I'm OK with Canada's modest AI ambitions

Call me a Luddite, but I can't help but be extremely suspicious of the whole world's reckless infatuation with Artificial Intelligence (AI). I'm not saying the whole world is wrong and I am right - well, actually, I kind of am ... - but I just have this feeling that the level of obsession most people are exhibiting over it can't be healthy, and that we are likely headed down a dark rabbit hole of our own construction.

I can't help but feel that, much like 5G communications, we are adopting a huge, expensive and world-changing technology, just because it's there - because we can - not because we need it. AI adoption, and the number of huge, power-hungry data centres under construction, is not equivalent to economic output, or even productivity, although you'd be forgiven for thinking so from the media attention. 

AI is currently keepimg the world's stock exchanges at near record levels, in spite of all the other crap happening in the world, but not for any good logical reasons. Almost all of the big IPOs hitting the stock exhanges are tech related (mainly specifically AI-related). Call it a bubble or whatever other label you prefer. The markets have almost completely decoupled from the economy, and are largely running on the fumes of potential AI profitability. I've seen this movie before; it doesn't end well.

I read so many articles bemoaning Canada's sluggish uptake of AI (here's just one example) compared to our peers. Well, usually compared to the US. 30% of the US's real GDP growth now comes from private investment in IT equipment and software, compared to 5% in Canada, we are told. Data centre construction has increased by 180% in three years in the USA, while Canada doesn't even separate the category out from other spending on transportation, utilities and communications buildings. But is that such a bad thing. Who has it right?

Indeed, there is outright opposition to US-style unregulated expansion of AI data centres (except in US-style unregulated Alberta). Manitoba recently nixed a huge data centre development because, as Premier Wab Kinew explained, "there's a big threat to the environment and not much benefit to.the economy". Well, he's got a point. A similar process played out in Hamilton, Ontario.

Canada does have many AI data centres, hundreds of them, particularly in Quebec, and many more are being built as we speak. It's not like we have our heads completely in the sand. Do we have enough? Well, how long is a piece of string?

The huge bet south of the border on AI, and the all those data centres it relies on, is just that: a bet. The future gains from AI we keep reading about may not actually unfold as predicted, which would leave states, local governments and electricity payers on the hook for many decades.

Canada, generally speaking, is much more environmentally conscious than the US (despite Mark Carney's efforts to change that), and the environmental footprint of AI data centres has come under increasing scrutiny of late. AI requites massive electricity consumption, high water usage for cooling data centres, and heavy raw material extraction for hardware. It's no surprise that some of the strongest opposition to AI and, on a more local level, data centres is from an environmental perspective.

Another element, though, is the increasing Canadian distrust of AI: trust in AI is significantly lower in Canada than the global average, particularly as regards potential job losses. Data centres are the physical embodiment of AI and its perceived threat to society. That distrust of AI extends to the business community in Canada to some extent, which is investing much less in AI than the US.

Once again, is this necessarily a bad thing (as it is usually portrayed)? Is the helter-skelter scramble in the USA actually the right call? The US may be much more conservative than Canada in most respects, but Canadian business tends to be quite circumspect and risk-averse, and that's not always a bad thing (look at how Canadian banks dealt with the 2008 financial crisis compared the Americans).

Here's another thing. An analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis found that the computer equipment, batteries, switchgear, copper wiring, etc, needed for the US's AI rollout amounted to 23% of all US imports last year, increasing its trade deficit by roughly $200 billion. Canada's AI-related imports,non the other hand, remained pretty much consistent with previous years, and much more manageable.

So, who has it right? History will probably tell, but that doesn't much help today's planners. Mark Carney is making some moves to at least be seen to be doing something on AI, but even his strategy is pretty modest in the scheme of things. And, you know what? I'm OK with that. 

Canada's most important draw ever?

It's kind of pathetic, but kind of cute in a way. All of Canada is celebrating the one point it won agaist lowly Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 2026 World Cup, what is being referred to in some quarters (and only slightly tongue-in-cheek) as "the greatest draw in Canada's history".

In fact, they really should have won, if they had had just a few minutes longer, or if they had had a few more of their best players back from injury. But that's a lot of "ifs". They squandered several good chances, hit the bar, etc.

But the bottom line is, that single point for a 1-1 tie is more than Canada has ever won in its previous two World Cup appearances (1986 and 2022) put together, and the first time they have not actually lost. So, yes, a big deal, I guess, and arguably boost towards getting out of the group stages for the first time. (Switzerland would be an unlikely victory, but Qatar ought to be beatable.)

Canada as a footballing nation is still in its infancy. In 2023, soccer was still only the fifth most popular sport in Canada, after hockey, basketball, American/Canadian football and baseball. Compare that to most countries in Europe, South America, Africa, where soccer is almost the ONLY sport, and you get an idea of the kind of obstacle Canada is having to surmount.

That said, soccer has been the fastest-growing sport for several years now in Canada, and is now probably the most played team sport in terms of active participation, especially among youth. But this is still a very recent phenomenon, much of it driven by Canada's increasing immigration population.

Anyway, take it for what it is. At the moment, soccer is very much top of mind here in Canada and, in the population imagination, the sky's the limit. So: Go Canada!

The sad natural history of Mauritius

It's weird to find out about it by reading Salman Rushdie's memoirs book Joseph Anton, but I only found out today that the now-extinct dodo was endemic only to the island of Mauritius. Furthermore, the island used to boast a whole slew of other, much less known, flightless or near-flightless birds, all now extinct also.

Mauritius is a speck in the Indian Ocean, about two thousand kilometres off the coast of Africa. The only other places even vaguely close are another speck called Réunion, and a the much larger island of Madagascar. It's the original island paradise - white sand beaches, turquoise lagoons, lush volcanic peaks - but man, is it isolated. 

The seafaring Dutch found it, though, at the end of the 16th century, at which time it was entirely uninhabited but chock-full of endemic birds and animals. By the time the Dutch left, just over a hundred years later, they (and their dogs and imported rats) had managed to kill off almost all of the native species, including the dodo. The French then moved in and established a sugar industry based on slave labour. A century after that, the British moved in to Mauritius and abolished slavery, but brought in hundreds of thousands of indentured workers from India (slavery lite), the descendents of whom still live there today.

So, a sorry history, to be sure. But it was all the extinct flightless birds that intrigued me. The dodo we know about, but Wikipedia has a whole page of links on the extinct animals of Mauritius, many of them flightless or at least flight-challenged birds, like the red rail, the Mauritius sheldgoose, the Mauritius ground thrush, the broad-billed parrot, the Mauritius blue pigeon, the Mauritius scops owl, the Mauritian turtle dove, the Mascarene coot, the Mascarene grey parakeet, etc. 

In addition to flightlessness, or at least poor flight ability, these birds, and many of the other Mauritian animals now extinct, these birds were terminally naive and trusting, having developed with no real predators, and certainly nothing like the rapacious humans now moving into the area.

Imagine being a Dutch explorer back in 1598, arriving on the pristine shores of Mauritius, full of curiousz ground-based animals and birds. What would you have done? Probably killed as many as possible. We were a pretty savage bunch back then.

Trump's attendance at Knicks game sheer selfishness

New York Knicks fans are saying that Donald Trump's presence at Game 3 of the NBA finals "killed the vibe", "messed up the flow" and generally "jinxed" the team, when he attended the last game against the San Antonio Spurs.

The Knicks were 2-0 up in the series and on a record-breaking 13-game play-off winning streak, when the Spurs beat them 115-111 in Game 3. Trump was heartily booed whenever his image appeared on the jumbotron, despite his own contention that "it was mostly cheers" (it was mostly cheers when he was NOT on the screen). This was New York, after all - not a big Trump town.

Fans were already up in arms after facing enhanced security screening at Madison square Gardens due to Trump's presence, causing waits of over two hours. Even getting to the venue was a nightmare, with many streets cordoned off and barred to vehicles while Trump arrived in his motorcade to boos and signs saying "Nobody wants you here", "Trump must go", and "Impeach. Convict. Remove." Local businesses, hoping to make a healthy profit from a home game, complained that the streets were deserted and takings were down.

And in the end, the Knicks lost, and a record-breaking run came to an end. Make of that what you will.

Trump may be a long-time Knicks fan, but he really didn't have to go to the game. It was sheer selfishness and narcissism. And it backfired, big-time, on any number of levels. 

