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Smith will need more than tears to mask latest separation dodge

CALGARY—Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s crocodile tears are nauseating as she tries to dodge accountability for the political trap she has set for herself.

In case you missed it, last week, a political earthquake ruptured the United Conservative Party’s (UCP) dominance of the Alberta landscape. On Sept. 14, the provincial riding of Calgary–Shaw served Smith’s UCP government a significant provincial byelection defeat. Alberta NDP candidate Kyle Campbell edged out UCP candidate Mike Derry by 582 votes. The riding is a right-wing bastion, only changing hands to the NDP once in 2015 since it was formed in 1986. Its last UCP MLA, former environment minister Rebecca Schulz, resigned this past January. In 2019, the NDP lost this riding by 40 points. The rot in the UCP is evident.

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Immediately, one would be correct to assume this is a bellwether for the quasi-separation vote slated to take place on Oct. 19. The Globe and Mail reports that “political experts described the looming provincial referendum on independence as an albatross around the government’s neck that turned the by-election into a protest vote.”

In his interview with CTV News, Campbell confirmed hearing similar sentiments while door-knocking, namely “that the looming vote on whether Alberta should remain in Canada or if the province should move forward with a binding referendum on whether to separate from the country was another prominent concern for voters.”

Even Stevie Wonder can see that Smith has been canoodling with separatism as a double agent for American interests in the province under the guise of diplomacy. Earlier this month, she vacationed in Tennessee, meeting with the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce and other local groups. As she said to CBC News, travelling to Tennessee was “a good time to discuss leveraging Calgary’s assets.” Evidently, that framing was not met with confidence from the voters of Calgary–Shaw.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith teared up while speaking about Ottawa-Alberta relations during a Sept. 19 virtual conference on the province’s upcoming referendum. Screenshots courtesy of CBC News

Smith has been playing fast and loose with separation, which ended up with her straddling the proverbial fence. Now that she’s split her pants, she wants to cry, elicit sympathy, and absolve herself of any accountability for her actions. One would think she knew how to read the room, especially since Prime Minister Mark Carney shut down trade negotiations with the United States after the latter demanded a pound of flesh with a side of sovereignty. Her manufactured emotions that were on display during a Sept. 19 virtual appearance are an example of “white woman tears,” which conveniently flow when white women are aggressors of a conflict that backfires on them, making themselves out to be the victims. It’s the same thing Ed Sheeran did when he was exposed for being a Judas.

It also evoked the memory of Hillary Clinton’s white woman tears in 2007 when she cried after losing to Barack Obama in Iowa in the Democratic primary for the 2008 U.S. presidential election. She was languishing in the polls until she turned on the waterworks, and next thing you knew, she won. The Guardian recalled: “The emotional moment in a café on the eve of Tuesday’s poll was widely credited yesterday for bringing female voters back to the Clinton fold after their defection in the Iowa caucuses last week. Their strong support, as well as a surge for Clinton from traditional Democratic voters in the large towns of New Hampshire, propelled her to victory when polls were forecasting a double-digit win for Obama.” The only problem for Clinton was that those tears didn’t propel her victory for long. The truth is, you can only use those once, and after that, people see through the manipulation.

And that’s all they were on Smith’s part—manipulation. Those of us in this country with some level of discernment have seen through her remain-in-Canada act, and now she needs to pivot; the tears act as a hinge for that pivot.

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This is how I can tell that we were being conditioned: instead of taking accountability for the fact that she might be leading her party towards a political buzzsaw with this referendum vote, she decided to double down by attacking immigrants. She tweeted: “Temporary residents contribute about $150-million to our tax base annually, yet the cost to provide services for them is over $1-billion. It’s simply not fair to Alberta taxpayers.” She provides zero sources for these numbers, yet we are supposed to take them as facts. Blaming immigrants or minorities of some kind are where the conservatives naturally turn when things are going wrong for them. This displacement of blame allows Smith to refocus attention in an attempt to obscure the fact that she has been privatizing Alberta health care and education throughout her premiership, thereby defunding public services for private interests.

Be careful of politicians who have shown themselves incapable of empathy suddenly growing a heart. They are not the Tin Man on the Yellow Brick Road to meet the Wizard of Oz. They are merely trying to capitalize on your emotions to manipulate how you view them.

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Erica sits down with Mo Amir, host of This is Vancolour, to speak about what the hell is going on in the crazy that is B.C. politics, particularly the disintegration of the B.C. Conservatives. We also talk about how Indigenous land rights set the stage for the leopards to eat their faces.

