Business
Oil may be exempt from Trump Tariffs as Trump says oil “has nothing to do with it”
From LifeSiteNews
Trump to impose 25% tariffs on Canada, Mexico this Saturday
U.S. President Donald Trump has confirmed that he will implement 25% tariffs on all imports from Canada and Mexico this Saturday.
During a January 30 interview, Trump announced that, beginning February 1, he will impose 25% tariffs on all imports from Canada and Mexico while Canada’s Parliament remains suspended thanks to an order by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“Number one is the people that have poured into our country so horribly and so much,” Trump told media. “Number two are the drugs, fentanyl, and everything else that have come into the country; and, number three are the massive subsidies that we’re giving to Canada and to Mexico in the form of deficits.”
It’s unclear if Canada’s oil will be exempt from the tariff as Trump told reporters that oil “has nothing to do with it.”
Trump’s tariffs aim to force Canada and Mexico to take serious action against illegal drug smuggling and immigration which occurs at their borders.
Initially, the tariff was to take effect on his first day of office, January 20, but was postponed until February 1, leaving Canadians under two weeks to respond to his demands.
However, because Trudeau prorogued Parliament until March 24, little action has been taken by Canadian politicians to respond to Trump’s threats.
Trudeau, who is slated to resign once a new Liberal leader is selected, has told Canadians that Liberals are considering all options, including retaliatory tariffs.
“We will not hesitate to act,” Trudeau said at a meeting of the Council on Canada-U.S. Relations on January 17. “We will respond and, I will say it again, everything is on the table.”
Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has demanded that Trudeau immediately reconvene Parliament on an “emergency” basis so Canada can deal with the looming tariffs.
“Canada is facing a critical challenge. On February 1st we are facing the risk of unjustified 25% tariffs by our largest trading partner that would have damaging consequences across our country,” wrote Poilievre in a news release Tuesday.
Meanwhile, polls have revealed that 77 percent of Canadians want an immediate election to deal with the tariff threat.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has done just that, calling a snap election to take place on February 27. The election, according to Ford, allows him to secure a new “four-year” mandate from Ontario voters to respond to Trump’s tariffs.
News that the tariffs are to take effect also come after Trump has repeatedly suggested that he would like to annex Canada and make the country the “51st state” of America.
While Trump’s comments were initially passed over as a joke or trolling, Trump has persistently referred to Canada as the “51st state” and even threatened to use “economic force” to overtake Canada.
Trump claimed that there is a $200 billion trade deficit between Canada and the U.S. regarding spending on “subsidies” and the fact that the U.S. military is there to also “protect Canada.”
Just last week, Trump told the World Economic Forum (WEF), “We love Canada, but they might be better off as part of the United States.” He made the comments to suggest that Canada, as a way of avoiding the tariffs he is threatening, should just up and join the United States.
Trump’s repeated threats have drawn the ire of many Canadians, who boldly tell the president that Canada will remain its own country. Others have warned that the move to annex Canada would bring about the beginning of a one-world government.
Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre, who is likely to become prime minister in the next election, has had choice words for Trump. He has said Canada will “never” become a U.S. “state.”
“We are a great and independent country,” he continued. “We are the best friend to the U.S. We spent billions of dollars and hundreds of lives helping Americans retaliate against Al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks. We supply the U.S. with billions of dollars of high-quality and totally reliable energy well below market prices. We buy hundreds of billions of dollars of American goods.”
Business
Canada is failing dismally at our climate goals. We’re also ruining our economy.
From the Fraser Institute
By Annika Segelhorst and Elmira Aliakbari
Short-term climate pledges simply chase deadlines, not results
The annual meeting of the United Nations Conference of the Parties, or COP, which is dedicated to implementing international action on climate change, is now underway in Brazil. Like other signatories to the Paris Agreement, Canada is required to provide a progress update on our pledge to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 40 to 45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. After decades of massive government spending and heavy-handed regulations aimed at decarbonizing our economy, we’re far from achieving that goal. It’s time for Canada to move past arbitrary short-term goals and deadlines, and instead focus on more effective ways to support climate objectives.
Since signing the Paris Agreement in 2015, the federal government has introduced dozens of measures intended to reduce Canada’s carbon emissions, including more than $150 billion in “green economy” spending, the national carbon tax, the arbitrary cap on emissions imposed exclusively on the oil and gas sector, stronger energy efficiency requirements for buildings and automobiles, electric vehicle mandates, and stricter methane regulations for the oil and gas industry.
Recent estimates show that achieving the federal government’s target will impose significant costs on Canadians, including 164,000 job losses and a reduction in economic output of 6.2 per cent by 2030 (compared to a scenario where we don’t have these measures in place). For Canadian workers, this means losing $6,700 (each, on average) annually by 2030.
