MISCHIEF/DAMAGE:
Bathurst St & Glencairn Ave
-police responded to reports of damage at a synagogue
-a window was broken with an unknown object
-damage believed to have occurred overnight
-no suspect description(s) currently available
-no injuries reported
-Hate Crime Unit…

— Toronto Police Operations (@TPSOperations) June 6, 2026

Idit Shamir , the Consulate General of Israel in Toronto and Western Canada, issued a statement saying that it “strongly condemns the antisemitic attack against Congregation Mishkan Avraham in Toronto, where an object was thrown at the synagogue, shattering a window and causing damage to the building. ”

The Consulate General of Israel in Toronto and Western Canada strongly condemns the antisemitic attack against Congregation Mishkan Avraham in Toronto, where an object was thrown at the synagogue, shattering a window and causing damage to the building.

Yesterday, in Montreal,… pic.twitter.com/Y1qhZELwQb

— CG Idit Shamir 🇨🇦🇮🇱 (@ShamirIdit) June 6, 2026

“A synagogue should never become a crime scene. A community should never have to wonder which Jewish institution will be attacked next. The time for symbolic gestures has passed. Canada must demonstrate, through concrete action, that antisemitic violence will be confronted with the full force of the law.”

Israel’s ambassador to Canada, Iddo Moed , wrote on X Saturday afternoon that the damage is “a ppalling, alarming, disgusting and shameful beyond words! Today in Toronto, yet another Jewish community has been targeted!”

🚩Appalling, alarming, disgusting and shameful beyond words! Today in Toronto, yet another Jewish community has been targeted!

There cannot be any misunderstanding: demonising Israel, delegitimising Israel, dehumanising Israel all lead to unchecked intimidation, to extreme… https://t.co/E8G8UZSXNy

— Iddo Moed (@MoedIddo) June 6, 2026

He added: “There cannot be any misunderstanding: demonising Israel, delegitimising Israel, dehumanising Israel all lead to unchecked intimidation, to extreme violence and even to destruction.”

Toronto city councillor echoed the consulate’s comments in his own post on X: “ No one in this city should have to wonder whether their place of worship is safe. Antisemitism has no home in Toronto, and an attack on one community is an attack on all of us.”

Overnight, the window of a synagogue near Bathurst and Glencairn was smashed. A place where families gather to pray was targeted, and the Toronto Police Hate Crime Unit is leading the investigation.

No one in this city should have to wonder whether their place of worship is… https://t.co/PGqbXfD4nQ

— Brad Bradford (@BradMBradford) June 6, 2026

• 'More allies than ever before': Tens of thousands expected for Walk with Israel
• Four new arrests made in connection with 'deliberate' attacks on Toronto Jewish community members

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An 84-year-old man declared a dangerous offender for kidnapping a hitchhiking couple in 1979 and trying to stab the man to death, then escaping the Kingston Psychiatric Hospital in 1992 and abducting a 16-year-old girl he confined, sexually assaulted and threatened to kill, has not “‘aged out’ of posing a physical and sexual aggression risk,” according to a recent decision from the Ontario Review Board (ORB).

Denis Russell McCullough was found “not guilty by reason of insanity” in July 1980 for the kidnapping and attempted murder. After his Kingston escape, McCullough was declared a dangerous offender and sentenced in October 1994 to detention in a penitentiary for an indeterminate period. He was living at Millhaven Institution, a maximum-security prison, while under investigation for “sexual misconduct,” but returned this past April to the Regional Treatment Centre at the Bath Institution, and testified at his recent ORB hearing.

“He stated that he has lung cancer, heart problems, and finds walking difficult. When asked if he thought he posed a risk to the safety of the public he stated, ‘If I see a person as a danger to me, then I’m a risk… it doesn’t matter who you are.’ He added that he would not be the aggressor, denied having raped anyone — stating he would never touch a woman — and did not know why he was in custody,” said a May 26 decision from the independent tribunal that regularly reviews the status of individuals found not criminally responsible due to mental disorder.

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The board heard that McCullough was paroled in Canada in May 1978 after a U.S. crime spree, but “absconded” 15 months later.

“While unlawfully at large and on his way to the west coast he picked up a male and a female who were hitchhiking,” said the decision.

“During that trip he stabbed the male several times. He and the female victim were able to stitch the male’s wounds and Mr. McCullough tied the male victim to a tree when they stopped in British Columbia.”

The man was able to free himself and police arrested McCullough a short time later.

While he was a patient at the Kingston Psychiatric Hospital, McCullough “stashed provisions outside the hospital,” then on June 6, 1992, kidnapped his teen “victim and kept her for many hours, including overnight, and forced her to walk from Kingston to the greater Napanee area in Ontario. During the abduction he sexually assaulted her, a fact he now denies,” said the decision.

McCullough “has an extensive criminal record,” said the decision. “In 1963 he was convicted of two counts each of robbery and break and enter. Following those offences, he purchased a car and fled to Texas but was deported back to Canada and sentenced to 12 years.”

Mcullough “was paroled in October 1969 and a month later absconded to the United States, where he was convicted of armed robbery in Nevada. He served 18 months in a mental health facility in that state before starting a term of five years to life in Carson City prison, Nevada. He was paroled in 1976 and returned to Canada.”

McCullough, who was born and raised in Quebec, “reported that illicit drug use began in his 20s. He has spent the majority of his youth and adult years in some form of custodial setting. He has no family support and has not communicated with his family in over 40 years.”

His April 2025 psychological risk assessment “describes Mr. McCullough as a moderate risk for general, violent, and sexual offence re-offending,” said the decision.

“The assessment notes that he suffers from serious mental health issues, although he is not receiving regular mental health service intervention or medication. He is described as ‘highly institutionalized.’”

According to the Parole Board of Canada, “various professionals have assessed McCullough as having a complex personality construct that is rooted in psychopathy and narcissism” and “McCullough’s antisocial values are deeply entrenched into the construct of his personality, which renders change difficult.”

In the last two years, McCullough exposed himself to staff, for which he was fined $25, and was “involved in nine security incidents,” said the decision.

On Oct.19, 2024, “during medication delivery, Mr. McCullough continuously attempted to grab at the nurse.”

He’s been “accused of sexually assaulting an inmate and being sexually inappropriate with another inmate,” said the decision. “A report was received on March 2, 2023, that he had threatened to kill another inmate on his range, but he denied making the threat. He put another inmate in a headlock on June 1, 2023, and minor use of force was used to remove his arm from around the inmate’s neck.”

His caretakers had to physically handle McCullough to get him back into his cell on Dec. 27, 2023, “when he refused direction to do so,” said the decision.

“Information was received on February 24, 2024, that Mr. McCullough was telling other inmates that he was receiving oral sex from another inmate at the Regional Treatment Centre at the Bath Institution.”

McCullough “has recently been diagnosed with Bipolar Affective Disorder — in remission for over 10 years — and has been assessed as having some developing cognitive impairment,” said the decision.

While McCullough uses a wheelchair and attended the ORB hearing in one, “he is still able to ambulate and engage in sexual activity and physical altercations,” it said.

His parole officer testified McCullough “would need a great deal of support if living in the community, which halfway houses could not provide. She noted that Mr. McCullough has no plan to live in the community and no community support.”

His parole officer “considered Mr. McCullough a significant threat to re-offend,” said the decision.

Lawyers for the hospital and the province “maintained that Mr. McCullough continued to represent a significant threat to the safety of the public and that detention at the Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care – Provincial Forensics Program (Ontario’s most secure forensic facility) was appropriate if he were released from federal custody,” said the decision.

McCullough’s lawyer “questioned whether significant threat to public safety had been established to the legal standard of a balance of probabilities. He noted his client has not had a criminal conviction since 1994, suffers from significant health issues, and is only partially ambulatory.”

The ORB ordered that McCullough “be detained at the Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care – Provincial Forensic Programs Division, should his incarceration in a federal penitentiary cease,” said the decision.

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Alberta is the most attractive destination for Canadians who move between provinces, while Newfoundland and Labrador is the least, a new study shows.

The Fraser Institute report measured that movement, known as interprovincial migration, over the 30 years from 1995 to 2024 using Statistics Canada data. It counted only moves within Canada, not immigration from abroad.

Alberta was the magnet. Over the period it gained 538,824 more people from other provinces than it lost, the largest net gain in the country and more than double British Columbia’s 214,883. It drew people from every other province and every age group.

The gains came in waves. Alberta drew people heavily in the late 1990s and mid 2000s, lost some between 2015 and 2020, then surged again after 2021.

“Alberta across multiple dimensions has been the top destination for people moving within Canada,” said Grady Munro, a senior policy analyst at the Fraser Institute and a co-author of the study. The province stands out, he said, for “some of the highest levels of economic growth, a plethora of job opportunities, relatively higher wages, and for much of its time relatively lower taxes compared to the rest of the country.”

The study counts who moved, not why, and Munro said the data cannot prove a cause. Past research points to jobs, wages and taxes, he said, but “we can’t say for certain why exactly we’re seeing the trends that we are.”

Alberta was also the top landing spot for the young, drawing a net 192,329 people aged 18 to 24. “These are high school graduates, college students, people very early in their career who have a lot to provide in terms of economic activity for the rest of their life,” Munro said.

Quebec and Ontario lost the most people, a net 255,988 and 168,166, respectively. For a province that big, the outflow is a small share of Ontario’s population, but it has been steady for most of the 30-year period. “Frankly, its economy has stagnated and fallen behind the rest of Canada,” Munro said, after decades as the country’s economic powerhouse.

Quebec and Manitoba lost people every single year for 30 years.

The bigger losses were relative to size. Over 30 years, Newfoundland and Labrador, Manitoba and Saskatchewan each lost a net outflow worth about a tenth of their current population. By comparison, Quebec’s loss equalled about 2.8 per cent of its current population and Ontario’s about one per cent.

The sharpest losses were among the young. Newfoundland and Labrador saw a net 40,480 residents aged 18 to 24 move away over three decades, equal to 97.3 per cent of its current population that age. It does not mean almost all its young people are gone. It means 30 years of steady losses add up to nearly the entire young adult population living there now. No other province came close. New Brunswick, the next-hardest hit, lost a net total equal to about a third of its young.

The data does not follow individuals, so it cannot track who moves back to Newfoundland and Labrador. But Munro said “there are greater amounts of younger 18 to 24 year olds leaving than there are coming back.”

Newfoundland and Labrador has aged as a result. It now has the oldest population in Canada, with seniors making up about a quarter of residents, and 18 to 24 year olds less than eight per cent, both the most lopsided figures in the country.

The numbers also miss one large group. The data leaves out interjurisdictional workers, people who keep a home in one province but travel to another for work, which Munro said is “fairly significant in the Atlantic region.” The figures for the most recent year, 2024-2025, are also preliminary, meaning Statistics Canada could still revise them.

Munro said the trend should be a signal to the provinces losing people. The data “can be a wake-up call,” he said, for places that have watched significant numbers leave over the last 30 years.

• How Alberta fell out of love with mass immigration
• Fewer than half of Albertans say they would stay in a newly independent province: poll

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OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Canada’s artificial intelligence strategy on Thursday, with a plan for “large-scale AI data centres” and a goal of massively increasing the country’s computing capacity by 2030.

That means lots of new AI data centres, with the hopes of increasingly keeping Canadian data within the country’s borders.

But until recently, developing these facilities has been primarily a matter of local concern for communities where they will be built. As Ottawa ramps up investment in hopes of dramatically scaling up AI compute capability across the country, the federal government is now wading into controversies involving data centres that have primarily played out at the municipal and provincial levels before now.

Here’s what you need to know about the concerns and debates involving these facilities.

What are AI data centres, and what makes them different from standard data centres?

An AI data centre is a facility designed to power artificial intelligence systems by storing data and running the massive computations needed to train and operate AI models.

Unlike traditional data centres, which mainly handle web hosting, cloud storage, email, or business software, AI data centres are built around high-performance processors such as graphics processing units and specialized AI chips. They require far more electricity, advanced cooling systems, and ultra-fast networking to manage the intense workloads created by machine learning.

AI data centres are optimized for parallel processing and large-scale data movement, making them significantly more energy- and hardware-intensive than conventional facilities.

There are just over 300 data centres operating throughout Canada, though most are located in or near major metropolitan areas.

Why is the federal government investing in AI data centres now?

When the Trudeau government announced the launch of the Canadian Sovereign AI Compute Strategy in December 2024, the intent was to develop “cutting-edge AI solutions across all sectors of our economy helps Canada remain a destination of choice for investment and top talent.”

Then in April 2025, the first budget by the Carney government proposed to provide over $925 million during a five-year period to “support a large-scale sovereign public AI infrastructure” throughout Canada. Updated last month, the AI Compute strategy indicates the government plans to “make strategic investments in public and commercial infrastructure.”

The goal of the “sovereign AI” compute strategy is to develop and maintain technical capabilities within Canada to harness the full potential of emerging digital automation technologies.

Michel Richer, president of Bell AI, told National Post that “data sovereignty” is primarily about “two pillars.” Those involve “ensuring that no actor outside of the country” either has the ability to access data generated within Canada or to stop Canadian computer systems from operating.

According to Richer, establishing data sovereignty within the country helps “guarantee that we are in full control over our access to data and full control over which systems are running or are prevented from running.”

Announcing the sovereign AI compute strategy, the federal government said the plan “will make strategic investments in public and commercial infrastructure to ensure that Canadian innovators, businesses and researchers have access to the compute capacity they need.”

Why have AI data centres been so controversial at the local and regional level so far?

Initiatives such as zoning approval and implementing tax breaks for AI data centres have been divisive and hotly contested issues for municipal governments throughout Canada and the United States.

The small council for the rural municipality of Sherwood near Regina had to exclude the public due to repeated disruptions during a meeting in April during which a proposal for a Bell AI data centre was ultimately approved. Controversy has also erupted in Nanaimo, where an active online petition encourages community members to “push to stop” a prospective data centre “from being built.”

Similar debates are playing out across the United States as well, where a recent Gallup poll reports that seven in 10 Americans oppose having AI data centres constructed in their local area. In the small municipality of Independence, Missouri, the two city council members on the ballot for a local election who had previously supported tax breaks for an AI data centre were voted out of office last month. Staunch opposition has also emerged in states such as Virginia and Maine where these facilities have been proposed or built.

A report published by the University of Michigan in July 2025 highlights a number of issues that have plagued proposals to develop AI data centres. Increased utility rates driven by higher electricity demand, large volumes of water necessary to cool high-output electronics straining local resources, and tax breaks that fail to deliver economic benefits promised to the local community are a few of the most contentious concerns often raised about these facilities.

However, many of the most common objections are based on outdated perceptions of AI data centre models, according to Simon Ahdoot, CEO of global technology company Hypertec, which is based in Montreal. Ahdoot told National Post that “the market has adapted to” develop more efficient methods for powering and cooling advanced electronics utilized in data centres.

For example, he said many new builds today implement a “closed loop” cooling system that gets filled with a “certain amount of water” that is then recirculated rather than constantly drawing in and discharging massive amounts of liquid. Ahdoot also said Canada has an advantage compared to many places in the United States because colder temperatures provide “a lot of free cooling” that can be put to use in these facilities.

According to Ahdoot, local officials and the general public should have a realistic and updated understanding of the “practical sustainability” solutions that have been developed in recent years in response to growing concerns about AI data centres.

What’s next for AI data centres in Canada?

Heavy investment by the federal government marks a new chapter in the development of these facilities across Canada. Ottawa has so far avoided becoming entangled in disputes over approving and constructing AI data centres, though that may soon change as federal subsidies are increasingly injected to back proposed capital projects.

While demands for a moratorium on new data centres grow more popular among critics, proponents insist that onerous restrictions risk sending investment and skilled jobs elsewhere.

Riyadh Nazerally of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada told National Post that although municipal governments remain “responsible for planning and zoning decisions,” the federal government may nonetheless “engage with partners to share information and support coordination where appropriate, particularly on large infrastructure projects.”

With the rapid infusion of federal funding, it remains to be seen whether controversy over AI data centres will be increasingly directed at the Carney government rather than municipal officials as before.

As these debates continue to play out across the country, Michel Richer of Bell AI said policymakers should focus on “using the full resources of the different levels of government to help remove roadblocks and accelerate projects” to ensure data sovereignty and AI innovation “translate into economic benefits throughout Canada.”

National Post

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Fewer than half of Albertans are certain that they would continue living in their newly independent province should it separate from Canada, according to a new Postmedia-Leger poll, as a referendum later this year is set to decide if the province wants to vote on breaking from the federation.

According to the survey conducted between May 29 and June 1, 39 per cent of respondents said they would “continue to live in my new independent country” in the case of separation, while 38 per cent said they would move elsewhere in Canada. Nineteen per cent said they weren’t sure, and the remaining two per cent said they would move to another country altogether.

The proportion of those of who would remain is much larger in Quebec, where 56 per cent of respondents said they would stay in their “new independent country,” with just 24 per cent saying they would move elsewhere in Canada.

Among respondents polled outside of Alberta and Quebec, 10 per cent of respondents said they would move to an independent country of Alberta should the province separate from Canada, while just one per cent said they’d move to an independent Quebec.

Andrew Enns, executive vice-president of Leger’s central Canada operations, said the survey should serve as a loose indication of peoples’ views toward separation rather than true moving intentions. Opposition to the independence movement in the province are strong, he said, yet the number of people who would actually pack up and leave might be lower in reality than the results suggest.

“I would fully expect that that number will be less,” Enns said. “I think that number is more of a temperature gauge on peoples’ emotions. This is a big deal for people.”

Respondents widely viewed Alberta’s hypothetical separation from Canada as having a much greater economic impact on the rest of the country than Quebec’s, with 33 per cent saying Alberta’s would have the biggest negative impact of the two. Just eight per cent of respondents said Quebec’s separation would have the greater economic impact, while 45 per cent said it would be equal. The remaining 14 per cent said they didn’t know.

Enns said those results were hardly surprising given the amount of focus on the Alberta economy over the last year under Prime Minister Mark Carney, including Ottawa’s emphasis on using natural resources to combat Canada’s overdependence on U.S. trade.

“We’ve heard a lot of talk, especially in the last 18 months, about how important our natural resources sector — particularly the Alberta energy sector — is for Canada’s economy,” he said.

On the question of which province’s exit would have the greatest impact on “Canada’s national identity,” 17 per cent said Quebec and 15 per cent said Alberta. A majority (54 per cent) said the impact would be equal, while the remainder (14 per cent) didn’t know.

The poll results come just as Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has confirmed that the province will see a separation-related question in its October referendum, appearing alongside nine other questions on issues like immigration and Senate reform. Separatist sentiments in Alberta have hit new highs in recent years, as frustrations over the province’s perceived place in Confederation are reviving resentments that have lingered for decades.

Smith’s referendum question will ask voters whether they wish to remain in Canada, or have a second, “binding” referendum that could trigger separation negotiations with Ottawa. Support for the referendum still seems somewhat narrow: According to public polls, about 70 per cent of Albertans appear to prefer staying in Canada, with the remaining 30 per cent saying they are either deeply supportive or somewhat supportive of separation.

Despite the separatist sentiment in the province, most respondents to the Postmedia-Leger survey from Alberta still appeared to think the province is appropriately represented by the federal government. Among those in Alberta, 33 per cent said Ottawa was doing a “good job” of representing their interests, while 16 per cent said it was doing a “poor job.” Fifteen per cent said they do a “very poor job,” and the remaining 11 per cent said the government is doing “very good.” Twenty-six per cent said they didn’t know.

One of the biggest sources of Western frustration is the federal government’s treatment of its oil and gas sector, which has prompted Smith to seek an energy alliance, or memorandum of understanding (MOU), with Carney.

The deal, aimed at helping to unlock fossil fuel investment by cutting back proposed environmental restrictions and building a new West Coast pipeline, appears to have broad support, based on the results of the Postmedia-Leger poll.

Among those surveyed, a majority (66 per cent) support measures to expand Alberta’s oil and gas sector, compared with 17 per cent opposed. The remaining 17 per cent said they did not know. Those who “strongly support” that expansion were most prominent in Alberta (80 per cent), and the lowest in Quebec (58 per cent).

Notably, the “strong” supporters of such policies were also almost equally distributed between Conservative and Liberal respondents: 77 per cent of people who intended to vote for the Conservative Party of Canada in the next election were highly supportive of expansion, compared with 76 per cent who back the Liberal Party of Canada. Just 41 per cent of NDP supporters expressed strong support, and 40 per cent of Bloc Québécois voters.

Enns said the near-equal split between Liberal and Conservative supporters underscores the major policy shift of the Liberal caucus during Carney’s leadership, which has seen the government pivot sharply from environmental to energy security priorities.

“I don’t have any sort of party affiliation to draw on, but I would suggest that a couple of years ago Liberal voters wouldn’t have been as keen on expanding the energy sector in Alberta by a long shot,” he said.

The Postmedia-Leger poll drew from 1,532 Canadians using an online survey. A margin of error cannot be associated with a non-probability sample in a panel survey. For comparison purposes, a probability sample of the same number of respondents would have a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 per cent, 19 times of out 20.

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This year’s Walk will begin at the Temple Sinai Congregation, travel north on Bathurst Street. Then end at UJA’s Sherman Campus for the Walk Festival, a gathering with food, activities, and entertainment.

This Sunday, thousands of people are expected to attend the annual Walk with Israel. We have been working closely with organizers and our policing partners to prepare for the event and support public safety throughout the day.

Listen to @TPSMyronDemkiw discuss our approach. https://t.co/6zsWwXVruK

— Toronto Police (@TorontoPolice) June 5, 2026

• Four new arrests made in connection with 'deliberate' attacks on Toronto Jewish community members
• Suspect, 18, identified after three shot at outside Toronto synagogue

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has proposed a meeting with his Russian counterpart to negotiate an end to the war face to face.

In a rare open letter to President Vladimir Putin, Zelenskyy renewed his appeal for “direct engagement,” acknowledging the U.S. has become “fully focused on the issue of Iran.”

In the letter, Zelenskyy said he was ready for a “full ceasefire” and “all-for-all exchange of prisoners of war” ahead of in-person negotiations. He also called for the return of Ukrainian civilians and children who have been taken during the war.

At times combative in tone, Zelenskyy cashed in on recent Ukraine’s battlefield successes and reproached his foe’s time in power.

“Yes, you can still force Russians to exist this way. But your resources are shrinking significantly ,” he wrote. “You will not have enough money or political capital to keep buying the loyalty of Russians the way you have for the past 26 years.”

Zelenskyy’s letter said the meeting would have to take place in a neutral country. Any peace deal would have to involve Europe and the U.S., which would “monitor a ceasefire along the line where hostilities stop,” he added.

“We in Ukraine do not want a permanent war. We know very well that life without war is infinitely better. And we want to achieve that,” Zelenskyy wrote.

Zelenskyy, who has previously said that the war is “all about the land,” rejected the idea of giving up more territory as part of a deal. “The front line today is the line from which diplomacy must begin,” he wrote.

Putin rebuffed Zelenskyy’s request on Friday. Speaking at St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, he said: “I see no sense” in a meeting. Putin said he skimmed over the letter, noting that it came across as rude.

“Is it a way to create conditions for a personal meeting and negotiations, or is it creating an environment in which it’s impossible to hold any personal meetings at all? I think it’s the latter,” he said, according to Bloomberg .

Zelenskyy has rejected a peace proposal reached by Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump in Alaska last year, which required Ukraine to give up land to end the conflict.

“You can see for yourself that Ukrainian and European issues are not decided in Anchorage,” Zelenskyy wrote in the letter. Previous trilateral talks in Istanbul, Abu Dhabi and Geneva have failed. Neither leader participated in the talks and have not met face to face since the war began in February 2022.

