Lead in Afghanistan

Thread by @JeffRigsby2 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App

Afghanistan has one of the world's highest rates of childhood lead exposure, which causes permanent brain damage.

Nearly all children here have significant lead poisoning.

Researchers in the US have found the source of the lead. But nobody has told the Afghan public.

Thread. 

A worldwide survey in 2020 found that one in three children had blood lead above 5 micrograms per deciliter (μg/dL). That's considered the threshold for lead poisoning.

Children in Afghanistan have an 𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘨𝘦 blood lead level of 14.2 μg/dL, nearly three times the cutoff. 

(Wikipedia: "Lead poisoning")

And the vast majority of Afghan kids have blood lead above the 5 μg/dL level.

Compare that to the worst recent case of lead poisoning in the United States, which happened a few years ago in the city of Flint, Michigan.

Roughly 100,000 people in Flint were exposed to elevated lead levels from the municipal water supply.

The affected families won hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, and public officials were prosecuted.

There are different estimates of exactly how much harm was done.

 

But according to some studies the share of young children in Flint with blood lead levels above 5 μg/dL may have been around 5 percent.

That was still considered a public health emergency—and for good reason.

Lead exposure in children causes irreversible losses in intelligence.

 

It also predicts violent behavior in adulthood.

Some people think the fall in US crime rates in the 1990s was partly caused by the ban on lead paint and the phaseout of leaded gasoline, which both began two decades earlier.

Lead has damaging effects on other organ systems too.

 

According to the WHO, some of its hazards include "increased risk of high blood pressure, cardiovascular problems and kidney damage":

So if Afghanistan has one of the world's worst lead exposure problems, people should know where the lead is coming from.

There are a few possible suspects.

South Asia as a whole has the world's highest burden of lead poisoning.

And in Bangladesh the problem turned out to be turmeric (زردچوبه).

The spice was being adulterated with lead chromate, a pigment that makes it a brighter shade of yellow.

What happened in Bangladesh was ultimately a success story:

It showed that when a major source of lead contamination can be located, the problem is sometimes easy to fix.

I think that may be true in Afghanistan too, but the evidence has been overlooked.

The cosmetic use of kohl (سرمه) is another risk factor for lead exposure in this part of the world.

Kohl is supposed to be powdered stibnite (antimony sulfide).

But stibnite looks very similar to galena (lead sulfide), and the two minerals are often found in the same locations. 

So kohl sold in India tends to have very high levels of lead. Kohl is banned in the United States for just that reason:

Nobody knows whether turmeric, kohl, or any of the other spices and cosmetics sold in Afghanistan contain dangerous amounts of lead.fda.gov/cosmetics/cosm…

 

That's because they've never been tested. But it would be a good idea if someone tried.

In Bangladesh, the adulteration of turmeric with lead pigment mostly stopped after government inspectors began spot checks at the country's spice markets, using handheld XRF spectrometers.

 

But that isn't the most urgent priority for Afghanistan, where the major source of lead exposure is probably already known.

It just isn't known here.

Since 2019, health officials in Seattle have been finding elevated blood lead levels in Afghan immigrant and refugee children.

 

 And in 2022, four local researchers published a paper in the 𝘑𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘌𝘹𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘚𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 & 𝘌𝘯𝘷𝘪𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘌𝘱𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘮𝘪𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺 which solved the mystery.

The lead is coming from cooking pots the families brought with them from Afghanistan. 

(full text at )

The most hazardous pots tested were a type of aluminum pressure cooker called a 𝘬𝘢𝘻𝘢𝘯 (کازان).

These are a standard item in many Afghan kitchens, and it's been hard to convince some immigrant families in Seattle to stop using them.doi.org/10.1038/s41370…

 

But the authors' "simulated cooking and storage" tests released very high levels of dissolved lead.

(Amusingly, they didn't pressurize the 𝘬𝘢𝘻𝘢𝘯𝘴 for the tests because they were afraid they might explode. So the lead levels produced by actual cooking might be even higher.)

 

Chris Ingalls, of Seattle's KING 5 television channel, has been following this story since the article appeared.

It was newsworthy for non-Afghans because at the time, some online retailers were selling imported 𝘬𝘢𝘻𝘢𝘯𝘴.

Eventually the press coverage forced them to stop. 

 

The US Food and Drug Administration has now issued an "import alert" against Rashko Baba, the dominant manufacturer of 𝘬𝘢𝘻𝘢𝘯𝘴.

And the state of Washington has passed legislation to tighten controls on lead in cookware.

Ingalls deserves a great deal of credit for all this.  

 

So does Afghan Health Initiative (), a Seattle-area nonprofit supporting the immigrant community.

And so do the researchers who originally identified the 𝘬𝘢𝘻𝘢𝘯𝘴 as the source of lead poisoning in local Afghan children.

But why does no one else know?

 

I don't think Afghans in California or Virginia have heard about this threat.

Much more importantly: Afghans in Afghanistan weren't told anything either.

Children here are less intelligent than children in most countries, because of something their mothers cook with every day.

 

And the most incredible aspect of the story is that it could have been told years ago, before the Seattle researchers even completed their study.

In January 2020 Radio Azadi, the Pashto service of RFE/RL, filmed a short video inside Rashko Baba's 𝘬𝘢𝘻𝘢𝘯 factory in Nangarhar.

 

 Tens of thousands of people have seen workmen melting down car engines and radiators to cast into Afghanistan's leading brand of pressure cooker:

But nobody seems to have pointed out that anything cooked in those pots will be unfit for human consumption.

 

The IEA should close the Rashko Baba plant tomorrow. Arresting the company's owners wouldn't be a bad idea either.

But any aluminum 𝘬𝘢𝘻𝘢𝘯 made in Afghanistan or Pakistan is probably recycled scrap metal.

According to the Seattle researchers, this is how it works in Africa:

 

 "Investigations in Cameroon and other West African countries found that the smelting process often used drinking cans, car and motorbike engine parts, vehicle radiators, transmissions, airplane fuselages, lead batteries, computer and electronic components, and other materials."

 

So if you own one of these things, destroy it.

You can buy pressure cookers made from stainless steel, and they won't poison your children's brains.

Links - 30th December 2025 (1 - Migrants: Canada)

Extortion suspects have all claimed refugee status, Canada’s border agency says - "Canada’s plan to expel those behind B.C.’s extortion epidemic has hit a roadblock after every single suspect sent for a deportation hearing claimed refugee status.  The foreign nationals were identified by B.C.’s Extortion Task Force, but once the Canada Border Services Agency began investigating them, all claimed to be refugees.  As a result, deportations of the 14 suspects have been put on hold until the Immigration and Refugee Board decides whether they have legitimate cases for asylum... The immigration enforcement agency spokesperson said he would not comment further on the matter, and did not respond when asked if all were citizens of India... by making refugee claims, the suspects may have delayed their deportations for years, said Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland... Deportations are key to Canada’s effort to tackle the extortions that have been targeting members of the South Asian community, particularly in B.C.’s Lower Mainland and Brampton, Ont.  The extortions of South Asian business owners, in particular home builders, also in the Alberta capital of Edmonton has led to several arrests and charges. Indian crime groups such as the Lawrence Bishnoi gang, which Canada listed as a terrorist group on Sept. 29, have been demanding exorbitant payoffs from business owners and others. After threatening victims by phone, gang leaders in India will then send local foot soldiers to conduct arsons and shootings to pressure them to pay up.  Because the Indian government has allegedly used the Bishnoi gang to attack its political opponents in Canada, the issue has become intertwined with foreign interference and repression.  In September, the B.C. government formed an extortion task force to tackle “organized-crime activity involved in extortion-related threats.” It is led by the RCMP and composed of police and immigration officers... three Canadian Sikh organizations will hold a town hall meeting in Surrey, B.C. to discuss Indian transnational repression and extortion, which they said had reached “crisis level.”  “Families, businesses, and community members are facing intimidation, threats, and violence that no Canadian should ever experience,” the Sikh Federation, B.C. Gurdwara’s Council and World Sikh Organization of Canada said in a poster promoting the event.  The RCMP warned in October 2024 that Indian government agents were involved in “serious criminal activity in Canada,” including extortion. Indian diplomatic and consular officials were allegedly involved.  India has still not acknowledged its alleged role in violent crimes in Canada, nor has it publicly vowed to stop.  But since taking office, Prime Minister Mark Carney has moved quickly to mend ties with India in the hope of securing a trade deal."