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Arday, 41, was a Cambridge professor—the youngest Black person to hold that title in the university’s history—who was found dead at his London, U.K., home on Aug. 14 amid weeks of harassment by the university, media, and the public following accusations of plagiarism. In July, the allegations were picked up by right-wing mainstream British news outlets, including The Telegraph, which published parts of the so-called academic plagiarism. “Notwithstanding the two universities’ insistence that Prof. Arday’s work has been checked and cleared, several respected academics have urged them to look again arguing that computer programs designed to detect copying might have missed instances in which a few words have been changed or a sentence has been paraphrased.” The professor who The Telegraph cited as making accusations against Arday—David Harris from Plymouth Marjon University—was himself temporarily stripped of his emeritus title for his “controversial” “self-published research.” The controversial topic was critical race theory, which was a made-up crisis designed to kick Black people out of privileged spaces. In addition, “self-published” research means it’s not peer-reviewed, and, therefore, does not rise to the level of quality that a peer-reviewed academic journal requires. But The Telegraph didn’t let that stop them.

As reported by the BBC, academic Nathan Cofnas—”a U.S. researcher whose role at a Cambridge college was terminated” after posting anti-Black, racist rhetoric—was instrumental in the latest round of targeted harassment against Arday. According to The Observer, “In February 2024, [Cofnas] published a post on Substack in which he claimed that race is linked to intelligence and that without DEI initiatives there would be no Black academics at Harvard and that ‘under a colour-blind system’ Black people ‘would disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sport and entertainment.’ He called for a ‘revolution’ against the ‘DEI devil’ and for people to ‘accept that talent is not distributed equally within or across groups.’”

In March of that year, students at Cambridge organized petitions and protests, and the university’s Emmanuel College received 58 complaints about Cofnas, including that he was “endorsing the logic of a eugenicist.” In April 2024, Cofnas was fired, which clearly fomented a lot of resentment from the junior research associate.

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And thus, the campaign of targeted harassment began, mainly on the word of two ostracized academics whose politics and ideologies were brought to the mainstream through a right-wing publication with zero scrutiny of—or even curiosity about—the accusers. Newscord, an anti-bias media watchdog, recorded 249 articles about Arday in 22 days: “Jason Arday told the press he was at the limits of what anyone should endure. It answered with 188 more articles. He is dead at 41.”

Ironically, in a video interview, Cofnas acknowledged that plagiarism was normal in academia, but that Arday was special: “And he had such an exalted position that the mismatch between the quality and the prestige was so enormous that there was a hook for a story. That was what was special about him. Not that he’s a fraud, not that he’s a worthless scholar. It’s that there was a story. There was a basis for a news story that would capture people’s attention.”

Arday was used by dishonest academics and racist right-wing mainstream news media in the United Kingdom to rewrite his story to one where a fraudulent Black man was smart enough to get a prominent position in an elite white institution by subterfuge, yet too stupid to hold said position—and in between, there’s diversity, equity and inclusion practices that co-signed the swindle. This framing is riddled with Jim Crow-era, minstrel show concepts of Black people that have once again become mainstream in the West.

In 2023, the University of Cambridge’s paper, Varsity, wrote about associate professor William O’Reilly, who is white: “More than 12 pages of an article published under O’Reilly’s name had been lifted almost word for word from two essays by one of his students.” The Financial Times reported that “the complaint of plagiarism had been upheld by a university tribunal, but that the professor would keep his job,” and that decision “to leave O’Reilly in post casts doubt on the internal disciplinary processes of Cambridge, which rely on academics judging their peers.”

Meanwhile, Arday had already been investigated for plagiarism arising from Harris’ complaint, and nothing was found. A new investigation was launched on the word of Cofnas. White people have the power to ruin the lives of Black people through rumours and innuendo, regardless of ulterior motive. That is white supremacy.

Erica Ifill is host of the Bad+Bitchy podcast.

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Unfortunately, this year, FIFA and Canadian governments have priced out regular people from this tournament in the middle of an affordability crisis. This tournament will end up being the most expensive in history for fans.

In Canada, the tournament will be hosted by Vancouver and Toronto, covering 13 games from the expanded participation format, costing Canadian taxpayers at least $1-billion, as reported by CBC News. World Cup bids are made a decade in advance, but the Toronto spending plan that estimated $30-million to $45-million in costs has ballooned ten-fold to approximately $380-million, on the low end. For Vancouver, the costs began at $240-million and increased to $624-million; the feds have kicked in $220-million to both cities.

When politicians tell us there’s no money for social services, they’re lying to us.

FIFA would probably say that the cost will be recouped by the number of visitors to host cities where they will increase economic activity by patronizing local businesses—or so prevailing wisdom suggests. But that wisdom may not materialize. The British Columbia government expects 350,000 fans to make the pilgrimage; however, the CBC reported that “hotel bookings in Vancouver were actually down 20 per cent in June compared to the year prior.” Odd as that may seem, it has been shown that hotels tried to gouge incoming guests, who eventually ghosted them. Toronto Metropolitan University’s Institute for Hospitality and Tourism Research found an 113-per-cent increase in the price of rooms during the tournament, according to the CBC.

