eby’s push for bail reform

fending in every region of the province. Today, during the press conference detailing the new legislation, Federal Justice Minister David Lametti credited B.C.’s leadership on the file: “Since the month of October we have been working with the provinces. It was first raised at a Federal Territorial Provincial meeting by the British Columbia government, an NDP government. We have worked since that time on a technical level with all governments across Canada of every political stripe.” “British Columbia, a leader in this regard… has introduced a revised bail policy that directs crown prosecutors to seek detention in cases involving repeat violent offenders.”

Media contact: Emily Della Mattia

New directive requires CSiS to tell MPs, public safety minister about foreign threats

foreign threats against parliamentarians, their families, their staff members or Parliament itself. Mendicino has instructed the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to give such threats the highest level of attention in a new ministerial directive.

OTTAWA - Public Safety Minister Marco

Mendicino has formally directed Canada’s spy agency to investigate and disclose any

He says CSIS needs to ensure that members of Parliament are informed of threats against them, whenever that is legally possible, and inform police or law enforcement when needed. The newly unclassified document says CSIS must also tell the public safety minister about all instances of threats against Parliament or parliamentarians and explain how it will respond.

The measures come in response to growing concerns about China’s alleged attempts to meddle in the last two federal elections, and accusations that Beijing has tried to intimidate members of Parliament and their families. Conservative MP Michael Chong is set to testify this evening at the House of Commons procedure committee about a CSIS report that alleges a Chinese diplomat tried to intimidate him over his stance on China’s human-rights record.

Chong has said in the House of Commons that Jody Thomas, the prime minister’s national security adviser, told him the 2021 CSIS report was sent to the Privy Council

NDP MP wants ‘democratic controls’ on the prime minister’s powers

A New Democrat MP is trying to convince his colleagues to change the rules that govern the House of Commons in a series of ways he says would instill “democratic controls” on the prime minister’s “unfettered” powers. Manitoba NDP MP Daniel Blaikie has presented a motion seeking to change the rules known as ‘Standing Orders’ to clarify what can be declared a confidence vote, and empower MPs to have authority as to whether the government of the day has the confidence of the House.

The motion also would have the effect of making it harder for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and all of his successors to misuse prorogation and dissolution as political tools to reset or swerve accountability.

“The prime minister enjoys a lot of power in the Canadian system of government, but perhaps one of the most important powers that the prime minister has is the ability to dissolve or prorogue Parliament at will,” Blaikie told reporters during a press conference on Parliament Hill Monday. ”What that means is the prime minister can call an election at any time that he wants. And, at any point if he’s not happy with what’s going on in Parliament, he can he can tear up all that work, stop Parliament with a prorogation … This is something that I don’t think makes a lot of sense … because Parliament is the body that’s supposed to hold the government to account.” The motion—revisiting an initiative the NDP’s democratic reform critic tried to pass in the last Parliament—received its first hour of debate on Friday, and Blaikie

Office and to relevant government departments. Chong was not aware of the assessment until it was reported on by the Globe and Mail. But Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other ministers have maintained they only learned about the threats against Chong and other unnamed MPs from the same media report. Trudeau has said for weeks that CSIS will be required to inform individual MPs about threats against them going forward. In a written statement Tuesday, Mendicino said he has issued the new instructions to the spy agency in an effort to be as open and transparent as possible.

Source: ctvnews.ca/politics said he’s hopeful the second hour of debate and coinciding vote will be scheduled before the summer break in late June, otherwise it would be pushed to early in the fall.

Source: ctvnews.ca/politics

Annual inflation rate edged up in April, raises chances of higher interest rates

at 4.5 per cent, but its governing council considered raising rates last month before deciding to remain on pause. The bank’s next interest rate decision is set for June 7, ahead of the May jobs report from Statistics Canada on June 9.

OTTAWA - The annual pace of inflation rose in April for the first time since it peaked in June last year, a move some economists say will test the Bank of Canada’s decision to pause hiking interest rates if the economy does not cool as expected later this year. Statistics Canada said Tuesday its consumer price index was up 4.4 per cent compared with a year ago, up from a year-over-year increase of 4.3 per cent in March.