Casey Babb on X - "Published today, this shocking article details how active Hamas is in Canada. "About 450 people with assorted roles in Hamas have ties to Canada," including Canadian citizens who hold leadership roles in the organization, like operative and financier, Usama Ali. Others, like Syrian refugee and Winnipeg resident Omar Alkassab, serve as lower-level fundraisers for the terror group.   Simply put, there are potentially hundreds of people living in Canada who are supporting terrorist organizations that are killing Canadian citizens and our allies. This is a disgrace."
Andy Lee on X - "My favourite part of this heartwarming Canadian immigration success story is the part where the top Hamas financial terror guy had *three* different Canadian passports that the United States had sanctioned back in 2022 and now we don’t know where he is"

cbcwatcher on X - "Another story CBC is conveniently ignoring "A close associate of Mark Carney and generous donor to the Liberal Party is working behind the scenes to prevent Ottawa from cracking down on cheap truck drivers, who are costing Canada billions of dollars and are implicated in a growing number of accidents." https://journaldemontreal.com/2025/12/09/cha"

Lyle Stewart on X - "Just learned this. Here in Calgary there is a trucking company that operates 176 trucks! Out of the 176 trucks, 160 of them are being driven by new Canadians! Why? The company gets huge subsidies for hiring them! Ridiculous! @PierrePoilievre @MichelleRempel"

To combat hate in Canada, South Asians will have to move past their own divisions - The Globe and Mail - "The othering of brown people is a serious problem in the West. But there’s another insidious issue at play in Canada: Many South Asians are stoking the flames of hatred against each other, too.  Growing up, it was near impossible not to hear the tales illustrating the many ways that South Asians don’t get along with one another. The conversations about infamous regional, religious and everything-in-between rivalries are unavoidable: Pakistan vs. India, Bangladesh vs. Pakistan, Hindus vs. Muslims vs. Sikhs, and absolutely everything about the discriminatory caste systems. It didn’t matter that we were in a country thousands of kilometres away from the region: Our differences were not only brought over here, but re-enacted here, too.  Today, we see some South Asians targeting and extorting our own small businesses. We see clashes between subgroups at our places of worship, including Hindu temples and Sikh gurdwaras; indeed, the World Sikh Organization of Canada‘s statement about last year’s attacks noted that anti-Sikh hate was coming from both right-wing hate groups and Indian nationalists. We hear hypocrisy from a generation of older immigrants disparaging international students, or dismissing their challenges as being far lighter than what they experienced back in their day... so many of our people prefer to find community only with those who are part of their specific tribe. And so instead of operating as one diaspora in solidarity, we often create fissures amongst ourselves... But for a community that prides itself on maintaining traditions, this conversation is the most difficult thing to start. Indeed, any mention of change in front of extended family instantly gets me dismissed as the “Westernized child” who’s strayed far from home."
It's okay, just blame white people

To combat hate in Canada, South Asians will have to move past their own divisions : r/canada - "My buddy I grew up with and have been friends with since second grade, his parents immigrated to Canada from India. Same as my family but my family came from the Caribbean.  But whatever, they came over in the 70s (we're 90s kids), and did the typical embrace Canada and Canadian customs and all that jazz.  The only reason they can't stand the new immigrants is because they come here and just want Canada to be India 2.0. like if you want Canada to be India so bad, just stay in India. That's what pisses off so many Indian people that come here to start over in a brand new country and leave all the bullshit behind.  And that's also what pisses off other Canadians. Like you want to come to Canada? Fuck yeah, Canada is awesome. Nobody is asking you to abandon your culture, but fuck, at the same time you gotta embrace Canada. Yeah we're a melting pot and growing up in the GTA that was awesome - and especially living out in the Maritimes now I realize how much I learned about other cultures just from living somewhere where I just exposed to many different cultures vs. people who grew up here where it was predominantly white - but we're also Canadian and part of immigrating to another country is adopting that country as your own. Not forcing that country to adapt to you."
Damn old immigrants pulling up the ladder behind them! Why do old immigrants hate new immigrants? This must be a status thing: they will never be equal to white people, so they gain social status by discriminating against new immigrants. Sad.

Dei Civitas on X - "In the Parliament of "Canada", a third world person talks about things in Sri Lanka. Then another third world person, who for some reason has been made a Cabinet Minister, holds forth about how he and the other third world people will send Canadian tax payer money to the third world.  This is exactly how Trudeau and Carney intend Canada to work."

wastedcanadian on X - "Canadians are being discriminated against at the food bank 🇨🇦"

Man who killed Amnesty International worker found not criminally responsible - "A man has been found not criminally responsible due to his mental disorder for killing an Amnesty International worker and volunteer who had been helping him settle in Ottawa in 2023. Superior Court Justice Anne London-Weinstein issued her decision last week.  London-Weinstein told court that Ahmed Ismail, 46, suffers from schizophrenia, resulting in psychosis and paranoid delusions. She ruled Ismail was not criminally responsible (NCR) at the time of the killing because his mental illness rendered him incapable of knowing his actions were wrong... The victim's twin brother Ted Bryant, who lives in Australia, said they "had a bond only twins can truly understand," and said he struggles to understand how such violence could have happened "to such a gentle, kind and lovable person."  The Bryant family has been pacifist dating back generations to the Napoleonic wars and "instinctively avoided conflict," Ted Bryant said. "Will wouldn't hurt a fly," Ted Bryant said, adding that he found his brother's killing "inconceivable."  Ted Byrant's wife Diane Bryant said she's "truly puzzled that this quiet, gentle man was able to provoke anger so great that he was viciously attacked and subsequently stabbed and murdered. I cannot imagine or let myself think of how frightened he must have been, how much pain he must have suffered, and how desperate he must have been to get away.  "How can we be sure that you won't hurt anybody else?" she asked Ismail via video link from Australia. "How can anybody be sure they're safe around you?""
Man who killed Amnesty International worker found not criminally responsible : r/OttawaNewsPulse - "The irony, of course, is that Bryant and his brethren spent the last decades ardently supporting the import of immigrants and refugees like this guy into our country. They probably also were delighted when the government removed the need to get a medical certificate before you could come here. And Amnesty International has been completely opposed to deporting refugees for any reason whatsoever.  The guy who killed Bryant was almost certainly a refugee. He should be deported. Canada should not be responsible for medicating and supervising this guy for the rest of his life."
Mocking others for voting for leopards eating people's faces is only good when it pushes the left wing agenda

Why Canadian bosses love hiring foreign workers - "“Temporary foreign workers work longer hours, are less absent and are less likely to be laid off than domestic workers,” say the professors of economics, Pierre Brochu, Till Gross and Christopher Worswick, in their peer-reviewed analysis Foreign workers put out more effort for lower earnings than domestic employees, the scholars found. One big reason they’ll grind away for less is that most come from countries with extremely low wages. A London School of Economics study found temporary migrants from the 11 largest developing countries — such as India, the Philippines and Mexico — can earn more than 400 per cent higher wages than in their country of origin by snagging even a low-skill job in North America... “We identify the unintended consequences of a TFW (temporary foreign worker) program: to lower wages and employment for domestic workers.” Even though Canada isn’t the only Western country opening its borders wider to guest workers, the Liberals have done so with more gusto than almost anywhere else. The proportion of foreign workers in Canada has tripled since the Liberals were first elected. Temporary residents now account for 7.1 per cent of the population, compared with 2.3 per cent in 2013. Their proportion is highest in B.C. — at 9.1 per cent. Even though the TFW program draws most media coverage, it accounts for only a small portion of the country’s guest workers. Most are in Canada under the little-known International Mobility Program (IMP), or here as international students, most of whom are allowed to hold jobs in Canada for at least three years after they graduate... Canadians’ standard of living isn’t significantly rising in large part because companies are relying heavily on guest workers, says David Williams of the Business Council of B.C. The OECD, a club of 37 mostly rich nations, projects that Canada will have the lowest growth in GDP per capita over the next four decades, he said. That happens when bosses rely on paying low wages to offshore workers, rather than innovating and increasing productivity. University of Waterloo labour economist Mikal Skuterud, Ontario analyst Ben Rabidoux and Pierre Fortin, past-president of the Canadian Economics Association, are among the many who ring alarm bells when corporations and lobby groups like the Century Initiative, not to mention politicians, claim the country faces labour shortages — when government statistics make clear that’s not the case. What’s worse, bad actors often take advantage of Ottawa’s openness to low-skill guest workers. Even Ottawa has admitted some employers exploit labourers. “Particularly under Justin Trudeau’s leadership, Canadian companies found it easier and more convenient to hire foreign workers since they were a cheap, obedient labour pool eager to work under terms and conditions set by their employers,” said Shinder Purewal, a political scientist at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. “For companies such as Canadian Tire (which has been fined for mistreating offshore hires) foreign workers are often viewed as affordable and dependable labour, who are less likely to demand or advocate for the same labour standards expected by Canadian workers.” Too many bosses have engaged in criminal activity, Purewal said. As reported by Postmedia News and other media outlets, such employers arrange for would-be migrants to pay them tens of thousands of dollars to fill out a fake labour market impact assessment (LMIA), which the employer uses to convince immigration officials that a suitable domestic worker isn’t available. Many migrants go along with the subterfuge because “LMIA has become a ticket for low-skill temporary workers to seek permanent residency,” said Purewal, speaking of the 528,000 permanent resident spots that Prime Minister Mark Carney continues to make available each year. The LMIA program for low-skilled workers had become so abused, Purewal said, that Ottawa cancelled it in March for regions with unemployment rates above six per cent... The way forward, Skuterud said, is for Ottawa to stop tying migration policy so closely to temporary fluctuations in the labour market — and to start ignoring the often-exaggerated claims of shortages made by some companies and lobby groups. Guest worker programs need more transparency, plus a renewed focus on skilled labour, Skuterud said. He recommends phasing out “low-skill streams, including in agriculture and caregiving, over three to five years.” It might sound dull, but Skuterud is right in saying Ottawa’s migration policies need to be steady, predictable, very long-term — and focused on the needs of all Canadians. “This horizon gives viable businesses time to make productivity-enhancing training and technological investments. (That will) reduce reliance on low-wage foreign labour, while supporting wage growth and productivity gains in the domestic workforce.”"
Weird. We're told that immigration doesn't depress wages, and that open borders boosts productivity. We're also told that businesses don't invest because everyone buys housing instead and the cure is socialism

