A Canadian, 19, accused of running a multimillion-dollar cryptocurrency fraud ring out of South Florida, spent money on luxury cars, jewelry and enjoying the Miami nightlife while overstaying his visa to stay in the U.S., federal prosecutors allege.

A federal grand jury indicted Trenton Richard David Johnston and alleged co-conspirator 28-year-old Brandon Michael Tardibone of Miami this week, in what authorities describe as a US$13 million (CAD$17.8 million) crypto and money laundering scheme.

Prosecutors allege Johnston posed as customer-support representatives for a major search engine and crypto companies to trick victims into surrendering access to digital accounts and cryptocurrency wallets. Once access was obtained, investigators allege Johnston and Tardibone drained the accounts and laundered the money through a web of financial transactions designed to conceal its source.

Authorities believe there are other victims yet to be identified.

According to court documents obtained by National Post, Homeland Security Investigations began looking into Johnston when a confidential source showed law enforcement text messages in which he allegedly said he “was making millions of dollars by defrauding” people. The source explained they had witnessed him engaging in the fraud using a gaming computer and “impersonating entities like Google in speaking with victims to gain access” to their accounts.

On March 24, local police stopped Johnston’s Rolls-Royce in North Miami and arrested him on state charges for possession of a controlled substance.

Three confidential witnesses who were in the vehicle with him at the time, all of whom told authorities they received money from Johnston at times, said they had witnessed him engaging in the fraud using a gaming computer and “impersonating entities like Google in speaking with victims to gain access” to their accounts. One of them admitted to also participating and stealing approximately $20,000, but estimated “Johnston’s proceeds to be in the tens of millions of dollars based on their conversations” and what she witnessed.

A search of his residence uncovered “handwritten notes containing seed phrases for various cryptocurrency wallets.”

Forensic examination of his cell phone revealed messages with Tardibone in which they “made multiple references to having successfully ‘hit,’ ‘smacked’ or otherwise obtained 185 BTC (bitcoins) from a victim, which they refer to as a ‘target’ or ‘targ.’”

They also corresponded about having the money cleaned and using it to purchase luxury vehicles and short-term home rentals in Miami and Los Angeles.

Federal authorities allege more than $1 million in stolen cryptocurrency was used to fund an extravagant lifestyle that included leased exotic vehicles, high-end jewelry and luxury entertainment.

Court documents indicate Johnston was admitted to the U.S. “as a visitor for pleasure for no more than 12 months” when he entered via the Buffalo, N.Y., border crossing at the Peace Bridge in October 2024.

According to the indictment, Johnston overstayed his visa and remained in the U.S. illegally while operating from the Miami area, where prosecutors say Tardibone knowingly harboured him at a luxury residence to help him avoid immigration authorities.

Johnston faces charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering. He is being detained until trial and faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

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.

The schizophrenic woman who committed a notorious killing of an innocent stranger in a downtown Toronto Shoppers Drug Mart more than 10 years ago has been granted an absolute discharge, freeing her entirely from the restrictions of the justice system.

In 2015, Rohinie Bisesar, then 40 and now 51, stabbed Rosemarie Junor in the cosmetics section of the drug store in Toronto’s financial district underground PATH, following the malicious command hallucinations of a voice in her head she called the “entity.”

Junor, 28, who also went by “Kim,” was newly married and worked in a downtown private medical clinic. She died five days later in hospital of a single stab wound by a small kitchen knife that pierced her heart.

“While the tragedy cannot be undone and will always be on our minds, Ms. Bisesar no longer is a significant threat to the safety of the public, and the law requires that an absolute discharge must be imposed. Ms. Bisesar’s commitment to her present health has substantially contributed to this result,” reads the Ontario Review Board’s new decision.

It was a horrific story that transfixed the city with its incomprehensible violence from an unlikely offender. Bisesar was a tiny woman, 4 foot 11 and 85 pounds, whose life appeared to have recently and abruptly unraveled from professional success to the point of spontaneous insane homicide.

She had an MBA from a top Ontario school and had worked in a major financial firm, but she had been hospitalized a year before the killing after threatening her parents with arson and expressing bizarre paranoia. Unemployed, she continued to frequent the financial district and became a familiar regular at downtown coffee shops, neatly dressed and working on a laptop.

Then, on a Friday mid-afternoon in December, according to facts recorded at her 2018 trial, the voice in her head said “What is the worse thing you can do?” and told her to get a knife. She travelled a dozen subway stops uptown to a discount store to buy one, a small kitchen knife, then returned downtown.

In the PATH, she sat on a bench beside a woman and considered stabbing her, but then “the entity picked me up from the bench and had me start walking really fast.”

She saw Junor on the phone in the nail polish section of the Shoppers, and almost immediately, 24 seconds later, she stabbed her in the upper chest and fled. She was identified by security footage and arrested four days later at a residence in the east end.

Curiously, just 10 minutes before the reported time of the arrest, the National Post received an email from Bisesar’s personal email address, which appeared to be from her though this could not be independently confirmed. “Do you know any top professionals in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, nanotechnology, satellites?” it said. “Something has been happening to me and this is not my normal self and I would like to know who and why this is happening.”

The email then addressed the stabbing.

“I am sorry about the incidence,” the email said. “I felt the need to be extreme to see if it would work. I would normally not do such a thing.”

Bisesar spent three years in jail before her trial by a judge alone, at which prosecutors and defence agreed she was not criminally responsible by reason of mental disorder.

