OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney warned Thursday that “years of uncertainty” could flow from Alberta’s upcoming referendum, which asks residents whether they want to hold a binding vote on independence.

Carney drew comparisons to the outcome of the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union made exactly a decade ago as of this past Tuesday in a referendum, the results of which have rocked the country’s economy and its politics.

“This is a real referendum,” he said of the question being posed to Albertans on Oct. 19.

“It’s not, you know, (a) question about a question, free option. It’s a dangerous bluff.”

Carney, who was serving as Bank of England governor when the U.K. decided to leave the European Union, told reporters during an end-of-session press conference on Parliament Hill on Thursday that he had a front row seat to what he said was “sold” during that 2016 debate on leaving.

He described those arguments as being, “that everything is going to be easy, that you can keep your passport, you can keep the currency, you can stay in the country and leave it at the same time.”

“You see what’s happened in the United Kingdom. It’s very reminiscent. At a minimum, it’s years of uncertainty before the subsequent question comes, right at a time the world is fundamentally uncertain,” Carney says.

“Right at a time Alberta and Canada, Quebec, Ontario, the territories, the whole country, are moving to the forefront, right at the time when we’re seen as one of the most trustworthy, reliable, desirable countries to do business with, and we shouldn’t mess that up.”

Carney’s comments come as he prepares to head to Alberta next month to attend the Calgary Stampede and works to implement parts of a deal he struck with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith that paves the way for the possible construction of a new million-barrel-a-day oil pipeline to the West Coast, in exchange for Alberta agreeing to increase its carbon price charged on heavy industries.

The prime minister, who was raised in Edmonton, has previously referred to Smith’s choice to put an independence question on the ballot as a “dangerous bluff.”

That past remark drew the ire of some Opposition Conservative MPs, including party leader Pierre Poilievre, whom represents the rural Alberta riding of Battle River-Crowfoot. Poilievre, who was raised in Calgary, has committed that his party will campaign for “ a strong Alberta within a united Canada.”

Speaking on Thursday, Poilievre said Albertans must be provided with “hope” about how their lives can improve by staying within Canada.

“Look, the thing’s happening,” he said. “We have to deal with it. At the end of the day, I wish it weren’t happening, but it is, and I’m going to make the case for Canada.”

Smith, who has been criticized by fellow premiers like Manitoba’s Wab Kinew and Ontario’s Doug Ford over putting an independence question on the ballot, has said she did so after thousands of Albertans signed their names to petitions on the issue and a decision by an Alberta court to quash a petition campaign from a separatist group over the province’s failure to consult First Nations.

The Alberta premier panned the court decision as “undemocratic” and pledged that her United Conservative Party government would appeal the ruling, while bringing forward an independence question in the meantime.

That question asks Albertans whether the province should remain in Canada, “or should the Government of Alberta commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada?”

It is set to appear as part of a series of other questions being asked in the same referendum on proposed constitutional reforms and immigration.

In a statement on Thursday, Smith reiterated that her government supports Alberta remaining a part of Canada.

“Let’s remember that 700,000 Albertans signed one of two petitions asking for a referendum on this issue. This is a decision for Albertans—not Ottawa—and Albertans’ frustrations have been fueled by the last 10 years of disastrous policies from Ottawa under his predecessor, Justin Trudeau,” she said.

“I would also remind all Canadians that we should not dismiss the legitimate grievances of Albertans. Instead, we should focus on addressing these issues, restoring hope in Canada, and demonstrating that our country can work and is working.”

Emergency Management Minister Eleanor Olszewski, the lone federal cabinet minister from Alberta, has expressed disappointment over Smith’s decision, saying the uncertainty stemming from U.S. tariffs calls for national unity and that “ it’s not the time” to bring such a divisive question forward.

Recently, her former chief of staff Morgan Breitkreutz joined Carney’s office earlier this month as a special senior advisor, with a focus set on Alberta.

National Post

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OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney admitted that he and his government did a poor job rolling out a controversial federal-provincial program to acquire unsold B.C. condo units and panned by critics as a “condo bailout.”

The prime minister made the rare admission during a 45-minute press conference with reporters Thursday to mark the end of the parliamentary session.

In this case, the error was doing a poor job explaining part of a $3.2 billion suite of measures for the B.C. housing market that would see Build Canada Homes and BC Housing partner up to “convert” 2,200 unsold condo units into affordable housing.

“I want to say up front: I don’t think we’ve done, myself included, a particularly good job of rolling this out and explaining exactly what it is,” Carney said of the program announced with B.C. Premier David Eby last week. “I think it’s important to say a few words of what this is and what this isn’t.”

At the time, the announcement lacked any detail on whether these condos would be acquired at market price or a discounted rate and what the total cost would be. There was also no clarity on what “innovative financing tools” would be used in the endeavour.

There was also much confusion as to how much either government was earmarking for the acquisitions. The lack of clarity had critics up in arms about the program, with one mortgage specialist telling National Post this week the program appeared to be a “moral hazard” that is “socializing losses while the profits flow to developers.”

Asked to explain the program, Carney quickly obliged while admitting the government’s poor communications around the program.

He said the total acquisition budget is $1.45 billion, with the federal government’s portion tagged at 10 per cent, or $145 million. He also said the government was targeting “distressed condos” and buying them at a discount.

“The province of British Columbia, which initiated the idea, sees an opportunity, potentially given what’s happening in that market, to convert some of these condos that are lying unsold to affordable housing, particularly rent-to-buy affordable housing… people who don’t have money for a down payment but can build that equity over time,” Carney explained.