When leaders complain about 'labour shortages,' be suspicious | Vancouver Sun - "Paradoxically, Fortin said, one impact of bringing in record numbers of people, particularly low-wage temporary workers, is that it contributes to new labour shortages. “The ‘common sense’ inference that more immigration must lessen labour shortages in the economy as a whole is wrong. What works for a single employer does not necessarily hold for the economy as a whole,” Fortin said. “There is no evidence that more immigration has reduced economywide labour shortages. In fact, it likely has made them more severe.” That’s because a growing population leads to more consumers, which requires businesses to then hire more people to provide more goods and services, whether sofas, fast food or housing... “immigration is not a private good, but a global and transformative phenomenon. There is a need for a better balance in sharing its costs and benefits.” High immigration rates, he says, have economic, social, cultural and humanitarian implications. “Society is morally obligated to welcome and integrate all immigrants in the most humane manner. This requires much time and money. (It can) provoke serious economic disequilibria in sectors that must absorb the increase in demand, such as construction, housing, health, education and social services.” A cultural problem famously pinpointed by Harvard sociologist Robert Putman in 2017 can also be exacerbated. That is, says Fortin, that the pace of immigration can happen so fast that it leads ethnic groups to “hunker down” into enclaves, reducing society-wide co-operation and increasing mistrust."

Highly skilled immigrants are twice as likely to leave Canada, report shows - "New immigrants are leaving Canada “at near-record rates, with highly educated and highly skilled immigrants leaving Canada at twice the rate of those with less education and lower skills,” a new report by the Institute of Canadian Citizenship and the Conference Board of Canada found... The likelihood of leaving Canada goes up as the level of education increases... Some of the next decade’s most “in-demand” occupations were among those where highly skilled immigrants were most likely to leave Canada within 25 years... Canada’s health care sector, which has suffered a lack of personnel in recent years, was also cited as one where highly skilled immigrants have a high likelihood of leaving within 25 years... Declining or stagnating incomes were cited as the key cause behind highly skilled immigrants choosing to leave Canada."
Time to import more minimum wage retail workers and their dependents to avoid a shrinking population, then "tax the 'rich'" to pay for more social benefits, while promoting degrowth

Opinion: Liberal immigration plan needs more clarity - "The annual headline target of 380,000 new permanent residents (PRs) is misleading. It doesn’t count new “ one-time initiatives ” over the next two years to give permanent residency to another 115,000 protected persons and 33,000 temporary workers already living in Canada. It’s a reclassification that gives twice. Subtracting them from the stock of non-permanent residents (NPRs) helps Ottawa meet its target of reducing the NPR share of the population to below five per cent by 2027. And not adding them to the target for PRs makes it look like the admission of new permanent immigrants over the next two years is more moderate than it actually is. But there’s an obvious transparency gap. It’s as if they’ve disappeared — removed from one column but not added to the other... Lack of transparency about how 33,000 temporary workers will get permanent residency is more troubling. The stated criteria — “strong roots” and “paying taxes” — are too vague. The 33,000 should be chosen by merit-based selection under Express Entry, prioritizing candidates with high human capital and language proficiency. Without clear criteria , what’s bound to be arbitrary selection will undermine public confidence... As the unemployment rate among core-aged temporary workers (ages 25–54) nears double digits — almost twice that for Canadian-born workers — continued high levels of temporary immigration become more of a problem. The 49 per cent reduction in new international student admissions (from 305,900 in 2025 to 155,000 in 2026) that’s also in the plan could have its own unintended consequences . The government is right to rein in temporary residency, but a straight cap penalizes high-quality universities and colleges while failing to target the real problem: predatory practices and weak programs. Finally, the sharp cut to business immigration is a concern at a time when Canada urgently needs more job creators and capital investment. This program, which falls under the broader economic immigration category, targets entrepreneurs and investors who can build businesses. Yet only 500 permanent residents are being admitted through it next year, down from 2,000 this year."

New 28-storey Broadway rental tower pivots to Indigenous-only medical care hotel : r/ilovebc - "As someone who had to wait 8hrs at a primary care clinic hoping for an opening two cities away with a 4 month old baby with a serious fever and breathing problems, I was elated to learn about a refugee only clinic near by me that my family cannot access:  https://www.fraserhealth.ca/Service-Directory/Service-at-Location/C/A/new-canadian-clinic---burnaby  For context, we tried emergency first and were told primary care clinic was our best chance as emergency would be a longer wait."

Two indian men being drunk and creepy. Redditors: No no thats not the issue. Anti-Indian racism in Canada is the issue. : r/CanadianConservative - "The top comment literally deflects the behavior by saying it's common to have drunk people try to grope you if you have floor tickets to a concert. For a sub that's supposed to preach compassion, they sure like to victim blame. Maybe the next top comment should point out what OP was wearing that night that made the behavior justified lol."

Tablesalt 🇨🇦🇺🇸 on X - "🚨BREAKING - THE GOVERNMENT OF BC IS USING $1B OF TAXPAYERS MONEY to build housing for INTERNATIONAL students whove never paid ANY TAX in Canada. (Also, the 2 One BC MLAs are kickin ass) government minister responds with: "Diversity is our strength""

Immigrant who caused deadly crash on QEW wins chance to stay in Canada - "A Pakistani immigrant ordered deported 17 months ago for causing a deadly five-vehicle crash on a major highway in Mississauga, Ont., and then fleeing the scene, has won another chance to stay in Canada.  The “tragic” Jan. 27, 2018, crash on the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW) resulted “in the death of one person and severe injuries to various other individuals,” according to a recent Federal Court decision.  Yasir Baig “fled the scene of the accident but surrendered to the police” a dozen days later...  According to the judge who sentenced him, Baig got angry that night because someone flashed their high beams at him and honked. That caused a chain reaction involving five vehicles, Superior Court Justice Bruce Durno said in June 2023...  Seven people were rushed to hospital from the crash scene, including two women who suffered critical injuries.  One of the women, Nicole Turcotte, 22, of Niagara Falls, later died in hospital."

IRCC on X - "Thinking about moving to Canada? Did you know Canada has public health care? Learn how it works, who can get it and what services are covered. Get the details and helpful tips:"
HoCStaffer on X - "Canadians: We need more docs & nurses.
Liberals: Everyone come get free healthcare!
Insane!"

Thousands of foreigners’ criminal convictions forgiven by Ottawa over 11-year span, raising transparency concerns - The Globe and Mail - "More than 17,500 foreigners have had their criminal convictions forgiven by the Immigration Department over the past 11 years, removing a bar to coming to Canada, federal government figures show. The disclosure has raised transparency concerns about the type of offences they committed...  IRCC has not, however, released a breakdown of the kind of criminal offences that were forgiven... people with criminal convictions facing deportation from the United States may seek to come to Canada."
Left wingers think removing illegal immigrants from the US who have committed crimes is fascism, so good luck with that

