News roundup, 26 June 2026

- Chinese automakers BYD, Chery, and Geely say they are "willing to explore" the possibilities of joint ventures to enable the production of their vehicles in Canada. This would enable them to sell cars far in excess of current import quotas, while creating jobs in this country. The devil is always in the details with such things, of course; the biggest question is whether they will actually hire locally, or if they'll just bring in workers from overseas who might not know what their labour rights are in this country. For instance, when HD Mining posted their job requirements for a mine in BC a number of years ago, one of them was fluency in Mandarin, and they used the temporary foreign worker program to import labour after not getting enough applicants meeting that requirement. It remains to be seen if that will happen here.

- China has introduced new "ethnic unity" legislation that creates a shared identity among different ethnic groups in the country. What is alarming about this is that it includes a clause saying that groups and individuals outside the country can be held legally accountable for "inciting ethnic separatism" or "undermining ethnic unity"; this is particularly concerning given the country's history of running covert overseas police stations. Of course China is far from the only country to claim the right to enforce their laws outside their borders (the US is guilty of that practice too, most famously in the Meng Wanzhou case).

- The captain of an Air Canada Q400 flying from Newark to Halifax experienced a medical emergency, apparently a seizure, while in command of the aircraft. The aircraft was safely landed in Boston by the first officer; passengers say that the captain was "kicking and flailing" as flight attendants dragged him out of the cockpit.

- The greenhouse emissions from City of Winnipeg operations rose last year; the biggest factor, interestingly, was not heating buildings or the city's substantial fleet of vehicles but methane emissions from the Brady Road landfill. The city hopes to have an organic waste composting program in place in a few years, but it would be nice to be able to do something about the stuff already in the landfill, such as using landfill gas to generate electricity (as Waterloo has been doing since 1999).

- An arrest warrant has been issued for a former correctional officer who was the case manager for a convicted murderer who escaped from a prison in Port Coquitlam, BC. Naila Sheikh is wanted for breach of trust; it's unclear if the charges are directly related to the escape.

- The former finance director for Jesuits in Canada has been ordered to repay $8.8 million after stealing from the organization for many years. I seem to recall there being something about that kind of behaviour in the Bible. No criminal charges have been filed, interestingly.

News roundup, 5 June 2026

- Mark Carney is backing away from plans to roll back a wide range of environmental regulations. The government had planned to create "federal economic zones" where various developments were pre-approved, and to give the cabinet the power to exempt projects from endangered species legislation. Following condemnation from First Nations as well as environmental activists, though, the government seems to be backing down.

- Wab Kinew is putting the kibosh on a proposal by a company called Consensus Core to build a gigantic data centre in the Rural Municipality of Ritchot, south of Winnipeg. The facility would have used so much electricity that they planned to power it with natural gas turbines because they couldn't divert enough from the power grid, not to mention the amount of water these things often use for cooling. It's not like it would have created a lot of permanent jobs anyway - in fact part of the point of AI is to not have to hire so many people. Meanwhile a recent study suggests that by 2030 AI could consume as much electricity as Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Pakistan combined - with carbon emissions equivalent to that of the UK. And for cooling it could consume as much fresh water as 1.3 billion people. 

- Following Doug Ford's ban on municipalities' use of photo enforcement cameras, a study at eight former camera locations in Ottawa has found that less than half of drivers passing the locations were obeying the posted speed limit. At one of the locations compliance was down to 20%, down from 86% in the last month that the cameras were allowed to operate.

- Two Chinese automakers, Chery and Geely, have begun shipping electric and plug-in hybrid cars to Canada. Some are being sold under the Lotus marque; Geely bought a majority stake in the British automaker in 2023. Buyers of these vehicles might be prohibited from driving them across the border, though, if a bill introduced by two Michigan legislators makes it through the US Congress. Congresswoman Haley Stevens and Senator Elissa Slotkin claim that this is a matter of "national security", claiming that the vehicles will record critical information about their drivers and surroundings. I wouldn't be surprised if they do, but this isn't something limited to Chinese cars - GM has already gotten a talking to for spying on their users via their OnStar system. The people who might have a legitimate reason to fear surveillance by China would mostly be Chinese expats living overseas - but nobody's forcing them to buy the cars. And if the Chinese state wants to spy on them, they can probably just buy the info from their cellphone providers and social media companies anyway. Of course, the fact that the sponsors of the bill come from Michigan probably has something to do with the matter...

- The European Parliament has made European-based Qwant, rather than Google, the default search engine on its in-house systems, as part of the EU's efforts to achieve "tech sovereignty". The company, founded in France in 2013, bills itself as a "privacy-first" alternative to Google. The article reporting this doesn't link to the search engine (perhaps Politico doesn't want their articles to be deindexed) but you can find it here.