On Thursday, Trump told reporters he was in support of Putin and Zelenskyy brokering peace directly.

“I’m glad that they’re maybe talking about meeting, I think we had a lot to do with it,” Trump said from the Oval Office. “But I think it would be great if they met, they should get it done.”

Zelenskyy cited Ukrainian figures that say more than 30,000 Russian soldiers were killed or seriously wounded in May.

“We have been maintaining that level month after month, and we have video confirmation of every one of your losses — these are not empty claims,” he said. “In the 21st century, no army can afford such a ratio. And the share of those killed will continue to grow.”

Long-range Ukrainian drones have also brought the war into Russian soil, Zelenskyy noted, dragging Russian civilians into the war, which Putin has tried to avoid. “They do not like our drones and missiles,” he wrote.

Putin addressed the matter speaking to reporters on Wednesday. “To our regret, some of them break through,” he said of the strikes, according to a translation by the Associated Press. “Russia has an air defence system, we need to improve it, strengthen it, and we will do that.”

Talks have stalled since late February as the U.S. is increasingly preoccupied with the Iran war.

The letter could help talks resume, but a peace deal won’t be immediate, said Alex Kokcharov, geoeconomics analyst at Bloomberg Economics.

“Zelenskyy is using Ukraine’s improved battlefield position to push for talks, while Putin still appears to view diplomacy as a way to secure Russian territorial gains and gain time,” he said .

The more likely outcome is intensified coercive bargaining, with more long-range strikes, Russian air attacks, and pressure on both sides’ domestic and external support bases, he said.

• Senior officials warn Putin he's overspending on his war
• At least 352,000 Russian soldiers have died fighting Ukraine: report

National Post

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OTTAWA — Some Liberals are defending Prime Minister Mark Carney’s leadership style, saying he can be tough when needed but has always stayed respectful in their experience.

Carney’s caucus management has been under close scrutiny ever since a report by the Toronto Star came out alleging he has lashed out at caucus members — with one saying he’s yelled at them — or made them feel like he is not interested in their concerns.

Ministers and MPs said this week they have never heard Carney yell at them or others.

Speaking on his way to question period, Charlottetown MP Sean Casey said the prime minister can be “tough when appropriate” but “not tough for the sake of being tough.”

“He has a good way with people, I would absolutely say that, and it’s genuine,” he said.

“He’s a no bullsh-t kind of person. If he says it, he means it.”

Élisabeth Brière, MP for Sherbrooke, said “no, never” when asked if she had ever heard Carney yell. But she said the 61-year-old former central banker has high standards for his caucus.

“Of course, he’s demanding,” she said. “As prime minister, you have to be.”

The National Post has reported that Carney rapidly imposed his leadership style upon taking office last year. Insiders described him as running a tight ship, starting meetings on time, and not being afraid to call out underperforming members of his entourage.

As one person described it at the time, Carney “does not suffer fools.”

Montreal MP Anthony Housefather said he has never seen Carney act anything other than “respectfully” with caucus and that he appreciates the “back-and-forth” with him.

Winnipeg MP Doug Eyolfson was mentioned in the Toronto Star piece as having been told to not come to Carney with his concerns over the lack of federal response to controversial Alberta legislation that creates a two-tier health care system in the province.

Eyolfson acknowledged he had a disagreement with Carney but did not make light of it.

“I’m glad that we can disagree and still have a good working relationship,” he said.

Other examples cited by the Toronto Star included Nova Scotia MP Jaime Battiste receiving a rebuke for raising concerns over the government’s changes to the Indian Act and Laval MP Angelo Iacono asking Carney to visit his riding with Carney insisting he’d already been.

Culture Minister Marc Miller dismissed the report as “gossip,” while Whitby MP Ryan Turnbull said he had never seen Carney act in the ways that were described in the article.

“He respects caucus, he regularly meets with us, and I think he would have a lot of trust in our caucus,” said Turnbull.

Speaking in Shawinigan, Que., on Friday, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said that Carney has “inspired” Canadians, judging by a recent Postmedia-Léger poll that found the Liberal government now has the support of half of all Canadians.

The last time the federal government topped 50 per cent in support was over two decades ago, when Prime Minister Jean Chrétien said Canada would not take part in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reached 49 per cent in the polls in 2016, during his first year in the top job.

“Listen, it’s rare in the history of the country where you have a leader of a party, a prime minister who can create unanimity,” Champagne said in French, adding that the polls prove “the extent to which people appreciate the work of Mr. Carney.”

Government House leader Steven MacKinnon claimed that while Carney has “great expectations,” the Liberal caucus is united on the government’s objectives.

Despite complaints from anonymous sources, Casey said the mood in caucus has improved since Trudeau’s tenure.

“Everybody loves a winner.”

National Post
calevesque@postmedia.com

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A new elementary school set to open in August will be named after former Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney, the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB) announced on Friday.

Education Minister Paul Calandra said the board’s newest elementary school will be named Brian Mulroney Elementary School, in honour of Canada’s 18th prime minister and his lasting contributions to Canada and the world.

The school will welcome close to 700 students when it opens and will be the first public school in Canada named after Brian Mulroney.

“Brian Mulroney was one of the most consequential leaders in modern Canadian history,” said Calandra. “He strengthened Canada’s economy, championed the French language and francophone communities, led on the environment as the greenest prime minister in Canadian history, and earned international respect for his leadership on human rights and the fight against apartheid.

“It is fitting that a new generation of students will learn in a school that bears his name, and I hope they will be inspired by his commitment to public service and nation-building.”

Mulroney’s daughter, Caroline Mulroney, who has just stepped down as Ontario’s Treasury Board president and MPP for Ontario’s York-Simcoe riding, said her family is “deeply honoured” by the naming of the school.

“We are grateful that future generations of students will carry this legacy as they learn and grow within its walls,” she said in a social media post.

My family and I are deeply honoured that a new school in Orléans will open this fall bearing my father’s name.

With strong English and French programming, it reflects his lifelong belief that bilingualism strengthens Canada and helps bring communities together.

He dedicated his… https://t.co/HhE2EpS0rI

— Caroline Mulroney (@C_Mulroney) June 5, 2026

The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney served as prime minister from September 17, 1984, to June 25, 1993, and passed away on February 29, 2024.

Caroline Mulroney said in a letter to constituents that her father’s death two years ago, as well as her four grown children leaving home, were major factors in her decision to leave Ontario’s legislature.

She said in the letter: “Two years ago, I lost my father. Last year, my husband Andrew and I became empty nesters. These are the kinds of moments that clarify what matters. Together, they have led me to the conclusion that now is the right time to step back from elected life and begin a new chapter, one I am genuinely excited about.”

I was honoured to make my final announcement as York—Simcoe’s MPP in Bradford, where I shared progress on bringing care closer to home in the community.

Thank you, York—Simcoe, for eight incredible years! 💙 pic.twitter.com/5eg8h5idNp

— Caroline Mulroney (@C_Mulroney) June 4, 2026

The OCDSB has previously named seven schools after Canadian prime ministers and governors general, as well as after Sir Winston Churchill, Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth II.

The school is located in Ottawa’s east urban community near Mer Bleue and serves a growing area with a strong francophone presence.

In a news release, the OCDSB said the naming of the school recognizes Mulroney’s contributions to Canada, including his support for the French language and francophone communities, his role in advancing free trade and economic growth, his environmental leadership, and his advocacy for human rights on the international stage.

“Teaching Canadian history is an important element of our curriculum. I hope the students of Brian Mulroney Elementary School and students across the OCDSB district will be inspired to learn more about Canada and the importance of public service,” said OCDSB Supervisor Robert Plamondon.

• Michael Taube: From trade to personal liberties, Brian Mulroney stood for freedom
• Raymond J. de Souza: Brian Mulroney — an underappreciated political giant

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

Millions of Canadians will receive a top-up payment of as much as $717 from the federal government directly into their bank accounts this week.

The top-up is part of the new Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit, formerly known as the Goods and Services Tax/Harmonized Sales Tax (GST/HST) credit, and is equal to 50 per cent of the annual value of the GST/HST credit from July 2025 to June 2026.

The federal government said the new benefit will provide relief to more than 12 million low- and modest-income Canadians by helping them afford day-to-day essentials. Eligible individuals will receive the payment on Friday, June 5.

According to the Department of Finance, Bill C-19, the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit Act, will deliver $3.1 billion in immediate assistance through the top-up.

Anyone who received the January 2026 GST/HST credit — or was eligible for it — will automatically receive the one-time payment into their bank account, as long as they have a direct deposit set up with the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). If not, they will receive a cheque in the mail.

The Department of Finance also outlined how much eligible Canadians can expect to receive.

A single individual with no children will receive a one-time top-up of up to $267, while those who are married or have a common-law partner could get a maximum payment of up to $349.

Those eligible with children will receive up to $441 if they have one child, $533 with two children, $625 with three children, or up to $717 with four children.

Those who have shared custody of a child will get half of the amount they would have received if they had full custody of the child.

Meanwhile, Bill C-19 also increases the value of the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit by 25 per cent for five years, starting in July 2026 — a change the government says will deliver $8.6 billion in additional support over the 2026-27 to 2030-31 period, including to 500,000 additional individuals and families.

However, while eligibility for this week’s top-up is determined by 2024 tax returns, the increased quarterly payments are based on 2025 returns.

This year’s upcoming quarterly payment dates are July 3 and October 5.

• Politicians are desperate to make your grocery bill cheaper — not everyone thinks it's a good idea
• City-run grocery stores unlikely to lower prices, says think tank

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

A trans prisoner was convicted of assaulting a 12-year-old girl and two women in 1998. Amanda Joy Cooper was living as a biological male at the time of the crimes.

Cooper grabbed the girl while she was rollerskating in a parking lot, and told her, “I’ll rape you,” according to Quebec court documents. Days later, Cooper attacked a young woman at the same location. Two days after that, Cooper assaulted a 19-year-old woman at a bus shelter.

Prior to those incidents, Cooper had been convicted of sexual assault multiple times. While in federal custody for the first time in 1986, Cooper sexually touched female prison staff and sexually assaulted a female parole officer. Cooper was designated a dangerous offender in 2001.

Cooper now identifies as a woman and, while in prison, had gender-affirming surgery, described by the Canadian Society of Plastic Surgeons as surgery to help a person “physically actualize their internal sense of self.”

Cooper wants to be transferred from Millhaven Institution, a maximum-security prison for men west of Kingston, Ont., to the Fraser Valley Institution for Women in British Columbia.

Cooper’s case, which will be reviewed by a federal court judge on June 15, is part of a growing debate over how to handle inmates who request prison placement based on gender identity, rather than anatomy.

• Killers of Indigenous women less likely to face murder charges. ‘The justice institution has failed us’
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The debate pits the wishes of transgender women to be in an institution that matches their gender identity with the concerns of other women in those institutions over their own safety and privacy.

The issue stems from a policy change by Correctional Services Canada (CSC) in 2017 to align with federal legislation prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity. Nearly a decade later, transfer requests made by transgender women are being increasingly rejected, an Investigative Journalism Bureau (IJB) investigation has found.

While the rate of transfer approvals reached 80 per cent in the first few years following the 2017 policy, it has since fallen to 23 per cent, according to data obtained by the IJB. In 2018-19, for instance, 10 individuals applied; eight requests were approved. In 2024-25, 13 people applied; three requests were approved (the rest were either rejected or withdrawn). The number of individuals making requests has numbered between eight and 15 annually, according to a breakdown from CSC.

“I think this speaks to the question of the policy on paper versus the policy in reality,” said Nicole Kief, executive director of Prisoners’ Legal Services, based in British Columbia.

“Women who are trans or Two Spirit or gender non-conforming in another way, who feel that an institution for women best aligns with their gender, are being prevented from having that placement.”

Heather Mason, a non-trans woman, was in and out of prison for drug-related offences between 2014 and 2018. The former inmate told the IJB that while she was incarcerated, a sex offender — a trans woman — saw her naked while she was being strip searched. Mason screamed and grabbed her shirt, trying to cover her body. She said the offender was pulled away by a guard.

“I felt very violated, and I also felt that it’s the duty of the correctional system to provide safety for us, because we are locked in an institution where we cannot leave and we have no recourse to protect ourselves.”

She said that incident occurred in March 2015 at South West Detention Centre, a provincial facility in Windsor, Ont., not under CSC’s jurisdiction. Only months earlier, the province said prison placement would be based on “self-identified gender or housing preference.”

Ontario’s Ministry of the Solicitor General did not respond to a request for comment.

In an unattributed statement, CSC said it recognizes that the placement of gender-diverse offenders in its institutions “is a complex and evolving area of operations” and it “continues to adapt its practices and respond to emerging issues.” CSC falls under the ambit of the federal minister of Public Safety (currently Gary Anandasangaree).

Each transfer request is “assessed on a case-by-case basis,” says the statement. The agency added that it considers risks to other offenders and staff “particularly in relation to a history of gender-based violence or sexual violence,” and “risks to the offender’s personal safety.”

Transfer requests and denials

From 2017 to 2025, 57 trans women made 129 requests to transfer to a women’s prison and 35 requests were approved. More than 70 requests were denied by CSC in that period. (An offender can make more than one request, resulting in several decisions over the course of their incarceration, CSC said. If the application is denied, another can be submitted within six months, or sooner depending on the circumstances.)

There were 90 transgender women in federal prison as of October 2025, according to CSC data, 73 of them housed in men’s prisons and 17 in women’s prisons. Of the 17, eight have had gender-affirming surgery.

The list of offences committed by those 17 transgender women include murder in the first and second degree, assault with a weapon, manslaughter, arson, forcible confinement, sexual interference of minors and printing or publishing child pornography, CSC said. Two of the 17 trans women are dangerous offenders, which means they were convicted of a serious violent or sexual crime and may pose a threat to others.

A 2022 study by CSC found trans women made up 80 per cent of gender-diverse offenders with sexual offence histories. The majority of offences happened while the offenders were “living as their biological sex” and most victims were women and children.

Most female offenders are accused of nonviolent crimes, with property crimes making up the largest proportion, followed by drug offences, according to a 2019 Statistics Canada report.

CSC said it has not seen “an increased risk level to offenders” when a gender-diverse person is placed in an institution that better aligns with their identity.

Stacey Love-Jolicoeur, a trans woman and advocate, has visited 35 Canadian prisons to meet with incarcerated trans people since 2012.

“They’re still human beings, that’s the bottom line,” said Love-Jolicoeur, who is familiar with Cooper’s case. The reason Cooper should be in a women’s prison is “pretty simple,” she says. “Amanda is a post-op trans woman with no male anatomy.”

According to court documents, Cooper said she “has been harassed, bullied, threatened, and assaulted by other inmates because of her gender identity” while in the men’s prison.

A previous transfer request was denied by CSC due to “overriding safety concerns” including concerns that Cooper’s transfer would “jeopardize the health and safety of the inmate population and staff,” court documents show.

A lawyer for Cooper declined comment. CSC would not comment on Cooper’s case, saying it is before the courts.

Transferred back

At least one trans woman has been removed from a federal women’s prison after being transferred, the IJB found.

Michelle Autumn, a trans woman, started a life sentence in 2007 for first-degree murder. The offence involved luring a 13-year-old Edmonton girl to a golf course, where she was sexually assaulted and killed by a group that included Autumn, court documents show. The crime was committed when Autumn was 17 and living as a man.

Autumn was transferred to Grand Valley Institution for Women on March 6, 2025, according to court documents. During a strip search, Autumn exhibited “highly inappropriate behaviour,” including playing with her genitalia “in a sexually suggestive manner.”

When staff decided to move Autumn to a single occupancy cell, she barricaded herself in a common room and tried to use a broken television remote as a weapon, court documents say. The incident ended when a chemical irritant grenade was deployed.

Autumn was transferred back to a men’s prison on March 10, 2025, and did not respond to a request for comment.

“CSC has the authority to transfer an offender to a more suitable institution at any point, if deemed necessary,” the agency said in its statement. CSC said involuntary transfer decisions “are not automatic and are not based on gender identity.”

Mason, the former prisoner, insists women are being silenced about their experiences in prison.

“It’s not transphobic to speak about reality, and women deserve to be protected. And it’s also not transphobic to say, ‘Hey, this isn’t working.’ You have two groups of people who have competing rights here, and it’s women that are being harmed.”

Canada’s first trans woman transfer

Fallon Aubee was Canada’s first trans woman to be transferred to a federal women’s prison after spending more than 15 years at various men’s facilities. In 2017, she was moved to B.C.’s Fraser Valley Institution, where she completed her first-degree murder sentence. She was released on day parole in 2023 after serving 22 years.

Before her conviction, Aubee was privately exploring her feminine side while publicly presenting as male, she said. Being in prison forced her to reflect on how she wanted to live her life.

After she told prison officials at Saskatchewan Penitentiary that she was transgender, she was held in segregation for six months. She was told it was due to her maximum-security rating but she believes it was because of her gender identity.

She said she was harassed and her food was contaminated after she disclosed she was transgender.

“I was threatened (by inmates) with being set on fire, stabbed, (having) my cell burned out, thrown over a balcony, (having my) head caved in with a weight bar.”

CSC said it was not aware of these allegations.

Aubee said she spoke to the prison doctor, a psychologist and her case manager about identifying as a woman. “I just kept telling myself I’m not going to live 25 years (in prison) and not be able to just be who I am,” she said. It took more than a decade of fighting, but she made it to Fraser Valley, where she said she was “treated exceptionally well.”

Coming out as trans is “one of the most difficult things, the most emotionally stressful, painful things you’re ever going to go through,” she said.

The Investigative Journalism Bureau (IJB) at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health is a collaborative investigative newsroom supported by Postmedia that partners with academics, researchers and journalists while training the next generation of investigative reporters.

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Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon has commented publicly on an airport bag tag scheme in which airport employees have been allegedly using unsuspecting travellers as drug mules.

He was challenged by Conservative MP Dan Albas in committee testimony this week, who asked: “How is it that people right now are being detained, arrested, and then caught up in the CBSA system forevermore for something they didn’t do? It is your responsibility to make sure bad people can’t get those jobs and stay in those jobs.”

MacKinnon responded by saying that credentials for airport workers are revoked on a regular basis. “We have a constant system of ongoing revocation of credentials,” he said.

“Many of the people who were the objects of interest in the recent television report all had their credentials revoked.”

He added: “The system that we implement requires us to assess the risk to aviation safety. I’ve asked my officials to examine whether that is an appropriate test,” and said that his officials have gone “very deep” in their review of the system.

But when pressed on specific measures he has taken in response to the scam, MacKinnon was unable to provide an example.

“What one concrete measure have you done beyond talk to your officials?” Albas asked.

MacKinnon responded by saying that “these are very intricate and delicate interconnected systems” and that he wasn’t going to do anything “rash.”

“But I can tell you that in federal transportation infrastructure, security is something that preoccupies me,” he said.

It’s been two weeks since a CTV News investigation revealed a widespread criminal operation involving airport workers swapping passengers’ luggage tags onto suitcases loaded with drugs.

The report found that at least 17 passengers on flights out of Canada were detained on drug smuggling allegations in the past year as a result of the scam.

In instances where the drug shipments were discovered by foreign customs officials, the innocent passengers whose names appeared on the luggage were arrested.

In one such case , RCMP officers were called after the Canada Border Services Agency found 33 kilograms of cannabis in each checked bag of two German citizens scheduled to depart on a commercial flight from Toronto to Germany.

The RCMP arrested the pair, but each denied ownership of the luggage. Investigators then found that an Air Canada employee working in the baggage room had allegedly placed luggage tags bearing the passengers’ names onto suitcases that contained cannabis. Both passengers were released, and the Air Canada worker was arrested and charged.

National Post previously spoke to Mitesh Shah, CEO of Ontario-based professional security company Empire Protection , about steps airports can take to prevent similar incidents in the future.

He said that he would like to see more screening of airport personnel. “Airport employees don’t go through the same scrutiny that travellers do,” he commented.

Meanwhile, a security expert interviewed by CTV for its investigation said that workers in secure baggage areas should wear body cameras and be prohibited from carrying personal cellphones while on duty.

When it comes to passengers protecting themselves, Shah recommended taking pictures of personal luggage before it’s checked in at the airports and adding a ribbon or something else unique to make each bag stand out.

Such measures could help travellers demonstrate ownership if authorities mistakenly link them to a different suitcase.

• How Canadian flyers can stop their luggage from turning into a drug shipment due to airport bag tag swaps
• Chris Selley: The chilling airport bag-switching scandal suggests Canada still lacks adult supervision

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

University of Toronto law professor Peter Biro has resigned his fellowship from Massey College after he says the institution wanted an “advisory committee” to vet an antisemitism conference he was organizing.

“A good portion of Canadian society is utterly oblivious to the fact that our current age represents the next great transmutation of jew-hatred in human history,” Biro wrote in his resignation letter dated May 31. “That only underscores the critical importance of this conference.”

The one-day conference titled Antisemitism in Our ‘Free and Democratic Society’: A Canary’s Song was scheduled for Sept. 15 at Massey, a college affiliated with — but independent of — the University of Toronto. The event, according to Biro’s resignation letter, was set to feature Canada’s former special envoy on Holocaust remembrance and combatting antisemitism Deborah Lyons, Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights founder Irwin Cotler, as well as American Holocaust historian and diplomat Deborah Lipstadt.

This is far longer than my typical post, but it tells an important story of what appears to be an attempt by leadership at Massey College to censor a major conference on antisemitism, leading to the resignation of one of its senior fellows.

The disappointment that greeted Mark… pic.twitter.com/31D7bWPUUO

— Michael Geist (@mgeist) June 3, 2026

“Massey College accepts with regret the resignation of Mr. Biro. Massey College condemns antisemitism in any form and is committed to playing its role in addressing it,” Massey College Principal James Orbinski said in a written statement.

Biro wrote that Massey’s concerns stemmed from a lack of coordination with the college and questions surrounding the appropriateness of “partner organizations.” The conference was due to be co-hosted with the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.

Biro dismissed the Massey College president’s concerns as “absolutely false,” writing that everything was developed with “full cooperation with and the full contemporaneous knowledge of the Principal, beginning in mid-January and continuing through to May 27.”

He wrote that he had previously chaired and participated in other conferences at Massey without any issue.

Orbinski said that he “cannot comment on prior processes” given that he only became principal of Massey College in 2025 .

“When Massey was first approached by Mr. Biro with his written draft conference proposal on antisemitism, after some conversation, I agreed to hold a programmed conference on antisemitism. I welcomed the initiative and told Mr. Biro that Massey would engage in a process of consultation about the proposed conference,” Orbinski said.

Orbinski told National Post that he and Biro had “two meetings on the proposed conference,” during which he “particularly emphasized the centrality of consultation and collaboration in defining the agenda and speakers, and my responsibility as Principal to seek appropriate advice, and that I would do this.”

“Unfortunately, Mr. Biro did not check back on the process of consultation,” he wrote. “I had begun that process of consultation with colleagues, when I was informed by email that all Mr. Biro’s proposed speakers had been invited, that the Prime Minister of Canada had been invited, and that a partnership with another organization had been established. Much of the necessary collaborative process was ignored. In a subsequent phone call with Mr. Biro, he informed me that the agenda was fixed, that he was moving the conference to another venue, and that he was resigning from the College.”

Biro called Massey’s concern “one of substance rather than one of process” from “undisclosed senior members of the College about whether the subject of antisemitism is being curated in an appropriate fashion, (and) about whether the salient issues are being framed in a politically and socially appropriate way.”

Orbinski said “no substantive concerns were identified” so far, given the “process of consultation was in process.”

News of Biro’s resignation, and the uncertainty it cast over the future of the conference, provoked strong reactions from other professors. Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor, called the incident “an important story of what appears to be an attempt by leadership at Massey College to censor a major conference on antisemitism.”

