Canada considers the US to be a safe country for asylum-seekers.

This is so real.

This post has been on my mind for a few days now, so I’m going to say something about it. 🧵

A rally and a scone in the neighbourhood, contemplating the pitfalls to public-private partnerships.

Reminder: journalists get arrested in Canada too. In fact, The Narwhal is in court right now challenging the RCMP for arresting photojournalist Amber Bracken. Our editor-in-chief,Carol Linnitt, testifies today and Monday, and court is open to the public if you're in Vancouver.

Discontinued Canadian Safe [Drug] Supply Program Was Working, Study Shows filtermag.org/canada-safe-...

The crisis of #homelessness in Ontario is out of control and this means people left outside in ever greater numbers in conditions of extreme cold that pose an immediate threat to their lives. www.ctvnews.ca/northern-ont...

To everyone who told me to be quiet, that I was overreacting, to wait and see. "The federal department says research centres in Guelph, ON, Quebec City and Lacombe, AB, as well as four satellite research farms across NS, SK and MB are closing." www.ctvnews.ca/canada/artic...

Since so many people are fangirling over Carney's supposed "historic" speech in Davos, I want to offer an alternative reading. This is not left cynicism, but a sober reading of imperial positioning in this moment. 1) Carney squarely positioned Canada as a middle power.

These leaders are fakes and flakes. They will be lining up to join this “peace board”

Erica was 25 years old when she was sentenced to 20 to 45 years in prison. It was always a dream of hers to grow her family and give her daughter a sibling. But, she writes, she may never be able to fulfill that dream:

"By ending the decriminalization pilot, the Province is failing to treat addiction as a public-health issue, not a criminal one, and is doubling down on policies that have already caused immense harm to First Nations." Grand Chief Stewart Phillip www.ubcic.bc.ca/ubcic_deeply...

Carney’s vision for a new world order entails the undemocratic components to the Building Canada Act, and a 2025 Budget that downsizes government services to invest in AI and the military.

Canadian social media management firm Hootsuite is providing monitoring tech to the US government's immigration enforcement agency. Via @betakit.com reporter Josh Scott and myself. betakit.com/hootsuite-dh...

From Palestine protests to Indigenous land defence, police are dusting off old, abandoned court orders—”zombie” injunctions—to threaten or arrest organizers @irinaceric.bsky.social explains how these legal threats are being used to chill social movements. breachmedia.ca/police-using...

Favourite books I read this year. A bit of a theme of concise classics. #BookSky

Bookstore tourism in BC. MacLeod’s specializes in used books, to the point of glorious excess. Little Sister’s successfully challenged obscenity laws in defence of queer work. #booksky

You know, Miracle on 34th Street has it all as a legal drama and systemic critique. A bad arrest, prosecutorial overreach (and honestly total lack of ethics), the problem with judicial elections, and a defense lawyer who works miracles. The best.

Christmas on the West Coast

"In my 20 years of incarceration, I've been strip-searched at least 500 times." "Strip searches, by definition, should be classified as sexual abuse." "For a person like myself with a traumatic history, strip searches [..] resurface previous harms." #Georgia #USA #Incarceration #SexualViolence

Presented findings from a SSHRC funded research project at a (Christmas themed) Community Living Board meeting.

My newest article for @canadiandimension.bsky.social unpacks Danielle Smith's use of the notwithstanding clause for her anti-trans and anti-labour reactionary politics in relation to a lineage of right wing uses of the NWC. canadiandimension.com/articles/vie...

My students did not recognize me in jeans and muted colours. Bright swishy dresses are my pedagogy.

It would have been nice if someone asked Doug Ford to explain how he plans to order these charity audits given charities are overseen federally by Canada Revenue Agency

David Cochrane asks about the fact that it would’ve been impossible for the coastal First Nations to travel from their communities to meet the feds on the timeline the govt offered. “It’s called Zoom,” Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson responds. Jesus CHRIST. (Video: Scott Robertson/Twitter)

The closest I'll ever come to TikToking. www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_Xh...

