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Category: Canada 🇨🇦 (Page 8 of 27)

Canada and California absolutely must call Google’s and Facebook’s bluff on news

Brian Merchant, LA Times »

California and Canada must absolutely not give in to the tech giants’ tantrum. This is a bluff, and not a particularly convincing one. For the sake of the beleaguered news industries in both places (yes, including this media outlet), the Canadian and Californian governments must absolutely call it.

For assurance, we should look to Australia, where a like-minded bill went into law in 2021, even after Google and Facebook made the same exact threats. Facebook did initially restrict access to news, but the ploy lasted barely a week before it backfired wildly, and Facebook agreed to comply, albeit after extracting some concessions.

That bill has already restored tens of millions of dollars in revenue to Australia’s troubled newsrooms, and, while far from perfect, has transformed the media environment dramatically.

Though he lacks Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s showmanship, New Brunswick’s Blaine Higgs has a hard-line conservative record to make right-wing ideologues giddy

The Conversation »

However, Higgs has gone further than his Conservative counterparts in the region. In doing so, he has burned many bridges.

His relationship with the health-care sector is fraught. Emergency rooms have overflowed at times with residents dying in waiting rooms.

When it was reported a woman was unable to get access to a rape kit, Higgs blamed the nurses for “showing a lack of compassion.” He has also limited abortion access within the province.

Higgs has an equally contentious relationship with Indigenous Peoples. In 2021, New Brunswick directed government employees to halt territorial acknowledgements because the province is involved in a series of legal actions and land claims initiated by First Nations.

The province also tore up tax-sharing agreements with the Wolastoqey Nation, which Higgs argued were “unfair.”

Canada’s top five largest cities, ranked by population

With the spring 2021 census, we learned Canada was home to 36,991,981 people, 1.8 million (5.2 percent) more in just five years. Close to 27.3 million, nearly three in four, lived in one of Canada’s 41 urban centres.

The 41 urban centres, all have a population of 100,000 or more people, and accounted for most of Canada’s population growth from 2016 to 2021.

This list ranks the cities with populations of 1 million or more people.

  1. Toronto » 2.8 million people
  2. Montréal » 1.8M
  3. Calgary » 1.3 million
  4. Edmonton » 1 million
  5. Ottawa »1 million

Source » Statistics Canada

Top 10 Freest Countries on Earth

Freedom House rates people’s access to political rights and civil liberties in 210 countries and territories through its annual Freedom in the World report. Individual freedoms—ranging from the right to vote to freedom of expression and equality before the law—can be affected by state or nonstate actors.

  • 🇳🇴 Norway » Global Freedom Score 100
  • 🇫🇮 Finland » 100
  • 🇸🇪 Sweden » 100
  • 🇳🇿 New Zealand » 99
  • 🇨🇦 Canada » 98
  • 🇩🇰 Denmark » 97
  • 🇳🇱 Netherlands » 97
  • 🇺🇾 Uruguay » 97
  • 🇮🇪 Ireland » 97
  • 🇱🇺 Luxembourg » 97

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