UPDATE

A wild Game 4 went the Knicks' way too. Trump did not attend. Are you seeing a trend here?

America's latest World Cup affront

God, the current American administration really knows how to manufacture a public relations disaster out of thin air!

After multiple reports of incidents like the Iranian World Cup soccer team's support squad being denied entry, and even the players being forced to jump through all sorts of hoops just to play the games they have already earned and deserve - why are they even scheduled to play in the US? With games also being played in Mexico and Canada, surely that could have been avoided - now we have a lone Somali referee being denied entry at the last minute.

Omar Artan is an experienced FIFA -approved international referee, and has all his papers in order, including his travel visa. He was named referee of the year last year by the Confederation of African Football, and he would have been the first referee from his country to officiate at such a prestigious event, the honour of his lifetime.

Instead, he was pulled over at Miami airport, subjected to 11 hours of interrogation, and denied entry "due to vetting concerns" by US Customs and Border Protection. He was put back on  plane home. They later "clarified" that the Somalian was refused admission due to "association with suspected members of terror organizations", with no other details being offered.

There has been understandable outrage across most of the world. As a former England player put it: "Every few hours its another story - another story about fans denied, players denied, officials denied, journalists denied, now refs. Is this how the hosts behave really for the greatest game, the greatest tournament in the world?"

So much for Gianni Infantino promising "Everyone will be welcome in Canada, Mexico and the United States". There are those who argue that FIFA has lost complete control of this particular World Cup, and that the scandals from the last two tournaments, in Russia and Qatar, are starting to pale into insignificance at the side of what is happening in the United States.

Canadian politicians have also weighed in, saying that Mr. Artan would be welcome to officiate in Canada. But apparently even that would not be an acceptable solution because all the referees are required to attend a training hub in Florida before the games begin. Ridiculous!

Mr. Artan arrived back in Somalia to a hero's welcome, greeted by MPs, government and football federation officials, social media celebrities, and many of his fellow referees. He has quickly become an icon in his homeland. He took the moral high ground, praising FIFA and vowing to be back refereeing at the 2030 FIFA World Cup in Spain/Portugal/Morocco.

Donald Trump and the rest of his merry band of crooks and thugs have their dirty fingerprints all over this late decision. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the order for this latest indignity came right from the top. Trump has singled out Somalia several times for some of his most offensive insults, calling it "barely a country" and "garbage", and claiming that "they just run around killing each other".

How can it possibly be in America's interests to have the rest of the world hate them so?

What to do when you get a rick bite (Ontario edution)

I guess it was only a matter of time before I or my wife got bitten by a tick. It happened to my wife this last weekend on an otherwise beautiful walk in the Rouge Valley. Except, we didn't realize it until two days later (it was on her stomach for one thing!)

I knew I had to take it off as soon as possible with tweezers (pull straight out, no twisting or smearing!) But I had no idea what to do next. Well, now I do!

First, I took a photo of it and identified the tick through eTick.ca - some kind of AI application, I guess. We received a positive identification within just a couple of hours and, sure enough, it was a black-legged tick, or deer tick, the kind that potentially carries Lyme Disease. Not all of them carry the disease, so all was not lost at this point. But that was a  pretty impressive service, I thought.

My next stop was the Public Health Ontario webpage on  Lyme Disease. This resource has a flowchart you can follow to decide whether or not you need to get a prophylactic antibiotic shot. The first question is: do you have the tell-tale bulls-eye rash and/or flu-like symptoms (fever, chills, headache, stiff neck, fatigue, decreased appetite, muscle and joint pains, joint swelling, swollen lymph nodes, etc). If so, go straight to see a doctor or nurse practitioner. In our case, though, the answer was no, so go to Question 2.

Question 2 assesses the level of risk of Lyme Disease, and asks if all four of these risk factors apply: the tick has been removed in the last 72 hours; the bite occurred in a high-risk area (Google it); the tick was likely attached for at least 24 hours; and you have no allergy to the antibiotic doxycycline. In our case, we "ticked" all of these, so a dose of doxycycline was recommended (that seems to be the ONLY antibiotic that is recommended). If we had not been able to tick off all four, then the advice is just to monitor the bite and see if any symptoms occur.

So, we went to our local pharmacy - pharmacists innOntario are now authorized to treat this kind of thing, no need for a doctor's appointment - bought 2 tablets of doxycycline (after the pharmacist briefly went over all of the above), and Bob's your proverbial uncle. Actually, he even waived the $2.99 cost, so the whole thing cost us ... nothing!

What a good system!

Why air conditioning might not be the best solution to hot weather

We do have air conditioning in our Toronto lakefront house (well, it's a heat pump - same idea, just cheaper and more efficient). But cool breezes off the lake and a certain attitude conspire against us using it very often.

American family and friends despair of us, but it's always seemed counter-intuitive to me to respond to climate change-induced exteme heat events by firing up a power-hogging electrical device which will only make climate change worse. It's also horribly expensive, as electricity rates creep up. 

But we do use it a few times a year, mainly on very hot nights where sleep would otherwise be impossible. During the day, even when it's hot, we tend not to use it - hot is just how it is in the summer. You can maybe see why visiting American family members shake their heads.

Turns out, though, I'm probably right. Certainly about the climate change piece, but also the half-formed idea I have always had that air conditioning is just not particularly healthy, and maybe even dangerous.

It's a fact that extreme heat events kill more people in the affluent West than in the wilds of Africa, where the heat is typically so much more intense and air conditioning is all but unheard of. Over millennia, Africans have adapted to the heat, physiologically and in their habits and conditions: houses maximize air flow, the workday is arranged around the hottest parts of the day, clothing is loose and cool, hydration is a regular feature of life.

But also, there's evidence that chronic use of air conditioning can reduce such resilience. Although air conditioning in offices can improve labour productivity, fans and proper air circulation can achieve the same benefits, at least up to around 30°C. In residential homes, though, AC can prove downright dangerous. In increasingly common "compound climate events" - where a heat wave induces a power failure, for example - the rapid change in temperature can result in more heat stress than the high temperatures alone. As one recent American study puts it, "high AC prevalence may have the unintended effect of amplifying heat vulnerability during grid failure events". You only have to walk out of an over-air-conditioned store into the hot street to understand the logic of that.

Now, I'm not saying that air conditioning should be banned. Nearly a third of the deaths during heat waves occur among the elderly over 80 years of age, and more Europeans than North Americans tend to die from heat exposure (air conditioning is much more prevalent in North America). It's essential that seniors homes nursing homes and hospitals are air-conditioned, and even residential apartment blocks where a high proportion of senior citizens live. 

I just think we overuse it. We don't need frigid conditions in our houses and stores during the few months of the year when the weather is actually nice and warm; that is just perversity. Maybe a fan works well most of the time, maybe just opening the windows would be sufficient. Take a cold shower, have a cold drink. Don't just automatically hit the AC button, and if you do, don't set the temperature unnecessarily low.

FIFA may have miscalculated in Canada

Not only is the upcoming World Cup not going to work out as beneficial to host cities Toronto and Vancouver as advertised, it might not even work out as well for FIFA as they had hoped.

The way these things usually work is: FIFA does pretty much whatever it wants and makes all its big money up front, while the host cities and their citizens carry all the risk and the expense. That's still how it works this time, except that FIFA's policy of charging top dollar for ticket prices may not be quite as effective as usual. FIFA's dynamic pricing policy has resulted in some of the most expensive World Cup tickets ever, and many Canadians are thinking twice about them (and the $17 beers).

While Canada was hugely excited by the prospect of holding World Cup games at first, the bloom is off the rose somewhat of late. Less than a week before the first games, hundreds of tickets remain unsold for events that were once expected to be oversold many times over.

Unlike many another country, soccer here is popular but a distant third or even fourth love, after hockey, baseball and basketball. Both Vancouver and Toronto are overwhelmingly cities of immigrants, most of whom have brought their idolization of soccer with them to Canada. But, as a nation, our national pride is invested much more in hockey, even in baseball and basketball, than it is in soccer. Football is not a core part of our national psyche, as it is for so many other countries.

