The Montreal-based social network that's teetering on the edge of extinction was a family affair, both in the nepotism sense and allegedly in the mafia sense. That's according to a former employee who sent in an epic tale of sex, drugs and shady business dealings under CEO Luc Verville, pictured here in happier times. His brother Michel, a cofounder, was kicked out of the company — but not before generating some serious ill will among employees:

Still smarting from his inglorious Oscar Night '06 jilting at the hands of fork-tongued Crash co-producers Paul Haggis and Cathy Schulman, real estate magnante-cum-film industry dilettante Bob Yari has a whole new territory to divide and not quite conquer. It's called "Canada," reports Adam Dawtry, where the would-be mogul this week locked up distribution for his slate of around 10 middlebrow indies per year through 2010.

A story in Canada's National Post about how Canadian journo Clive Thompson is secretly jealous of more famous Canadian author Malcom Gladwell made brief mention of "a Canadian mafia of print journos that exists in the Manhattan magazine world." There are more Canucks in the New York media world than you might imagine, and nearly all of them hold positions of terrifying power. Do you know your Canadian Mafia members? Join us on a trip through Manhattan's dirty underbelly with the Molson-guzzling old time hockey aficionados who secretly run the media.

We share the following clip, a Canadian ad about workplace safety, for no other reason that no PSA has ever made us recoil in horror while screaming Holy. Fucking. Shit. You've been warned. [Deadspin]

With nothing but snips of hearsay to cling to until Project Runway returns to Bravo next month, we were pleasantly surprised to learn through Reality Blurred that Canada already has a version of the model-trafficking reality TV sensation on the air. Premiered recently on Slice (the #1 cable network for Canadian women!), Project Runway Canada adheres closely to the original's pattern—only in place of Tim Gunn is some other guy with a hockey 'stache, and in place of host Heidi Klum is the regal Queen Bowie herself, Iman.

Another month, another requirement to shoehorn some north-of-the-border content into the Defamer proceedings—part of a comprehensive 200-year restitution deal for those regrettable Canadian containment camps of WWII. Little Mosque on the Prairie—think Aliens in America (shot in Vancouver, ironically enough) as interpreted by the cast of Degrassi Junior High— has been awarded with a peace prize, raising the CBC sitcom with the somewhat backbacon-handed take on Islamic race relations to the esteemed ranks of Bishop Tutu and Jimmy Carter:

A unified front of left-leaning ice-friendly countries, led by Russia and including Canada and Denmark, has begun to emerge from the once-frosty north. So far, they're just demanding the immediate return of all the ice they lost this summer. (This year, "six Californias" of open water appeared in the Arctic.) But what no one has asked is: Why do these fringey countries like ice so much? Is it because they have nothing else? Unfortunately, now that Canada's dollar is oddly similar to an actual dollar and a donut at any one of the 2,733 Canada-based Tim Horton's costs like four actual dollars, we must listen to their distress. But they are misguided! God's great plan for His world has at last granted Canada a Northwest Passage! Freed from this sad dependence on ice and misery, Canadian sea shipping lane dominance will turn Toronto into the new Tokyo, and Montreal into the new Seoul! Though Regina will still suck pretty bad.

When Kiefer Sutherland wandered out of his East Side comfort zone—where drunken U-turns aren't just legal, they're encouraged!—and into the glare of a West L.A. cop car's spotlight, few of us immediately realized that the ensuing arrest constituted a probation violation for the beloved, tannenbaum-tackling lush-of-the-people. Now, with the actor facing possible jail time and all the ominous God-finding that implies, we offer a Kiefer post-DUI round-up:

Apparently digital-music piracy isn't as prevalent as we thought. Canada's Royal Mounted Police simply made up the fact that the country loses $30 billion to software piracy. We thought only gossip blogs did that kind of thing. The figure, a jumble of Internet research and corporate propaganda from the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition (members include the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America, and the Software & Information Industry Association), has helped shore up Canada's anti-piracy laws. Let this be a lesson to you kids: Don't always believe what you read on the Internet. Even if the Mounties wrote it.

Because we like to leave you to your weekend with uplifting stories of celebrity good deeds, we now bring you this story about roguish leading man and sex tape veteran Colin Farrell—whom, despite reports of being a dark twisted puppy, came off more of like a warm friendly one when he took a Toronto homeless man (apparently they have them!) on a shopping spree he wouldn't soon forget:

While our American audience can feel free to skip this post in lieu of ones favoring domestic gladiatorial work opportunities, we strongly felt the need to pass along this story to our Canadian readers—an editorial decision we reassure you was reached based entirely on its news merits alone, and not out of some deal made with their government to boost our Canadian content in exchange for an attractive array of bloggers' tax incentives.

