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🇨🇦🇺🇦 ZELENSKYY IN CANADA

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is in Canada this week for meetings with Prime Minister Mark Carney, with talks focused on defence, security, energy and the continuing war in Ukraine.

Zelenskyy arrived in Calgary on September 9 and is meeting with Carney today before travelling to Banff, where he is expected to address the federal Cabinet Planning Forum.

The visit comes at a significant moment in the war. Russia has intensified aerial attacks on Ukraine while Kyiv has expanded long range strikes inside Russia. At the same time, questions are growing about the future of Western support and the role countries such as Canada will play as the geopolitical landscape shifts.

Canada has been one of Ukraine's most consistent allies since Russia's full scale invasion in 2022, and this week's meetings could offer a clearer picture of what that relationship will look like going forward.

With Washington's approach to Ukraine changing, Canada's next moves are being watched well beyond our borders.

AI RESEARCHER RESIGNS, WARNS THOSE BUILDING AI BELIEVE IT COULD KILL US WITHIN A DECADE

AI researcher Jacob Coxon has resigned from Anthropic, one of the world's leading AI companies, warning that the race toward superintelligent AI is moving faster than our ability to make it safe.

And he isn't the only insider sounding the alarm.

Anthropic's Alignment Science Lead Evan Hubinger has said he personally estimates the chance of AI killing all humans within the next decade at greater than 10%.

That does NOT mean scientists have calculated a 10% chance that AI will wipe us out.

It's his personal risk estimate about future superintelligent AI, not today's ChatGPT or other current systems.

So how could AI possibly kill us?

Researchers aren't primarily worried about killer robots marching down the street.

They're concerned about a future AI becoming vastly more capable and autonomous than humans and gaining access to real world systems.

Potential dangers include cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, manipulation of people on an enormous scale, assisting in the creation of biological threats, interference with weapons systems and eventually becoming capable of improving AI itself faster than humans can control it.

Perhaps the strangest danger is that AI wouldn't need to hate humanity at all.

If a superintelligent system were given a goal and concluded that humans could prevent it from accomplishing that goal, keeping humans from interfering could become useful to it.

That's the problem researchers call "misalignment."

None of this means humanity has ten years left.

It means some of the people working closest to the development of advanced AI believe there is a serious risk and say we still don't know how to guarantee that increasingly powerful AI remains under human control.

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👉And that raises a pretty uncomfortable question:

If the people building it aren't certain they can control what comes next, how fast should we be building it?

🇨🇦 TRUMP POSTS MAP SHOWING CANADA AS PART OF THE UNITED STATES

Donald Trump posted an image to his Truth Social account today depicting virtually all of North America under the American flag.

Canada is gone as an independent country. So is Mexico. Greenland is also shown as American territory.

Across the continent are the words:

“UNITED STATES OF AMERICA”

Trump offered no explanation for the image.

This wasn’t a meme falsely attributed to him or something created by one of his supporters. The President of the United States posted it himself.

Maybe it’s trolling. Maybe it’s political theatre. Maybe it’s intended simply to provoke America’s neighbours.

But when the U.S. president repeatedly talks about territorial expansion and then publishes a map erasing the borders of neighbouring sovereign countries, those countries have every reason to pay attention.

For Canadians, the question is pretty simple:

What exactly is Donald Trump trying to tell us?

🇨🇦 Canada is not for sale.

Happy Labour Day ❤️

I wouldn't put it past him 😩

🇨🇦 CANADA IS POSITIONING ITSELF FOR A BIGGER ROLE ON THE WORLD STAGE

Prime Minister Mark Carney has been sending an increasingly clear message: if the United States retreats from its traditional role as a reliable international partner, Canada intends to help fill some of the space it leaves behind.
This isn't simply speculation.
Carney has explicitly said Canada is prepared to take a leadership role in building a coalition of like minded countries committed to international cooperation, open trade and strong alliances. His government is now pursuing what Carney has described as cooperation among the world's “middle powers.”
And there are signs other countries are listening.
Finance Minister François Philippe Ch*****ne said this week that Canada is increasingly being viewed internationally as a trusted partner, with a number of countries interested in deeper cooperation with Canada.
The strategy isn't based on the idea that Canada can replace the United States as a superpower. It can't.
Instead, the idea is that countries such as Canada, European democracies, Australia, Japan and other middle powers become considerably more influential when they work together.
That matters in a world increasingly shaped by competition between the United States and China.
For decades, American influence was strengthened enormously by something China has struggled to replicate: a vast network of allies and partners that voluntarily worked with Washington.
If the United States damages those relationships, the power doesn't simply disappear. Other countries begin building new ones.
Canada appears determined to be at that table.
For a country of 41 million people, that would be a remarkably consequential role.
🇨🇦 Canada may not be the biggest weight on the scale. But when the balance of global power is shifting, every weight matters.

TRUMP IS NOW SELLING “LAKE AMERICA” HATS

Well, that didn’t take long.
Just days after Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the US federal government to refer to Lake Ontario as “Lake America,” his official Trump Store began selling hats bearing the new name.
Price? US$55.

The product description declares, “All it takes is a good pen to make the Great Lakes greater.”

There’s just one rather large problem with the branding exercise: Lake Ontario is shared with Canada. Trump can direct American federal agencies to use a different name, but he cannot rename the lake for Canada or require Canadians to recognize his preferred name.

So a political stunt involving a shared Canadian American lake has now become merchandise sold by the Trump family business.

🇨🇦 Still Lake Ontario.

An American federal judge authorized ICE to use an invasive surgical procedure to force feed a Cuban detainee who went on a hunger strike while being held at the Montgomery ICE Processing Center in Texas.
The court order permits officials to perform a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy, or PEG. The procedure involves making an incision through the abdominal wall and inserting a feeding tube directly into the stomach.

The Guardian reports this is the first ICE hunger strike case it has reviewed in which this particular surgical method was authorized. Its investigation has documented numerous other cases involving ICE seeking court authorization to force feed hunger striking detainees.
Human rights advocates and medical ethicists have long raised serious concerns about forcibly feeding competent adults who refuse food as a form of protest.
Whatever your position on immigration policy, government authorized invasive medical treatment without a person's consent deserves serious public scrutiny.

This is America today 💔

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Are you following the Lindsay Clancy Trial?

Things are getting tense in the Lindsay Clancy jury room.

The jury foreperson reported that one juror has acknowledged doubt but is allegedly refusing to apply it to the verdict under the court’s instructions on reasonable doubt. Clancy’s defense asked to have the juror removed, but the judge declined.

After nearly 40 hours of deliberations and an apparent 11 to 1 divide, one juror may be standing between this case and a verdict.

And so, until further notice, we shall call him Juror Clatrick Pancy. 🎩🧐