“Massey College, much like Mark Carney, had a chance to lead, but both failed to meet the moment,” Geist wrote in an X post on Wednesday, referring to the prime minister’s recent visit to a Toronto synagogue to address antisemitism in Canada earlier this week. “The stain on Massey College will not come off as easily.”

University of Toronto chemistry professor Dvira Segal commented on Geist’s post, saying, “Our academic institutions and government are willing to address antisemitism only insofar as the discussion sanitizes the connection between Judaism and the land of Israel.”

“That clearly is the oversight they wanted, that the conference not touch the historical, cultural, and religious connections of Jews to the land of Israel, nor the extent to which the denial and politicized erasure of those ties has become a modern form of antisemitism,” Segal wrote.

Biro said that life on campus at the University of Toronto, where he is an adjunct professor, has materially changed in recent years, particularly after the Hamas atrocities of October 7.

“There’s been a radical change in the atmosphere and in the civic culture of campus,” he told the Post on Thursday. “But it’s a microcosm of what’s occurring in the broader society, accentuated significantly on campuses across the country. And U of T is no exception.”

Biro said the changing spirit of academic life has been driven by higher education shifting “from being a research institution, particularly in the social sciences, to being a driver of social justice agendas.”

“Activism has supplanted truth-seeking as the dominant spirit and driving force of much of the work, both on the research side, (and) even on the teaching side,” he said. “Israel vilification has become the currency, cornerstone and language of much of what transpires in the social sciences.”

• Chris Selley: U of T college's odd and troubling reaction to a racist joke
• Ramy Elitzur: The boycott demands of U of T's violent encampment mob simply can't be met

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

Just six weeks after airlines operating in Europe seemed to be facing disruptive fuel supply shortages, Air Canada and Lufthansa are saying it’s safe for customers to book their summer holiday trips.

In April, a wave of concern swept the travel industry after Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency, made pronouncements that there was “maybe six weeks or so” of jet fuel left due to Iran’s blockade preventing oil tankers from getting through the Strait of Hormuz to the rest of the world, as the Iran-U.S. war raged on.

However, in an email to Air Canada customers shared with National Post on Thursday, the airline assured prospective flyers that it is completely safe to book.

“You may have seen recent headlines about the global fuel supply and its impact on travel to Europe and wondered what it means for your personal travel,” reads the email provided to the Post by Air Canada’s manager of communications, Peter Fitzpatrick.

“Please be assured that we are fully expecting to operate our current summer schedule. While global fuel markets remain dynamic, Air Canada has a diversified and sophisticated fuel supply in place. There is no fuel shortage affecting our operations, including across Europe, and we do not anticipate any significant impact through the summer.”

Air Canada continues in the email to point out that it has a sizable roster of destinations across Europe and therefore customers can “feel … confident” when they book their travel.

“There is no fuel shortage affecting our operations,” says #AirCanada. https://t.co/inItQJb4v0 pic.twitter.com/qyQNZpGMHP

— PAXnews (@PAX_news) June 2, 2026

Contrary to Europe, Canada has its own sources of jet fuel, as previously reported by National Post. The fuel concern became an issue in April for international operators flying back from Europe. One aviation expert cited a fuel shortage in northern Italy.

Shortly after, Air Canada announced the cancellation of flights from Montreal and Toronto to New York’s JFK airport. And several other international carriers, such as Air France-KLM, Air India, Air New Zealand, Cathay Pacific, Lufthansa, United Airlines and Vietnam Airlines also announced cancellations.

But Lufthansa has changed its tune. The airline’s chief commercial officer, Dieter Vranckx, said in a recent interview shared on the airline’s website that “there are no signs from our suppliers that fuel supply will be at risk this summer.”

Echoing Air Canada’s position, he said, Lufthansa’s summer flight operations are not expected to be disrupted by fuel supply concerns . That includes its flights across six European hubs: Frankfurt, Munich, Zurich, Vienna, Brussels and Rome.

Less than a quarter of jet fuel shipments destined for Europe need to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, Vranckx said. And to compensate for any shortfall, he noted that “imports are now increasingly reaching us from other continents — for example, from North America and Africa. In addition, European refineries have ramped up their jet fuel production to maximum capacity.”

When asked whether it’s safe to book a holiday, he responded: “Absolutely — fuel supply is stable so summer’s good to go.”

It should be noted, however, that supply and the cost of fuel are separate issues. In mid-April, Air Canada announced fuel-price-based cuts to domestic, U.S. and international destinations. That included the cuts to JFK, as well as cuts to routes out of Montreal to Algiers and Mexico.

“Jet fuel prices have doubled since the start of the Iran conflict, affecting some lower profitability routes and flights which now are no longer economically feasible,” Air Canada said in an April 18 statement. “Schedule adjustments including some frequency reductions are being made in response.”

Jet fuel prices have since been volatile, but they have recently fallen, as per the latest weekly data from the International Air Transport Association.

However, that may not translate into a reduction in ticket prices. As National Post has reported, many airline executives have indicated that current high prices may become the new normal, even if fuel costs ease.

• Oil shock from the war will hurt Canadians for months. Here's how
• Airline CEOs warn fare increases will 'stick' even if jet fuel costs fall

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

Smack in the middle of the Alberta prairie, a couple of hours away from Edmonton, and even Red Deer, sits one of most crucial points in Canada’s oil infrastructure.

Despite being a key hub for Alberta oil heading south to the U.S. and elsewhere in Canada, Hardisty has faced many of the challenges small towns across Canada face.

Financial Post feature writer Joe O’Connor joins the show to discuss the history of Hardisty, why it plays such a major role in the oil industry, and how the community is rallying to attract newcomers.

Background reading:Welcome to the most important oil town in Canada — population 623

Subscribe to 10/3 on your favourite podcast app

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our newsletters here.

A man convicted in the brutal killing of his three children has been granted conditional discharge by the British Columbia Review Board.

In 2010, Allan Schoenborn was found not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder for the first-degree murders of his three children: Cordon, aged five, Max, eight and Kaitlynne, 10, at their Merritt, B.C., home in 2008.

He appeared before the board for his annual hearing on Monday to request the 12-month conditional discharge.

The B.C. Review Board decision , which took effect on June 2, says Schoenborn is to attend a psychiatric clinic for treatment, live in a supervised place, and stay at the Forensic Psychiatric Hospital in Coquitlam, B.C., if ordered to do so by the board.

He must also report any intimate relationships, be on good behaviour, and not possess or use any weapons or drugs.

Former B.C. Conservative leader John Rustad said the Review Board’s decision was “wrong” in a social media post on Thursday.

“This man needs to be locked away,” he wrote. “He should not be getting any kind of discharge, conditional or otherwise. After what he did, the public has every right to expect that he remains under the strictest supervision for the rest of his life.”

Today’s decision by the BC Review Board to grant Allan Schoenborn a conditional discharge is wrong.

This is the man who stabbed and smothered his three young children, Kaitlynne, Max, and Cordon, to death in their home in Merritt back in 2008. He killed his own kids.

I’m sorry,… pic.twitter.com/5Eem2Rg9LQ

— John Rustad (@JohnRustad4BC) June 4, 2026

Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West also addressed the decision on social media , saying that he is “outraged” by the decision.

“I am outraged by the B.C. Review Board’s slippery slope normalization of someone who killed their children.”

“A conditional discharge is not a minor administrative step. It is part of a process that moves him closer to greater freedom.”

Dave Teixeira, a spokesperson for the victims’ family, said in a video shared to X on Thursday: “In my opinion, (Schoenborn) is more evil than he is ill. He’s interested in getting out, he’s not interested in getting better.”

He added that he’s concerned that the conditional discharge is a “waiting room for the absolute discharge,” saying: “It’s very rare that people on a conditional discharge do not advance forward.”

“Should he ever get an absolute discharge, I promise you we will be hearing about him on the news after he’s created more tragedy,” he said.

Brief history and update on the 3x child killer Allan Schoenborn and the BC Review granting the killer a conditional discharge even though he is still considered to be a threat to public safety. #bcpoli pic.twitter.com/3dcsgfBKBm

— Dave Teixeira 🎧 (@davedotca) June 4, 2026

In May 2021, Schoenborn legally changed his name to Ken John Johnson, a move that led the B.C. government to pass legislation preventing those convicted of serious crimes from changing their names.

The Name Amendment Act (No. 2) came into effect in September 2024, and requires all applicants for a legal change of name in British Columbia aged 12 years and older to have a criminal record check.

The legislation intends to prevent convicted criminals from evading accountability and the consequences of their actions by changing their name.

The disposition, written by B.C. Reviewboard Chairperson Geneviève Boudreau, will be reviewable in one year’s time.

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The Toronto Transit Commission is facing criticism from the Jewish community over its new staff jerseys dedicated to the FIFA World Cup.

Photos show an upside down red triangle emblazoned on the jerseys’ shoulders. In the abstract, a triangle is just a geometric shape, a common design element in sports branding. In the current climate, however, that specific motif is politically loaded, say Jewish leaders.

Since late 2023, an inverted red triangle has been widely used in Hamas propaganda videos to mark individuals and targets for attack, and has migrated into Western protests and even antisemitic vandalism of Jewish homes and institutions.

“Everybody has Google, Grok, Gemini, and can check in 10 seconds if there are any cultural or political references,” Talia Klein Leighton, president of Canadian Women Against Antisemitism, told the Post.

“Like at best, it’s an oversight. At worst, somebody is targeting the Jews with their shirt design. Well, I tend to be a little more cynical, because I’ve just seen so much in the last two and a half years.”

She added: “If I was the TTC, I would be taking it very seriously, because it’s their employees walking around with the political symbol.”

Toronto Councillor James Pasternak, whose York Centre district has one of Canada’s largest Jewish populations, told the Post that he “wondered how it (the red triangle) contributed to the jersey design, and whether a member of the anti-Israel mob inside the TTC or one of its suppliers played a sick trick. I’m going to look into it.”

The Post first learned of the story from a photo via the X feed of Caryma Sa’ad, a Toronto lawyer and video archivist, who captured the new jersey on June 3.

Not only is that an incredibly poor use of money for an organization perpetually crying for cash, but the upside down triangle looks like the Hamas symbol used to target people for death. https://t.co/mQ7vEWC1km

— Jon Fraser (@JonFraserTF) June 4, 2026

“(It’s) more than just tone‑deaf,” said Matthew Taub, director of advocacy group Unapologetically Jewish. “Toronto is home to one of the largest Jewish populations in the country, already on edge from a sharp rise in harassment and intimidation.”

“It suggests that no one in the decision‑making chain paused to ask what it might resemble,” said Taub. “Even my own (group’s) logos and apparel, five pairs of eyes see it, several times over, before we all sign off on it. I don’t think this was missed. I think it was intentional.”

He added: “The question is why, in 2026, an organization so steeped in equity jargon appears oblivious to one of the most discussed hate symbols of the last two years.”

Jon Fraser, a technology executive, chimed in on X, saying “not only is that an incredibly poor use of money for an organization perpetually crying for cash, but the upside triangle looks like the Hamas symbol used to target people for death.”

The image of a cash‑strapped transit system rolling out bespoke shirts is itself a jarring sight, given the TTC’s perpetual warnings about budget shortfalls and service constraints, Taub added.

Facing a $232 million budget hole this year from decreased ridership and fare evasion, “now’s not the time to spend money on fancy shirts,” he said.

Taub said riders who endure delays, overcrowding and safety concerns are entitled to ask how many bus repairs or platform staff hours “this marketing gimmick could have funded instead.”

The Post asked TTC media relations about the cost to design the shirts, the time involved, the cost of the current inventory, and how they respond to the apparent similarity between symbols.

They replied via email: “The TTC Ambassador shirt design features a modern, stylized maple leaf, a traditional and iconic Canadian symbol, blended with distinct TTC station tiles and names, tied together with the same TTC red that is seen on our vehicles.”

Isha Chaudhuri, spokesperson for the Brad Bradford mayoral campaign, told that Post that “If these new uniforms actually helped move traffic and transit more efficiently, that’d be a conversation. But they don’t,” she said.

“So, we see a system that is chronically saying they don’t have enough money, spending on something that will literally do nothing to help them achieve their mandate. Which is to move people safely and efficiently. We believe the TTC should focus more of its time, energy and resources on fixing transit and serving riders. Torontonians work hard for their money, and they expect taxpayer dollars to be spent wisely.”

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc said his trip to D.C. on Tuesday “has not been without some turbulence,” but that he remains optimistic that a trade deal with the Americans will be reached.

This week, Canada signalled that it wants to see the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) renewed for 16 years to preserve trade growth on the continent even as U.S. President Donald Trump renewed his calls to make Canada the “51st state” in a post shared to Truth Social.

LeBlanc and Canada’s chief trade negotiator Janice Charette arrived in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, a day after LeBlanc’s office sent a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and his Mexican counterpart, Marcelo Ebrard, with Canada’s recommendations for CUSMA.

The letter said Canada would like to see the agreement renewed to sustain North American economic growth while pointing to the huge level of trilateral trade, which is reaching $1.9 trillion in 2026, a 32 per cent jump since CUSMA was created.

LeBlanc and Charette met with Greer, whose team held negotiations with the Mexican trade team last week and demanded a change to CUSMA’s rules of origin requirements. LeBlanc said the meeting with Greer was positive, although he refused several times to get into details when prompted by reporters.

“Sitting with Ambassador Greer at his office, we took the time to talk about specific issues on which Canada can propose, we think, measures that should give the Americans a lot of comfort,” said LeBlanc.

Just hours before the Canadian duo’s arrival in the U.S. capital, however, Trump posted his fiery reminder of his intentions on Truth Social : “51st State!” his post read, linking to a Bloomberg report about Canada’s technical recession. U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra then shared the post on his X account this morning , hours before the LeBlanc-Charette-Greer meeting.

In response to a reporter’s question about expelling the U.S. ambassador, Prime Minister Mark Carney said that wasn’t on the table.

“It’s an administration that we have to work with. It’s our biggest trading relationship. It’s our biggest security relationship,” said Carney, at a news conference in Montreal. “We take the administration as it is.”

Carney also defended his record on economic matters, saying his government was “laying the foundations” for a stronger Canadian economy.

“We see some weakness in part because of clear decisions by the government,” he told reporters in Ottawa, avoiding the term “recession”.

He pointed to the federal government’s rollback of immigration, which has impacted the country’s population growth, as well as the tightening of government spending.

“There’s some other choppiness in terms of how investment is happening, but we’re also seeing at the same time the foundations coming into place, settling in for that stronger, more resilient economy.”

When it comes to the pace of trade talks with the U.S. and the fact Mexico appears further along than Canada, Carney pointed to how the list of technical issues the Trump administration has with its southern neighbour is longer than its one with Canada.

He says Canada was focused on what Carney called “more fundamental structural issues” like the Section 232 tariffs Trump applied to steel and aluminum, as well as other levies charged on autos and forest products.

“We’re looking to determine whether there’s a possibility of a new partnership there.”

Ontario Premier Doug Ford also took the opportunity to renew his war of words with the U.S. administration about Trump’s rhetoric.

“I can’t believe I have to say this again, but Canada will never be the 51st state. Canada is not for sale,” said Ford, on social media .

In D.C., the Canadian negotiators walked into a tense situation after the U.S. talks with Mexico.

The Mexican team was told on Friday that Trump wants them to agree to a deal where CUSMA-qualifying autos would see 82 per cent of the vehicle parts content made in North America, with 50 per cent of that value produced solely in the United States. There was no mention of Canadian content.

“The United States concluded discussions with the goals of reducing the trade deficit with Mexico and strengthening American supply chains,” USTR said via a statement after the meeting, noting that the White House “continues to emphasize the importance of ensuring the Agreement benefits U.S. manufacturers, farmers, ranchers, workers, service suppliers, and businesses of all sizes, and of addressing free-riding from third countries.”

Mexico has not said whether it will agree to the change — talks between the two sides continue in Washington in mid-June. But if President Claudia Sheinbaum’s team bows to this stipulation, trade watchers fear the White House could simply present Ottawa with a take-it-or-leave-it offer.

While news of LeBlanc and Charette’s trip dropped last week — before the 82 per cent demand — the U.S.-Mexico talks have added a new sense of urgency for Ottawa to get the U.S. and Canadian trade teams talking again. The last time LeBlanc and Charette met with Greer was in early March.

After his meeting with Greer on Tuesday, however, LeBlanc was keen to push back on the narrative that Canada was behind Mexico or that talks between the U.S. and Canadan trade negotiators have not taken place.

Talks have “been unfrozen for a number of months,” LeBlanc said, noting that he met with Greer by video meeting on Memorial Day and that Charette has been holding multiple discussions with Ambassador Jeffrey Goettman.

As for formal or technical trade talks, LeBlanc simply said, “we’re doing a lot of that work now.”

“The Americans have decided to publicly say that they’re doing that work with the Mexicans. That doesn’t surprise us in the sense that we always knew there would be these bilateral conversations.”

LeBlanc also made it clear that the July 1 CUSMA review date should not be seen as a real pressure point.

“All three countries could agree also, on a different scenario and a renewal after July 1. So I think we’ve gotta be careful not to set up a cliff that doesn’t exist,” he said.

LeBlanc reiterated that his team has put “specific proposals” to the U.S. side in a bid to address the longstanding trade concerns, but he declined to share details.

Tariffs, however, remain the biggest friction between the two sides, and Canada has repeatedly sought relief on the Section 232 sectoral tariffs against autos, steel, aluminum, and softwood lumber.

There has been no real breakthrough on that, and the U.S. Section 301 investigation on forced labour could soon result in additional tariffs against Canadian products.

But LeBlanc refused to discuss hypotheticals or any possible retaliatory measures Ottawa might take in response to American tariffs.

Instead, he and Charette prioritized stability and the need for continued negotiation.

When asked whether Canadian industry was prepared for the bumpy road ahead, for example, Charette said their work is all about getting the best deal and best market access for Canada’s goods.

“We’re fighting very hard in their interests, and their interests are in us getting to an outcome where we have the lowest possible tariffs on the narrowest basket of goods with the most market access for Canadian products.”

With files from Stephanie Taylor

National Post

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An accused sleeper agent for al-Qaida’s terror network who Canada has been trying to deport for 24 years won another reprieve when a Federal Court judge granted him a new review instead of deportation.

Mohamed Harkat, an Algerian citizen, came to Canada in 1995 claiming refugee protection, but in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States the former pizza delivery driver and gas station attendant was accused of being a sleeper agent in Osama bin Laden’s global network.

His arrest in 2002 sparked an enormous legal fight that has been running up and down in Canada’s highest courts ever since.

On Thursday, Federal Court Justice John Norris said that Ottawa’s latest effort to remove him was unreasonable. He sent the decision to be reassessed and redetermined by a different decision maker.

Harkat was formally granted refugee protection in 1997. Five years later, Canada issued a security certificate against him under new laws enacted amid heightened attention and concern of Islamic terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Harkat, now 57, has denied the allegations.

Ottawa used a security certificate to declare him inadmissible to Canada as a security threat, which was supposed to speed his removal from the country. It didn’t. The certificate was argued in court and upheld in 2005, but the security certificate system had to be reworked after a constitutional challenge.

In 2008, after amendments to the law, a second security certificate was issued against him. This one declared him inadmissible to Canada on security grounds for engaging in terrorism, being a danger to the security of Canada, and being a member of the Bin Laden network, an organization engaged in acts of terrorism.

This second certificate also had to be assessed by the Federal Court, which Justice Simon Noël did in 2010, ruling it was reasonable.

Noël found in his 2010 decision that while Harkat had been involved in the Islamist extremist movement before and after coming to Canada, there was no evidence he personally engaged in violent acts in Canada or elsewhere.

Harkat’s role, Noël said, “would have been largely one of logistics and facilitation.” Before Harkat came to Canada he ran a guest house in Peshawar, Pakistan, for a known extremist, where he helped move mujahideen to and from training camps and ran errands, court heard. The groups involved, Noël found, had material and ideological links to bin Laden, meaning they were part of the Bin Laden Network — making Harkat part of it as well.

Noël also found that while Harkat’s activities constituted a danger to the security of Canada, that danger has lessened by the passage of time, his public exposure as a target of a security investigation, by his previous detention, by his current release on stringent conditions, and by severing his past ties.

Noël’s decision was appealed to the Federal Court of Appeal and then to the Supreme Court of Canada, which upheld the decision in 2014. That was supposed to be “conclusive proof that the person named in it is inadmissible,” meaning that a deportation (or technically a “removal order”) can move forward without a further admissibility hearing.

However, immigration law generally prevents deporting someone to somewhere they are likely to face persecution or a risk of torture or cruel and unusual treatment. It’s called “non-refoulement.” There are a few exceptions — one is if the government believes it is justified on security grounds because of the severity of the person’s acts or their danger to Canada. Ottawa next leaned on that to try to trigger Harkat’s removal.

That process takes time, too. Canada Border Services Agency officials and Harkat’s lawyers went back forth with arguments and submissions for years.

It wasn’t until 2018 that Ottawa determined that Harkat should not be allowed to remain in Canada even under non-refoulement risk, “based on the nature and severity of acts committed.”

Harkat applied for a judicial review of that decision by the Federal Court, as well. Harkat argued the decision was unreasonable and the process leading to it was unfair.

A decision on that application was released late Thursday and Norris, the judge, granted Harkat’s request for a judicial review.

“I am not persuaded that the process followed by the decision maker breached the requirements of procedural fairness,” Norris wrote in his decision.

“On the other hand, I have concluded that the delegate’s determination that the applicant should not be allowed to remain in Canada on the basis of the nature and severity of acts committed is unreasonable because a key finding by the delegate — that the applicant was complicit in acts of terrorism committed by Chechen extremists — is not reasonably supported by the delegate’s analysis of the record, including Justice Noël’s findings supporting the reasonableness of the security certificate.”

Norris said that Ottawa’s focus on facts deviating from the record when ordering his removal was a “fundamental flaw.” Norris rejected requests by Harkat’s lawyers that the court order special conditions that Ottawa needed to follow when making the new determination.

The hearing raised constitutional issues but did not formally elicit a notice of a constitutional question.

Under immigration law, an appeal of this decision to the Federal Court of Appeal can only be made if Norris certifies that a serious question of general importance is involved. Norris left a decision on that issue open for later.

Harkat’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment prior to deadline.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Mexican leaders are weighing a U.S. proposal to revise the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement’s (CUSMA) auto rules of origin — changes that could force a major restructuring of North America’s tightly integrated auto supply chains.

Last week, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer’s team told their Mexican counterparts that U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration wants to raise the overall required North American parts threshold from 75 to 82 per cent and, more controversially, require that 50 per cent of all components originate specifically in the United States.

Bilateral talks between the U.S. and Mexico have been progressing, but Canada has been sidelined from formal technical talks in recent months, despite ongoing backchannel conversations. Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc visited Washington on Tuesday to meet with his chief negotiator, Janice Charette, and Greer. He said afterward he remains hopeful for a positive outcome.

“I remain optimistic,” he told reporters at the Canadian embassy in Washington, “that there will be a conclusion by all three parties — that the economic interest of North America is served by committing to what Ambassador Greer has previously, publicly referred to as the load-bearing walls of their trade relationship with Canada and Mexico.”

He also downplayed concerns about the rules-of-origin proposal, adding that Canada is “very confident that we will have those conversations with the Americans and the Mexicans” on such important changes to the trilateral agreement.

Still, some trade watchers fear that if the American and Mexican trade teams reach a bilateral agreement, Canada may be pressured to accept that framework or risk exclusion — a similar approach was used the first time in 2018.

“It is clear the Trump administration is trying to drive a wedge between Canada and Mexico,” said Andrew Hale, fellow at Advancing American Freedom in Washington. “The countries should be negotiating trilaterally given that this is a trilateral free trade agreement.”