“So, buying them at a discount at the right time, financing, terming that out, setting up a rent-to-own structure for truly affordable housing,” he added.

He told reporters that he had not been lobbied “directly” by developers and argued that it wasn’t designed for the benefit of developers either.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre criticized Carney’s “condo bailout” Thursday, questioning why the government is buying units from developers who don’t want to sell their units at a loss.

“The government inflated the housing market into a bubble, and now the bubble burst. So who is going to pay the price? Mark Carney wants you, the welder, the waitress, the barber, the small businessperson, to pay through your taxes to bail out his developer friends,” he said.

He also argued that the program will have the opposite effect Carney promises because it will make taxpayers pay to bid “against themselves” when they try to purchase a unit through the program.

The Greater Vancouver Area condo market is currently experiencing a correction. A report by the Toronto-Dominion Bank published earlier this month, forecasts roughly 15 per cent peak-to-trough decline from the 2023 high by mid-2027, marking the deepest correction on record since 2005.

There are over 4,000 unsold condo units in Vancouver.

National Post, with files from Jordan Gowling.

cnardi@postmedia.com

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OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney said a deal on CUSMA will ultimately happen between him and U.S. President Donald Trump, despite teams of negotiators on both sides working through trade issues.

“Ultimately… a breakthrough, if you will, on this will…be at that level,” Carney told reporters on Thursday, in answer to a question about whether a deal will ultimately be secured at the leadership level of both countries.

U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra told CTV News on Tuesday that the two countries remain far apart on negotiations related to the CUSMA review.

“What I have seen with the president is that you’re not close to make a deal, and then you make a deal,” said Carney.

“Doesn’t mean the deals are good deals, but it means being prepared, having done the work, knowing what you want, so both things can be true,” he said.

The trade pact is up for review this year, with all three countries likely to miss the July 1 deadline to renew the agreement for another 16 years. CUSMA will then run for 10 years and enter a phase of annual reviews. Any party can pull out of the agreement with six months’ notice.

Both Canada and Mexico have formally requested the agreement be extended for 16 years.

In his earlier remarks on Thursday, Carney said Canada is working with the U.S. and Mexico to “modernize” the trade agreement to provide greater certainty for workers and businesses.

The prime minister also spoke with Trump on Wednesday, where they discussed defence priorities in the lead-up to the NATO summit which is scheduled to take place in Turkey on July 7 to 8. Iran and the broader situation in the Middle East were also discussed by the two leaders.

Carney said that Canada is now “pulling its weight” in NATO, pointing to expected announcements on submarines and other defence procurement decisions.

He also said the conversation with Trump touched on working with Nordic countries, France, Germany and other NATO allies to protect the Arctic.

Trump took once again aim at the alliance when he met with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte in Washington this week, claiming several member countries are not meeting the new five per cent of GDP defence spending target that the U.S. pushed for.

Rutte gently pushed back, saying it is a “mixed bag” and that many NATO countries have increased their military spending. “The alliance is so much stronger because of this,” he said, repeatedly referring to Trump as “the leader of the free world.”

Trump also took aim at several European countries for not offering help with the Iran war.

“We don’t need their money, we don’t need anything,” Trump said. “We have the most powerful military in the world by far, but I just want loyalty. You know, we’re so loyal to them.”

“Give us a little nudge, give us a little kiss,” the president added. “We don’t want much.”

Carney said he did not speak about CUSMA during Wednesday’s phone call with the president.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre criticized the prime minister for not raising the trade issue with Trump and said it’s been almost a year since Carney promised a deal with the U.S.

“The aluminum, steel, auto, and lumber workers are desperate for their jobs and their paycheques, and Mr. Carney has a long telephone conversation with the president and doesn’t even bring it up,” said Poilievre, during a press conference in Ottawa on Thursday. “What could be a greater priority to this country?”

Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc will participate in the first trilateral meeting on July 1, where he will meet with both his American and Mexican counterparts. Mexico and the U.S. have held two rounds of formal bilateral talks on CUSMA, while Canada-U.S. talks have lagged.

LeBlanc along with Chief Trade Negotiator Janice Charette met with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on the sidelines of the G7 Summit in France last week.

LeBlanc said progress was being made on several issues with the Americans.

During that summit, Carney was also caught on a hot mic discussing the Chinese electric vehicle deal with Trump, assuring him that Canada has capped the number of Chinese vehicles entering the Canadian market a lower tariff rate at 49,000.

The prime minister said on Tuesday that ultimately Canada will not sign a bad deal.

“I mean, we could sign a bad deal this afternoon, right? We could have signed a bad deal a year ago,” Carney told reporters. “We’re not going to sign a bad deal, so it has to be a real deal.”

National Post, with files from Catherine Lévesque

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No later than Oct. 27, a divided Israeli electorate will decide whether the leader who steered the country through three inconclusive wars in three years should continue to chart the course.

Benjamin Netanyahu has been Israel’s prime minister, on and off, since 1996, and remains the dominant political figure in the country.

But massive security failures during Hamas’s October 7 massacre shook many Israelis’ faith in a man whose main promise was to keep them safe. His follow up wars — against Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and, with the U.S., against the terror groups’ Islamist puppet-master in Iran — have not yet yielded conclusive results.

Netanyahu is also awaiting the verdict on a six-year corruption trial while managing a division within his nationalist coalition, which incited massive protests in 2023 over plans to limit supreme court powers.

While any one of these challenges would likely have sunk a rival candidate, Netanyahu’s political obituary has been written more than once, and it may be too early for pundits to start sharpening their pencils.