It was the first tick higher in the annual rate since it peaked at 8.1 per cent in June 2022.

Tuan Nguyen, an economist with accounting and consultancy RSM Canada, said the April inflation reading came in much hotter than expected, putting more pressure on the Bank of Canada to reassess its rate pause strategy.

“Our base case remains that the Bank of Canada will continue to pause at the June meeting, but of course the probability of a rate hike is increasing,” he said. Nguyen said he expects a change in the Bank of Canada’s tone in its rate decision next month and added that he thinks rate cuts later this year are off the table, based on the latest inflation report.

The Bank of Canada has forecast that the annual inflation rate will come down to about three per cent in the coming months, but suggested that a return to its target of two per cent will take longer.

Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem has said that if the central bank starts to see signs that inflation is likely to get stuck materially above its two per cent target it is prepared to raise rates further.

The central bank’s key interest rate has been on hold

Leslie Preston, managing director and senior economist at TD Bank, wrote in a report that cooler inflation for demand-sensitive services inflation, or “supercore,” was the most encouraging development of the inflation report, even though it was somewhat offset by hotter inflation for goods.

Preston wrote that this reinforces the challenge Macklem has talked about in bringing inflation all the way back to the central bank’s two per cent target. “This suggests that the BoC needs to remain vigilant to inflation pressures, and may need to hike again if momentum in the domestic economy does not cool as expected,” Preston wrote.

Statistics Canada said the increase in inflation for April was driven by higher mortgage interest costs which were up 28.5 % compared with a year ago as new homebuyers and those renewing mortgages faced higher interest rates. A 6.1 per cent increase in rent prices also helped push the overall rate up. Grocery prices, which have been closely watched, were up 9.1 per cent compared with a year ago, but that increase was smaller than the 9.7 per cent yearover-year jump in March. Prices for fresh vegetables in April were up 8.8 per cent on a year-overyear basis compared with a 10.8 per cent gain in March, while coffee and tea prices increased 6.4 per cent year-over-year compared with 11.1% in March.

Gasoline prices in April were down 7.7 % compared with a year earlier when prices were higher due in part to Russia’s of Ukraine. However, gasoline prices in April rose 6.3% compared with March, the largest monthly increase since October 2022. Despite the increase in the overall annual rate of inflation, the average of the three core measures of inflation that are tracked by the Bank of Canada came in at 4.70 per cent for April, down from 4.97 per cent in March. Source: ctvnews.ca/business

L OCAL eve NTS

The Pakistani community of vancouver, deeply grieved over the illegal arrest of imran Khan

On May 10, The Pakistani community of Vancouver, Canada is deeply grieved over the illegal and illegal arrest of Imran Khan and his reckless treatment. The protest was against this action on streets of 72 Ave x Scott

Road, Surrey. The local PTI leaders addressed the public and explained what is going on in Pakistan against PTI’s top leadership and Imran Khan, the martyrdom of about one hundred Pakistanis by the Pakistani Army and Rangers is also a unique event. The army has the responsibility to protect us, Army is the one who has raised us and is ready to kill us now. The community showed its unity with Khan.

PTi’s team had a meeting with The hon. Robert Oliphant, Parliamentary Secr. to the Min. of foreign Affairs

On May 14, the Pakistan Tehreek Insaf (PTI) team of British Columbia had a crucial meeting with The Honourable Robert Oliphant, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the presence of Member of Parliament from Surrey, Honourable Randeep Sarai, and community leader Bilal Cheema and Saif Pannu were also present. We discussed the alarming decline in the human rights situation in Pakistan. The establishment and PDM’s brutal use of force have led to abductions, arrests, injuries, and even killings of political workers and journalists. Human rights violations are on the rise, and the civil society is deeply concerned. We urged Mr. Oliphant to convey our concerns to the Foreign Minister and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, emphasizing the serious threat this poses to the 220 million people in Pakistan. Any further unrest could trigger a mass exodus of oppressed individuals seeking refuge in Canada and other Western countries. It’s crucial to address this issue promptly to safeguard the rights and well-being of the Pakistani population.”

