breakfastmtn

Up to $5,000 business or lease incentives coming for EVs

The government is unveiling its new national automotive strategy aimed at protecting Canada’s auto sector and jobs in the face the U.S. President Donald Trump's desire to move vehicle production to the U.S. Ottawa is also trying to jump-start the country's battery-powered vehicle industry.

Carney expects his new emissions system will lead to 75 per cent of new cars sold in Canada being electric by 2035 — an ambitious goal, but still less than the previous mandate that Carney is ditching.

. . .

Carney announced the Liberal government is also launching a new $2.3-billion program to offer consumers and businesses purchase or lease incentives of up to $5,000 for EVs and up to $2,500 for plug-in hybrids.

Plug-in vehicles must be under $50,000 to qualify and be made by countries Canada has free trade agreements with, which would exclude any vehicles made in China. The price cap will not apply to Canadian-made vehicles.

A BC human rights inquiry also found that the police board ‘abdicated its legal responsibility’ when investigating complaints.

An inquiry by B.C.’s Office of the Human Rights Commissioner has found that news media faced numerous problems accessing the scene of a decampment operation on April 5 and 6 in 2023, despite the Vancouver Police Department’s continued claim that there were no restrictions.

The actions police took to bar media from entering a two-block stretch of East Hastings Street during the forced removal of numerous tents set up by homeless people was “not in accordance with human rights standards,” the inquiry’s final report found. That in turn affected the rights of the vulnerable unhoused people living in the encampment, the report found.

“Human rights advocates and the press must be permitted to work without unreasonable interference, to gather and distribute information about incidents of forced eviction in order to protect the rights of unhoused people,” Kasari Govender, B.C.’s current human rights commissioner, said during a Wednesday press conference.

“As noted by one resident after his belongings were destroyed during an encampment eviction in Prince George, he said: ‘I want the court in this city to know we are people and we exist. We just want to survive and be treated like human beings.’”

A year into President Trump’s second term, his threats, retreats, twists and turns appear to be wearing on allies and adversaries.

President Trump, who considers himself a master deal maker, has never made any secret of his belief that the secret to winning at negotiation is to keep the other side off balance.

But a year into his second term, his act is starting to wear on both allies and adversaries, some of whom are starting to view him as so mercurial and unreliable that they appear willing to consider waiting him out or turning away from him rather than enduring the abrupt starts, stops and humiliations that can accompany engaging with him.

In foreign policy, tariffs, immigration and his pressure campaign on universities, Mr. Trump’s threats, retreats, twists and turns have left negotiating partners feeling at times that they are being used to score political points and that there is little purpose to engaging on substance when his moods and demands can shift in an instant.

“What Trump is identifying as unpredictability is actually anxiety about his electoral prospects,” said Timothy L. O’Brien, a biographer of Mr. Trump.

MBFC
Archive

Scrutiny of university classrooms is being formalized, with new laws requiring professors to post syllabuses and tip lines for students to complain.

College professors once taught free from political interference, with mostly their students and colleagues privy to their lectures and book assignments. Now, they are being watched by state officials, senior administrators and students themselves.

. . .

And several states, including Texas, Ohio and Florida, have created laws requiring professors to publicly post their course outlines in searchable databases.

The increased oversight of professors comes as conservatives expand their movement to curb what they say is a liberal tilt in university classrooms. In the last couple of years, they have found sympathetic ears in state legislatures with the power to pressure schools, and their efforts have gained momentum as the Trump administration has made overhauling the politics and culture on campuses a focus.

But all of this, some professors and free-expression groups say, is leading to a wave of censorship and self-censorship that they argue is curbing academic freedom and learning.

MBFC
Archive

About 2,000 personnel will be left in Minnesota, where President Trump’s immigration crackdown has generated outrage.

Tom Homan, the White House border czar, said on Wednesday that the federal government would immediately withdraw 700 law enforcement officers from Minneapolis, scaling down the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the area.

The change came after the Trump administration sent thousands of federal officers and agents to Minnesota, a deployment that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said was the agency’s “largest operation to date.” About 2,000 officers and agents would be left in the state, Mr. Homan said.

. . .

State and local officials said the drawdown was welcome but did not go far enough. Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis, a Democrat, said in a statement that the reduction in officers was “a step in the right direction” but that 2,000 federal officers in the region was still “not de-escalation.”

MBFC
Archive

President Trump and the White House regularly circulate imagery that has been manipulated by A.I. But the photo of Nekima Levy Armstrong was different.

When Nekima Levy Armstrong was transported from the federal courthouse in St. Paul, Minn., to the Sherburne County Jail with three layers of shackles on her body — around her wrists, waist and feet — it was the closest, she said, that she had ever felt to slavery.

Still, she walked calmly, her face resolute, her head held high.

But if you saw a photograph that the White House disseminated of Ms. Levy Armstrong, who was arrested for protesting at a church service, you would not know it.

The White House posted a manipulated photo of her arrest to its official social media account, depicting Ms. Levy Armstrong, a civil rights attorney and activist, as hysterical — tears streaming down her face, her hair disheveled, appearing to cry out in despair. “ARRESTED” was emblazoned across the photo, along with a misleading description of Ms. Levy Armstrong as a “far-left agitator” who was “orchestrating church riots in Minnesota.”

