Francis Scarpaleggia is chosen as the new Speaker of the House
Liberal Member of Parliament for Lac-Saint-Louis Francis Scarpaleggia has been elected as the new Speaker of the House.
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CTV News
36 minutes ago
- CTV News
In Syria's Sweida, the stench of death still lingers days after sectarian bloodshed
Residents walk past a burned-out military vehicle after last week's sectarian clashes in the Druze-majority town of Sweida, Syria, on Friday, July 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki) SWEIDA, Syria (AP) — The stench of decaying bodies hangs heavy in the streets of the provincial capital in Syria's southern province of Sweida, where fighting recently erupted. Once bustling roads now lie eerily silent, with only a few people passing by. In some areas, the destruction is overwhelming, with buildings and cars charred black. At a bank branch, shattered glass covered the floor as an alarm blared nonstop. Walls are emblazoned with slogans graffitied by both sides in the recent conflict. The devastation came after violent clashes broke out two weeks ago, sparked by tit-for-tat kidnappings between armed Bedouin clans and fighters from the Druze religious minority. The fighting killed hundreds of people and threatened to unravel Syria's fragile postwar transition. Syrian government forces intervened, ostensibly to end the fighting, but effectively sided with the clans. Some government fighters reportedly robbed and executed Druze civilians. Associated Press journalists from outside the city were able to enter Sweida on Friday for the first time since the violence started on July 13. With a ceasefire largely holding, residents of Sweida are trying to pick up the pieces of their lives. 'Snipers hit him' At the main hospital, where bodies of those killed in the fighting were piled up for days, workers were scrubbing the floor, but the smell lingered. Manal Harb was there with her wounded 19-year-old son, Safi Dargham, a first-year engineering student, who was shot while volunteering at the overwhelmed hospital. 'Snipers hit him in front of the hospital,' she said. 'We are civilians and have no weapons.' Safi sustained injuries to his elbow, behind his ear, and his leg. Harb says he may lose his arm if he doesn't receive urgent treatment. Harb's husband, Khaled Dargham, was killed when armed men stormed their home, shot him, and set the house on fire. She said the armed men also stole their phones and other belongings. An emergency room nurse who gave only her nickname, Em Hassib ('mother of Hassib'), said she had remained in the hospital with her children throughout the conflict. She alleged that at one point, government fighters who were brought to the hospital for treatment opened fire, killing a police officer guarding the hospital and wounding another. The AP could not independently verify her claim. She said the bodies had piled up for days with no one to remove them, becoming a medical hazard. Sectarian tensions simmer as Druze resist disarmament Disturbing videos and reports from Sweida surfaced showing Druze civilians being humiliated and executed during the conflict, sometimes accompanied by sectarian slurs. After a ceasefire took hold, some Druze groups launched revenge attacks on Bedouin communities. The U.N. has said more than 130,000 people were displaced by the violence. Government officials, including interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, have promised to hold accountable those who targeted civilians, but many residents of Sweida remain angry and suspicious. The Druze religious sect is an offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. There are roughly a million Druze worldwide and more than half of them live in Syria. The others live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights — which Israel captured from Syria during the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981. The Druze largely welcomed the fall of former President Bashar Assad in December in a rebel offensive that ended decades of autocratic rule by the Assad dynasty. However, the new government under al-Sharaa, a former Islamist commander who once had al-Qaida ties, drew mixed reactions from Druze leaders. Some clerics supported engaging with the new leadership, while others, including spiritual leader Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri and his Sweida Military Council, opposed him. Al-Sharaa has denied targeting the Druze and blamed the unrest on armed groups defying state authority, particularly those loyal to al-Hijri. He also accused Israel of deepening divisions by striking Syrian forces in Sweida, attacks that were carried out under the pretext of defending the Druze. Talal Jaramany, a 30-year-old Druze resort owner, took up arms during the fighting. 'What pushed me to put on a military uniform and go to the front lines is that what happened was lawless,' he told The Associated Press. Jaramany insisted there was little distinction between the Bedouin clans and the government's General Security forces. 'They used weapons, not dialogue,' he said. He rejects calls for disarmament, saying the Druze need their weapons for self-defense. 'We won't hand over our arms. Our weapon is sacred,' he said. 'It's not for attacking. We've never been supporters of war. We'll only give it up when the state provides real security that protects human rights.' Sweida's Christians also recount near-death escapes Members of Sweida's Christian minority were also caught up in the violence. At a church where a number of Christian families were sheltering, 36-year-old Walaa al-Shammas, a housewife with two children, said a rocket struck her home on July 16. 'Had we not been sheltering in the hallway, we would've been gone,' she said. 'My house lies in destruction and our cars are gone.' Gunmen came to the damaged house later, but moved on, apparently thinking it was empty as the family hid in the hallway, she said. In recent days, hundreds of people — Bedouins as well as Druze and Christians — have evacuated Sweida in convoys of buses carrying them to other areas, organized by the Syrian Red Crescent. Others have found their own way out. Micheline Jaber, a public employee in the provincial government in Sweida, was trying to flee the clashes last week with her husband, in-laws and extended family members when the two cars they were driving in came under shelling. She was wounded but survived, along with her mother-in-law and the young son of one of her husband's siblings. Her husband and the rest of the family members who were fleeing with them were killed. Someone, Jaber doesn't know who, loaded her and the other two survivors in a car and drove them to an ambulance crew, which evacuated them to a hospital outside of the city. She was then taken to another hospital in the southwestern city of Daraa, and finally transported to Damascus. She's now staying with friends in the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, her arms encased in bandages. 