Jamie Sarkonak: Committing a crime should guarantee deportation - " When he was about 22, a Jamaican national and Canadian permanent resident impregnated his 13-year-old stepsister. She said he forced himself onto her, he said he didn’t remember; you be the judge. She had a child. This happened in 2007, and in 2008 he was convicted of sexual interference and sentenced to five-and-a-half months.  That should have been the end of his time here — his crime was considered “serious criminality,” and this rendered him legally inadmissible to Canada. But officials cancelled his deportation to give him another chance. He went on to commit more crimes, including domestic violence, and in 2018 he was still fighting before the courts.  By then, he had three Canadian children — the oldest being the one conceived through criminal means — and he used them to argue against being returned to Jamaica. He lost his last appeal, but whether he’s still here, we don’t know. He could have not shown up to his flight and dropped off the radar. The Canada Border Services Agency’s position is that a criminal’s deportation status is private information, even though such information should be as public as a court docket...  Canada only considers crimes over a certain threshold — those with a maximum of 10 years or greater, or cases where the individual’s sentence was over six months — to count as “serious criminality” warranting possible deportation of a permanent resident. This is one reason that immigration discounts are used in Canadian law: in cases where doing so will make a difference, judges will sometimes sentence a permanent resident below six months to help keep the offender here.  When courts do sentence foreign offenders to the point of reaching “serious criminality,” it renders the individual in question legally inadmissible to Canada. Inadmissible status is generally followed by a removal order, which should lead to actual deportation. But that process can be interrupted. One route involves convincing a judge to pause the order and put the offender on probation of sorts, giving them time to prove their rehabilitation and worthiness to Canadian society...  In June immigration appeal adjudicator Harold Shepherd (appointed in 2022) paused the deportation of Fiji national Ricky Ravikash Lal, 43, whose long criminal record runs from 2006 to 2020 and includes obstructing police, impaired driving, ignoring court orders, mischief over $5,000 and possessing a weapon for a dangerous purpose.  Though Lal’s probability of rehabilitation was considered low, and though he “has not demonstrated a settled desire to overcome his issues and rehabilitate himself to the extent that he no longer poses a risk to the public or of reoffending,” the adjudicator decided to give him another three years here to turn things around.  In August, immigration appeal adjudicator Catherine Gaudet (appointed 2022) paused the deportation of Trinidad and Tobago national Avinash Ryan Persaud, 22, who has been convicted of robbery 13 times since 2018. During these proceedings, he was charged with another 30 counts involving drugs and weapons. What remorse he has shown has been superficial. But the adjudicator believed in the faint hope that mental health treatment, which Persaud had never seriously pursued, could turn his life around.  And earlier in November, 42-year-old Philippine national Jaques Delgado Lazaro, who was convicted of “several criminal offences” in 2021 and was in the news for ramming a Toronto police cruiser while breaching bail in 2023, was fortunate enough to have his deportation paused by Federal Court Justice John Norris...  Under the current system, the mental health of a foreign perpetual criminal is more important than the physical safety of Canadians and the preservation of an ordered, high-trust society."

Somali woman in polygamous marriage lied to get into Canada - "A Somali woman barred from Canada for five years for giving false names and birth dates for herself and her two children while applying for refugee status here, dodging the fact that she had entered into a polygamous marriage with a Canadian-Somali man, has won another chance at staying in this country.  Fadumo Yusuf Mohamed Abdille came to Canada in 2012 and was granted refugee status, but that was vacated in 2023 due to misrepresentation on her refugee claim, according to a recent Federal Court decision out of Toronto."

Vancouver/Surrey racial arrest rates, what do you think? : r/ilovebc - "A lot of people probably have no idea this exists, but a few years ago we saw the most detailed report on policing in the history of this country come out. The numbers are probably much worse than you can imagine, just wondering what you all think....   I think the numbers are pretty damning and state what a lot of people already know. Immigration from Africa & the Middle East has resulted in a very dramatic increase in crime, very similarly seen in Europe. Personally I think that the government should force all police departments to collect and release similar data."

The stats: Indigenous people are the least hospitable to mass immigration. by @Bratt_world(Brattani) | Twitter Thread Reader - "The stats: Indigenous people are the least hospitable to mass immigration.
CBC: that’s xenophobic
My favourite part is where cockring tries to imply that second generation conseBrianna Lyman on X: "This girl justifies her actions because “As a Mexican-American” she felt obligated to help illegal aliens Her allegiance isn’t with America it’s with a bunch of foreigners Mass migration is national suicide There is no room for a hyphenated American in America" / Xrvative south Asians from Brampton and Surrey are also xenophobic and racist because they too are against mass immigration"

Jury acquits teen in fatal Toronto school shooting (aka "Jury acquits teen who claimed self-defence in fatal Toronto school shooting, saying he carried gun because his neighbourhood was ‘like Iraq’")
If parts of Toronto are like Iraq, why is Canada endangering asylum seekers by accepting their claims?

Canada Proud on X - "#REPORT: New data shows that a quarter of immigrants brought to Canada to fill nursing quotas in response to an ongoing labour shortage were never hired for any nursing positions."
Proof you need to bring in even more and that if you're against mass migration you want healthcare to collapse so conservatives can privatise it

Links - 29th December 2025 (2 - China's 'Peaceful' Rise [including UK Spy Scandal])

Landeur 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 on X - "Story in a nutshell: China sent spies to Britain; they got arrested. Labour covered for them and collapsed the trial. Labour denied it. Mi6, Ex-Civil Service Chief, are calling Starmer a liar publicly."

Labour secretly sabotaged China spy trial - "Labour secretly sabotaged the trial of two alleged spies by refusing to brand China an “enemy”, The Telegraph can disclose.  Prosecutors dropped charges last month against Christopher Cash, 30, and Christopher Berry, 33, who were accused of passing information about the Government’s foreign policy to a high-ranking member of the Chinese government.  At the time, Sir Keir Starmer’s spokesman said that it was “extremely disappointing” that the two men would not face trial, adding that the charges were “gravely concerning”.  But The Telegraph can now reveal that the case collapsed because ministers withdrew a star witness who had been tasked with testifying that China was an “enemy” of the UK... MPs said the case showed the Government did not have the “mettle to defend the British people”.  Chinese groups have been accused by ministers and UK intelligence agencies of hundreds of cyber attacks.  Sir Richard Moore, the outgoing head of MI6, has described China as “the single greatest priority” of his agency, while the Intelligence and Security Committee has warned of Beijing’s “prolific and aggressive” attempts to gain access to Britain’s spy agencies. However, Labour has tried to build closer diplomatic links with China in the hope of securing investment to grow the economy. In July, Sir Keir quietly sent Jonathan Powell, his national security adviser, to Beijing to hold talks with his Chinese counterpart that were only announced by Chinese state media.  Mr Cash, who worked for Tory MPs, and Mr Berry, a teacher, were accused last year of passing “politically sensitive information” about the China Research Group in Parliament and government policy to a “senior member of the Chinese Communist Party and a politburo member” through a Chinese intermediary.  The official who commissioned the research has since been named in media reports as Cai Qi, a senior aide to Xi Jinping, the Chinese president... Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions, hinted in a letter to Chris Philp, the Tory MP, that failing to designate China as an enemy had caused problems for the prosecution.  He described that legal test as a “limitation” and said there had been an “evidential failure” this year, even though there was “sufficient evidence to prosecute” at the time the men were charged under the Conservative government in April 2024... Ministers have previously used the deputy national security adviser, a Downing Street civil servant, to testify in cases involving the Official Secrets Act. Matt Collins, the current official in that role, gave a written statement for the trial of a Bulgarian spy ring working for the Kremlin earlier this year.  Labour ministers have sometimes described China as a “sophisticated and persistent threat” but prefer to label the country as a “competitor” that also offers investment opportunities for the UK.  David Lammy and Yvette Cooper, then the Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary respectively, intervened in January to support China’s application to construct a “mega embassy” in London, despite security concerns about spying. Alicia Kearns, a Conservative MP who worked with Mr Cash on the China Research Group, said the decision to withdraw a witness raised “serious questions about constitutional impropriety”.  “In the public interest, the Government must disclose ministerial involvement, and come clean on whether any government witnesses were withdrawn,” she said.  “Starmer must answer: was it no longer in the public’s interest to prosecute, or more likely he and his Labour Government don’t have the mettle to defend the British people and our great democracy?”... Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker, said he was “very angry about the decision not to prosecute” and warned that MPs and staff would be “worried about how they work in Parliament” because of threats of foreign espionage."

Lee Harris on X - "The more information that comes out about Keir Starmer and the China spy case, the worse it gets. He lied. He's compromised. He's a genuine threat to national security. To say this is incredibly serious is a HUGE understatement. This really could be the end of Keir Starmer."
Melissa Chen on X - "Why is this not the biggest story in the UK?   Your government sabotaged prosecuting a spy case and then covered it up, hoping that you don't notice.   This is complete and total elite capture. Each person involved is denying and punting responsibility.  Huge opportunity for @reformparty_uk  and @Nigel_Farage  to articulate how they will weed out CCP political interference and insulate the UK from China's brazen attempts at economic coercion and subversion"

Keir Starmer under pressure to release China spy evidence - "Dan Jarvis, the security minister, said that Matthew Collins, the deputy national security adviser, had been given “full freedom” to provide evidence to the CPS ... Labour provoked a backlash from the Civil Service by naming Mr Collins, an unelected civil servant, as the person responsible for the evidence in the case... Lord Butler, a former Cabinet secretary under three prime ministers, accused the Government of being “economical with the truth” regarding the collapsed spying trial."