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FIFA’s contract, obtained by Breaker News, stipulates that there needs to be a “controlled area” around the venues. In Vancouver, the games will be played at B.C. Place, which is downtown. FIFA also mandated a beautification stipulation around the city to ensure attractiveness of the area, which includes the Downtown Eastside, which is known for its unhoused and drug-addicted communities. Already there is a “silent, veiled displacement occurring,” as Jenna Breuer of the Atira Women’s Resource Society told Vancouver is Awesome. The city gave Atira a parsimonious sum of $35,000 to displace this vulnerable population. This means effectively removing what few supports they have.

In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani constructed a lottery that is giving away 1,000 tickets for $50 each, plus free round-trip bus transportation. In a speech, Mamdani highlighted the tournament’s working-class roots: “We are making sure that working people will not be priced out of the game that they helped to create.” Neither Vancouver nor Toronto have negotiated with FIFA on ticket prices.

FIFA could’ve potentially shot itself in the foot with ticket prices after introducing dynamic pricing. In this paper, I wrote about this method of cheating the consumer a few weeks ago: “Dynamic pricing is the practice of maximizing revenue by aligning your willingness to pay with the price of the goods and services on offer.” And now they have algorithms to ensure their exploitation leaves nothing on the table for working people.

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In April, Canada’s opening group stage match on June 12 against Bosnia and Herzegovina was on sale for $3,125. Currently, on StubHub, the lowest price is $1,230 (category 4). This is obscene for a World Cup ticket price. The opening group stage match in category 4 in Qatar in 2022 was $55; subsequent group stage matches were $11, as documented by NBC News.

There’s also a resale market, from which FIFA takes 15 per cent off the top. They are expected to take in US$13-billion; none of the sponsorship and advertising money goes to the host cities, it is retained by FIFA.

Footy has always been a sport of—and played by—the working class. What we are seeing is not only the greed and graft of FIFA—which, if you’re a true football fan, is always expected—but the disappearance of yet another event that has served regular people from all over the world. We are being priced out of our leisurely activities, events, and experiences that connect people.

Erica Ifill is host of the Bad+Bitchy podcast.

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Bill C-22 reveals a troubling trend with the Carney government

Carney’s Liberals have left a lot to be defined through the undemocratic regulatory process. The plan is to be vague when shoving it down our throats via Parliament.

CALGARY—The data scandal the Alberta separatists have constructed is nothing compared to what Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals have in store for us.

Behind the bright lights of separation lies the nefariousness of Bill C-22, An Act Respecting Lawful Access. Its abominable creation came from the failure of Bill C-2, a bill about which I wrote in The Guardian last year. This iteration is no better than its predecessor. The bill is currently at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security (SECU) where they are studying its potential effects.

What this legislation does is force electronic service providers to build and maintain systems that store the metadata of the providers’ customers for up to one year, regardless of whether that person is under investigation. According to the CBC, Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree likened these new requirements to accessing an office cabinet: “like a filing cabinet, where certain types of information would be available with legal authorization.” The legislation would provide the legal authorization, which requires very little evidence and little judicial oversight. This is circular reasoning.

Let’s be clear on what metadata is and how accessing it without your knowledge is problematic. Metadata is information about your data. For example, when you take a video, the metadata that is stored is information about that video: location, time, type of camera used, duration, file size, etc. While this is tantalizing information, the real grandaddy of internet tracking is the internet protocol address, or the IP address, which is a unique numerical identifier assigned to every device that is connected to a network. Not only does it identify the device, it identifies the location of the device. As the digital rights advocacy group, Electronic Frontier Foundation, clarified: “Metadata can reveal a lot about who you communicate with, where you go, and when you do so.” It can also reveal online behaviour. For example, frequent visits to a women’s health centre in under a year for a woman under the age of 40 could indicate a pregnancy; transgender people could be tracked for accessing gender care. This is putting vulnerable people at risk, in addition to the public at large.

Saving metadata on all internet users in the country introduces a system vulnerability by introducing new access points between the user and the network. As the Internet Society noted in its brief to SECU: “There is no way to provide backdoor access to encrypted data and communications without compromising the privacy and security of millions of law-abiding citizens.” There are new artificial intelligence systems that can scan for these vulnerabilities. A breach is inevitable, and it will make the Elections Alberta data breach look like an autocorrect mistake. Knowing this, the Carney government’s solution is to redefine what a system vulnerability is, rather than dealing with the vulnerability as is. And while the government tells us it’s protecting Canadians with this legislation, it could expose the public to foreign interference, particularly Sikh Canadians, Iranian Canadians, and Chinese Canadians.

