Trump ANNOUNCES FBI Director Pick Kash Patel…TORCHES Entire FBI

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on the breaking news of Donald Trump’s FBI Director pick Kash Patel.

Bill 74 stirs uncertainty

Bill 74 stirs uncertainty 

Bishop’s’ international students, professors’ federation voice concerns. 

By William Crooks 

Local Journalism Initiative Bishop’s University students and faculty are facing uncertainty as Bill 74, aimed at restricting the number of international students in Quebec’s schools and universities, casts doubt over the institution’s autonomy and future diversity. The recently proposed legislation has prompted mixed reactions, with student leaders and professors’ groups warning of its potential impact on university independence, program viability, and Quebec’s appeal as a study destination. In an interview with Drew Henkel, President of Bishop’s University’s Student Representative Council (SRC), and third-year international student Fiona Gaombalet, both expressed concerns over the restrictive nature of Bill 74. The bill, which would grant the Quebec government new powers to regulate international admissions by program and institution, could limit educational options for students from around the world, they argue. This move has raised apprehensions among both students and faculty members across the province. Henkel highlighted the apprehension felt among students, especially as international students already face high tuition fees and the pressure to finance their studies while adjusting to life in Quebec. “It’s always kind of on people’s minds… it’s an uncertainty towards the future,” Henkel shared. The SRC has yet to take direct action but aligns with the university’s stance against the bill, with Henkel stating that the bill “isn’t a positive function for us in any way.” Gaombalet echoed the concerns, reflecting on her own experience coming from France to study in Quebec. “In France, we cannot have proper access to the studies that we want to do. Here in Quebec, you actually have the ability to learn and be in corporate situations to acquire more knowledge,” she said. Gaombalet emphasized that many international students, like her, are driven by Quebec’s unique bilingual environment and the chance to integrate into both anglophone and francophone cultures.

How Trump Plans to Seize the Power of the Purse From Congress

by Molly Redden

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Donald Trump is entering his second term with vows to cut a vast array of government services and a radical plan to do so. Rather than relying on his party’s control of Congress to trim the budget, Trump and his advisers intend to test an obscure legal theory holding that presidents have sweeping power to withhold funding from programs they dislike.

“We can simply choke off the money,” Trump said in a 2023 campaign video. “For 200 years under our system of government, it was undisputed that the president had the constitutional power to stop unnecessary spending.”

His plan, known as “impoundment,” threatens to provoke a major clash over the limits of the president’s control over the budget. The Constitution gives Congress the sole authority to appropriate the federal budget, while the role of the executive branch is to dole out the money effectively. But Trump and his advisers are asserting that a president can unilaterally ignore Congress’ spending decisions and “impound” funds if he opposes them or deems them wasteful.

Trump’s designs on the budget are part of his administration’s larger plan to consolidate as much power in the executive branch as possible. This month, he pressured the Senate to go into recess so he could appoint his cabinet without any oversight. (So far, Republicans who control the chamber have not agreed to do so.) His key advisers have spelled out plans to bring independent agencies, such as the Department of Justice, under political control.

If Trump were to assert a power to kill congressionally approved programs, it would almost certainly tee up a fight in the federal courts and Congress and, experts say, could fundamentally alter Congress’ bedrock power.

“It’s an effort to wrest the entire power of the purse away from Congress, and that is just not the constitutional design,” said Eloise Pasachoff, a Georgetown Law professor who has written about the federal budget and appropriations process. “The president doesn’t have the authority to go into the budget bit by bit and pull out the stuff he doesn’t like.”

Trump’s claim to have impoundment power contravenes a Nixon-era law that forbids presidents from blocking spending over policy disagreements as well as a string of federal court rulings that prevent presidents from refusing to spend money unless Congress grants them the flexibility.

In an op-ed published Wednesday, tech billionaire Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who are overseeing the newly created, nongovernmental Department of Government Efficiency, wrote that they planned to slash federal spending and fire civil servants. Some of their efforts could offer Trump his first Supreme Court test of the post-Watergate Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which requires the president to spend the money Congress approves. The law allows exceptions, such as when the executive branch can achieve Congress’ goals by spending less, but not as a means for the president to kill programs he opposes.

Trump and his aides have been telegraphing his plans for a hostile takeover of the budgeting process for months. Trump has decried the 1974 law as “not a very good act” in his campaign video and said, “Bringing back impoundment will give us a crucial tool with which to obliterate the Deep State.”