It was a long road to that decision. An early videolink court appearance was derailed by her rant about terrorists and the prime minister.

Two years after the killing, she went before a jury who heard a psychiatrist testify she was psychotic. A jury agreed she was unfit to stand trial and unable to properly participate in her defence.

A year after that, the same psychiatrist found her mental health “radically improved,” her schizophrenia effectively in remission through medication, and a jury agreed she was fit to be tried.

After the NCR verdict, Bisesar was in secure detention in a mental hospital until 2021, when she was discharged from hospital to independent housing in the community, with her psychotic symptoms controlled by medication and in full remission.

People found not criminally responsible for serious crimes have annual appearances before a review board, which considers the terms of their continued treatment and secure detention in hospital.

Some people found NCR end up spending more time in secure hospital detention than they would have spent in prison under a guilty verdict to a crime. Some personality disorders, for example, are effectively incurable and a review board never decides a person’s risk to the public is below the legal threshold for release. In those cases, their detention is basically indefinite.

But schizophrenia is treatable with medications, and so sometimes the period of confinement is much less than what a murderer would get in prison for the same killing. The most famous example is Vince Li, who killed Tim McLean, 22, on a Manitoba intercity bus in 2008 and cannibalized parts of his body. Like Bisesar, his schizophrenia was medically controlled after his NCR verdict, and he was granted an absolute discharge less than a decade after the killing.

Bisesar received a conditional discharge in 2023, requiring her to remain under outpatient forensic psychiatric care of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. She is unemployed, lives alone on disability assistance, and does volunteer work. She is on a long-acting injectable anti-psychotic and has been compliant with medication and therapy.

Last year, she was denied an absolute discharge when the Ontario Review Board found she “continues to pose a significant threat to the safety of the public,” though a minority of the panel found she did not.

This recent decision to grant her an absolute discharge — effectively closing the books on her case — reflects the hospital’s view that she no longer poses such a threat. It notes that she “understands that she has a major mental illness that requires treatment in perpetuity.”

It notes that at the time of her offence in 2015 Bisesar was “floridly psychotic, untreated and desperately unwell.”

National Post

• Schizophrenic man behind Toronto army recruiting centre knife attack approved for Mecca pilgrimage
• Toronto man who killed his mom because 'he thought she was a zombie' gets absolute discharge

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.

The Right Thing to Do is smart, honest advice to readers’ questions about life, family and relationships by columnist Rebecca Eckler. Got a question for Rebecca? Submit it anonymously on the form here. You can also send an email to NPadvice@postmedia.com.

Dear Rebecca

I am an only child. I am now married and have a toddler. I was raised in a very strict household, largely because of my stay-at-home mother’s tendency to be controlling, narcissistic and emotionally immature, all qualities I did not fully understand until I moved out.

Since getting married and becoming a parent, I’ve come to recognize how unhealthy parts of my childhood were. Even today, my mother oversteps boundaries, insists on interfering with our parenting decisions with our toddler, sends incessant messages asking where I am, if I’m home yet, has my son been fed, and so on and forth. It feels like she cannot treat me as an adult and perhaps still struggles with empty-nest syndrome despite me having left home nearly a decade ago.

I work a high-stress, very demanding job, and my husband and I are in the thick of the toddler years. The last thing I need is another person to manage and I wish there were a way for her to be a part of our lives without the incessant “hovering.” She cannot seem to respect boundaries or acknowledge our requests and so we’ve had to repeatedly take “breaks” where we pause communication for weeks or even months at a time for the sake of my mental health. I can’t bring myself to trust that she’ll respect our wishes if we were to leave our son in her care and so not only do I mourn the loss of a relationship with my mother, but also the loss of support in raising a small child.

My husband has tried advocating for me with my mother and attempted to help repair the relationship, but her response is always to lash out, accuse me of complaining and paint herself as a victim. It doesn’t seem like she’s willing to hear me out or recognize the hurt she is inflicting. She refuses to seek counselling.

Is there any hope?
— Only Daughter

Dear Only Daughter

You ask if there is hope for you and your mother. Well, yes and no. You’re certainly not going to get “the hope” you’re hoping for.

Listen, I’m not “anti-hope” when it comes to trying to fix fraught mother-daughter adult relationships. I am, however, anti-delusional.

Could your mother start to respect your boundaries? Sure, in the same way, I could wake up with abs of steel like Jennifer Lopez while doing absolutely nothing.

Both are delusional AF.

At a certain age, and after decades of behaving a certain way, it’s highly unlikely your mother will magically wake up one day emotionally evolved, self-aware and respectful. If anything, she’ll probably double down.

Your exhaustion is palpable, which worries me. It’s not just new-mother-stressful-career exhaustion. It sounds like I’ve been emotionally on call since I, myself, was a toddler , exhausted. Of course, you need breaks.

Your career is demanding. You have a husband. A pint-size dictator to raise. You do not need another adult with unlimited texting privileges asking how many bites your kid ate from that dinosaur-shaped chicken nugget.

Unfortunately, many adult daughters of overbearing mothers spend years hoping, “Maybe she’ll understand this time if I explain myself differently.” I hate to break it to you, but all your mother will ever hear is, “Why are you attacking me?” Emotionally immature parents rarely see themselves as controlling. This may ring especially true if you’re an only child.

But you do not owe your mother live coverage of your parenting, with play-by-play updates if your toddler has been fed, bathed, napped, has blinked and found his nose. Your kitchen, as far as I know, is not a breaking news television station.

You do not have to answer unsolicited parenting commentary. Period.

