In the news today: Champagne talks TikTok, Musk and AI bill

As for what he tells his own family? Champagne won’t share.

“My personal experience or my risk tolerance…might be very different than other people.”

Champagne made the comments in a wide-ranging year-end interview with The Canadian Press. The interview was conducted on Dec. 12, before the surprise resignation of former finance minister Chrystia Freeland raised questions about the fate of the Liberal government. Champagne, who has been industry minister since 2021, kept in post in a Dec. 20 cabinet shuffle.

In November, the federal government said that TikTok must close its operations in Canada after a national security review of the Chinese company behind the social media platform, though the app itself would remain available to Canadians.

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UN envoy Bob Rae hopeful for UN development goals

Canada is trying to push the world’s nations to stick with the goals they set to confront the planet’s main challenges, despite rising geopolitical confrontation that has made the 2030 deadlines more difficult to meet.

“There are any number of reasons why you could say this is impossible, but you can’t let yourself give in to those,” said Bob Rae, Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations.

Last summer, he started a one-year term leading the UN Economic and Social Council, a body that manages the UN’s most prominent agencies and the bulk of its budget.

The council, dubbed ECOSOC, was started at the founding of the UN to co-ordinate the work of its agencies including refugee support, pandemic response and global rules on civil aviation and postal services.

In recent years, the council has tried to help countries meet the Sustainable Development Goals, a series of targets the world agreed to try achieving by 2030 to get humanity on track to end extreme poverty, achieve carbon-reduction targets and wipe out the worst preventable diseases.

2024 was Vancouver’s wettest year this century

Vancouver lived up to its soggy reputation last year, with Environment Canada data showing 2024 was the city’s wettest year so far this century.

Meteorologist Chris Doyle says more than 1,367 millimetres of precipitation was recorded at Vancouver International Airport last year.

The drenching was boosted by a series of atmospheric river events and other storms, and represents the highest annual precipitation for Vancouver since 1999, when 1,394 millimetres fell.

Doyle says a key reason for the heavy rainfall last year was an “enhanced East Asian jet stream” across the Pacific Ocean that persisted for weeks.

Vancouver averages 1,189 millimetres of precipitation each year, including both rain and snowfall converted to liquid water amounts.

Charlottetown proposes ‘bike bus’ to school

Anna Keenan likes to keep up with public transit trends.

The City of Charlottetown’s sustainable transportation officer said she learned on Instagram of a new way students are travelling to school: a bike bus.

Instead of getting picked up by a yellow school bus, students in some cities across the world — including in the United States, Australia, Brazil, Spain, Israel and India — wait for a convoy of children on bikes, led by volunteers or parents, to pass by their home.

Keenan said she liked the idea so much she proposed at a city committee meeting that students from two elementary schools in Charlottetown start bike buses next spring.

She learned about bike buses on the Instagram account of Sam Balto, a physical education teacher at Alameda Elementary School in Portland, Ore., who is the founder of “Bike Bus World,” a movement encouraging cities everywhere to start their own bike buses.

‘Star Trek’ now a Canadian enterprise

Olivia Chow has a model starship in her office.

It’s the USS Toronto, a Parliament-class vessel slightly bigger than her hand. An accompanying plaque features a quote from her husband, Jack Layton, who died in 2011.

“Always have a dream that will outlast your lifetime,” it reads.

Chow, the mayor of Toronto, says her fandom began in the 1960s, when she was still living in Hong Kong.

She remembers watching “Star Trek: The Original Series,” then known simply as “Star Trek,” every day after school, along with “Batman” and “Mission: Impossible.”

Today, Chow leads a city that has become a second home to the “Star Trek” franchise.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 3, 2025.

The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press

In the news today: Champagne talks TikTok, Musk and AI bill

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