So, there is a certain subset of the population that is socccer-mad, and will pay whatever it takes to watch a world-class display of football, even if that might be Ghana v Panama or Senegal v Iraq. But, past that, the delirium starts to fade, and there has been push-back against what many perceive as FIFA's greed and insensitivitiy. Even bona fide fans feel they are being charged exorbitant ticket prices. Even local hotels are only at about 80% capacity, which is about the same as usual during summer months. (Or according to other stats, less than half full!) So, did FIFA miscalculate?

Embattled FIFA president Gianni Infantino claims that demand for tickets has been ten times that of the last two World Cups added together, but that doesn't seem to have played out here in Canada. Infantino claims that, "there are expensive tickets, yes, but there are also affordable tickets". The face value of the cheapest tickets to the opening game in Canada (the home team versus Bosnia & Herzegovina) starts at over C$1,000, which most Canadian fans (particularly recent immigrants) will find far from affordable. It feels to many residents like they are paying for the games, but still can't attend them.

One Toronto fan summed it up well: "I've given up, and at this point, I don't want to give my money to FIFA. I'm done with them. I get that, while they can control pricing, it feels like an affront to what makes football great: it's a sport for everyone. Accessibility ought to make it easier for fans - especially those living in the host cities - to see the games."

A "sports economist" from Concordia University explains that FIFA is in the business of maximizing its revenues, not of filling stadiums (and certainly not of providing a memorable experience for local fans). Sometimes it makes more commercial sense to sell high-priced tickets than to fill lower-priced seats. The practice from previous World Cup tournaments of making more tickets accessible to local residents has been supplanted this year by the more lucrative strategy of real-time variable pricing models, which it says "aligns with industry trends across various sports and entertainment sectors". As the sports economics prof puts it, "There is no competition, so they can behave in whatever immoral, unethical, improper way they want - unless fans are prepared to walk away." Well, it seems some fans at least have walked away. 

It's thought that, as the date of the first games approaches, the prices of the remaining tickets may drop drastically. But don't bet on on it. This is FIFA at the controls, after all. 

One other wild card in all this is that Ontario recently passed a law, just in time for the World Cup, that bans the resale of tickets at prices above the original face value. So, in theory at least, we shouldn't be seeing resales on StubHub or on FIFA's own resale platform at the kinds of ridiculous prices seen in some other jurisdictions. But ... FIFA is still in charge of those original face values. And regulation and policing of the new law is almost impossible, according to experts.

Meanwhile, FIFA continues to make PR mistakes, further alienating local people. It has banned reusable water containers at the eleventh hour, ostensibly for safety reasons, and only allows fans to bring in one small factory-sealed soft plastic disposable bottle of water. (This was a climb-down after the initial announcement that NO water bottles could be brought in.) After that, they can of course buy FIFA's own high-priced disposable bottled of water to deal with the high temperatures expected during the tournament. Toronto's environmentally-conscious council has complained loudly. 

There's even a "Reboot FIFA" campaign underway, looking to deliver "the largest single complaint FIFA will ever have received about the conduct of its senior officials", covering a range of issues including exorbitant ticket prices and the semi-official offering of a peace prize to a notorious war-monger.

For what it's worth, the venerable Sports Illustrated magazine has voted Vancouver the best of the 16 host cities, mainly for the stadium's central situation and accessibility, the good public transportation, the city's walkability, and it's mild weather. Surprisingly enough, Toronto came in at No.3, separated from Vancouver only by Seattle.

Hobson's Choice for the Armenian people

With all this talk about "great powers" and "middle powers", spare a thought for some of the "small powers".

Take little Armenia, for example: population about 3 million, area about half the size of Nova Scotia or a bit bigger than Wales, GDP in the same range as Burkina Faso and Mongolia? Armenia is about to hold a general election on June 7th, and the run-up to it has brought home just what a balancing act a small land-locked country like that has to maintain.

Armenia has been a life-line for Iran, on its southern flank, providing thousands of truckloads of agricultural produce, cargo and fuel. But it must be painfully aware that Iran can turn on its allies in a heartbeat.

It maintains a fragile peace with next-door neighbour, historic rival and perennial bugbear Azerbaijan, particularly in the aftermath of yet another skirmish over Nagorno-Karabakh, in which many thousands of ethnic Armenians were expelled, and some Armenian POWs remain in custody.

Its relationship with Turkey (sorry, Türkiye) on its western border is in constant state of fracture, especially under the iron rule of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Notwithstanding the ongoing debate over the 1915 Armenian Genocide by the Turkish Ottoman Empire - well, only debated in Turkey and Azerbaijan, really; accepted fact everywhere else - there are many other points of contention with Turkey, some going back centuries. For example, Mount Ararat, with all its historical and cultural significance, sits firmly within the legal borders of Turkey, but Armenians still see it as the mythical birthplace of the Armenian people, and the recent removal of its image from Armenia's passport entry/exit stamps was highly controversial.

And, overshadowing everything, is the looming presence of Russia, Armenia's one-time overlord back in the Soviet Union days. There is still a Russian air base near the Armenian capital Yerevan, and Russian FSB officer can still seen patrolling Armenia's southern border. Vladimir Putin still considers Armenia to be within Russia's sphere of influence despite its many years of independence, and he has warned Armenia in no uncertain terms against pursuing closer links with the European Union. Russia has exerted pressure in many ways, some subtle, some not so much, from a ban on seafood, mineral water, fresh fruit and vegetables and flowers(!), to the withdrawal of its ambassador, to veiled threats over the functioning of Armenia's (poorly) Russian-run railway system. Putin also warned Armenia in a not-so-veiled reference that "the crisis in Ukraine began with efforts to move toward EU accession".

Into this volatile mix, then, come the candidates standing for the position of President: former president Robert Kocharyan, staunchly pro-Russia and running on a nationalist platform but also aiming to distance Armenia from the pro-Europe stance of the current President Nicol Pashinyan; the almost equally pro-Russia billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, Moscow's preferred candidate, technically still under house arrest for plotting to overthrow the government, who is promising a "strategic re-alignment" with Russia; and the sole pro-European candidate, the unpopular incumbent Pashinyan (unpopular mainly because of making concessions in favour of peace with Azerbaijan).

If the two pro-Russian candidates were to work together they would handily beat Pashinyan. But, as things stand, Pashinyan may just squeak out a victory, Russian pressure notwithstanding. But a lot of Armenians are going to be a bit frustrated with the choice of potential presidents they are being presented with. Hobson's choice? (Look it up!)

UPDATE

In the end, it wasn't even close. 

Paashinyan's Civil Contract Party won the election with 49.8% of the popular vote. Karapetyan's Strong Armenia Alliance polled just 23.2%, while Kocharyan's Armenia Alliance came in a distant third with 9.9%.

Putin is understandably pissed. There are reports that the Kremlin has instructed the Russian press to downplay the pro-Europe vote. 

America hijacks D-Day memorial to score what they see as political points

The arrogance! The disdain! The pompousness! The insensitivity! Yes, I could be talking about almost any member of the Trump administration on almost any day, but this time it's the turn of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Hegseth was giving a speech in Normandy, 82 years after the joint D-Day operation to liberate Nazi-occupied Europe in 1944. Under the codenames Operation Overlord and Operation Neptune, D-Day remains the largest amphibious invasion in military history, and marked a crucial turning point in World War II.

I guess the Europeans felt they had to invite an American to speak, as the USA did provide the largest contingent of troops in the operation and was directly responsible for two of the five beach landings. But they must have had some misgivings at handing Hegseth the mike. And they would have been so right.

Hegseth thought it was appropriate to turn a solemn memorial event into a tub-thumping political diatribe and a pointed critique of European immigration policy from a (totally inapposite) American perspective.

"Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain, in Italy, in Greece, and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion?"

"The men who fought and died here restored freedom to Europe. That freedom must be maintained by this generation of leaders and war-fighters, or what they fought for was merely temporary."

I don't know whether Hegseth thought up the (spurious) link between these "invasions" himself, or had a speech-writer do it. But I'm sure he felt himself very clever for it. 

And clearly it never even occurred to him that the callous politicization of a such a sombre and reflective event might not be, well, appropriate. European speakers could have drawn parallels between the "dangerous ideologies" of the Nazis and what is happening in the USA today, but they realized that that would have been inappropriate. Or they could have pointed out modern America's penchant for invading other countries, but that would have been cheap political point-scoring, wouldn't it?

