Welcome to the Canadian National Multilingual News Group (CNMNG). This is a project made possible through funding by Canadian Heritage. CNMNG aims to gather news researched and written by a corps of Canadian-based journalists/writers from the country’s multilingual community groups. The overall goal is to inform, analyze and critique the issues of the day in a professional manner and to provide that to publishers and editors active in the ethnocultural-multilingual press and media whose experience provides them with a perspective that is sensitive to news relevant to their own language group.
This month, in his January column, Senator Loffreda (photo) writes about the government’s proposed bill to help news publishers and journalists receive fair compensation for their work that is being shared on the platforms of tech giants like Facebook and Google. Bill C-18 is currently before the Senate. →
OTTAWA – The federal government failed to spend $38 billion, last fiscal year, intended for promised programs and services, including broadband Internet, new military equipment, affordable housing, veterans support and services to the Natives. The “excuse” is that of delays and interruptions due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but the reality is that unspent funds have played an important role in lowering the deficit: in the year ending March 31, 2022, in fact, Canada ran a deficit of $90.2 billion, $23.6 billion less than budgeted for. →
A former colleague of mine, who is of Ukrainian origin, recently expressed his caution, verging on disappointment, regarding Canada’s stated leadership in opposition to the Russia military offensive into Ukraine and the measures “we” have been implementing to demonstrate that leadership.
TORONTO – On the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the AGPI (Abraham Global Peace Initiative) organized an event in Toronto’s City Hall, in partnership with the City, to celebrate the commemoration. →
TORONTO – The first details are emerging about the intentions of the federal government in view of the summit between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the provincial premiers who have been asking for more funds for health care for months. →
TORONTO – In a third world country like the Philippines with so many poor people, rumour and gossip seem to be the national pastime. Texting (email) costs only one peso, a mere few cents Canadian. Even if this is the Philippines, poverty has not stopped citizens from engaging in online chats, Facebook and Twitter. And they feel important for they all have something to say, for after all they are a part of a larger social group.
HAMILTON – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau came face to face with some protesters Tuesday night in Hamilton, Ontario, when his massive security team escorted him across the street from the “Breda Bar” restaurant where he and members of his federal cabinet – meeting in “retreat” in the Ontario city – had gathered for dinner. →
TORONTO – Fake news, testimonials and personal narratives used to suggest a distorted interpretation of reality and social networks used as a means of spreading false information: this and much more is discussed in the report drawn up by the Council of Canadian Academies, a non-profit organization that examines complex scientific topics of public interest. Including Covid-19, as in the case of “Fault Lines” (Expert Panel on the Socioeconomic Impacts of Science and Health Misinformation), a work supported by a gigantic bibliography (over sixty pages of references) from which it clearly emerges that misinformation on the coronavirus has done great damage to Canadian society, contributing to more than 2,800 deaths and an estimated $30 million in hospital visits and intensive care. Deaths that could have been avoided and money that could have been spent elsewhere. →
TORONTO – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will meet with Canadian premiers in Ottawa on February 7 to conclude an agreement on health care financing: an announcement, made today by Trudeau himself, which comes after months and months of pressure from the premiers of all Canadian provinces and territories, which are facing serious difficulties in the management of public health facilities. →
TORONTO – January 25, 2020: a man in his 50s arrives in Toronto from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the Covid-19 epidemic, and becomes the first “presumed” case of the new coronavirus in Canada. Exactly three years have passed and since then more than 50,000 Canadians have died after contracting Covid-19, according to data released Monday by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). Today, January 24, at 12.20pm, the Johns Hopkins University dashboard, constantly updated, reported (for Canada) 50,304. →
MONTREAL – 4,689 people entered Canada illegally through Roxham Road in Quebec last December, more than the number arrived at the “irregular border crossing” during the entirety of 2021. In fact, the number recorded in December 2022 it is the highest since August 2017, when 5,530 people entered. A total of 39,171 people entered the country illegally and then applied for asylum in 2022, more than double the 18,836 who entered via Roxham Road in 2017, the previous record year. →
TORONTO – The first real “face to face” between Prime Minister Doug Ford and Ontario’s municipal leaders will begin tomorrow with his speech at the general assembly of ROMA, the Rural Ontario Municipal Association: with him, Sylvia Jones (Deputy Premier and Minister for Health), Lisa Thompson (Minister for Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs) and Steve Clark (Minister for Municipal Affairs and Housing). →
TORONTO – Reforming Canada’s “bail policy” to keep hardened offenders in jail will not only fail to reduce crime, but will increase the risk of innocent people being jailed, criminologists and experts argue, criticizing the conservative leader’s stance Pierre Poilievre, author of the call to change the “bail policy” after the case of 25-year-old Randall McKenzie, accused of the murder of Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) officer Greg Pierzchala, killed in late December: McKenzie was free on bail and had failed to appear at the last court hearing where he was on trial for previous offences. →
TORONTO – The majority of the world’s wealth is in the hands of 1% of the population. A disconcerting figure, what emerges from the latest report by Oxfam, published in conjunction with the start of the World Economic Forum in Davos in Switzerland, according to which in the last two years the 1% of the richest people have accumulated almost two thirds of all the new wealth created in the world. →
