Indy News Canada

The January 29 executive order by President Donald Trump to blockade oil shipments to Cuba by threatening third party countries with 100 per cent tariffs is unprecedented and against the United National Charter.

That said – not much is stopping Trump these days including sending his wife Melania to address the United Nations Security Council in the wake of attacks on Iran.

The blocking of oil to Cuba is spurring demonstrations around the world in support of Cuba and is also encouraging NGOs and individuals to collect aid to be sent to Cuba. Generators, solar panels, food and medical aid among other items are being filled into containers. Mexico has sent at least four ships full of government aid and also donations from the Mexican people.

More than two decades after modern treaty leaders first began calling for independent oversight, they are now urging Parliament to move forward on Bill C-10 — an Act respecting the Commissioner for Modern Treaty Implementation.

After second reading in the House of Commons, Bill C-10 moved forward Feb. 9 when the House referred the bill to the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs (INAN). The legislation is now under review by INAN, as witnesses appeared in “Ottawa” on Feb. 26 to testify.

Leaders say the Act would finally close a long-standing accountability gap in how “Canada” lives up to its commitments in the constitutionally protected agreements.

In the spring of 2024, as pro-Palestine encampments were still popping up at universities across the country, a student organizer named Kathy got a text she’d long feared: a notorious police unit was now operating on her campus at the University of British Columbia.

In a chat devoted to monitoring police activity, encampment participants left messages saying they had noticed vehicles with the name of the paramilitary Community-Industry Response Group (C-IRG) unit parked outside, and had seen its officers roaming university buildings.

“C-IRG actually were walking all over the campus, not just at the encampment,” recalled Lamya, another organizer. “They were also at this point entering the student union building, student classrooms, and stationed in them 24/7 with binoculars, staring into the camp.”

The U.S. subsidiaries of Brookfield, BMO and AtkinsRéalis (formerly SNC-Lavalin) plus 13 other companies headquartered in Canada directed donations to American politicians who voted not to certify the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

A new analysis of U.S. Federal Elections Commission data between 2021 and 2025 revealed 16 Canada-based companies collectively funded 87 of the 147 congresspeople or senators who objected to certifying election results in Arizona, Pennsylvania, or both, in turn refusing to confirm Joe Biden as president in January 2021.

The analysis and report was prepared by New York-based Donations and Democracy. The organization tracks foreign-headquartered companies that contributed to the campaigns of any of the 147 politicians who cast doubt on the election, even after protesters stormed the Capitol to halt Biden’s certification.

Known for their signature multi-stripe design, point blankets were first turned into coats by a group of Indigenous women who were hired by British captain Charles Roberts to create new winter outerwear for soldiers at the fort that he commanded near Sault Ste. Marie in 1811. The point coat was first sold commercially in 1922, eventually becoming such an important Canadian symbol that they were proudly worn by the Canadian national team in both the 1964 and 1968 Winter Olympic parades.

Canadian federal institutions overwhelmingly fail to meet a policy requirement to report material privacy breaches within a mandated seven-day timeframe.

Since that guideline came into effect in 2022, records show only one per cent of privacy breaches have been reported within seven days. On average, federal institutions took more than eight months to notify the privacy watchdog of a breach.

The statistics are revealed in a log prepared by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC), which was obtained under access to information by the IJF. The log shows a total of 1,634 privacy breaches reported by federal institutions during the relevant period, affecting 525,310 individuals.

When not snickering at it, commentators have largely dismissed the current NDP leadership race.

They point out, correctly, that the party got wiped out last spring, winning only seven measly seats in Parliament — barely enough to fill a golf cart, not enough for party status.

So the NDP is a dud. Case closed. After all, nothing ever changes in politics. Right?

Except, for instance, in 1993 when the Progressive Conservatives were slashed from a majority to two paltry seats in Parliament — just enough to fill all seats on a bicycle built for two.

I’m not willing to conclude Prime Minister Mark Carney’s grip on Canada is forever.