When will we learn that China is not our friend? - "The disappearance of several key defence suppliers overseas has undermined this country’s ability to defend its shores at a time when Russia poses a constant threat to our national security.  There are scores of other foreign deals that have left the economy weaker – but the sale of British Steel to China’s Jingye five years ago must beat the lot.  That takeover – done in a hurry by naive Tory ministers desperate to prevent another important part of the industrial supply chain from vanishing – always looked rotten, as this column warned at the time and in the years that followed.  Yet the news that Jingye executives have proposed forgoing a giant legal claim against the British state in exchange for the approval of Beijing’s central London mega-embassy is confirmation that they should never have been allowed near a critical strategic asset in the first place. Jingye officials believe they are owed £1bn in compensation after the Government took control of the Scunthorpe steelworks in April amid accusations that Jingye was attempting to sabotage the UK’s last remaining blast furnaces. So not only is the British taxpayer potentially on the hook for this hurried bailout but the same people that drove an important British company to the brink are now shamelessly attempting to bribe the Government.  If that doesn’t make Labour wary of taking Chinese money then nothing will.  It is an outrageous affront to decency and a stark reminder that China Inc is not our friend – despite what Sir Keir Starmer might have us believe as the Labour Government embarks on a terribly naive campaign to warm up relations with Beijing.  This is the vulnerability of Labour’s Britain. Stuck in a precarious financial state, we find ourselves increasingly at the behest of unreliable and dangerous partners... Beijing insists the embassy is a strategic and diplomatic outpost that will help further good relations with the UK – but allowing it to be built in the heart of the capital, close to fibre optic cables that carry sensitive data to the City and Canary Wharf, would be akin to handing the Chinese a Trojan horse from which to launch attacks on British interests.  It would be an unthinkable act of self-harm.  China’s redaction of the embassy blueprints – in which key details about a basement that critics say could be used for eavesdropping and interrogations were removed – is about as incriminating as it gets. Still, we shouldn’t hold our breath for any epiphany on China from Labour.   The disastrous collapse of the Chinese spy case merely heightens suspicions that the Government is terrified of upsetting Beijing in case it turns off the investment taps at a time when this country needs all the outside money it can get. We can debate whether the Government or the Crown Prosecution Service is to blame for the collapse of the case against two Britons accused of spying for Beijing until the cows come home.   Yet, the Government’s failure to provide evidence to the trial that China was a threat to national security is hugely damning. Even more so that the Prime Minister of all people stands accused of failing to pass on an MI5 dossier said to expose the full extent of hostile Chinese activity against this country including secret police stations targeting dissidents in Britain.  As Kemi Badenoch has pointed out, it now looks as though the Government deliberately torpedoed the China spy case and then tried to cover it up as part of a desperate bid to appease Beijing."

Ross Kempsell on X - "Starmer surrendered the UK’s most important territory to an ally of China, for no reason. His aides prevented the key trial into alleged Chinese espionage. He is waving through a new Chinese embassy without seeing the plans. Let’s say it clearly: Is Starmer an agent of influence?"

Laila Cunningham on X - "They’ll arrest you for a tweet, but they won’t prosecute Chinese spies. The case was dropped because Starmer lied that China wasn’t designated a threat at the time, yet MI5 and MI6 confirm it was. Why lie? To protect his national security adviser, who is part of 48 Group Club, China’s most successful influence operation in the West, a front built to court UK elites, shape policy, and blur the line between diplomacy and infiltration. Ministers, advisors. They’re all on it. The establishment captured, in plain sight. The British government is clearly compromised. More in the @thetimes"

China Tries To Censor Data About Nearly 1 Billion People in Poverty - Newsweek - "Internet censors in China worked around the clock this week to suppress online discussions about poverty in the country after an economist revealed nearly 1 billion people were living off less than $300 a month.  A hashtag on Weibo, China's X-like microblogging app, pointed to the ongoing income inequality by stating that "964 million people" were surviving on monthly incomings of 2,000 Chinese yuan, or about $280.  On Tuesday, the hashtag about China's economic woes briefly reached the No. 1 spot on Weibo's trending page before it was taken down. A day earlier, Li Xunlei, chief economist at Zhongtai Securities, had published an article that highlighted the data.  Despite signs of stress appearing across various sectors, Beijing has not come up with a stimulus package as part of its post-pandemic economic recovery. The country's major property giants, Evergrande and Country Garden, defaulted on their debt this year as help from the government failed to materialize.  Chinese leader Xi Jinping has instead made calls for improving income distribution through a campaign of "common prosperity," with the censorship once again revealing just how sensitive Beijing is to any debate about China's economic performance—a metric tied directly to Xi's legitimacy and right to govern. On Weibo, searches for the now disabled hashtag returned a notice reading: "In accordance with relevant laws, regulations and policies, the content of this topic cannot be displayed."  It is a common censorship tactic that stops popular topics from gaining traction among the website's 600 million monthly active users, who have recently been sent automated messages advising them not to badmouth the economy, a message that has been driven home by China's spy agency, the Ministry of State Security.  In his article for the business outlet Yicai, Li cited data from a 2021 research paper by the China Institute of Income Distribution at Beijing Normal University, which placed the number of people living on less than 2,000 yuan a month at 964 million, or nearly 70 percent of the population... His article, which was later taken down, said China was at an "inflection point" because of its population structure, which was once declining and aging. Li nonetheless concluded that competent government leadership could enable further economic growth, possibly doubling China's GDP by 2035. In June 2020, Wang Haiyuan and Meng Fanqiang, the authors behind the income study cited by Li this week, published an article in China's leading financial news magazine Caixin, in which they quoted late Premier Li Keqiang's comments about the estimated 600 million Chinese people who were living on less than 1,000 yuan, or $140, a month.  "Although 40 years of reform and opening up have greatly improved the country's comprehensive strength and level of national income, as of today, the fact that we have a large population, few resources and very uneven development is still obvious, and a considerable number of residents are still close to the poverty line," Wang and Meng wrote.  Their old article was also deleted from Caixin's website in the aftermath of efforts to suppress Li's more recent analysis.  At the end of 2020, China's President Xi declared a "complete victory" over absolute poverty in the country, which Beijing defines as living off 2,300 yuan a year. He said the last remaining 99 million people were lifted out of the category, but the message arrived to little fanfare at the time."
From 2023
Weird. We're told that the Chinese all love Xi because he made them rich
I am told that anyone who has visited China will know that this is not true. Looks like the China Institute of Income Distribution is controlled by the CIA

Joel Kotkin: We must not take our eyes off the true threat — China - "Although Prime Minister Mark Carney is European in his manners and predilections, he is a charter member of the cadre of useful idiots who seem intent on imposing Chinese vassalage on Canada. The Euro-centric economist has proposed that Canada strengthen ties with the European Union, but Europe is, for now, a spent force. Canada is more delectable for China. It has many of the raw materials that Beijing craves, with rising oil imports at the fore. Canada also has a large Chinese diaspora community, roughly 1.7-million people of Chinese descent, that Beijing seeks, with some success, to manipulate to its ends. One would expect some Canadians to resist these trends but Carney epitomizes an establishment, including American corporations and Wall Street, that remain remarkably untroubled with Beijing’s stated aim of becoming a global economic superpower by 2049. So, while assaulting Trump for his trade policy, Canadian political leaders seem to be missing that the West’s greatest long-term challenge is the relentless Sinic mercantilism . British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s attempt to appease China in order to “ Trump-proof ” and revive the country’s moribund economy seems more like the road to ever great irrelevancy, as is the case for much of Europe. China is trying to build a mega-embassy in London that will help it surveil and harass those who fled Communist rule for the assumed safety of Great Britain. Trump may be a posturing maniac, but the China challenge is of a more considerable magnitude. China already dominates the industrial world; it now boasts roughly as many factory exports as the U.S., Japan and Germany combined. It is the world’s the world’s largest automobile market and the biggest steel producer. It is also investing heavily to take over the aerospace industry from leading companies like Bombardier, Boeing and Airbus. Carney and other members of the elite cannot address these threats as long as they adhere to notions like “net zero,” an obsession of Carney and his fellow poobahs. For all his talk about building energy infrastructure, Carney’s green obsessions could instead lead Canada into a dependent relationship with solar and electric vehicle manufacturers based in China, a country that emits more greenhouse gasses than the U.S. and the EU combined. In embracing this double standard, Carney and much of the Canadian elite qualify as classic “useful idiots,” as defined by Vladimir Lenin . Essentially the same people who seek to block oil drilling and place burdens on Canadian mining, agriculture and industry for environmental reasons seem to have little trouble sourcing from a country that’s on a coal-plant building spree . A greener Canada will have to kowtow to China to procure the requisite rare earth minerals and the technology for processing them. This represents what Muhammad Ali called the “rope a dope,” essentially using the West’s green obsessions to supplant its own industries with those of the world’s biggest GHG emitter. This occurs in part because the global corporate elite and their allies in the green movement, itself partially funded by China , seem fine with disarming western industry and lowering the middle class’s quality of life. If you think Trump threatens Ontario’s auto industry, the threat from China is even greater. Slapping tariffs on China is one of the few things winning Trump support from even leftist trade unions . But that’s not the worst of it. Under such circumstances, China can build support both from its former citizens who are anxious to cash in on Beijing’s largess, along with left-wing activists to business interests that are lining up to make their fortunes selling resources to China. Canada is an ideal place for Chinese political interference... China takes advantage of our liberal institutions — and our comparatively open economies — to undermine them. The Chinese government has become skilled at siphoning off the technological edge of the West while trying to silence any objections to Beijing’s awful human rights record . Before jumping into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s lap, Carney and his cronies might want to consider the long-term economic and political costs. Today, particularly with the imbecilic Trump at the helm, America may seem like the biggest ogre. But MAGA will not rule forever, nor will Trump escape mortality. His unnatural coalition of wealthy oligarchs and rabid populists is intrinsically weak and is already showing signs of splintering. More critically, the U.S. shares not just a border but many of the same values as Canada — certainly far more so than the Chinese Communist Party. But to deal as equals with the U.S., or other countries, Canada’s identity needs to be more than just not being American . Canada’s own internal divisions are not insignificant, as evidenced by the recent comments by Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet that Canada is “an artificial country with little meaning.” And it’s also likely that Carney’s recent nationalistic appeal will not be able to forestall a growing estrangement between Ottawa and many provinces, notably Alberta. In the short run, Carney will likely use the American bogeyman to paper over the serious divisions within the Canadian polity. This message will appeal to his potential partners in the NDP. Yet despite what the blathering media and political classes say, America and Canada have more in common than either does with the true quasi-fascist state emerging in China. It will take wiser heads than those who now rule in Washington and Ottawa to rebuild an alliance that’s advantageous to both countries."

