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Canada plans to invest at least C$2.3 billion ($1.8 billion) over five years in military drones and counter-drone systems, according to its proposed 2026 federal budget, as Ottawa expands defense cooperation with Ukraine.

The funding would allow Canada’s Department of National Defense to accelerate the development, procurement, and deployment of unmanned systems and technologies designed to counter them.

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Canada and Ukraine also reached agreements on joint drone production, military assistance and air defense support.

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Wayne Gretzky says he backs Canada’s decision to bar Russia from the upcoming world junior hockey championship in Alberta.

Prime Minister Mark Carney said earlier this week Russian and Belarusian athletes will not be permitted to represent their countries on Canadian soil while the war in Ukraine continues.

The decision came after the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled Russia must be reinstated to international hockey competition, starting with the world juniors. Russian and Belarusian teams have been banned since Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Speaking at a Friday ceremony hosted by Upper Deck to rename the Hockey Hall of Fame’s resource centre in honour of his late father, Gretzky said he understands the position Carney has taken.

The Great One praised Carney for making his position clear, saying “good for him” before adding, “I think a lot of the players and the people of Canada feel the same way.”

The world juniors are scheduled to run from Dec. 26 through Jan. 5 in Edmonton and Red Deer.

Archived link

Canada plans to invest at least C$2.3 billion ($1.8 billion) over five years in military drones and counter-drone systems, according to its proposed 2026 federal budget, as Ottawa expands defense cooperation with Ukraine.

The funding would allow Canada’s Department of National Defense to accelerate the development, procurement, and deployment of unmanned systems and technologies designed to counter them.

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Canada and Ukraine also reached agreements on joint drone production, military assistance and air defense support.

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Prime Minister Mark Carney has taken advantage of an oil revenue windfall to include tens of billions of dollars in new spending in his second federal budget, which focuses on building national sovereignty and addressing the high cost of living.

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The budget - titled Masters of Our Destiny - lays the groundwork for a Canada that is less reliant on the US for trade. It also aims to tackle the stubborn affordability crisis by promising billions to end homelessness and build new housing.

The C$142bn in new spending over the next five years is thanks to better than expected revenues from oil prices bolstered by the Iran War.

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One of the largest line items in Carney's second budget is an C$11.2bn commitment over the next four years to combat homelessness.

This includes funding for supportive housing, mental health and addictions treatment.

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The government will also boost a grocery benefit that is available to low-and-modest income Canadians, which is estimated to provide C$2,570 for a family of four within one year.

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There are signs that Canadians are struggling to make ends meet. Average hourly wages have not kept up with inflation, according to Statistics Canada. Food bank usage has hit record highs.

The average price of a home in Canada has dropped around 22% in recent years, mostly due to a clamp down on immigration. But houses are still too expensive for many in Canada's major cities - namely Toronto and Vancouver.

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China has exponentially expanded its network of illegal overseas police stations, to “extend its tentacles” across a web of new community associations, according to a report by international human rights group Safeguard Defenders.

In its latest report, the Spanish non-governmental organization (NGO) identifies nearly 1,250 overseas Chinese associations which they say are fronts for suspected police centres in 91 countries.

“That network is being used to watch the diaspora. To watch what they do, what they say and to essentially police them,” says Laura Harth, Safeguard Defender’s China director in an interview with CTV News.

The new figures are also a 12-fold increase from the NGO’s findings four years earlier.

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The report, A Formula for Repression, asserts that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is exporting “its domestic system of surveillance and control to Chinese diaspora communities around the world.”

China has more than 60 million citizens living abroad.

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Safeguard Defenders says the associations are run by overseas party operatives under the direction of Beijing’s United Front Workers Department (UFWD).

President Xi Jinping calls the UFWD a “magic weapon” for monitoring and controlling its citizens, no matter where they live.

Safeguard was able to identify 1,247 community hubs that had acknowledged they were “liaison points” to Chinese police and prosecutor websites and in publications.

The NGO says any association connected to the UFWD can be mobilized to participate in its mass surveillance program.

China says it has “tens of thousands” of UFWD affiliated organizations around the world.

Instead of being chastened by the past exposure of its illegal activities, Harth, the report’s lead researcher, says China has gotten better at covering its tracks.

“They’ve learned their lesson. The public security bureaus were maybe a bit too enthusiastic. They (previously) put their own logos on walls and doors. Now post 2022, they’re more careful about (not) naming the exact associations they’re working with.”

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Researchers say that more than 10 police forces from five provinces in China are working through a vast network of Chinese Federation hubs on foreign soil.

The hubs are marketed as a place for the diaspora to connect culturally and foster business and tourism ties with various provinces and cities in China.

Safeguard Defenders lists the names of 80 regional associations linked to Chinese law enforcement. In 2022, it only found four associations that had set up police stations.