The right thing to do is to start responding with, “ He ate .” That’s it. That’s your response. So is silence. That, too, is a response.

“Is there any hope?” is not even a realistic question, based on your situation. A better question to ask is, “Can you manage some sort of relationship with your mother as she is, not as the mother you wish she had been, and the grandmother you wish she could be?”

Instead of asking, “How do I make her understand my reasoning?” Ask, “How do I stop needing her to understand my reasoning?” You are an adult, and you are not alone. Honestly, difficult mothers are probably what keep most therapists employed.

You have explained your position to her. Repeatedly. Your husband has too. You already know you cannot boundary your mother into an ah-ha moment. You cannot boundary someone into changing their entire personality. You cannot boundary someone into therapy. If that happens, buy a lottery ticket immediately.

What you can do is stop second-guessing your boundaries. Your mother lashing out or being upset does not mean you’ve done anything wrong. Your mother does not need to understand your boundaries for you to have them.

And you — yes you! — can stop treating every incoming message like they are a life-or-death emergency. Stop it! Stop defending your parenting decision. Stop responding to every “Did he eat?” text as though Child Protective Services is waiting outside your house.

While this may sting, there is probably no hope for a dramatic mother-daughter reset. So, you can stop exhausting yourself with the hope that she’ll become the mother you want.

But there is hope… for you. To become a different type of daughter, who no longer feels guilty for having boundaries, ignoring phone calls or taking breaks.

You could start with one small act of bravery, by putting your mother’s number on “Do Not Disturb” or on “Hide Alerts.”

Also, have you eaten today?

Love,
Rebecca

Rebecca Eckler is a bestselling author, founder of re:books publishing, Rivkah Books, and co-founder of CANREADS. She’s a professional oversharer and observer of human behaviour, and has spent decades writing about life’s messy twists. She believes advice should come with humour, compassion, and the occasional reality check. She has no formal qualifications for this other than a lifetime of questionable decisions and excellent stories.

Have a question for Rebecca? Send anonymously by clicking here. Or email NPadvice@postmedia.com.

• What we've lost (10): A normal life
• Albertans are 'very dissatisfied' with their lives, people in Quebec highly satisfied: survey

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.

The Parole Board of Canada has granted unescorted temporary absences for the “personal development” and rehabilitation of a woman who helped kill a pregnant Inuit student from Labrador a dozen years ago in Halifax and dumped her body beside a highway in a hockey bag.

Victoria Lea Henneberry is serving a life sentence for the second-degree murder of Loretta Saunders in February 2014. In a decision released Wednesday, the parole board approved two 72-hour unescorted temporary absences (UTAs), so Henneberry, 40, can visit a halfway house.

“Your case management team believes it is desirable for you to participate in the proposed UTA so that you can focus on a gradual release to the community while allowing your risk factors to be closely monitored,” said the June 2 decision.

“This UTA allows a structured and supervised opportunity to assess your behaviour, decision-making and ability to comply with conditions in a community setting.”

Henneberry was in a minimum-security prison in Ontario last year. The parole decision out of Kingston, Ont., doesn’t indicate where she is imprisoned now, or where the halfway house is located that she’s planning to visit.

A spokeswoman for the parole board said Wednesday she could not divulge those locations because of inmate privacy.

The parole board granted Henneberry 30 days of unescorted leave in the fall of 2024 to take “personal development” courses at a halfway house.

But that was “prematurely cancelled days prior to its completion due to numerous violations of rules,” and Henneberry’s “emotional instability (self-reporting of suicidal ideation),” said the decision.

Henneberry and her boyfriend, Blake Leggette, were subletting a room in Saunders’ Halifax apartment when the couple killed the Saint Mary’s University student after she came to collect their rent that they didn’t have.

Saunders was 26 and pregnant when she died. Leggette attacked her from behind on Feb. 13, 2014, when she entered the apartment.

“Once inside the apartment, your boyfriend choked the victim and tried to suffocate her with plastic bags,” said the decision.

“The victim’s head was then hit against the floor twice.”

The pair put Saunders’ body in a hockey bag. They left the apartment to return a computer to a store for the money. When they returned, Leggette carried the hockey bag to the victim’s own car and put it in the trunk.

The couple left, using the victim’s bank card to buy food and other items.

They drove from Nova Scotia to New Brunswick, “where the victim’s body was then dumped, in the hockey bag, at the side of a highway, and continued to drive to Ontario,” said the decision.

They were later arrested in Ontario.

Henneberry “confessed to the murder the following day,” said the decision. “Video evidence showed that you and your boyfriend talked about killing the victim five days prior to the actual murder.”

Henneberry’s latest psychological risk assessment indicates she was diagnosed with a personality disorder (borderline personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder), “with a suggestion of feigning psychological symptoms and negative impression management,” said the decision.

“Based on actuarial measures, the psychologist reported that you are currently a low-moderate risk for both general and violent recidivism.”

Henneberry hasn’t “demonstrated violent or aggressive behaviour or attitudes,” in the last three years, said the decision, and “there is no indication” she’s involved in the “institutional drug subculture.”

Henneberry, who the board has said practises the Wiccan religion, was born in Halifax, but mostly raised in Ontario.

The Correctional Service of Canada recommended she get the passes as part of her “gradual reintegration into society,” said the decision.

The parole board determined that Henneberry had “presented a structured plan that will both allow” her to complete her goals “and do so without additional risk to society.”

While she’s out of prison, Henneberry must “immediately report all sexual and nonsexual relationships and friendships” with men to her parole supervisor.

