New Jersey’s largest newspaper chain shot another dozen Canadian hostages last week as the end game of its northern extortion scheme grows ever closer. If the federal government doesn’t allow Postmedia Network and the rest of the country’s press to start taking money from the pockets of Google and Facebook soon, more of the country’s captive newspapers could get whacked.

On January 11, the Salvadoran government under President Nayib Bukele ordered the arrest of five prominent anti-mining activists and water defenders from the north of the country. Social organizations around the world have taken notice. More than 250 organizations from countries across the Americas, the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia signed a statement calling for the government to drop the charges.

You can provide healthy profits to the shareholders of a small number of transport companies in Canada, or you can provide comprehensive service to all corners of the country, but history has demonstrated you can’t do both. Whether Canadians have the right to publicly-funded transport options, and whether they have the right to expect a decent quality of service, are two parts to the same question.

Does the Competition Bureau have a hope of stopping Rogers from swallowing Shaw and creating a nationwide cable monopoly? Probably not, but that’s just the point, and it’s a point the bureau itself has been trying to make for years. Its enabling Competition Act is not just unfit for purpose, it was seemingly designed to actually prevent competition.

Now that newspapers are moving to online publication, they are crying foul because they are finally having to compete on a level playing field. They have even now prevailed upon Ottawa to pass Bill C-18, the Online News Act, which would force Google and Facebook to pay a portion of their revenues to newspapers. Something just doesn’t smell right here.

Since the 1990s, the US and Canada have supported a program of neoliberalization in Panama, which has led to a decreased role for the state, an increase in the influence of transnational companies in the Panamanian economy, and a turn toward commodity exports including agricultural goods and minerals. This shift resulted in more investment from US and Canadian companies.

The UN itself has condemned Canada’s treatment of Indigenous land defenders and called on the government to stop criminalizing their activities in defence of Indigenous cultures and ecological integrity. These actions are especially important to consider in the midst of COP15, as Indigenous territories account for roughly 22 percent of the world’s land but hold 80 percent of its biodiversity.

Canada has been described as “three telcos in a trenchcoat” for the inordinate power they wield. They control all of the private TV networks, as Bell owns CTV, Rogers owns City, and Global is owned by the Shaw Family Living Trust. Giving back some of their monopoly profits to benefit Canadians is the second-last idea they want to hear. The first? Free public wifi.

Barrick Gold continues to benefit from the silence of local and regional authorities in Argentina and Canada, who are taking no action to contain or remediate the harm committed from the spills. Despite this pattern of environmental harm and a history of hiding the spills from those most affected, the company is expanding the mine to extend its life another 10 years.

It’s time to take a step back and re-think the patchwork quilt of newspaper bailouts we have been seeing for the past few years and instead come up with a long-term strategy for journalism in Canada. To that end, writes Marc Edge, it’s worth looking at what other countries are doing to promote local journalism and restore trust in news media.