Mongolia has long been one of Canada’s closest partners in Asia as a source of strategic metals and minerals, while occupying a fulcrum point between Southeast Asia, Russia and the Middle East. Yet, little light has been shed on the bleak implications of the increasing demand for lithium, and other strategic resources found across Central Asia that are essential to the energy transition.

Internet connectivity that relies on crossing uncharted territories inevitably brings with it new forms of colonialism. Seemingly benign infrastructure is in fact strengthening global supply chains that enrich the world’s billionaires. The future is cheap and fast, and the jostling of the private sector to claim a stake in satellite internet is just one small part of this space opera.

For Canada to ratify OPCAT it would need to introduce national standards against which Canada’s compliance can be measured. Yet, the foot-dragging of Canadian legislators on the issue of torture prevention has received little coverage. As a result there is a lack of public awareness of the effects that this international law might have across different sectors of society.

Despite Canada’s long-standing support for the Ukrainian army, there has been almost no coverage of recent peace talks in the war-ravaged Donbas. More concerningly, few have analyzed the implications of stalled progress towards ending the civil war, even as the Trudeau government continues to fund a military mission in an active conflict most have all but forgotten.

Despite Justin Trudeau’s promise to support a global ban on lethal autonomous weapons systems, Canadian companies continue to profit from exporting software or components for killer robots. There is still no domestic regulation around the manufacture of these technologies, and little in the way of public debate around their development and export.

In face of the seasonal waves of coup attempts that have most recently swept up Belarus and Mali, Canada’s Liberal government has proven selective in its statements of support for popular uprisings. After months of protests, a military coup on August 18 deposed Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, who stepped into power following Mali’s infamous 2012 coup.

Canada is now faced with an opportunity to take real initiative on defining the scope of arms control around an emerging technology that is on the verge of being adopted into wider military use, and falling out of human control. To do so, it will be necessary to show independence from an unscrupulous ally that is besieged by its own manifest destiny.

This is the first article in a three-part series on Canada’s historical reluctance to ratify the United Nations’ Optional Protocol with the Convention against Torture (OPCAT). Despite being one of the early champions of this international law that exists to prevent torture in civilian and military detention centres, Canada has still not officially adopted the agreement.

Without sufficient protections for Canadian data through the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, we should be demanding accountability from the federal government around domestic privacy protections, and looking critically at the profit-driven AI-based programs that are increasingly supplanting human judgement in every sphere of life.

The shrill panic of new Cold War rhetoric is a big business, after all, and clearly companies like Datametrex are finding the moment ripe to capitalize on the appetite for broadening Canadian state censorship. So what is to be made of the effect of such blacklisting and smear campaigns on democratic debate in Canada?