In 2012, a survey from the nonprofit Vancouver Foundation identified a perplexing trend: as the city was densifying in response to its housing crisis, people—especially those who lived in high-density housing—reported feeling less connected to their neighbours. A growing body of research since then has found a correlation between living in high-density urban environments and increased rates of social isolation, due to factors including a lack of secure tenure in rental buildings, poor architectural design, a dearth of green space and limited access to nature, and stigma related to cultural values that equate high-density housing with lower social status.

Indigenous leaders from the Similkameen Valley are “deeply disappointed” by a provincial decision to approve a contentious mine expansion in their territories — emphasizing that they did not give consent for the project to move forward.

On Monday, the “B.C.” government announced it had issued Mines Act and Environmental Management Act permits for the New Ingerbelle expansion of the Copper Mountain Mine near “Princeton” in smǝlqmíx territory.

The expansion project will see the century-old mining operation revive its old Ingerbelle open pit gold and copper mine site near nməlqytkʷ (the Similkameen River). The expansion will extend the mining’s operation until 2047, the province said.

This month, the Surrey, B.C.-based website reported Vancouver politician William Azaroff had resigned from his role as executive director of a municipal party over a slew of scandalous resurfaced Tweets.

Surrey Speak didn’t say what Azaroff supposedly wrote, but reported it had to do with “issues of race, Indigenous identity and political ideology.”

Azaroff, Surrey Speak reported, had issued a regretful statement, and his party had promised to chart a new direction.

But none of that actually happened.

Azaroff never stepped down as the executive director of his party, OneCity. He couldn’t, because he has never held that position. He didn’t resign from anything. In fact, he had just been named the party’s nominee in an upcoming mayoral election.

As for the Tweets? Azaroff, a mild-mannered man who runs a non-profit housing development company, said he had never written anything resembling what Surrey Speak described.

The NHL is the only men’s pro league to never have a current or former player come out publicly as being gay, and hockey culture is notoriously homophobic. Luke Prokop is the only player with a team contract who’s come out as gay, yet he’s never played a league game in his career. Reid actually originally began writing her series out of the anger she felt toward the culture, as well as “all the other things that made [her] really ashamed to be a hockey fan.”

Though many third parties are active year-round, Elections Canada’s financial disclosure requirements only apply during an election period, which lasts between 37 days and 51 days, when an election doesn’t take place on a fixed date.

“There's no pre-election disclosure or registration,” Conacher said. “So, we actually have a worse dark money problem in Canada than they do in the U.S.”

“We don't regulate spending in between elections and have any disclosures. Whereas in the U.S. during election year, they do actually have that disclosure,” he said.

Canada Strong and Proud spent up to $581,044 on political ads placed on Meta platforms in 2025. Only about $290,000 was spent during the official federal campaign period and is subject to reporting requirements. To date, the sources of just $750 in contributions have been disclosed to Elections Canada.

Every River Has a Mouth, the newest exhibition at the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art, plunges deep into connections that flow between Salish artists on the province’s coast and its interior.

Guest-curated by Snuneymuxw artist and storyteller Kwulasultun (Eliot White-Hill), it’s his first collaboration with the acclaimed gallery in “Vancouver.”

“Salish art has its own total visual language, our own shapes,” White-Hill tells IndigiNews. “We use our own grammar.”

Too often, people assume West Coast “native art” is all the well-known northern Indigenous style known as formline, he notes.

“So really,” he says, “every opportunity we have to talk about that and to name it and to honor it in a way that people can learn through — that is really important.”

There are 86 billionaire families in Canada who are richer than a combined 6 million Canadians. The progressive research institute Canadians for Tax Fairness has released a report entitled: The new robber barons: A quarter century of wealth concentration in Canada.

On February 5, 2026, York Regional Police announced charges against seven active officers with the Toronto Police Service and one retired officer in connection with allegations of corruption, bribery, obstruction of justice, drug trafficking, theft of personal property, breach of trust, and the unauthorized access and distribution of confidential information.