Hegseth - and the whole Trump administration for that matter - has no such qualms, no such subtlety or delicacy. They feel emboldened to say whatever they want in whatever arena at whatever time. They are boors and churls (and much worse).

Canada pledges to accelerate AI development just as others advise caution

It sometimes seems like half of all articles in the newspaper are something to do with artificial intelligence, sometimes something good, often something bad.

Canadian news outlets are all reporting and commenting on Prime Minister Mark Carney's big reveal of Canada's AI strategy yesterday, outlining the government's approach to what he calls "the defining technology of our era". Under the banner "AI For All", Carney's upbeat, if somewhat vague, presentation promises: protections for Canadians, young and old, from the risks and potential online harms of AI (through modernizing consumer privacy legislation, introducing online safety laws, watermarking AI-generated content, creating a Canada trusted AI certification program, protecting elections from interference, etc); access to free AI literacy training (an area where Canada particularly lags), including for post-secondary students; up to 90,000 AI-related job opportunities for young Canadians, plus another 250,000 new jobs through increased AI adoption by 2031; boosting business adoption of AI from 12% today to 60% by 2034; building a world-leading supercomputer by 2031; building up a multilateral alliance giving Canada "sovereign autonomy" in key AI capabilities; and $2 billion in direct investment to achieve these strategic aims.

It all sounds very forward-thinking, ambitious, even Panglossian, although what it is really is Canada trying to make up some lost ground on everyone else. Some Canadian tech companies like Cohere are extremely positive about the new policies, calling it "an incredible step forward", "a defining moment of opportunity", and "the beginning of the next chapter", particularly since Canadian researchers were at the forefront of AI's early development.

Critics of the strategy, though, have questioned how AI is supposed to create so many thousands of jobs rather than cost jobs, as many are predicting (Signal 49, for example, warns that AI and automation could lead to 550,000 Canadian job losses by 2030 as businesses restructure.) Others have complained that the government strategy is vague on timelines and specific safety measures. 

Be that as it may, the Canadian government had to make some kind of an announcement about how it is pursuing and dealing with AI, if only because everyone else is.  

It's interesting, though, that it comes hard on the heels of Pope Leo XIV's papal encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, which warns about the urgent need tor an ethical framework for AI to prevent it from becoming an instrument of domination and an agent of lethal autonomous warfare, to avoid the manipulation of reality (e.g. deepfakes), and to protect the rights of workers, the marginalized and the vulnerable.

It also comes just as major AI developer Anthropic warns that maybe there should be a coordinated and verifiable pause in all AI development, because AI systems are approaching the point where they can improve themselves, without human intervention, faster than society can manage the risks.

This, then, is the environment in which Canada is, somewhat belatedly, committing itself to accelerating AI development and adoption.

So, are we in a recession or not?

Why is it so hard to get a straight answer? Well, that's because it depends on who you ask, and what particular axe they have to grind.

The news that Canada is now in a "technical recession" has set political birds a-twitter, with Conservative opposition leader Pierre Poilievre squawking about the "Liberal recession" and the dire need for an immediate emergency debate in parliament. Mr. Poilievre, of course, is hysterical-complainer-in-chief, and will probably never amount to anything more than that. His whole job, as he sees it, is to expostulate that the sky is falling and that it is all the Liberals' fault, leaving Conservatives to hopefully conclude that it would all have been quite different had he been in charge. It's only a matter of time until Conservatives tire of his smarmy Grinch-like smile and his negativity.

But I digress...

Most non-conservatives and most economists of any (or no) political stripe have treated the news with much more nuance, cautioning that the idea of a "technical recession" (two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth) is not actually that helpful, and not even an official label. Many economic institutes, including he widely-recognized traditional arbiters of recession-calling, the National Bureau of Economic Research in the USA, and the CD Howe Institute's Business Cycle Council in Canada, do not use that definition. 

Most economists are cautioning that the weakness in Canada's economy is not yet widespread or persistent enough to warrant the recession label. Even the Bank of Canada, which issued the news, warned against overreacting to the announcement. BoC governor Tiff Macklem was very clear about it: "We have not seen a significant braod-based decline in economic activity ... recession is not the word I woild use".

In the current case, real GDP by expenditure was actually pretty much flat over the last two quarters (Q4 2025 and Q1 2026). StatsCan produces many different variants of national growth statistics, but the one usually used for these purposes shows a 0.036% decline in Q1 2026, and 0.246% decline in Q4 2026. Annualizing the figures magnifies the quarterly changes somewhat to about 0.1% and  1% fall for both quarters, but these are all tiny percentages, well within the margin of error for a stat that often gets adjusted or revised in retrospect, as often happens.

Getting still more granular, it turns out that it was really only October 2025 and March 2026 that showed actual decreases in real GDP - growth was either flat or modestly positive for the four months in between. Early estimates for April 2026 also suggest quite a sharp rebound to 0.4% growth.

And pulling out for a slightly different view of things, real GDP per capita, which some say is a better measure of economic growth and productivity, actually expanded 0.2% in Q1 2026, after a tiny dip in Q4 2025, as the country's overall population shrank slightly. Tellingly, a year or so ago, Mr. Poilievre and other critics were focussed much more on GDP per capita; now, when it doesn't serve their purposes quite so well, they are downplaying it.

Recession is, to some extent at least, in the eye of the beholder. Remember the great non-recession of 2015? Towards the end of Stephen Harper's Conservative administration, Canada's GDP fell by 0.5% and then 0.8%. But the Conservatives of the day, with an election looming, "declined" to call it a recession, even of a technical nature - one euphemism was a "discrete sectoral downturn" - while the opposition Liberals of course insisted that it was most definitely a full-blown recession. After much deliberation, the CD Howe Institute ultimately ruled that that technical recession didn't qualify as a real recession because its impact was not broad enough.

According to CD Howe, the last real recession was 2008/9, often referred to as the "Banking Crisis" (although Canada did not experience any major bank failures, and it weathered the downturn much better than other G7 nations), with a deep but very short one - which I would have thought ruled it out as a recession, by their own rules) in March-April 2020, at the start of the COVID pandemic. Before that, we are talking about the early 1990s and then the early 1980s. Recessions are not very common, particularly in Canada.

So, what are we to conclude? You can berate statistics and damned statistics all you like, but the fact is that they can usually be manipulated to prove a point, any point. While it's clear that, in very general terms, Canada's economy is not particularly healthy - how could it be, with all the external pressures on it? - most economists and financial institutions (including, let it be said, the Business Cycle Council) are urging extreme caution on the use of the R-word. 

Sorry, Pierre.

Trump tries some new tariffs - well, why not?

The Trump administration is at it again with tariffs, this time against almost all of America's major trading partners, with the pretext being that they are not pulling their weight on preventing the importation of goods manufactured using forced labour, which unfairly disadvantages the USA.

After the US Supreme Court struck down Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs (levied, illegally as it turned out, under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act), he needed to find another way to impose tariffs, because that seems to be the sum total of his economic policy. What his highly-paid lawyers and policy wonks came up with this time was to use Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act to impose tariffs of 10%-12.5% on 60 countries (including Canada) that they say are not doing enough to enforce the import ban on goods produced using forced/slave labour (from Xinjiang, China mainly). Canada, however, should be largely protected from these tariffs due to its participation in the USMCA/CUSMA agreement.

It's a bit of a stretch, and it's hard to see the current US regime taking the moral high ground on ANYTHING. But, to some extent, in this area, they may be right. 

Canada does have laws around forced labour imports, and there are specific provisions built into USMCA/CUSMA which prohibit the importation of goods produced wholly or partly by forced labour. But enforcement does seem to be lax. While Canada has intercepted 50 shipments on suspicion of forced labour contraventions since 2020, just 2 were ultimately turned away. The Coalition Against Forced Labour has called Canada out on this, and auditors from PwC agree that enforcement has been far from perfect. This will all no doubt also come up in some detail at the USMCA renegotiations later this year.

I confess, the first thing that occurred to me after I heard the news about the new tariffs was, "I bet America doesn't enforce their forced labour rules any better than we do!" Former Liberal MP John McKay, who was involved in the original implementation of the Canadian laws on forced labour, notes that the US still allows private American firms to make exports using prison labour, and it does not adequately enforce its own laws on forced labour imports, such as the Biden-era Uyghur Forced labour Prevention Act.