Carney’s Liberals have left a lot to be defined through the undemocratic regulatory process. The plan is to be vague when shoving it down our throats via Parliament, while solidifying the parameters and details through the governor-in-council, which is an appointed position. Sounds like a clever way to get around that pesky thing called democracy and public accountability. There were no public consultations conducted. There were private consultations, however, led by Murray Rankin, British Columbia’s former minister of Indigenous relations and reconciliation, which Anandasangaree has refused to share with the SECU when asked to do so. I have reached out to the chair and vice-chair, MPs Jean-Yves Duclos and Frank Caputo, respectively, as to why they are not calling civil organizations to testify at committee, however they have failed to respond by the time of writing.

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Section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects a reasonable expectation of privacy and the right of freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. Currently, as stated by Robert Diab, professor of law at Thompson Rivers University: “At the moment police obtain the name and street address of someone linked to an online account by obtaining a warrant … on probable grounds to believe an offence has been committed.” In R. v Bykovets (2024), the Supreme Court of Canada decided that “IP addresses attract a reasonable expectation of privacy, and thus a request by the police for an IP address is a search under section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Charter) requiring prior judicial authorization.” It is a higher standard for search and seizure than what appears in the Department of Justice’s Charter statement for Bill C-22. The statement lays out the threshold for searches as “reasonable grounds to suspect,” claiming that the “subscriber information sought does not by itself constitute particularly sensitive information, since it is limited to information that identifies clients and services, and does not include the contents of communications.” Justice Minister Sean Fraser, who co-sponsored the legislation, obviously is not bothered about erring on the side of, well, justice. He and his department also know that by the time a challenge is seen by the Supreme Court, the apparatus would’ve been built and paid for, and Pandora’s Box would’ve been gaping open for some time.

The Ministerial Orders section of C-22 is the least democratic, and gives us insight into the authoritative brush with which the Carney government paints legislation and jurisprudence. Under Section 7, “the Minister may make an order with respect to an electronic service provider … whether or not the provider is a core provider.” The digital rights advocacy network OpenMedia raises the alarm on these secret orders: “Section 15 prohibits the provider—and any person acting on its behalf—from disclosing the existence of the order, the information it contains, the information the Minister relied on, or the fact that the provider is subject to it.” Secret orders? With this bill, we’re no better than Russia.

In addition, the minister of public safety can circumvent the judiciary and make a request for this information where the only check on that power is the intelligence commissioner. Carney’s government will tell us that the intelligence officer would be a retired federal judge who could reject the order; however, what they won’t advertise is the intelligence officer is appointed by the prime minister.

Metadata capture is mass surveillance. Signal, an encryption app, is threatening to leave Canada if this bill is passed, and that will severely negatively impact journalists and activists, but that’s the point of mass surveillance. We won’t know whether some of these investigations would be political in nature, target specific groups, or expose diasporic communities because these investigative powers will be delivered in secret without proper judicial oversight. In addition, foreign governments can also make requests and access this surveillance apparatus.

This bill is so bad, the Americans hate it, even though they are the ones who pushed for this in the first place. The Globe and Mail reported that “his [Anandasangaree’s] department’s lawful-access bill could weaken both countries’ collective defences against hackers, harm U.S. national security and ‘fracture cybersecurity norms.’” C-22 has become an embarrassment for this government, and reveals a troubling trend with Carney’s government: they will happily crush our civil rights to consolidate their power. You never know a government until it has majority powers.

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The Separatist Call is Coming from Inside the House

What is crystal clear is conservatives flirted with far-right grievances to gain political power only for those monsters of Confederation to use their access to undermine federalism.

CALGARY—To continue last week’s “Canada is giving corruption vibes” theme, one should never leave out the grift that is Alberta separatism. And we have former Alberta premier Jason Kenney to thank for this iteration of the province’s grievances that have turned into a full-fledged attempt at sovereignty.

On April 30, independent journalist Jeremy Appel broke a story of a separatist group led by David Parker, whose Centurion Project has been accused of accessing Elections Alberta’s voter registration database. As reported by Appel in The Orchard, Elections Alberta investigator Ryan Tebb said that “the elections watchdog ‘has reason to believe’ that the organization has built a ‘database’ of voters from the electors list, and will be commencing an investigation.” The RCMP has opened a separate investigation, and The Globe and Mail has since confirmed: “Elections Alberta on Thursday alleged that a separatist organization known as the Centurion Project was using the Republican Party of Alberta’s copy of the list of electors without authorization.” So now we have a group of renegades, whose loyalty is to their own grievances, with a database of Alberta voters’ personal information. Fantastic.