The Unseen Realm of China’s Public Sleepers - "Situated on the southeastern outskirts of Beijing, Majuqiao serves as a gathering spot for day laborers who work in the nearby Yizhuang industrial zone, where the headquarters of e-commerce giant JD.com and others are located. These laborers form the backbone of a complex factory system, taking on temporary jobs in large factories such as sorting, unloading, carrying, and cleaning. They work long shifts of up to 12 hours and, come nightfall, many remain in the area, searching for a public place to sleep and recharge—some out of necessity, some by choice... It’s difficult to find reliable numbers on the scale of homelessness in China—the definition is complicated by the country’s hukou (household registration) system, which might list a person as a resident of their hometown even when they’ve moved elsewhere decades ago and don’t intend to go back.  A 2020 paper in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology, which counted all migrant workers without a hukou in their city of residence (known in China as the “floating population”) as homeless, listed the figure at 300 million. While it’s not known how many of these individuals are literally sleeping outdoors, or spending nights in places of business like internet cafes or fast food joints, even migrant workers who have a regular place to sleep face challenges like squalid living conditions and sudden evictions, or inability to afford the deposit and down payment to rent better apartments... Rules on staying in hotels and inns have also been getting stricter. Since 2010, hotels have required the reception to ask for guests’ real names and ID numbers upon checking in, and a platform was set up in 2012 to transmit this information directly to the local public security bureau. Regulations were further tightened around 2017 (reinforcing the bans on staying under someone else’s name or registering only one guest in a shared room) and during the pandemic. This leaves migrants who had their ID cards lost, stolen, or confiscated by employers (or creditors in Yu’s case) out in the cold.  According to lawyer Feng Lulu from Beijing Zhongwen Law Firm, while there are no explicit laws prohibiting or permitting sleeping in public places, local authorities and management of parks, malls, and other spaces may enforce their own rules. Train stations and airports, for example, often provide massage chairs where passengers may catch a short nap, but these are typically only available if there are departures at night, making squares and underground passages around the stations an alternative sleeping spot for migrant workers wanting to save on rent or hotel costs before catching their ride home. In 2021, the Longhua Bus Station in Shenzhen installed a sprinkler system in an underground passage, as well as partitions on its benches, to discourage people from sleeping there, making netizens question how this would affect migrant workers, the homeless, and other vulnerable people."

Terry Glavin: Resist striking a 'devil's bargain' with Beijing - "It is no secret, as the Canadian Security Intelligence Service has candidly assessed , that Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party pose “an enduring threat to Canada.” By espionage, hacking, strong-arm tactics, transnational repression of diaspora communities, influence-peddling, coercion, “elite capture” strategies, election interference, intellectual-property theft and other clandestine means, Beijing poses far and away “the greatest counter-intelligence threat to Canada,” CSIS has determined. None of this appears to bother Julian Karaguesian, a visiting lecturer at McGill University, or Robin Shaban, a former adviser to the department of finance and a fellow of the Beijing-friendly Public Policy Forum. This week, in a Globe and Mail opinion piece titled “Let’s free ourselves of the U.S. and forge closer ties with China,” Karaguesian and Shaban claim that the understanding of China as an unreliable trading partner bent on world domination is a “made-in-Washington narrative” from which Canada must break free, and only Canada’s “long-standing subordination to the U.S.” prevents us from doing so. Because Canadians are “clinging to an Atlanticist-G7 worldview,” we are trapped in paralysis, and instead — citing Columbia University’s Jeffrey Sachs — we should willingly embrace the reality of “the new multipolar world.” Not coincidentally, Sachs, a once-respected economist, is best known nowadays as an apologist for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Karaguesian and Shaban propose a standpoint that is indistinguishable from the pleadings of Beijing’s propaganda platforms and Chinese diplomats in Canada. Michael Kovrig, on the other hand, takes a different view. Kovrig is the former foreign service officer and China analyst who was imprisoned and held hostage in China along with fellow Canadian Michael Spavor for more than 1,000 days, in retaliation for the detention in Vancouver of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou. Meng was released from house arrest in 2021 in a plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department related to charges of violating sanctions on Iran. The “two Michaels” were released simultaneously. In a lengthy analysis published by the Canadian International Council last week, Kovrig sets out the case for an approach to China centred squarely on Canadian values. He dismisses Beijing’s diplomatic entreaties this way: “The implicit deal: kowtow to the Chinese Communist Party in return for economic benefits, sacrifice Canadian manufacturing for agricultural exports.” That’s a reference to Canada’s tariffs on Chinese electrical vehicles and China’s tariffs on canola, pork, peas and some fisheries products. To cave to China would amount to striking a “devil’s bargain,” and its long-term costs would outweigh any benefit to Canada. Canada’s recent reluctance to kowtow has a lot less to do with what Washington wants and a lot more to do with what Canadians want, Kovrig argues. What the Chinese Communist Party and its Canadian friends don’t appreciate is that Canada’s national interests are expected to align with Canadian values. It’s the way democracies work. “Internationally, those values are actualized through liberal norms, laws and institutions that help protect smaller countries like Canada from aggression and coercion by larger powers such as China” Kovrig writes. If Canada’s approach to China has hardened in recent years, it’s because policy has been “driven primarily by public opinion and government assessments that the CCP’s agenda and actions are harmful to Canada’s interests, rather than by ideology or American pressure.”"counter-intelligence threat to Canada,” CSIS has determined. None of this appears to bother Julian Karaguesian, a visiting lecturer at McGill University, or Robin Shaban, a former adviser to the department of finance and a fellow of the Beijing-friendly Public Policy Forum. This week, in a Globe and Mail opinion piece titled “Let’s free ourselves of the U.S. and forge closer ties with China,” Karaguesian and Shaban claim that the understanding of China as an unreliable trading partner bent on world domination is a “made-in-Washington narrative” from which Canada must break free, and only Canada’s “long-standing subordination to the U.S.” prevents us from doing so. Because Canadians are “clinging to an Atlanticist-G7 worldview,” we are trapped in paralysis, and instead — citing Columbia University’s Jeffrey Sachs — we should willingly embrace the reality of “the new multipolar world.” Not coincidentally, Sachs, a once-respected economist, is best known nowadays as an apologist for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Karaguesian and Shaban propose a standpoint that is indistinguishable from the pleadings of Beijing’s propaganda platforms and Chinese diplomats in Canada. Michael Kovrig, on the other hand, takes a different view. Kovrig is the former foreign service officer and China analyst who was imprisoned and held hostage in China along with fellow Canadian Michael Spavor for more than 1,000 days, in retaliation for the detention in Vancouver of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou. Meng was released from house arrest in 2021 in a plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department related to charges of violating sanctions on Iran. The “two Michaels” were released simultaneously. In a lengthy analysis published by the Canadian International Council last week, Kovrig sets out the case for an approach to China centred squarely on Canadian values. He dismisses Beijing’s diplomatic entreaties this way: “The implicit deal: kowtow to the Chinese Communist Party in return for economic benefits, sacrifice Canadian manufacturing for agricultural exports.” That’s a reference to Canada’s tariffs on Chinese electrical vehicles and China’s tariffs on canola, pork, peas and some fisheries products. To cave to China would amount to striking a “devil’s bargain,” and its long-term costs would outweigh any benefit to Canada. Canada’s recent reluctance to kowtow has a lot less to do with what Washington wants and a lot more to do with what Canadians want, Kovrig argues. What the Chinese Communist Party and its Canadian friends don’t appreciate is that Canada’s national interests are expected to align with Canadian values. It’s the way democracies work. “Internationally, those values are actualized through liberal norms, laws and institutions that help protect smaller countries like Canada from aggression and coercion by larger powers such as China” Kovrig writes. If Canada’s approach to China has hardened in recent years, it’s because policy has been “driven primarily by public opinion and government assessments that the CCP’s agenda and actions are harmful to Canada’s interests, rather than by ideology or American pressure.”"

