Green leader Annamie Paul says challenging her leadership should wait until after the fall election, now that the party cancelled a non-confidence vote ignited by internal divide over Israel. Paul said she considered “packing it in many times,” but she’s sticking with a run in Toronto Centre, a prime riding from where she can criticize Justin Trudeau.
Summer of burning churches
Suspicion over the fire that destroyed the St. George Coptic Orthodox Church in Surrey is attached to the fact that it was the target of an arson attempt a few days earlier. The latest in a wave of churches set ablaze came after Harsha Walia, the head of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, resigned in the wake of controversy for tweeting “Burn it all down.”
Canada will open its borders to fully vaccinated American tourists on August 9. The announcement was accompanied by slating September 7 as a conditional date for international visitors. But the ban on flights from India was extended a month, to August 21, due to concerns over the delta variant, which is also dominating cases in the U.S.
Losing the pollution Olympics
Air quality alerts have become a significant trend across Canada, due to the smoke from wildfires in B.C. and Saskatchewan, as well as haze and smog travelling from northern Ontario. The result was a day in which Toronto experienced air despair beyond Beijing while only statistically better than Jakarta, but others recently had it worse:
“If Twitter doesn’t want people to know about this film, what will it censor next?” Paid posts for the trailer to The New Corporation were rejected as prohibited political content, so the filmmakers are fighting back with a lawsuit. They’re also seeking a court order to force the Canadian government to protect freedom of expression by regulating Twitter.