“He knows the Israeli political scene like the back of his hand,” Ira Robinson, professor emeritus of Jewish Studies at Concordia University, told National Post. “Surviving the Israeli political scene for so many years has taught him a number of tricks, and he is, once again, like him or dislike him, a survivor.”

In Israel’s multi-party parliament, disparate factions reach delicately balanced compromises, where “simply somebody sneezing can make a coalition crisis,” Robinson said. “Netanyahu has faced probably dozens, if not hundreds, of coalition crises in his career.”

“I am certainly far less than 100-per-cent certain, but based on track record, don’t count them out,” he added.

Opinion polls have shown former prime minister Naftali Bennett and Gadi Eisenkot, a former chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, in close contention with the 76-year-old Netanyahu.

Bennett, a religious former tech investor, formed a party with Yair Lapid, the secular centrist opposition leader and former television personality, earlier this year.

The two were in a power-sharing agreement that ended Netanyahu’s 12 consecutive years in power in 2021. Bennett’s coalition collapsed after a year, with Lapid serving as a caretaker leader for six months. Their ideological gap has raised doubts as to whether their alliance can hold.

“These are two very different world views that that have to be combined, and so any opposition to Netanyahu will be extremely diverse, and for that reason very fragile, just like it was last time, and the very fact that we are in June 2026 and elections will happen no later than October and it’s still not clear what the opposition lineup is,” said Csaba Nikolenyi, a political science professor and director of the Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies at Concordia.

As opposition leader, Lapid “wasn’t able to galvanize any meaningful, genuine opposition to the Netanyahu government,” Nikolenyi said.

“For Bennett, who is trying to come back up, it may not be the best association,” he added.

Netanyahu’s challengers may take a similarly hawkish stance while also highlighting Israel’s loss of standing with the U.S. under his leadership, particularly as a result of the Iran war. Netanyahu can no longer count on his close relationship with Donald Trump after being on the receiving end of multiple expletive-laden rants, as has been widely reported.

Following the Iran-U.S. ceasefire, Lapid said Netanyahu “failed to deliver the goods,” and complained of “an American president openly and publicly telling the prime minister of Israel: ‘I am your boss, and you will do what you are told.'”

A poll earlier this month by Hebrew University of Jerusalem found that 92 per cent of Israelis viewed Iran as winners of the war.

According to Nikolenyi, perhaps the biggest election question will be who bears responsibility for Oct. 7, the deadliest security failure in Israeli history.

“The civilian leadership is putting the blame on the military, whose job and task it is to protect the borders of the nation on any given day,” he said. “There is a leadership, a national leadership under whose watch this tragedy happened, and under whose watch the successive wars have unfolded, so it’s in this context that the MOU between the United States and Iran is coming.”

Polls have shown Israelis are willing to incur the cost of war for increased national security.

“The liberal world and the liberal constituency, and the socialist constituencies, are really shrinking, just demographically speaking, in Israel,” noted Nikolenyi.

That has left candidates competing for the centre with only a few months left to co-ordinate a compromise.

“There is much overlapping between the public who prefer, for example, Eisenkot or Bennett or even (Avigdor) Lieberman,” said Tamar Hermann, senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute. “The division lines are not clear, and there is no agreement between these leaders who is going to become prime minister if they will eventually get more votes than the other side.”

One of the most well-liked contenders expected to run is Eisenkot, the ex-general who entered parliament in 2022 and left in order build an independent political base. While the public admires his straight-talk and honesty, they can point to little in the way of substance, Hermann said.

“There are no major pieces of legislation that could be associated with him, or, or even opposing some, but people will judge him as on his record as a former IDF chief, and in Israel that matters a lot,” Nikolenyi noted.

As prime minister, Bennett was noted for his operational skills even as things came apart, Hermann said. “He does have failure written under his name, but he seems to be a good compromise for people who would like to have someone of the moderate right who is capable of really managing things,” she said.

Bennett has no established party organization behind him and is a “one man show,” said Nikolenyi. “To do well and to succeed well in Israeli politics in the long run, you need a party organization, because it’s a very party-centred and party-oriented political system,” he noted.

Along with an established party apparatus, Netanyahu’s three decades in politics also brings other political advantages, not least of which is a solid base of support.

“On his base, the main sentiment is of love for the person. It is familial — not familiar, but familial,” said Hermann. “It’s like if you have a father that made some major mistake or even committed a crime, it’s still in a very tight family.”

“Unless there is some dark horse around the corner” Netanyahu is seen as “irreplaceable” by his supporters, Hermann noted. “The people who hate him actually hate his guts, but still recognize his qualifications, so everyone agrees that none of the candidates that are running for office right now are of his calibre, and this is shared by his rivals, or even enemies, and his supporters.”

Netanyahu will most likely be “stuck with” the leaders of Israel’s extreme-right parties, who serve in the current administration, Hermann said. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has overseen surge of settlement construction in the West Bank amid mounting violence, and national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who was convicted of anti-Arab incitement in 2007, were brought in after moderate and centrist parties refused to work with him.

“(Ben-Gvir) is really pushing Netanyahu into making decisions and taking actions that were unthought of,” said Hermann. “Netanyahu doesn’t like him, nor Smotrich, but he didn’t have any other possibility.”

“In order to replace them, he should bring over party leaders from the other side, and doesn’t look as if he is going to get it,” she added.

A poll last week by Israel’s Channel 12 found that 59 per cent of those surveyed feel Netanyahu should not run for re-election, while 33 per cent said he should. Another 8 per cent were not sure.

Any credible opposition would likely have to ally with religious parties, according to Robinson. But Eisenkot, Bennett and Lieberman, a nationalist who represents voters from the former Soviet Union, have so far ruled out aligning with Arab and ultrareligious parties.