It was mentioned that the killing of Ali Bilal, and Arshad Shareef and the assassination attempt of former Prime Minister Imran Khan are not being investigated properly and thousands of political workers are arrested. A crackdown on social media activists is also harassing people overseas.

Kindness Chain Chilliwack Association participated in operation cleanup downtown Chilliwack

KCCA would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you who participated in today’s downtown cleanup event. Your selfless contribution of time and energy has made a significant impact on our environment, and your efforts will not go unnoticed. Together, we were able to clean up litter and debris, beautify our community, and spread an im- portant message about the importance of environmental sustainability. It is thanks to volunteers like you that we are able to make a tangible difference in our community and create a cleaner, greener world for future generations.

Thank you once again for your incredible support and for being a part of this meaningful initiative. Remember, we are not only cleaning up our streets but also spreading a messageKeep our planet clean and green!

Streets covered today - Yale Rd (North and south of meeting point), Cheam Ave, Hodgins Ave, and Mary St. Special thank you to the City of Chilliwack, Downtown Chilliwack, and wonderful volunteers from Annis Community housing at PCRS. Lee Phillipson who made this event a success. Courtesy By: KCCA, FB

BBQ event for the BC Muslims Sports Association (BCMSA) for Muslim Ball hockey Team

It was a hot day but as I mentioned, working with well-organized and dedicated people was a great working experience, Alhamdulillah 500 lunchbox tickets were sold, and participating from the Fiji community was terrific, thanks Brother

Rubbeen Mohammad for engaging our youth in sports activities thanks all other Volunteers: you guys were dedicated Shaban

71% of those who died were aged 3059, 77% were male; 197 lives lost to drug toxicity in March alone.

Almost 600 people in British Columbia died in the first three months of 2023 because of the toxic drug supply, according to preliminary data released by the B.C. Coroners Service on Tuesday. The toll of 596 deaths is the second highest number recorded for January to February since a public health emergency was declared in 2016 due to the crisis. The same period last year saw 599 deaths.

The latest figures released by the coroners’ service show illicit toxic drugs claimed 177 lives in February and 197 in March.

“This is a crisis of incomprehensible scale, and I extend my deepest condolences to everyone who has experienced the loss of someone they loved,” said chief coroner Lisa Lapointe in a statement Tuesday.

Of those who died, 71 per cent were between the ages of 30 and 59, and 77 per cent were male — statistics that are similar to previous months.Drug toxicity continues to be the leading cause of unnatural death in B.C., the coroners’ service says, accounting for more deaths than homicides, suicides, motor vehicle incidents, drownings and fire-related deaths combined. It means that at least 11,807 deaths have been caused by toxic drugs since the public health emergency was declared seven years ago. “The toxic drug crisis continues to devastate families and communities throughout the province, and I remain steadfast in my commitment to do everything possible to turn the tide and end this public health emergency,” said Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Jennifer Whiteside in a statement.

Whiteside reiterated that the province’s 2023 budget includes more than $1 billion to improve mental health and addictions services, including new treatment and recovery beds.

Vancouver, Surrey and Greater Victoria are the areas experiencing the highest number of drug toxicity deaths, according to the latest data. The highest rates of death in 2023 so far have been in the Northern Health region, at 60 deaths per 100,000 individuals, and in the Vancouver Coastal Health area (59 per 100,000). No additional deaths were recorded at overdose prevention sites in February and March. Only two instances have previously been reported — one in 2022 and one in January this year.