Carlo Dade, director of international policy at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, agreed but said the outcome is up to Canada.

“The Americans have forced their hand to make that choice. So the way this will logically read is that the Americans concluded negotiations with the easier of the two partners, and it’s now turning to the third partner to sign on,” he said.

“That’s what the Americans tried to do (in 2018),” he said, referring to the original CUSMA negotiations, “and last time Mexico was able not to go for it.”

Mexico’s trade team will be in Washington for a continuation of the bilateral negotiations in mid-June.

“(The Mexican team) should reject this proposal,” said Hale. “Not only is it unfair, but it’s counterproductive to the long-term integration of the North American supply chains.”

But the Mexican side was probably not surprised, said Diego Marroquín Bitar, fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, referring to how former USTR Robert Lighthizer originally wanted it at 85 per cent.

“It makes sense for them to go back to their original position,” Marroquín said, though that doesn’t mean Mexico will accept it.

“There’s a reason why the Mexicans and the Canadians didn’t accept the original 85 per cent request … because the auto industry couldn’t take it,” he said.

He also pointed to how the sides negotiated a gradual approach last time, giving auto companies time to adapt to comply with the agreement.

“So anything that’s negotiated from now on will definitely have to include some gradual implementation,” he added.

But Marroquín is more concerned by the proposed 50 per cent U.S. content floor.

“The 50 per cent minimum US content floor would be devastating for the auto industry. It would cause major disruption,” Marroquín said, referring to the need for flexibility to make auto production efficient.

But that may not be the case for Canada.

According to Matthew Holmes of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, most Canadian vehicles already effectively meet the 50 per cent U.S. content threshold.

“It’s not as acute an issue for us,” he said.

The real disruptor for Canada, he said, are the Section 232 tariffs on autos, steel, and aluminum, which are driving layoffs in Canada and raising U.S. car prices — all while failing to boost U.S. production as intended.

Marroquín also emphasized that layering stricter rules of origin atop the 232 tariffs would risk job losses in all three countries while reducing North America’s competitiveness against Asia and Europe.

“If you make the rules of origin more stringent and you still have tariffs on top of them, that can really destabilize the auto industry,” he said.

While the 50 per cent U.S.-specific requirement may be less vexing for Canada, Canada is more vulnerable than Mexico when it comes to boxing out China, which Washington is keen to do.

Dade urged Canada to recognize that Mexico faces a different set of strategic pressures – namely the need to retain jobs and avoid civil unrest — and has an easier path on the China question.

“This time around, China is front and center,” Dade said, referring to how it’s been a key part of the 19 trade agreements Washington has forged with other countries.

Canada exports far more to China than Mexico, he said.

“We can’t afford to do what Mexico can do.”

Negotiations over rules of origin changes are likely to continue in the weeks to come, running up to the July 1 review date. But LeBlanc has repeatedly said he is not concerned by having a resolution before then.

“We’ve got to be careful not to set up a cliff that doesn’t exist,” LeBlanc said Tuesday, noting how CUSMA remains in place for 10 more years even if there is no consensus by the three parties to extend it for 16 years.

Besides, biding their time might benefit Canadian negotiators, some trade watchers say, especially if control of Congress swings to the left in the November U.S. midterm elections.

“Wait it out,” said Hale. “A future Congress and president will likely come to their senses by then.”

National Post

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TOP STORY

Canada is only 10 months away from a March 17 deadline under which MAID could become legal for the mentally ill. This would make Canada one of only six countries on earth where otherwise healthy citizens can be euthanized by their government for conditions such as depression or post-traumatic stress disorder.

And according to a new survey by the Angus Reid Institute, a majority of Canadians had no idea any of this was happening. Of respondents, 56 per cent were “unaware that mental illness eligibility for MAID could arrive in March 2027.”

The survey illustrates an underappreciated aspect of Canadian politics, if not democratic politics generally. As political parties jockey for favour among the electorate, they’re often up against an audience that does not follow current affairs and may even struggle to define the basic workings of their political system.

Below, a cursory summary of other instances in which Canadians were found not to have the best grasp of what’s going on.

Canadians wildly underestimate the deadliness of cancer and car crashes

Just days before Canada was swept by the COVID-19 pandemic, Ipsos published a poll asking Canadians the most likely causes of death in their country.

These types of polls are famous for highlighting public overestimates of the murder rate, and Canada was no different: Respondents said six per cent of deaths were from homicide, against the true figure of 0.2 per cent.

But it also showed that Canadians were simultaneously underestimating the deadliness of the things most likely to kill them. At the time, cancer was responsible for 29 per cent of Canadian deaths, although Canadians thought it was 17 per cent.

Cardiovascular diseases represented another 29 per cent of deaths, with Canadians instead pegging the figure at 13 per cent.

And they were most inaccurate when it came to deadly accidents. At the time, one fifth of Canadian deaths were due to car crashes, plane crashes and other “transport-related” fatalities. But poll respondents guessed it was closer to one death in every 14 (seven per cent).

In 2012, most Canadians didn’t know how the prime minister is elected

A chronic problem with Canadian politics is the mistaken belief that U.S. norms are Canadian. Even Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is on record as thinking that she has pardon powers, even though that’s a prerogative of U.S. state governors, and not Canadian premiers

In a 2012 poll, Ipsos found that a majority of respondents seemed to think that the prime minister of Canada was directly elected, similar to a U.S. president.

Of survey participants, 49 per cent got the question right, answering that elections decide the composition of Parliament, which then determines who the prime minister will be. But 51 per cent got it wrong, saying the prime minister is “directly elected” by voters.

Although, this same survey showed excellent results on Canadians’ knowledge of royal prerogative. Ninety per cent of respondents got it right that the Governor General can refuse requests by a prime minister, including a request to call a snap election.

A third of Canadians have ‘never heard’ of our deadliest terror attack

Recent years have seen a notable ramping-up of violent rhetoric and actions from Canada-based pro-Khalistani extremists. That is, Sikh nationalists seeking the secession of a chunk of Indian territory to be transformed into a Sikh ethnostate known as Khalistan.

This has included pro-Khalistani attacks on Hindu temples , and in 2023, a Brampton, Ont., parade featuring a pro-Khalistani float glorifying the 1984 murder of Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi.

This should be particularly relevant to Canadians, given that Khalistani extremists are responsible for Canada’s single worst act of mass murder, the 1985 Air India bombing. But as the Angus Reid Institute found in 2023 , many Canadians have never even heard about it.

In 1985, pro-Khalistani elements in B.C. placed a bomb on an Air India 747, killing 329 people, including 280 Canadians, when it exploded off the coast of Ireland.

But according to Angus Reid Institute respondents, 28 per cent had “never heard of this until now” when provided with the details of the tragedy. This included clear majorities of Canadians under 34 (53 per cent for the men, 62 per cent for women).

Nearly half of Canadians hadn’t heard about an alleged Indian assassination plot on Canadian soil

Speaking of Khalistanis, in 2023 the pro-Khalistani leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar was shot and killed in Surrey, B.C., in a targeted hit. And according to details released in a related U.S. investigation, the hit may have been ordered by an agent working for the Indian government.

If true, it would mark the first time in history that a successful, state-sponsored assassination had occurred on Canadian soil.

But as this was all playing out, a poll by Leger found that almost half of Canadians hadn’t heard of this. When asked if they knew about allegations that the “Indian government has interfered in Canada,” 47 per cent said they were “not aware.”

In 2014, Canadians guessed that unemployment was as bad as in the Great Depression

In 2014, Ipsos conducted a poll across 14 countries to gauge how much people knew about the demographics of their own country. While Canadians were pretty good at guessing their country’s life expectancy, it was a completely different story when it came to unemployment.

Respondents guessed that 22.7 per cent of the working-age population was unemployed , a rate in line with some of the worst years of the Great Depression. In reality, it was about seven per cent, roughly the same as in 2026.

IN OTHER NEWS

It’s been two weeks since a CTV report revealed a widespread criminal conspiracy that involved airport employees using unwitting Canadian air passengers as drug mules. Specifically, employees at Canadian airports were taking tags from legitimate luggage and slapping them on suitcases filled with drugs. In instances where the drug shipments are discovered by foreign customs agents, the innocent passenger with their name on the suitcase is then arrested. In committee testimony this week, here’s how Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon said his office was dealing with the issue: “These are very intricate and delicate interconnected systems. We’re not going to do anything rash, but I can tell you that in federal transportation infrastructure, security is something that preoccupies me.”

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Brad Bradford is once again vying to become Toronto’s mayor, pitching himself as the planner-turned-politician who wants City Hall to tackle congestion, crime and the cost of living.

Bradford, a city councillor from the city’s east end, first sought the mayor’s chair in the June 2023 byelection triggered by John Tory’s resignation. In that race, which saw multiple candidates splitting the centre-right vote, he finished eighth, with just under 10,000 votes.

He emerged determined to try again, and early signs are good: As of mid-May polls show Mayor Olivia Chow in the lead, but Bradford in second place.

Born in Ancaster, Ont., in 1986, he was first elected city councillor for Ward 19, Beaches–East York in 2018. As chair of council’s planning and housing committee, he has championed measures to speed up approvals, promote office-to-residential conversions, expand modular housing, and make it easier and cheaper to build rental homes and multiplexes.

If elected on Oct. 26, he will be the first professional urban planner, and Toronto’s first Millennial mayor. Dave Gordon interviewed Bradford for the National Post. The interview has been edited for brevity.

What convinced you to run again?

One of the things that changed in my life was the arrival of my second daughter. I see the world and the city differently. I see it as a young father.

I see it as someone who has to have a conversation with my wife about which parks we’re taking our daughters to, because too often the parks have become a mess. I see it with the commutes — that have Toronto as the most congested city in North America.

We are paying more money in taxes. We are getting less service.

We have all of the ingredients to make this one of the best cities in the world — the best city to raise a family, to build a business and unlock our potential. But right now we’re falling down on those basic things, that really play a big role in our quality of life. I want this to be a city that we can be proud of again.

What would you change, as mayor?

Crime, congestion, cost of living.

With respect to crime, leadership and tone starts at the top. We need the rule of law to apply equally across the board.

The collective bargain that we have as Canadians and Torontonians is that there are rules on the books. The vast majority of us agree to respect them. But if you don’t, there’s going to be consequences. And those consequences must be applied equally across the board.

I will be actively engaged, and sit on the police board. The reason I mentioned that, is Mayor Chow decided to depart from the previous mayor, and not sit on the police board. Mel Lastman sat on the police board. John Tory sat on the police board. That’s where the tone and the direction is provided. For two reasons.

Safety is job No. 1 of any government. It’s the most important thing is keep all of our residents safe.

And number two, the police budget is the largest line item in the city budget. So from a fiscal discipline and financial sustainability perspective, you want to be there. Mayor Chow has abdicated that responsibility. She’s delegated it away. In my view, that’s mayoral malpractice.

Congestion, number two. The most important thing we can do is get people back on transit. Transit ridership is 20 per cent less today than it was in 2019.

It’s a staggering number. You think about any other line of business, if you had 20 per cent fewer customers than you did seven years ago, you’d be out of business. Now you ask the question: Why are people not riding transit? Because it’s not safe, and not reliable.

So I introduced a three point plan for safety and reliability on the transit system. It starts with police officers in all of our stations. There is a deterrent factor that comes with a uniformed officer.

For congestion, we’re going to invest in technology.

A Canadian-based company has the best traffic AI software in the world. They install cameras at intersections and they monitor traffic flow in real time and can make light timing signal adjustments down to the second. Intersections are responsible for 30 per cent of the delay in your driving.

On the cost, the third C; the biggest bills you get every year is your property tax. Mayor Chow has increased that 25 per cent, over this course of council.

On the housing side, we are going to reduce the cost to build housing in Toronto by expediting the timelines, cutting the taxes and the fees associated with development, which are always passed through to the end user, the renter, the first time homebuyer, the new Canadian. We tax housing more than cigarettes and alcohol. Thirty to 35 per cent of the cost of a unit of housing in Toronto is taxes, fees, and delays.

Antisemitic violence has increased year over year — how do you intend to face that?

We have become a global centre for this type of abhorrent behaviour, and it’s putting Toronto on the map, for all the wrong reasons.

That’s why I led the charge to create bubble zones, actually called safe access zones. It’s delineating a perimeter around places of worship or faith-based community centres, because we’ve seen those come under attack.

Mayor Chow fought me every step of the way. It took three different attempts to get that through council.

I was able to put together a coalition of the willing at council … and it has been helpful. Because if you are a first-year constable, trying to determine in that moment what is free speech versus hate speech, is a very difficult task. But if you have a clearly demarcated perimeter around a place of worship … you can do your protesting here, but you can’t do it there; when you cross the line, that makes it clear for everybody.

The other thing was, I led the charge for the injunction on Al-Quds Day lately. The premier followed the next day. It’s regrettable that it wasn’t done sooner. In light of the fact that we’ve had three synagogues shot at that past week, and the U.S. consulate.

This is an event that historically has been quite controversial. A lot of antisemitic messaging, genocidal messaging.

I will never stand at a podium (as Chow did) and offer a declaration of a (“Palestinian”) genocide, that I am unqualified to opine over. Because my job is in Toronto. My job is taking care of this city. She’s actually driving division and pulling the city apart.

Progress Toronto accuses you of voting to cut police funding, but then says you switched gears. Could you explain your current position?

It really was a reallocation of the money there — from the police budget, to the mobile crisis response team, which is where we have police officers, social workers and street nurses responding to particular types of calls. We didn’t have that at that time. I think it was 2020. We have that now. It’s actually very valuable.

But look, a lesson learned would be it should not have come at the expense of the police budget. We just needed to find a funding offset for it.

The answer is we needed to fund both. So that’s actually the nuance of that, that nobody ever talks about.

I was out with 51 Division a few weeks ago on an overnight, and I was with the mobile crisis response team and they provided two naloxone injections to a guy who was effectively dead on arrival and brought him back to life.

But look, this idea of flip-flopping is a bit torqued. I think reasonable people when they are presented with new and different information or anecdotal experiences are permitted to evolve their perspective on things.

What projects wasted taxpayer money recently?

There’s lots of waste and inefficiency at City Hall.

Our budget is $19.5 billion operating. That’s bigger than five provinces. And I can tell you there’s lots of room to deliver better value and performance.

We spent millions of dollars to put stickers on your recycling bins to tell you that we don’t pick up your recycling anymore.

We purchased half a million condoms to give away at the World Cup.

Mayor Chow hired 200 information agents for the TTC, as soon as she was elected. The information agents are the folks that wear the red smocks and stand outside of the station and tell you where the station is. But they don’t do anything for safety.

They don’t do anything for reliability. They don’t do anything for the $130 million a year that we lose in fare evasion. Was that the best use of 200 new full-time staff? I would suggest not.

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New data from Statistics Canada shows that food prices rose by 3.5 per cent year-over-year in April 2026, although many grocery staples saw their prices increase by significantly more than that.

Meat is one of the biggest drivers of food price inflation, with beef prices continuing to climb amid tight supplies and strong consumer demand.

Beef striploin cuts saw their price increase most year-over-year to $42.42 — an increase of $9.61 or 29.29 per cent.

Similarly, the average price of beef top sirloin cuts increased by $2.74 to an average price of $28.94 per kilogram, while beef rib cuts per kilogram increased by $2.35 to $30.56 as of April 2026.

Beef stewing cuts saw a price increase of $1.86 per kilogram to $22.51 on average, and ground beef reached $15.59 per kilogram in April, a $1.42 increase compared to last year.

Other protein that saw price increases include salmon (+$1.24), canned salmon (+$0.73), chicken breasts (+$0.88), chicken drumsticks (+$0.59), whole chicken (+$0.32) and bacon (+$0.31).

Elsewhere, coffee also saw steep price hikes compared to other products. A 340g bag of roasted or ground coffee now costs $9.39, compared to $7.78 in April 2025.

Bananas rose in price by roughly 12 per cent, from $1.66 to $1.87 per kilogram. The price of tomatoes increased by $1.49 from $4.69 to $6.18.

Not all grocery prices moved higher, however. A handful of products became slightly cheaper compared with a year ago.

These include eggs, which fell from $4.92 to $4.80 per dozen; onions, which declined from $5.64 to $5.54 per kilogram; and chicken thighs, which edged down by one cent, from $12.17 to $12.16 per kilogram.

Overall inflation increased to 2.8 per cent in April, up from 2.4 per cent in March. RBC said in a report last month that this figure is “less than expected, driven primarily by higher gasoline prices and fading favourable energy base effects.”

Meanwhile, the latest data on food prices comes just days after new figures indicated Canada has entered a technical recession.

Recessions are generally defined as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. On Friday, Statistics Canada announced that GDP contracted by 0.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2026, following a one per cent contraction in the fourth quarter of 2025.

Robert Kavcic, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note to investors that the decline in the Canadian economy seen over the last six months is “barely a scratch in GDP terms.”

But Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Canadians need answers about why Canada has the only shrinking economy in the G7 while speaking in front of the House of Commons on Monday, and blamed Liberal economic policies for the result.

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OTTAWA — As Prime Minister Mark Carney stood Thursday at the Toronto General Hospital announcing his government’s long-awaited strategy on artificial intelligence, he touted the institution’s history as being home to the world’s first lung transplant.

That legacy, he said, showed the possibility of what can happen “when good people harness new technologies and deploy them with the right purpose.”

That was the call to action the prime minister delivered for his government’s new AI strategy, a 50-page document released on Thursday outlining the Liberals’ planned approach to the nascent technology, from sovereignty and safety, to building out AI data centre and jobs.

The plan itself emphasizes thousands of new job possibilities from more widespread adoption and announced the development of a national AI literacy initiative and that millions more dollars would flow into helping more Canadians and businesses use these technologies, with Carney declaring that Canada’s approach would be “prudent, pragmatic, and pro-worker.”

Back on Parliament Hill however, opposition MPs were not buying it, slamming the Liberals’ plan as lacking on detail or addressing the level of trust Canadians have towards artificial intelligence.

“Many Canadians rightfully distrust AI,” Ontario MP Jamil Jivani, said in a statement following the strategy’s release.

“Mark Carney’s AI strategy does nothing to indicate the government understands this distrust or has a coherent vision for how to respond to the concerns of Canadians.”

The federal New Democrats’ leader in Parliament, Don Davies, said rather than carrying the title, “AI for All,” he said the strategy ought to have been named “All in for AI.”

“We know that this technology can produce benefits for Canadians,” he said, “but it needs effective regulation and strong guardrails.”

The strategy announced on Thursday, written after the government received more than 11,000 submissions and heard from a 28-member expert group, emphasized how the Liberals recognized the need for trust.

It promised to introduce further safeguards when it comes to Canadians’ privacy and personal information and the provision of “free AI literacy training” not only targeted at high school graduates and first-year university students, but increasing the training available for K-12 teachers.

When it comes to legislative changes, the strategy committed the government to “modernize new consumer privacy legislation to enshrine a fundamental right to privacy” as well as introduce online safety laws.

“We have to be honest about the risks that AI poses to Canadians and the challenges that Canada faces,” Carney said on Thursday.

“Deepfakes, unsafe chat bots, AI-generated disinformation are becoming more prevalent.”

The prime minister also added that “the privacy of Canadians is under threat globally.”

Melissa Lantsman, the Opposition Conservatives’ deputy leader, said on Thursday that although the prime minister stated that concern, his plan missed the mark in addressing it.

“There is no details in this strategy about privacy, about security, about how to keep Canadians safe.”

The reality of Canadians like herself using AI was here, Lantsman said, but added, “we’ve got to put the guardrails in place, so the Canadians feel protected.”

Davies, who represents a Vancouver riding, pointed to the ChatGPT exchanges that OpenAI had flagged internally but never reported to Canadian authorities involving the shooter who months later opened fire on family members and students at a school in the interior town of Tumbler Ridge, B.C., back in February.

He called it “a failure of companies to regulate clear warning signs.”

“These are the kind of concerns that are being voiced by real people across this country, and they’re not seeing it from this government.”

Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon has previously said it was looking at all options when it comes to the question of regulating AI companies. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also apologized for his company’s handling of the earlier exchanges the shooter in Tumbler Ridge had with its chatbot.

Heritage Minister Marc Miller has also said the government was committed to bringing forward a new bill dealing with online safety but has not provided a timeline. He has said the government was “very seriously” looking at the option of banning social media access for minors and looked to an expert panel to provide it with advice on how to tackle the issue of minors using AI chatbots.

When it comes to jobs, the Liberals’ strategy targets creating up to 90,000 “AI-related jobs and work placement opportunities for young Canadians to start their careers,” through the Canada Summer Jobs program, as well as “help creating up to 250,000 new jobs through the adoption of AI by 2031.”

Carney said his government was committed to doing, “everything we can to make sure that AI is working for people, as opposed to replacing or working at cross purposes.”

Both the Conservatives and New Democrats pointed to anxieties Canadians have about AI displacing their work and the fact that the country already struggles a high youth unemployment rate.

Jivani, who has taken to social media as of late to voice his concerns around AI, said in his statement that Carney’s strategy risks further exacerbating the situation for young people and “promises to create jobs with no specific plan for how to do so” as well as “makes no promises to protect jobs in Canada.”

“Carney’s strategy shows he is unwilling to take any meaningful responsibility to hold corporate power accountable.”

Davies added that while many Canadians, including workers, were nervous about AI, Thursday’s plan failed to alleviate any of those concerns, adding he believed it was only the “corporate CEOs” who he says “seem to be truly excited about it” its potential for mass adoption.

National Post

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Canadians across the country are in with a chance of seeing the northern lights tonight.

That’s because a geomagnetic storm is expected to hit Earth today, after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Centre issued a G3 geomagnetic storm watch for Thursday and Friday.

G3 is NOAA’s classification for a “strong” geomagnetic storm. In the event of such storms, “Intermittent satellite navigation and low-frequency radio navigation problems may occur, HF radio may be intermittent, and aurora has been seen as low as Illinois and Oregon,” NOAA says.

The event is driven by solar activity, in this case a solar flare that occurred on Wednesday, directing three coronal mass ejections (CMEs) — which are eruptions of plasma and magnetic fields from the Sun — towards Earth.

These particles interfere with Earth’s magnetic field, triggering the colourful light display known as the aurora borealis, or the northern lights.

When can you see the northern lights tonight?

NOAA’s current forecast predicts CME arrival around mid-afternoon EDT on June 4. “CME passage would likely continue into the evening and possibly overnight hours of June 5,” the agency added.

However, there remains some uncertainty around timing, and NOAA notes that outliers show arrival six to eight hours earlier, while others suggest it could arrive up to eight hours later.

If CME arrival is too early, much of the activity can occur before dark, meaning there is less chance of seeing the northern lights. In addition, late spring is not always the best time to view the lights, because of the later sunsets and fewer hours of darkness.

The best way to keep up to date with the latest timing predictions is to keep checking the Space Weather Prediction Centre.

The Sun emitted a strong solar flare on June 3, peaking at 7:28 a.m. ET. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured an image of the event, which was classified as X1.0. https://t.co/LuhZRnB99c pic.twitter.com/JXtBy7eplC

— NASA Space Alerts (@NASASpaceAlerts) June 3, 2026

Where can you see the northern lights tonight?

Strong geomagnetic storms can push auroral activity into the northern U.S., meaning there’s a chance of catching the northern lights across much of Canada.

NOAA said of the current storm watch: “The aurora may be visible over many of the northern (U.S.) states and some of the lower Midwest to Oregon.”

It added: “The general public should consider monitoring our page for the latest information and updates.

While the northern lights may be visible across Canada, the best viewing conditions will be in Eastern Canada, because skies are expected to be largely clear overnight on Thursday.

