One year later, AI code signatories happy with decision but want more company

OTTAWA – Current and former officials of Canada’s spy agency are slated to appear today at a federal inquiry into foreign interference.

Witnesses include Vanessa Lloyd, the interim Canadian Security Intelligence Service director, as well as David Vigneault, who stepped down from the role earlier this year.

Leaks of CSIS information about alleged foreign interference led to pressure on the Liberal government to set up the commission of inquiry.

The inquiry’s latest hearings are looking at the ability of federal agencies to identify and counter foreign meddling.

The commission is examining the practices of various institutions as well as the experiences of diaspora communities.

A final report is due by the end of the year.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 27, 2024.

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VANCOUVER – A chemical firm based in Port Coquitlam, B.C., claims Health Canada wrongfully cancelled its licences to make natural health products after being sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for alleged involvement in importing precursor chemicals that could be used in illicit drug production.

The U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions against Valerian Labs and its owner Bahman Djebelibak, who goes by Bobby Shah, in October 2023, and five days later Canada suspended and then cancelled Valerian’s licenses to make health products.

Valerian is now taking Health Canada to Federal Court, claiming in judicial review applications that the Canadian actions were solely based on a U.S. Treasury news release alleging it was involved in “the international proliferation of illicit drugs.”

Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo had said in a statement at the time that the targets of the sanctions included a China-based network involved in the manufacturing and distribution of fentanyl and “other substances that take thousands of American lives each year.”

Health Canada’s Office of Controlled Substances also revoked Valerian’s registration and certificate under the agency’s “Precursor Control Regulations,” which it says “provide a regulatory framework that allows Canada to fulfil its international obligations with respect to the monitoring and control of precursors used in the production of illegal drugs.”

A Health Canada guidance document defines precursors as “chemicals that are frequently diverted from legitimate activities to the illegal manufacture of drugs.”

Valerian Labs says the Health Canada decisions were unreasonable and unfair, having relied on an uncorroborated “foreign press release.”

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control named several China-based companies in the sanctions announcement, including Jinhu Minsheng Pharmaceutical Machinery Co., which sells equipment and materials allegedly used in the production of counterfeit oxycodone pills.

The department’s statement said Valerian Labs was a “major customer” of Jinhu Minsheng, receiving shipments of methylamine hydrochloride — which it called a precursor used to produce methamphetamine and MDMA.

Reached by phone and text message, Shah denied allegations related to the drug trade but acknowledged buying the chemical.

“I have bought Methylimine HCL, I have bought machinery,” he wrote in a text message.

His “only mistake” he wrote, was that he “didn’t just procure. I have them as commodities on my inventory that I offer as a chemical vendor.”

He said he had been instructed by his lawyer to “not engage” with The Canadian Press, and said he did not consent to the use of his remarks. He was told an off-the-record interview needed to be agreed upon from the outset.

Valerian’s applications filed Sept. 13 in Federal Court in Vancouver say Health Canada “has not set out any justification as to why the press release provides reasonable ground to believe that a suspension is necessary to prevent injury to the health of purchasers or consumers of products manufactured by Valerian Labs.”

A Health Canada spokesperson said no one was available for an interview about the company’s licence cancellations, and the agency would not comment on ongoing litigation.

In a written statement, Health Canada said its “top priority is protecting the health and safety of the people of Canada.”

“The department is committed to verifying that health products manufactured and sold in the Canadian market are safe, effective and of high quality. When there is information that could give rise to health and safety risks, Health Canada will determine if compliance and enforcement action is required and communicate the risks to the public, if warranted.”

Company registration records show Valerian Labs used to be registered in B.C. under the name Hollywood Vape Labs, and court records show he and his former wife, Ramina Shah, faced a civil forfeiture lawsuit from the B.C. government, but the case was dropped.

In 2021, a B.C. Provincial Court judge found police had breached the couple’s Charter rights against unreasonable search and seizure in a cheque fraud investigation.