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Safeguard’s report claims that at least 18 Chinese overseas associations are participating as police monitoring stations in Canada. These associations may have multiple sub-branches in one city.

In 2022, the NGO revealed five illegal police locations in Canada.

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New Democratic Party MP, Jenny Kwan calls the allegations troubling.

“If true, it suggests that existing government responses have not been sufficient to deter these illegal activities,” Kwan wrote in an open letter addressed to Canada’s public safety minister.

“Canada must close the legal gaps, investigate these operations and ensure that people in our communities can speak, organize and exercise their democratic rights without coercion, intimidation or fear.”

Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree represents a riding in Scarborough, Ont., with a high population of ethnic Chinese constituents. He’s cautioning against jumping to conclusions.

“I can say that foreign interference of any sort is unacceptable. It’s something that we will not tolerate. With respect to these specific allegations – they are allegations and have not been investigated,” Anandasangaree said.

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Fear in ethnic communities

In Canada, the RCMP says it has investigated five alleged Chinese police stations in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. However, no charges were laid.

Uyghur-Canadian Rukiye Turdush, the executive director for Center for East Turkistan National Interest, calls the massive spike in China’s overseas police stations “shocking and scary,” but not a surprise.

She has organized protests against China’s violation of human rights in Xinjiang and says she has seen firsthand how the UFWD is suppressing dissent.

Turdush, says fellow Uyghur activists who received visas to visit relatives in China were pressured to sign documents stating support for Chinese national law.

“They come back and they’re scared …They hide and can no longer come to my organization.”

The activist is also concerned that her organization has been infiltrated by CCP operatives to launch attacks on the leadership and spy on members.

“That’s how China is dividing the community. We don’t trust each other and we don’t feel safe,” Turdush said.

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Canada-China police co-operation agreement

Safeguard Defender’s new data comes 11 months after Prime Minister Mark Carney signed a new police co-operation agreement with President Xi.

In January, the two leaders committed the RCMP and China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS) to increased co-operation in combating corruption and transnational crimes such as telecommunications fraud, cyberfraud and the trafficking of illegal synthetic drugs.

The prime minister has refused to release the text of the agreement despite calls from the Conservatives and the NDP to do so.

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Canada does not have an extradition treaty with China, but Michael Kovrig, senior advisor for the International Crisis Group, says the agreement implies that the RCMP and the MPS are co-equal policing organizations that follow similar norms and behaviours.

“That’s simply not the case. The RCMP is not setting up fake police stations to influence Canadians abroad. It’s not involved in subversive activities in foreign countries. We should be calling for the agreement to be released. We need transparency and accountability.”

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Some of the budget's other proposed spending measures for Indigenous communities — not all of them entirely new — are:

• $11 billion to help communities manage and preserve 119,000 existing housing units, and $1.7 billion to "enable faster delivery of shovel-ready housing projects"
• $6 billion over six years for Jordan’s Principle, and $575 million over five years to renew the Inuit Child First Initiative
• $5.8 billion over five years for elementary and secondary education on reserve, and $437.9 million for post-secondary education
• $2.9 billion over three years for the Non-Insured Health Benefits program
• $865.6 million in 2026-27 to respond to emergencies that occurred on reserve and an additional $446.2 million ongoing for future emergency response and recovery
• $806.7 million over five years to implement the Act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families
• $633.7 million over four years and $250.9 million ongoing to the First Nations and Inuit Policing Program.

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It has been 20 years since Canadian Huseyin Celil was detained in Uzbekistan and ultimately deported to China, where he has been jailed ever since, a legal and diplomatic saga that has bedevilled three consecutive Canadian governments.

A Uyghur political activist who grew up in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, Mr. Celil was convicted on charges of terrorism and separatism in 2007 over the staunch objections of Ottawa and human-rights groups. Beijing has always refused to recognize his Canadian citizenship, despite supporters saying Mr. Celil renounced his Chinese passport prior to his arrest.

Originally sentenced to life, in 2016 he was among a group of 11 Uyghurs who saw their sentences reduced − in his case to 20 years, starting in 2018 − after they “had confessed their crimes and shown remorse,” according to a contemporaneous Chinese state media report, which held them up as an example of a successful “deradicalization” program.

The following year, that “deradicalization” approach would be applied across Xinjiang as a whole, as hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs were processed through a sprawling network of what the Chinese government would ultimately term “vocational educational and employment training centres,” but which outside observers have denounced as re-education facilities.

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In 2021, Parliament voted unanimously to declare that China’s actions in Xinjiang constituted a genocide against the Uyghur population. The vote, along with the detention of two other Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, saw relations with China enter a deep freeze, which has only begun to thaw since Mark Carney became Prime Minister.

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With so much uncertainty surrounding the case − [it is not even known] if Mr. Celil was still alive − [his supporters] were able to track him down to a prison in Xinjiang, where a member of the staff appeared to confirm he was still being held.