Source: cbc.ca/newsc

Big Bang from islamic Perspective

By: Zaghlool El-Naggar

In the Holy Quran we read: “Haven’t the unbelievers seen that the heavens and the earth were joined together (in one singularity), then we clove both of them asunder.” (Surat Al-Anbiya’ 21:30). This verse reflects the unity of creation as a dominating factor in the orderly form of the universe throughout its evolutionary history from one stage to another. However, long before discovering the established phenomenon of the red shift, and its logical consequence of describing our universe as an expanding one, scientists used Einstein’s theory of general relativity to extrapolate back in time and came to the striking conclusion that the universe had actually emerged from a single, unbelievably small, dense, hot region

(the Hot Big Bang Model of the universe). Formation of the Universe

George Gamow formally proposed the model in 1948, after a lengthy discussion on other models of the universe by a number of scientists (e.g. Albert Einstein, 1917; William de Sitter, 1917; Alexander Friedmann, 1922; George Lemaiyre, 1927, etc.). Lemaitre is credited for introducing the idea of the “primeval atom”, where galaxies originated as fragments ejected by the explosion of this atom. In 1948, George Gamow modified Lemaitre’s hypothesis into the “Big Bang theory” of the origin of the universe. In this theory, Gamow proposed that the universe was created in a gigantic explosion, whereby the various elements observed today were produced within the first few minutes after the Big Bang, as the extremely high temperature and density of the universe would fuse subatomic particles into the chemical elements. More recent calculations indicate that hydrogen and helium were the primary products of the Big Bang, with heavier elements being produced later within stars.The extremely high density within the “primeval atom” would cause the universe to expand rapidly.As it expanded, the smoky cloud of hydrogen and helium thus formed would cool and condense into nebulae stars, galaxies, clusters, super clusters, black holes, etc. This explains the original singularity of the universe; its explosion to a huge cloud of smoke from which the different heavenly bodies were formed by separation into eddies of various masses followed by condensation. The condensed bodies were arranged into stellar systems, clusters, galaxies, supergalaxies, etc., and the formed galaxies started to drift away from each other, causing the steady expansion of the universe. The Glorious Quran describes these three successive stages in the verses (21: 30), (41: 11) and (21: 104). The first and the third of these verses are discussed above, while the second reads: “Then He (Allah) turned to the sky while it was smoke, and ordered it the earth to come into being willingly or unwillingly, they answered: we do come in willing obedience* ” (Surat Fussilat 41:11).

Big Bang Evidence Cosmos

As the universe expanded, the residual radiation (radiant heat) from the big bang continued to spread outwardly and to cool down gradually until about the 3K (= – 270°C) of today. This relic radiation was detected by radio astronomy in 1964, thus providing direct material evidence for “The Big Bang Model”. Further evidence in support of this model is provided by the chemical composition of the observed universe. This amounts to about 74% hydrogen and 24 % helium (by mass), with only traces of other elements that in total amount to about 2%.All the recorded hydrogen in the observed universe and almost all the recorded helium are primordial, although some helium is currently produced by nuclear fusion of hydrogen in the sun as well as in other stars. Nevertheless, the total mass of hydrogen produced by the process of nuclear fusion within all the stars since the beginning of creation amounts to only a small percent. It is calculated that when the universe was 3 minutes old, its temperature must have been 109 °C (cf. Ohanian, 1985, p. D-6).

At such a high temperature, hydrogen was subject to nuclear fusion, leading to the formation of helium. Theoretical calculations show that the fusion reactions led to an abundance of about 75% hydrogen and 25% helium, which is a remarkable agreement with the observed abundance. This further confirms the Hot Big Bang model for the creation of the universe. The Hot Big Bang model has steadily and successfully battled other explanations for the origin of the universe, and the model has been gradually refined with time.

Hot to Cold

The “Hot Big Bang Model” for the origin of the universe envisages a beginning from an extremely small, hot, dense initial state some 10-15 billion years ago. This initial, minute body exploded and started to expand, forming the still expanding, vast, cold universe of today. The model predicts the formation of nuclei, the relative abundance of certain elements, and the existence and exact temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation (or the glow of radiation left over from the initial explosion, which is currently permeating the universe).

