Canada

If you're a Star Wars fan in the Sudbury, Ont., area, these might be the droids you're looking for.

Since 2019, software engineer Patrick Ryan has embraced the art of building droids, the robot characters from Star Wars.

His creations have grown in complexity, and now he brings them to multiple conventions each year, letting fans interact with real-life versions of their favourite fictional characters.

But his signature piece is a BB-8 droid, a much more complex creation from 2015's The Force Awakens.

Before taking their latest chance to weigh in on the wisdom of exiting the Canada Pension Plan, Albertans must first watch a five-minute video, most of which tries to persuade them how great an idea it is.

The promise of lower premiums and higher benefits hasn't sold well in the past. We recently learned that only 10 per cent of respondents favoured the idea in the 2023 round of government consultations on an Alberta pension plan.

But with her Alberta Next feedback project, Premier Danielle Smith is treating this as a new day, full of fresh possibilities to alter the province's place within Canada on finances, constitutional powers, immigration and more.

Everyone knows guns used by Canadian criminals are often smuggled from the U.S. Not everyone knows how — not like Naomi Haynes does. That's because she did the smuggling.

A native Montrealer who's been living in the U.S. for decades, she helped traffic dozens of weapons into Canada, some linked directly to drug gangs.

"I wasn't thinking about the havoc I was causing in my birth land," she told CBC News last week.

"I've got my kids, I've got bills. The only thing I [was] thinking about is monetary gains. I wasn't thinking about the people who are going to be affected."

Archived

The Canadian government has ordered Chinese surveillance camera manufacturer Hikvision to cease operations in Canada over national security concerns, Industry Minister Melanie Joly said late on Friday.

[...]

"The government has determined that Hikvision Canada Inc's continued operations in Canada would be injurious to Canada's national security," Joly said on X, adding that the decision was taken after a multi-step review of information provided by Canada's security and intelligence community.

[...]

Canada said last year it was reviewing an application to impose sanctions against Chinese surveillance equipment companies, including Hikvision, after rights advocates alleged the firms were aiding repression and high-tech surveillance in Xinjiang.

Joly said Canada was also banning the purchase of Hikvison's products in government departments and agencies, and reviewing existing properties to ensure that legacy Hikvision products were not used in the future.

She said the order does not extend to the company's affiliate operations outside Canada but "strongly" encouraged Canadians "to take note of this decision and make their own decisions accordingly."

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Actually, fuck him twice.

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