Surveillance
Amid China’s increased assertiveness in global affairs and reports of its interference in the domestic affairs of Canada and other countries, a House of Commons committee report is putting additional pressure on the government to create a foreign agent registry to address the threat.
The report, published May 17, was released in response to Beijing’s “increasingly assertive stance in global affairs, along with its intrusions in the domestic matters of other nations,” which have prompted many countries to reevaluate their relationship and policies toward the regime, the Special Committee on the Canada–People’s Republic of China Relationship (CACN) said in a news release.
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Read MoreThe disintegration continues. The latest revelation about the Trudeau Liberals’ blindness to Chinese election meddling is that then-public safety and emergency preparedness minister Bill Blair took months to grant CSIS a warrant to monitor election activities by former Ontario cabinet minister infamous for his links to communist China. And they still have no idea how to respond.
As my former Sun News colleague Alex Pierson tweeted, “Either they are complicit or incompetent. Everyday it is another jaw dropper.” To which I responded, “Of course they could be both.” And certainly, incompetence is playing a key role.
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Read MoreTwo Quebec-based charitable agencies suspected by the RCMP of being undercover Chinese police stations have received over $400,000 combined since 2010 in federal funding, according to government records.
The Chinese Family Service of Greater Montreal (SFCGM), which has been open in Montreal’s Chinatown neighbourhood for decades, founded in 1976, received six grants and contributions totalling $123,750 from Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) between 2018 and 2021, according to federal government grants and contribution database.
The Centre Sino-Québec de la Rive-Sud (CSQRS), located in Brossard on Montreal’s south shore, received 12 federal grants and contributions between 2010 and 2022 totalling just over $284,895, according to the same database.
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Read MoreFor the first time, researchers have managed to use GPT1, a precursor to the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT, to translate MRI imagery into text in an effort to understand what someone is thinking.
This recent breakthrough allowed researchers at the University of Texas at Austin to “read” someone’s thoughts as a continuous flow of text, based on what they were listening to, imagining or watching.
It raises significant concerns for privacy, freedom of thought and even the freedom to dream without interference.
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Read MoreSadiq Khan admitted some low-traffic neighbourhoods in London ‘aren’t perfect’ and may need removing today amid a backlash against the controversial schemes.
The London mayor conceded councils might need to ‘tweak’ LTNs or scrap them – but he defended efforts to reduce congestion and pollution.
The Government pursued a growth of LTNs in the wake of the Covid pandemic in 2020 as it sought to encourage more people to walk or cycle in towns and cities.
But they have proved unpopular with drivers and residents, with many instances of road bollards being vandalised, for forcing them away from their usual routes.
There are concerns that LTNs have merely moved congestion and pollution to other roads.
Ministers have also been accused of ‘greenwashing’ by campaigners after it was revealed the Department for Transport (DfT) could give no evidence that LTNs reduce the number of miles driven.
Sadiq Khan admitted some low-traffic neighbourhoods in London ‘aren’t perfect’ and may need removing amid a backlash against the controversial schemes
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Sadiq Khan admitted some low-traffic neighbourhoods in London ‘aren’t perfect’ and may need removing amid a backlash against the controversial schemes
The Government pursued a growth of LTNs in the wake of the Covid pandemic in 2020 as it sought to encourage more people to walk or cycle in towns and cities
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View gallery
The Government pursued a growth of LTNs in the wake of the Covid pandemic in 2020 as it sought to encourage more people to walk or cycle in towns and cities
But LTNs have proved unpopular with drivers and local residents. There are concerns they have merely moved congestion from some parts of towns and cities to other roads
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View gallery
But LTNs have proved unpopular with drivers and local residents. There are concerns they have merely moved congestion from some parts of towns and cities to other roads
More than a quarter of LTNs in Britain have already been scrapped
More than a quarter of LTNs have been scrapped since being installed after the outbreak of the Covid pandemic, an analysis has shown.
The i newspaper reported it had asked regional transport authorities and local councils in Britain’s main urban areas to provide data on the number of experimental LTNs installed – and scrapped – since March 2020.
The responses, received last year, covered 105 local authorities and showed that in these areas 189 LTNs were installed since March 2020 and 52 (28 per cent) have since been removed.