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Conservative MP Garnett Genuis, a long-time critic of consecutive Liberal governments’ approach to China and an advocate for Mr. Celil, said he has received “no additional information” about what Ottawa is doing on his behalf.

“Our office is in the process of submitting a written question to the Canadian government on his case, identifying the Carney government’s intended approach going forward,” Mr. Genuis said.

“Unfortunately, the government’s response to this case does not match the intensity of their response to the detention of the Two Michaels. My view is that a Canadian is a Canadian, and the government should be fully and sharply engaged to secure Mr. Celil’s release.”

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If that happened, it would mean Canadian students would have access to grants and scholarships that would allow them to study in an EU country. It could also facilitate more transatlantic co-operation and research partnerships. That in turn could lead to economic growth, which is one reason why Canada and the EU are coming together in the first place.

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Archived link

It has been 20 years since Canadian Huseyin Celil was detained in Uzbekistan and ultimately deported to China, where he has been jailed ever since, a legal and diplomatic saga that has bedevilled three consecutive Canadian governments.

A Uyghur political activist who grew up in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, Mr. Celil was convicted on charges of terrorism and separatism in 2007 over the staunch objections of Ottawa and human-rights groups. Beijing has always refused to recognize his Canadian citizenship, despite supporters saying Mr. Celil renounced his Chinese passport prior to his arrest.

Originally sentenced to life, in 2016 he was among a group of 11 Uyghurs who saw their sentences reduced − in his case to 20 years, starting in 2018 − after they “had confessed their crimes and shown remorse,” according to a contemporaneous Chinese state media report, which held them up as an example of a successful “deradicalization” program.

The following year, that “deradicalization” approach would be applied across Xinjiang as a whole, as hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs were processed through a sprawling network of what the Chinese government would ultimately term “vocational educational and employment training centres,” but which outside observers have denounced as re-education facilities.

...

In 2021, Parliament voted unanimously to declare that China’s actions in Xinjiang constituted a genocide against the Uyghur population. The vote, along with the detention of two other Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, saw relations with China enter a deep freeze, which has only begun to thaw since Mark Carney became Prime Minister.

...

With so much uncertainty surrounding the case − [it is not even known] if Mr. Celil was still alive − [his supporters] were able to track him down to a prison in Xinjiang, where a member of the staff appeared to confirm he was still being held.

...

Conservative MP Garnett Genuis, a long-time critic of consecutive Liberal governments’ approach to China and an advocate for Mr. Celil, said he has received “no additional information” about what Ottawa is doing on his behalf.

“Our office is in the process of submitting a written question to the Canadian government on his case, identifying the Carney government’s intended approach going forward,” Mr. Genuis said.

“Unfortunately, the government’s response to this case does not match the intensity of their response to the detention of the Two Michaels. My view is that a Canadian is a Canadian, and the government should be fully and sharply engaged to secure Mr. Celil’s release.”

Archived link

It has been 20 years since Canadian Huseyin Celil was detained in Uzbekistan and ultimately deported to China, where he has been jailed ever since, a legal and diplomatic saga that has bedevilled three consecutive Canadian governments.

A Uyghur political activist who grew up in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, Mr. Celil was convicted on charges of terrorism and separatism in 2007 over the staunch objections of Ottawa and human-rights groups. Beijing has always refused to recognize his Canadian citizenship, despite supporters saying Mr. Celil renounced his Chinese passport prior to his arrest.

Originally sentenced to life, in 2016 he was among a group of 11 Uyghurs who saw their sentences reduced − in his case to 20 years, starting in 2018 − after they “had confessed their crimes and shown remorse,” according to a contemporaneous Chinese state media report, which held them up as an example of a successful “deradicalization” program.

The following year, that “deradicalization” approach would be applied across Xinjiang as a whole, as hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs were processed through a sprawling network of what the Chinese government would ultimately term “vocational educational and employment training centres,” but which outside observers have denounced as re-education facilities.

...

In 2021, Parliament voted unanimously to declare that China’s actions in Xinjiang constituted a genocide against the Uyghur population. The vote, along with the detention of two other Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, saw relations with China enter a deep freeze, which has only begun to thaw since Mark Carney became Prime Minister.

...

With so much uncertainty surrounding the case − [it is not even known] if Mr. Celil was still alive − [his supporters] were able to track him down to a prison in Xinjiang, where a member of the staff appeared to confirm he was still being held.

...

Conservative MP Garnett Genuis, a long-time critic of consecutive Liberal governments’ approach to China and an advocate for Mr. Celil, said he has received “no additional information” about what Ottawa is doing on his behalf.

“Our office is in the process of submitting a written question to the Canadian government on his case, identifying the Carney government’s intended approach going forward,” Mr. Genuis said.