It is alleged that the officers had connections to criminal networks in Ontario that have been implicated in a conspiracy to murder a correctional facility worker.

I’m lugging six twenty-litre blue jugs in the back of my truck to my permanent residence outside of Whitehorse, a dwelling without running water known as a “dry cabin.” These 120 litres will last myself and my partner—and our three dogs—just over a week. On average, individual Canadians use 223 litres of water a day. For us, it rounds down to just under nine.

Yukoners call us “blue juggers,” or that we’re “blue-jugging it”; the lifestyle is both a noun and a verb. We use an outhouse, even at minus forty, and shower opportunistically at my in-laws’, the cross-country ski club, or a corner gas station.

When the United Nations released a scathing report on Canada’s treatment of disabled people last spring—calling out inadequate financial supports and urging Ottawa to halt the expansion of medical assistance in dying—the federal government was silent.

Nearly a year later, it still is.

Internal government emails obtained by The Breach suggest officials anticipated little public scrutiny of the report, even as they acknowledged mounting anger from disability advocates, particularly over the federal government’s decision to eliminate a dedicated minister for disability.

What happened in Tumbler Ridge is a tragedy. Lives were lost. Families were shattered. A small community is now carrying a soul-crushing grief that will live long after the headlines fade. That is where our attention should begin, and where it should remain.

Yet almost immediately, the tragedy was pulled into the public domain and repackaged. Not to support the grieving or help a traumatized community heal, but to advance ideological positions and turn suffering into rage farming.

A new children’s book tells the story of Cree Elder Shirley (Fletcher) Horn’s experience over a decade of attending residential “school” — recounting the experience from a kid’s perspective.

Shirley: An Indian Residential School Story was written and illustrated by Anishinaabe author Joanne Robertson, along with Horn.

The Elder said she wanted to make sure the story came from her viewpoint as a child — weaving in the depth of her experience in the institutions from the ages of five to 15. This way, the story is accessible to children reading the book.

“When you’re a child of five, six and seven, you’re not thinking like an adult, you’re thinking like a child,” reflects Horn.

“From a child’s perspective, it’s very different.”

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner explained to the IJF that the figure of 2.2 million affected individuals was “a preliminary estimate,” although that number was recorded following reports from three federal institutions and six months after the breach initially occurred. The watchdog itself did not investigate the incident.

In an email to the IJF, the RCMP reiterated that, “while there was no indication that any personal information was viewed or extracted, it is not possible to confirm that it was not accessed.”

Under questioning from reporters, Osborne seemed to contradict herself. She acknowledged that “the rate of possession offenses, the seizures of drugs, did go down especially in that initial first part of the decriminalization pilot.”

But the minister couldn’t quite explain where the pilot fell short. She did say the goal of the project was “to make it easier for people who struggle with addiction to come forward and seek help.” When reporters asked how the pilot project influenced rates of treatment, Osborne said it was almost impossible to tell.

Leaders of the Lower Similkameen Indian Band (LSIB) are again demanding the protection of their community’s river, nməlqytkʷ.

As the First Nation awaits a provincial decision on an open-pit mine expansion near the waterway, also known as the Similkameen River, a province-wide council of outdoor recreationists declared it among the province’s most endangered rivers last month.

The provincial government has yet to decide if it will allow Hudbay Minerals’ controversial Copper Mountain Mine to expand, despite fears about it further polluting nməlqytkʷ.

But the fixation on tariffs and inflation obscures a different shift revolutionizing pricing: algorithms. The Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project warns automated tools are reshaping what Canadians are charged for essential goods and services, including groceries and fuel. Companies can now use software to tailor prices based on everything from our browsing patterns, location, loyalty history, device type, and operating system. The same item can appear at one amount for you and another for someone else, depending on who you are, when you see it online, and what the algorithm believes you are willing to pay.