> For many Canadians, Saskatchewan—a province of over a million people in a space roughly the size of Texas—is something of an afterthought, a land of rolling prairies and infinite blue skies. But for those paying attention, Moe has become the face of a province that may have considerable sway over the nation’s climate policies and the heart of an increasingly Donald Trump-esque ideology. A man of nebulous personality, which shape-shifts as per the moment’s needs, Moe has established himself as one of the most popular premiers in the country. March data from the nonprofit Angus Reid Institute indicated that Moe had a 53 percent approval rating—one of only two provincial leaders in the country to exceed the majority mark that quarter.

> The “watch me” moment has since become a defining aspect of Moe’s six years as premier—and, with it, his adversarial relationship with Prime Minister Trudeau’s federal Liberal government. As Simon Enoch, director of the Saskatchewan office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, explains, this confrontational stance is Moe’s “one-trick pony,” which “seems to work.” Moe has successfully inched Saskatchewan politics further right—with extreme climate, LGBTQ2S+, education, and economic policies. The party has expanded the range of policy possibilities that the public is willing to accept. “You see consistently, over the past two or three years, a movement towards being a solid right-wing populist party, led by a right-wing populist guy in the form of Mr. Scott Moe,” says Ian Hanna, former special communications adviser for Wall. “There’s a transition in the party and a transition in the province.”

> Still, “he’s going to win the next election,” Hanna says. The Saskatchewan electoral system is configured so Moe can lose almost every urban vote in the province and maintain his leadership in the general election. The question many around the country are left asking is: What makes him so popular?

> The head of the LCBO is managing a public crown corporation at the same time as he sits on the board of a big business lobby group that is actively lobbying Doug Ford’s government to privatize alcohol sales.

> George Soleas, the President and CEO of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, a public crown corporation that generates $2.5 billion in revenue for Ontario taxpayers each year, also currently serves on the board of directors of the Retail Council of Canada.

> The Retail Council of Canada, which bills itself as “the Voice of Retail™ in Canada,” is actively lobbying the Government of Ontario to privatize alcohol sales. The lobby group has recently been quoted in press releases issued by Doug Ford’s government endorsing their plans to privatize alcohol sales.

> According to lobbying records, the RCC was lobbying provincial government ministries earlier this year on “the future of alcohol policy” – specifically on “how to increase choice and convenience for consumers.”

> The Retail Council of Canada’s members include big corporations that would gain a substantial financial benefit from privatizing alcohol sales, including Loblaws, Sobeys, Metro and Walmart.

> In 2023, the cost of policing to Canadian taxpayers closed in on $20 billion for the first time. While annual police budgets continue to grow, there is little debate in the media about its cost to taxpayers and the value for money in relation to crime reduction.

> This 50 per cent increase over inflation in the cost of policing from 20 years ago is now coinciding with disturbing increases in violent crime. Homicides are up, stoking public fear. Violent crime has returned to levels seen 20 years ago. Canada’s homicide rate is second only to the United States among G7 countries, and is rising as the American rate drops.

> The rate of homicide involving Indigenous victims is six times that of non-Indigenous people, and it’s three times higher for Black men.

> With one in three women experiencing some form of violence in their lifetimes, intimate partner and sexual violence is now recognized as being at epidemic levels.

> The majority of policing costs are paid from municipal taxes and have risen faster than expenditures on transit or social services. The cost of policing at the municipal level per capita varies considerably from a high of $496 annually for Vancouver to a low of $217 in Québec City.

> Though much of the rhetoric for justifying increasing police budgets is about crime, an analysis of trends over the last 20 years in Canada could not find any correlation between increases in municipal police budgets and a reduction in crime rates.

> Our review of studies in the United Kingdom and the United States shows that investments in programs tackling risk factors give better returns than innovations like problem-oriented policing.

> Canada provided up to $200 million to pipeline company Coastal Gaslink, recently updated financial data reveals — an apparent violation of a commitment to phase out fossil fuel subsidies.

> According to Export Development Canada (EDC), a Crown corporation that provides loans and grants to help businesses reach the market, Coastal Gaslink was given between $100 million and $200 million worth of project financing to help it export gas. The publicly-disclosed financing is thin on details, but was signed on June 27.

> Coastal GasLink, owned by Calgary-based TC Energy, snakes through several Indigenous territories, including the Wet’suwet’en Nation. Wet’suwet’en hereditary leadership, who maintains jurisdiction over the land in question, opposes the pipeline. Hereditary Chief Namoks (also known as John Ridsdale), told Canada’s National Observer he was disappointed to see hundreds of millions of dollars provided to a company violating his nation’s rights.

> Any government funding “that goes against human rights, Indigenous rights and [the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples] simply should not be allowed,” he said.