Musk and Ramaswamy have seized that mantle, writing, “We believe the current Supreme Court would likely side with him on this question.”

The once-obscure debate over impoundment has come into vogue in MAGA circles thanks to veterans of Trump’s first administration who remain his close allies. Russell Vought, Trump’s former budget director, and Mark Paoletta, who served under Vought as the Office of Management and Budget general counsel, have worked to popularize the idea from the Trump-aligned think tank Vought founded, the Center for Renewing America.

On Friday, Trump announced he had picked Vought to lead OMB again. “Russ knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government, and he will help us return Self Governance to the People,” Trump said in a statement.

Vought was also a top architect of the controversial Project 2025. In private remarks to a gathering of MAGA luminaries uncovered by ProPublica, Vought boasted that he was assembling a “shadow” Office of Legal Counsel so that Trump is armed on day one with the legal rationalizations to realize his agenda.

“I don’t want President Trump having to lose a moment of time having fights in the Oval Office about whether something is legal or doable or moral,” Vought said.

Trump spokespeople and Vought did not respond to requests for comment.

The prospect of Trump seizing vast control over federal spending is not merely about reducing the size of the federal government, a long-standing conservative goal. It is also fueling new fears about his promises of vengeance.

A similar power grab led to his first impeachment. During his first term, Trump held up nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine while he pressured President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to open a corruption investigation into Joe Biden and his family. The U.S. Government Accountability Office later ruled his actions violated the Impoundment Control Act.

Pasachoff predicted that, when advantageous, the incoming Trump administration will attempt to achieve the goals of impoundment without picking such a high-profile fight.

Trump tested piecemeal ways beyond the Ukrainian arms imbroglio to withhold federal funding as a means to punish his perceived enemies, said Bobby Kogan, a former OMB adviser under Biden and the senior director of federal budget policy at the left-leaning think tank American Progress. After devastating wildfires in California and Washington, Trump delayed or refused to sign disaster declarations that would have unlocked federal relief aid because neither state had voted for him. He targeted so-called sanctuary cities by conditioning federal grants on local law enforcement’s willingness to cooperate with mass deportation efforts. The Biden administration eventually withdrew the policy.

Trump and his aides claim there is a long presidential history of impoundment dating back to Thomas Jefferson.

Most historical examples involve the military and cases where Congress had explicitly given presidents permission to use discretion, said Zachary Price, a professor at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco. Jefferson, for example, decided not to spend money Congress had appropriated for gun boats — a decision the law, which appropriated money for “a number not exceeding fifteen gun boats” using “a sum not exceeding fifty thousand dollars,” authorized him to make.

President Richard Nixon took impoundment to a new extreme, wielding the concept to gut billions of dollars from programs he simply opposed, such as highway improvements, water treatment, drug rehabilitation and disaster relief for farmers. He faced overwhelming pushback both from Congress and in the courts. More than a half dozen federal judges and the Supreme Court ultimately ruled that the appropriations bills at issue did not give Nixon the flexibility to cut individual programs.

Vought and his allies argue the limits Congress placed in 1974 are unconstitutional, saying a clause in the Constitution obligating the president to “faithfully execute” the law also implies his power to forbid its enforcement. (Trump is fond of describing Article II, where this clause lives, as giving him “the right to do whatever I want as president.”)

The Supreme Court has never directly weighed in on whether impoundment is constitutional. But it threw water on that reasoning in an 1838 case, Kendall v. U.S., about a federal debt payment.

“To contend that the obligation imposed on the President to see the laws faithfully executed, implies a power to forbid their execution, is a novel construction of the constitution, and entirely inadmissible,” the justices wrote.

During his cutting spree, Nixon’s own Justice Department argued roughly the same.

“With respect to the suggestion that the President has a constitutional power to decline to spend appropriated funds,” William Rehnquist, the head of the Office of Legal Counsel whom Nixon later appointed to the Supreme Court, warned in a 1969 legal memo, “we must conclude that existence of such a broad power is supported by neither reason nor precedent.”

Smith’s idealization of Republican policy in the United States

Since her return to provincial politics, elected representatives, opposition leaders, academics and activists have shared their concerns regarding the bills put forward by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and the United Conservative Party. Legislation such as the Alberta Sovereignty Act and the Provincial Priorities Act have garnered strong opposition, with critics highlighting threats to the constitutional division of powers and rule of law, academic freedom and Indigenous sovereignty. Proposed changes to the Alberta Human Rights Act and anti-trans legislation have sparked additional concerns. Many of these measures were left out of the UCP’s 2023 election platform, raising questions as to their origins. While much has been made about her borrowing pages from the Quebec playbook, Smith’s idealization of Republican policy in the United States may provide additional clues as to the source of the UCP’s policies.