She’s also ordered to stay away from mobile phones and any device that can access the internet, and she must avoid contact with Saunders’ relatives.

“There are victims who have experienced trauma as a result of your criminal activity. As any contact with you will have negative impacts on them, you are not to have either direct or indirect contact with the victims or members of their families.”

• Wiccan woman who killed pregnant Inuit student is back in jail again
• Killer who left pregnant victim's body on side of road granted unescorted leave for 'personal development'

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.

OTTAWA — The Liberal government is moving ahead with a plan to require social media companies to restrict access to their sites for those under 16, but with an ability for them to seek exemptions and a timeline that as of Wednesday remained unclear.

The measure was proposed as part of a new online safety regime outline in a bill Canadian Heritage Minister Marc Miller tabled Wednesday afternoon, known as the “Safe Social Media Act.”

Since taking office, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government’s has faced calls from child safety advocates, children’s health organizations and parents whose children have been victimized online to introduce measures to regulate tech giants.

Miller said the measures introduced in the bill represent the “basic expectations” that parents and Canadians have that children ought to be safe while online.

“I believe all parties should agree on the importance of these minimum safeguards,” he said

The legislation revives certain measures advanced under former prime minister Justin Trudeau but which were never passed, including the creation of a new regulator, the Digital Safety Commission of Canada, and a requirement for platforms to submit safety plans.

It also seeks to establish a rule that platforms must remove content that “ sexually victimizes a child” or includes the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, including sexualized deepfakes, within 24-hours of being flagged.

The legislation seeks to impose a “duty to act responsibility” for social media platforms by requiring them to take steps to reduce users’ exposure to seven different types of harmful content online, from content that can be used to bully a child and encourages a minor to engage in self-harm, to that which incites violence, as well as terrorist or violent extremist content.

Wednesday’s bill also proposes requiring social media platforms to restrict access to users under 16, but with the caveat that it would allow companies to seek an exemption if they make changes to improve safety on the sites that are deemed as sufficient by the new regulator. As proposed, companies would have to verify a user’s age, with the government open to seeing different methods used.

The timeline of when a potential ban could take effect was not immediately clear on Wednesday. During a briefing with reporters, officials said setting up the new regulator, the body that would be responsible for granting exemptions and levying fines for non-compliance, would happen in roughly 18-months time.

Deciding which social media platforms would be covered by the ban would be left up to a set of future regulations, along with the timing for implementation and what criteria companies would have to meet to secure an exemption.

Officials who briefed reporters in a not-for-attribution basis said those regulations could come into force before the regulator was up and running, meaning there would likely be a period of time when social media access would be banned for those under 16, as it would take time before the first exemptions could be granted.

Miller, meanwhile, told reporters on Wednesday that a social media ban would take effect once the bill achieves royal assent, the last stage of the legislative process for a piece of legislation to become law. It was later clarified that that was not the case.

In terms of social media sites expected to be covered by a potential ban, the minister pointed to Meta’s Facebook as well as Snapchat. The bill also includes an exclusion for “any private messaging feature of the service.”

Asked why the Liberals were not instituting a full ban on social media for those younger than 16, a policy first pioneered by Australia and which other jurisdictions have followed, Miller told reporters he knows not everyone will agree with the government’s approach.

“We know that social media can be made safe by design,” he said on Wednesday. “There are platforms for kids under 16 that can be used responsibly.”

The legislation also seeks to apply age verification rules to pornography sites where users can upload their own content. It was later clarified that deciding which sites that verification requirement would apply to would be left up to a future set of regulations. Unlike social media companies, pornography sites would not be able to qualify for exemptions.

The minister declined on Wednesday to specify which sites that could cover.

“Do you want me to talk to you about my experience with porn sites? I don’t think I’ll fall into that trap necessarily,” he said with a laugh, but later added the move was not about “regulating the Internet.”

Instituting age verification rules for porn sites mirrors efforts Sen. Julie Miville-Dechene is trying to advance through a bill that passed the Senate back in April and currently sits before the House of Commons.

When it comes to AI chatbots, the bill proposes its own set of regulations, such as requiring that companies take measures to reduce the risk of the technology engaging in what it defines as “harmful behaviour” and implement “crisis intervention protocols,” when users express a willingness to commit self-harm or engage in violence.

The proposed measures fell short of what Western premiers and B.C. Premier David Eby’s government had called for, which was to legislate a mandatory reporting threshold for when companies would have to notify police of potential threats.

Those calls came after it was revealed that the 18-year-old shooter whom RCMP said opened fire on a secondary school in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., back in February, had exchanged troubling messages with OpenAI’s ChatGPT many months before the incident, which the company decided against flagging to police.

Miller said on Wednesday that OpenAI did have protocols in place but that an “egregious human error” was made, saying he believes requiring AI chatbots to be more transparent about their reporting protocols would still be significant.

In the case of what happened in Tumbler Ridge, he said: “I do think this law could have made a difference.”

The minister also defended how the government was not proposing a ban on chatbots as it was with traditional social media companies, saying the AI chatbots were still “an evolving playing field.”

“Admittedly, they play a function and a role that can be very damaging towards kids, but can also play an important function in the educational system and in the AI strategy that we are putting forward,” the minister said, referencing the document released last week by Carney.