'When the shell hit the car, I came out alive — I was able to get out of the car and walk normally,' Jaber said. 'When you see all the people who died and I'm still here, I don't understand it. God has His reasons.' The one thing that comforts her is that her 15-year-old daughter was with her parents elsewhere at the time and was not harmed. 'My daughter is the most important thing and she is what gives me strength,' Jaber said. ___ Abou AlJoud reported from Beirut. Omar Sanadiki And Sally Abou Aljoud, The Associated Press
National Post
2 hours ago
- National Post
Jamie Sarkonak: The Law Commission of Canada's radical mission to decolonize justice
Article content To their credit, they don't beat people over the head with social justice. The commission's website is bland; its budget is small ($4 million per year — modest, in government measures); its top project at the moment has to do with charity law, a niche that most people don't think or care about. Think-tank-like, it runs student photo competitions to engage those entering the profession. Article content But within all that mundanity sits an opportunity more open to radical change: the commission's 'Beyond Tomorrow' project, which offers $20,000 to successful essay writers, is aimed at addressing concerns of stakeholders and 'embracing complicated conversations, addressing breakdown of trust, contributing to common endeavours, and fostering constructive change.' Article content It doesn't mean much until you examine those stakeholder concerns, which the commission compiles in an annual report. Included in these are radical notions of a decolonized legal system. Article content 'There is a need for this shift to take place at the pedagogical level in universities, particularly because students are at the heart of decolonization,' read one piece of input in favour of politicizing education even further. Most law schools already mandate Indigenous courses (which are often taught with a heavy anti-Canadian bias). But for some activists, that's simply not enough. Article content Article content Another favoured the 'recognition of Indigenous jurisdiction over environmental matters,' while other feedback spoke of a 'multi-juridical future' in Canada that could be assisted by adding Indigenous legal traditions into law school curriulcums. Canada, for context, is a bijural system that uses both English common law and French civil law; some activists insist that the notion of 'Indigenous law' — a heterogeneous mix of tribal traditions that are often interpreted through the lens of far-left academics — should make up a third pillar of Canadian law that governs the lives of citizens. The federal justice department supports making this so-called third order of law a reality. Article content We have every reason to believe these will resonate with the commission. Aside from its initial mandate, it published a bizarre navel-gazey essay about intersectionality — one concept at the heart of progressive thought — written in the fluffy, philosophically shallow style of a diversity consultant's website. For example: Article content 'Intersections may prompt us to think of Canada in the world and of worlds within Canada, or of the complicated and perhaps permeable boundaries between human and non-human, whether living or artificial. Solidly grounded in the complex reality of law, the framing notion of intersection mandates ambitious creativity in delineating the scope of meaningful law reform.' Article content
CBC
2 hours ago
- CBC
Sask. tech companies look to EU for growth amid US tariffs
Federal figures suggest Canadian companies are looking to Europe in larger numbers to reduce their reliance on markets and investment in the United States. In April, 245 Canadian startups showcased their products at the Hannover Messe trade fair in Germany. Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe also attended the trade show, with hopes of promoting Canadian exports. Aaron Genest, president of Sask Tech and a manager at Siemens Digital Industries, says that trade with the United States is unlikely to change much, but most new market expansion is coming from Europe. "We have a very small tech industry, but we have a lot of tech-enabled industries in Saskatchewan in mining and in agriculture, for instance," said Genest. "Those companies are seeing lots of opportunities in the EU." As for the stock market, the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) reached a record high on Friday, with technology shares leading the gains. A deadline of Aug. 1 on a Canada-US trade deal continues to loom however, and could be the cause of so many companies turning attention to overseas growth. Though outcomes are still uncertain, Trump said Friday that his country may not reach a new trade deal with Canada. Genest says that the Federal and Provincial governments are doing a lot to create buzz for Canadian exports to Europe, and it gives businesses more opportunity. "There are artificial logistics that could be put in place that would change that equation, and we're seeing that with the Trump government," said Genest. "They've been clearly making it harder to move things. At some point those artificial barriers overcome the geographical convenience." CEO and Founder of Saskatoon's River City Innovations Jeff Shirley produces industrial electronic temperature sensors for foreign and domestic markets. He says that he still does business with the US, but in the past two years, he's tripled his business in the Middle East. With his business having presence in Spain and France as well, Shirley says Canadian companies have developed a reputation of quality and reliability. "We found the local market here in Canada to be very challenging right now," said Shirley. Last week, Scott Moe called on all provinces and territories to join Canada's largest barrier-free interprovincial market through the New West Partnership Trade Agreement. Originally created in 2010, the agreement has lower procurement thresholds and fewer exemptions than the Canadian Free Trade Agreement.