Yet even with all these costly measures, Canada will only achieve 57 per cent of its goal for emissions reductions. Several studies have already confirmed that Canada, despite massive green spending and heavy-handed regulations to decarbonize the economy over the past decade, remains off track to meet its 2030 emission reduction target.
And even if Canada somehow met its costly and stringent emission reduction target, the impact on the Earth’s climate would be minimal. Canada accounts for less than 2 per cent of global emissions, and that share is projected to fall as developing countries consume increasing quantities of energy to support rising living standards. In 2025, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), emerging and developing economies are driving 80 per cent of the growth in global energy demand. Further, IEA projects that fossil fuels will remain foundational to the global energy mix for decades, especially in developing economies. This means that even if Canada were to aggressively pursue short-term emission reductions and all the economic costs it would imposes on Canadians, the overall climate results would be negligible.
Rather than focusing on arbitrary deadline-contingent pledges to reduce Canadian emissions, we should shift our focus to think about how we can lower global GHG emissions. A recent study showed that doubling Canada’s production of liquefied natural gas and exporting to Asia to displace an equivalent amount of coal could lower global GHG emissions by about 1.7 per cent or about 630 million tonnes of GHG emissions. For reference, that’s the equivalent to nearly 90 per cent of Canada’s annual GHG emissions. This type of approach reflects Canada’s existing strength as an energy producer and would address the fastest-growing sources of emissions, namely developing countries.
As the 2030 deadline grows closer, even top climate advocates are starting to emphasize a more pragmatic approach to climate action. In a recent memo, Bill Gates warned that unfounded climate pessimism “is causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals, and it’s diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world.” Even within the federal ministry of Environment and Climate Change, the tone is shifting. Despite the 2030 emissions goal having been a hallmark of Canadian climate policy in recent years, in a recent interview, Minister Julie Dabrusin declined to affirm that the 2030 targets remain feasible.
Instead of scrambling to satisfy short-term national emissions limits, governments in Canada should prioritize strategies that will reduce global emissions where they’re growing the fastest.
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Elmira Aliakbari
Artificial Intelligence
Lawsuit Claims Google Secretly Used Gemini AI to Scan Private Gmail and Chat Data
Whether the claims are true or not, privacy in Google’s universe has long been less a right than a nostalgic illusion.
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When Google flipped a digital switch in October 2025, few users noticed anything unusual.
Gmail loaded as usual, Chat messages zipped across screens, and Meet calls continued without interruption.
Yet, according to a new class action lawsuit, something significant had changed beneath the surface.
We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.
Plaintiffs claim that Google silently activated its artificial intelligence system, Gemini, across its communication platforms, turning private conversations into raw material for machine analysis.
The lawsuit, filed by Thomas Thele and Melo Porter, describes a scenario that reads like a breach of trust.
It accuses Google of enabling Gemini to “access and exploit the entire recorded history of its users’ private communications, including literally every email and attachment sent and received.”
The filing argues that the company’s conduct “violates its users’ reasonable expectations of privacy.”
Until early October, Gemini’s data processing was supposedly available only to those who opted in.
Then, the plaintiffs claim, Google “turned it on for everyone by default,” allowing the system to mine the contents of emails, attachments, and conversations across Gmail, Chat, and Meet.
The complaint points to a particular line in Google’s settings, “When you turn this setting on, you agree,” as misleading, since the feature “had already been switched on.”
This, according to the filing, represents a deliberate misdirection designed to create the illusion of consent where none existed.
There is a certain irony woven through the outrage. For all the noise about privacy, most users long ago accepted the quiet trade that powers Google’s empire.
They search, share, and store their digital lives inside Google’s ecosystem, knowing the company thrives on data.
The lawsuit may sound shocking, but for many, it simply exposes what has been implicit all along: if you live in Google’s world, privacy has already been priced into the convenience.
Thele warns that Gemini’s access could expose “financial information and records, employment information and records, religious affiliations and activities, political affiliations and activities, medical care and records, the identities of his family, friends, and other contacts, social habits and activities, eating habits, shopping habits, exercise habits, [and] the extent to which he is involved in the activities of his children.”
In other words, the system’s reach, if the allegations prove true, could extend into nearly every aspect of a user’s personal life.
The plaintiffs argue that Gemini’s analytical capabilities allow Google to “cross-reference and conduct unlimited analysis toward unmerited, improper, and monetizable insights” about users’ private relationships and behaviors.
The complaint brands the company’s actions as “deceptive and unethical,” claiming Google “surreptitiously turned on this AI tracking ‘feature’ without informing or obtaining the consent of Plaintiffs and Class Members.” Such conduct, it says, is “highly offensive” and “defies social norms.”
The case invokes a formidable set of statutes, including the California Invasion of Privacy Act, the California Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, the Stored Communications Act, and California’s constitutional right to privacy.
Google is yet to comment on the filing.
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