No Israeli party has won an outright majority in parliament, which requires securing 61 out of 120 seats to form government. Under its tradition of multi-party politics, smaller parties yield concessions on pet issues in return for their support.

“The major small parties that you would want or probably need in a coalition are the religious parties, and that’s a very volatile issue,” said Robinson.

In 2022, Netanyahu regained power after 18 months in opposition after his conservative Likud Party formed a coalition with five right-wing and ultrareligious parties. The latest crisis in his camp came after two ultra-Orthodox parties left over his failure to legalize decades-old exemptions for religious students from mandatory conscription. The ultra-Orthodox community currently has 18 seats in parliament.

“(Netanyahu) is cautious not to push this draft issue on the agenda, because he doesn’t want to alienate the ultra-Orthodox, and the ultra-Orthodox are strong,” said Nikolenyi.

“So long as he has that, and the support of the religious Zionist community, which is kind of unshakable, because these parties have nowhere else to go — they will never support anyone to the left of Netanyahu — Netanyahu kind of has them has that corner fairly, fairly well guaranteed for him,” Nikolenyi said.

Any politician looking to build a stable coalition will have to approach religious parties, Robinson said.

“And these parties will tell whoever it is, be it Netanyahu, be it Eisenkot, whoever it is … ‘You’ve got to give us what we want,’ and now the negotiation becomes, do you get 100 per cent of what you want? Do you get 80 per cent of what you want? What are the parameters,” he explained.

“That’s all backroom politics, and Israelis are used to it.”

Passengers on board an Air Canada flight on Wednesday have described how they “instantly started praying” when the plane swerved violently, following the captain experiencing a medical issue.

Flight AC7664, which was being operated by regional partner PAL Airlines, was en route from Newark, New Jersey, to Halifax when it was diverted to Boston Logan Airport after the pilot reportedly became incapacitated.

Rodney McDonald, who was among the 61 passengers onboard, told ABC News that it appeared the pilot had suffered a seizure during the flight.

“The moment the plane swerved, I knew something was wrong because it was not turbulence,” McDonald, who was travelling with his wife and two sons, told the outlet.

“The flight started swerving violently. It really felt like someone had jilted the controls, and then it happened over and over again,” he added.

“And, you know, every thought goes through your mind, you start praying. My boys instantly started praying.”

McDonald described how he rushed to help the pilot, who had been dragged out of the cockpit by a flight attendant.

“(I) realized that the pilot was out of control physically, not violently, like it was clear that he was not in control of his faculties and needed to be restrained,” he said.

“(We) worked to get him under control, it was a fairly strenuous 40 minutes of keeping him down and using as many seatbelts as we could to restrain his legs, arms and chest.”

McDonald said a registered nurse on board helped direct passengers and assist the pilot, adding: “The flight attendants were stupendous. They stayed calm.”

According to flight tracking service FlightAware , the aircraft was diverted to Boston at approximately 1:26 p.m., roughly 45 minutes into the journey.

“Pilot is incapacitated. Aircraft is being flown by the co-pilot,” Broadcastify audio, obtained by ABC, revealed. The flight landed safely just before 2 p.m.

In a statement, Air Canada told National Post: “Air Canada flight AC7664, a flight operated by its regional partner PAL Airlines, was en route from Newark to Halifax on the afternoon of June 24. During the flight, the captain experienced a medical issue and was removed from the flight deck as per safety protocols. The first officer took control of the aircraft and diverted the flight to Boston, where it landed safely. Pilots are trained to fly aircraft and land safely without the assistance of a second pilot.

“There were 61 customers aboard the aircraft, a De Havilland Q400. The captain was taken for medical treatment in Boston.”

Video from ABC affiliate WCVB appeared to show first responders removing the pilot from the aircraft after it landed in Boston.

The flight then took off from Boston just after 7:20 p.m., and arrived in Halifax just before 9:30 p.m., according to FlightAware.

• Retired Air Canada captain allegedly piloted over 900 flights using counterfeit licence
• Air Canada assures customers there is no fuel shortage to disrupt Europe-bound summer flights

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A would-be U.S. Senator has released a campaign-style video telling U.S. President Trump to “open the damn bridge” that spans the Detroit River between her state and Windsor, Ont.

Mallory McMorrow has been a senator in the state senate of Michigan since 2019, and the body’s majority whip since 2023. She is currently a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in the 2026 election in her state. The Democratic incumbent, Gary Peters, has said he won’t be seeking a third term.

One billionaire family controls the bridge that carries 25% of all U.S.–Canada trade.

The good news? There's a brand new public bridge right next door (and Canada paid for the whole thing).

The bad news? Donald Trump won't let it open.

Here's the story:

For more than a… pic.twitter.com/iNEszxJme8

— Mallory McMorrow (@MalloryMcMorrow) June 24, 2026

In a post on social media this week, McMorrow can be seen in Detroit with the Gordie Howe Bridge in the background.

“The Gordie Howe Bridge is finished,” she says. “But Donald Trump won’t open it, because the billionaire family that owns the other bridge gave him a million bucks.”

The other bridge is the Ambassador Bridge, opened in 1929 and now owned and operated by the Moroun family.

McMorrow continues with “one message for the president: Open this damn bridge. And you’d better believe I approve this message.”

In an interview on CNN the same day she explained: “This is a symbol, right in the heart of Michigan, of the corruption of the Trump administration. This is a bridge that has been built for years; more than two decades have gone into bringing this bridge to life.”

She continued: “This is a crossing that is responsible for 25 per cent of North American trade. The current crossing is owned by one family.”