Canadian court rules Québécois too stupid to be expected to understand sweepstakes come-ons, fines Time Inc. $101,000. That's gonna buy a lot of poutine, eh, mes amis? [National Post]

Because, like death, Ontario-themed news tends to come in threes, we round out the latest wave of Defamer Canadiana (it began with a girl-on-girl mauling at the Eislers' place in Kingston, then continued today with a Jack Bauer debate on Ottawa's Parliament Hill) with the exciting announcement that The O.C.'s resident yummy mummy, Kelly "Kiki Cohen" Rowan (born in Ottawa!) has netted the northern land mass's most loaded—and by extension desirable—bachelor. From a People.com Canadian! Supermarriage! Exclusive!:

As unlikely as it sounds, a recent international legal symposium in Canada's capital devolved into a philosophical debate over whether or not the star of a popular primetime Fox program had the right to employ cruel and inhumane torture tactics as a means to achieving a justifiable end—and the name Paula Abdul never once came up. No, visiting U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was actually defending the morally ambiguous actions of 24's Jack Bauer, who'd think nothing of turning his own brother's Pain-O-Meter to 11 if it meant stopping the needless obliteration of another Valencia. From The Globe and Mail:

As do-gooding canine detectives Lucky and Flo crisscross Asia-Pacific, sniffing out tell-tale polycarbonates used in the multibillion dollar movie pirating industry, a menace of similarly devastating proportions lurks right outside our back door. That's right: Canada, our "friendly" 49th-parallel-adjacent neighbor, some of whose citizens conceal their dastardly plans to plunder our precious commodity of easily digestible mass entertainment behind an unsettling wall of maple-syrup-decayed smiles:

Canada, the large mass of semi-arable land blocking Montana's view of the Arctic, is about to receive less coverage in American media than it gets now. (Already that coverage is too much: unless it's about auto parts heiresses screwing former U.S. presidents, we don't want to know about it). Come summer, the Washington Post is closing its Toronto bureau, leaving "Canadian coverage in the United States to wire services, contract writers, freelancers and reporters parachuted in for specific events." The Toronto Star claims that "many analysts" believe the move "will inevitably push the Canadian message further into irrelevance and widen the gulf between two nations which already do not understand each other well." But is it true?

As of posting time, the fates of multiple feature film productions and beloved TV series—as well as Little Mosque On The Prairie and Ha!ifax Comedy Fest—hang in the balance, as ACTRA has decided to go on strike:

Canadian National Post reporter Martin Patrinquin Patriquin has some disappointing news for us all: perhaps in response to his countryman Hal Niedzviecki's bloggers-are-mean cri de coeur, he's decided that he's not going to participate in this pesky blogging trend.

Towleroad notes the alleged "inning" of Neil Patrick Harris by his publicist, an incident which began with an item on Canada.com that claimed the actor had pulled strings to get "longtime sweetheart" David Burtka a role on How I Met Your Mother, then was followed by a report on ContactMusic.com ("A grain of salt free with every suspiciously underattributed celebrity news item!" ) which stated that the actor's "publicist, Craig Snyder" (actual name: Craig Schneider, according to StudioSystem) had countered the story by saying, "He's not of that persuasion." Now that the statement's out there, it shouldn't be long before we get a more definitive proclamation on the matter from the flack, who can always distance himself from his remark on the original Canada.com item by clarifying that the words "not of that persuasion," were referring to Harris being Canadian, not gay—a subtle but crucial difference.

• Felix Dennis will never see a broad as costly as a tree. Also, it takes a lot of dosh to get people drunk enough to listen to your doggerel. [Radar]
• On the other hand, anyone who calls Greg Gutfeld "Darth Vader," must have his finger on some kind of pulse. And, look forward to The Week on the web. [Independent UK]
• Judy McGrath is going to be just fine, thank you very much. Buying MySpace is not the be all and end all of running a media empire. Unless, uh, you're Tom Freston. [NYT]
• ABC News reports news that ABC Newsman considers Matt Drudge the Walter Cronkite of our era, excepting for that fact that Walter Cronkite never falsely accused a presidential aide of wife-beating. [ABC News]
• Bob Woodward saves the good stuff for himself and other newspapers who are willing to buy his book in advance of their sell-dates. [NYT]
• Yahoo! not sexy enough for investors, apparently. [NYP]
• Something is happening to press freedom in Canada. We'd be all up in arms if it weren't, you know, Canada. [NYT]