News roundup, 23 Dec 2025

- Mark Carney has appointed Mark Wiseman to take over as ambassador to the US, replacing Kirsten Hillman who announced her resignation earlier this month. Wiseman has previously served as chair of several investment funds, including that of the Canada Pension Plan, as well as having served as a manager at BlackRock. The choice has raised alarms in Quebec, though, because Wiseman has questioned the merits of supply management in the past, and there are thus fears that he might cave too easily to American demands on the matter. Carney, for his part, insists that supply management is safe on his watch; we'll have to see how that goes.

- The website for Global News, which has a brand licensing agreement with CBS for 60 Minutes, briefly hosted the segment that was spiked on the orders of CBS news chief Bari Weiss. The segment was removed from Global's website after about two hours. Global hasn't said why, but my guess is legal threats from CBS. In any case, screen recordings of the segment were taken by some users; a clip may be seen here.

- Security upgrades at a troubled Manitoba Housing complex in inner-city Winnipeg seem to be paying off, with a drastic drop in police calls to the building. Two years ago the police were attending daily and the place was so bad that no further placements were being made at the building and residents were getting their mail sent offsite due to the amount of theft. The controlled entry has no doubt helped, though one resident is ambivalent - even though he recognizes that things are much safer now, he says it "kinda brought me back to when I was in a residential school where we had more rules". Unfortunately tradeoffs like this are inevitable when trying to bring about a short-term solution to crime.

- The Kinew government plans to address differential pricing for groceries such as that used by third-party delivery service Instacart. The service, for their part, say that they aren't a retailer and don't control base prices; they've now also announced that they're stopping the practice that they say they never did before anyway.

- An AI weapons detection system recently installed at Lawton Chiles Middle School in Oviedo, Florida sent the school into a lockdown after mistaking a band student's clarinet for a gun.

News roundup, 11 Dec 2025

 - A Winnipeg man has been sentenced to 3½ years for possession of child pornography and related materials. What makes this case different is that the charges included possession of several anatomically correct child sex dolls, as well as a large amount of AI-generated materials. The judge declared that this constitutes abuse "whether involving real or computer-generated images". At first blush this might seem like overreach until you consider the fact that the AI-generated porn likely required actual child sex abuse materials in order to train the AI in the first place - and even if it didn't, it would need actual images of children, so there's a risk that it would generate material that looks like the abuse of identifiable children. The existence of such material is, to say the least, not in the children's interest. The dolls are more of a grey area since no actual abuse would need to occur in order to make them. On the one hand, one could argue that they could prevent actual abuse by sublimating pedophiles' desires; on the other hand they could also cause future abuse by serving as a "gateway drug". Since determining which happens more often with any certainty would likely require unethical research methods, though, I'm OK with erring on the side of banning them. In any case the guy had plenty of real materials made by abusing real children so locking him up seems more than fair.

- Kirsten Hillman, Canada’s ambassador to the US, has announced that she is leaving her post in the new year. She didn't provide a specific reason for her resignation, but I think we all can guess the reason.

- A US District Court has struck down Trump's executive order that was intended to stop offshore wind development and limit that on land, calling the order "arbitrary and capricious". Unfortunately it will not immediately reactivate suspended projects, as the agencies involved are expected to put as many barriers in the way of development as possible while the regime appeals the decision, and at best the entities working on the projects will have to bring more lawsuits in order to get things moving again.

- Democrats in Minnesota are holding a primary to choose their candidate for the Senate next year as incumbent Tina Smith is retiring. Bernie Sanders has endorsed Peggy Flanagan, the state's lieutenant governor, while Pete Buttigieg has endorsed the more centrist Angie Craig. 

- Downsview Airport in Toronto, which served as a test facility for Bombardier until it was closed last year, is being redeveloped into a mixed use urban district with housing for more than 50,000 people as well as commercial buildings (which will be conversions of existing hangars on the site).

- A 12 year old boy in Lethbridge, Alberta has pleaded guilty to attempted murder after stabbing his 7 year old brother multiple times. The younger boy survived but was seriously injured.

- A 35 year old woman from Ochre River, Manitoba was turned away from a vendor in nearby Dauphin due to already being intoxicated. She proceeded to crash her truck into a parked car, a stop sign, and a telecommunications box, the latter knocking out internet service in the city for several hours. After blowing over the limit she was arrested, and then faced additional charges for threatening an officer and another prisoner as well as pulling a fire alarm while detained.