On the West Coast and in the Prairies there will be more cloud cover, so viewing opportunities will be more limited.

For the best chance of seeing the lights, stargazers should head away from areas with significant light pollution, such as city centres and brightly lit neighbourhoods.

And if the display appears faint, try using your smartphone camera. Phone cameras are often more sensitive to auroral light than the human eye and can reveal colours and details that may otherwise be difficult to see.

What is a geomagnetic storm?

According to Space Weather Canada , a geomagnetic storm is a temporary disturbance of the Earth’s magnetosphere caused by sudden strong variations in solar wind.

The largest of these storms are associated with CMEs, which come from an explosion of activity on the Sun.

These events can cause disruption to GPS-related navigation, interfere with low-orbit communication satellites and radio signals, and create harmful currents in power grids and pipelines. However, impacts of that scale are not expected from the storm forecast for tonight.

According to NOAA, G3 storms like this one occur on 130 days during each 11-year solar cycle (or roughly 12 days in every year).

The strongest geomagnetic storms, classified as G5 or “extreme” storms, occur on only four days per solar cycle and can cause widespread disruption, including blackouts. In these cases, the northern lights can be seen as far south as Florida and southern Texas.

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OTTAWA — Former Liberal leader and minister Stéphane Dion is not calling on Canada to become a member of the European Union (EU) — but rather a “full and integral member” of the European Political Community (EPC) to reinforce ties with the continent.

Dion, who until recently served as Canada’s ambassador to France and Germany and special envoy to the EU, made the recommendation in front of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade in Ottawa on Wednesday.

The EPC was created in 2022 at the proposal of the French President Emmanuel Macron. It brings together the leaders of 47 European countries at biannual summits to discuss cooperation on shared priorities, such as security, stability, sustainability and prosperity.

Prime Minister Mark Carney participated in the EPC Summit in Yerevan, Armenia, this past May, which was the first time a non-European leader joined this group.

“This is further evidence of the great interest Europeans have in Canada,” Dion, who is a dual citizen of Canada and France, told the Senate committee members. “So, let’s go further. Canada should become a full and integral member of the European Political Community.”

“It would consolidate our status as the most European of non-European countries.”

The retired diplomat said joining the EPC would be “entirely beneficial for both sides” as it would strengthen Canada’s ties with Europe and allow to consult with leaders of countries the prime minister would otherwise “never have time to visit individually.”

Dion’s proposal raised some eyebrows among some senators in the room.

“I know that, based on your professional life, you’re well aware that when you offer a sales pitch on an idea that you really deeply believe in, you want to make sure that it doesn’t become an object of mockery for your critics,” said Charles Adler, senator from Manitoba.

“If you want to mock my ideas, I don’t care. I know they are good,” said Dion.

“People will naturally interpret (your prior comment) as being part of the EU,” replied Adler.

“Yes, but I’m facing senators who know (better),” shot back Dion.

The ambassador of the European Union to Canada, Geneviève Tuts, who was sitting next to Dion in the room, was asked by Newfoundland and Labrador Sen. Mohamed-Iqbal Ravalia to share her perspective on whether Canada could realistically join the EU.

Tuts said it is not the first time she has been asked that question and the answer is two-fold. First, she said, the potential member has to be situated on the European continent. Second, a country needs to respect the values promoted by the EU.

“I have absolutely no doubt about the second condition. We share the same values,” she said. “Being qualified for being a European country, I’m not sure this will be possible.”

The hypothetical idea of Canada joining the EU has been floated by European politicians as a joke more frequently since Carney came to power. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson recently told CTV it is a “very welcoming club” for like-minded countries.

This week, the president of Finland, Alexander Stubb, said in a speech that the EU should “think big” and increase its membership, citing Canada as a potential candidate.

Tuts said on Wednesday that while there is strong willingness on both sides to deepen cooperation between Canada and the EU, in her view, there are better ways to achieve that goal than Canada joining the continent’s political and economic union.

Dion chimed in to say that he thinks Canada joining the EU is “a false good idea.”

He said the 17 EU states need unanimity to welcome a new member, and that 10 other countries on the European continent are already waiting to become members. So, Canada becoming a member before Ukraine, for instance, would not be an easy sell, he said.

“From the Canadian perspective, very rapidly, I have 11 reasons why I think it’s a bad idea,” Dion continued, ruffling through his papers. “I will go as rapidly as I can…”

He noted that Canada would possibly have to open the Constitution to join the EU which, in itself, would “kill the idea.” He also mentioned the more stringent EU regulations on trade, industry or agriculture that would make it more difficult to align with the U.S.

Dion got through five of his points before the chair of the committee interrupted him.

“I just want to say it pains me a lot to interrupt you because you were my minister, and I never interrupted you then,” the chair, Ontario Sen. Peter M. Boehm later said.

Boehm was as a senior public servant when Dion served as minister of foreign affairs under prime minister Justin Trudeau.

National Post
calevesque@postmedia.com

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OTTAWA — The government that promised to move at speeds not seen in generations is slowing down its pace to allow more consultation on its major projects reform.

On May 8, the federal government launched a 30-day consultation period with the Canadian public, Indigenous peoples, provinces and territories, on potential changes to regulation aimed to fast-track approval processes for major projects to just one year.

The government proposed a suite of measures that critics have said would significantly weaken environmental protections and affect endangered species in the country.

They include creating a regulatory system that ensures only one federal decision is needed for major project approvals, “economic zones” where projects would be deemed pre-approved and allowing early construction before the end of an impact assessment.

Liberal MP Steven Guilbeault was notably one of the fiercest critics of the proposed reform . He has since announced that he will be resigning as an MP this summer.

The government was expected to table legislation before the end of the parliamentary session in June. But with the end of the consultation fast approaching, the government announced on Thursday the public engagement period would be extended until July 22.

“Canadians have demonstrated a strong interest in these proposed reforms and have already provided thoughtful and constructive feedback,” said Dominic LeBlanc, the minister responsible for One Canadian Economy in a press release.

“Extending the engagement period will allow us to hear from even more Canadians and help us develop reforms that reflect the views and priorities of people across the country.”

A government source said they had heard from different groups that the proposed 30-day period was too short to submit their input on how to accelerate major projects in Canada.

Following the end of the consultation, the government intends to introduce legislation in the fall with hopes it will be adopted quickly.

National Post
calevesque@postmedia.com

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Canadians who haven’t completed the 2026 census questionnaire may soon receive a phone call or in-person visit from a Statistics Canada employee.

The census collects demographic, social and economic information from households across the country, and completion of the questionnaire is required by law. Canadian households can face fines of up to $500 for not doing so, under Section 31 of the Statistics Act .

In a news release published on Tuesday, StatCan said: “Census enumerators will begin contacting households from which a completed questionnaire has not yet been received. In addition to phone follow-ups, they will also start going door to door in communities across Canada.”

The government agency added: “These visits are intended to remind residents to complete the census and to offer assistance.”

What will the in-person visits involve?

Thousands of enumerators have been hired across Canada to conduct the follow-ups, most of whom have been recruited to work in communities near where they live.

A spokesperson from StatCan told National Post that census employees have already been circulating in certain regions, but follow-up activities began to ramp up on Wednesday.

“Visits to households who have not yet completed the Census will continue for a few weeks, to ensure everyone is counted,” they said.

Census employees who conduct in-person visits will issue reminders to households that haven’t completed their questionnaire and verify that census communications have reached them, StatCan said, as well as offer support to people who could not complete the Census on their own.

“Going door to door allows us to identify dwellings that are unoccupied, that may have been missed by the initial rounds of census communications or have been improperly identified or classified,” the government agency added.

Canadians who receive a visit from a StatCan employee can verify their identity by contacting the Census Help Line at 1-833-852-2026. Additional information on identifying official census communications is available on the recognizing census communications page of the census website.

Meanwhile, follow-up activities for the 2026 Census of Agriculture will also begin, and StatCan employees will communicate with respondents by phone and through email.

When will Canadians get a final reminder by mail to fill out census?

StatCan told National Post that non-responding households with a mailing address will receive a final reminder letter in mid-July, informing them of their legal obligation to complete the census questionnaire and the possible consequences of failing to do so.

The deadline to fill in the 2026 Census of Population was May 12. However, according to the Statistics Canada census website: “You can still submit your questionnaire past May 12.”

The site refers to May 12 as a “reference date” rather than a deadline, adding: “We encourage respondents to complete their questionnaires as soon as possible to fulfill their legal obligation.”

What happens if you don’t complete the census?

Completion of the census is a legal requirement, and Canadian households can face fines of up to $500 for not doing so, under Section 31 of the Statistics Act .

However, actual cases of people refusing to fill out the census are rare. A spokesperson from Statistics Canada previously told National Post the overall response rate was 98 per cent or higher in both 2021 and 2016.

They also said: “Statistics Canada’s priority is the successful collection of data rather than the pursuit of penalties.”

What are the criticisms of the census?

The census has been the subject of criticism over the years, including for the cost of conducting it and the nature of the questions, which some have labelled “intrusive.”

Franco Terrazzano, federal director at Canadian Taxpayers Federation, told National Post in an email: “StatCan will cost taxpayers about $1 billion this year, so taxpayers deserve a full accounting of what this door-knocking costs and what it actually achieves.

“Taxpayers shouldn’t be footing the bill for a bunch of bureaucrats to go on a stroll, knock on doors and achieve nothing.”

Terrazzano attributes the $1 billion figure to Statistics Canada’s 2026-27 budgetary estimate, published by the federal government .

StatCan told National Post in an email: “While Statistics Canada continues to adopt new technologies and processes that help make collection more efficient and cost-effective, such as moving to an online questionnaire and encouraging households to respond by themselves, in-person visits are still an important part of the Census of population and help ensure that every household has been counted.”

In 2011, Harper’s Conservative government discontinued the mandatory long-form census on the grounds that it is too intrusive, and replaced it with the voluntary National Household Survey (NHS).

The decision was supported by Niels Veldhuis, president of the think tank Fraser Institute, who called the census at the time “a truly intrusive instrument.”

“While the current census data are no doubt interesting for academics, economists and planners who wish to analyze social and economic trends, it is rife with intrusive questions that the government has no business forcing Canadians to answer,” he said.

However, the measure was reversed by Trudeau’s Liberals in 2015, in an announcement made just one day after the then-Prime Minister and his cabinet were sworn in. Justin Trudeau said of restoring the census to its mandatory status: “We want to make sure we’re driving good policies based on good evidence and quality data.”

When it came to the 2026 census, many Canadians expressed their criticisms of it on social media.

In a local Facebook group, one Barrie resident wrote : “Is everyone’s census questions as many and as intrusive as mine?…I’m shocked at the level of detail being requested per household member, not to mention how tedious it is to respond to (the) same question for multiple household members.”

In a different group for Calgary residents , another said: “Almost 100 questions many of them intrusive. They want to know your sexual orientation, how much you pay for utilities, where are you coming from, your parents, ancestors, your mortgage, etc.”

There are two different types of census questionnaires: a long-form one and a short-form one. While 75 per cent of Canadian households receive the short-form version, which collects basic demographic information, 25 per cent receive a long-form questionnaire. The long-form questionnaire collects the same demographic information, as well as information about the social and economic situation of people across Canada and the dwellings they live in.

StatCan told National Post that data from the census provides “essential” information that allows all levels of government to make informed decisions on issues that are important for Canadians.

The StatCan website explains that answers are collected under the authority of the Statistics Act​ and are kept strictly confidential.

“Census data are used to plan health care services, employment programs, emergency services, new schools, childcare services, public transit, housing, and more,” the government agency said.

“Statistics Canada has strict rules to safeguard all its data holdings, and these rules meet or exceed the requirements of the Statistics Act and the Privacy Act,” it says.

“All Statistics Canada employees take an oath under the Statistics Act to protect your information. The oath is valid even after their employment has ended and is accompanied by penalties that include fines and imprisonment.”

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A woman sexually assaulted by a man who used a sleep disorder known as “sexsomnia” as part of his defence at trial has been awarded just over $210,000 in damages by the Supreme Court of B.C.

In convicting Karl Richard Antonius of one count of sexual assault in July 2020, now-retired Justice Austin Cullen didn’t dismiss his “impressive array of parasomnias” — conditions that cause abnormal experiences or behaviours during sleep — but rejected the notion that his newly-diagnosed history with them supported an argument that “his conduct was involuntary.”

Antonius, then 53 years old, was sentenced to two years less a day that October and was granted day parole after serving seven months and five days, according to Justice Warren B. Milman’s recently published lawsuit decision.

The assault in question occurred more than a decade ago on Sept. 27, 2015, in Vancouver when Antonius, in his late 40s at the time, was on a blind date with a 28-year-old woman whose identity is protected by a publication ban and is only identified in his conviction and civil suit decision as T.K.

During the trial, she testified to having no interest in having sex with Antonius that night, but trusted him enough to sleep next to him at his hotel apartment after realizing a friend had her house keys. Wearing a t-shirt and shorts he supplied, the woman got into the bed and lay on her left side and was joined then by Antonius, who touched her bottom at least once and also attempted to move the shorts down.

She said she denied his advances, swatting his hand away at one point, and he seemed to accept that she was only interested in sleeping. When she awoke in the same position some time later, however, she found Antonius had removed her shorts and her underwear and was having unprotected sex with her.

“T.K. said she was ‘kind of was still waking up and not really sure of what was happening.’ She ‘was like slowly coming out of sleep’, ‘was kind of in shock’, and ‘didn’t know what to do,” Cullen summarized. “She said it took a moment for her to realize what was happening and she just froze.”

Antonius finished, rose without saying anything and left the bedroom. The two soon parted ways without mentioning what had occurred and T.K. never responded to his calls or messages thereafter.

When charged in 2016, Antonius told police he thought she was lying in an attempt to extort money from him and “attributed the finding of his DNA on her to the fact she was wearing his boxer shorts and the absence of semen being consistent with his belief that she was not being truthful,” Cullen wrote.

But three years into the case, Antonius began to wonder if T.K. had dreamt about the sexual assault and said his research led him to the topic of sexsomnia, which he said gets “lumped together” with “sleep eating,” something he did but was never formally diagnosed with.

“As a result of what he has learned about sexsomnia, he now accepts that he did have sexual intercourse with T.K.,” Cullen wrote. “He said that he feels terrible for her, terrible for himself, but especially for her.”

Several witnesses called by the defence at trial recounted stories of a fully-nude Antonius sleepwalking and sleep eating. One witness, a former sexual partner, testified that he appeared to initiate sex while asleep, only to roll over and resume sleeping immediately after.

Three medical experts also diagnosed him with parasomnia, two of whom cast a degree of doubt as to whether it was an incident of parasomnia and a third who categorically said it wasn’t.

Cullen accepted that “those experiencing parasomnia episodes can perform relatively complex tasks” but said Antonius’s actions with T.K. “involve consciousness of the context in which it was occurring.”

“The accused had to undress himself, undress her by removing her boxer shorts and her panties, and initiate sexual intercourse with her without awakening her,” the judge wrote, noting it “implies a cautious approach and a conscious purpose.”

Before he was convicted, Antonius was removed as President of Vancouver-based Boreal Metals Corp., a mineral exploration company focused on historical mining project areas in Sweden and Norway, after the allegations against him and the sexsomnia defence came to light in November 2019. The company said its board of directors “had not been made aware of the nature of charges made against Mr. Antonius or his defence to them.”

In an affidavit for her sexual battery civil suit filed in November 2022, T.K. said she was worried that Antonius impregnated her or “given her the herpes virus, with which she was diagnosed four years later,” Justice Warren B. Milman wrote.

She described herself as a “confident” and “outgoing person” who liked spending time with friends and meeting new people before the assault.

“Now, after 11 years, she describes herself as a ‘shadow of her former self,’” as she struggles to maintain relationships, forge new ones, and trust people, men in particular.

“Her world has become much smaller because she is reluctant to venture from her safe haven at home. Her view is that the defendant robbed her of her safety and sense of self.”

Many of her struggles are also documented in an affidavit filed by her mother, who said her daughter “has not been able to move forward with her life.”

Antonius failed to file any response to the court, resulting in a default judgment against him in October 2024.

T.K. had been seeking $250,000 in non-pecuniary damages (pain and suffering), but was awarded $200,000, which includes a $50,000 in aggravating component due to the betrayal of trust and the “profound impact… on the course” of her life.

Milman denied her request for $50,000 in punitive damages, finding that the trial judge imposed an “adequate” sentence.

She will also receive $7,640.62 for counselling already obtained and another $3,042 for future sessions, for a total award of $210,682.62, plus the cost of her legal fees.

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OTTAWA — That hot person who reached out on LinkedIn or Indeed to offer you a job that feels “too good to be true”? They may be a Chinese intelligence agent, warns Canada’s spy agency.

In a new advisory with its Five Eyes intelligence sharing partners , the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) sounded the alarm Wednesday on an increasingly popular method for Chinese spies to steal information from Canadians: online hiring websites.

The warning comes as Prime Minister Mark Carney looks to increase trade ties with China and establish a new “strategic partnership” with the Asian economic behemoth after years of diplomatic chill.

“China’s military intelligence is using an increasingly wide array of professional networking sites and online job platforms to target Five Eyes government and military personnel—and anyone with access to classified or privileged information,” reads the advisory.

“Successful candidates are pressured to provide ‘non-public’ information for unspecified clients who are associated with the Chinese government. Chinese military intelligence services ultimately seek to acquire privileged military, political and economic intelligence that can provide China with a strategic and tactical advantage over the Five Eyes,” it continues.

It’s not the first time that CSIS has warned of foreign spies posing as online job recruiters, but the tone and depth of the advisory suggest the scheme is increasingly successful — and problematic for Western governments.

According to the advisory, Chinese spies are looking to covertly recruit people who hold security clearances within their respective governments, military personnel or individuals with “indirect or peripheral” access to government information such as academics, journalists or researchers.

The scheme is simple and yet effective enough for Five Eyes intelligence agencies (Canada, U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand) to feel the need to warn their citizens of it.

According to the advisory, Chinese spies pose as recruiters or consultants on websites such as LinkedIn, Indeed or freelance work boards and claim to work for fake “cover companies” based anywhere but China.

Usually, the profile picture shows an attractive individual with a common name who appears to be young but holds an uncharacteristically senior job title, CSIS warned.

They either post jobs looking for individuals with geopolitical, national security or defence expertise, or reach out to such people offering them freelance work.

The job posts or offers are often generic, rife with spelling errors and “too good to be true,” the advisory said. They also offer to pay using unconventional methods such as cryptocurrency and promise more money for “non-public information”, CSIS warned.

After making contact, the recruiters tend to offer an interview where they start probing for information or looking for contacts in sensitive sectors or government. They’ll generally also ask targets to do an initial test report before being told that subsequent reports will require “more privileged information,” which comes with more money.

Though not all targets will have classified information they can share, even unclassified or private information on government is of great interest to Chinese spies, CSIS said.

“While applicants often have no direct access to classified information, even unclassified information on government policy, or on military strategy, capabilities and installations, can be collected and combined with more sensitive reporting to form a comprehensive operational picture,” reads the advisory.

“Certain types of data can place the lives of frontline military or other personnel at risk, can weaken our economic prosperity, and enable interference in our democratic processes.”

National Post

cnardi@postmedia.com

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OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney said the Trump administration’s latest threat of tariffs following an investigation into forced labour supply chains is “not a surprise” and that Canada supports the overall objective of ending the practice of forced labour.

Speaking on Wednesday, Carney also hinted his government will soon be proposing more stringent measures to better halt the importation of these slave-made goods into Canada.

“Canada has a very strong legislative regime against forced labour in supply chains,” he said. “We don’t want any element of forced labour coming in goods and services, and we want to use our influence to eliminate this practice of forced labour and child labour.”

Carney said his government has been looking at ways to “reinforce” its regime to better stop imports of forced labour and said the intention is to table those legislative measures in the House of Commons before the end of the session on June 19.

The United States Trade Representative (USTR) released a report late Tuesday which said that Canada, Mexico, the European Union and other countries have “failed to effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labour.”

The USTR is invoking section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which is designed to address unfair foreign acts, policies or practices affecting U.S. commerce.

As a result, the Trump administration proposes those countries, which include Canada, be hit with 10 per cent additional tariffs. Dozens of other countries which have partial or no bans on forced labour imports could be hit with a higher duty of 12.5 per cent.

“The failure of our most important trading partners to address the importation of goods made with forced labour is unacceptable,” said U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Jamieson Greer in a statement.

“This creates a dynamic where American workers are forced to compete globally on an unlevel playing field,” he added.

Dominic LeBlanc, the minister responsible for Canada-U.S. Trade, met with Greer in Washington D.C. on Tuesday to relay Canada’s position on the issue.

“I would say that the conversation today helped the Americans understand our shared commitment to issues like… the question around forced labour and the fight against forced labour,” LeBlanc told reporters at the outset of the meeting.

“It won’t surprise you that we share the concern of the Americans and other economic partners that we need to do everything we can together to face this challenge,” he said.

LeBlanc, however, would not speculate on whether Canada would retaliate if these new tariffs went ahead.

“We’re not going to answer hypothetical questions about a potential response to a measure that we haven’t seen,” he said.

In 2020, Canada implemented an import prohibition on goods produced wholly or in part by forced labour through an amendment to its Customs Tariff, in compliance with the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) which had just replaced NAFTA.

Other legislative efforts further improved transparency. In 2023, former Liberal MP John McKay passed a private member’s bill that requires companies to report any possible forced or child labour in their supply chains and in their annual financial statements.

The USTR report claims that in the past nearly six years, “the number of enforcement actions Canada has taken to prevent the entry of forced labor goods is minimal.”

“The little information that is available regarding enforcement statistics suggests that, between 2020 and 2026, Canadian authorities intercepted just 50 shipments for suspicion of forced labour, with only two shipments ultimately prohibited entry,” it reads.

The report also takes aim at the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), the agency responsible for enforcing the prohibition on forced labour imports, as it “does not appear to publish official statistics or other information regarding its enforcement efforts.”

Finally, the report takes aim at Canada being a possible “dumping ground” for exports of forced labour which may have been denied entry into the United States.

In a statement, a spokesperson for CBSA said “importers are responsible for ensuring that any goods that they are importing into Canada are compliant with Canadian law.”

“It is the responsibility of the importer to conduct due diligence on its supply chains to ensure that goods it imports into Canada are not mined, manufactured, or produced wholly or in part by forced labour,” said Karine Martel.

Martel also provided more context on the 50 shipments that were seized since 2020 due to concerns over potential forced labour.

She said that while two were determined to have been produced using forced labour, the remaining shipments were either permitted entry upon review of additional information, abandoned by the importer, or re-exported out of Canada prior to a review by CBSA.

On his way to his weekly caucus meeting, Carney stopped to tell reporters that, “with respect to these 301 tariffs, this is not a surprise, it’s something that the U.S. has been planning for a few months.” The USTR initiated the investigation back in March.

He also noted that the consultations on the new proposed tariffs will be happening for about 30 days, and that Canada will still benefit from its carve-out with CUSMA.

“So, that puts us in a position where, again, we would still have the best trade deal of any of the U.S. trade counterparts,” he said.

It is not the first time that American legislators have complained that Canada has not been doing enough on the file of forced labour imports.

In 2024, a group of U.S. senators, which included now U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, called on the U.S., Canada and Mexico to take more action so that slave-made goods, especially by Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang region, don’t end up on North American shelves.

National Post
calevesque@postmedia.com

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A pair of immigrants from Syria and Iraq have been convicted of assault causing bodily harm in a British Columbia gym dispute sparked by their victim moving a weight bench.

