Christian Lassonde

The current LPC government called small business owners tax cheats and implemented punitive tax polices against them in 2016 on advice and support of a few prominent academics. Then these businesses move to other jurisdictions who want their capital and risk taking growth. 🤷

Change. The. Laws. No more bail. Put them away. 😡😡😡😡😡

45 prior charges?! come on people, what are we doing here?

@skanwar @chrislevan @tarunsachdeva We all are!

@chrislevan @tarunsachdeva I’m a Toronto accelerator

you can't just count coffeeshops with wifi as accelerators

I’m laughing my ass off - but I shouldn’t be. This is all too accurate.

@cjpedregal Thank you! Love granola but API access needed!

There are some tweets out there saying that Granola is trying to lock down access to your data. Tldr; we are actually trying to become more open, not closed. We’re launching a public API next week to complement our MCP. Read on for context. A couple months ago, we noticed that some folks had reversed engineered our local cache so they could access their meeting data. Our cache was not built for this (it can change at any point), so we launched our MCP to serve this need. The MCP gives full access to your notes and transcripts (all time for paid users, time restricted for free users). MCP usage has exploded since launch, so we felt good about it. A week ago, we updated how we store data in our cache and broke the workarounds. This is on us. Stupidly, we thought we had solved these use cases well enough with our MCP. We’ve now learned that while MCPs are great for connecting to tools like Claude or chatGPT, they don’t meet your needs for agents running locally or for data export / pipeline work. So we’re going to fix this for you ASAP. First, we’ll launch a public API next week to make it easier for you to pull your data. Second, we’ll figure out how to make Granola work better for agents running locally. Whether that’s expanding our MCP, launching a CLI, a local API, etc. The industry is moving quickly here, so we’d appreciate your suggestions. We want Granola data to be accessible and useful wherever you need it. Stay tuned.

I’m at a loss for words. Substitute ANY other group (women for example) and people would be falling over themselves to express concern, outrage, etc. For those of you sitting comfortably in your silence - be ashamed.

Why Canada Needs To Fall In Love With Capitalism Again rosssimmonds.com/blog/canadians…

All too accurate

Stop hiring woke administrators

Now that Premier Ford has taken a principled stand against the Al Quds Days hatefest, I hope that he will stop the endless anti-Canadian propaganda emanating from Ontario school boards, teachers unions, & education faculties.

Guy’s not even trying to hide it. Went straight from the airport to guest of honour out on Toronto’s streets treated like a rockstar. What the actual f—- is going on in this Country!?

Dune II (Westwood Studios) was released in 1992, and it cannot be overstated how much this game impacted, changed, and popularized RTS games. It felt like the floodgates opened after it paved the way for an entire genre. Yes, there were others before it, but in terms of depth, playability, graphics, cutscenes, three different (and playable) factions, and digitized speech, it was unbelievably awesome. I can only name a handful of games that captured me the way Dune II did - it was a rare gem. Controlling units individually feels tedious from today’s perspective, but it never bothered me back then. I guess you can’t miss what you don’t expect. Instead, I was totally hooked - not just on the game's concept, but also on how it was presented. For 1992, the graphics (for a strategy game) were impressive, the cutscenes had that Cinemaware quality, and the music and digitized speech added to the "I am right in the middle of this" vibe. Of course, I started with Atreides, but over time I - and probably you too - switched to the "dark side" and played Harkonnen and Ordos. The Harkonnen Devastator (epic name) was so badass. I know that Dune 2000 was released years later but I never felt it was a worthy sequel. A real Dune III would be a dream come true...

🚨BREAKING: Formula One set to change its logo

Finally - someone else calling for exactly what I’ve been saying for the last decade. Key: “First, they provide income tax credits to investors in innovative startups. Second, they allow losses from startup investments to be directly offset against income. Third, all shares purchased in innovative startups through the schemes are exempt from capital-gains tax. ” THIS IS WHAT CANADA NEEDS! theglobeandmail.com/business/comme…

I had really high hopes for the program (hence why we were on the initial list of orgs) - but clearly the system was never designed with the amount of flagrant abuse that was possible. Fix #1 - Audit the funds that are invested in the startups to make sure they come from an unaffiliated third-party. Not as easy as it sounds but doable.