If you're keeping score this week, Carney is: * Negotiating backroom deals on pipelines with Alberta and without BC or Indigenous folks. * Undermining anti-greenwashing laws. * Making deals with the UAE despite their role in Sudan. * Cutting funding for infectious disease work in Africa.

This government lost in court the last time their efforts to undermine student organizing was constitutionally challenged.

BILL 33 HAS PASSED. It will: - ⏫ Ministerial power over school boards, allowing for a Minister to override local democracy and decision-making. - ⏫ Ministerial power to force schools and school boards to abide by political directives, like forcing police back into schools.

Nicely summarizes how the Carney government’s thoughtless, reckless AI strategy will reduce government capacity while making government more dependent on foreign tech firms. As with a lot of things with this government, it comes down to a refusal to think about long-term governance issues.

The UN approved a US plan for Gaza that hands control to foreign powers and delays Palestinian statehood, undermining national authority and sovereignty. qudsnen.co/un-approves-...

Former UN special rapporteur Richard Falk was detained by 🇨🇦 customs agents and, for four hours, was asked a series of questions about his participation in the conference, his involvement in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and his position on Israel. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

I'm cited in this piece in the Toronto Star today about the spread of generative AI, the challenges it poses for historians & history education, and the need for digital literacy. www.thestar.com/news/how-fak...

Buried in the Doug Ford govt's fall budget are changes that would remove parts of Wasaga beach from provincial protection. As I reported in August, those parts are 60% of the world’s longest freshwater beach and the main nesting area for the endangered piping plover: thenarwhal.ca/wasaga-beach...

“Razing Palestine” (Ed. Leila Marshy) comes out this week. Proud to stand in solidarity with every contributor & others who experienced personal & professional consequences for speaking out against Israel’s genocide. These stories represent just the tip of the iceberg of repression in Canada.

You've probably heard of Bill C-12 and C-2, but there's a slate of other bills that, when assembled together transformer style, could create a freedom repression machine that rivals the one south of the border. We broke down how it would work >> act.gp/4i9pU1b #Cdnpoli 📹 via leftiejane on IG

Another excerpt from Read This When Things Fall Apart: Letters to Activists in Crisis. Red Schulte’s letter speaks to those organizing outside the law—a place more people of conscience will find themselves as authoritarianism tightens its grip.

With so much on the line, the new federal government has tabled a budget that in many ways could pass as a Conservative budget, write David Macdonald and Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood. #CanPoli

If crime is way down, why are Canadians so afraid of crime? And what are politicians funnelling money into? My latest -- they are boosting policing to police us ... not keep us safe (unless you're rich, which trust me, you are not.) noraloreto.substack.com/p/the-big-cr...

Book award celebration. My heart feels full.

Queer and trans immigrants allege forced labor and sexual assault in Ice facility: ‘I was treated worse than an animal’ www.theguardian.com/... #transgender #trans #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA

New analysis of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first 100 days after the federal election show oil and gas, mining and other industrial groups made up about 60 per cent of lobbying records. Environmental groups couldn’t get a word in. thenarwhal.ca/carney-natur...

An Ohio University professor was removed from teaching a MFA class a day after returning home from an Israeli prison where he was detained upon being illegally abducted from the flotilla. His students [solidarity!] walked out on the replacement prof in protest. www.dispatch.com/story/news/s...

"Prisons are built in remote locations, shielded behind wire and walls, and utterly severed from society’s truth-seekers—its journalists, its documentarians, and its scholars—and from the families and loved ones of those inside." Read more:

At UNB, professors and students were surveilled for Palestine solidarity because, per campus security, the university is the President’s “house.” “If I tell my kids my kids you can’t do this, I don’t need to write it down… He’s the President and he can set the rules.”

Upcoming event

““They dragged little Greta [Thunberg] by her hair before our eyes, beat her, and forced her to kiss the Israeli flag. They did everything imaginable to her, as a warning to others,” the Turkish activist ErsinÇelik, a participant in the Sumud flotilla, told Anadolu news agency.”+

As Mark Carney prepares to observe his first National Day of Truth and Reconciliation as prime minister on Tuesday, some of the country’s top Indigenous voices say his economic-growth agenda is putting other key priorities on the back burner.