Indigenous leaders warn that Alberta separation would violate treaty rights
Willow Fiddler
Nw-na-indigenous-west-0505 indigenous leaders in alberta want a meeting with premier danielle smith to warn against fanning flames of western separatism. fiddler
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CTV News
33 minutes ago
- CTV News
Liberal MP criticizes Modi's G7 invitation in meeting with Prime Minister Carney
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives to receive visiting Angolan President João Lourenco at the Indian presidential palace in New Delhi, India on Saturday, May 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup) OTTAWA -- B.C. Liberal MP Sukh Dhaliwal said he met with Prime Minister Mark Carney Wednesday morning to push back against the decision to invite Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the G7 summit in Alberta next week. In an interview with The Canadian Press before that meeting took place, Dhaliwal said he spoke with hundreds of people who don't want Modi to attend the upcoming leaders summit -- some of them members of the Liberal caucus. 'We as Canadians take pride to be a champion on human rights. We are the country of law and justice,' Dhaliwal said Tuesday. 'When it comes to protecting fundamental rights and serving justice for the victim, it is non-negotiable.' In 2023 and 2024, former prime minister Justin Trudeau and the RCMP said there was evidence linking agents of the Indian government to the murder of Canadian Sikh separatism activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, B.C., in June 2023. Last October, RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme said the police force had evidence linking Indian government officials to other crimes in Canada, including extortion, coercion and homicide. Justice Marie-Josee Hogue, who led the public inquiry into foreign political interference last year, reported that China and India are among the primary actors behind foreign inference operations targeting Canada. Carney issued an invitation to Modi in a phone call on June 6. Dhaliwal said Wednesday that he met with Carney Wednesday before the weekly Liberal caucus meeting and shared concerns about that invitation that were raised by constituents. 'Now that (Modi's) invited, we have to move forward,' Dhaliwal said. '(Carney) is alarmed about the issue and he will be very strong in dealing with those issues that are important to Canadians.' Gurbux Saini, another B.C. Liberal MP, said the decision to invite Modi to the G7 and the invitation extended to Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman are undermining Canada's reputation as a champion of human rights. 'It is a damaging thing because we have been known in the world as caring and compassionate people who love human rights, and this is something the prime minister is aware of and it has been brought to his attention,' Saini said Wednesday. Canada has invited Saudi Arabia's de facto leader to the G7 summit, according to two Canadian government officials who were not authorized to speak publicly about Canada's invitation list. As of mid-afternoon Wednesday, Riyadh had not indicated whether it had accepted the invitation. Carney did not respond to reporters' questions on his way into the caucus meeting Wednesday. International Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu said some of his constituents have raised concerns with him about 'invitations to leaders.' 'But I think it's important to note that at this time, at a time of crisis, we need to be able to collaborate and of course work out some issues,' Sidhu said before entering the caucus room. The crisis Sidhu referred to is the tariff war with the U.S. Dhaliwal, who represents the riding where Nijjar was killed, said Tuesday the invitation betrays Canadian values. 'Before we invited him, Prime Minister Modi should have committed that he and his team or his associates or his departments will fully co-operate with the Canadian authorities,' Dhaliwal said Tuesday. Carney said he wants to keep policing matters separate from Canada's responsibilities as G7 chair and has argued that India, one of the world's largest economies, belongs at the table. Carney has said India agreed to continue 'law enforcement dialogue.' Modi's comment on his Friday call with Carney did not mention policing. The NDP condemned the decision to invite Modi. At a press conference on Parliament Hill Wednesday morning, Alberta NDP MP Heather McPherson accused the Carney government of putting 'profits over people.' 'That's appalling. For me, what it indicated, this government has consistently and very clearly chosen profits and the economy over human rights,' McPherson said. 'I think all Canadians expect their government to provide good, family-sustaining jobs, but not at the expense of human rights.' At a Tuesday webinar organized by the Asia Pacific Foundation, a federal think tank, experts argued Canada can use the G7 summit to build a functional relationship with India on trade, clean energy and dealing with China. C. Raja Mohan of the Council for Strategic and Defense Research in New Delhi argued that South Asia's political concerns are going to continue to resonate across the English-speaking world, in part due to high emigration to places like Canada, the U.S. and Britain. He said that creates 'a structural problem' where foreign interference and extremist elements among Sikh activists can create tensions for both India and other countries. 'This is going to get worse. After all, politics is not going to cease, either in the West or in India,' he said. Mohan argued Ottawa and New Delhi must find ways to address these issues through sustained, long-term law enforcement co-operation, rather than 'public posturing.' 'How do you prevent Indian politics from poisoning Canadian politics, or prevent political mobilization within the ... Anglo-American world from ... generating problems for India?' he asked. 'This is something we have to manage over the longer term, and there are not going to be these high-minded, declaratory solutions to this.' Michael Kugelman, a senior fellow with the Asia Pacific Foundation, said he suspects India will be observing how Ottawa responds to any protests against Modi in Canada. 'New Delhi will be watching this very closely,' he said. Kugelman said the G7 visit could be a way to build trust between Canada and India, and might lead to more a substantive reset of relations before the November G20 summit in South Africa. By David Baxter and Dylan Robertson With files from Nick Murray This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 11, 2025.