Ali Alabed and Sa’Ad Munshed were working out together at the Poirier Recreation Centre in Coquitlam, B.C., on Feb. 27, 2024, when Zhe Ming Bryan Wong asked an elderly Asian man who was exercising with dumbbells if the weight bench beside him was free. The man gave him a nod and Wong, a 32-year-old accountant and digital marketer, wheeled the bench to the gym’s cable machine area.

“Mr. Wong then heard someone say, ‘Who the f–k took my bench?’ and he realized that person was yelling at him. There is no issue that the person approaching him was Mr. Munshed,” Judge Gregory J. Brown wrote in a May 27 decision from B.C.’s Provincial Court after viewing surveillance video of the violent scuffle.

Munshed, wearing pajama bottoms and headphones, walked toward Wong “in a strident manner,” said the decision.

Wong started returning the bench.

“At the right top of the video, Mr. Munshed is seen face to face with Mr. Wong. They appear to be in a confrontation, and Mr. Munshed is pointing back to where the bench was first located.”

Munshed testified that Wong “got aggressive and put his hand on” his chest and “pushed him back three or four steps,” saying, “you think you are number one guy in the gym.”

Wong testified that “he feared for his safety but he wanted to stand his ground and not be bullied. He told Mr. Munshed to stop yelling.”

Wong “did not recall raising his middle finger,” toward Munshed.

“The video was blurry on that point, although there is a still photograph from the video that appears to show Mr. Wong’s middle finger raised,” said the decision. “Mr. Wong said raising a middle finger can mean different things.”

After Wong, who was heavier than Munshed, pushed the taller man with his right hand, Munshed moved back a few steps, said the decision.

“A man in a grey hoodie steps in and pushes Mr. Wong back with the back of his hand. Mr. Munshed and Mr. Wong then jostle each other with their hands. Three other men aligned with Mr. Munshed are standing just behind Mr. Wong, Mr. Munshed and the man with the grey hoodie.”

Wong testified that he left the upstairs gym, with Munshed’s “gang of cohorts” following him.

Munshed, and his brother who tried to act as a peacekeeper during the altercation, both testified that it was Wong “who uttered threats, but they both minimized the five-on-one situation, and the video shows Mr. Munshed starting the confrontation upstairs,” the judge noted.

After Munshed and Wong each reported the matter to staffers in the centre’s reception area, they headed back toward the stairway.

Munshed and Alabed “could have easily extricated themselves,” at that point, Brown said.

“Instead of leaving or waiting for Mr. Wong to go up the stairs, the two accused ultimately laid a beating on him.”

As Wong approached the stairs, Munshed got close to him. “Mr. Wong then uses both his arms to push Mr. Munshed towards a wall. Mr. Munshed does not fall,” said the decision.

Alabed, who has boxing experience, then stepped in and pushed Wong. Wong, in turn, pushed Alabed back, then kicked him several times.

“The kicks are with the flat of the foot and do not appear to strike Mr. Alabed with great force,” said the decision.

Alabed then punched Wong in the face three times “and his arm extends fully back for each punch,” said the judge. “By the third punch, Mr. Wong has turned away and his head is facing downwards.”

Munshed then joined in, “punching and shoving” Wong.

“From this point forward, it is a two-on-one scenario for some time,” Brown said.

“Mr. Wong is pushed and pulled by both Mr. Alabed and Mr. Munshed through the hallway towards the locker area. During this time, both accused deliver punches to Mr. Wong’s body and head. Mr. Wong partially falls to the left side of the hallway and he is then pushed against the right side of the hallway. The altercation ends part way down the hallway.”

Wong extended his “arms out defensively to little effect as he is being attacked by the two men. Mr. Wong’s tank top is completely ripped off by the end of the altercation,” said the judge.

Wong felt blood drip down his left eye and felt he was “defending” his life,” said the decision. “He saw the physical altercation escalating.”

The surveillance video shows that when the two men were punching Wong, “his arms were extended but his hands were more open than closed,” said the judge.

Munshed’s group then left the facility. Wong was taken to hospital.

The Crown proved Munshed and Alabed were not acting in self-defence, said the judge.

“It should go without saying that I do not find the overall altercation to be a consensual fight; after some initial jostling, it evolved to an attack on Mr. Wong,” said the judge.

“I am satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Wong suffered bodily harm. Following the assault, he had cracked bones around his eyes, a concussion, and his left eye had to be stitched shut for two weeks. He had bruising to other parts of his body, and he missed a month of work.”

All three men were muscular. Munshed and Alabed were friends, but they “really did not know” Wong “except that Mr. Munshed had seen Mr. Wong in the gym previously.”

Alabed, 22, came to Canada from Syria four years ago.

Munshed, 29, is a permanent resident of Canada who was born in Iraq. He was 14 when he immigrated and now works as a roofer.

“Race may have had a role to play, as each side alleged the other made racial slurs,” Brown said. “More significantly, the events upstairs contributed to the ongoing animosity downstairs. Mr. Munshed was upset Mr. Wong took his bench and some sort of machoism took over from there.”

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OTTAWA — The federal government signalled it would not support efforts to include the criminalization of statements that deny or downplay the harms of the Indian residential school system in its anti-hate bill after a Senate amendment to do so was defeated on Wednesday.

It comes as the Senate has also struggled to provide senators debating the controversial legislation with upwards of 200,000 pieces of mail that it received on the bill as they prepare to cast their final vote.

The legislation, known as Bill C-9, was introduced in September by federal Justice Minister Sean Fraser with an eye to respond to the police-reported rise in antisemitism and other hate-related incidents by creating new obstruction and intimidation offences around places of worship and other buildings where an identifiable group gathers.

Since its introduction, Muslim advocacy groups and other civil liberties associations have raised concerns over its proposal to criminalize the display of symbols linked to designated terrorist organizations, citing the risk that protesters could be targeted by police that cannot differentiate between actual terror-related symbols and Islamic phrases and images that may be co-opted by certain groups.

The Liberals’ decision to accept a Bloc Quebecois amendment to remove the religious defences provision from the Criminal Code in exchange for the Quebec party helping the government pass it through the House of Commons drew further controversy, with many Muslim and Christian organizations, including the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, warning the removal could lead to a chilling of teaching and preaching religious text. The government has sought to address these concerns by amending the bill with a certainty clause and emphasizing that religious freedoms remain protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The backlash has led groups to organize fierce letter writing campaigns. A memo distributed to senators on Wednesday, which was obtained by National Post, informed them of a “bulk shipment” of around 200,000 unsorted postcards were able to be viewed, with staff instructed “to retrieve the postcards addressed to them.”

Eric Gagnon, the director of parliamentary affairs, said in an email it was never the Senate’s intent “to withhold or conceal correspondence from Canadians” and that the postcards in question were “identical,” adding that “both electronic copies and physical samples” were sent to senators’ offices, so they knew what the mail said.

This week, the Senate committee on human rights sought to change Bill C-9 even further, by amending it to criminalize the “condoning, denying, or downplaying the Indian residential school system.”

Sen. Nancy Karetak-Lindell, who says she and her siblings attended residential schools, brought forward the amendment, citing how the committee heard from First Nations witnesses that called for such an offence to be added to target what they warned was a rise in ant-Indigenous hate.

Senators must still debate and vote on the bill Thursday, where the amendment could be reintroduced. Any changes the Upper Chamber makes would then have to return to the House.

A spokesman in Fraser’s office said on Wednesday that provisions to include speech about residential schools extends beyond the bill’s original intent.

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Hillel Neuer is executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based NGO that holds the United Nations accountable to its founding principles. A Montreal-raised lawyer, Neuer has spent two decades confronting dictatorships, double standards, and moral inversion at the highest levels of international diplomacy. He spoke recently with Neil Seeman outside the University of Toronto, reflecting on what inspires him, and on how students can spot distortion and stand their ground. The conversation comes as UN Watch leads a high-stakes campaign to block former human rights chief Michelle Bachelet’s bid for UN secretary-general, with Neuer calling for a leader “willing to confront dictators, not shield them”:

What do you say to students who fear losing their friend group by taking an unpopular stand?

It is easier said than done, but if you have friends who are going to ostracize you because you told the truth — because you contested the manufactured blood libel that Israel commits genocide, and that whoever supports Israel is somehow a supporter of baby-killing — then they are not really your friends and you are better off without them.

Certainly, in my own experience, I have been in a hostile atmosphere for two decades. But with the contempt and hatred I get from those who have become apologists for the Islamic regime in Iran, I also get support, encouragement, and admiration from amazing people around the world. It may be difficult at first to be ostracized, but you will earn respect from morally principled, good people. They may be fewer — but better to have a few good people than a majority of fake friends.

How would you coach a student to spot antisemitism in the classroom?

Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident, came up with a useful three-D test: Double standards, Discrimination, and Demonization.

Some signals are obvious — I have seen demonstrators in Toronto recently lifting up 1930s-style Nazi caricatures that dehumanize Jews. But today’s antisemites are often more clever. They mask antisemitism in the cloak of virtue — and antisemitism has always done that. When society was religious, Jews were accused of having killed God. When science was the reigning virtue in Nazi Germany, Jews were declared the inferior race under racial science. In Soviet Russia, Jews were accused of being fascists, nationalists, and capitalists. In our time the great virtues are human rights and anti-racism, so it is in their name that people demand the elimination of the Jewish state.

An easy tell is the double standard: if an activist has not lifted a finger when tens of thousands were killed in Sudan, when a million Uyghurs were placed in camps in China, when thousands were massacred in the span of two days in other conflicts — but the only issue they speak about is Israel — then you have a basis to ask whether they are truly motivated by human rights or by something much darker being masked in the name of virtue.

What questions should a student ask to push back on a professor who presents those distortions?

Let’s be realistic — in many cases this is psychological and emotional, and it may be very difficult to persuade people on the basis of facts alone. But you have to try. Everything I do is to speak rationally, bring facts, and make arguments.

On Israel specifically: ensure there is a balanced discussion. Israel can and should be criticized — it is a robust democracy that encourages debate and critical inquiry. The prime minister is pilloried every day in demonstrations of hundreds of thousands in central squares. But if the professor is presenting a caricature — omitting that Israel was attacked by Hamas in the most brutal fashion, that over a thousand people were killed, that Hamas has sworn to do it again, that Hamas deliberately hides its population under hospitals and schools, that it has built hundreds of kilometres of tunnels without building a single bomb shelter for its own people — then it is a one-sided distortion.

If you say Israel killed civilians but you do not mention that, according to Colonel Richard Kemp, Israel has taken more measures to avoid harming civilians in a war zone than any other military in history — then you are deliberately distorting the truth. Try to make sure the essential countervailing facts are brought into the mix.

What can anchor a student who keeps encountering those omissions, especially without a faith tradition?

We do have a serious crisis in the West where our universities and our society seem directionless. Canada is a country that fought in World War I and World War II. We have In Flanders Fields — a tribute to those who fought courageously, calling on their successors to carry the “torch.” Each November on Remembrance Day we see the poppies. That is a tradition of moral clarity.

If you have no moorings, you are lost at sea. Students need to go back to the origins of Western civilization — the Bible, Greek philosophy. Jordan Peterson reached millions of people trying to educate them in that direction, and I hope he will be well because he had a very important message for people who felt lost. People should also be reading Douglas Murray, a great contemporary writer trying to make sense of some of the madness of our time. We have been through very mad cultural revolutions in the past five to 10 years, and social media has made us a little crazy. We need to go back to our origins.

Should a university ever take a position on a global conflict?

Generally not. I don’t think universities need to be in the business of taking positions — at some point it is endless. There are many ongoing conflicts with far more casualties than Gaza, and these same institutions never felt compelled to weigh in on them.

After October 7th there was a bizarre mass hysteria where almost every institution felt it had to say something about Gaza and accuse Israel of genocide. Teachers’ unions that had never taken a position on China, Sudan, Syria, Russia, or the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Tigray, or dozens of other conflicts, suddenly found it necessary to condemn Israel. That was pathological.

That said, if a university sees that its own spaces are being hijacked by violent agitators — that its very function is at risk — then it does behoove the institution to push back. Many did not do so initially. In the past year, partly with the Trump administration’s pressure and some efforts in Canada, universities have started to see that they are losing their institutions and must act to protect them. I spent seven years at Concordia and McGill. To see those institutions taken over by agitators and hysteria was deeply distressing. I hope universities push back.

When people try to silence you, do you see it as a legal fight or as bearing lonely witness to justice?

When I came to the UN I had just come from practising law for a few years at a large law firm in Manhattan. I came from a world where if you had the facts and the arguments, the other party would recognize they needed to settle because you had a good case — a world governed by the strength of facts and argument.

Then I entered a world that was upside down. You could prepare the best case, have the facts and the law on your side, and it didn’t matter a whit. When I am interrupted at the UN it has nothing to do with law. I am often interrupted on the basis of a “point of order” — by Cuba, China, Pakistan, Egypt, North Korea, Venezuela, Libya under Qaddafi. Procedurally they had no basis to interrupt; they should have used a right of reply at the end of debate. But they wanted to show on video that they interrupted and could push back. Rarely would a chair tell them they were out of order, because the chair is calculating: who is going to pressure me more — a small NGO like UN Watch that has no tanks and no economic leverage, or China?

So it has very little to do with the law, and much more to do with cynical politics.

What is your favourite book?

One of the books I turn to often is A Dangerous Place — a memoir by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, one of the great ambassadors to the United Nations. He was there in 1975 when the infamous “Zionism is Racism” resolution was adopted by the UN General Assembly, and he saw that not only as an antisemitic act but as an assault on the very language and idea of human rights. He famously stood up and said: “The United States rises to declare before the General Assembly of the United Nations and before the world that it does not acknowledge it, will not abide by it, will never acquiesce in this infamous act.” It was one of the greatest speeches ever delivered at the United Nations. His book is an intellectual analysis of the new anti-Western alliance — and of their apologists in the West. That is very powerful for me.

Does Moynihan’s bipartisan legacy still inspire you?

Yes, and that is something sorely missing today. Just the other day I saw a tweet from a former U.S. ambassador to Moscow — an Obama-era appointee — responding to news that the U.S. was the only country to object when the UN Economic and Social Council voted to nominate Iran to a committee dealing with women’s rights and counterterrorism. The same body elected Cuba, Nicaragua, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia to the UN committee that oversees human rights NGOs. Canada and other Western allies went along with it. The ambassador’s tweet blamed U.S. non-engagement — when in fact the U.S. was the only country that stood on principle.

Standing up to Iran is fighting terrorism, and on that should be bipartisan. When Obama killed bin Laden, many Republicans saluted him. When I first started in 2004, we were invited to Congress by Tom Lantos and others who were Democrats. It was still bipartisan to fight the pathologies of the UN — antisemitism, anti-Israel prejudice, anti-Western bias. In the past ten to 15 years it has become horribly polarized. So yes, we are nostalgic for that era.

– Neil Seeman is a book publisher, essayist, entrepreneur, author, lawyer, and academic based at the University of Toronto.

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“Yet some MAID clinicians publicly portray MAID deaths as uniformly peaceful, beautiful and free of complications,” she said.

“This does not present an accurate picture of reality and risks influencing decisions about MAID” based on an idealized portrayal of assisted death, Coelho said.

Cases of MAID that do not proceed as planned were highlighted last week in media reports involving the 2024 death of Bradley Stewart, an Ontario man who resumed breathing after being pronounced dead by a London, Ont., family doctor and MAID provider — a traumatic experience his siblings who witnessed his mishandled death are still recovering from.

The doctor, James MacLean, did not administer the customary sequence of drugs, and left before Stewart resumed breathing.

Another case reviewed by the Ontario chief coroner’s office and obtained by National Post describes the anonymized death of “Mr. D.,” an 87-year-old man with congestive heart failure who died by MAID in 2023.

Two assessors agreed that Mr. D met all eligibility for MAID, that it was a voluntary request and that he was suffering a grievous and irremediable medical condition.

The MAID provision took place at his home, the same day he was transferred home from hospital.

Once settled, two intravenous sites were established.

The doctor administered the first drug, midazolam, a Valium-like sedative. Next lidocaine was injected to numb the vein and prepare it for the next injection, propofol, a coma-inducing drug that can burn and sting upon injection.

Midazolam is meant to put people in a deep state of relaxation. People often fall asleep.

However, “During the first three minutes. Mr. D experienced signs of physical and psychological distress, including groaning, guarding (tensing muscles) and grimacing,” reads the case review.

“Mr. D did not experience expected sedation” from the midazalom and remained conscious.

“His behavioural signs of distress escalated to repeated verbalizations, including ‘help me’ that continued until sedation was achieved with propofol and a comatose state was confirmed,” according to the case report.

“These unfortunate end-of-life circumstances created profound distress for the family. They witnessed their father suffering with physical and psychological distress and these final memories stay with them.”

The family “shared reflections such as powerlessness to change the course of their father’s final suffering, anguish regarding the decision to support their father through the MAID process and immense grief and sorrow regarding their final memories with their father,” according to the case review.

The MAID provider reported Mr. D’s death to the coroner’s office. A coroner’s investigation concluded that the most probable explanation was an unexpected response to midazalom which, in rare cases, instead of sedating people causes a paradoxical reaction: stiffening of the limbs, elevated heart rate, twitching, jerking or muscle spasms.

According to the case review, the family wanted their father’s death shared with the broader MAID community “to ensure all providers engage in an informed consent process prior to MAID which includes discussion of potential adverse effects of medications” and have contingency plans in place to meet all possible complications.

A paper published by CAMAP (the Canadian Association of MAID Assessors and Providers), titled “Complications with MAID in the Community in Canada,” explicitly recommends a discussion of possible complications with patients.

“That recommendation would make little sense if there were no meaningful complications to discuss,” Coelho said.

None of the protocols for intravenous MAID fail, if administered properly, the CAMAP document states. The most significant complications are the inability to obtain intravenous access, or losing it once the procedure has started.

In a survey of 335 Canadian emergency doctors, three reported having seen MAID patients come to emergency because of IV failure.

A 2022 study of 3,557 MAID deaths in Ontario and Vancouver between 2016 and 2020 found complications in 41 cases (1.2 per cent). Most fell into one of two categories, the authors reported: obtaining or maintaining IV access, or prolonged time to death requiring a second kit of MAID medications.

Overall, death occurred within three to 15 minutes in most cases. The shortest documented time to death after the first injection was one minute; the longest, 127 minutes. “But the authors did not analyze how often significantly prolonged deaths occurred or what factors predicted them — questions that matter deeply to patients and families,” Coelho said.

The Ontario coroner’s office routinely speaks with families after a MAID death, the researchers noted. Any major complications unrecognized by doctors may be reported by families. “Therefore, it is reassuring that complications were uncommon or were insufficiently troubling to clinicians, patients and families to even be recognized as such.”

However, a complication that might not be captured is the possibility of consciousness due to “sub-therapeutic doses of anesthetic agents,” meaning the possibility that some may be aware during the MAID procedure.

In an email to National Post, CAMAP co-founder Dr. Stefanie Green said she wasn’t available for an interview before deadline, but said that “99% of cases have no complication and the vast majority of the 1% that do are related to IV access (or challenges with this).”

However, in a November 2025 interview with Chatelaine, Green said, “The patient feels nothing other than comfort and sleep. There is no gasping, there is no choking, there is no coughing. It’s a peaceful, comfortable witnessed death.”

One in 100 isn’t insignificant, given more than 16,000 people died of MAID in 2024 alone, Coelho said.

Another small study involving five family members who had complex MAID bereavement experiences found that while some witnessed a peaceful death, other accounts challenged the narrative “that MAID unequivocally leaves a legacy of a dignified, good death.”

Bradley “Stewie” Stewart — one of six kids, a community-minded man and active member of the little Baptist church and local Legion in Beachville, Ont., who’d rarely missed a day’s work in 47 years with the same company — was diagnosed in 2023 with liver cancer.

He ultimately chose to die by MAID to avoid the death his father endured. “He thought there was a better way with MAID,” his sister, Cathy Stewart-Mott said.

Stewart, 67 when he died in September 2024, squeezed every moment he could into the months, even days, leading up to his death.

He collapsed on a Sunday after attending a car show at the local museum where he’d manned the barbecue every summer for 20 years before he became ill. “That’s when he said to his brothers, ‘I think this might be it,'” Stewart-Mott said.

MacLean was called to the house three days later, after Stewart had become unresponsive. Stewart was surrounded by his siblings, family members and friends. His three chihuahuas were perched on his bed. MacLean injected midazalom and propofol. But missing from his briefcase was a third drug that paralyzes the muscles and stops breathing. After injecting the propofol, and unable to hear a heartbeat, he pronounced Stewart dead and left.

Only Stewart resumed breathing. Some in the room noticed “what looked at first like almost imperceptible” breaths that grew stronger, Stewart-Mott said.

She was in the kitchen when her daughter found her. “Uncle Brad isn’t gone,” she said. “He’s breathing again.”

MacLean had used a back-up MAID kit; a new one he’d ordered wasn’t ready when he arrived at a pharmacy to collect it.

Tracey Townsend, another sister, said that when MacLean returned to the house after being called back, “He said something to the effect of, ‘Wow, this has never happened to me before. He’s still breathing?’”

MacLean administered more medication, including the neuromuscular-blocking drug, and again declared Stewart dead.

The death had a profound effect on the family. At first, “we couldn’t talk about it,” said Townsend, who had to take a few months leave from work. “Going through MAID and losing somebody twice in a matter of a couple of hours. (It was) too much.”

“There was shock. There was numbness,” said Stewart-Mott. “People tried to remove themselves from it. ‘Maybe this didn’t happen.’”

They’re angry that despite finding serious concerns with Maclean’s MAID practice — including a second complaint involving his assessment of a MAID patient outside a Tim Hortons — MacLean wasn’t brought before a disciplinary hearing by his licensing college. Instead, he agreed to a minimum of six months’ clinical supervision, among other voluntary undertakings. He is permitted to continue practising MAID.

“It literally was a slap on the wrist,” Townsend said.

“It shocks me because, in a lot of jobs, that’s the kind of action that would have got someone fired and yet they are literally saying it’s remediation,” Stewart-Mott said.

“They had the ability to suspend his doing MAID but never went down that road.”

MacLean declined to comment when contacted by National Post last week, citing rules regarding privacy and confidentiality of complaint investigations.

National Post

• Ontario man dies of MAID after being assessed outside Tim Hortons
• 'A doctor took my son': This 26-year-old was denied an assisted death in Ontario by died by MAID in B.C.

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OTTAWA — The federal government will order its broadcasting and telecommunications regulator to review its recent decision to triple the amount that online streamers must contribute to Canadian content, while injecting $600 million to help the cultural sector.

On Wednesday, Culture Minister Marc Miller confirmed the government disagrees with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)’s requirement to raise online streamers’ contribution from five to 15 per cent of their annual revenues.

“We don’t agree entirely with the CRTC’s decision. I will be directing the CRTC to review that decision. And from now until then, we’ll be actually assuming that role and making sure that people actually get the money they’ve been asking for,” Miller told reporters.

The decision was made following consultations on how to implement the Online Streaming Act. The legislation passed in 2023 obliges Netflix and other large streaming services to financially support Canadian content and promote it on their platforms.

In 2024, the CRTC required them to pay five per cent of their annual revenues. But U.S. tech giants such as Apple, Amazon, Spotify and the Motion Picture Association-Canada, which represents the largest American studios, are challenging the order in federal court.

Miller said the ongoing litigation has frozen the funds that were intended to support the cultural sector, and that is why the federal government is stepping in to help.

“The reality is while we’re waiting for that money to come out — hundreds of millions of which are frozen in litigation — the industry is suffering,” he said.

But this announcement is seen by critics as a concession to the United States comes at a time when Canada is preparing to review its trade deal known as CUSMA. The United States Trade Representative (USTR) has already identified the Online Streaming Act as a trade irritant.