Mark Zuckerberg dines with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago

Mark Zuckerberg dines with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago

Relations appear to have improved markedly from Trump's threat earlier this year to throw the Meta boss in jail.

Harper appointed to AMICO board chair

 Province appoints former PM Harper as AIMCo board chair, names three other members 

The Alberta government has appointed former prime minister Stephen Harper to become the new chair of AIMCo, less than two weeks after ousting the fund’s board of directors and its chief executive.  

Confirming widespread speculation, the province announced Wednesday that Harper, the former federal Conservative party leader who served as Canada’s prime minister from 2006 to 2015, will become board chair of the provincial Crown corporation.  

Oligarchs buy the news

1890, Ohio Senator John Sherman introduced and saw passed into law the Sherman Anti-Trust Act

which provided not just fines but jail sentences against people like Rockefeller who were committed to destroying competition and owning entire markets. The law was flawed with a few loopholes and ambiguities, so it was amended in 1914 with the Clayton Anti-Trust Act.

Alberta Patients’ Lives at Risk Due to Vendetta, Claims Doctor

Alberta Patients’ Lives at Risk Due to Vendetta, Claims Doctor

An internationally recognized Edmonton cancer surgeon is alleging he now has 10 times more patients on his surgical wait-list than his colleagues after his operating room hours were slashed in retaliation for a whistleblower complaint he filed against an Alberta Health Services executive.

Announcements, Events & more from Tyee and select partners

Everyone on Your Holiday List Will Love These BC Books

Get some gift-giving inspiration to ease your holiday shopping with these nine great titles.

The lawsuit alleges the surgeon’s patients are being harmed, to the point of being at “increased risk of death,” by delays in consultation, diagnosis and surgery.

He further alleges the AHS executive distributed two anonymous complaints against him, despite knowing they were false and defamatory.

These allegations are contained in a lawsuit recently filed by Dr. Hadi Seikaly, a head and neck cancer surgeon, against Dr. Daniel O’Connell. Seikaly is suing O’Connell personally and has not included AHS in the lawsuit.

Fossil Fuel Interests Are Working to Kill Solar in One Ohio County. The Hometown Newspaper Is Helping.

Fossil Fuel Interests Are Working to Kill Solar in One Ohio County. The Hometown Newspaper Is Helping.by Miranda Green, Floodlight, Jennifer Smith Richards, ProPublica, and Priyanjana Bengani, Tow Center for Digital Journalism, and photography by Sarahbeth Maney, ProPublica ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. This story was co-published with the Tow Center for Digital Journalism and Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action. Word tends to spread fast in rural Knox County, Ohio. But misinformation has spread faster. The first article in the Mount Vernon News last fall about a planned solar farm simply noted that residents were “expressing their concern.” But soon the county’s only newspaper was packed with stories about solar energy that almost uniformly criticized the project and quoted its opponents.

Ottawa—International students enrich our communities

 

News release

January 22, 2024—Ottawa—International students enrich our communities and are a critical part of Canada’s social, cultural and economic fabric. In recent years, the integrity of the international student system has been threatened. Some institutions have significantly increased their intakes to drive revenues, and more students have been arriving in Canada without the proper supports they need to succeed. Rapid increases in the number of international students arriving in Canada also puts pressure on housing, health care and other services. As we work to better protect international students from bad actors and support sustainable population growth in Canada, the government is moving forward with measures to stabilize the number of international students in Canada.

The Honourable Marc Miller, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship announced today that the Government of Canada will set an intake cap on international student permit applications to stabilize new growth for a period of two years. For 2024, the cap is expected to result in approximately 360,000 approved study permits, a decrease of 35% from 2023. In the spirit of fairness, individual provincial and territorial caps have been established, weighted by population, which will result in much more significant decreases in provinces where the international student population has seen the most unsustainable growth. Study permit renewals will not be impacted. Those pursuing master’s and doctoral degrees, and elementary and secondary education are not included in the cap. Current study permit holders will not be affected.