> “So it clearly shows the oil and gas industry is steering the government.”

> Five years ago, Kim Gavine, general manager of Conservation Ontario, warned that the province was already “experiencing stronger and more frequent flood events as a result of climate change impacts."

> Instead of taking this threat seriously, Doug Ford slashed Ontario’s funding for flood management programs and has recklessly tried to pave the Greenbelt, a crucial network of protected waterways and wetlands that help prevent flooding. By prioritizing the interests of his corporate developer buddies and expanding gas power plants when we desperately need to be transitioning to a green grid and investing in proactive resilience measures, Ford is making communities across the province more vulnerable to climate disasters like what I just experienced.

> This isn’t just a Toronto or Ontario problem either. David Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, described last week’s massive urban flooding as our new reality. Our governments, at every level, need to do what it takes to better prepare for these escalating climate impacts everywhere.

> We don’t yet know the full extent of the damage from last week’s storms, but Global News' Chief Meteorologist reported that the flooding was likely to be “worse and more widespread than the recent benchmark event in July 2013 and that was a billion-dollar disaster.” A billion dollars that our already strapped municipal government doesn’t have, money that we desperately need for housing, transit, and social services.

> [Using Ontario tax dollars,] Enbridge Gas is starting construction of its $358-million natural gas pipeline in southwestern Ontario, which critics say “doesn’t even make economic sense” given the need to transition away from fossil fuels.

> advocates criticized the investment in the new gas pipeline, arguing that it contradicts climate goals and is economically unsound.

> “This is a bad investment,” said Keith Brooks, programs director at Environmental Defence.

> “The science is clear. In a world that limits climate change to 1.5 degrees, there is no room for new fossil fuel infrastructure like a gas pipeline that costs over a third of a billion dollars. This project doesn't even make economic sense.”

> Brooks noted the project relies on a 40-year revenue model, which he believes is unrealistic given the current energy transition. He pointed out that it is being subsidized by $150 million from existing gas users.

> “It will likely cost all of Ontario's gas customers even more when it winds up a stranded asset and doesn't generate the revenue that Enbridge is banking on.”

source: https://mastodon.social/@Blinxeto/112833043655692211

I use wired earbuds. Last week, I started noticing issues with my current pair on my android phone. The first issue was that the audio would disconnect if the headphones cord going into the jack was slightly moved. The issue seemed to progress, whereby audio disconnects happened more commonly. Eventually, the headphone issue started changing tracks in Tidal (the headphones do not have a next track button) all by itself and launching the google music app and playing songs in it.

I assumed my earbuds were at fault, but the same earbuds perform fine in my laptop and other earbuds experience the same issue in my phone.

Restarting the phone temporarily removes this issue, but it seems to start up again the longer the phone is on.

Has anyone else experience this? Does anyone know what's going on and how I can fix this? Did an update get pushed to my phone that's intended to brick earbuds?

Edit: Thanks to everyone for their helpful suggestions and comments ☺️!

I recently migrated to Librewolf from Firefox due to Mozilla's recent blunder of covertly adding adware to their browser.

I like the ResistFingerprinting feature for added privacy, but enabling it seems to set my browser time to GMT instead of ET, with most times on webpages (which refer to browser time) ahead by several hours as a result.

Can I define my desired timezone in the browser settings so I don't have to pick one or the other between a correct browser time and better privacy? TIA :D!

> Fifty-six child-care projects planned for schools across Ontario have been classified as "cancelled," potentially costing around $11 million in "sunk costs," according to a Ministry of Education document.

“[Carbon capture] is a dangerous distraction driven by the same big polluters who have caused the climate emergency,” Julia Levin, associate director of national climate for Environmental Defence, told Canada’s National Observer in a phone interview.

This situation is “especially frustrating because Strathcona has no intention of paying a single dime between getting 50 per cent of their capital costs covered by the investment tax credit and 50 per cent covered by the Canada Growth Fund,” Levin said.

“Why are taxpayers covering the full cost of one of the country's largest oil producers to continue to extract more oil?”

Tell me we don't live in a plutocracy, ffs.

> The federal government wants to restrict farmers' ability to save seeds and other reproductive plant materials like tree grafts for some crops – and is asking farmers to comment on the changes during the height of the growing season.

> Last month, the government announced it is considering amendments to Canada's seed laws that would force farmers to pay seed companies royalties for decades after their original purchase of seeds from protected varieties of plants. Even if farmers grow that plant variety in later years with seed they produced themselves from earlier crops, instead of buying new seed, they must pay the royalties for over 20 years.

> If passed, the changes will apply to horticultural crops like vegetables, fruit trees and ornamental plants. They will also restrict farmers’ ability to save and use hybrid seeds, which combine the desirable traits of several genetically different varieties. Public consultations on the proposed changes opened May 29, 2024 and ends on July 12, 2024.

