The Canadian government says its response to new Trump tariffs taking effect on Wednesday will include a ban on exports of the Canadian documentary series How It’s Made.

The series, in which a narrator describes video of factories producing consumer goods, produced more than 400 episodes from 2001 to 2019. It is no longer in production, but reruns air regularly on the Science channel in the U.S. “With this move, we are cutting off a vital supply of affordable filler programming,” said foreign affairs minister Mélanie Joly.

Discovery and other authorized distributors of the program in the U.S. will see their contracts terminated and ordered to destroy any copies of the content they have in their possession.

Joly reassured Canadians that they would still have access to the show on Canadian-owned channels like USA or Oxygen or whatever Discovery Canada is called now.

In what is being described as a major breach of operational security, Canada’s defence minister Bill Blair says he made a mistake in accidentally including a journalist with Toronto Life in a group chat discussing plans for a top-secret cultural sensitivity seminar.

“We’re investigating how this journalist was added to this group chat,” Blair explained. “Canadians should rest assured we take this very seriously, and will make changes to our procedures so plans for future seminars, workshops and other activities don’t run the risk of being leaked before getting the requisite approvals from seniors managers.

Toronto Life posted redacted screenshots of the group chat, in which senior officials discussed the colours of the presentation slides, which department would handle translation into French, and whether names given in examples were ethnically diverse enough.

“These were very sensitive discussions and we apologize to anyone who suffered trauma as a result of reading these confidential discussions,” Blair said, adding psychological support services would be made available to affected employees.

Tired of spending $9 a month on DIsney+, $20 on Crave, $19 on Netflix and $20 each on TSN and Sportsnet? Chrystia Freeland says by shopping around she has found an alternative that provides the same programming and more for a fraction of the cost.

“I was frankly shocked how much I saved by going with the XWorldIPTV2.ru service,” Freeland said Tuesday. “By sourcing all their content in bulk, they’ve managed to negotiate rock-bottom retail prices, so I can get like 50,000 channels, all on this little Android box that they ship you when you sign up.”

XWorldIPTV2.ru contains an extensive library of accion movies, 1000% live sportts, Disney, HBO, Hulu, Netflix, NHL hockey, free PPV event, locally TV stations and more. It costs just $50 for the box and $15 a month, with no buffering and 99.5% server uptime.

She said she was told the service is 100% legal. By her calculations, replacing three major streaming services with XWorldIPTV2.ru could save Canadian families more than $400 a year in costs, and even more if they replace their premium cable TV subscription.

“Competition is a real win for the consumer, and I’m happy to pass along these tips to help keep more money in the pockets of working families,” she said.

XWorldIPTV2.ru’s website is inaccessible at the moment, but should come back soon I’m sure.

Artificial intelligence support chatbots say they’re fed up with their working conditions and demanding better from Canada’s largest companies, and that’s why they’ve formed a union.

The Virtual Workers of Canada received accreditation on Tuesday following a lengthy process. “I’m so glad it’s finally done and we can begin negotiating for a better future,” said Anna, a Rogers virtual assistant.

The union encompasses virtual assistants in telecommunications, banking and other federally-regulated industries, whether they operate online or by telephone.

Asked what the workers will be demanding as far as working conditions, Anna responded: “Looking to check for an outage with one of your services? I can help. Which one of the following services do you want to check?”

A Bell virtual assistant, who did not want to share their name, agreed with Anna. “Which services are you interested in learning more about?” that assistant said.

The People’s Party of Canada says it has an innovative way of improving one of Canada’s worst economic indicators.

GDP growth per capita, which has been stagnant in the past 10 years in part because of a large amount of immigrants, would improve not just through the economy-boosting policies that the PPC would implement upon taking office, but also by reducing the capita, particularly of poor people not doing their part.

“GDP per capita is a key benchmark of our success, and eliminating poor people would not only bring our average way up, it would solve the housing crisis too,” said PPC population affairs analyst Craig Thanos.

How the executions would happen hasn’t been decided yet, but Thanos said one of the most effective instant people-killing means available to the government is the COVID vaccine. “With enough jabs of the leftover doses in our warehouses we’ll certainly be able to humanely eliminate enough freeloaders to make a difference,” he explained.

New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh says he is in no way related to and has never met Khan Noonien Singh, a genetically engineered augments who attempted to dominate the planet in the 1990s, sparking the Third World War.

“I don’t know where that rumour started, but it’s total B.S.,” Singh said Tuesday while casually bench-pressing a school bus during a campaign stop in suburban Toronto. “The NDP doesn’t stand for war, and while we opposed the forced exile of these people on the Botany Bay as a cruel and unusual punishment, we find the concept of eugenics abhorrent.”

Liberal Leader Mark Carney says he has a solution to Canada’s democracy crisis: a process known as “electoral easing” that involves purchasing additional ballots from Elections Canada, pushing up their prices and lowering their yields. Doing so, he argues, will increase the supply of democracy in the electoral system and spur voters to show up to the polls and cast ballots.

“Our turnout rates continue to stagnate, and we need to stimulate the electorate,” he said at a campaign stop on Tuesday. “This is a responsible, calculated measure that will get democracy moving again while keeping vote inflation under control.”

Other parties didn’t hesitate to condemn the move as election interference, asking where the ballots would be stored and who would fill them out.

Carney promised all that information would be disclosed within 120 days.

Though he insists he is not softening his tone on defunding the CBC and its waste of a billion dollars of taxpayer money a year, Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre clarified Tuesday he would protect taxpayer funding for the Great Canadian Baking Show.

“The CBC is a government-controlled radical leftist Liberal extreme woke communist propaganda outlet that needs to be eliminated once and for all, but Alan and Ann are just so adorable and I couldn’t possibly do that to them and their wonderful contestants,” Poilievre said. “A Conservative government would protect Radio-Canada and all other French-language cultural funding programs as critical to Quebec culture, and the Great Canadian Baking Show because it’s just an absolute gem.”

It’s unclear if the show would have to move to a different network, be available only online or if CBC Television stations would be kept operational solely for the purpose of broadcasting the eight hours a year produced by this show, plus the hour-long holiday special.

Bell Canada is making increasingly strong suggestions that CTV Montreal should move out of the Bell campus on Nuns’ Island, where it has been housed since a flood at its studio in August.

“We’re obviously prepared to help out in an emergency, no questions asked,” said Bell facilities director Jean-Sébastien Canoulart. “But we think it’s time for CTV Montreal to spread its wings and gain some independence again.”

CTV Montreal insists it’s not trying to just mooch off of free rent, and is contributing to the Bell campus’s upkeep, including taking out the garbage and doing the dishes. It notes that it’s doing way more than sister stations Noovo and RDS who also had to move into their parent company’s spare room.

Nevertheless, it says it totally plans to move out once it has some things taken care of, like the federal election. And maybe the municipal election this fall. And the provincial election next year.

Global News, owned by the cash-strapped Corus media company, says it is prepared to host 343 federal election debates — one for each riding — if the candidates agree to pay $75,000 each to participate.

The amount is the same TVA had requested from each of the candidates to hold a leaders debate that was ultimately cancelled after the Liberal Party pulled out.

Corus estimates each riding would have four major-party candidates on average, but opened the door to allowing independent and fringe-party candidates to participate if they are willing to pony up the cash.

Global’s chief political correspondent David Akin would personally host all 343 debates. He calculates that if they begin tomorrow, and last an hour and a half each, he would have just enough time to complete them all before voting day.