‘Obedience and fear’: the brutal working conditions behind China’s tech boom

Chinese venture capitalists force failed founders on to debtor blacklist - "Chinese venture capitalists are hounding failed founders, pursuing personal assets and adding the individuals to a national debtor blacklist when they fail to pay up, in moves that are throwing the country’s start-up funding ecosystem into crisis. The hard-nosed tactics by risk capital providers have been facilitated by clauses known as redemption rights, included in nearly all the financing deals struck during China’s boom times. “My investors verbally promised they wouldn’t enforce them, that they had never enforced them before — and in ’17 and ’18 that was true — no one was enforcing them,” said Neuroo Education founder Wang Ronghui, who now owes investors millions of dollars after her childcare chain stumbled during the pandemic. While they are relatively rare in US venture investing, more than 80 per cent of venture and private equity deals in China contain redemption provisions, according to Shanghai-based law firm Lifeng Partners estimates. They typically require companies, and often their founders as well, to buy back investors’ shares plus interest if certain targets such as an initial public offering timeline, valuation goals or revenue metrics are not met. “It’s causing huge harm to the venture ecosystem because if a start-up fails, the founder is essentially facing asset seizures and spending restrictions,” said a Hangzhou-based lawyer who has represented several indebted entrepreneurs and asked not to be named. “They can never recover.”... Once blacklisted, it is nearly impossible for individuals to start another business. They are also blocked from a range of economic activities, such as taking planes or high-speed trains, staying in hotels or leaving China. The country lacks a personal bankruptcy law, making it extremely difficult for most to escape the debts. With Chinese funds and VC firms now struggling to return capital to their outside investors, a growing number have turned to redemption clauses to recoup as much money as possible... A start-up adviser who did not wish to be named said the situation was perversely incentivising VCs to pursue portfolio companies that were doing well but lacked an immediate path to a sale or an IPO."

Britain must stand against Xi Jinping’s disturbing vision of the future - "When Mr Xi promises to build a “community of common security”, what he means is that no country should have any allies, leaving all but the strongest at China’s mercy. When he stresses the “sovereign equality” of states, he means that no one should interfere with the sovereign right of tyrants to murder, torture and oppress their own peoples. And when Mr Xi declares that international law should be “applied equally and uniformly” with “no double standards”, he obviously excludes Russia, which he believes should be free to invade Ukraine and pound its cities with killer drones and ballistic missiles made from Chinese components. No one should doubt that a world re-ordered by Mr Xi would be a bleak and pitiless place."

Behind the scenes of an $11-billion subway war

From 2022:

Behind the scenes of an $11-billion subway war

"The letter wasn’t a formal notice of expropriation but rather a friendly heads-up. “We thank you in advance for your understanding,” it read.

Three of Keeley’s neighbours received the same letter that week, sending a current of panic crackling through the community. The homes were to be bulldozed to make room for the tunnel entrance of a subway line that would, theoretically, emerge from the earth beneath their properties before rocketing across the valley on a new bridge. Residential expropriations in downtown Toronto are rare, but they do happen. Metrolinx will typically negotiate with homeowners and offer them market value for their property based on third-party appraisals. Often, they can’t come to an agreement, kick-starting the expropriation process and dragging both parties into a complex bureaucratic back-and-forth. In the end, if the province decides it needs a house, there’s little the homeowner can do about it.  Since the letter’s arrival, Keeley and his neighbours have been in a state of anxious paralysis. You can’t sell a house that’s about to be taken by the government. How do you live with a wrecking ball hanging over your head, with the knowledge that every tulip bulb you plant or cabinet you fix will soon be pulverized into the dirt?

The Minton Place letters were part of a wave of Metrolinx announcements that washed over the city during the pandemic, each arriving with the same infuriating we-thank-you-in-advance-for-your-understanding tone of inevitability. In Thorncliffe Park, residents woke up one day in April of 2021 to discover that a storage facility the size of 21 soccer fields was being plunked down in their dense community. In Riverside and Leslieville, residents were shocked to learn that the agency planned to run the transit line right through the heart of their neighbourhood. And in August, the province expropriated the First Parliament Site on Front Street over howls of objection from residents, who had long-standing plans to turn the historical city block into a library, park and community hub.

Each of those moves was to make way for the Ontario Line, a 15.6-kilometre subway track...

The Ontario Line is the first downtown subway in Toronto in more than 50 years—a massive undertaking that has the potential to be as transformative, and as destructive, as any infrastructure project in living memory.

Announcing a megaproject is exciting. Cutting the ribbon is a triumph. In between is the ugly, contentious, sometimes devastating reality of building the thing. Oppositional neighbourhood groups have sprung up like mushrooms along each stretch of the line. They’ve formed war rooms over Zoom and in backyards, strategizing about how to beat back the Goliath of a provincial transportation agency. Expropriation lawyers, accustomed to a glacial pace of change in their field, have been jolted into action by the new legislation and by anxious clients.

The skirmishes erupting along the Ontario Line are a sequel to the battles that have marked the last decades of city-building in Toronto, pitting the sanctity of neighbourhoods against the needs of the region, the rights of current residents against the viability of future Torontonians. In a city that does its best to avoid hard choices, the massive project comes with an implicit message: in order for the majority of us to win much-needed transit, some of us will have to lose...

If it seems like the Ontario Line is happening fast, it’s also a century behind schedule: plans for a transit line along that approximate route have existed since 1910. In 1985, fresh from two decades of transit building, Metropolitan Toronto released its “Network 2011” plan... The plan was broadly popular, but downtown progressives mounted opposition to the relief line. Ten years earlier, these activists had defeated the Spadina Expressway, which would have torn through the Annex and destroyed scores of homes in the process. The urbanists who fought the expressway were part of a continent-wide rejection of the postwar megaprojects that plowed through neighbourhoods and razed low-income areas in the name of the greater good.

Jack Layton, then a young alderman, led downtown resistance to the relief line in the 1980s. He argued that the suburbs needed to be developed into their own self-sufficient communities. Making it easier to get downtown would only bring more people into the delicate ecosystem that was the old city of Toronto. In a 1984 Globe and Mail op-ed, John Sewell, the former mayor who had come to prominence during the Spadina Expressway battle, argued that the city needed to “stop talking about more expressways and subways going downtown.” He wrote, “we can’t grow forever and as things are now, the city works quite nicely, thank you.”

Network 2011 never happened. When transit-friendly premier Bill Davis resigned, he was replaced by leaders who balked at the plan’s $2.7-billion price tag. The next 40 years of transit planning were defined by political backtracking and indecision, with successive premiers and mayors unceremoniously cancelling the plans of their predecessors. By the mid-2000s, however, rush-hour hordes were crowding onto the Bloor-Yonge platforms, and in 2018, the TTC hit historically high congestion, with trains that were either 100 per cent full or near full for 90 minutes every morning.

Today, the basic concept of a relief line is that rarest thing in Toronto transit planning—a project that just about everyone acknowledges is necessary and overdue. And yet the politicking around the project has only grown more complicated. Today, the protective stance of Layton and Sewell has ossified into the dominant mode of thinking in progressive downtown neighbourhoods. You can hear its core themes at planning meetings and city hall deputations: a Jane Jacobs–inspired defensiveness over the heritage and character of communities, a distrust of large government projects, and an insistence on the primacy of consultation. The rhetoric once used to stop a neighbourhood-obliterating expressway is today used to protest an unsightly daycare or an inconvenient bus lane.

The response to the excesses of postwar urban renewal projects has been the rise of what urban planners Alan Altshuler and David Luberoff call the era of “do no harm planning,” where governments do everything in their power to steer away from opposition. In practice, that means burying subway lines at great cost in places like Scarborough in an effort to avoid contentious surface construction. It means putting transit lines along highway medians to avoid disrupting residential communities, even if those routes bypass the neighbourhoods most in need of transit. And it means pre-emptively cutting back on ambitious projects that would benefit the region but might inspire the ire of local groups...

When Maggi Redmonds first learned about the plans for the Ontario Line, she was appalled...

Metrolinx will add three tracks to the three that already exist, raise the entire track bed and rebuild six bridges. At peak hours, trains will zoom by every 90 seconds, guaranteeing a near-constant flow of rail traffic. For Redmonds, the plan seems like a blueprint for devastation that would turn her neighbourhood into a construction site for several years and then leave it as little more than a rail yard.

In early 2020, Redmonds attended a meeting organized by her neighbours and found they all had the same concerns. Why was an above-ground subway being pushed through the middle of their historic neighbourhood? And why was Metrolinx acting like this was a done deal? The residents quickly formed a group, EastEnd Transit Alliance, or EETA, to push back against the plan.