The prediction of the cosmic background radiation made by Ralph A. Alpher of Union College and Robert Herman of the University of Texas at Austin was confirmed by Arno Penzias and Robert W. Wilson of Bell Laboratories in 1964. Despite its success, the Hot Big Bang Model leaves many features of the universe unexplained. For example, the universe today includes a vast number of regions that could never have been in causal contact at any stage in their entire history. These regions are moving away from one another at such a rate that any information, even traveling at the speed of light, could not cover the distance between them. This “horizon problem” makes it difficult to account for the striking uniformity of the cosmic background radiation (cf. J.J. Halliwell, 1991, p. 76). Other unexplained features in the Hot Big Bang Model include the “flatness problem”, the origin of large scale structures such as galaxies, galactic clusters and superclusters, etc.

Inflationary Universe Cosmos

In 1980, Alan H. Guth of M.I.T. suggested a further refinement of the Big Bang model that he called “the inflationary universe scenario”.In this scenario, the universe is believed to have started with a very brief, but exceedingly rapid period of expansion (for about 10-30 second), in which matter consisted of scalar-field particles (white in the Hot Big Bang model, the matter content of the universe is presumed to have been a uniformly distributed plasma or dust). As mentioned by J.J. Halliwell (1991), the origin of the universe in the inflationary scenario can be explained as follows: by following the expansion of the universe backward in time, the size of this vast, complex universe tends towards zero. Here the strength of the gravitational field and the energy density of matter tend towards infinity. This means that the universe appears to have emerged from a singularity; a region of infinite curvature and energy density at which the known laws of physics break down. These conditions are a consequence of the famous “singularity theorems”, proved in 1960 by Stephen W. Hawking and Roger Penrose of the University of Oxford. These theorems showed that under reasonable assumptions any model of

B.C. expands mental-health, substanceuse supports for more young people

More children, youth and families will benefit from seamless mental-health and substance-use services as B.C. expands Integrated Child and Youth (ICY) teams to seven additional school districts.

The new multidisciplinary teams are being added in Fraser-Cascade (Hope, Harrison, Agassiz), Kootenay-Columbia (Trail), Mission, Nanaimo-Ladysmith, OkanaganShuswap (Salmon Arm), Pacific Rim (Port Alberni) and Powell River school districts. “Integrated Child and Youth teams make is easier for young people and their families to connect to the care they need, where and when they need it,” said Jennifer Whiteside, Minister of Mental Health and Addictions. “Integrated Child and Youth teams fill gaps and better co-ordinate mental health, wellness and substance-use care in schools and in the community, making it easier for families to access the help their child needs.”

Source: news.gov.bc.ca the expanding universe extrapolated backward in time will encounter an initial singularity.

The singularity theorems do not imply, however, that a singularity will physically occur. Rather, the theory predicting them – classical general relativity – breaks down at very high curvatures and must be superseded by the quantum theory. Near a singularity, space – time becomes highly curved; its volume shrinks to very small dimensions, and here only the quantum theory can be applied. Quantum cosmologists began a few decades ago (since the 1960s) to address the problems of the origin and evolution of the universe in a more subtle way than that proposed by classical astronomy. Quantum cosmology attempts to describe a system – fundamentally – in terms of its wave function. Yet many conceptual and technical difficulties arise. At the singularity, space becomes infinitely small, and the energy density infinitely great. To look beyond such a moment requires a complete, manageable quantum theory of gravity, which is currently lacking. Whether to accept the Hot Big Bang model of the universe, or its modified inflationary scenario explanations on the basis of conventional or quantum astronomy, the established fact is that our universe emerged from a single, infinitesimally small, dense, hot source. To agree or differ on the events that unfolded since that moment, including the formation of matter, followed by its coalescence into galaxies, stars, planets and chemical systems, does not change the fact of the one singularity from which our universe was created.

The Qur’anic precedence with this fact at a time when nobody had the slightest knowledge of it, or even for several centuries after the revelation was received, is indeed most striking. The objective notion to this Qur’anic verse in the right context of a science course can indeed be spirit lifting and enlightening for the younger Muslim generations of students and faculty.

Source:aboutislam.net/muslim