Let me take you back to 2019 when Kenney won the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta and merged it with the Wild Rose Party (led at one point by current Alberta Premier Danielle Smith) to create the United Conservative Party (UCP). As detailed in a paper from York University, Taking Alberta Back: Faith, Fuel and Freedom on the Canadian Far Right, Kenney beat the Alberta NDP (then led by Rachel Notley) “on a campaign to ‘fight back’ against Ottawa’s environmental policies,” and “sought to both harness and redirect the separatist movement into his strategy to obtain a ‘fair deal’ within Canadian confederation.” It is here where the UCP married the far right in a bid for more political power, which Smith is now exploiting. It backfired for Kenney, since he became seen as one of the elites that part of the UCP base saw as an impediment to fairness for the province. Hence why he had to be soft on COVID restrictions until it was no longer feasible.

Credit: Patrick LaMontagne

In a May 4 social-media post, Kenney seemed mystified as to how the separatists became so powerful: “It’s beyond bizarre that we are letting Tin Foil Hat brigade crazies like [Jeff] Rath divide Alberta and dominate the politics of this brilliant province, while giving them our personal data to boot.”

Dude, you are the “we.”

It was Kenney who brought the idea of Alberta not getting a fair deal to the mainstream, even travelling around the country pre-COVID to promote the unfairness of equalization, which is at the core of current Albertan separatist discontent. He launched the Fair Deal Panel in 2019 “to consult Albertans on how to define and secure a fair deal for Alberta.” In the report, there is a whole section opining the unfairness of a system they do not understand, with calls for equalization reform. The panel recommended: “Proceed with the proposed referendum on equalization, asking a clear question along the lines of: ‘Do you support the removal of Section 36, which deals with the principle of equalization, from the Constitution Act, 1982?’” Once this question is legitimized by government authorities such as Kenney, why are we surprised that the separatists ran with it?

COVID eventually took Kenney down because doing the responsible thing—implementing COVID restrictions as people lay dying—is anathema to far-right dunderheads. In addition, his reputation took a hit when he was pictured dining with a group unmasked and not observing social-distancing rules that he implemented. His hypocrisy solidified the view of his inauthenticity as a good ol’ boy for the separatists, and showed him as an irresponsible manager for the province to normal people.

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What is crystal clear is conservatives flirted with far-right grievances to gain political power only for those monsters of Confederation to use their access to undermine federalism. The federal Conservative party publicly aligned themselves with the Ottawa Convoy (which in itself had Western alienation roots), including selfies with now-party leader Pierre Poilievre, only for the participants in the convoy to migrate to the separatist movement. The Public Order Emergency Commission released a report on the convoy that specifically states: “The rise of the Freedom Convoy has coincided with a rise in Western separatism.” The Center for Strategic and International Studies’ brief on Alberta separatism states: “The [Ottawa Freedom Convey] movement is also benefiting from cross-border political influences, particularly conservative populism imported from the United States.”

These relationships and patterns may rightly cause one to ask how much American influence has fuelled these two integrated movements, and, to that end, did the conservatives create an opening that offers the opportunity for nefarious actors to advance their interests?

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CALGARY—Last week, NDP MP Don Davies sought unanimous consent“asking MPs to agree that ‘the government should ban surveillance pricing, where personal data is used by corporations to increase the prices consumers pay both in-store and online.’” Global News went on to note that this was the first piece of policy introduced into Parliament by the NDP since Avi Lewis was elected as its leader on March 29. Despite the motion’s defeat, the NDP has kicked over a dormant hornet’s nest of affordability issues.

Another byproduct of this motion was to introduce real opposition to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s artificial intelligence agenda, which Carney plans to ram through without many regulations. As reported by the Canadian Press, AI Minister Evan Solomon has indicated that “he’ll put less emphasis on AI regulation and more on finding ways to harness the technology’s economic benefits.” In essence, this government has put us on notice that it is all about profits over people.

This issue should’ve been on the radar of the Conservatives who swear up and down they’re here for working people, but they, too, are in the bosom of big business.

Dynamic pricing is the practice of maximizing revenue by aligning your willingness to pay with the price of the goods and services on offer. This practice requires the use of data analytics and AI algorithms to automatically shift prices in real time based on data gleaned from online behaviours that are tracked by various tools like loyalty programs. This is a free-market failure; symmetric information is necessary for the perfectly competitive markets these politicians love to quote.