@classonde @StevePaolasini That’s actually a crazy fact, I didn’t know that you asked to be removed due to the sheer scale of abuse possibility this program had… that should’ve been one the government’s biggest red flags

Alright. As promised, @StevePaolasini and I have been really busy over the past few weeks compiling the full Canadian Startup Visa (SUV) program backstory complete with the fraud and mismanagement facts. And damn, do we have a story for you. Stay tuned for the full article when it comes out but let's start with some fun facts we discovered in the process. Like many things that have gone wrong, the SUV started off with great intentions. An ambitious, unique, innovation-driven pilot program meant to replace the antiquated Immigration Entrepreneur Program that got phased out in 2011. SUV had a very straightforward objective: attract innovative founders who would build companies in Canada and contribute to its long-term economic growth. What made the pilot unique was the selection mechanism: the private sector evaluated the business idea first while the government assessed admissibility second. In practice, this meant that before applying for permanent residence, applicants needed Commitment Certificates / support from a designated Canadian organization such as: venture capital funds, angel investor groups, or business incubators. The SUV pilot was launched in 2013 and the IRCC decided to convert the program into a permanent one in 2018. It had great initial results! Lower operating costs than the previous entrepreneur program and applicants raising higher capital in Canada: reinforcing the idea that private-sector validation was working. However, IRCC's own evaluation of the SUV pilot indicated a very important weakness: the government had limited visibility into the ongoing activities of the designated orgs. This is important because that's where all the issues started. IRCC's follow-up, 2023 program evaluation report indicated that "One-third (33%) of surveyed clients reported “an opportunity to immigrate to Canada” as the most appealing aspect of the SUV Program." The report also pointed out that some designated orgs were allegedly charging applicants additional fees to assess their businesses or create fraudulent documents and immigration applications. Let's talk about some of the biggest offenders. Starting in 2019, Empowered Startups was featured in a series of Federal Court decisions revealing troubling arrangements involving their applicants. There are multiple, public cases documenting that applicants each paid this designated org 300K CAD in incubation fees! Another one known as Manitoba Technology Accelerator (MTA) operated under two different names and submitted HUNDREDS of applications under both of them over 2023-2024. The total applications submitted by them over that time period was upwards of 1K cases. Funnily enough, MTA only lost its designation temporarily in 2025 and Empowered Startups never got de-designated. Instead of dealing with the fraud-abetting organizations, in December 2025, the IRCC stopped giving out SUV open work permits. And in January 2026 they indefinitely paused the entire SUV program. These drastic actions make sense from their end. Their backlog is now over 45K people and there are only 500 (!!!) spots allocated for business immigration in the 2026 levels plan. That is close to 90 years of inventory, not something that is feasible or even realistic to deal with... The main questions now remain: 1. Why did we turn a blind eye to this sheer scale of fraud going on in the SUV program for years? The warning signs were there as early as 2019 but the program only got paused after 2025 2. Why have these organizations not lost their designation before? Why did MTA only lose its designation temporarily? Why is there no further investigation being done into these fraudulent activities? 3. And most importantly, what on earth are we going to do with a SUV backlog of 45K applicants with support from predominantly questionable organizations and close to no spots available now for business immigration applicants? Is this where the powers of bill C-12 will potentially come in? I'm not sure anyone has the answers right now. But we do need to deal with the consequences of this mismanagement before launching a new program...

@ninomelikidze @StevePaolasini If you were a designated org like an incubator or accelerator with a flawed business model - the SUV was a lifeline to stay in business. You didn’t even have to go hunt for money, it was coming straight into your inbox.

I remember the early days of the program (we were a designated org) we would get 4-5 emails a month from folks wiling to pay us to ‘invest’ in their company. We also would get a dozen or so emails a month asking for what our process was - mostly from immigration lawyers. In ~4 years we didn’t see a single pitch that was fintech that fit within our investment mandate. And the emails REALLY started increasing - it got so bad we asked to be removed from the designated orgs.

@rkhazzam Vigilante justice is incoming.

8th shooting this month in the GTA. Armed home invasions have become so pervasive that people have setup neighbourhood watch groups, hired private security, etc. We don't need to accept or tolerate this. Repurpose the ~$1.5B of taxpayer money being spent to buyback guns from licensed gun owners (who contribute to virtually zero gun violence) and use those resources to seize illegal guns, jail repeat offenders and deport repeat offenders here on temporary visas. ctvnews.ca/toronto/articl…