Actually, though, the US does seem to be enforcing that specific law quite well, as well as the terms of the Tariff Act of 1930 insofar as they relate to the products of forced labour. Some 6,300 shipments were denied entry into the US in 2024 alone (although that was pre-Trump; figures for 2025 do not seem to be available).

That said, most people seem pretty sure that the Trump regime is not doing this out of moral indignation. They are doing it as "an excuse to impose the tariffs that they wanted to do anyway", as one European diplomat put it, adding that it's completely implausible that all these US trading partners are equally guilty - all 60 major trading partners appear to have failed to meet the bar the US has arbitrarily set - and there seems to be little or no proof being offered. Human rights groups also caution that, while the problem of forced labour does exist, the US tariffs are not the way to deal with it. 

I have looked previously at the whole issue of forced labour in Xinjiang, China - because that is essentially what we are talking about here -  and it is not as black-and-white an issue as it might appear. But the bottom line is, Trump is effectively using any justification he can to impose tariffs (because he's a "tariff guy", don't you know?), and if he can also engineer a hit on China at the same time, then all well and good.

These new tariffs cannot be imposed immediately, but must go through a period of public comment and review, starting with hearings in July. Given how many legal set-backs Trump has experienced in recent months, the tariffs are not the slam dunk they may have been even a year ago.

UPDATE

A new law proposed by the Liberals to placate Trump and his buddies on the matter of blocking imports produced with forced labour was tabled this week (mid-June), designating a list of specific goods, producers, countries or regions where there are "reasonable grounds to suspect" forced labour involved. The government maintains this was not in direct response to the Trump tariff threat, and that it had been innthe works since 2024, but the timing sure is propitious.

It all sounds a bit woolly, especially as the bill puts the onus on shippers to prove that their goods are free of forced labour components. How is that going to work, I wonder? Proving the absence of something is always fraught.

Wait, so now we need to worry about AI worms?

As if viruses, malware, phishing threats, and all were not enough, now cybersecurity experts are warning about AI-powered worms.

While viruses require a user to execute a file or open a link, worms can slither their way into a network or operating system to exploit vulnerabilities, move from device to device and replicate themselves across computer networks, all without human intervention. Once in, worms can carry out any number of cyberthreats, from network overload to denial of service attacks to spam distribution to ransomware delivery to data theft. Any device connected to the Internet - whether it be computers, cameras, printers - is potentially at risk. 

Remember the ILOVEYOU bug back in 2000, and WannaCry in 2017, and all the chaos and fear they engendered? Well, they were worms. But now, the addition of artificial intelligence into the mix has made everything that much more dangerous and harder to fix. While most cybersecurity concerns have centred around large language models like OpenAI's GPT-5.5-Cyber and Anthropic's Claude Mythos Preview, AI worms are a much cheaper and more accessible way for hackers to wreak havoc on the Internet.

Back in the day, worms used to follow scripts generated by humans and, when they hit a defence they weren't designed to crack, they failed and died. AI has upped the ante and can create worms that modify their tactics as they spread from one device to another, tailoring attack strategies to each machine they interact with.

So potentially destructive is their impact that researchers actually debated whether or not to publish their findings at all, worried that they would give bad actors a ready-made blueprint for how to conduct such an attack. Eventually, they decided to publish and just omit certain operational details, judging that the call to action - particularly at a governmental level - is a much higher priority.

Why do people smash things when their sports team wins?

Can someone please explain to me what burning cars and e-bikes and smashing and looting stores has to do with celebrating a sports victory?

After Paris St-Germain beat Arsenal in soccer's Champions League final this weekend, PSG fans went on a rampage in Paris and clashed with police. 219 fans were injured, eight of them seriously. Bus, train and rail services were severely disrupted, and one person was reported dead after an accident on the Paris ring-road (which may or may not have been connected to the riots). Some 6,000 police officers were mobilized this year after similar celebrations in Paris turned violent last year, and 57 of those police officers were injured. In all, 780 people were arrested, with over 450 of them still in custody. 

So, this then is what the French do when their team wins? What is the psychology behind that? Or is it just a function of the amount of alcohol imbibed? I could almost understand it if they had lost and they were frustrated, although it still wouldn't be justified.

Well, it turns out that psychology and sociology do have something to say about these violent revellers. 

For one thing, there is something called the "group contagion effect", whereby the anonymity of being part of a large group makes people feel they can get away with something illegal or dangerous, and generally let loose their aggressive side. After a particularly intense game, people may search for a release from the tension through destructive behaviour. This can quickly spiral out of control in a large crowd of other like-minded people, and soon the usual rules and norms get overridden.

There's also an aspect of crowd behaviour called "excitation transfer", where extreme happiness can turn into extreme aggression as one part of the brain gets over-stimulated and over-excited. A state of high physical excitation (increased heart rate, adrenaline production, etc) can continue even after the initial arousal, and the body's leftover energy can become misattributed or transferred to a different emotional stimulus.

Well, maybe there are perfectly good psychological explanations for this stuff, but it still doesn't make any sense to me!

How Spain became so successful: immigrants

Remember back in the late 2000s/2010s, Spain, along with southern European neighbours Portugal, Italy and Greece were disparagingly referred to as "PIGS", and mercilessly berated as failed states by more successful European countries like Germany and France?

Well, not any longer. Since the 2020 pandemic, Spain's economy has boomed while the likes of Germany, France and the UK have struggled. Disposable income in Spain has risen three times as fast as in France and eight times as fast as in Germany. Unemployment, poverty and inequality have all fallen to their lowest levels in nearly 20 years. The Economist ranked Spain as the No. 1 economy in the world in 2024.

All this has happened under the progressive centre-left government of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, which has now been in power for eight years. It has welcomed record numbers of immigrants, hiked the minimum wage, implemented energy price controls, fast-tracked renewable energy projects, and even implemented a kind of guaranteed income system. Just about the only negative arising from all this is a burgeoning housing crisis, which the government will need to address if it wants to retain voter popularity.

When the initial COVID lockdowns started to fade in 2021, and tourists started to flock back to Spain (the country has always been in the top three of global tourist destinations), Spain, with one of the fastest-ageing populations in all of Europe, just didn't have enough workers to keep up. Increased immigration was the obvious solution, but that also had political ramifications, and the country's surging hard-right faction was ever active on that file, as always.

Spain's solution was elegant. It visibly cracked down on the most controversial form of immigration: African migrants entering the country illegally by boats across the Mediterranean. This was actually just a tiny proportion of its overall immigration, but it was the one most often targeted by the populist right wing and by the Spanish public in general. At the same time, they substantially ramped up the least controversial form of immigration: legal Latin American migrants. Given that they share a language and certain cultural affinities, Latinos have always been reasonably well-tolerated in Spain, especially if they do the least-popular and poorly-paid manual jobs.

They fast-tracked work authorizations for immigrants willing to work in those sectors with labour shortages, streamlined the foreign worker visa process, and encouraged workers to settle in areas where the local workforce had dried up. Government representatives would even recruit individuals from the migrant refugee camps on the US-Mexico border. 

It was a very successful strategy even if it wasn't particularly progressive in some respects (this is not quite on a par with Donald Trump declaring that only white South African Afrikaners are welcome to immigrate into the USA, but it does sniff of discrimination). In just two years from 2021-3, Spain added 3 million workers to its 48 million population. They injected new life into Spanish economy, allowed businesses to expand, and some of the more ambitious immigrants even went on to open up new businesses themselves. By some estimates, a quarter of the rise in Spain's GDP over the last few years can be attributed directly to immigrants.

Kamloops residential school burials investigation is proceeding, just very slowly

Can you believe that it's been 5 years since the announcement in May 2021 of the discovery of the remains of 215 Indigenous residential school students - some as young as three years old, we were told - at an apple orchard near Kamloops, British Columbia, once the site of a notorious residential school for First Nations kids.

The news marked a watershed moment in Indigenous relations for Canada. Huge sums of money were allocated by the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau towards further investigations. There was an unprecedented period of national mourning and much heart-searching. National flags were maintained at half-mast for nearly five months. A National Day For Truth and Reconciliation was established, and people held vigils and tied orange ribbons to poles and fence-posts. Pope Francis made an official apology on behalf of the Catholic Church for its role in Canada's residential school system as a direct response to the discovery.