National Post

• The countries implementing social media bans for children, as Canada joins a growing list
• Poll finds 90% in favour of social media age ban, while advocates urge action for online harms

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.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Doug Ford is not known for playing nice with Donald Trump. The Ontario premier has repeatedly condemned the president’s 51st state rhetoric and boldly removed American booze exports from their biggest market: Ontario’s shelves.

It was also notably Ford’s Ronald Reagan ad that reportedly led to the breakdown in U.S.-Canada trade talks last year.

So the fact that Ford visited Washington this week, engaging lawmakers and business leaders and calling for getting the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) renewal done, may have seemed odd to many — and maybe downright risky.

But was it — or was it a sign that Canada has pivoted on its approach to Washington?

“You are looking at a change in tone from Ottawa,” said Graeme Thompson, senior analyst at Eurasia Group, who pointed to three relevant developments preceding Ford’s visit.

“There was Mr. Carney’s speech in New York, which was very conciliatory, and Dominic LeBlanc’s trip to Washington, where he met with Jamieson Greer and evidently presented at least constructive proposals and reported that the meeting went well.”

The third development was a statement from the Department of Canadian Heritage, indicating that the minister would instruct the regulator to revisit its decision on interpreting the Online Streaming Act to mean it would levy 15 per cent charges — as opposed to 5 per cent — on big tech companies’ streaming revenues in Canada to support Canadian industry.

That is “really important,” Thompson said, “because digital trade and digital taxes have emerged as a major bilateral trade irritant for the U.S., and that signals a softening of the Canadian position on that issue.”

Ian Lee, a professor at Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business, also sees a clear strategic shift toward a conciliatory tone with the U.S.

In New York, Mark Carney even leaned in on Trump’s MAGA messaging, saying “Canada Strong will help make America great again.”

Now, with Ford’s visit, that’s “the one-two punch,” said Lee.

“I think that this is one of those situations in which there’s a pretty good coordination between the government and between Ford,” said Christopher Sands, director of the Center for Canadian Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

Ford told reporters on Tuesday he spoke with LeBlanc before his trip to Washington and, while there, he met with Canada’s Ambassador Mark Wiseman — which suggests at least some coordination with Carney’s team.

“Towards late spring, there was a decision in Ottawa,” Sands said he believes, “that they were going to reboot, and if Carney needed to say nice things, he would say nice things.”

Sending Ford as a trade ambassador was risky, of course, but could he be Carney’s conservative foil?

“I think it’s possible,” said Sands, noting that the prime minister noticed how “Ford was a politician who had a populist ear, not unlike Trump, and whose message on Fox News or whatever outlet might cut through and convince some Americans that Canada’s not the enemy.”

Lawrence Herman, senior fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute who specializes in international trade and investment law, thinks Ford’s messaging has been good for Canada.

“It shows that Canada can speak with the same voice,” he said, noting that Ford is preferable to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith or Conservative MP Jamil Jivani “spreading the word about how Canada isn’t unified.”

Ford’s meetings, by all accounts, were positive, but his planned reception with Ross Perot Jr. at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Monday was cancelled — officially due to a scheduling conflict. The rumour, however, is that Trump’s team pressured the Chamber into cancelling what would have been a flashy moment for Ford with U.S. industry leaders.

Still, Ford had his meetings and TV interviews, sharing plugs for building a “Fortress North America,” a term used by both Ford and Carney in recent weeks.

Essentially, the fortress idea is a growth plan centred on the principle that “economic security is national security,” which aims to create more jobs, lower prices and strengthen continental security. To get there requires renewing CUSMA and eliminating the Section 232 tariffs on steel, aluminum and auto.

“There’s going to be more jobs, more opportunities for everyone,” Ford told reporters on Tuesday.

“We’re just sending a positive message. Let’s get this deal done.”

Lee said he believes the Fortress messaging is code for “no tariffs,” meaning that Canada may be willing to bend on its deal with China or on other issues so long as the sectoral tariffs disappear.

“I think that they’re throwing out trial balloons saying, ‘OK, if we go to Fortress North America, we’ll walk away from the Chinese, but then there’s got to be a lot in it for us.’”

But tariff elimination is unlikely, trade watchers say.

“I feel like tariffs are here to stay,” said Inu Manak, senior fellow for international trade at the Council on Foreign Relations, “and that it’s going to be challenging to have nothing on the books.”

“For consistency, USTR has to apply tariffs to Canada and Mexico, as a policy that tariffs apply to everyone.”

But how that’s implemented, Manak explained, is key.

The proposed remedy from USTR for Section 301 tariffs over forced labour issues, for example, offers the same exemptions as the IEEPA tariffs did for CUSMA-compliant goods, meaning that more than 80 per cent of trade would remain tariff-free.

The real question, Manak said, is “how do they structure some of the exemptions to the tariffs that are coming down the line to ensure that they do not impact Canada’s trade with the United States?”

Whatever happens with the tariffs, a CUSMA renewal may not be in the cards.

Neither Manak nor Eurasia Group’s Graeme Thompson believes a renewal is coming anytime soon.

Thompson pointed to the likely zombification of the trade agreement.

“It looks quite unlikely,” he said, “that there will be a trilateral agreement … where all three leaders sit down and sign a document that agrees to extend USMCA for the statutory 16 years.”

That would lead to a process of annual reviews.

“If you’re in a constant negotiation where there’s no real certainty that the terms you’ve signed up to are, in effect, permanent,” said Thompson, “then there’s not really a trade deal as such. It’s dead.”

“But at the same time, we expect, with the 85 or 90 per cent of Canadian exports to the U.S. that enter the U.S. tariff-free, that that will remain in place, and to that extent, the agreement lives.”