An official told The Times that no studies on the effect on distance travelled had been requested because ‘LTNs don’t exist to reduce miles driven’.
Clair Battaglino of Social and Environmental Justice, which campaigns against LTNs, said: ‘Until we see better evidence, claims that LTNs are good for the planet are just greenwashing.’
Mr Khan offered a staunch defence of local councils’ action to introduce congestion and pollution-cutting measures as he was quizzed about claims LTNs aren’t beneficial for the environment.
But the London mayor admitted the establishment of LTNs in London had not been entirely successful.
‘This is an issue of the environment and also health and also the economy,’ Mr Khan told Sky News.
‘Congestion is bad for the economy, carbon emissions are bad for the climate and particulate matter and nitrogen oxide is bad for health.
‘By councils – not me, not civil servants in Whitehall, not Rishi Sunak – by councils deciding where the LTNs are, you have successful LTNs.
‘Some LTNs aren’t perfect, some LTNs need amending, some may need taking out.
‘So what I’m saying is, councils should be in charge of what happens in their communities.
‘If an LTN isn’t perfect, they’ll tweak it, they’ll amend it, they’ll remove it. Because, obviously, they want to make sure an LTN is successful.
‘This about devolving powers and resources to local decision makers who will make the right choice in relation to the environment, in relation to health, and in relation to the economy.’
READ MORE: Labour-run Southwark council scraps plan for SIXTH low traffic neighbourhood after being bombarded with furious backlash
Mr Khan pointed to evidence that LTNs in areas such as Lambeth,
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Read More‘Today, Montana takes the most decisive action of any state to protect Montanans’ private data and sensitive personal information from being harvested by the Chinese Communist Party.’
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Read MoreA Quebec charity being investigated for hosting an extra-judicial police station acting on behalf of Beijing received nearly $200,000 in federal funding since 2020.
Service à la Famille Chinoise du Grand Montréal (SFCGM) is implicated in allegedly running the operation for China.
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Read MoreA group of leaders from some of the country’s top schools have issued a warning
The Government is responding too slowly to the dangers of artificial intelligence, which poses the greatest threat to education, according to head teachers.
A group of leaders from some of the country’s top schools have issued a letter warning of the “very real and present hazards and dangers” being presented by the technology.
They have called on schools to collaborate in order to ensure AI works in their best interests and those of pupils, amid fears it is being used as a shortcut by pupils across the country for completing work.
The group, led by Sir Anthony Seldon, the head of Epsom College, also told the times they are launching a body to advise and protect schools from the risks AI poses.
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Read MoreSupreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch on Thursday lamented what he calls an intrusion into civil liberties by pandemic emergency decrees since the start of COVID-19 as the high court dismissed a suit on Title 42 as moot.
“Since March 2020, we may have experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country,” Gorsuch, one of six conservative-leaning Supreme Court justices, said in an opinion accompanying the court’s decision (pdf) published on Thursday.
Gorsuch wrote that emergency decrees ordering vaccine mandates and lockdowns issued by federal and state executive agencies resulted in an accumulation of power in those agencies and accompanied this loss of liberties during the pandemic.
“The concentration of power in the hands of so few may be efficient and sometimes popular. But it does not tend toward sound government,” the justice wrote. “However wise one person or his advisors may be, that is no substitute for the wisdom of the whole of the American people that can be tapped in the legislative process.”
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Read MoreWith news of the Chinese Communist Party’s rampant targeting of the Chinese diaspora and dissidents of the regime in Canada coming to the fore in recent months, a new report from a House of Commons committee urges the government to push back against such threats and to find ways to protect Canadians from arbitrary detention by malign regimes.
The report, published by the Special Committee on the Canada–People’s Republic of China Relationship (CACN), compiles testimonies from 50 witnesses who have appeared at the committee over two parliamentary sessions. Many witnesses have offered stories and personal experiences of intimidation and harassment by the Chinese regime.
The report noted that CACN’s national security study on the issue first began during China’s arbitrary detention of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who were held in Chinese prison for over 1,000 days before being released in September 2021. However, the report also draws attention to other cases where the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has arbitrarily detained Canadians, or people with links to Canada.
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