

During one incident at the couple's home in Dartmouth, N.S., the former wife recalled how he used a hammer to smash a collection of shelves and expensive figurines when he was triggered by the sight of dust on the shelves.

When she fled from the home, he threatened to smash her car windows with the hammer, she told police.

"There was another time he got very upset when he was drinking ... he actually pinned me down on the floor that day,” she said. “I was very scared that day, too."

After the 2020 killings, several of the gunman's neighbours in Portapique came forward to describe the man as jealous, controlling and abusive. And police confirmed that on the night the murders started, he had bound and attacked his longtime partner.

The next day, Banfield told police that her spouse had devolved from a "loving, kind and generous" man when they first met, to a moody partner who since 2003 had routinely assaulted her.

"In the past, he was abusive and I would appease him and say whatever I could to make it stop," she told RCMP Staff Sgt. Greg Vardy during an interview at the Colchester East Hants Health Centre in Truro, N.S.

Banfield told the RCMP she didn't report the abuse because she "didn’t want to get him in trouble. And in hindsight, I wish I would’ve, because maybe this wouldn’t have happened."

At the time of the interview, Banfield was being treated for injuries she suffered on April 18, 2020, when Wortman attacked her at their home in Portapique.

Banfield, then 51, described other beatings at the cottage, saying her spouse’s explosive anger was typically triggered by small disputes. Before the assault in April 2020, Banfield said the last time she experienced intimate partner violence was three years earlier.

Among other things, the public inquiry’s mandate includes investigating the role of gender-based violence.

In a research report commissioned by the inquiry, two professors at Monash University in Australia found that all mass shootings in western countries in recent decades have been carried out by men.

The paper concludes that there is a "significant minority" of mass shootings that also involve the targeting of specific women, "often an intimate partner, as the first victim," and that there is growing evidence of the linkages between gender-based violence and mass shootings.

"In order to better understand, prevent and respond to mass casualty attacks, there is a need to better understand, prevent and respond to gender-based violence," the report says.

Meanwhile, participating lawyer Anastacia Merrigan has told the inquiry there are discrepancies between the evidence provided by Forbes — the killer’s former neighbour — and the RCMP's description of how they responded to her complaint.

In a summary of evidence, the inquiry said a responding officer took "minimal notes" at the time of Forbes's complaint and that other information had been purged from RCMP files.

The inquiry's summary says a constable who responded to the complaint in 2013 is quoted in an RCMP report saying he didn't remember Forbes reporting a domestic assault.

Merrigan, who represents the Transition House Association of Nova Scotia, said she wants the inquiry to provide a more critical view of what happened with Forbes’s complaint.

"To date, the foundational document has adopted the evidence provided by the RCMP almost without question," she told the inquiry last week.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 11, 2022.

Michael Tutton and Michael MacDonald, The Canadian Press

We need to pay better attention to the ways people talk about incels

Luc Cousineau, 

Postdoctoral Fellow in International Network on Technology, 

Work, and Family, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) 

- Tuesday
The Conversation

Men’s rights activists have been around since the mid-1970s when scholars began to study feminist ideas and politics. But over the past 50 years, this movement has shifted and many of these activists are migrating towards more extreme and misogynistic views — the most violent of which are incels.

Research on incels is growing, and in December of last year, New York University (NYU) released Incels: Inside the world of involuntary celibates. While the report includes a useful glossary of incel terms and ideology, worldview and theory, there are issues with it. And these issues are common across incel-related writing (and writing on other violent terrorists), making it an issue that people need to get a handle on.

In the context of communities like incels, researchers must navigate a line between exploration and exposing content for wider consumption.

The dilemma here is that when researchers are working from a perspective critical of these ideologies we should be aware of how our research might serve to amplify the messaging. Are we inadvertently honouring the people we seek to condemn?

It is certainly possible to walk that line, and communications researchers Debbie Ging and Adrienne Massanari provide us with good examples. However, in reports like the one out of NYU, some common practices are problematic.

Risk creating worshippers and copycats

One of the most discussed hot-button issues when writing about far-right and misogynist violence is whether to identify attackers.

Like using the word incel itself, naming well-known attackers adds shock value. But when people do this, regardless of intention, it increases the profile of the attackers and can elevate them to positions of cultural phenomena and martyrdom.

Perhaps the most significant example of this is the Isla Vista killer, who killed six people during a multi-site spree in California, in 2014. The killings were heinous, but at the risk of sounding glib, six deaths in a mass killing isn’t huge in the United States. What made this incident huge was the nearly perpetual coverage and re-inscription of the killer across popular media and the academy.

By publishing and re-publishing this information, media and academics helped make the perpetrator an icon, inadvertently supporting and perpetuating the incel community’s veneration of individuals who have “died for the cause.”

When we label attackers incels, we inflate their power

A picture from Kimveer Gill's Blog

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for EMOTIONAL PLAGUE 

The NYU report labelled the perpetrator of the 1989 École Polytechnique tragedy the first incel. While it might be true that he had some characteristics that would align him with today’s misogynist incels, he was not an incel.

Given that the term incel as it is used today did not appear until the late 1990s, it is simply not possible for him to have been an incel.

To include him in any accounting of incel violence does a disservice to those working to disrupt violence against women, as it flattens the nuances and complexities of misogynistic violence.

The Montréal perpetrator’s inclusion in the history of incel violence is a fabrication to give certain ideological positionings deeper roots. His inclusion gives a historical significance and early presence to inceldom while helping provide legitimacy.
The issues are much deeper than incels

In the context of media coverage and academia, incels are trendy; they get views.

For most incels, violent misogynist inceldom is the end of their journey, not the beginning. They have likely been introduced to elements of inceldom in other spaces (like pick-up artist communities) and moved slowly into inceldom.

The appeal of covering incels can blind people of this pathway, and facilitate a move to innocence where people ignore the more mundane and everyday instances of violent misogyny.

The fact that radicalization is a process provides opportunities to stop movement towards radical ideas — there are places where men can be intercepted before they are encouraged (or encourage others) to do real violence.

Even once men become incels, there are opportunities for deradicalization and de-conversion, like the work being done by Groundswell Project in the United Kingdom.

We are going to see more and more writing about incels as some continue to commit acts of violent misogyny. But how people write about them matters.

The danger is that in giving incel ideology all of this time and energy people will unavoidably perpetuate what they seek to stop. It gives energy to a movement that’s primary interest is subjugating women and increases the value of violence.

As writers and academics, we have the responsibility to do better. There is no place for this violence in Canada, and we bear part of the responsibility to stop it.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

Read more:
Incels are surprisingly diverse but united by hate

Inside the warped world of incel extremists

Luc Cousineau receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. He is the Director of Research at the Canadian Institute for Far-Right Studies.