- Prime Minister Mark Carney is widely expected to issue an election call this weekend, with the election to be held on the 28th of April. Presumably he wants to take full advantage of the Liberals' recent surge in the polls.
- China has slapped tariffs on numerous Canadian exports, mostly agricultural products, in retaliation for Canada's 100% levy on cheap EVs from that country. Some are calling for the EV tariffs to be lifted, both to get relief from China's retaliation and to spite Tesla; the Canadian auto industry isn't keen on the idea of course, but given what Trump is doing the Canadian industry might not have much of a future anyway.
- A court in North Dakota has hit Greenpeace with hundreds of millions of dollars in liability after Energy Transfer, the owner of the Dakota Access Pipeline, managed to convince a jury likely composed of slackjawed Trump supporters that the organization was to blame for costs incurred as a result of the Standing Rock protests. This could destroy the organization, or at least its American branch. One thing that's not clear, though - one of the defendants is Greenpeace International, which is based in the EU - who enforces the ruling if that entity doesn't pay up?
- Nova Scotia's Minister of Opportunities and Social Development, Scott Armstrong, is coming under fire after it came out that he used $3,000 of public money to attend Donald Trump's inauguration. Armstrong justifies this by saying it was needed in order for him to advocate for jobs in the province.
- Ben and Jerry's, the famously progressive ice cream manufacturer, is suing its own parent company Unilever over alleged violations of the merger agreement which was supposed to leave the company's "social mission" intact. Apparently Unilever wanted Ben and Jerry's to stop criticizing Trump among other things, and is now removing its CEO without consulting the ice cream maker's board of directors.
- Istanbul University has annulled the degree of Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, claiming irregularities in a program transfer he made when he was attending the institution in 1990. This comes just in time to make him ineligible to run for president (a university degree is a necessary qualification for the job in Turkey). Then, just to make sure he was out of the way, Turkish authorities arrested Imamoglu, accusing him of corruption and "links to terror groups". Imamoglu was considered the only credible opponent to incumbent president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is up for reelection shortly.
- Tesla has been removed from the upcoming Vancouver Auto Show. Organizers say that this is necessary to protect "the safety of attendees, exhibitors, and staff". Don't know about safety, but it probably is necessary if they want to avoid having the event disrupted by protesters. Meanwhile, people continue to target Tesla dealerships, most recently one in Montreal.
- A doctoral student in urban planning at Columbia University has had her student visa revoked and has fled the US for Canada. The US Department of Homeland Security has labelled her as a "terrorist sympathizer" and "supporter of Hamas", something she denies. But I guess studying urban planning, and thus potentially hurting the market for cars and petroleum, is pretty much the same thing to the Republicans.
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