There are a few common strategies that companies use to engage in dynamic pricing. The first is time-based pricing. This is when prices rise during peak times to take advantage of increased demand. This is Uber’s business model, in a nutshell. The second is segment-based pricing, which charges different prices for the same product to different consumer factions. This sounds routine, given that we’ve had seniors’ discounts and student pricing for a while; however, as a strategy of dynamic pricing, the difference is these prices are adjusted instantaneously and are based on factors designed to maximize your willingness to pay. Demand-based pricing is similar to time-based, only it bases its surge on high demand itself, instead of basing pricing on the time period when demand is high.

Surveillance pricing can be thought of as a subcategory of dynamic pricing that specifically targets individuals based on the data obtained through things like loyalty programs, which are data-harvesting tools. Every time you use a loyalty card, it collects what you buy, the time, frequency, and demographic characteristics, and will adjust the prices and promotions accordingly. Vanderbilt University and UC Berkeley released a report on how loyalty programs have inverted the concept of “loyalty”: “They track not just what consumers buy, but who we are, what we search for, and even how we move our cursors across a screen. Companies then monetize this data—selling it to brokers, building profiles on each of us, and most importantly, learning how much each of us is willing to pay.”

With each of these models, the consumer is getting screwed. Although prices can theoretically lower during slower periods, the price itself is based on the consumer’s willingness to pay, which is determined by analyzing your personalized data. Willingness to pay can be translated into the following question: how much financial pain are you willing to tolerate?

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This past November, the Competition Bureau concluded its investigation into the use of pricing algorithms in the rental market. One of their targets, RealPage, has also been investigated by the United States Department of Justice. Unlike the Competition Bureau, which “did not find a contravention of the civil provisions of the Act at this time” since it’s not widely used in Canada, the DOJ took action against the company for anti-competitive practices. RealPage allowed landlords to share information to inflate rent prices for unsuspecting housing-seekers. “This software then generates recommendations, including on apartment rental pricing and other terms, for participating landlords based on their and their rivals’ competitively sensitive information. The complaint further alleges that in a free market, these landlords would otherwise be competing independently to attract renters based on pricing, discounts, concessions, lease terms, and other dimensions of apartment leasing.” This is not the free market; rather it is greed and corruption only meant to squeeze people out of their last dollar.

To be fair, it is not clear as to how widespread the use of surveillance pricing is in Canadian marketplaces, but what is clear is that we don’t have the institutional oversight to protect us like we think we have. Don’t look to the Liberals or Conservatives to fight for consumers, given that before the NDP brought it up, the inherent unfairness and avariciousness of algorithmic-based pricing was not even an issue. And given the Carney government intends to push AI down our throats with little oversight, he is already giving businesses a green light to rob us.

Erica Ifill is host of the Bad+Bitchy podcast.

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Let me be clear: I am not implying that the NDP is saved or that Avi Lewis is its saviour. I want to see what he has to offer over time. I am merely gleeful that there presents an opportunity to apply real political pushback on neoliberal politics and economics, which is what got us into this affordability crisis in the first place.

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Establishment enmity could be a good omen for the NDP’s Lewis

The mocking responses of the Establishment to Avi Lewis’ win belie their divorce from the realities of Canadians not in their socioeconomic class.

CALGARY—The collective crash-out of the Canadian political and news media establishment over Avi Lewis’ March 29 win in the NDP leadership race is giving me life.

It only took one ballot that garnered 56 per cent of the vote, and as CBC News noted, it was “a decisive victory that slightly outstrips what Jagmeet Singh won in 2017.” Alberta MP Heather McPherson walked away with 29 per cent of the vote, placing her second. With this victory, the NDP has let us know that they’re going all-in on democratic socialism, and moving away from the chokehold the consultant class has on the party. In addition, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew introduced himself on the national stage much like future United States president Barack Obama did at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Kinew, whose politics lie left of centre, is the most popular premier in the country at 61 per cent. There is a strong appetite for left-wing populism in Canada, which has not seen representation since before then-NDP leader Jack Layton.

Currently, there is no left-wing representation in mainstream political and media structures in Canada. The capture of the Conservatives by the far right, facilitated by Leader Pierre Poilievre, has pulled the Overton window in that direction. We now categorize Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney as the centre, when he’s a right-wing banker whose top priority is not Canadians, but Canada Inc. There is no diversity of thought here. Anyone who doesn’t pray at the altar of neoliberalism is labelled a kook, and publicly denigrated.

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Our media have been promoting conservatism at the expense of representation. These are the same people who present Poilievre as ready to lead because he managed to keep his vitriol and name-calling to a minimum for a few hours. The goalposts move to accommodate him, while Lewis—who just got here—is expected to have policy positions to fix Canada’s problems on Day 1. Canadian news media doesn’t even feature left-wing pundits, and if you are to believe the testimony of many left-wing journalists, even CBC has blacklisted many of them from appearing on the network. I, too, have been blackballed by CBC. Remember, this is an entity whose diversity is mandated and funded by our tax dollars, including those of left-wing voters.