“It would be disingenuous to suggest that this is the single issue,” said Miller. “The reality is we’re impatient to make sure that the sector stays vital and stays supported.”

The minister also said affordability is a key factor in the government’s directive to the CRTC.

“We know that in countries, where these types of decisions have taken place, that there are real impacts on production costs, and potential increase in user fees, which are not insignificant for people that have many streaming services,” he said.

“So, affordability is an important aspect of this that shouldn’t be neglected in the discussion.”

That aspect is clearly highlighted in a press release from Canadian Heritage on Wednesday explaining how the government intends to ensure “Canadian content remains affordable.”

“The CRTC’s new requirements would impose new costs on the companies providing these services, which could ultimately fall on Canadian consumers through higher prices,” reads the press release.

“At a time when Canadians face cost-of-living pressure, now is not the time to make culture and entertainment more expensive.”

In the House of Commons, Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet called the directive to the CRTC “another betrayal” for Quebec’s cultural sector.

“After abandoning the digital services tax, Ottawa is once again sacrificing funding for cultural creation by allowing web giants to avoid paying their fair share,” he said.

Prime Minister Mark Carney replied that the decision was rooted in affordability, to avoid Canadians from having to pay more out of pocket for their streaming services.

Conservative MP Rachael Thomas put forward a motion last week to ask cabinet to use its powers under the Broadcasting Act to reject the CRTC’s increase, adding that the cost will be passed on to consumers, will discourage investment and act as a trade irritant.

Thomas was told by Liberals at the time that the government did not have the power to overturn a financial decision according to the Broadcasting Act.

On Wednesday, she did a victory lap. “After nearly two weeks of excuses and trying to mislead the Canadian public, the Liberals are now backpedaling and admitting that the Conservatives were, in fact, correct,” she said.

The chair of the Canadian Media Producers Association, Kyle Irving, said “the federal government has sold out Canadian culture in favour of big U.S. tech interests.”

“If the DST file taught us anything, it is that concessions with nothing in return, only result in demands for more concessions,” he said.

Irving also said dismissed the idea that the federal government will improve affordability by halting the CRTC’s decision, saying that U.S. streamers have consistently raised prices year after year and they will continue to do so regardless of any government action.

“The question we must ask is should US streamers, who’ve made tens of billions from Canadian audiences, also be required to invest in Canadians telling Canadian stories?”

— With files from Jordan Gowling.

National Post
calevesque@postmedia.com

• CRTC to require online streamers to pay 15% of annual revenues to support Canadian content
• After Trump's new tariff threat, Canada to ‘reinforce’ its measures on forced labour imports

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Four additional arrests have been made in connection with two alleged hate-motivated incidents deliberately targeting Toronto Jewish community members on April 30 and May 7, 2026 with ‘gel blaster’ imitation firearms.

As a result of the ongoing investigation, Chief Superintendent Kathleen Stephenson said during a press conference at Toronto Police Headquarters on Wednesday afternoon, two adult men, one male youth, and one female youth have been arreste d and charged. She added that investigators are also seeking two additional suspects, a male and a female.

“These incidents appear to have been organized and planned, with more than one individual involved in their co-ordination,” said Stephenson.

“Beyond those directly affected (these incidents) create fear, anxiety, and uncertainty for countless others who see themselves reflected in the victims. People may question whether they are safe attending religious services, walking in their neighbourhoods, or openly expressing who they are. That is why we take these investigations so seriously.”

Four Additional Arrests Made in Hate-Motivated Assault with a Weapon Investigations https://t.co/OxYsK2uFpt

— Toronto Police (@TorontoPolice) June 3, 2026

During the first incident, individuals visibly identifiable as Jewish were allegedly shot at from a passing vehicle using an imitation firearm. Then on May 7, police responded to a second incident outside the Congregation Chasidei Bobov synagogue on Bathurst Street. Three other Jewish community members from the synagogue were allegedly targeted in the same manner.

After the second incident, Toronto Police investigators arrested and charged an 18-year-old man from Vaughan.

The TPS Counter Terrorism Security Unit continued to follow the evidence, executing search warrants and identifying others allegedly involved, said Stephenson, crediting members of the unit with extensive investigative work that led to the latest arrests.

“While this matter remains before the courts, allegations of targeted violence and hate against any community demand a thorough and determined response, said Stephenson. “We also recognize that incidents like these can be an early warning sign of something more serious. When allegations of targeted, hate-motivated violence come to our attention, early intervention matters.”

Just two days ago, the Prime Minister acknowledged that Canada's civic compact is failing Jewish Canadians.

Today, Toronto Police announced additional arrests of hateful extremists who deliberately targeted visibly identifiable Jews in a series of attacks.

When Jewish Canadians… https://t.co/iyqL6wtt9P

— CIJA (@CIJAinfo) June 3, 2026

The Centre for Jewish and Israel Affairs issued a statement about the arrests on Wednesday afternoon. In a post of the statement to X, the CIJA wrote: “ We commend the Toronto Police Service, including the Counter-Terrorism Unit and the Hate Crime Unit, for their diligence in bringing those responsible to justice. But arrests alone will not solve this crisis.”

Noting the involvement of youth in these latest alleged attacks, the CIJA said that we are “witnessing the consequences of radicalization and the normalization of hate. Governments, institutions, and authorities at every level must confront the forces driving this hatred and violence before more Canadians are put at risk.”

• Suspect, 18, identified after three shot at outside Toronto synagogue
• Toronto Jews injured in drive-by shooting with ‘gel-blaster’ firearm

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OTTAWA — Canada could take a big swipe out of its national housing crisis if municipal governments would reduce or eliminate the hefty charges attached to building new homes, according to a new report from the federal housing agency.

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) said the number of viable building projects in some municipalities would increase by as much as 14 per cent if those local governments would scale back what is known in the industry as development charges. Those additional costs, which have become a contentious issue in Canada as the gap between supply and demand of new homes continues to grow, are for new infrastructure such as sewers, electrical and water services.

Using a new model to analyze the correlation between development charges and new builds, the CMHC found that small cuts of less than 20 per cent to development charges would have a modest effect on construction, boosting project viability by less than two per cent in most cases. But cutting the charges by between 50 and 60 per cent would trigger a building increase of about five per cent in, for example, Toronto and Vancouver, the country’s two most expensive housing markets, while eliminating development fees entirely would increase project viability by about 10 per cent in both cities.

In Burnaby, a fast-growing city just east of Vancouver, eliminating development charges would boost housing construction by 13.8 per cent, the model concluded.

“They’re a very significant barrier,” said Mathieu Laberge, CMHC’s chief economist.

The new report, based on data from 40 Canadian municipalities, is one of the first to try to make a statistical link between development charges and the construction of new homes. Canada has been battling a housing crisis for many years that has been caused by the supply of new homes not keeping pace with increases in demand, fueLled largely by population increases, migration to larger centres and immigration.

That gap between supply and demand has led to massive increases in housing prices, leaving many Canadians “house poor,” remaining in apartments or other homes that don’t meet their needs, or even homeless.

Carolyn Whitzman, an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto’s School of Cities, said cutting development charges would help cut costs and improve affordability, but added that the effects would likely be marginal without other changes.

Developers say they’d build more if land were made available and overall costs were lower. According to one recent study, the biggest cost in the price of a new home (about 36 per cent) is taxation, making the three levels of government the top beneficiary of the construction of a new home. About 70 per cent of that typical tax bill goes to development charges, land-transfer taxes, and HST. The other 30 per cent is for the indirect income and corporate taxes paid throughout the supply chain, although it’s all ultimately passed on to buyers.

Municipalities, which don’t have the authority to collect through through income or sales tax, rely largely on development charges and property taxes for their revenue.

Housing industry officials have said there’s been growing awareness in recent months of the link between development charges — and other rising costs — and the lack of building.

Whitzman said development charges, while important, are only one hurdle in the housing crisis. Other challenges include the need to reduce unnecessary regulations and other red tape, increase the use of AI and other technology in an industry dominated by small companies, and boost efficiency through greater scale within the sector. The costs of land, materials, and workers have also gone up.

“It’s hard to find construction workers if there are no houses affordable for construction workers,” Whitzman said.

Governments at all three levels, meanwhile, have in recent years also been paying more attention to the lack of homes. During last year’s federal election campaign, the Liberals promised that 500,000 homes would be built annually over the next 10 years, triggering a level of residential construction not seen since the years following the Second World War.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has since promised a new Crown corporation called Build Canada Homes to provide about $25 billion in public financing for prefab and “affordable” housing, plus $10 billion in low-rate capital.

The federal government also launched the Build Communities Strong Fund, a 10-year, $51-billion program to help support the construction of water, sewage, transit and road infrastructure. Carney also promised to eliminate the GST on new homes that sell for less than $1 million to first-time buyers.

Economists say an increase in housing construction is important beyond filling a critical social need. It means downward pressure on housing prices, economic activity and jobs through construction and the related purchases of appliances, paint and other items that new homeowners typically make. New buildings also mean a windfall for government coffers at all three levels.

Laberge said an increase in new home construction of course means a greater take from property taxes for any municipality that cuts development charges, but it’s not clear how much.

Despite all the new policies and programs, housing construction has yet to take off. Less than a year ago, the CMHC admitted that the crisis might get worse because housing starts were expected to fall in 2025, 2026 and 2027, leaving production at less than half the 480,000 that the CMHC says Canada needs to add each year over the next decade.

Analysts say it takes years to build homes and that there’s sometimes a lag of as much as a dozen years from when a plot of land has been identified for a new home, subdivision or apartment building to when people are able to move in. It can take even longer when roads and key services — sewer, water, electricity — need to be added.

National Post

• Housing prices would be 10% lower if Canada had kept pace with U.S., CMHC says
• Canada's housing crisis is dragging life satisfaction down among young adults

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The math says it almost shouldn’t happen. A Canadian team has not won the Stanley Cup in 32 years, and the odds of a drought that long are about three in 10,000.

That figure comes from Doug Stotz, a retired financial services executive outside Boston who has been running the numbers on Canada’s losing streak for at least a decade.

The Stanley Cup Final opened Tuesday in Carolina, with the Hurricanes hosting the Vegas Golden Knights. Both teams are American. The last Canadian team to win was the Montreal Canadiens in 1993. The drought spans 33 years, but the 2005 season was wiped out by a lockout with no Cup awarded, leaving 32 seasons without a Canadian winner. The closest a Canadian team came this year was the Canadiens again, who lost the Eastern Conference final to Carolina.

Stotz built the estimate on a simple idea. Each season, he took the share of teams in the league that were not Canadian, then multiplied those odds across every year since 1994.

“This year there are 32 teams that started the season. Seven of them were from Canada,” Stotz said. “So, if you knew nothing about how good each team was, a Canadian team has a 22 per cent chance of winning the Stanley Cup. And so, there’s a 78 per cent chance that a team from the States would win.”

The league has grown over that stretch, from 26 teams in 1994 to 32 today, while the number of Canadian teams held between six and eight. As the league expanded, the annual odds against a Canadian winner climbed from about 69 per cent to 78 per cent.

Run that out over 32 years and the chance of no Canadian winner the whole time lands at 0.03 per cent.

Stotz is the first to say the number is rough.

“All models are flawed, but some are useful,” he said.

He called it a quick and dirty estimate. A more refined version would weigh each team’s real chances and count only the teams that made the playoffs, since a team cannot win the cup without getting there first. Stotz said a sharper model would still land in the range of a one-in-a-thousand event (0.1 per cent).

Jeffrey Rosenthal, a statistics professor at the University of Toronto, said the simple model overstates how unlikely the drought is, because it treats every season as a fresh, independent event.

“Many players and coaches stay on the same team from one year to the next, so most teams’ skill levels are somewhat similar to the previous year,” Rosenthal said in an email. “So if they performed badly the previous year, they are more likely to do so again.”

Teams are not equal to begin with, he said, and the gap is not just luck.

“Some teams are better than others, and this is not just due to random chance, but also to many structural economic and historical factors, including fan base, dollar exchange rate, reputation,” Rosenthal said.

He said the low odds point to a conclusion the headline number misses.

“The fact that it would be so unlikely for no Canadian team to win in 32 years if it were just random actually demonstrates that it is not just random,” Rosenthal said.

Stotz is a lifelong Boston Bruins fan. He said he started the calculation while working at the Bank of Montreal in Canada, and still sends the chart tracking how the odds have changed since 1994 to his Canadian friends.

Stotz said hockey lends itself to long droughts more than most sports.

“Hockey is a sport with the greatest chance that the non-favoured team wins,” he said.

Low-scoring games and frequent overtimes mean upsets are common, he said, which is part of why a streak this long can build.

Whether the drought is bad luck or something more, Stotz lands on the simpler answer.

“That’s just random weirdness,” he said, “or a statistical anomaly.”

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Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals ended in a 5-4 victory for the Las Vegas Golden Knights, however, the team’s goalie faced his own particular challenge during the s eries opener.

Carolina Hurricanes fans chanted “No means no” at Carter Hart, in a loud and very public reference to his part in a sexual assault case that arose following accusations made by a woman who was involved in a hotel celebration with five members of Canada’s junior men’s national team after they won the 2018 IIHF World Junior Hockey Championship. Hart and four of his teammates were acquitted of all charges last July.

Monday night in Raleigh, N.C., many of the more than 18,000 fans at PNC Arena “relentlessly chanted ‘No means no!’ at Golden Knights goaltender Carter Hart throughout Game 1,” Hockey News site, Hockey Forever, posted on Instagram on June 2.

The post also includes a video clip from the game, in which the chant can clearly be heard as the action continues.

View this post on Instagram

Here is the video from IcyVert, identified in the Hockey Forever post:

A “no means no” chant has started here pic.twitter.com/6lKI5aD8un

— IcyVert (@IcyVert) June 3, 2026

Canadian sports journalist, Justin Arenburg, posted an Instagram video clip saying: “The Carolina Hurricanes made sure Carter Hart heard everything tonight from the opening ceremony when he was booed ten times louder than any other Vegas Golden Knight player on the ice, to the chants midgame that included ‘No means no.’”

View this post on Instagram

Over the course of the eight-week trial of Hart, Dillon Dube, Alex Formenton, Cal Foote, and Michael McLeod, the proceedings were declared a mistrial twice. This led to Justice Maria Carroccia adjudicating the case by herself. She ultimately acquitted all five defendants, ruling that she did not find the testimony of E.M. “credible or reliable.” She also ruled that “the Crown (did not) meet its onus on any of the counts.”

After the acquittals, the NHL eventually allowed the players to return to the league, reports ESPN .

However, of all five players, only Hart has returned to the NHL, according to the Daily Mail . Foote signed with the Carolina Hurricanes’ AHL team, the Chicago Wolves. Dube signed a tryout deal with the Springfield Thunderbirds, the AHL affiliate of the St. Louis Blues. McLeod and Formenton are playing in Europe.

Hart has been shielded by Vegas’ staff from questions about the case. That includes a press conference in the run-up to the Stanley Cup Finals, when Hart answered a single question about the verdict before a communications officer cut the media scrum short.

• Read the full text of the judge's verdict in the Hockey Canada sex assault trial
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Instead of combating computer bugs, Google is taking up a new focus, seeking U.S. government permission to actually release a lot of pesky bugs — mosquitoes.

The tech company wants to release 32 million of the insects in California and Florida over the next two years as part of an ongoing AI-driven health initiative it calls the Debug Project . The goal is to control mosquito populations and cut down on mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue and Zika.

The Debug Project plans to do this by breeding and releasing sterile male mosquitoes to reduce populations of disease-carrying species. The project is using a mix of engineering, AI and data systems to solve a large-scale biological problem.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is reviewing Google’s request to release up to 16 million mosquitoes annually. The EPA will decide whether to approve Google’s request for an experimental-use permit after the public comment period ends on June 5, reports The Guardian .

“Bad mosquitoes spread disease. Good mosquitoes can stop them,” the Debug Project team says on its website . “Debug is a group of scientists and engineers developing technology to raise and release sterile mosquitoes to eliminate the ones that carry disease. Mosquitoes kill more people than every other animal combined. One species, Aedes aegypti, carries diseases such as dengue, Zika, yellow fever, and chikungunya which make hundreds of millions of people sick every year.”

The Debug team contends that most of these diseases can’t be effectively combated with vaccines or treatments. Moreover, attacking mosquitoes with pesticides is not sustainable because they become less effective over time and can also be toxic. Meanwhile, since it’s impossible to find all the places where mosquitoes breed, the project team insists: “We need a new approach.”

The team calls its planned mosquitoes “good bugs.” They are male mosquitoes that have a naturally occurring bacteria called Wolbachia, which renders the carriers unable to have offspring with females.

Another benefit, says the Debug team, is that these male mosquitoes can’t bite or spread disease. For this type of male-only release, the U.S. EPA acknowledges that male mosquitoes do not bite and show no risk to people, animals, or the environment.

“Over time, there will be fewer and fewer bad mosquitoes,” according to the Debug Project. “This technique uses a naturally occurring bacteria and uses no chemicals, no toxins and doesn’t involve genetic modification. We look forward to working with communities to show that by releasing enough good bugs Debug can have a real impact on mosquito populations and disease. Eventually, we hope to help millions of people live longer, healthier lives.”

It may seem odd for Google to be focused on biological rather than computer bugs, but this initiative was initially driven by a former subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet. Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences) is a tech company focused on AI-driven health. It uses technology and data science to combat diseases and other global health problems, reports The Guardian . But as of December 2024, Google acquired the Debug Project from Verily.

It was begun back in 2016 , according to a Debug Project blog post. That’s when the team started exploring tech-driven solutions to combat deadly mosquitoes. The approach is drawing on the sterile insect technique, which experts have used to combat a variety of problematic bugs for decades. Using the wolbachia bacteria for sterilization had been done for about 15 years, reports USA Today.

However, some researchers worry that released mosquitoes could disrupt local food ecosystems when a target species is reduced. Mosquitoes “are important source of food for amphibians, bats, birds, fish, insects, and reptiles.” They also warn that reducing one mosquito species could let another disease-carrying species fill the niche.

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Senior officials have warned President Vladimir Putin that sustaining defence spending at current levels would imperil the Russian economy, the first major sign that the Kremlin’s consensus on the war in Ukraine is fraying.

The country’s top finance ministers and the central bank are urging the government to cut spending or risk the deficit spiraling out of control, according to Bloomberg News . Russia’s heavily sanctioned economy has reportedly depleted fiscal reserves after more than four years of the full-scale invasion.

Russia is expected to exceed its budget by 2 trillion rubles (C$37 billion) in 2026, which could double in a “negative scenario,” according to a letter from the Finance Minister Anton Siluanov obtained by the Financial Times. Further deficit-financed overspending to the tune of 4 trillion roubles was also expected in 2027 and 2028, he wrote. Russia allocated almost 40 per cent of this year’s budget, about 16.84 trillion roubles ($316 billion), to spending on defence and security.

The current budget was planned with eventual reductions to defence spending, which Putin has so far resisted, asking ministers to look for efficiencies elsewhere. In January, the finance ministry asked government agencies to reduce non-essential spending by 10 per cent but excluded social and defence spending, according to FT.

“Reserves are not endless. Weakness in finances cannot be tolerated in the context of such large-scale transformations in the world,” Siluanov said in an interview last week with the Russia newspaper Kommersant, urging “restraint,” according to Bloomberg. Siluanov’s warning comes as Russia’s rainy day stash, the National Wellbeing Fund, has depleted by about 60 per cent since before the invasion in 2022.

Despite a boost from higher oil prices, the Russian economy has run out of momentum. In May, the country’s economic ministry downgraded its gross domestic product forecast for 2026 to 0.4 per cent from the previous estimate of 1.3 per cent. Russia’s war economy had previously confounded expectations, growing in 2023 and 2024 before slowing in 2025 to one per cent.

Officials have blamed the unprecedented sanctions, a strong rouble hurting exports and double-digit interest rates.

Sources tell Bloomberg that some officials in Putin’s circle who continue to support Putin’s war agenda are urging that military expenditure be protected, arguing that it would hurt businesses who rely on military contracts .

Russia has also considered leveraging its commodity-heavy economy by implementing a windfall tax on producers and banks to fill its budget gap, Bloomberg previously reported.

In April, Putin publicly dressed down officials and asked them to explain the slowdown in manufacturing, industrial production and construction. “These are objective circumstances, of course, but it is clear they are far from the only factors determining business and investment activity in the country,” he said, according to Moscow Times.

With money tight, some of Russia’s oligarchs have taken to making large financial donations to the state. According to the Russian-language business magazine Expert, close to 220 billion rubles (C$4.1 billion) were donated. One tycoon argued in a closed-door meeting with Putin and other business leaders that “that the vast majority of those at the meeting started their businesses in the 1990s, and that, in most cases, those beginnings were in one way or another connected to the state,” according to Interfax.

With a military breakthrough in Ukraine becoming harder to achieve, Putin’s belief that Russia can capture all of Donetsk and Luhansk this year seems increasingly remote. According to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, Russia is seizing or infiltrating only close to eight per cent of territory they advanced into in 2025.

Ukraine officials said in March that Russia’s casualty rate reached 35,351 in March, a new monthly high. An emboldened Ukraine has attacked oil facilities and ports deeper inside Russia with the use of drones, while Russia has escalated its missile and drone strikes across Ukraine.

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OTTAWA — Newly elected B.C. Conservative Leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay says she’d maintain commercial ties with neighbouring Alberta if Albertans vote to leave Canada.

“I would maintain relations, economic relations,” Findlay told National Post when asked how she’d react to a successful Alberta independence vote as premier of B.C.

One of the big questions surrounding Alberta independence is how it would affect the landlocked jurisdiction’s ability to get exports to the Pacific via B.C.

Findlay said Alberta’s future in Canada is a matter of “determination by those in Alberta,” adding that she was wary of “dealing in hypotheticals” about the subject.

“It’s so hard to know. Often things you think might go this way or that way end up going a third way,” said Findlay.

Findlay, known to her supporters as “KLF,” narrowly won the B.C. Conservative leadership vote over the weekend, after running on a populist platform focused on reining in Indigenous land claims and increasing the influence of western provinces within Confederation.

She promised in a fiery victory speech to defend B.C. from the whims of “eastern and global elites.”

Findlay spoke to National Post on Tuesday to discuss her vision for a Western Canada alliance and how she’ll navigate relations with next-door neighbour Alberta amidst uncertainty about its future in Canada.

She said she understood the “frustration behind things like the (Alberta) referendum,” and laid much of the blame at the feet of former prime minister Justin Trudeau and successive B.C. NDP governments for limiting the flow of Alberta oil and gas to new markets overseas.

“(I couldn’t) believe it when… Trudeau said there was no ‘business case’ for developing our (liquefied natural gas) when Japan and Germany were asking for it. How can you have a commodity and people wanting to buy it and say there’s no business case? It’s ridiculous,” said Findlay.

Findlay, who campaigned on scrapping the federal oil tanker ban and clearing the way for a northwest coast crude oil pipeline, said that B.C. and the other western provinces have a common interest in growing offshore energy exports.

“I see the whole thing, in my mind, about building these western alliances as well,” said Findlay. “The idea to get resources to market, infrastructure built and double (export) capacity will resonate across B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan.”

Findlay noted that Canada’s three westernmost provinces are united in frustration over the federal equalization program.

“(We’re) feeling like we’re not being heard, and yet we’re being looked to for equalization payments and relied on to basically fund a lot of what’s relied on back east,” said Findlay.

She added that the region’s underrepresentation in the House of Commons and Senate adds to these frustrations.

Findlay, who was a Conservative MP for a decade before losing her seat in last year’s federal election, said she gained a begrudging respect for the separatist Bloc Québécois during her time in Parliament.

“When I was serving in Ottawa… the Quebecois there would just look at us and say, ‘well, nothing’s stopping you from having a B.C. party, or an Alberta party,'” said Findlay.