IRCC will allocate a portion of the cap to each province and territory, who will then distribute the allocation among their designated learning institutions. To implement the cap, as of January 22, 2024, every study permit application submitted to IRCC will also require an attestation letter from a province or territory. Provinces and territories are expected to establish a process for issuing attestation letters to students by no later than March 31, 2024.

These temporary measures will be in place for two years, and the number of new study permit applications that will be accepted in 2025 will be re-assessed at the end of this year. During this period, the Government of Canada will continue to work with provinces and territories, designated learning institutions and national education stakeholders on developing a sustainable path forward for international students, including finalizing a recognized institution framework, determining long-term sustainable levels of international students and ensuring post-secondary institutions are able to provide adequate levels of student housing.

In order to better align the Post-Graduation Work Permit Program, we are changing the eligibility criteria:

• Starting September 1, 2024, international students who begin a study program that is part of a curriculum licensing arrangement will no longer be eligible for a post­graduation work permit upon graduation. Under curriculum licensing agreements, students physically attend a private college that has been licensed to deliver the curriculum of an associated public college. These programs have seen significant growth in attracting international students in recent years, though they have less oversight than public colleges and they act as a loophole with regards to post-graduation work permit eligibility.
• Graduates of master’s degree programs will soon be eligible to apply for a 3-year work permit. Under current criteria, the length of a post­graduation work permit is based solely on the length of an individual’s study program, hindering master’s graduates by limiting the amount of time they have to gain work experience and potentially transition to permanent residence.

In the weeks ahead, open work permits will only be available to spouses of international students in master’s and doctoral programs. The spouses of international students in other levels of study, including undergraduate and college programs, will no longer be eligible.

The important measures announced today complement other recently announced reforms to the International Student Program. Taken together, they aim to ensure genuine students receive the support they require and have the resources they need for an enriching study experience in Canada, while at the same time stabilizing the overall number of students arriving and alleviating pressures on housing, health care and other services in Canada.

Quotes

“International students are vital to Canada and enrich our communities. As such, we have an obligation to ensure that they have access to the resources they need for an enriching academic experience. In Canada, today, this isn’t always the case. Today, we are announcing additional measures to protect a system that has become so lucrative that it has opened a path for its abuse. Enough is enough. Through the decisive measures announced today, we are striking the right balance for Canada and ensuring the integrity of our immigration system while setting students up for the success they hope for.”

– The Honourable Marc Miller, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship

Jack Smith to end Trump cases and resign, report says; Musk and Ramaswamy roles cause conflict of interest concerns - live

Jack Smith to end Trump cases and resign, report says; Musk and Ramaswamy roles cause conflict of interest concerns - live

Mehdi Hasan

“If Kamala wins, only death and destruction await because she is the candidate of endless wars,” declaimed Donald Trump at a rally in Michigan, on the Friday before the election. “I am the candidate of peace.” In a typically ridiculous rhetorical flourish, Trump added: “I am peace.”

Nevertheless, despite the ridiculousness, the president-elect in recent weeks succeeded in connecting with plenty of of anti-war voters tired of the United States’ “forever wars”. He went to Dearborn, the “capital” of Arab America, attacked Kamala Harris for campaigning with the pro-war Cheneys, and came away with an endorsement from a local imam who called him the “peace” candidate.

In fact, I have lost count of the number of leftists who have told me in recent months: “Trump didn’t start any new wars.” Sorry, what? Trump spent his four years in the White House escalating every single conflict that he inherited from Barack Obama. Many have forgotten that Trump bombed the Assad government in Syria twice; dropped the “mother of all bombs” on Afghanistan; illegally assassinated Iranian general Qasem Soleimani on Iraqi soil; armed Saudi Arabia’s genocide in Yemen; and made John Bolton his national security adviser. Few are even aware that Trump launched more drone strikes in his first two years in office than Obama, dubbed “the drone president”, did across eight years in office.

But this time, we were told, it would be different. This time Trump meant it. No more war! No more neocons! Some took heart from Trump’s very public rejection of arch-hawks Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley. Others signal-boosted efforts by RFK Jr, Don Jr and Tucker Carlson to block neoconservative figures from joining the new Trump-Vance administration. “I’m on it,” bragged Trump’s eldest failson. Trump is surrounding himself with hawks so you can be assured that his will be a very hawkish administration. Again

It was all for naught. “I am peace”? Really? Consider who Trump now plans to nominate as his secretary of state: Marco Rubio. The Florida senator was once an outspoken critic of the president-elect, calling him a “con man”, “the most vulgar person to ever aspire to the presidency”, and questioning the size of his manhood. Fast forward almost a decade and Rubio has happily bent the knee to Trump in order to become fourth in line for the presidency and to take charge of US diplomacy.

