Workshop Description: 

While ACLA in BC recognizes that racism is deeply rooted in all aspects of the settler colonial state of so-called Canada, we know that young, newcomer, international students, and/or temporary foreign workers are systemically made vulnerable due to their lack of understanding of their rights. 
 
Featuring long-term labour lawyer Leo McGrady, this workshop will focus on understanding rights under the BC Human Rights Code, the Canada Human Rights Act, the BC Labour Code, the BC Employment Standards Act, and the Criminal Code. Most importantly, we will learn the channels through which workers can file complaints and seek legal support. 
 
Come share your experiences and learn about progress in anti-racism and human rights protections, and ways to defend your rights. We will learn through discussions, real court cases, and there will be prizes. The workshop is free. Meals and transit reimbursements are provided.

Canada’s governing Liberal Party led by Prime Minister Mark Carney has won the national elections for a fourth term in a remarkable comeback prompted in part by unprecedented attacks by United States President Donald Trump.

The Liberals beat Pierre Poilievre’s main opposition Conservative Party on Monday after millions of people voted in snap elections dominated by the big question: Which candidate can better handle Trump, who has slapped tariffs and threatened to annex Canada?

Here is a closer look at the results of Canada’s federal elections and what comes next.

OTTAWA - Canadians say their relations with Washington are just as bad as ties with Moscow, according to polling that suggests an openness to improving links with China and especially Mexico.

Just 16 per cent of Canadians polled by Leger say Canada has a good relationship with the U.S., compared to 15 per cent for ties with Russia.

Meanwhile, 36 per cent of Canadians say Ottawa has a good relationship with Beijing, while the number ranks higher than 75 per cent for ties with Mexico, the European Union and the U.K.

With Canada facing a fraught trade relationship with the U.S., a new survey suggests there’s growing support for turning the country’s sights to China.

The Nanos Research poll, conducted for CTV News and The Globe and Mail, found Canadians are four times more likely to want increased trade with the Asian superpower compared to two years ago.

“About two in five Canadians think Canada should keep its trade relationship at the current level,” said Nik Nanos, chief data scientist with Nanos Research, in a statement.

“However, the appetite to increase its current trade relationship with China has grown.”

A jarring contrast defines the present global landscape. While the IMF forecasts a multiyear drag on growth due to the current tariff wars—and markets eye the United States with crisis-era caution—Beijing is proclaiming an era of regional stability. This divergence isn’t just a matter of differing perspectives. It highlights a fundamental tension in the global landscape, a chasm between the perceived realities of economic policy-making and the aspirational rhetoric of geopolitical leadership, a tension with significant implications for the United States.

The level of trade policy uncertainty is particularly alarming. According to the Economic Policy Uncertainty Index, compiled by professors at Stanford University and Northwestern University, this specific metric has spiked to levels only witnessed during the peak of the pandemic. Even before President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcements, it had already surpassed the levelsseen during the Great Recession of 2008-2009. The index further reveals that the trade policy uncertainty index has reached an unprecedented level in the post-World War II era. The “off the charts” reading, coupled with the IMF’s dire predictions of escalating trade wars and intertwined supply-chain vulnerabilities, underscores the profound disruption and unpredictability that current trade policies are injecting into the global economy, directly impacting American businesses and consumers.

In early February, during the depths of winter, Twin Otter aircraft belonging to the Canadian military flew over the vast expanse of the western Arctic looking for sea ice. Below, sheets of white extended beyond the horizon.

But the pilots, who were searching for a suitable site to land a 34-tonne (76,000lb) Hercules transport plane a month later, needed ice that was 1.5-metres (5ft) thick.

They could not find any. The teams scoured 10 other possible spots, stretching as far west in the Arctic as Herschel Island, five miles off the coast of Canada’s Yukon territory.

In the end, no site proved suitable for a sea-ice landing area. The north, it seemed, was too warm.

The pervasive, rattling buzz of diesel generators is a daily feature of the Arctic landscape. Especially in the remote communities that pepper the vast tundra of Nunavut. 

That's because the territory holds the dubious distinction of being one of the few places in Canada that still relies, almost exclusively, on imported fossil fuels. 

But the needle is moving, ever so slightly, as more and more Nunavummiut look to solar energy to offset their diesel use, emissions and costs — including the first solar project in Nunavut's history big enough to power large parts of a community.

The Inuit hamlet of Naujaat sits right on the Arctic circle, facing the icy shores of Hudson's Bay in Nunavut's northern Kivalliq Region. Home to around one thousand people, Naujaat is about to flip the switch on 2,500 solar panels — enough to power 130 homes, or about 60 per cent of the hamlet. 

One sunny March day on Angel Island, a hilly landmass in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, a dancer with a 40-ft braid attached to her head glided across a narrow concrete walkway. The audience sat on chairs in front of a long wooden building: a former detention center where – from 1910 to 1940 – half a million people, the majority Chinese, were held for months, even years, in prison-like conditions.

Sometimes called “the Ellis Island of the west”, Angel Island‘s immigration station is the unlikely setting, and inspiration, for an ambitious new work by the Oakland Ballet Company. It‘s based on the people from 80 countries who were confined to the the island‘s detention center, which was the result of the Chinese Exclusion Act and other racist laws designed to keep Asian people out of the United States. In response, the detainees carved over 200 poems onto the walls expressing their anguish and rage.

It‘s often said that the joy is in the journey — and at the Royal BC Museum, so is the history.

On April 17, the museum unveiled its newest exhibit, Odysseys and Migration.

Produced by the Chinese Canadian Museum, the exhibit spans from the 18th century to the present day. It explores relationships from Hong Kong to Vancouver and beyond, chronicling the global migration of Chinese people and their role in Canadian history.

“What‘s really important for me about this exhibition – because I curated it – is that we reorient our Chinese Canadian history,” said Dr. Melissa Karmen Lee, CEO of the Chinese Canadian Museum. She explained that the exhibit will help rewrite the common misconception that Chinese people first arrived in Canada during the gold rush.

China will let scientists from six countries, including the US, examine the rocks it collected from the Moon - a scientific collaboration that comes as the two countries remain locked in a bitter trade war.

Two Nasa-funded US institutions have been granted access to the lunar samples collected by the Chang'e-5 mission in 2020, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) said on Thursday.

CNSA chief Shan Zhongde said that the samples were "a shared treasure for all humanity," local media reported.

Scientists have found new but tentative evidence that a faraway world orbiting another star may be home to life.

A Cambridge team studying the atmosphere of a planet called K2-18b has detected signs of molecules which on Earth are only produced by simple organisms.

This is the second, and more promising, time chemicals associated with life have been detected in the planet's atmosphere by Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

But the team and independent astronomers stress that more data is needed to confirm these results.

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