The mocking responses of the Establishment to Lewis’ win also belie their divorce from the realities of Canadians not in their socioeconomic class. Former Conservative industry minister James Moore said on CTV News, “I think Mark Carney is one of the luckiest political leaders that we’ve seen in this country in a long time in the fact the New Democrats keep tripping over themselves and electing people who are not electable to the broader Canadian public.” Unelectable? Same thing everyone said about Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayoral race, and the United Kingdom Greens who are now waxing the Labour party with their “unelectable” candidates on a democratic socialist wave of political support. Just because left-wing politics didn’t have proper representation for 20 years doesn’t mean there isn’t a political appetite. Let’s not forget that Carney’s win was made possible by an NDP collapse, which saw those voters go Liberal.

Due to the elites’ commandeering of political and media spaces, we have not had much movement or policies geared towards tackling income and wealth inequalities. In fact, it has been talked about very feebly when it is done so, if at all, in news media. There has been absolutely zero discussion on the economic violence our tax and wage structures continually visit upon everyone who isn’t rich. I wrote about the classism of our current structures in this paper in 2023: “Political power drives policy, and that’s one of the reasons our neoliberal policies have favoured the rich and continue the trajectory of a smaller and smaller number of elites who run the country.”

The elites have run this country into the ground, removing the promise of upward mobility and a good quality of life one would expect from a western country. They consistently starve public services but subsidize industries and their shareholders for the promise of jobs; yet those jobs have not materialized into providing liveable wages. While the Conservatives have rightfully called this out, they blame government, never the economic leadership that gouges wages and fixes prices. An example is the bread price-fixing scandal, where the rich companies exploited us and only walked away with a slap on the wrist. The Conservatives don’t mention the culpability of the elites at all because that’s who they truly represent. In addition, they blame the most vulnerable for the deeds of the wealthy, as Lewis rightfully pinpointed in his convention speech: “They’ll blame Trump. They’ll blame immigrants. They’ll blame Indigenous land rights. They’ll blame anyone but the CEOs, the corner-office class to whom they feel accountable.”

t remains to be seen whether Lewis can truly rebuild the NDP into the progressive party it is supposed to be. Frankly, there is a lot of work to do, but Lewis comes in as a great organizer, which is what the party desperately needs. The NDP is currently in the gutter, so there’s nowhere to go but up.

Erica Ifill is host of the Bad+Bitchy podcast.

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Here is a summary of Canadaland’s phishing scandal

Some supporting evidence. Click to read the full threads

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Everyone is paying the cost for Trump’s ego

The return on investment of this obscene spending is garbage, and without objectives and a robust strategy for this conflict, the results may be sub-optimal for both Israeli and American pursuits.

CALGARY—The Iran war is a military omnishambles of epic proportions, and it’s not getting any better. This war began as the brainchild of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who convinced United States President Donald Trump that he would be the only president to bring down the Islamic Republic, betting on Trump’s metastasized ego to complete the task. It worked.

Buoyed by the “success” of his military escapade in Venezuela, where the U.S. military captured/kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro and replaced him with puppet leadership, Trump was feeling himself. On Feb. 28, he launched Operation Epic Fury, with air strikes killing Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The expectation was that victory was nigh, only for the inconvenient truth of a more-resilient enemy to emerge; the regime did not fall. The entire world is now engulfed in the consequences of an ill-conceived, haphazardly implemented war for the benefit of Israel’s bloodthirsty hegemonic expansion in the region, and Trump’s imperialist narcissism.

While the prowess and power of the U.S. military is unmatched, it has not won a conflict since the Second World War; Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Afghanistan, and Iraq were all wars America lost with its superior military. It is also the most expensive, and therefore the return on investment is questionable.

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The U.S. has “estimated the cost of the war against Iran had exceeded $11.3-billion in the first six days alone,” as reported by The New York Times. The Pentagon is expected to request another US$50-billion. Much of the money is spent on ammunition, which has revealed questions about America’s wartime industrial capacity. As estimated by the Foreign Policy Research Institute, in the first four days, “the U.S.-led coalition expended approximately 5,197 munitions across 35 types,” which “represents a significant industrial burden for replacing some munitions that cannot be replenished in four days, four weeks, or even four months.” Despite Trump’s statements to the contrary, America does not have the manufacturing capability to keep up with the weaponry it needs to keep pace with the operation, nor does it have the rare earth minerals to produce modern defence munitions or technology, such as Tomahawk cruise missiles. China dominates global production.

Now we know why the country can’t afford universal health care.