That, he said, would make it a “zombie agreement that’s neither fully dead nor alive.”

In that case, Ford’s U.S. booze ban would stick, as the premier said on Tuesday that he would not return the American products to Ontario’s shelves before a renewal is complete.

“Once that deal’s done,” he said, “I’m going to be … bringing all the booze back on shelves … and everyone’s going to be Kumbaya.”

Ford’s campaign continues over the next month with visits to South Carolina and Utah.

National Post

• Trump renews '51st state' rhetoric as LeBlanc admits 'turbulence' on D.C. trip
• Randall Denley: Ford needs to push for more U.S. trade against Carney's talk of less

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.

OTTAWA — Canada’s former top general, Wayne Eyre, advised Canadians against burning bridges with their American neighbours, warning that actions like booing national anthems at hockey games can turn U.S. friends into foes.

While acknowledging that Canada’s relationship with the U.S. has changed and will likely never go back to “where it was or where we thought it was,” Eyre told attendees of a University of Ottawa event last week that the relationship with the Americans remains crucial.

“We need to be careful about burning bridges with those who are still friendly,” Eyre said at the event organized by the university’s Centre for International Policy Studies.

“Evoking wide-scale nationalism by not considering the population separate from the administration, by booing national anthems at hockey games and turning those who are friendly to us against us; we’ve got to remember there are more Americans friendly to Canada than there are Canadians,” he added.

In the first year of Donald Trump’s second presidency, attendees of some sporting events in Canada involving an American team would boo the U.S. national anthem. The most notable example came during a 4 Nations hockey match between Canada and the U.S. in Montreal in February 2025.

During his keynote speech, the former chief of defence staff, who retired in 2024, also warned against running into China’s arms as a way to move away from dependence on the United States.

He also threw subtle barbs at two of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent foreign policy directions. First, he cautioned against “sacrificing” Canada’s relationship with Taiwan in order to placate the Chinese government.

Secondly, he said he “bristled” when Carney said Canada was launching a new “strategic partnership” with the Chinese government in a bid to increase trade between both countries.

The move has raised hackles within the Trump administration, which is in intense economic competition with China all the while seeking to increase trade with the Asian behemoth.

“We need to be wary about siding with China over the U.S., as I believe that is the path to ruin,” Eyre said.

“Having some trade is good, but doing it from a position where we’re not sacrificing our national interests and national values has got to be the way forward. Because if we go all in, we’ll have our lunch eaten for us very, very fast,” he added.

Eyre has previously said that he believes Canada should consider acquiring a nuclear weapon as a deterrent in the increasingly unstable war. He did not repeat that during the June 2 event, but argued that the government needs to be more comfortable taking risks when it comes to military procurement.

For example, Canadians should be comfortable with a solution that has 80 per cent chance of success. “Yeah, it’s going to fail two out of 10 times, but that’s the price of doing business.”

While noting that Canadian and U.S. defence interests are still aligned and interconnected, he lamented that his U.S. military counterparts are going through “their worst crisis in political-military relations since perhaps the Civil War.”

Since taking power last year, Trump’s administration has significantly upended American military leadership, reportedly firing or demoting dozens of senior leaders, often without citing a reason.

That included chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. and Army chief of staff Gen. Randy George.

National Post

cnardi@postmedia.com

• U.S. national anthem gets booed during NHL game in Vancouver
• Trudeau, Carney defend Canadians who boo American anthem as Joly says 'we're angry'

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 politics newsletter, First Reading, here.

The U.S. ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, is reportedly under consideration to become the new director of national intelligence, reports Associated Press.

Hoeskstra is a former House of Representatives intelligence committee chairman. In a Wednesday afternoon post on X, AP also noted he also played a key role in rebuilding the Michigan Republican party in advance of the 2024 federal election that returned Donald Trump to the White House.

After the election win, Hoekstra called Trump and secured an invitation to Mar-a-Lago to discuss possible positions in the administration.

Pete Hoekstra, a former House Intel chairman and current ambassador to Canada, is in conversations with the White House about the DNI position, according to a source familiar.

Hoekstra also played a key role in rebuilding the Michigan GOP in 2024.https://t.co/PZKzkvF6xt

— Joey Cappelletti (@Cappelletti7) June 10, 2026

Within three hours of the meeting, as previously reported by National Post , Trump announced on Truth Social that Hoeskstra would be his new ambassador to Canada. But his post has not been without controversy. He has publicly voiced a lack of understanding as to why Canadians are angry at Trump for imposing devastating tariffs, while urging this country to become the 51st state. He has suggested Canada’s response to Trump has been “nasty and mean.”

Some see Hoekstra as a diplomatic embodiment of the pugnacious president he represents, the Post has reported. He is personable and unassuming in one-on-one conversation, while making no apologies for his abruptness.

Hoekstra served as a Member of Congress from 1993 to 2011 representing Michigan’s 2nd District. Hoekstra was the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from 2004 to 2007. The latter involved meeting with world leaders from Muammar Gaddafi to Vladimir Putin.

As a conservative Republican lawmaker, think-tank pundit, author and diplomat, he has often expressly shared Trump’s worldview. Hoekstra is also listed as one of the contributors to Project 2025, a blueprint for governing, mirrored by Trump’s administration since taking power.

He obtained undergraduate and MBA degrees before rising to become vice president of marketing at office-furniture maker Herman Miller. He turned his attention to politics, first winning election to the House of Representatives.

