Danielle Smith's panel criticized as an exercise with a pre-determined outcome
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CTV News
9 minutes ago
- CTV News
Ford vows to 4-lane final stretch of Hwy. 69
Progress being reported on four-laning the final 68-km stretch of Highway 69 between Sudbury and Toronto. There appears to be progress on four-laning the remaining stretch of Highway 69 between Sudbury and Toronto in Ontario. Currently, approximately 68 kilometres of the highway from Henvey Inlet First Nation to Nobel remains incomplete. At a news conference in Thunder Bay on Thursday, Premier Doug Ford was asked about expanding all of Highways 11 and 17, rather than focusing solely on areas near the Manitoba border. Ford expressed strong support for the idea. Doug Ford Ontario Premier Doug Ford speaks in Thunder Bay, Ont., on July 31, 2025. (File photo/CTV News) Ford backs northern highway upgrades 'We're spending $200 billion on infrastructure, spending a fortune on roads and highways –I think it's up to $35 billion – but I'm all in, and I want to make sure our highways are safe,' Ford told reporters. 'It's treacherous, especially not just here, but have you ever gone from Sudbury down to the city? Like that two-lane – that was like white-knuckled driving down there. If a transport is off by two inches, you're done.' The premier highlighted an agreement with three First Nations communities to secure land for the project. 'We've bought their piece of property, and so we're going to be twinning that. We've made that announcement, and my goal is to make sure our highways are safe,' he said. Northern winters highlight need for safety improvements Ford emphasized the dangers of northern Ontario winters, stating that those in urban centres may not fully grasp the challenges. 'My message to people in the city – you have no clue until you come up to the north and you drive in the winter,' he said. 'We drove all through the north during the election. Snow was coming down – we had a pretty heavy winter. It's terrifying.' He added that northern Ontario's harsh conditions are something one must experience firsthand to truly understand. Timeline still unclear While Ford confirmed that Northern Development Minister Greg Rickford has been pushing to complete the project, no start date for construction has been announced. Provincial officials say Ontario remains committed to improving highway safety, with further details expected in the coming months.
CTV News
2 hours ago
- CTV News
Advance voting underway in provincial riding of Arthabaska
A person votes in Montreal on the first Monday of October 2018, election day in Quebec. (The Canadian Press/Graham Hughes) Advance voting is taking place this weekend in the provincial riding of Arthabaska, in Quebec's Centre-du-Québec region, ahead of the Aug. 11 byelection. Ten candidates are in the running. The race appears to be shaping up as a contest between Quebec Conservative Party leader Éric Duhaime and Parti Québécois candidate Alex Boissonneault. The governing Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) is fielding Keven Brasseur. Other candidates from parties represented in the National Assembly include Chantale Marchand for the Quebec Liberal Party and Pascale Fortin for Québec solidaire. Also running with authorization from Élections Québec are Louis Chandonnet (Équipe autonomiste), Denis Gagné (independent), Trystan Martel (Climat Québec), Arpad Nagy (independent) and Éric Simard (Union nationale). The byelection was triggered by the resignation of CAQ MNA Éric Lefebvre, who left provincial politics mid-mandate to run federally. He was elected April 28 under the Conservative Party of Canada banner in the federal riding of Richmond–Arthabaska. In the last Quebec general election in October 2022, Lefebvre was handily re-elected with 51.75 per cent of the vote — more than 12,200 votes ahead of his closest challenger, Conservative candidate Tarek Henoud. This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Aug. 3, 2025.
CTV News
2 hours ago
- CTV News
Extremists target gaming platforms for recruitment: report
In this Thursday, Aug. 29, 2019 photo, headphones are placed on top of computer screens in metropolitan Manila, Philippines. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila) A pair of U.K. researchers has identified video games as key targets for recruitment by far-right extremists, in part because they say such platforms are so difficult to police. Published Thursday, a paper from the International Policing and Public Protection Research Institute (IPPPRI) examined the political discourse circulating on video-game streaming platforms and third-party messaging apps. In interviews with 13 content moderators, industry experts and members of anti-extremism organizations, researchers heard that far-right messaging was the most commonly spread, including neo-Nazism, attacks on women, racialized and LGBTQ2S+ communities, and the spread of conspiracy theories like QAnon. 'These gaming-adjacent platforms offer extremists direct access to large, often young and impressionable audiences,' co-author William Allchorn said in a release. 'They have become a key tool for extremist recruitment.' In March of 2024, Canada's federal government announced new funding to research political indoctrination in online gaming, including how communities built out of games can 'create environments conducive to radicalization to violent extremism.' 'There is clear evidence that extremist actors are active in these spaces,' reads a report published later that year by the international Extremism and Gaming Research Network, one of the recipients of the funding. Last August, the RCMP issued a safety advisory to parents about the dangers of online extremists who target children, including in video games and related communities. 'We ask parents, guardians and adults in positions of authority to keep an eye out for indicators that a child or youth is being targeted or exploited,' the release reads. 'Your report could be the missing piece to preventing more harm.' Problems with prevention The IPPPRI researchers note that indoctrination can begin within the games, where opportunities are plentiful for a political agitator in search of recruits. Multiplayer matchmaking offers a steady flow of new contacts, shared interest in the game helps to build rapport quickly and for some titles, including the ever-popular first-person shooters, 'hyper-masculine' themes present a bridge to discussing more radical thinking, the paper notes. Inappropriate content is often filtered out of in-game messages and players can easily get removed from a given match for violating the rules, but those chats are sometimes only used at the beginning of the recruitment process. Once a target has been drawn in, researchers say the conversation is prone to move to third-party chat groups, where extremist propaganda flows more freely — a process known as 'content funnelling.' 'These platforms have largely flown under the radar, while at the same time becoming digital playgrounds for extremists to exploit,' Allchorn said. 'Our research identified a widespread lack of effective detection and reporting tools.' Interviewees said among the far-right messaging were other forms of fringe politics, including Islamist extremism, and what they call 'extremist-adjacent' material, such as the 'glorification' of mass shootings at schools. Though much of this kind of content is often against platforms' terms of service, enforcement may rely on users reporting one another for banned conduct; something Allchorn said some don't even know how to do. Efforts to employ AI to automatically respond to extremist content are complicated, the analysis found. Violent words, for example, might just be used to harmlessly refer to what's happening in the games, and the highly contextual dialect of memes, irony and inside jokes found in online communities can easily confuse automated tools. Even keeping up with the growing list of alternative terms and symbols used to circumvent language filters can be a consistent challenge, interviewees told researchers. 'Strengthening moderation systems, both AI and human, is essential, as is updating platform policies to address content that is harmful but technically lawful,' Allchorn said. 'Decisive action works and platforms can be doing more to help curb the spread of extremism.'