She pointed out that “Canada paid for the entire thing” and that “the bridge is finished,” adding: “The Moroun family that opens the other bridge made a million-dollar donation to Trump’s super PAC, they got a meeting with (U.S. Commerce Secretary) Howard Lutnick, and then all of a sudden they finally found a guy to do their bidding in president Trump, who is now railing against this bridge.”

After numerous delays and a vague, early-2026 date for its opening, it was recently announced that the new bridge would open on June 12.

“It’s positive news. Obviously the bridge will be open at the end of the week,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said on June 9 , calling it “a symbol but also a fact of co-operations between our countries.”

However, two days later he told reporters : “At the request of the United States we agreed to delay the opening and take the necessary time to resolve outstanding issues.”

He added: “There’s not great drama here,” saying the delay “of a few weeks is time well spent.”

When asked what the issues were, he said they were “a series of technical aspects” without going into more detail.

The bridge’s official website does not give an opening date, and its latest news release , dated June 11, is a statement by Chuck Andary, the bridge’s interim CEO and Chief Legal Officer, that reads in part: “Canada and the United States have agreed to delay the opening of the bridge, taking the necessary time to resolve any outstanding issues. We appreciate the efforts of workers on both sides of the border to get the bridge to its current state of readiness.”

Trump has pushed back on the opening of the bridge for months, saying in a social media post on Feb. 9: “I will not allow this bridge to open until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them, and also, importantly, Canada treats the United States with the Fairness and Respect that we deserve.”

Matthew Moroun, a Detroit-based trucking magnate whose family has operated the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor since the 1970s, made a million-dollar donation to MAGA Inc. on Jan. 16, according to campaign finance reports.

• U.S. border agents arrest Canadian felon who crossed Gordie Howe Bridge on foot
• Why is Trump angry about the Gordie Howe International Bridge that Canada paid for?

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Fentanyl has become a political symbol of border failure, but public health academics say the recent decline in overdose deaths points instead to shifts in supply and public health measures — not tariffs or border crackdowns.

Nearly half of Americans — 42 per cent in 2024 — know someone who has died from an overdose, with most of those deaths linked to synthetic opioids like fentanyl. In Canada, no national polling exists, but regional surveys have also shown high levels of exposure; in hard-hit areas like British Columbia, for example, one in five Canadians in 2023 said they knew someone who had died from an overdose.

Regina LaBelle, professor of addiction policy at Georgetown University, says the issue has become politicized in the U.S., leading to responses by national leaders that sound good but make little difference.

“There’s a lot of frustration, and it, in and of itself, lends itself to facile responses that look good, but in the end don’t really do anything,” she said.

“Blowing up drug boats … is a perfect example of a facile response that does absolutely nothing,” LaBelle added, referring to U.S. military strikes aimed at disrupting drug-smuggling routes along the Mexican and Venezuelan coasts.

Treating fentanyl primarily as a border issue is a mistake, she said.

“We often think of it as just a border issue, and it’s not just a border issue. These are transnational criminal operations,” LaBelle said.

That view runs counter to comments from U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, who said last week that pressure on the southern border is pushing cartel activity northward, including toward Canada. He pointed to a surge in fentanyl moving across the northern border.

“The biggest concern we see,” Mullin said, “is what’s happening on our southern border being pushed up to our northern border.”

“Over the last year,” he added, “we’ve apprehended enough fentanyl that would kill 17 million Americans on our northern border.”

Canadian fentanyl czar Kevin Brosseau pushed back, saying the data “really haven’t borne that out.”

Brosseau pointed to U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures showing about 3 kilograms of fentanyl seized at the northern border since October 2025, compared with more than 3,000 kilograms at the southern border. Pure fentanyl, even in small amounts, can still be enough for millions of doses.

But seizure data are an imperfect measure of trafficking, LaBelle said, because determining route changes requires classified or multi-source intelligence, not just CBP figures.

Epidemiologists are also skeptical that fentanyl trafficking is simply shifting north.

“I mean, it just really isn’t happening,” said Mark Tyndall, a public health scientist and professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia. “It’s way too much trouble to ship (fentanyl) around and put it through Canada and then take it into the United States.”

Jonathan Caulkins, a drug policy researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, agreed.

“The flows that we know of across the U.S.-Canada border are token and trivial compared to the flows into the U.S., primarily across the southwest border or the flows into Canada of the precursors, not through the U.S.,” Caulkins said.

The precursors for making fentanyl are widely available for local production of the drug.

“The fentanyl killing Canadians is mostly made in Canada with precursors that came from China,” Caulkins explained.

“The U.S. supply chain is independent of the Canadian supply chain once the precursors leave China, but the manufacturing for U.S. markets mostly happens in Mexico,” he added.

Fentanyl’s potency means only a tiny amount is needed to supply the U.S. market, which limits the usefulness of border seizure data. The more useful target, Caulkins said, is trafficking capacity and the criminal organizations behind it.

“This is really needle-in-the-haystack stuff,” he said.

At the same time, both Canada and the U.S. have seen sharp declines in overdose deaths since late 2023. In the U.S., according to the CDC, deaths involving synthetic opioids fell from 74,702 in 2023 to 48,422 in 2024. In Canada, Public Health Agency data show 7,146 opioid-related drug toxicity deaths in 2024, down 17 per cent from 2023, followed by another decline to 5,630 in 2025 .

The key question is what drove that decline, and whether it’s sustainable.

Caulkins called it the “billion-dollar question.”

There are several possible factors, including expanded naloxone access, supervised consumption sites, drug supply prevention efforts and increased public awareness.

Benedikt Fischer, a professor at Simon Fraser University, said the most likely explanation is a shift in the fentanyl supply itself.

