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May 24 2025

The Roundup: Senators visit. RCMP warning. Media experiment.

SAT MAY 24 2024
David Akin's Roundup
Senators visit. RCMP warning. Media experiment.
Canada
Carney meets with US Senate delegation; Energy minister attempts Alberta re-set
Prime Minister Mark Carney and some of his most senior ministers met in Ottawa on Friday with top U.S. delegates. The five American senators are all members of the influential Senate committee on foreign relations. As David Akin reports, strengthening support for a strong Canada-U.S. partnership topped the agenda.

Canada’s newly-minted Energy Minister Tim Hodgson was in Calgary on Friday, promising to heal divisions and drive development of natural resources after years of mistrust between the province and the Liberal government. Hodgson was born and raised in the Prairies and says under his watch, Canada will “remain a reliable global supplier of oil and gas.” Heather Yourex-West reports.
[Global National]

Partly due to youth radicalization, violent extremism remains 'a prominent national security threat,' RCMP says. [Global]
The recounts from April's federal election took place after extremely tight races in Newfoundland's Terra Nova—The Peninsulas and Ontario's Windsor—Tecumseh—Lake Shore. [Global]

Among respondents who support Alberta becoming a country, 76 per cent say they understand why the Prairie province might want to become independent. [Global]

The Canada Revenue Agency says it plans to cut 280 permanent jobs and cites 'fiscal constraints', and this follows the cutting of more than 3000 jobs since last year. [Global]

At least six MPs are asking their colleagues for support in their bid to become Speaker, with many speaking about the need to improve decorum in the House of Commons. [Global]
If it becomes law, the bill will override the Canadian-U.S. tax treaty that has been in place since 1942. [Globe and Mail] (🎁 link)
The new U.S. ambassador to Canada says he knows the implication of King Charles III’s upcoming trip to Ottawa is to push back on U.S. President Donald Trump’s 51st state threats — and he says there are “easier ways to send messages” to the American government. [CBC]
This ministerial transition briefing binder provides a high-level overview of the RCMP and its leadership team for newly appointed ministers. This binder also identifies certain key files and outlines several organizational priorities. [RCMP]
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The Provinces
The mayor's lawsuit alleges his former chief of staff and a Vancouver businessman both displayed "a wanton and flagrant disregard for the plaintiff's rights" by spreading rumours about him allegedly being pulled over for drunk driving. [Vancouver Sun]
Aurora
Elsewhere
Trump's image of dead 'white farmers' came from Reuters footage in Congo, not South Africa
The image came from a video that showed humanitarian workers lifting body bags in the city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo. [Reuters]
Douglas Porter: After spending the past six weeks reversing the initial trade war damage, this late-week blow swiftly undercut stocks and the U.S. dollar—the policy equivalent of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Notably, the latest threat arrives less than 24 hours after a feel-good communiqué from the G7 finance ministers, following a three-day meeting in Banff. At the very least, this will add some serious spice to the mid-June G7 leaders’ summit in Kananaskis. [BMO Capital Markets]
G. Elliott Morris: Donald Trump's policies are punishing the poor, rewarding the rich, inflating prices, and shrinking revenues. And for what? [Strength in Numbers]
Party elites are considerably more responsible for their woeful state of affairs than the former president. [The New Republic]

The day after winning November’s election, Trump began calling top staff with a surprising plan, according to two people with knowledge of the conversations. He wanted to start raising money again, immediately, not just for the transition and his inauguration, but for political committees that would demonstrate his clout throughout his second term. Trump made calls to donors himself. One of the people described the message as ‘double up.’ If a donor had given $1 million before the election, Trump wanted another $1 million now. [AP]
Media
The Experiment
For several months last year, readers of Il Foglio, a national Italian newspaper, were participants in a peculiar guessing game orchestrated by the paper’s editor in chief, Claudio Cerasa. Tucked inconspicuously into the newspaper’s pages was an occasional impostor article generated by artificial intelligence. Those who correctly identified the AI-written piece by week’s end earned a prize: a free subscription and a bottle of champagne. 
The experiment was popular with readers, but Cerasa couldn’t help appreciating that some of them flagged real articles as machine-made. These false positives, he said, revealed some of the practices in human writing that makes it seem too formulaic: “When an article relies too heavily on a list-like structure—first, second, third—or reads too didactically, it risks appearing as if a bot wrote it.” [Columbia Journalism Review]
Science and Technology
OpenAI's Top Scientist Wanted to "Build a Bunker Before We Release AGI"
OpenAI's former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever has long been preparing for AGI — and he discussed with coworkers doomsday prep plans. [Futurism]

Anthropic says those capabilities make Opus 4 ideal for powering upcoming AI agents. For the unfamiliar, agentic systems are AIs that are designed to plan and carry out complicated tasks without human supervision. They represent an important step towards the promise of artificial general intelligence (AGI). In customer testing, Anthropic saw Opus 4 work on its own seven hours, or nearly a full workday. That's an important milestone for the type of agentic systems the company wants to build. [Endgadget]
Issued this day ...
… in 1983. Sc 792. First Class Definitives. Design: Heather Cooper.

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