Throughout lockdowns and successive waves of Covid, as plans for the line moved forward, the group grew more militant. When some members of EETA wanted to meet with Metrolinx to figure out how to work with the agency, others were horrified. “The phrase they kept using was ‘We want a seat at the table,’ ” says Redmonds. If EETA members were discussing noise barriers with Metrolinx, it meant they’d given up on fighting to bury the line. To her, that wasn’t advocacy, it was capitulation. Shortly after, Redmonds and other hardline members left the group and moved to a new organization that would be single-mindedly devoted to pushing the Ontario Line underground.

The new group, “Save Jimmie Simpson,” was named after the beloved park east of the rail corridor that, the protesters believed, would be destroyed if Metrolinx had its way. Metrolinx says that the park is not, and has never been, in jeopardy of being expropriated, a fact that Save Jimmie Simpson now acknowledges. But the name stuck. This kind of misunderstanding has become a pattern for the Riverside protesters. They’ve extrapolated based on what little they’ve been told, and always with the underlying assumption that Metrolinx—which they have dubbed “Metrolies”—isn’t telling them the whole story. Then they present the most attention-grabbing version of that interpretation to their fellow residents.

One of the leaders of the new group was Eon Song, a 37-year-old finance worker. Song had moved to the neighbourhood just months earlier, buying a home on Wardell Avenue, a pretty stretch of red-brick homes across the street from the train corridor. Before putting in an offer, he and his partner, Pierre, a science teacher, had gone to the property with a decibel reader to make sure the sound of the GO trains wasn’t too disruptive. “Before we bought the house, we knew there were plans from Metrolinx,” says Song. “But we thought they were many years away and that there’d be an opportunity for people to have a say. And we didn’t think they would proceed with an above-ground line right through a residential neighbourhood. We just didn’t think that would happen.” The more he learned, the more outraged he became. He dug into noise guidelines put forward by the Rail Association of Canada. He found World Health Organization reports about the effects of vibration and noise on human health. 

The fight between Save Jimmie Simpson and Metrolinx has devolved into a vicious PR battle. A poster blitz by the activists in the fall of 2020 warned residents they could “Kiss tennis goodbye” and “Kiss basketball goodbye.” In 2021, someone in the neighbourhood spray-painted a green line through the middle of Bruce Mackey Park, which hugs the west side of the rail corridor—slicing the park in two to show, protesters said, how far the rail corridor would need to expand to accommodate the Ontario Line.

In response, Metrolinx put up billboards and flooded social media with ads. In the summer of 2021, they published a post rebutting the “misinformation” coming from activists. The truth is that Metrolinx has no plans to remove basketball courts or any other park amenities. In fact, it claims it will increase the square footage of the parks flanking the corridor by installing retaining walls. Rather than reassuring activists, this has only served to make them more enraged—evidence of a behemoth government agency throwing PR money around to brand concerned citizens as liars.

Throughout these squabbles, the protesters in Riverside have taken great pains to say they’re in favour of public transit. The neighbourhood, Song points out, was behind the TTC’s underground relief line, which went through a long consultation process. They’re just against this particular line in this particular place. It’s the same sentiment we’ve heard from resident groups for years. And the fact that it’s undoubtedly true doesn’t particularly matter. When a group derails a specific project, how they feel about transit in theory is irrelevant. The line doesn’t get built...

Going above ground through Riverside, MacKay says, is a smart way for Metrolinx to take advantage of a huge swath of land they already own. It also buys the agency the time and money to extend the line to neighbourhoods like Thorncliffe Park and Flemingdon Park, where transit is sorely needed...

The activists in Riverside aren’t the only ones frustrated with the agency’s consultation style. Fred Keeley and his neighbours at Pape have found their meetings with Metrolinx infuriating. Keeley understands that the line needs to go somewhere. He believes in public transit and the greater good. But he says no one from the agency has been able to show him the slightest bit of proof that this is the best path for the line. “That’s really what I think drives us all crazy,” says Keeley. “If this has to be it, then all right, this has to be it. But let’s make sure it’s the best route.”...

“What we do on our projects is we work out technically what is the best and the right option to follow,” says Metrolinx CEO Phil Verster. “And then we consult on how to implement that option. This is our mandate.”

This unyielding approach has the benefit of being fast—a seductive idea for Torontonians who have been waiting generations for transit. But Metrolinx’s job isn’t just to create a transit map that’s ideal on paper. It’s also to guide people through a massive transformation, to help accentuate the gains and minimize the hardships. The spokespeople at Metrolinx, it seems, have mistaken a human problem for a technical one...

The neighbourhood where the Ontario Line will have the largest footprint is Thorncliffe Park, just north of the DVP and east of Leaside. There, a massive maintenance and storage facility is set to be built in a dense, low-income neighbourhood of immigrants.

Metrolinx’s stated plan in Thorncliffe Park is to tear up the community, or at least a good chunk of it. The maintenance and storage facility will displace the neighbourhood’s mosque, as well as an entire plaza that is home to 34 businesses, including Iqbal’s, a beloved halal grocery store. MacKay insists that Metrolinx will find a new location in the neighbourhood for each and every business—a promise that is, on its face, completely unrealistic. “There is nothing available in the area,” says Apexa Kotak, the owner of Trupti, a specialty spice store that’s been in the neighbourhood since 1997. “I don’t know why they chose this place,” says Kotak. “They’re hurting so many people.”...

Metrolinx insists Thorncliffe Park was selected for technical reasons. Its staff looked at nine potential sites and compared them across a variety of criteria, with the aim of minimizing impact on residents, businesses and the environment. “We have no other place we can build it,” says Phil Verster bluntly. But Sukhera is convinced no one would suggest plunking down an enormous storage facility in a wealthier, whiter neighbourhood. “Why is it us?” he asks...

During the pandemic, with TTC ridership down and work patterns forever altered, some have questioned whether this is the right time to invest so much in public transit. Metrolinx says this view is short-sighted—you build transportation infrastructure for the needs of a city a half-century from now, not two years from now.

In December, opposition groups got a wink of hope. Metrolinx abruptly announced they were changing the route of the TTC’s Yonge North Extension, bowing to pressure from neighbourhood protesters. The abrupt switch, in an Ontario PC riding, enraged anti–Ontario Line activists, newly convinced that the process was purely political. But it also suggested an opening: with enough pressure, it seemed, Metrolinx could be forced to bend.

The agency also recently announced a $50-million deal with the Islamic Society of Toronto that will bring a new mosque as well as a gymnasium and business centre to the community. For Sukhera, the deal seemed like a payoff to win support for the Ontario Line. “This is a transaction between a party that is being expropriated and Metrolinx, with no involvement from the Thorncliffe Park community,” he says.

The Save Jimmie Simpson people, meanwhile, have only intensified their efforts. Over the summer, they raised more than $18,000 and commissioned their own Health Impact Assessment, which concluded that a below-ground option would be better for the health of the neighbourhood, and hired a publicist to help get the message out. “The work feels less like community organizing,” Eon Song says, “and more like a political campaign.” They’ve requested to meet with the federal government, the federal NDP, and all provincial parties. Song sees no reason to stop fighting, even once contracts are signed and construction starts. The Harris government, he points out, halted work on the Eglinton subway after it broke ground. “They had dug a hole and spent millions of dollars filling it,” he says. “I have no plans to give up the fight.”...

Despite Metrolinx’s relentlessly upbeat prognostications, any project as massive as the Ontario Line creates real losers as well as winners...

The benefits of a subway line, meanwhile, are so distant that they can seem almost abstract. The kid from Don Mills and Eglinton who, 12 years from now, will be able to get a job downtown won’t show up to any town hall sessions. The couple who will move into the apartment building created by transit-oriented development two decades from now can’t give a reporter a sound bite.

Serving this silent, theoretical constituency is not something this city has done well. We’ve been slow to acknowledge that in the time since Layton and Sewell, the nature of our problems has changed. The biggest issues facing Toronto today—the housing crisis, climate change—will require more big government projects, not fewer. The neighbourhoods in need of protection in 2022 are not the residential enclaves of downtown Toronto but the inner-suburban communities of immigrants who need more transit and more opportunities, not more heritage designations. In seeking to do no harm, we’ve too often ignored the damage that comes from inaction. The Toronto of today—a place where the average semi-detached house costs $1.3 million and the average commute is 42 minutes—is not a city that anyone intentionally designed. It’s the result of decades when no one planned a different one." 

Damn automobile lobby making public transport impossible!

Left wingers are terrified of change and progress

Clearly everything progressive activists claim is true and if you fact check it, you're a bad person

Driving up the cost of building by pandering to everyone (including by buying more expensive land because of racial justice) is no problem, because it comes out of the public purse and you can "tax the 'rich'" to pay for that 

The same people who demand lots of public transit make it impossible to build