Globe and Mail
38 minutes ago
- Globe and Mail
The politics of political party data hypocrisy
Imagine if select Canadians could decide which laws applied to them and which didn't, as long as they vowed to follow a set of rules that they had written and made available for public consultation. 'I, John Doe, declare that I am no longer subject to the income tax laws of Canada and instead will abide by my own rules. Rule No. 1: I don't pay taxes.' That, of course, would be anarchy. But it happens to be the way Canada's federal political parties want to operate when it comes to privacy rights: one set of rules for themselves and another for everyone else. This hypocrisy was hidden in plain sight this week when the government tried to pull a fast one by sticking a set of bespoke privacy protection rules for federal parties at the bottom of a bill dealing with the cost of living. There on the last three pages of a 22-page bill about oranges (affordability) was an unexpected and unannounced section about apples (voter data). The proposed changes to the Canada Elections Act would exempt federal political parties and entities acting on their behalfs from all provincial and federal privacy regimes, and create a new one exclusive to them. The changes, which have the support of the Conservatives, put it plainly: a federal party and any company it hires to collect and manage data 'cannot be required to provide access to personal information or provide information relating to personal information under its control or to correct – or receive, adjudicate or annotate requests to correct – personal information or omissions in personal information under its control.' The law would be retroactive to the year 2000 – a crude power flex. The Liberals, the NDP and the Conservatives are appealing a 2024 B.C. Supreme Court ruling that said federal parties are subject to provincial privacy laws and must turn over the voter data they gather if ordered to do so. Passage of the bill will end the court case – a slap in the face of the judiciary. The same legislation would require federal parties to write their own privacy policies and make them public. But the required contents for those policies, as set by the legislation, are laughably slight. The parties will have to name the person responsible for overseeing the policies they write, state what kind of personal information they collect and how they collect it, and reveal what training they provide employees about safeguarding that information. And that's it. This comes nowhere near the demands that the federal government makes on private companies through its much-vaunted 'digital charter.' Under that 2022 law, individuals are supposed to have 'control over what data they are sharing, who is using their personal data and for what purposes, and know that their privacy is protected.' As well, Canadians can 'demand that their information be destroyed' when they withdraw their consent for its collection. No such luck with federal parties, though. And yet these are the same parties that, in 2019, uploaded voter e-mail addresses to Facebook without voters' knowledge. In 2021, the Liberals used facial-recognition software to verify the identities of people voting in nomination races. The parties are constantly scraping up voters' personal information, whether through party memberships, door-to-door campaigning, petitions or other means, and then sharing it to suit their purposes. That data is one of their greatest assets, and they don't want to give it back once they have it, or have anyone other than themselves oversee its collection, use, disclosure, retention and disposal. On the Liberals' part, they are showing a particular indifference to Canadians' privacy that could also be seen this month in the Mark Carney government's plan to allow police to go on warrantless fishing expeditions in people's internet subscriber information. The whole thing is wrong. Canadians should have the right to take their names off party lists, and to be informed of how their personal information is being shared and used by the parties. The parties don't want that, though. At least, not for themselves. Tough rules are for everyone else.