Freedom Convoy Pat King guilty on five counts

 OTTAWA -

 Pat King, one of the most prominent figures of the 2022 "Freedom Convoy" in Ottawa, has been found guilty on five counts including mischief and disobeying a court order.

A judge in an Ottawa courtroom Friday said the Crown proved beyond a reasonable doubt that King was guilty on one count each of mischief, counselling others to commit mischief and counselling others to obstruct police. He was also found guilty of two counts of disobeying a court order.

CRTC has granted Google a five-year exemption

OTTAWA — The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has granted Google a five-year exemption

from the Online News Act, ordering it to release the $100 million it now owes to Canadian news outlets within 60 days. Google agreed last year to pay Canadian news publishers $100 million a year, indexed to inflation, in order to be exempt from the law, which compels tech companies to enter into agreements with news publishers to pay for content reposted on their platforms.

BREAKING: Matt Gaetz SUDDENLY WITHDRAWS as AG Pick

Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon says “astronomical” immigration can harm Quebec’s birthrate?

Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon recently stated that “astronomical” immigration can harm Quebec’s birthrate. According to him, housing and accessibility of services, particularly daycare spaces, are determining factors affecting the decision to have children. “The two are related,” he said. Leaving aside the tenuous connection between “mass” immigration and the housing crisis, which experts say is misleading or largely exaggerated, do these factors really affect birthrates? In 2023, Quebec recorded one of the lowest fertility rates in its history. From 1.48 children per woman in 2022, the rate dropped to 1.38, staying just above the historic low of 1.36 in 1987. Can this drop be linked to recent events when it’s part of a general downward trend observed for decades? Low-fertility woes are not unique to Quebec. Canada registered a dramatic drop in fertility rates starting in 1960 when the contraceptive pill came along. Another major drop followed in 1969 when contraception and abortion were decriminalized. The downward trend has continued ever since, as women have more control over their family planning and financial prospects. While economic challenges could delay or prevent some from having children, considerations to have children or not (and how many) go way beyond financial factors. Since low birthrates have far-reaching economic and social consequences for a country — including economic stagnation or decline — there’s nothing inherently alarming about societies with declining birthrates and an aging population favouring pro-natalist policies. Read More

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tapped to work with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as new DOGE subcommittee chair

 Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., has been tapped to lead a new House subcommittee that will work with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

Greene and House Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., have met with Ramaswamy and his team and are “already working together,” a source familiar with the matter told CNBC on Thursday.

Comer aims to establish the subpanel early next year, the source said.

Greene’s group will be dubbed the Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, allowing it to share the DOGE acronym with the outside-of-government entity commissioned by President-elect Donald Trump.

The congressional version, first reported earlier Thursday morning by Fox News, shares similar goals as the one led by the two billionaires. It aims to investigate government waste, and seek out ways to reorganize federal agencies and cut red tape, the source said.

Caught in Texas’ Medicaid and Food Stamp Application Backlog? Know Someone Who Is? Help Us Report.

Caught in Texas’ Medicaid and Food Stamp Application Backlog? Know Someone Who Is? Help Us Report.by Miranda Green, Floodlight, Jennifer Smith Richards, ProPublica, and Priyanjana Bengani, Tow Center for Digital Journalism, and photography by Sarahbeth Maney, ProPublica ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. This story was co-published with the Tow Center for Digital Journalism and Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action. Word tends to spread fast in rural Knox County, Ohio. But misinformation has spread faster. The first article in the Mount Vernon News last fall about a planned solar farm simply noted that residents were “expressing their concern.” But soon the county’s only newspaper was packed with stories about solar energy that almost uniformly criticized the project and quoted its opponents.

Data Scientist's Shocking Call for Election Recount Raises Scary Questio...

Will Trump satisfy his voters?