“From all I can gather, it’s a mix of things, but the most likely driver of the drop in overdose deaths, at least on the Canadian side, has been changes in the fentanyl or in the synthetic opioid supply,” Fischer said.

He said that may mean lower purity, or products being mixed with less lethal substances.

LaBelle pointed to a study published in Science magazine earlier this year about there having been a shock to the fentanyl supply in 2023 — largely due to regulatory changes by China, which impacted access to precursor chemicals.

While many of the factors probably helped, the timing is what stands out: Deaths fell suddenly in both countries in late 2023, which makes it hard to explain the decline as the result of one country’s policy alone, according to Caulkins.

That suggests the supply itself likely affected the death rate, which also means the decline may not continue.

Supply conditions, Fischer warned, “can change very quickly again.”

“We’re talking about an illicit supply market that is entirely in the hands of illicit production traffickers, criminal organizations, and there’s no regulation,” he said. “A little change or an added highly toxic component to the drugs distributed could drive that toward an uptick.”

It’s not as though the northern U.S. border doesn’t matter at all, but threatening to use trade restrictions or tariffs and linking them to drug flows is a non sequitur, Caulkins said.

“If vigilance at any border drops, traffickers could use it as a transshipment route,” Caulkins warned, cautioning that Canada and the U.S. should not let trade tensions impair their ability to work well together at the border.

“Things that disturb the ability of the two countries on either side of the border to partner effectively are counterproductive.”

For now, though, academics say the fentanyl crisis is being shaped less by border crackdowns and more by shifts in an illicit market — and by whether public health systems can keep up.

National Post

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Hundreds of thousands of sick and injured Canadians are spending up to two days or longer parked on hard stretchers or plastic chairs in the country’s swamped emergency departments, waiting for a scarce bed to open upstairs, and these delays can be deadly.

New data show that, in 2024-2025, one in 10 emergency patients — 1.5 million people — spent more than 14 hours in emergency.

Of the 16.1 million ER visits reported in total, 1.8 million people needed to be admitted to hospital.

While half waited less than five hours for a bed after the decision was made to admit them, one in 10, or 180,000 people, languished 48 hours or more in emergency before they were moved to a ward bed or the operating room.

Studies have shown that for every 82 people waiting more than six to eight hours to be transferred to a bed, one additional death will occur, meaning that “for those 180,000 patients waiting more than two days for an inpatient bed, we could expect 2,195 attributable deaths,” said Ottawa emergency physician Dr. Michael Herman.

“This is not just inconvenient for patients, this is lethal.”

The new report from the Canadian Institute for Health Information validates “what we’ve been saying on the frontline for years now,” said Herman, a director on the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians’ board of directors.

People are landing in emergency sicker, many with multiple underlying health problems in addition to whatever brought them to hospital, and staying longer.

Two-thirds are being triaged as “high acuity,” meaning with conditions that are either life-threatening, such as cardiac arrest, or require rapid medical attention (severe chest pains, signs of sepsis, severely abnormal vital signs) — shooting down the “zombie myth that refuses to die” that waits times are being driven up by people with minor complaints, Herman said.

“The data clearly show that’s not true. We’re seeing a decrease in our low acuity patients and yet wait times are still going up.”

According to CIHI, severe, unstable cases have increased from 59 to 66 per cent of all emergency visits, or 1.7 million more visits since the pre-COVID year of 2018-2019.

Across Canada, ER wait times are intensifying in overcrowded, short-staffed hospitals big and small, urban and rural. Stretchers and beds aren’t keeping pace with growing demand, creating backlogs and growing wait times and more frustrated people are leaving before being seen by a doctor.

In 2024-25, 7.7 per cent of emergency visits — 1.2 million — involved someone leaving without being assessed by a doctor, according to the report.

Pre-pandemic, it was 5.4 per cent, or roughly 800,000 visits.

People aged 55 and older face the longest waits for a hospital bed. Unlike younger people, they can’t simply be moved into the first available bed. They often need to be in a specialized unit or isolation bed for infections like pneumonia.

Emergency departments are witnessing historic levels of boarding, a risky and humiliating practice of holding admitted patients on stretchers in loud, crowded, chaotic hallways or any available makeshift space.

The longer people, especially older people, stay in emerge when they’re admitted, the worse their outcomes, Herman said. ERs are set up for “brief, episodic care and high turnover,” he said. They aren’t resourced to provide the level of care the way an inpatient ward is, increasing the risk of deterioration and delirium.

The report highlights that the emergency crisis is largely outside emergency’s control. It’s a decades-old, inflow-outflow problem.

“It’s really the health system pressures that are manifesting in the emergency department,” said Cheryl Chui, director of health systems analytics at CIHI.

Upstream stressors include an aging population with diabetes, hypertension, congestive heart failure and other chronic conditions, a lack of timely access to family doctors and specialists to help manage those chronic problems, and 200-day or longer waits for MRIs and other diagnostic tests that can force desperate people to turn to emergency.

Downstream bottlenecks include a lack of home care and long-term care, slowing the flow of people out of hospital who no longer need to be there, which, in turn, blocks beds for new arrivals waiting to be admitted through emergency. Half the people needing placement in long-term care waited up to 44 days in hospital in 2024-25.

Children under 10 (most with fevers and infections), adults over 55 (injuries, infections, pneumonia, urinary tract infections and chronic illnesses) and Canadians living in lower-income neighbourhoods who are less likely to have a primary care doctor visited emergency departments the most last year.

In total, Canada’s emergency departments handled at least 16.1 million visits, according to CIHI.