Ramina Shah was murdered in January 2022, stabbed to death in a Coquitlam parkade, and the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team said in a written statement it could not comment on an “active ongoing investigation.”

The U.S. Department of the Treasury did not respond to a request for comment on the sanctions against Valerian Labs.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 27, 2024.

Barbara Nolan, an Anishnaabe elder on a mission to promote her nation’s language, says she loves to hear stories about how her work is influencing children.

Nolan launched a series of online videos last month to introduce the language — called Anishinaabemowin — to the very youngest members of the community.

“I know this one grandparent, she sends me a picture of her grandchildren sitting on the floor and they’re watching a big-screen TV,” Nolan said in a recent interview from Garden River First Nation, east of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. “And guess who’s on that big-screen TV? It’s me!”

In her videos, Nolan uses immersion techniques — instead of teaching the language, she encourages people to live it. Her content tackles a wide range of topics from Halloween to animals to the blight of residential schools, presented in a way that a child can understand.

Nolan, 77, is an elder born in Wiikwemkoong First Nation, and a residential school survivor. Growing up, she said, she heard her parents only speak Anishinaabemowin.

“I never heard my dad speak English or my mom for that matter,” she said. “And so we grew up hearing all this language — grandparents, aunties, uncles, neighbours, you know, the whole community.”

Nolan says many residential school survivors had their language taken from them, a dispossession she actively resisted but one that left an indelible mark on others.

“I would say they don’t want to speak it — even today,” Nolan said. “They know it, but they don’t want to speak it. It’s too painful for them. They think somebody is going to come and do something harmful to them … they’re going to be punished if you speak your language.”

Nolan has tried to buck that trend, working to revive and spread the language since the early 1970s. She works as a daycare language instructor in Garden River, playing with kids in Anishinaabemowin, introducing them to basic words. When the children she looks after start to speak for the first time, they sometime uses Anishnaabe words alongside English.

But those children, she said, aren’t immersed in the language; when they aren’t with her, they don’t speak it — or hear it. “And I thought, I think it’s about time that I did videos in the language, fun videos, animated videos.”

So she teamed up with Esbikenh, an Anishinaabe Grade 3 teacher in Walpole Island First Nation who creates digital characters. Together, they created online videos, presented on TikTok and other social media; she has even participated in the development of an application that teaches Anishinaabemowin.

Randy Morin, an Indigenous studies professor at the University of Saskatchewan, says there are about 63 Indigenous languages spoken in Canada and only three are expected to be around in the long term. “As you know, our populations are aging and they’re the ones that still speak languages, and unfortunately, we’re losing their languages very rapidly,” Morin said in an interview.

A major reason for language loss, Morin said, is federal government policy, including the residential school system. “But now it’s our aging population, our elders are passing away so fast and when they pass away, we lose so much: we lose language, we lose the values, our world view of how you see the world and interact with the world.”

Indigenous languages, he said, should be made official languages in Canada, so that they can receive funding proportional to the money that is invested in English and French programs across the country. “We lose our stories and we kind of lose the meanings of words that are so significant, so we need to hold on to these languages for a variety of reasons,” Morin said.

Indigenous languages, he added, can hold answers to pressing modern questions. The world’s last biodiversity-rich lands are owned and managed by Indigenous people, he said, whose languages are encoded with the techniques to manage the territory. The world may lose important knowledge about climate change and sustainable development when those languages are lost.

Knowledge, he said, is “embedded in the languages and how we look at the world, how we interact with the world. So we have much to lose.”

Nolan is trying to leave some of that knowledge behind. The first 10 videos were published online in August, with more to come. She intends to keep going for as long as she can — leaving behind something that can stand the test of time.

Locals in Garden River have told her how much they like the efforts.

“They will stop me on the street and they say, ‘Barbara, my little granddaughter, she likes your video. She just loves you, you know,’ and that is so rewarding for me to hear,” Nolan said.

“It’s for the kids. I have done that for the kids.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 27, 2024.