More than half of Canadians say freedom of speech is under threat, new poll suggests
A new poll suggests a majority of Canadians feel their right to freedom of speech is in danger.
Construction workers with heavy machinery have started work on Poland's border with Belarus on a US$394 million wall to stop migrants pushed across by Belarus in what the European Union calls a "hybrid attack."
Reporters were allowed Thursday to see the work in the village of Tolcza, near the closed border crossing of Kuznica in eastern Poland.
Border guards and the military patrolled as excavators and cranes prepared the ground for the metal wall that Poland's right-wing government says will serve the interests of all of the EU. Bloc member Poland is opposed to taking in large numbers of migrants.
"The Belarusian side is ready to do anything when it comes to provocations, so we have to be ready for any kind of event," said Maj. Arkadiusz Tomaszewski, deputy commander of the Border Guard in Ku┼║nica, where clashes with migrants and Belarusian security officers took place last year.
The 5.5-meter (18-foot) high metal wall topped with barbed wire will run more than 180 kilometers (115 miles) along the land part of the border, which also includes the Bug River. Cameras and electronic alarm systems are to be added.
Two construction companies will work on it around the clock. It is due to be completed in June, at a cost of some 1.6 billion zlotys ($394 million.)
European nations, facing a continuing inflow of migrants and refugees, are debating stepping up external border protection, tightening travel rules within Europe's passport-free Schengen zone and introducing stricter rules for returning migrants to their countries of origin.
During the 2015 massive inflow of migrants to the EU, Hungary drew condemnation when it built a wall on its borders with Croatia and Serbia to block migration routes.
Pressure from thousands of migrants from the Middle East and Africa on Poland's and Lithuania's wooded borders with Belarus began in the summer, leading to clashes with Poland's border guards. The migrants are mostly headed for Germany.
Last year, Lithuania started building a wall on its frontier with Belarus, while Poland sealed its border with Belarus using razor wire, increased the number of guards and restricting access to the frontier.
The EU says the migrants are being used by Belarus' authoritarian leader to destabilize the 27-member bloc in retaliation for its sanctions on Minsk following an election widely seen as rigged, and a clampdown on opposition protests.
At least 12 migrants have died in the wooded border area and conditions have got worse in sub-freezing winter temperatures.
Critics and environmentalists say the wall will fail to stop migrants, but will harm one of Europe's last pristine woodlands, the Bialowieza forest.
Natalia Gebert, from the Grupa Granica (The Border Group) that brings aid to migrants and asylum-seekers in Poland, says the wall "stops only the disabled, the weak, the sick."
"It doesn't stop desperate people who are fleeing danger from trying to cross," Gebert told The Associated Press.
She said that in the first three weeks of 2022 the group received requests for help from nearly 350 people, including 51 children.
Kalina Czwarnog of the Ocalenie (Deliverance) Foundation said the money for the wall could be better spent on ways of managing migration in a "humanitarian way and in line with international law."
A new poll suggests a majority of Canadians feel their right to freedom of speech is in danger.
Here are the latest recalls Canadians should watch out for, according to Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
William Nylander scored twice and Joseph Woll made 22 saves as the Toronto Maple Leafs downed the Boston Bruins 2-1 on Thursday to force Game 7 in their first-round series.
With the sheer number of passwords needed today, it may come as no surprise that over 60 per cent of Canadians feel overwhelmed, and over a third reportedly forget their passwords monthly.
Britney Spears and Sam Asghari are officially divorced and single.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
A spike in impaired driving-related collisions has caused Ontario’s provincial police to begin enforcing mandatory alcohol screening (MAS) at all traffic stops in the Greater Toronto Area -- a move one civil rights group says is ‘not acceptable.’
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.
The lawyer for a residential school survivor leading a proposed class-action defamation lawsuit against the Catholic Church over residential schools says the court action is a last resort.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.