> Critics say the move will further exacerbate a crisis in Canadian seed diversity, supply and resilience to climate change. Over the past 100 years, 75 per cent of agricultural biodiversity has declined globally, and only 10 per cent of remaining crop varieties are commercially available in the country.

> Public transit advocates are criticizing a $30-billion plan to improve public transportation unveiled by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday. [...] Trudeau called the investment the “largest public transit investment in Canadian history.” But for Nate Wallace, Environmental Defence’s clean transportation program manager, the announcement misses the mark almost entirely.

> The Canada Public Transit Fund will invest approximately $3 billion per year, over 10 years, in public transit by providing “baseline funding” that can be used to upgrade and replace things like buses and trains, as well as specific project-based funding for things like electrification and transportation in Indigenous communities. The money won’t start flowing until 2026 –– after the next federal election. None of it is going to cover day-to-day operations, which observers note is the major gap transit systems are dealing with right now. [bold is mine]

> Transit is expensive to operate, and in the pandemic years, municipalities were stretched thin as workers stayed home, exacerbating a ridership crisis years in the making. Cities began hiking fares and cutting service to make up for budget shortfalls, which saved money in the short term but discouraged use.

> Due to these year-over-year budget shortfalls, totalling over $1 billion since the pandemic began, the TTC is now facing a potential “death spiral” of declining revenues and ensuing service cuts, according to The Globe and Mail. In Vancouver, TransLink expects a funding gap of $600 million in 2026, while Montreal’s transit authority, the Société de transport de Montréal (STM), anticipates a budget shortfall of $560 million next year, growing to nearly $700 million by 2028.

> “It feels like this program is being announced in a separate universe. A universe where transit systems aren't facing massive operating deficits,” Wallace said. “Transit systems can't plan for the future if they're struggling to figure out how to keep the lights on today.”

Obligatory mention of proportional representation, which is the most important improvement that we could make to our democracy, but this article describes another issue - that the Prime Minister most likely has too much power in this country.

> Canadian prime ministerial powers fall into two main categories. The first is the ability of the prime minister, backed by their staff in the Prime Minister’s Office—the PMO—and the Privy Council Office—the PCO—to direct and control what happens in government and in Parliament. The second is the astonishing unchecked power of patronage Canadians give their prime minister to appoint all the leading figures in the country’s public life, judiciary, and administration.

> Backbenchers in the House of Commons no longer see themselves primarily as representatives of the people who elected them and therefore owing prime loyalty to the interests of their constituents. Canadian MPs see loyalty to their party and its leader as their duty beyond any other. A 2020 study by the Samara Centre for Democracy found that Canadian MPs vote as they are instructed by their party whips 99.6 percent of the time.

> I have become convinced that the key to unlocking the barriers to repairing our democracy is to dismantle this electoral system that revolves around the celebrity and curb appeal of a handful of individuals. If Ottawa worked as it should—if it worked as a representative system based on discussion and resolution of communal issues—then the other problems with the Canadian polity and federation can be overcome. In a country of immense diversity, no other democratic model will work. Fundamentally, the overriding problem for Canadian democracy is the unaccountable power that has gathered into the hands of the prime minister. Until that problem is addressed and redressed, until a sustainable working relationship between the prime minister and Parliament is restored, no tinkering with the other levels of our institutions will work.

> Last month, Alberta didn’t just announce it had transitioned entirely off coal as an energy source; the province kicked the fossil fuel six years ahead of a wildly ambitious schedule. The scale of achievement this represents defies exaggeration—and contains a warning for oil fans everywhere. [...] what happened to coal is coming for oil next.

> Virtually every major analyst that isn’t an oil company (and even some of them, like BP) now expects global demand for oil to peak around 2030, if not sooner; McKinsey, Rystad Energy, DNV, and the International Energy Agency all agree. This places Canada in a uniquely vulnerable position. Oil is Canada’s biggest export by a mile, a vital organ of our economy: we sold $123 billion worth of it in 2022 (cars came in second, at just under $30 billion). Three quarters of that oil is exported as bitumen—the most expensive, emissions-heavy form of petroleum in the market and therefore the hardest to sell. That makes us incredibly sensitive to fluctuations in global demand. Think of coal as the canary in our oil patch.

> When I see absurd prices, my mind leaps to cascading climate disasters and corporate monopolization. Someone on the other end of the spectrum might think of the carbon tax and global governance. But on one level, we’re both trying to explain away an encounter with our own insignificance as confirmed by the new price of, say, a can of Campbell’s Chunky soup.