Image by Pexels from Pixabay Share — Will Trump satisfy his voters? How quickly will he fail them? If Trump follows through with his promises for radical tariffs and mass deportations, while both may be emotionally satisfying for his voters, both will also take a big bite out of the economy, probably provoking a recession. That will be a real test of his and Rupert Murdoch’s ability to gaslight Americans. The majority of his voters believe that the country is ravaged with crime (our violent crime numbers are the lowest in decades), in the midst of a recession (we have the best economy since the 1960s), and our border is daily overwhelmed (crossings are at a multi-decade low). So his and Murdoch’s power to make people believe things that aren’t true is considerable (remember that roughly a half-million Americans died unnecessarily because they believed Trump and Murdoch on Covid and masks). But, still, there are limits to people’s credulity, particularly when it comes to losing their jobs to a recession. This point when he’s screwed things up and doesn’t have a solution will be a crucial moment; it’s the time he’d most likely try to go full fascist authoritarian to shut down truth-tellers and his political opposition. As Duke University political scientist Herbert Kitschelt told The New York Times’ Thomas Edsall: “The hour of political authoritarianism arrives, when the new wagers to create economic affluence among the less well-off and to resurrect the old kinship relations of industrial society turn sour and generate disenchantment among Trump’s own following. Trump then may well want to make sure that his disenchanted supporters — as well as those who always opposed Trumpism — will not get another chance to express their opinions.” If Kitschelt is right and Trump turns on his own base, it’ll be a critical moment in American history. Frankly, I’m more inclined to believe he’ll do what Reagan did when the economy was in the tank and he was being criticized for not responding to the Beirut Marine barracks bombing: he invaded Grenada. Starting a “little war” is a time-tested technique, first used by Margaret Thatcher, then Reagan, then both Bushs to divert the public’s attention from domestic crises. If he chooses his war stupidly, he could trigger WWIII. Keep an eye on this.

Bishop’s fights for future under Quebec’s proposed cap

“An unpredictable system” Bishop’s fights for future under Quebec’s proposed cap on international students By William Crooks Local Journalism Initiative In the wake of Quebec’s Bill 74, which proposes limits on international student enrollments, Bishop’s University finds itself grappling with uncertain prospects for student recruitment and financial sustainability. In a Nov. 8 interview, Bishop’s Principal and Vice-Chancellor Sébastien Lebel-Grenier shared his concerns over the potential impact of these restrictions on his institution, particularly in light of recent enrollment and funding challenges that have already hit the university hard. The timing of Bill 74, which would give the Quebec government discretionary power to cap international student numbers, is especially problematic, says Lebel-Grenier, given that Bishop’s has seen a sharp 27.7 per cent drop in its international student population this year. This decline contributes to a projected $1.6 million deficit, one that could grow as the cap on international students jeopardizes the university’s enrollment-driven revenue. “We’re already in a difficult position,” he said, emphasizing the need for careful financial management to protect the student experience, which remains Bishop’s highest priority despite these fiscal strains. The financial hit comes from two primary sources: decreased recruitment numbers and a new funding formula. The sudden changes have left Bishop’s and other Quebec universities scrambling to adapt. “What we’re seeing now is a situation where we’re investing a lot more effort to recruit students, yet our results are weaker,” said Lebel-Grenier. The financial gap, which government funds are not expected to fill, could mean further tough decisions ahead. While Lebel-Grenier refrained from specifying potential budget cuts, he acknowledged that reducing expenditures may be unavoidable as Bishop’s seeks to stabilize its finances. During a recent presentation to Quebec’s National Assembly, Lebel-Grenier highlighted that Bishop’s, one of Quebec’s smallest universities with 417 international students, relies on these students to enrich both its campus environment and the broader Lennoxville community. The institution, committed to a liberal arts model, sees international diversity as core to its mission. Lebel-Grenier argued that limiting this diversity threatens the very foundation of Bishop’s educational philosophy. The liberal education Bishop’s offers depends on varied student backgrounds, which enrich academic discussion and peer-to-peer learning.

Earth’s Land and Trees Absorbed Almost No Net Carbon in 2023

Earth’s Land and Trees Absorbed Almost No Net Carbon in 2023Earth’s land-based carbon sinks — forests, wetlands, grasslands and soil — are essential for absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide, regulating the planet’s temperature and mitigating climate change. A preliminary report shows that last year — the hottest ever recorded — almost no net carbon was absorbed by land. This means the world’s terrestrial carbon sinks temporarily collapsed, reported The Guardian. “We’re seeing cracks in the resilience of the Earth’s systems. We’re seeing massive cracks on land – terrestrial ecosystems are losing their carbon store and carbon uptake capacity, but the oceans are also showing signs of instability,” said Johan Rockström, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research director, at a New York Climate Week event last month, as The Guardian reported. “Nature has so far balanced our abuse. This is coming to an end.”