. . .

The photograph of Ms. Levy Armstrong [. . .] ​h​as the hallmarks of brazen disinformation from the top level of government: smearing and humiliating one citizen in order to influence public opinion, while sending a warning to other critics to beware of crossing the administration. And it adds a new, social media-era dimension to Mr. Trump’s long record of distortions and lies in the service of his policies and political standing.

MBFC
Archive

Lake Mead is two-thirds empty. Lake Powell is even emptier.

Not for the first time, the seven Western states that rely on the Colorado River are fighting over how to keep these reservoirs from crashing — an event that could spur water shortages from Denver to Las Vegas to Los Angeles.

The tens of millions of people who rely on the Colorado River have weathered such crises before, even amid a stubborn quarter-century megadrought fueled by climate change. The states have always struck deals to use less water, overcoming their political differences to avert “dead pool” at Mead and Powell, meaning that water could no longer flow downstream.

This time, a deal may not be possible. And it’s clear who’s to blame.

MBFC
Archive

Analyst warns Eby's language could push some 'separatist-curious' Albertans to become fully separatist

B.C. Premier David Eby is not backing down after calling the Alberta separatist movement seeking foreign assistance an act of treason — but one analyst is warning against using such serious language during a time where Canada needs to stand united.

Eby’s comments last week came amid meetings with fellow Canadian leaders in Ottawa, in response to reports that members of U.S. President Donald Trump's administration have met with members of the Alberta Prosperity Project, a group pushing for Alberta to become independent.

The group is seeking a $500-billion US line of credit from the U.S. Treasury to help bankroll the new country if they are successful in a referendum. An official with the U.S. State Department confirmed the meetings, but said "no commitments were made."

"To go to a foreign country and to ask for assistance in breaking up Canada, there's an old-fashioned word for that, and that word is treason," Eby said last Thursday.

In an interview on CBC’s The Early Edition on Monday, the premier doubled down on his comments.

One person was killed and four others were injured in Kyiv as Russia launched a mass attack on the capital overnight Jan. 24, officials said.

Explosions were first heard at 1:20 a.m. local time, according to Kyiv Independent journalists on the ground, who continued to report blasts throughout the night, including the interception of a ballistic missile.

The Ukrainian Air Force tallied 396 aerial weapons, including 21 missiles and 375 drones. The Air Force mentioned hypersonic "Tsirkon" missiles, ballistic Iskander missiles and Kh-22/Kh-32 cruise missiles.

The attacks continued Russia's targeting of Ukraine's energy infrastructure, which has resulted in an ongoing winter energy crisis following similar mass attacks the nights of Jan. 9 and Jan. 20.

MBFC
Archive

The National Institutes of Health failed to protect brain scans that an international group of fringe researchers used to argue for the intellectual superiority of white people.

Genetic researchers were seeking children for an ambitious, federally funded project to track brain development — a study that they told families could yield invaluable discoveries about DNA’s impact on behavior and disease.

They also promised that the children’s sensitive data would be closely guarded in the decade-long study, which got underway in 2015. Promotional materials included a cartoon of a Black child saying it felt good knowing that “scientists are taking steps to keep my information safe.”

The scientists did not keep it safe.

A group of fringe researchers thwarted safeguards at the National Institutes of Health and gained access to data from thousands of children. The researchers have used it to produce at least 16 papers purporting to find biological evidence for differences in intelligence between races, ranking ethnicities by I.Q. scores and suggesting Black people earn less because they are not very smart.

MBFC
Archive

A greatcoat worn by the senior US border patrol official Gregory Bovino, who has spearheaded aggressive immigration operations across the country, has raised eyebrows in German media with some commentators saying it resembled a fascist aesthetic.

Bovino has been an increasingly recognisable figure during the raids in Minneapolis for the brass-buttoned, calf-length olive green coat, which is unlike the fatigues and body armor worn by many of the federal agents.

Along with his close-shorn haircut, the media organization Der Spiegel suggested in a video feature that Bovino’s look recalled that of a Nazi officer.

MBFC
Archive

President Trump’s faith in his ability to wring concessions by taking maximalist positions was on full display this week. So were the costs, as he splintered NATO and then undercut his credibility by climbing down from his threats.

Even by President Trump’s own mercurial standards, his whipsawing over the past few weeks on Greenland — insisting on the largest land acquisition in American history and then dropping it without explanation, threatening allies and then reversing himself — was a remarkable and revealing exercise in a new era of American coercive diplomacy.

Mr. Trump began, as always, with a maximalist demand. This time, it was that a small European power, an ally that had shed blood for the United States in Afghanistan and beyond, turn over a vast and icy territory for the sake of U.S. national security. The president was clearly testing the boundaries of the Atlantic alliance, arguing that handing over the land was a small price for lesser powers to pay for continued American protection.

. . .

But this week Mr. Trump also discovered the limits of his coercive powers. After he threatened a wave of new tariffs, markets fell abruptly, which always seizes his attention. Allies objected, this time openly. And by the time the president returned to Washington on Thursday night, it was clear that he had left considerable damage to the Western alliance in his wake.

MBFC
Archive