The hundreds of "anomalies" identified by ground-penetrating radar at Kamloops were initially described as "the remains of 215 children" in a "mass grave". The press repeated this description avidly and unquestioningly, e.g. "Remains of 215 children found buried at former BC residential school", "Canada mourns as remains of 215 children found at Indigenous school", etc. 

Gradually, as cooler heads prevailed, they were reframed as "probable burials" or just "anomalies", and they were said to be "consistent with" the size, depth and layout of human burials. The number of suspected graves was reduced to around 200. But it was still a shocking and humbling discovery that merited further investigation, and it set off a frantic search in many other parts of Canada for more evidence of hidden burial sites and residential school atrocities.

Five years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, though, and there is still no hard evidence of what actually lies beneath the apple orchard. The Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc leadership are still resisting actually digging up the "probable" dead, and some people are starting to become suspicious that something is being hidden. Chief Rosanne Casimir has equivocated with unsatisfactory statements like, "While the investigation has been more complex than we initially thought, we are making progress and will continue adapting our methodologies and information as it advances". 

Interpreting ground-penetrating radar readings is an imprecise science, to put it mildly. Rocks, water and roots can appear as indistinct radar blips requiring interpretation. A ground-penetrating radar investigation of a potential mass grave in the US some years ago ultimately turned up nothing more than construction debris, artifacts and dirt, but no bodies. Other confirmatory technologies exist - human remains detection dogs, LiDAR (a remote sensing method using laser pulses), and soil spectroscopy - and it seems that some of these are also being used in BC.

Nevertheless, five years is a long time, and it's not clear what "advances" have been made. The ongoing uncertainty has given rise to skeptics and even denialists. One theory, based on historical blueprints of the residential school, is that the "anomalies" are actually part of a defunct septic system. Some denialists (or were they skeptics) have tried to break into the orchard in the middle of the night with shovels. Some have gone so far as to call the whole thing a big hoax, and one ex-MLA called it "the greatest lie in Canadian history". There are hashtags and slogans in some corners of the Internet like #StopTheGrift, "Every Hoax Matters" and "Dig Up or Shut Up". Some critics have called for the millions of dollars of taxpayers' money to be returned to Ottawa with interest.

These are the words of a small minority of mavericks and outliers, of course, but the media blackout and the cult of silence around Indigenous investigations are not helping the official case from a PR perspective. One poll found that 63% of Canadians won't accept that children are buried at the Tk'emlúps site until excavation provides further evidence. Some Indigenous leaders believe that there is a risk that the secretive, closed-door policy might lead to further division between Canadians and Indigenous people.

In fact, it does seem that investigations are proceeding, under federal guidance and according to a detailed plan to dig the site by 2027 (pending consent from around 120 First Nations communities throughout Western Canada that sent children to the school). DNA samples from First Nations are being collected to help with potential identification. Iron-clad legal protections against misuse are required. So, the work is proceeding, but this is a mammoth undertaking of great complexity, and the Tk'emlúps leadership is playing it very close to their chest. Precise timelines remain very uncertain.

And if the area is eventually excavated, and no children's bodies are found, what then? Well, we'll cross that bridge if and when we get to it.

Israel denies allegations of sexual violence in conflict zones

The UN has accused both Israel and Russia of engaging in "patterns of rape or other forms of sexual violence" in conflict zones, and added them to a blacklist of countries suspected of such proscribed tactics.

Israel, predictably enough, back-accused the UN, and Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in particular, of downright lies and slander, and severed all ties with Guterres (although what "ties" they really have is hard to know). Israel's UN ambassador pulled no punches in his public response: "Given that Antonio Guterres has chosen to violate every standard of honesty, integrity and professionalism, Israel has decided to sever all ties with the Secretary-General's Office and will wait until a new UN Secretary-General is appointed". Well!

Of course, no such thing has happened. Mr. Guterres was merely articulating the results of a detailed report by the United Nations in which multiple specific instances of conflict-related sexual violence on Israel's part are well documented, covering the years 2023, 2024 and 2025. It had put Russia and Israel "on notice" last year that they were likely to be added to the blacklist; this was not, then, unexpected. (Hamas, by the way, was already on the list.)

So, the UN was just doing its job, as was Mr Guterres. The violation of honesty, integrity and professionalism seems to be all on the side of Israel.

Russia, for its part, does not seem to have commented on the allegations, and presumably just doesn't care.

What's in a name? Where laws are concerned , quite a lot, it seems

Some of Vladimir Putin's most outspoken opponents are engaging in a full court press in Canada. And what they are campaigning for might surprise you.

The two activists are: Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian activist who has survived two poisoning attempts and a stint in a Russian jail; and Bill Browder, an American financier, who has led a high-profile (and dangerous) global campaign for targeted human rights sanctions, ever since his Russian tax advisor Sergei Magnitsky was beaten and killed in captivity for uncovering a massive fraud scheme administered by Putin officials.

The two men are currently campaigning in Canada, and their main demand is merely to rename one of Canada's laws. The Special Economic Measures Act (SEMA) has been Canada's main economic sanctions tool since it was first brought in back in 1992. Kara-Murza and Browder are arguing that the law should be renamed to include the name Magnitsky. They argue that the name is now globally synonymous with holding governments to account for human rights abuses, and that including the Magnitsky name would add "clarity" and give the law "a statement of moral purpose". 

There is currently a private member's bill, C-219, going through Parliament to exactly that effect, as well as to expand the current law to include transnational repression (where foreign states harass or harm vocal critics in order to silence or stifle their activism).

Now, I don't have a major problem with the proposed legislation, except that we already have a Sergei Magnitsky Law on the statutes, also known as the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act, and things could get confusing.

But mainly, I was surprised at just how important these two world-renowned activists consider the name of the law to be, that they would contemplate travelling here to specifically campaign for it.

Correlation between education and voting in the USA

Here's an interesting little rabbit hole to go down. Based on US census data, the best-educated American states are:

1. Massachusetts
2. Colorado
3. Vermont 
4. Marylamd
5. New Jersey 
6. Virginia
7. Connecticut
8. New Hampshire
9. New York
10. Washington

The least-educated states are;

1. West Virginia
2. Mississippi
3. Arkansas
4. Louisiana
5. Kentucky
6. Nevada
7. Oklahoma
8. Alabama
9. Indiana
10. New Mexico

Well, maybe you could have guessed most of those. But what's interesting is the correlation of these results with election results.

ALL of the top ten educated states vote Democrat. And ALL of the top ten least educated states voted Republican.

Of course, it could just be coincidence.

China's immovable smoking addiction

By all accounts, Chinese President Xi Jinping gave up an atrocious smoking habit some fifteen years ago. His country, though, is making zero - or rather negative - progress on his attempts to reduce China's awful addiction to smoking.

Over the last twenty years, smoking in the rest of the world has fallen by a respectable 26%; in China, over that period, it increased by 39%. China now accounts for nearly half of the global total of cigarettes smoked, some 2.4 trillion every year. While the percentage of smokers in China has fallen a bit, as fewer young people take up the habit, overall cigarette sales have continued an inexorable rise.

Part of the problem is that cigarettes are ridiculously cheap in China - at around $3 a pack on average, they are about a third of the price of smokes in the USA and Canada. China ratified WHO's tobacco control treaty in 2005, but has never really implemented its strictest provisions. Unlike the graphic health warnings on North American and European cigarettes, Chinese cigarettes have a simple, unobtrusive text warning, all but lost among the patriotic symbols that adorn the cigarette packs produced by the China National Tobacco Corp (CNTC), a vast state-owned monopoly and the world's largest producer of cigarettes. 

Indeed, the CNTC is the main problem. Generating annual profits of $244 billion last year, the CNTC alone contributes an eye-popping 7% of China's tax income each year, about the same as what it spends on defence. (Roughly half of the sales revenue of each cigarette flows into government coffers.) The company has also been called on to help out with specific strategic priorities, like financially shoring up one of China's biggest banks, funding national semi-conductor investment, etc. In short, it has made itself economically indispensable, and accumulated a lot of political influence in the process. 

It's also alarmingly corrupt: seven former top administrators of the CNTC have been arrested on corruption charges in the last seven years. It has successfully blocked a concerted national push for an indoor smoking ban, and even official studies have concluded that the state monopoly has actively interfered in national and local attempts to rein in smoking. It's influence is, obviously, even more marked in tobacco-growing regions like Kunming and Changde, where tobacco taxes can account for more than half of the city's budget. 