He was a founding member of the conservative Tea Party caucus. His voting record shows him as opposing abortion rights, same-sex marriage, gay adoption, gun control and paid parental leave for federal employees. Hoekstra voted in favour of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Born in the Netherlands, Hoekstra emigrated to the United States as a child. During Trump’s first administration, he was named ambassador to the Netherlands. The foreign posting ended when Joe Biden captured the White House in 2020, but four years on Hoekstra was back in Michigan, assisting Trump’s second run for the White House.

Hoekstra says he was interested in the Ottawa job, partly because of his ties to this country. He had an aunt and uncle who lived in B.C. and Alberta. His wife has a sister in Smithers, B.C., and an uncle who was a pastor in St. Catharines, Ont. He also cites the fact that Canadian troops liberated his parents’ city in the Netherlands during the Second World War, as well as Canada trade partnership with the U.S.

The appointment began positively. Hoekstra said during his Senate confirmation hearing that he recognized “Canada’s longstanding friendship, our deep economic ties and our strong military alliance.” He promoted his good, bipartisan relations with Democratic ambassadors who came after him in the Netherlands, and before him in Canada.

He contended that Trump’s priorities were “freer, fairer trade.” However, he later scoffed at what he called “anti-American” campaigning during the last Canadian federal election and said it’s understandable the White House considered it “nasty and mean” for some provinces to ban American alcohol, while Canadians curb travel to the States.

His strongest response came after the Ontario government paid for an ad on American television made up of clips of former president Ronald Reagan decrying tariffs. In public, Hoekstra said “you do not come into America and start running political ads, government-funded political ads, and expect that there will be no consequences or reaction.”

Hoekstra has stressed that Canada is being treated no worse than any of the other countries facing Trump tariffs. He has said trade talks will resume sooner or later, and insists he has made suggestions to the Carney government on how to proceed.

More recently, Hoekstra, wrapped up a meeting with B.C. Premier David Eby and said they were “both smiling” afterwards. He added: “We covered lots of topics and we’re both smiling and it was it was a good meeting.”

• How Pete Hoekstra became 'the most controversial U.S. ambassador in history'
• Trump taunts 'future Governor of Canada Mark Carney.' Hoekstra left 'smiling' after meeting Eby

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.

OTTAWA — Daniel Legault said he and his son were sowing their fields in Rigaud, Que., late at night this spring when they saw a drone flying at a low altitude above their heads.

Legault’s daughter-in-law took pictures and a video of the drone, which National Post has viewed. Legault said they were taken as the drone was flying over the stables where the family keeps their herd of cows. After some time, the drone eventually flew away.

The Legault family happens to live in one of the corridors where Alto is considering building its high-speed rail project. So, they raised concerns about the drone to their city council.

The mayor of Rigaud, Charles Meunier, said in an interview that he heard from Alto officials that they might have to eventually fly some drones above certain zones in the area. He said that was communicated to him after he heard of the incident at the Legault farm.

But Meunier said he could not say for sure if the drone that was buzzing above their cows that night was definitely Alto’s. “It’s a funny coincidence,” the mayor simply said.

Philippe Archambault, vice-president of communications for Alto, said that drone was not theirs. But he said the Crown corporation has started conducting tests on public grounds only, and Alto would inform any municipalities of future drone tests ahead of time.

But the incident is showing just how skeptical and apprehensive some local residents feel about the high-speed rail project moving full steam ahead.

Legault was one of nearly a thousand people — agricultural workers and citizen groups from Ontario and Quebec, but also Conservative and Bloc Québécois MPs — protesting on Parliament Hill on Wednesday to oppose the project coming to their communities.

A press release from l’Union des producteurs agricoles, a trade union representing agricultural workers in Quebec, said the protest aimed to raise awareness about the many impacts the project would have on local communities, including forced expropriations.

Concerns are particularly strong around Mirabel, north of Montreal, which saw thousands of citizens forced to relocate decades ago for an airport terminal that never really took off.

Robert Charron, a city councillor in Mirabel, said he was personally in favour of the project in principle until the federal government gave Alto sweeping new powers to accelerate the acquisition or expropriation of land for the project in its budget implementation bill C-15.

Claude Laframboise, a farmer from Mirabel, said he fears that the project will split his land in two and that his community will ultimately not benefit from it. He said he would like Mirabel to at least be considered for a stop, but it does not seem to be in the cards.

Bloc MP Jean-Denis Garon said Mirabel had major highways and infrastructure projects built on its territory since the expropriations happened in 1969 for the airport but considers that he has never seen a promoter be as “inconsiderate” and “savage” as Alto.

Different speakers at the event sang from a similar tune, saying they support transit projects, but that they need to be done right and with enough consultations.

“We’re not opposed as farmers to high-speed rail. But we are opposed to this project because this project is not the right one. The right project would serve all of Canada,” said Jenn Pfenning, president of the National Farmers Union, to the crowd.

But other communities along the proposed route between Toronto and Quebec City are now growing increasingly uncomfortable with the proposed corridors, which are currently 10 kilometres wide but will ultimately extend to 60 meters once the train will be built.

North Belleville Against Alto, Save Stone Mills and Tyendinaga Township Landowners Coalition were among the citizen groups that were part of the protest on Wednesday.

Paula Banks, a city councillor from Rideau Lakes, located an hour south of Ottawa, said this “horrendous train” would cut her municipality in half. She said her city council voted unanimously to oppose the high-speed train project and said they are not alone.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has previously called on the government to cancel the project , which has been estimated to cost between $60 billion to $90 billion.