CBC
an hour ago
- CBC
Weight of traditional knowledge discussed at public hearing for Diavik's water licence
A handful of Indigenous governments want to see more criteria enshrined in the conditions of Diavik diamond mine's new water licence, to determine that water will be safe for cultural uses. The Wek'èezhìi Land and Water Board (WLWB) is holding a public hearing about the company's application for a 10-year water licence renewal, at the cultural centre in Behchokǫ, N.W.T.,̀ this week. The Tłı̨chǫ government, the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, the Łutsel K'e Dene First Nation and the Deninu Kųę́ First Nation are all participating in the hearing, along with representatives of the federal and territorial governments and an environmental monitoring board. Violet Camsell-Blondin, who presented Wednesday morning on behalf of the Tłı̨chǫ government, told the hearing that both Western science and Indigenous traditional knowledge should be used to assess the water of Lac de Gras, the tundra lake in which Diavik operates, about 300 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife. "Cultural use criteria should not have a lower status or less clout in measuring successful closure and influencing the return of security deposits," she said. The WLWB has already required Diavik to incorporate traditional knowledge and cultural use criteria in its plans – but the Tłı̨chǫ, the Łutsel K'e Dene and the Yellowknives Dene want it to have the same weight as scientific monitoring and for it to be tied to the return of security deposits. What are cultural use criteria? An amendment to Diavik's current water licence required that cultural use criteria be developed for dumping processed kimberlite back into the open pits which will eventually, as part of closure, be filled with water and reconnected to Lac de Gras. A letter from the Tłı̨chǫ government to the board during that amendment process a few years ago describes cultural use criteria as the clarity, temperature, colour, smell and taste of the water, as well as whatever unnatural material might be in it. Diavik held workshops with Indigenous partners to establish that criteria and summarized in a report afterwards that healthy water would look clear, feel cold, smell clean, taste fresh and sound alive. "A lot of times science will say the water is good, you could drink it, but they won't drink it," said Patrick Simon, a Deninu Kųę́ First Nation councillor participating in the hearing, adding that scientists also use numbers that are hard to understand to communicate that water is safe. "If I told you, as an Indigenous person, the water is good, you can drink it, I will not only drink it but I'll show you the freshness of the water and the vibrancy, the clarity and even the feeling …. When we're around bad water it don't feel good. When we're around good healthy water, we feel alive, we feel connected. It's part of us." Simon said cultural use criteria will help Indigenous people decide whether they want to drink the water and harvest the animals in and around Lac de Gras once Diavik has closed. 'Flexibility should be maintained,' Diavik says A decision for the WLWB to make, once the hearing is over, is whether traditional knowledge and more cultural use criteria should be enshrined in the conditions of the licence – or whether those will be discussed further as part of the mine's closure plan. Diavik has expressed preference for the latter, stating in its presentation this week that it "strongly recommends that flexibility should be maintained" by discussing cultural use criteria through the final closure and reclamation plan and not establishing "fixed" licence conditions. Diavik is already in the process of creating a traditional knowledge monitoring program with its Indigenous partners that'll be submitted to the land and water board for approval. "Adding licence conditions might restrict the program that's in development. [The program] that really, at the end of the day, communities are developing for us," said Sean Sinclair, Diavik's manager of closure. "Potentially putting that in a box through licence conditions … we don't think it would necessarily be helpful and that it could be more flexibly managed through the closure plan." In a letter to the board ahead of the hearing, Diavik also said that there's uncertainty about how cultural use criteria would be evaluated for regulatory compliance. Diavik is trying to set itself apart from a history of abandoned mines in the N.W.T by closing responsibly. Its existing water licence expires at the end of the year, and it needs another one to wrap up production in March 2026, carry out closure, and start initial post-closure monitoring up until 2035. The hearing wraps up in Behchokǫ̀ on Wednesday.