There are local "tobacco bureaus" that actively work to water down even modest anti-smoking initiatives. In one city, the local health commission proposed a system of smoke-free public areas, but the local tobacco bureau managed to ensure it did not apply to restaurants and bars, and even tried to limit the smoke-free designation in schools to elementary and middle schools only.

We think of President Xi as ruling China with a rod of iron, but even his attempts to reduce the country's smoking addiction have met with the immovable object of the powerful smoking lobby.

Is Mark Carney's extended honeymoon period starting to sour?

Mark Carney has been granted a generous, even unprecedented, honeymoon period as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and as Prime Minister of the country. This is partly - mainly - due to the singular circumstances he has inherited (basically, Donald Trump and the chaos that inevitably follows him around). But, either way, Carney is currently basking in an enviable 67% approval rate, something most other world leaders can only dream of right now, and a comfortable +8% approval of the direction he is taking the country in. After a year in government, Mr. Carney is more popular than when he was elected, and his party now has a small majority, rather than the large minority it was elected with.

This all sounds exceptional, and certainly, compared to the likes of Donald Trump and Keir Starmer, it is. But, in fact, it's not dissimilar to Justin Trudeau's popularity rating a year into his tenure a decade ago, and look how he turned out! The big test of leaders often comes after about 15 months, sometimes referred to as the "15 Month Itch".

After the events of the last few weeks, you have to wonder whether that itch is starting to be felt. At the end of April, fourteen (unspecified) members of the Liberal caucus published a letter bemoaning the government's anti-environmental trajectory. Because it's undeniable the Carney has indeed presided over a wholesale roll-back and deliberate weakening of the environmental initiatives of his predecessor. Among other things, he has repealed the consumer carbon tax, eliminated the EV sales mandate, ended the oil and gas emissions cap, and called a halt to plans to end fossil fuel subsidies. Improbably, Carney maintains he is still an ardent environmentalist and climate change leader, and that he is just being practical and pragmatic, but his actions belie that. To call it a "pivot" hardly does it justice.

Then, just this week, after Mr. Carney followed though on his disastrous pipeline agreement with Alberta, the prominent MP, environmentalist and Liberal Quebec "lieutenant" Steven Guilbeault tendered his resignation, first from his position in the Cabinet and then as a Member of Parliament, on the grounds that he cannot in good conscience watch the Liberal Party abandon its environmental stance. As environment minister, Mr. Guilbeault was the architect of many of the Trudeau-era environmental policies, which he has watched being comprehensively dismantled by Carney. As a man of conscience and principle, it is all he can do to walk away.

Now, not everyone is as principled as Steven Guilbeault. Most of the 67% that still support Mark Carney (including a good proportion of Conservatives) clearly believe, as Carney himself does, that, at this particular moment in time, economic imperatives outweigh the nice-to-have option of environmental initiatives. Even though the consequences of climate change and other environmental deteriorations may be much more important in the long run, it's hard for people to see past the short-term challenges of inflation, job losses, housing shortages, etc. In times of economic fragility, it's always "the economy, stupid", and I get that.

But I wonder whether the growing schism in the Liberal Party between what you might call the "Economy First" and the "Environment First" factions is an important one? 14 out of 174 Liberal MPs is not a huge number, after all, but I do wonder if it might be the start of a fissure, the start of a 15 Month Itch. My guess, though, is not: pragmatism will win out over principle. Stupid.

Potential investors in Spacex should be very wary

The IPO for Elon Musk's SpaceX is expected to be the biggest ever, and will convert it into an almost $2 trillion enterprise. However, potential investors might want to have a good look at the way the company is set up, and particularly how Musk is paid and how his share holdings work.

An IPO (Initial Public Offering) is the way that a private company transforms into a publicly traded company, and is the way that companies raise capital for expansion. It allows institutional and retail investors to get a piece of what they think will be an exciting and profitable venture. SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corp, to give it its full name) may well be exciting - space! rockets! Mars! - although the profitability piece is much less certain.

And concerning Musk's position, investors should be pretty wary about investing in a company that has been expressly constructed around him in order to maximize his income and his control. The shares that will become available for ordinary investors at next month's IPO will be Class A shares that confer one vote each. What Mr. Musk has are Class B "super-voting" shares that carry 10 votes a share. Musk has 5.5 billion of these B shares, giving him around 85% of all votes. And he has those votes even though he doesn't technically have the shares in his hands until the company achieves some increasingly-unlikely targets, such as establishing a colony on Mars with a million inhabitants, launching high-powered data centres into space, etc. 

This set-up allows Musk almost complete control over the company, including an ability to appoint insiders to its board, to set his own compensation package, to insulate himself from shareholder lawsuits, etc. Investment experts say they have never seen anything like it, calling it "insane" and that the governance structure "freaks me out".

Caveat emptor, caveat emptor, caveat emptor!

The other disease outbreak that no-one is talking about

With all the attention on hantavirus and ebola outbreaks, the devastating measles outbreak in Bangladesh has gone all but unnoticed. What measles outbreak, you ask? Well, precisely.

In just two short months, since mid-March, Bangladesh has seen 60,000 suspected measles cases and 528 suspected measles-related deaths, the vast majority of them children under 5 years old. Yikes!

The irony is that, under disgraced ex-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed, Bangladesh was making good progress on completely eliminating measles in the country, with a robust community-led vaccination campaign. After the July Uprising of 2024, though, the interim government dropped the ball, the vaccination supply was disrupted, and immunization campaigns postponed. The whole thing was made worse by hospital staffing shortages caused by, among other things, foreign aid cuts, principally by the Trump administration in the USA.

And here we see the consequences. UNICEF and the WHO have watched it happening and issued stern warnings, but nothing has changed. This is now the largest measles outbreak in Bangladesh in decades and hospitals are already overwhelmed, with no end in sight.

US crusade against Cuba makes no sense

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's usual function in the US government is to try to settle things down after yet another wild outburst from his boss, Donald Trump, who, as we know, has anger management and impulse control issues (among many other issues).

On one brief, though, Rubio is probably even more hawkish than Trump, and that issue is Cuba. After all, there is no good reason why Trump should care that much about Cuba: it has little in the way of economic or strategic importance, which is what usually exercises Trump's twisted mind. He appears to be guided by Rubio on this one.

Because Rubio DOES have skin in that game, or at least he seems to think he does. Rubio was actually born and raised in Florida, but his parents were Cuban, and he seems to share the acute sense of grievance that so many Cuban-Americans feel. Despite living the good life in the Sunshine State, many ex-Cubans and their descendants are desperate for retribution against the Castros for pushing them out, as they see it, from their island paradise. 

These are not working-class ex-Cubans (which the Castro revolution actually helped raise up from penury and almost medieval serfdom under the pre-revolution Washington-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista); these are the old wealthy landowners and middle-class professionals. Pre-revolutionary Cuba was not a pleasant place for the poor, but a near-utopia for the wealthy. Being displaced from that is what really rankles for many Florida Cubans (and their descendants), and they want revenge.

But here's the thing: very few Cuban-Americans living in Florida today have any first-hand experience of the Cuban Revolution 67 years ago, or of the supposed paradise that preceded it (actually a brutal dictatorship, defined by rampant corruption, censorship and ties to the American mafia). Most of their rancour and sense of grievance is based more on family lore and race memory, warped and overblown throughout the decades, a kind of foundational myth with little base in reality. This is also Mr. Rubio's background.

Actually, Marco Rubio's parents left Cuba in 1956, over two years BEFORE the revolution, so arguably they were not even displaced by the revolution (although maybe they saw the writing on the wall). That makes Rubio an American born of Cuban parents who voluntarily left before the revolution. So, how much skin can he really be said to have in it? He is, though, the designated representative of many other displaced Cubans in Miami (or, mainly these days, their descendants), hence his apparent ardour on the subject.

Either way, one gets the impression that it is Rubio that is driving this latest crackdown by America. Trump probably doesn't care that much, other than about the Cuban-American vote. Rubio often claims the Cuban government is a severe national security threat to the US, although pretty much everyone knows that is not true.