Half of emergency patients spent four hours or less there, from the time they were registered or triaged to the time they left; 40 per cent spent five to 14 hours, and one in 10 spent over 14 hours, an increase of 28 per cent over 2018-19.

Even as emergency departments got busier, the data show the sickest patients were seen first, Chui said. Half of patients triaged as the most urgent waited less than 12 minutes to be assessed by a doctor.

But even then, 10 per cent of “high acuity” patients needing to be admitted waited nearly 47 hours before getting an inpatient bed or into the OR.

Overall, for 88 per cent of visits, people were treated and sent home within 10 hours. But Herman said 10 hours is an unacceptably long time and exceeds every benchmark or limit recommended by the emergency doctors’ group.

“But so many length of stay concerns exist outside the emergency department,” Herman said.

“You might have a patient who shows up on your doorstep at 1 a.m. who you know needs admission, but you can’t get the (appropriate) consultant involved until 7 a.m. That’s six hours right there, through no fault of the emergency department whatsoever.”

“It’s seen as an emergency problem; it’s seen as an emergency metric. But it’s really a hospital problem.”

Saskatoon resident Barbara Martin waited eight hours in pain in emergency “with a leg dangling” from a fractured tibia and fibula. Because it was a trauma case, the first emergency sent her to a different hospital for trauma surgery. “After eight hours, the resident saw me and said, ‘I’ll have to admit you,'” Martin said in a brief vignette shared with the report’s authors. Martin was admitted to a hallway “for maybe 12 hours” before getting a ward bed.

Chui said the ED wait times report isn’t meant to discourage people from going to emergency.

“Really, if you have symptoms that are concerning, please use the emergency departments…. Everyone is working very hard and trying their best.”

“What this report is trying to show is that it’s really a systems issue” and solutions needs to be coordinated likewise, “which is what makes it challenging,” Chui said. “It’s a complex systems problem.”

In 2023, Canada had one of the lowest hospital beds per capita and highest acute bed occupancy rates among 32 OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries, “signifying that hospitals have little capacity to handle surges in demand,” the report said.

“It really needs to come down to accountabilities,” Herman said.

At the provincial level, “Are we providing the resources, the primary care, the community supports, the long-term care that helps get these patients out of the inpatient wards and the support they need in the community?

“At the hospital level, big or small, patient flow needs to be a 24/7 project,” he said. “We know how dangerous patient boarding in the emergency department is.”

National Post

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Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is widespread in corporate Canada but merit-based hiring still largely rules, a report by the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy says.

The foundation released its first Corporate Discrimination Index on Wednesday. It scored 25 of the largest Canadian-owned companies on the Toronto Stock Exchange on their hiring practices and on how often DEI language appears in their corporate reports, drawing on 500 job postings and a 42-term “woke lexicon” in annual and ESG reports.

David Hunt, the foundation’s research director, said DEI began with good intentions but became “an ideology that has gone much too far.” He said it now “prefers equality of outcomes” over equality of opportunity.

The foundation found that 96 per cent of the companies provide DEI training, 88 per cent declare demographic hiring or promotion targets and 80 per cent promote DEI in job postings. It also said 88 per cent fund what it described as ideological or political groups. Hunt said he did not want to “pass judgment” on the funding but that a bank “should be a neutral actor.” Whether that kind of involvement is “appropriate,” he said, is “a question that we need to ask.”

The same report found that explicit discrimination is rare. Only two of 500 postings examined restricted candidates by identity, both at Enbridge. Postings that gave preference by identity made up under five per cent, and 20 of those came from a single insurer, Intact Financial. Discriminatory hiring practices “appear rare on the surface,” the report says, and companies largely preserve merit-based hiring. Leigh Revers, the report’s lead author, said companies talk about DEI more than they practise it. “It’s very much purely words and no actions,” he said. “They can talk all they like, but do they actually deliver on things? And the answer is no, not really. So they’re not really being especially discriminatory when it comes down to it.”

On the foundation’s Corporate Discrimination Index, Intact ranks first, with a score of 67 out of 100, while Shopify scores zero. The index assigns 60 per cent of its weight to preferential and restrictive hiring, with preference found in under five per cent of postings and restriction in two of 500. Intact’s score rests largely on postings that encourage applications from “equity-deserving groups,” language that is legal and not exclusionary. Hunt said Shopify scored zero because it “exclusively hires based on merit.” He said other sectors should look to high-growth technology firms. “Tech stands out in a good way,” he said.

A separate language index counts how often DEI terms appear in corporate documents. Hunt said the foundation built it because explicit bias rarely surfaces in job postings. “But that does not mean that discrimination and preferential hiring is not happening,” he said. “Because the fact that almost everyone has to go through this DEI training, and we see that that DEI is completely ubiquitous throughout corporate Canada. It’s extremely unlikely that that’s not affecting decision making in the job hiring process.” The foundation ran the word searches through the artificial intelligence chatbots ChatGPT and Grok, and quoted ChatGPT assessing its own results. The results were also later confirmed by researchers. The report said companies mention “Indigenous” nearly as often as they mention their products.

The report’s broader claim is that sectors using more ideological language discriminate more in hiring. It rests on a six-sector comparison the authors say is “driven largely by the low scores of a single sector group,” technology, and the report says that finding should be “treated with caution given the small sample.” Asked whether DEI explains why Canadians struggle to find work, Hunt said he would be “very careful” not to confuse correlation with causation. There was “a whole menu of factors,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to overstate how important this is.”