Findlay said other provinces, including hers, could learn from the way Quebec successfully pushed for more autonomy over things like immigration.

“I think that we have a number of areas where the provinces should push for a bigger say,” said Findlay.

Findlay said she’s keeping a close eye on nine constitutional and immigration-related questions that will be put to Albertans in the province’s Oct. 19 referendum.

“(I’ll be watching) because I’m looking at all these things as well,” said Findlay.

Findlay, a lawyer by training, said she’s especially interested in ballot question no. 6, which asks if Albertans support amending the Constitution to transfer the power to appoint provincial appeal court judges from the federal government to the provinces.

She said the current norm of federal governments appointing provincial judges contributes to the centralization of power.

“You do end up with the (federal) government of the day directly influencing who gets those appointments, with very little provincial and local input,” said Findlay.

Findlay campaigned on using section 43 of the Constitution to write in a new amendment stating that private property has primacy over Aboriginal title in B.C. This would require the approval of both houses of Parliament and the B.C. legislature.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has said that she agreed that courts have interpreted Indigenous treaty and title rights too broadly, and that she’s willing to talk with other premiers about “some kind of constitutional amendment,” to rein this in.

Smith has been critical of Justice Shaina Leonard’s decision last month to side with Indigenous groups challenging a citizen-led petition for a referendum on Alberta independence. Leonard said in the ruling that the province had a duty to consult with affected First Nations before allowing the petition to go forward.

A section 43 amendment affecting Indigenous relations could theoretically cover both B.C. and Alberta, assuming both legislatures pass supportive resolutions.

Findlay told National Post she expects to see Smith at a dinner event in Calgary on Friday.

Alberta separatist leader Jeffrey Rath called Findlay’s comments on Alberta self-determination “measured, reasonable and helpful.”

Rath said he’d welcome Findlay as an interlocutor at the Confederation table as Alberta negotiates its exit from Canada.

B.C.’s NDP government, which holds a one-seat majority, has had trouble getting its agenda through the province’s legislature, fuelling speculation that a snap election could be imminent. The next election must be held by 2028.

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A B.C. man who broke into a woman’s home and beat her with a baseball bat while her children hid nearby was awarded a reduced sentence last week because the judge was convinced the 25-year-old is “not now the person he was when he viciously and irrationally attacked” his victim.

After credit for time served, Craig Brentton Durando was given a sentence of two years less a day for assault with a weapon, robbery and breaking and entering — offences to which he pleaded guilty last October — allowing him to serve his time in a provincial correctional facility.

The home invasion in Kelly Balatti’s home occurred in September 2023, but was precipitated by earlier events involving her son, Nicolas.

In August, he and another man named Nikolas Downey exchanged mutual insults and threats at a house party and continued their feud into September via TikTok and Snapchat.

“On September 4, Downey sent (Nicolas) Balatti a message saying ‘see you tonight’ with a kiss emoji,” wrote Madam Justice Jennifer M.I. Duncan of the Supreme Court of B.C. in her recently published decision.

That night, Durando and three other men drove from Kitimat to Terrace, where they mustered with Downey and arrived at the Balatti residence early in the morning with plans to confront and assault Nicolas Balatti.

Durando, who had been drinking and using cocaine beforehand, kicked in the door and entered the home with Downey and another man, while another stayed outside and the third waited in the car.

Downey and Durando searched for their target, but the latter first came across Kelly Balatti in bed. After taking her jewelry, he ordered her onto the floor, where he proceeded to beat her with the bat while demanding to know her son’s whereabouts.

When she attempted to answer, “he kicked her several times in the mouth” with such force that “her head hit the wall behind her.”

After using the bat to hit the walls and the television, he threatened to come back if she called or told anyone.

“He raised the bat above his head and asked her if she wanted to know his name. She said no. He lowered the bat and said, “good,’” Duncan wrote.

Unbeknownst to Durando was that the woman’s teenage son was also home and called the police while he hid in his closet, while an elementary-school-aged daughter hid in her room.

Durando and Downey fled out the back door when police arrived and were later arrested.

While he had previous convictions for uttering threats, mischief, weapons offences and personation and had served some time, Durando had “managed to stay out of trouble with the criminal justice system” for over two years before the violent home invasion and assault, though he was steadily unemployed and struggling with drug and alcohol addiction.

In her victim impact statement, the woman said she suffers ongoing back pain from her injuries and remains traumatized.

“When she does close her eyes, she sees everything happening again,” the judge wrote.

It also compromised the home’s sense of security for her and her children, the youngest of whom “spends a lot of time away from home because she does not feel safe.”

The teen who called 911 filed his own statement and said his grades have suffered as he deals with trauma and fear that it will happen again.

As for Durando, the judge reported that he’s been thriving while awaiting the outcome of his legal proceedings.

After his arrest, Durando was released to a residential treatment centre as part of his bail conditions. He breached those by consuming marijuana, admitted to it and was back in custody by January 2024, only to be released to a new residential treatment centre that met “his needs or expectations” that May.

“He is now in second stage housing with New Visions and has been successful with avoiding any relapses,” the judge wrote.

She also noted that Durando has rebuilt a collapsed relationship with his family and secured a job as a diamond driller last July, a field which has ignited “an interest in jewellery making and hopes to take that up as a career.”

She said he is “clearly extremely remorseful” for his actions and “takes full responsibility.”

“He has done everything society could expect of someone in his position,” she wrote.

Duncan said Durando’s attack was “a heinous crime of violence” and without his mitigating factors, he would likely “be facing a sentence of five years, likely longer, despite his guilty plea.”

But she said his “substantial efforts at rehabilitation must be recognized and any sentence impose (sic) must not discourage him from continuing to abstain from drugs or leading a productive life.”

Durando, who received 9.5 months credit for the 190 days spent in pre-trial custody, will be on probation for three years after his release and is prohibited from any contact with the Balatti family and banned from the city of Terrace unless passing through.

Editor’s note: This story was updated to correct the fact that Durando did not receive a conditional sentence.

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OTTAWA — Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree kiboshed a Conservative request to split his controversial lawful access bill in half, as a former CSIS director called the lack of such a regime for Canadian police and intelligence agencies “absolutely unacceptable.”

The day after Conservatives tabled a motion requesting the Liberals split Bill C-22 on lawful access, Anandasangaree was categorical that that wasn’t happening.

“No, we’re not. Lawful access, Bill C-22 as presented, we are very comfortable with the balance between part one and part two and we are not prepared to split that bill,” Anandasangaree told reporters.

“These are stalling tactics that are now coming forward to derail and delay the bill itself,” he said, adding that he suspects the move is because there is discord within the Conservative caucus over supporting the reform.

On Tuesday, during a committee hearing studying the contentious bill, Conservatives promised to help pass the first part of C-22 by the summer recess if the Liberals agreed to split the bill, allowing for further study of the more controversial second part.

Bill C-22 aims to reform Canada’s lawful access regime, which regulates the most intrusive powers afforded to police and intelligence agencies. The new regime would make it easier for police and intelligence agencies to intercept private communications or personal data as part of their investigations.

The bill is divided into two parts. The first proposes that police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) be able to approach telecommunications companies and ask them if, yes or no, an individual is a client before having to get a warrant. It then sets out a new path for authorities to obtain client information from the companies with the appropriate warrant.

The second part of the current bill proposes new obligations to electronic service providers to organize and retain various types of client data — some for up to one year — in a way that makes it obtainable by law enforcement or CSIS with a warrant.

That means that if passed, the bill would compel electronic service providers to store and make information like device locations or cameras available to police or CSIS with the requisite warrant. That could be used to track a person’s live location in case they pose a threat to national security or are considered to be in danger, the government cited as examples.

The reform has faced fierce and growing pushback from opposition parties, tech giants, privacy and civil liberty groups, who argue it does not do enough to protect Canadians’ privacy and encryption services.

Some companies, such as encrypted messaging application owner Signal, have even threatened to leave the Canadian market if the bill as drafted becomes law.

But the reform is strongly supported by police and intelligence agencies, who argue that their investigations are increasingly hampered or even stalled by the lack of necessary legal tools to obtain evidence in the digital age.

On Tuesday, recently retired CSIS director David Vigneault told attendees of an event at the University of Ottawa that it is embarrassing that Canadian law enforcement has to rely on tips from foreign allies to know what threats are happening in Canada because outdated laws don’t allow them to obtain the information themselves.

Vigneault headed CSIS for seven years until his retirement in July 2024.

“Bill C-22 absolutely needs to be debated, but I can tell you from experience, the number of times that we had to essentially rely on foreign sources of information about what was happening in our country is absolutely unacceptable,” he said at an event organized by the university’s Centre for International Policy Studies.

“We owe it to our citizens to find that right balance. The status quo, Canada being the only advanced country, democracy, government with the rule of law, that does not have an adequate regime for lawful access is completely unacceptable,” he added.

On Wednesday, the three largest police associations issued a joint statement calling on MPs to pass the bill “without delay” because it is “long overdue.”

They argued that the bill does not give police new investigative powers but ensures that companies have the information police seek after successfully obtaining a warrant from a judge.

“For police officers and investigators, lawful access is not an abstract policy debate. It can determine whether authorities can quickly locate a missing child, identify the source of a livestreamed sexual assault, or intervene before online extremist threats become real-world violence,” reads the statement by the heads of National Police Federation, the Canadian Police Association and the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.

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cnardi@postmedia.com

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OTTAWA — The Carney Liberals now have the support of half of all Canadians, according to a new Postmedia-Leger poll, the first time any governing party has hit that benchmark in popular support in more than two decades.

The poll, conducted over the last week, found that 50 per cent of decided voters said that they would most likely support the Liberals “if federal elections were held today.”

The poll found that the Conservatives have the support of 34 per cent of Canadians, down three percentage points from April. Both the New Democrats and Bloc Quebecois are at six per cent support, the same as the previous month, with the Green Party at three per cent, up one percentage point.

The percentage of Canadians who now say they’d likely support one of the two major parties is almost identical to the historically high 85.1 per cent who did so during the last federal election when the dominant issue was how Canada should respond to the trade and sovereignty threats of U.S. President Donald Trump.

The big change over the last 16 months, however, has been a clear transfer of a significant chunk — about seven percentage points — of Conservative support from last April to the governing Liberals.

Andrew Enns, Leger’s executive vice-president, said no Canadian government has topped 50 per cent in support since 2003, when Prime Minister Jean Chrétien decided that Canada would not take part in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March of that year without a United Nations Security Council resolution, after which the Chrétien Liberals briefly touched 55 per cent support.

Enns said the 50-per-cent mark is only a couple of percentage points above where Carney’s Liberals have polled in recent months, but that it represents a watershed because it’s rare, an important psychological hurdle, and represents “a real majority.”

“That’s a big number,” said Enns. “We just don’t see it often in Canada.”

But Enns noted that Justin Trudeau’s Liberals also came close at one point during their first mandate to winning the support of half of the country when they reached 49 per cent in the polls in 2016.

The new poll shows that the Liberals have sturdy support across the country and among most key demographic groups, but the government is particularly strong in Atlantic Canada (62 per cent), British Columbia (56 per cent), and with Canadians over the age of 55 (59 per cent). Carney’s party is weakest, as has often been the case in recent decades, in Manitoba-Saskatchewan (31 per cent) and Alberta (36 per cent).

Support for the government was largely consistent among men (48 per cent) and women (52 per cent), and among urban (52 per cent), suburban (49 per cent) and rural (45 per cent) voters.

A majority of respondents (54 per cent) also said they were either “very satisfied” (15 per cent) or “somewhat satisfied” (40 per cent) with the Carney government, with 37 per cent saying they were either “somewhat dissatisfied” (17 per cent) or “very dissatisfied” (20 per cent). That number of “satisfied” respondents is down between three and five percentage points from earlier months this year.

As for the prime minister himself, the poll found that Carney has an approval rating of 56 per cent, down three percentage points from a month earlier. He has a disapproval rating of 34 per cent, compared to 33 per cent in April.

With the Liberals now holding a parliamentary majority after benefitting from recent byelection wins and a handful of floor crossers (four from the Conservatives, one from the New Democrats), the next election isn’t expected to be held for another few years. But opinion poll results always play a significant role in politics, and these numbers may strengthen Carney’s hand, for example, in dealings with provinces. They may also raise fresh strategic questions for the opposition parties, particularly the Conservatives and their leader Pierre Poilievre.

The poll sampled 1,532 Canadians over the age of 18 between May 29 and June 1. A probability sample of this size yields a margin of error that is no greater than 2.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

National Post

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The Montreal toddler who was critically injured when the bouncy castle she was playing in was hurled into the air by fierce winds on Sunday afternoon has died, the Quebec coroner’s office announced Tuesday.

The three-year-old was identified as Ava Ciampini in a GoFundMe created to support her parents, Luca and Arielle, with expenses related to their daughter’s funeral and memorial.

“She was the light of every room she walked into, and the hole she leaves behind is impossible to put into words,” wrote Stefano Giliati, who operates a youth hockey training program with the grieving father.

“Luca and Arielle are now facing the unimaginable while also caring for their baby boy, Milan. In the middle of this grief, the last thing this family should have to think about is the financial burden that comes with saying goodbye to their little girl.”

The tragedy occurred at Ouellette Park in the borough of LaSalle where the family’s parish, Madre Dei Cristiani church, was celebrating the Feast of the Madonna, or the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

As a series of thunderstorms passed over the region, it whipped up winds and a sudden, violent gust sent chairs and debris flying, toppled vendors’ tents and knocked people down, according to the Montreal Gazette . Also sent airborne was the inflatable structure.

“I saw a huge cube flying into the air, at least 40 feet up, about as high as the nearby buildings,” attendee Eric Chicas told the paper. “I remember thinking and hoping nobody was inside.”

It’s not clear how many children were in the inflatable at the time.

Montreal police officers already on hand were able to offer immediate assistance and emergency responders were quick to arrive, with five ambulances and an advanced life support unit deployed to the scene, according to CityNews .

Urgences-Santé head of operations Valérie Guertin said paramedics assessed 11 people on site, six of whom were taken to hospital — four adults and two children, one of whom was Ciampini.

Samuel Leon, who lives across the street from the park, told CityNews he saw a woman running towards a car with a little girl in her arms.

“She was out, she was limp,” he recounted, “so the police took the little girl into their car with the mother and they just raced out of here.”

According to the New York Times , the city had been under a thunderstorm watch since noon and Environment Canada issued a weather warning about 30 minutes before the winds rose. A meteorologist said peak winds reached close to 70 km/h.

In a statement to National Post, the coroner’s office offered its condolences to the family and anyone else affected.

“Coroner Martine Lachance has been mandated to conduct an investigation to shed light on the causes and circumstances surrounding the death,” a spokesperson wrote. “At the end of her investigation, if she deems it appropriate, the coroner may also make recommendations. These are preventive measures that aim to protect human life and prevent deaths in similar circumstances.”

Montreal police are also investigating the incident, which includes a review of whether safety measures were properly followed, the CBC reported. National Post has contacted the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal for more information.

As of late Wednesday morning, the fundraiser was ready to eclipse its $350,000 goal. Among the donors were former NHLer Max Pacioretty and his wife, Katia, and Montreal-based clothing manufacturer Man Made.

Giliati said the money will give the family “space and time to grieve and be together without the added weight of financial stress.

“Any funds beyond those costs will go directly to supporting the family in the difficult months ahead,” he wrote.

“If you knew Ava, love the Ciampinis, or simply want to help a family through the hardest chapter of their lives, please consider donating or sharing this page. Every contribution, no matter the size, is a reminder to Luca and Arielle that they are not alone.”

Provincial and local leaders have also expressed their condolences to the family.

“I cannot begin to imagine the pain you are going through right now,” borough Mayor Nancy Blanchet wrote to the family in a Facebook post offering the community’s sympathies.

“In LaSalle, we all know each other, whether closely or from afar. In moments like this, the entire community is deeply shaken and shares in your grief.”

On X, Quebec Premier Christine Frechette said in French that “no parent should ever have to endure the loss of a child.

“The circumstances surrounding this tragedy, which occurred during a family gathering that brought together an entire community, make this ordeal all the more difficult to accept.”

Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada said her thoughts are with the Ciampini family, but she also issued a warning about using inflatable structures in windy conditions.

“We have to be careful in terms of using those types of equipment under big winds like we had yesterday,” she said at a Monday news conference, per CityNews . “It came really fast and hopefully it’s a good advisement to people to be careful when they use this kind of equipment.”

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Controversy surrounding supervised drug consumption sites, and the resulting social issues, have prompted some provincial governments to change tack and start closing facilities.

But for residents around some of these sites, a closure has meant increased social disorder.

Ottawa Citizen journalist Bruce Deachman joins Dave Breakenridge to discuss community concerns with supervised consumption sites, why the Ontario government opted for closure, and what residents have seen since one site shut down.

Background reading:What happens when a safe injection site is shut down?

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OTTAWA — The Conservatives are calling on the government to split its controversial lawful access bill, signalling they are willing to support some of the new tools for police and intelligence agencies to obtain Canadians’ information while further studying other more contentious proposals.

The Conservatives tabled a motion asking the House of Commons to split the legislation, known as Bill C-22, in two at the Public Safety Committee meeting Tuesday.

If the motion passes, it will send an official request to the House of Commons to split the bill into two separate bills C-22A and C-22B, which would then proceed through Parliament separately.

In return, Conservatives say they would support Bill C-22A to pass it before the summer recess but would push to further study and amend the second Bill C-22B.

“We as Conservatives were committed to seeing part one potentially become law before the summer adjournment, but part two raises some serious concerns for us,” Conservative MP Rhonda Kirkland told the committee. The meeting ended before other MPs could opine on the motion.

Bill C-22 aims to reform Canada’s lawful access regime, which regulates the most intrusive powers afforded to police and intelligence agencies. The new regime would make it easier for police and intelligence agencies to intercept private communications or personal data as part of their investigations.

The reform has faced fierce and growing pushback from opposition parties, tech giants, privacy and civil liberty groups, who argue it does not do enough to protect Canadians’ privacy.

C-22 is strongly supported by police services across Canada and CSIS, who argue that their investigations into serious crimes like extortion, terrorism or child sex abuse material are significantly hampered because of Canada’s lack of a modern lawful access regime.

The bill is divided into two parts. The first proposes that police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) be able to approach telecommunications companies and ask them if, yes or no, an individual is a client before having to get a warrant. It then sets out a new path for authorities to obtain client information from the companies with the appropriate warrant.

This section would become Bill C-22A under the Conservative motion and is generally supported by opposition parties.

The second part of the current bill proposes new obligations to electronic service providers to organize and retain various types of client data — some for up to one year — in a way that makes it obtainable by law enforcement or CSIS with a warrant.

That means that if passed, the bill would compel electronic service providers to store and make information like device locations or cameras available to police or CSIS with the requisite warrant. That could be used to track a person’s live location in case they pose a threat to national security or are considered to be in danger, the government cited as examples.

That section of the bill in particular has been the focus of most criticism that it could force tech companies to undermine their encryption services or compel them to implement tracking or “mass surveillance” tools if the government requires it.

“There’s major government overreach, significant expansion of government authority, and I truly believe this bill needs further study if the committee is going to fix this,” Kirkland said of the current Bill C-22.

Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree’s office did not immediately respond to questions on if he would support the move.

National Post

cnardi@postmedia.com

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An Albanian man involved in a “blood feud” who served 26 months in an Italian prison for uttering threats, kidnapping, robbery and weapon possession, then came to Canada as a refugee claimant using a fake Italian passport, has won a shot at returning to this country.

“The serious crimes Pjeter Pjetrushi committed before coming to Canada rendered him inadmissible to Canada and ineligible for refugee protection,” Federal Court Justice Nicholas McHaffie wrote in a recent decision out of Ottawa.

The court heard Pjetrushi’s “family has been in a blood feud (in Albania) with a family named Tafili since 2000, after Mr. Pjetrushi’s cousin, a police chief, killed a member of the Tafili family during a forcible arrest. About a year later, the dead man’s son, named Admir, tried to kill Mr. Pjetrushi’s cousin but failed. Admir was arrested, convicted, and imprisoned. Other members of the Tafili family later tried to kidnap the cousin’s sons from their schoolyard.”

Pjetrushi left Albania in 2006 “as a minor, to join two of his brothers in Italy,” said the decision.

“He began working in Italy shortly thereafter. In early 2009, when Mr. Pjetrushi was 18 years old, his employer replaced him while he was away visiting his mother in Albania and refused to pay Mr. Pjetrushi the wages he was owed. Mr. Pjetrushi responded by waiting for the employer at his factory, grabbing him, threatening him with a knife, and forcing him to open his safety deposit box to give him money.”

Pjetrushi pleaded guilty and was convicted by an Italian court in February 2009.

“Upon his release from prison in 2011, Mr. Pjetrushi met with his victim and made peace with him. Italian immigration authorities ordered him to leave Italy and he returned to Albania.”

While Pjetrushi was behind bars in Italy, “Admir escaped from police custody in Albania and was not found,” said the decision.

Shortly after Pjetrushi got out of prison, two of his cousins in Albania — brothers of the targeted police chief — were murdered, said the decision.

“Admir took responsibility and was again arrested. Feeling threatened by the blood feud, Mr. Pjetrushi left Albania again in October 2011, using a fraudulent Greek passport to travel to Italy before being caught trying to enter France.”

Pjetrushi was convicted again in Italy for using and manufacturing the fake identification, said the decision. “He received a conditional sentence of five months and 10 days imprisonment before again returning to Albania.”

Pjetrushi fled Albania again in June 2012, but he was caught in Italy with fake identification and sent home.

“After hiding at his parents’ home for about two years, Mr. Pjetrushi again left Albania and returned to Italy, where he paid a smuggler to acquire a false Italian passport. He travelled to Canada in January 2015 and made a refugee claim in March 2015.”

He remained in Canada until August 2023 and worked without a permit in his own renovation and construction business, said the decision.

Pjetrushi has already been deported to Albania, “where he currently resides,” said the decision.

Pjetrushi filed an application with Immigration Minister Lena Diab “hoping to satisfy” her “that he had been rehabilitated,” said the May 26 decision.

“A delegate of the minister, relying on a recommendation from an immigration officer, refused that application. Mr. Pjetrushi now seeks judicial review of that refusal,” it said.

“He argues the delegate unreasonably focused on the nature of the crimes leading to his inadmissibility and his use of false identification documents, and failed to reasonably assess the evidence he presented to show he did not pose a forward-looking risk of reoffending.”

Pjetrushi “accepted that his earlier crimes were serious, but contended that they were the actions of an immature 18-year-old,” said the decision. “In supplementary submissions filed in June 2024, he asserted that, as a 34-year-old man who had been free of criminal activity for 12 years, it was highly unlikely that he would reoffend. In his affidavit filed in support of the application, Mr. Pjetrushi expressed his regret regarding his 2009 crimes, stating he had done them when he was young and immature, and that he ‘would never do something like that again.’”

McHaffie agreed that “the delegate’s decision was unreasonable,” said the decision.

“The delegate and the recommending officer materially relied on Mr. Pjetrushi’s use of fraudulent identity documents and unreasonably dismissed his submission that he did so to flee risk in Albania based solely on his two-month delay in filing a refugee claim after arriving in Canada. Their treatment of the supporting character evidence presented by Mr. Pjetrushi was also unreasonable, as it characterized the entirety of that evidence as ‘self-serving’ without justification, and ignored aspects of the evidence relevant to the question of rehabilitation. These errors were central to the delegate’s decision and pertained to important aspects of Mr. Pjetrushi’s rehabilitation application. They are sufficient to render the decision as a whole unreasonable.”

The judge sent Pjetrushi’s rehabilitation application back “for redetermination by a different delegate.”

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