“Unfortunately, the government’s response to this case does not match the intensity of their response to the detention of the Two Michaels. My view is that a Canadian is a Canadian, and the government should be fully and sharply engaged to secure Mr. Celil’s release.”

Archived link

It has been 20 years since Canadian Huseyin Celil was detained in Uzbekistan and ultimately deported to China, where he has been jailed ever since, a legal and diplomatic saga that has bedevilled three consecutive Canadian governments.

A Uyghur political activist who grew up in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, Mr. Celil was convicted on charges of terrorism and separatism in 2007 over the staunch objections of Ottawa and human-rights groups. Beijing has always refused to recognize his Canadian citizenship, despite supporters saying Mr. Celil renounced his Chinese passport prior to his arrest.

Originally sentenced to life, in 2016 he was among a group of 11 Uyghurs who saw their sentences reduced − in his case to 20 years, starting in 2018 − after they “had confessed their crimes and shown remorse,” according to a contemporaneous Chinese state media report, which held them up as an example of a successful “deradicalization” program.

The following year, that “deradicalization” approach would be applied across Xinjiang as a whole, as hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs were processed through a sprawling network of what the Chinese government would ultimately term “vocational educational and employment training centres,” but which outside observers have denounced as re-education facilities.

...

In 2021, Parliament voted unanimously to declare that China’s actions in Xinjiang constituted a genocide against the Uyghur population. The vote, along with the detention of two other Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, saw relations with China enter a deep freeze, which has only begun to thaw since Mark Carney became Prime Minister.

...

With so much uncertainty surrounding the case − [it is not even known] if Mr. Celil was still alive − [his supporters] were able to track him down to a prison in Xinjiang, where a member of the staff appeared to confirm he was still being held.

...

Conservative MP Garnett Genuis, a long-time critic of consecutive Liberal governments’ approach to China and an advocate for Mr. Celil, said he has received “no additional information” about what Ottawa is doing on his behalf.

“Our office is in the process of submitting a written question to the Canadian government on his case, identifying the Carney government’s intended approach going forward,” Mr. Genuis said.

“Unfortunately, the government’s response to this case does not match the intensity of their response to the detention of the Two Michaels. My view is that a Canadian is a Canadian, and the government should be fully and sharply engaged to secure Mr. Celil’s release.”

Canada and Europe have announced a new alliance of like-minded nations to serve as both a “protective canopy under which our citizens can thrive” and a powerful hedge against the unpredictable nature of geopolitics, while welcoming other countries to join.

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Carney pointed to a planned merger between the Canadian artificial intelligence company Cohere Inc and Germany’s Aleph Alpha GmbH as a step to lessening reliance on American AI giants. The tie-up will see the newly formed company have dual headquarters in Berlin and Toronto, and Canada’s federal government has announced a stake in Cohere worth up to C$1.6bn.

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Brussels and Ottawa also announced an agreement on Friday that would bringing Canada into Europe’s supercomputing network, giving Canadian access to European machines to train AI models.

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In addition to lofty promises of helping to reshape the global order, or giving safe harbour to like-minded nations looking to weather uncertainty, Canadian and EU leaders also pitched their new, deeper relationship as one that addressed key sources of anxiety for residents, including the cost of living.

“When trade becomes a tool of economic pressure, it’s the families that pay the price, from the supermarket shelf to the cost of a new car,” Von der Leyen said, noting that previously trusted trusted suppliers of energy, critical minerals or semiconductors “are increasingly turned into instruments of pressure”.

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Edit:

Canada and the EU announced more than twenty new measures that will create greater affordability, opportunity, and sovereignty on both sides of the Atlantic and launched negotiations to deliver multiple others.

• Keep prices fair when Canadians shop. Canada and the EU concluded negotiations toward a new Canada-EU Competition Agreement to enable Canadian and European authorities to crack down on anti-competitive practices by companies operating on both sides of the Atlantic.

Over the coming months, Canada and the EU will negotiate:

• Faster payment systems. We will support connecting Canada and the EU's instant payment systems to enable Canadians to send money to people and businesses in the EU seamlessly.
• More choice in banking and insurance. Canada and the EU will launch a Joint Working Group to explore opening their markets further to each other's banks, insurers and fintech companies.

To create more opportunities for Canadian students, researchers, and entrepreneurs, today Canada and the EU announced that we will:

• Give Canadian scientists access to some of the world's most powerful supercomputers. Canada has joined the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking. This initiative will give Canadian researchers, innovators and businesses access to JUPITER, one of the world's most powerful supercomputers. It will also accelerate collaboration on AI and research – speeding up discovery.
• Make it simpler for Canadian businesses to sell online across Europe. We concluded a new Canada-EU Digital Trade Agreement that will make it easier for Canadian businesses to sell goods and services online across Europe by updating digital trade rules and making cross-border transactions simpler.

[You'll find much more at Newswire.ca.]

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