The foundation calls this a “DEI Paradox.” It says companies promote DEI publicly while keeping hiring largely merit-based, and that heavy use of such language signals a workplace culture prone to discrimination. Revers said that what DEI “really means is setting quotas,” and that setting demographic targets in advance means “you’re kind of prejudging the candidate pool.” “But what you’re really doing is preemptively setting the playing field,” he said. “That’s what we consider to be discrimination.” The report found few postings that actually screen candidates by identity.

Revers said the company declarations are not matched by action. “It’s just saying one thing and doing another. So corporations are particularly good at that. It’s very much window dressing. It’s virtue signaling,” he said. They do it, he said, “because they know that it’s good for reputation if they say these things.”

“Canadian firms are heavily engaged in social engineering,” Revers said in a statement. The practice “extends well beyond the office,” he said, and companies fund groups that “advocate controversial issues.”

In an interview, Revers said corporations “were sold down the river on this” by “the academics in the universities.” Some companies are already retreating, he said. DEI is “kind of in hiding now,” and “the word has been toxified.” Even so, he said, “Canada’s not crazy.”

Revers is a University of Toronto professor emeritus who writes opinion columns for the National Post.

• Majority of Canadians oppose equity hiring — more than in the U.S., new poll finds
• DEI initiatives 'not supported by the empirical evidence,' Canadian researcher says

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OTTAWA — Criticism is mounting for a proposed federal-provincial program that would acquire unsold condo units in British Columbia and convert them into affordable housing.

“It’s moral hazard, it’s socializing losses while the profits flow to developers, so developers can only win, the government will come and bail them out, which is crazy,” said Ron Butler, principal broker at Butler Mortgage Inc. and host of the Angry Mortgage Podcast.

Last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney along with B.C. Premier David Eby announced a suite of measures valued at $3.2 billion to help the province’s housing sector, including lowering development charges and supporting infrastructure projects.

One of the measures also included what’s called the “Canada-British Columbia Partnership on Condo Conversion” which would see Build Canada Homes and BC Housing partner up to “convert” 2,200 unsold condo units into affordable housing.

Carney said developers “can’t sell at a loss” and weaker investment demand has made them “stuck.”

The announcement lacked any detail on whether these condos would be acquired at market price or discounted rate and what the total cost of the measure would be. There was also no clarity on what “innovative financing tools” would be used in the endeavour.

National Post reached out to the Department of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada and, in a statement, the department said more details about the program will be shared when they are finalized.

Mike Moffat, an economist and founding director of the Missing Middle Initiative at the University of Ottawa, said the lack of detail makes it hard to evaluate the merits of the initiative.

“I do think it makes sense that if governments can acquire good units at a steep discount and turn them into social housing, I do think there can be benefits to that,” he said.

“I can certainly understand where people are coming from in their skepticism or seeing this as a bailout, and you know, I think if we have more details, we can kind of assess how much of a bailout it is,” he added.

The Greater Vancouver Area condo market is currently experiencing a correction. A report by the Toronto-Dominion Bank published earlier this month, forecasts roughly 15 per cent peak-to-trough decline from the 2023 high by mid-2027, marking the deepest correction on record since 2005.

There are currently over 4,000 unsold condo units in Vancouver.

During a press conference in Toronto on Tuesday, Housing Minister Gregor Robertson was asked why taxpayer funds should be used to bail out condo developers.

Robertson’s said the measure was one of many tools the federal government is using to drive housing supply.

“In a time like this, when we have record levels of homelessness, we have people that can’t access affordable rental apartments, and we have empty homes in Vancouver and Toronto, we need to take action on this and make the most responsible decisions with it,” said the minister.

“There will be more details on what that program is, in the near-term,” he added.

Jill Atkey, CEO of the BC Non-Profit Housing Association, views the B.C. government’s latest move as disingenuous, given the provincial government this year cut funding for affordable housing.

“We’ve just been through a budget in February that actually…deferred funding on nonprofit and co-op projects, that was committed funding,” she said. “Projects were in development and have now been pulled back, so it’s a clear shift for us in terms of government priorities in British Columbia.”

Atkey said housing need is only growing in the province, with 125,000 affordable units needed over the next 10 years for households that are earning less than $50,000 a year. Atkey noted even under the previous provincial commitments, she said they were able to deliver 4,500 a year.

“When it comes to the condo conversion program, developers seem to be fine with making market returns when the market is doing well, and then to turn around and require a bailout when the market is not doing well,” said Atkey.

“I think that’s not where most British Columbians and Canadians are at in terms of tax dollar expenditures going into effectively bailing out the private sector when the market shifts,” she said, adding that developers had a good market for 30 years and this will only add to Canadians’ cynicism.

Butler said the program will likely target leftover condo units that remain unsold in buildings and it’s a misconception on the government’s part that these units will sit empty forever.

“When some of these guys go into receivership, the receiver will auction off the units,” he said. “There will be new, lower price discovery, and someone will buy them, and someone will live in them.”

Carolyn Whitzman, senior housing researcher and professor at the University of Toronto’s School of Cities, said there have been examples of this type of program working in Canada and other jurisdictions, but the issue remains complex.

“There’s nothing wrong with acquiring unsold condos in the abstract,” she said. “In the concrete, one, you’d want the whole building, two, you’d want to know what’s the price per square foot, and does that translate into anything close to cost-based rent for the kind of people, the kind of income groups you’re serving, like moderate income.”

Whitzman said Canada has fallen behind in non-market housing, which represents just three per cent of the market. She said Canada should look to France as an example of a jurisdiction doing it right, which had been in the same situation at Canada back in 2000.

“France decided that every municipality would have a 20 per cent non-market target, and that non-market target would be made up of new build and acquisitions, and also they’d support renovations,” she said, noting the government’s consistent goal has been widely successful.

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