The United States has long maintained a debilitating embargo on Cuba, an embargo that Trump recently made much, much worse by denying the country its essential imports of oil, which used to come mainly from Venezuela (which is now effectively controlled by the US). This has led to devastating power cuts, food shortages, transportation standstill, and a general  disabling of its entire economy. Most recently, Trump's DoJ has announced the indictment of 94-year old Raúl Castro (Fidel's brother) on "Trumped-up" charges relating to events back in 1996. It's even possible that another Maduro-style kidnapping is in the pipeline. How is arresting and trying a doddering old man going to help anything?

So, all this vitriol is directed against a small island in the Caribbean which is hard-pressed to keep its own population alive and in order, let alone present a threat to the mighty USA. It's hard to credit. This crusade against Cuba makes no real sense, not even for Marco Rubio. But then, why are we still looking for sense with this administration?

Remember COVID? It's still with us

I happened to read a letter in the newspaper that gave some rather striking statistics about the death rates from COVID-19 in various countries. Turns out they were true.

According to Wikipedia/Our World In Data, Canada's death rate from COVID to date has been 1,424 per million; the USA's has been 3,624 per million, and for the EU as a whole it was 2,831 per million. I'd say that was a statistically significant difference! Countries that observed even tighter controls than Canada showed even better (lower) death rates: New Zealand (884 per million), Japan (597 per million), Singapore (358 per million), etc. Next time someone complains about government overreach during the pandemic, throw that in their face! Vaccinations and public health controls save lives! Surprise!

I haven't thought too much about COVID in a while, except to get our biannual vaccination, which I did just last week. It wasn't easy to find a vaccination - what a change from the good old bad old days! - but I did eventually track down a Moderna jab. This was not my first preference: I have always had a much worse reaction to Moderna than to Pfizer, but beggars can't be choosers. 

Several of the pharmacies I spoke to said that the government either didn't send them any stocks of the new vaccine, or sent so few that they ran out in a couple of days. That's just how it is these days, they griped. It seems ridiculous that we had to jump through so many hoops to get hold of a vaccine that should be part of our regular routine, like the flu jab.

That said, though, it does seem like, at the moment anyway, in the slow period of the year as we now are, there are very few reported/diagnosed/confirmed cases of COVID in our neck of the woods. 

The important part there, though, is "reported/diagnosed/confirmed". Most people do not report it or have it checked out these days unless they actually end up in hospital; many just assume it was a mild flu or some other infection. I've only had COVID once, about three years ago, but it was pretty nasty, and I'd prefer to avoid it if possible.

A new stream of reliable renewable energy: osmotic power

Renewable energy is still enjoying a period of robust expansion, despite the best efforts of Donald Trump (or, arguably, because of them).

But a relatively new and little-known source of renewable power is starting to come of age: osmotic power. While it might sound like a fictitious concept, or something the Power Rangers might invoke, the idea of the power of osmosis has been around for decades. Norway may be credited with the proof of concept of a practical power plant employing the notion, and Denmark opened the first fully-functioning osmotic power plant in 2023. But it is only with the recent commissioning of a full-scale, efficient, commercial plant at Fukuoka, Japan, that the real potential of the idea has become clear.

Osmosis is the movement of water from areas of low salt concentration to areas of high salt concentration through a membrane of some sort. It is the same principle that allows plants to draw water from the soil, and that keeps our own cells hydrated. In the context of power generation, as at Fukuoka, the difference in saltiness of seawater and freshwater is used to pull water across a membrane, increasing the pressure on the saltwater side. This pressure gradient can then be used to drive a turbine, thereby generating electricity.

In the case of Fukuoka, the saltwater is super-concentrated by using the brine left over from the operation of a nearby desalination plant, making the whole process much more efficient. The electricity generated is then fed back into the power-hungry desalination plant, as well as to supply a few hundred local homes. The power it generates is equivalent to about two soccer fields of solar panels, and it runs day and night, regardless of the weather. It produces zero carbon dioxide and no other harmful by-products.

The trick is to produce enough power to outweigh the energy cost of pumping the two streams of water into the power station, and the frictional loss across the membrane, which is what the Fukuoka plant has achieved. The idea is gathering steam [sic], and pilot projects are springing up in Norway, South Korea, Spain, Qatar and Australia. 

Right now, the modality is still in its infancy but, as technical challenges are gradually overcome and the concept comes of age, researchers say that it could eventually meet up to 15% of global energy demand by 2050 - not to be sniffed at. This prediction sounds overly optimistic, but it certainly represents yet another string to the essential bow of renewable energy.

Michelle Smith's exercise in disingenuity

Alberta politics is weird. Hell, Alberta is weird. Quebec likes to think of itself as a "distinct society" (or at least that was the phrase they were using some years ago, they've probably moved on by now), but much of the stuff that happens in Alberta leaves the rest of Canada open-mouthed in disbelief. And, in recent years, most of the weirdness (call it "distinctness", if you prefer) has swirled around Premier Daniella Smith, who is certainly no stranger to this blog.

The latest news column-filling antic from Ms. Smith is her insistence on adding a separation question to the existing nine (yes, nine!) referendum questions to be put before the Albertan voting public in October. But, wait, you say, didn't an Alberta judge just rule that a referendum on Alberta separating from Canada against the wishes of its Indigenous population would be unconstitutional and illegal? Well, yes, technically. But that was just "a legal mistake by a single judge", according to Smith, which would "silence the voices of hundreds of thousands of Albertans".

So, Ms. Smith - give her credit for her ingenuity as well as her disingenuity - came up with a referendum question under the Referendum Act, rather than the Citizen Initiative Act, which has no such requirement to consult Indigenous groups. Technically legal, this does nevertheless violate the spirit of the court ruling, and is "an attempt to evade" consultation with Indigenous groups according to First Nations.

The other thing that has attracted attention and opinion is that the proposed referendum question does not directly broach separatism. Rather, it is a kind of meta-question, a "referendum on a referendum" as many are calling it:

"Should Alberta remain a province of Canada or should the Government of Alberta commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada?"

So, even if the referendum, by some freak accident, passes, Alberta is no further forward along the path towards separation, as any future referendum would still be blocked by the legal ruling. And, even if some way round that were discovered, the path is still strewn with many obstacles, as I have described before.

So, a pretty obscure move, but arguably a clever one. Presumably, Smith thought that this would placate the separatist wing of her UCP party, on which she is reliant, despite her own (somewhat suspect) protests that she is strongly pro-federalist. 

Well, no chance of that. One key separatist leader says he feels "duped", and that his movement will "react strongly". Another warned Smith that, "if she abandons her base or betrays her base, there will likely be political consequences", following up with "We need to work to remove her as leader in the same way that we worked to get rid of Kenney". Finally, "She's got to go!", said Jeffrey Rath. Ouch, none of that sounds very conciliatory or appreciative.

Indeed, she is facing criticism from all sides, not least for the way she plays fast and loose with her words. For one thing, she is trying to blame the national unity crisis over which she is presiding on everyone else but herself, including the 14 Liberal MPs who have publicly objected to Mark Carney's attempts at rapprochement with Smith, whom she calls "cowards", and of course people like federal NDP leader Avi Lewis and BC Premier David Eby, "who continue to try to put barriers in the way of us getting our product to market". How rude of them!

Smith has also repeatedly claimed that 700,000 Albertans are calling for a referendum on separation, not just the 300,000 who actually signed a petition to that end. The other 400,000? Ah, they are the people who signed a separate pro-unity petition designed to block the separatism petition. Because they really want a separatism referendum too, don't they? At one point, she even claimed that "as many as a million or more" wanted a referendum on separation (God only knows where that other 300,000 came from). Ah, Michelle, you're turning into Donald Trump!

It's easy to call Michelle Smith disingenuous and sneaky. So many of her words and actions militate towards that conclusion. But it's really quite hard to figure out what she really wants from all this (other than to stay in power - that much is clear). She says she is proudly pro-federalist and pro-Canadian, and yet she goes out of her way to facilitate Alberta separation. Then, she could have closed the whole thing down after the courts ruled a referendum question illegal ("we tried, but we failed", "my hands are tied", that kind of thing), but instead she pushed through a pseudo-separation question anyway, thereby igniting the current firestorm on all sides. 

She's nothing if not quixotic. Oh, wait, that's how they describe Donald Trump...