> They tell us there are a myriad of complicated kinks in the omnipotent supply chains that stretch across the earth—war, interest rates, climate events, dollar rates—that no one, not the state and certainly not you, can do anything about. The infinite web of multinational trade organized by ravenous corporations is outside of anyone’s control. Everything is to blame, so no one is to blame. We’ve built a food system that no one can do anything about other than keep making money.

> This helplessness is emphasized by the impotent responses of the federal government so far: sending minister of innovation, science, and industry François-Philippe Champagne on a global hunt for competition, like some sort of disgraced royal trying to marry off his impetuous daughter, or begging said grocery overlords to sign on to a code of conduct, which I assume will be about as effective as when I asked my university roommates to sign on to a chore wheel.

> Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe recently announced new oil and gas courses that will be offered to grade 11 and 12 students in the province to prepare students to work in those industries.

> The Saskatchewan Distance Learning Centre, which provides Kindergarten to Grade 12 online education to Saskatchewan students, partnered with Teine Energy, an Alberta-based company to develop the courses. They will include 50 hours of online theory and 50 hours of work placement.

> This training will directly benefit oil and gas companies and prepare students for careers in industries that other jurisdictions — like Québec — are phasing out.

> As global leaders and agencies call for a wind-down of the use of fossil fuels, Saskatchewan is winding up its partnership with oil and gas in education by joining hands with an industry referred to by the UN Secretary General as “godfathers of climate chaos.”

> Plant-based proteins produce, on average, 70 times less greenhouse gas emissions than an equivalent amount of beef, and use more than 150 times less land [1], making them a significantly more climate friendly choice. [...] The benefits of a transition to a plant-based food system are not only environmental, with research from The Vegan Society earlier this year finding that every one million people who switch to a vegan diet would generate an estimated £121 million of health care cost savings [2].

> The society’s manifesto asks policy makers to follow the lead of countries such as Denmark and South Korea, who are taking advantage of the opportunities presented by plant-based diets with clear plans to boost the plant-based industry and begin the transition away from animal agriculture.

> In order for the UK to follow suit, the manifesto outlines clear steps that the future government can take to support a plant-based transition. These steps include recognising the need to promote plant-based diets and food as crucial to meet net zero targets, supporting animal farmers in a transition to plant-based crop farming and setting a target to reduce meat and dairy consumption by 70% by 2030.

> We’ve seen lots of progress towards plant-based alternatives and the United Kingdom is well placed to lead the world in the growth of the plant-based food and drink sector. More people than ever are open to changing their diets, but we need change on a bigger scale, so there is an urgent need for political leadership on this issue.”

> Nothing contributes more to the affordability crisis than low-paying jobs.

> Like so much this premier does, the basic animating force appears to be a zealous desire to privatize, to hand over ever more of our province to private interests, to further cannibalize Ontario’s strong tradition of public services and public enterprises that have served the province well. Ford is following the path of former Progressive Conservative premier Mike Harris, whose needless privatizations produced some disasters for Ontario.

> The Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO), a crown corporation, has been doing a fine job selling alcohol — not exactly a risky enterprise requiring a lot of innovation — through its 677 outlets across the province. And since it is publicly owned, its healthy annual profit — $2.5 billion in 2023 — goes into the public treasury, where it pays for things like health care and education. Ontarians have long seemed satisfied with this reasonable arrangement.

> But business interests and the pro-business media have long been opposed. In an editorial this week, The Globe and Mail objected to the very existence of the LCBO, insisting that governments should raise revenue through taxes, not through competing with the private sector. Yet the Globe is quick to denounce any tax increase (certainly any tax increase that impacts corporations or rich people). Indeed, given the business community’s hostility to taxes, it would be quite a challenge to raise taxes enough to replace the $2.5 billion in revenue the government receives each year from the LCBO. Furthermore, it’s doubtful that Ontarians would want to pay higher taxes so that more profits from alcohol sales could go to highly-profitable grocery store chains.

> The power to exclude students from school indefinitely, at a principal’s total discretion, comes from a little-known provision of Ontario’s Education Act, Section 265 (1)(m). It offers principals a broad, unspecified authority to bar “detrimental” individuals from the school or classroom. There’s no limit on how long a student can be excluded, and no stipulated requirement for schools to provide alternative support. (In Layla’s case, the PDSB had offered to cover child care costs for the period of exclusion.)

> A student who is excluded under the provision is granted none of the contingencies or reprieves that accompany a suspension or expulsion. If a student in Ontario is suspended or expelled, they can find a clear roadmap for what should happen next: the process, from an appeal to an action plan to a hearing, is laid out in the Education Act. School boards are mandated to offer educational programs for both suspended and expelled students, and a student who is expelled must also be offered non-academic support, like counselling. If a student is suspended, the discipline is time-limited, and if they’re expelled, it’s the school’s duty to help find them an alternative plan.