Iran, on the other hand, uses cheaper drones, less-advanced technology, and is still holding their own. As reported by USA Today, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, “told reporters on March 10 that Iran’s ballistic missile attacks ‘continue to trend downward 90 per cent,’ and its one-way attack drones have ‘decreased 83 per cent’ since the beginning of the war.” That would be a good statistic on its own; however, asymmetric costs could hamper tactics in the future. The idea was to start the war with an aggressive air campaign, overwhelm the enemy, and destroy the regime. Not surprisingly, this did not happen, and there was no plan for a sustained Iranian resistance. The Times of Israel reported that the U.S. “struck more than 3,000 targets during the first week of the Iran war.”

The return on investment of this obscene spending is garbage, and without objectives and a robust strategy for this conflict, the results may be sub-optimal for both Israeli and American pursuits; the ROI is a harder Iranian regime. Khamenei was replaced by his son, Mojtaba Khamenei.

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“His selection could be a sign that more hardline factions in Iran’s establishment retain power, and could indicate that the government has little desire to agree to a deal or negotiations in the short term,” explained Al Jazeera. To recap: Trump and his cronies spent billions of dollars in a week to produce a worse government than was there before.

Now, the Americans are sending in ground troops. The desperation for control of this conflict is palpable.

The U.S. operates many bases in the Middle East, located in countries such as Qatar, Kuwait, and United Arab Emirates, all of which are in the direct line of Iranian drones and missiles. There are approximately 40,000 to 50,000 personnel across all bases in the region. Iran has made it clear that those sites will be vulnerable to target. And target it has. American and Israeli military actions have left these countries militarily naked with zero protection.

In defending themselves from Iranian missiles, the Gulf states must deploy interceptors that cost a king’s ransom. Al Jazeera reported that Kuwait has spent between US$800-million and US$1.5-billion; Qatar spent US$600-million to $900-million; and the UAE has forked over between US$1.3-billion and $2.6-billion. “Every interceptor fired represents resources that cannot be replaced overnight, raising fears that defence stockpiles could be rapidly depleted.” Conversely, in launching these attacks, Iran has only spent US$194-million to $391-million, thereby making the financial burden of launching the attacks cheaper than defending against them. This is not sustainable for anyone, and neither is this war.

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US and EU sanctions have killed 38 million people since 1970

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In Africa, Jesse Jackson Was Esteemed for His Fight Against Apartheid (gift link)

Born in Greenville, South Carolina, Jackson began his activism in the 1960s and founded the organizations that later merged to form the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. Expanding his work into international affairs in the 1980s, he became a vocal critic of the Reagan administration and launched a presidential campaign in 1984. Initially viewed as a fringe candidate, he finished third for the Democratic nomination behind former vice president Walter Mondale and Senator Gary Hart. He continued his activism and mounted a second presidential bid in 1988, finishing as the runner‑up for the Democratic nomination to Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis.

(Source: Wikipedia)

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1983 Syria

In 1983, Jesse Jackson travelled to Syria to secure the release of the captured American pilot Robert Goodman, who was being held by the Syrian government. Goodman had been shot down over Lebanon while on a mission to bomb Syrian positions there during the Lebanese Civil War 1975 to 1990.

1984 Cuba

Following talks in Havana, Castro agreed to release 26 Cuban prisoners (including former close allies and political dissidents) and 22 Americans held in Cuba. One of them was allegedly an American spy who had been imprisoned during the Bay of Pigs debacle

1991 First Gulf War (Kuwait)

Rev. Jesse Jackson negotiated with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, securing the release of over 200 Westerners—including 47 Americans—held as “human shields” after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Jackson’s humanitarian mission, which included bringing home sick and elderly hostages, provided a temporary diplomatic opening despite criticism from the U.S. government.

In 1999, Jackson negotiated the release of U.S. soldiers held by Serbian forces in Kosovo, and helped negotiate the release of four journalists held in Liberia the following year.

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How’d He Do It?

Jackson’s empathetic approach and genuine concern for the hostages’ welfare allowed him to establish a rapport with the captors. He also demonstrated his commitment to addressing the broader political grievances in the region, which resonated with the militants and built rapport.

Example: 1985 TWA flight 847

In summer 1985, Hezbollah hijacked the Trans World Airlines flight leg from Athens to Rome for 17 days (its final destination was San Diego). They demanded the release of a total of 766 prisoners from Israeli custody and took the plane repeatedly to Beirut and Algiers. Jesse Jackson called on Israel to free hundreds of prisoners and offered to go to Beirut to negotiate for the release of 40 remaining hostages. As of 2023, Hezbollah continues to deny involvement.

Jackson utilized what was termed “citizen diplomacy” or “faith-based diplomacy,” focusing on personal, high-level meetings with foreign leaders, which often bypassed official, stalled government channels.

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