On Wednesday, surrounded by his MPs, he reiterated that promise, promising to launch a nationwide campaign to save that money and fight for farmers and landowners.

“My friends, we saw what happened in Mirabel last time. They stole the lands of rural people and farmers for an airport that nobody uses. And Canadian taxpayers got the bill. Well, they’re doing it all over again. We won’t let them do it,” he told the crowd.

Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet has said his party supported the idea of high-speed rail even before the Liberals did. But the Bloc is now opposing the Alto project, arguing there is a lack of transparency on its real cost and the expropriation process.

The Bloc’s provincial cousin, the Parti Québécois, is now promising to axe the Quebec portion of the project should it form government in October.

Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon admitted that would effectively kill the project.

“Let’s be clear. There is no Alto project without Quebec,” he said on Tuesday.

As for Rigaud, its mayor passed a motion at city council this week asking for an information session with Alto about the high-speed rail project possibly set to pass through his community, so that residents can directly convey their concerns and questions to officials.

Meunier said he hopes Alto will accept his city’s request in a timely fashion.

Alto is expected to unveil a more precise route for its first segment between Ottawa and Montreal this fall.

National Post
calevesque@postmedia.com

• Farmers, conservationists and rural communities are uniting to protest high-speed rail
• Champagne says he recused himself due to 'personal connection' to high-speed rail company

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.

The “World’s first T-Rex leather product,” as it’s been trademarked by its scientific and artistic creators, could fetch up to 500,000 Euros (C$800,000) when bidding starts at a hotel in Paris, France, Thursday evening.

Some people within the scientific community, however, are skeptical about whether the lab-grown leather truly comes from the iconic Cretaceous era animal.

Here’s what to know about the alleged prehistoric purse.

How did they make the T-Rex leather?

In 2005, researchers in the U.S. identified soft tissue in the bones of a 68-million-year-old specimen, a finding that “rocked the world of dinosaur research,” Discover magazine reported at the time, per the University of Montana.

Until then, it was believed that organic material couldn’t survive for millions of years.

“Now, with these new discoveries of cellular preservation, we move to a new kind of paleontology: cellular and molecular paleontology,” said Jack Horner, curator of paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies and co-author of a paper on the findings.

Last year, The Organoid Company, a genomic engineering firm, and creative agency VML teamed up with sustainable biotechnology pioneer Lab-Grown Leather to use collagen sequences found in fossilized tissue to “develop and produce a high-quality alternative to traditional leather that is both animal-friendly and environmentally responsible.”

“Using advanced computational biology and AI modelling, scientists predicted and reconstructed the remaining genetic information” and inserted it into a “carrier cell line” to produce a collagen-based hide.

“It’s like having a puzzle, but you only have a few pieces, and then you have to fill in the rest,” Organoid CEO Thomas Mitchell said in an Instagram video.

He also told Reuters they experienced “a lot of technical challenges” along the way.

As it happens, Organoid and VML were also involved in the creation and marketing of the 2023 novelty woolly mammoth meatball, which used elephant DNA to fill in gaps and sheep stem cells to grow the “meat,” The Guardian reported.

Why are some scientists skeptical?

When Mitchell and company first announced their project’s success, it was met with skepticism by some who questioned whether the protein fragments extracted from the fossilized collagen sequences were, in fact, from the T-Rex and not some other source that made its way into the remains over millions of years.

“The boundary that we usually hold up for how long proteins can survive was only recently pushed back to around 20 million in very exceptional circumstances,” postdoctoral researcher Jan Dekker from the University of Turin told German news outlet DW .

Because the T-Rex died off in the asteroid-caused mass extinction event some 60 million years ago, Dekker doubts there’s any dino-DNA in the lab-grown leather.

He added that even if protein fragments from T-Rex DNA were evident, most of the completed sequence would be from the other animal used: chicken.

“What they have done is create synthetic collagen using an AI model trained on a variety of different species, mainly chicken,” Dekker said. “A very interesting development in itself, but it is not a dinosaur. In fact, it’s more chicken than anything else.”

Meanwhile, vertebrate paleontologist Melanie During of the Vrije Universiteit ​Amsterdam told Reuters that any persisting collagen from inside bones couldn’t be used to create skin or leather, and Thomas R. Holtz Jr., a paleontologist at the University of ​Maryland, said even proteins that matched flawlessly wouldn’t have the larger-scale fibre organization necessary to create the properties of animal leather.

Why choose a handbag as the first ‘T-Rex leather product’?

With a focus on accessories as their product’s initial commercial applications, the companies wanted “a flagship luxury item” for their launch and chose “avant-garde techwear label Enfin Levé” and Polish designer Michel Hadas to craft the handbag.

“The bag is deliberately restrained — an architectural silhouette with silver fittings that include a lost-wax cast buckle and a cold-forged element shaped like a DNA double helix,” reads a review by Emirates Woman.

“That helix is a quiet reference to the material’s lab-born origins, and it is one of the few decorative gestures on an object that otherwise lets the leather speak for itself.”

Once the purse is auctioned off, the companies intend to produce more of their T-Rex leather and make it commercially available to other brands and designers.

“Initial applications will focus on luxury accessories, with long-term ambitions extending into fashion, automotive, and other high-performance material sectors,” they explain.

“This material is fully biodegradable while retaining the durability and repairability of traditional leather, thus offering a sustainable, ethical, and traceable alternative to future generations of consumers committed to innovation and environmental responsibility.”

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.