Canada

ALT text: There's a figure in the post body taken from the Angus Reid poll link. It's a clustered bar graph outlining Canadians' preference for the government to take a "soft" versus "hard" approach in trade negotiations with Trump, given their vote in the 2025 federal election. Amongst Liberal, NDP, and Bloc voters 76-78% favour a "hard" approach with Trump, compared to only 46% of Conservative voters

The agency in charge of Montreal's parking meters is warning of potentially fraudulent QR codes posted on its signs.

The Agence de mobilité durable de Montréal said in a media release on Tuesday that it was aware that some of its signs had been vandalized with a QR code that wasn't supposed to be there.

The agency hung the signs on parking metres across the city to encourage people to download their new parking app, Mobicité. The signs have no QR code, but some users have reported seeing one posted on them.

Do not scan the QR code, the agency said, it may direct you to a fraudulent or malicious website.

"Our team is working hard to identify and remove them as quickly as possible," the media release said. "Thank you for your vigilance and for reporting any suspicious signs to us."

The agency changed its parking app from P$ Service mobile, which allowed users to pay for parking, to the new app, Mobicité, to allow additional features in the coming years.

For now, the Mobicité app will allow users to only pay for parking, like the old app did. But down the line, Laurent Chevrot, the general manager of the agency, says the app will add other functionalities over the next few years, such as the ability to provide parking information and customer service.

"With the other application, that wasn't possible," he said.

Mobicité rolled out at the beginning of June. It cost $719,000 and took 10 months to produce.

The Globe has a great editorial on immigration and infrastructure:

a “hard rule” in which population intake does not exceed the growth in the housing stock, the job market and the availability of doctors.

There is merit to that approach, although the emphasis should be on using permanent residency as a tool to ease shortages of specific skills, such as doctors.

Housing advocates (like Mike Moffat) have been calling for that kind of linkage for years. The bad news? It's Poilievre that's suggesting it. Here's hoping Lemmy and Canadian politicians can take the idea and run with it, despite the current advocate.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-right-fix-for-immigration-pierre-poilievre-ottawa/

Rent-seekers can't trust brokers to do their work for them. BIG SAD. Now they have to do something to earn their ill-gotten booty.

Injectable prescription drugs, sold as Ozempic and Wegovy, and the pill Rybelsus all contain the ingredient semaglutide. This class of medication, known as glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1s), regulate blood sugar levels and appetite.

Health Canada previously approved Ozempic to treat diabetes and Wegovy for weight loss. Nearly 33 per cent of Canadians (10.6 million people) were obese in 2023, according to a recent study.

Novo Nordisk, maker of Ozempic and Wegovy, will effectively lose its price protection on those drugs in Canada in January, opening the door to generic versions.

Mina Tadrous, an associate professor who evaluates pharmaceutical prices at the University of Toronto, says three or four companies have them in development or are starting the paperwork.

Tadrous says the number of companies affects pricing.

"The classic framework is that if you only have one, it comes down from the list price to 75 per cent," Tadrous said. "If we have two, it goes down to 50 per cent and if we have three it hits 25 per cent."

Three manufacturers could bring the price down to $100 from $400 for the same strength of semaglutide product, Tadrous estimates.

Injectable prescription drugs, sold as Ozempic and Wegovy, and the pill Rybelsus all contain the ingredient semaglutide. This class of medication, known as glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1s), regulate blood sugar levels and appetite.

Health Canada previously approved Ozempic to treat diabetes and Wegovy for weight loss. Nearly 33 per cent of Canadians (10.6 million people) were obese in 2023, according to a recent study.

Novo Nordisk, maker of Ozempic and Wegovy, will effectively lose its price protection on those drugs in Canada in January, opening the door to generic versions.

Mina Tadrous, an associate professor who evaluates pharmaceutical prices at the University of Toronto, says three or four companies have them in development or are starting the paperwork.

Tadrous says the number of companies affects pricing.

"The classic framework is that if you only have one, it comes down from the list price to 75 per cent," Tadrous said. "If we have two, it goes down to 50 per cent and if we have three it hits 25 per cent."

Three manufacturers could bring the price down to $100 from $400 for the same strength of semaglutide product, Tadrous estimates.

UFCW Local 1518 in British Columbia has announced that 500 drivers in Greater Victoria unionized.

Avoid Paywall

"As an infectious diseases specialist I never would have guessed this was going to happen because measles is supposed to be eradicated."

Late last year, multiple tenants in small apartment buildings around Halifax got similar letters from their new landlord, stating their leases would soon be terminated. But no reasons were given.

This didn't sit right with Amanda Rose, who has been renting her one-bedroom apartment in the city's north end for almost six years.

Sydnee Blum, a community legal worker with Dalhousie Legal Aid Service in Halifax, said she's representing one of the tenants in the appeal. Blum estimates up to 24 tenants of PreCor Property Management are impacted.

"When it's happening to multiple buildings at a time, this is, to us, part of a systematized effort to evict long-term tenants, do cosmetic upgrades on a building and then rent them for higher rents," Blum said.

Nova Scotia's Registry of Joint Stocks shows the director, president, and secretary of PreCor Property Management is Mitchell Hollohan, whose business address is listed in Halifax.

Chidi Nwagbo says he made a "stupid" decision paying human smugglers to get him into Canada that left him permanently scarred and in the hands of the very U.S. immigration authorities he was trying to flee.

The 57-year-old says he paid $2,000 US in cash to a human smuggling organization in New Jersey to escape the immigration raids sweeping the U.S. He says the smugglers lied to him about the dangers of the journey that almost killed him along the borderlands between New York State and Quebec in February of this year.

"If I had known that this would have been the outcome, I don't think I would have done it," said Nwagbo in a phone interview with CBC News from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centre in Batavia, N.Y.