Your pre-summer train-of-thought ...
On Monday, Prime Minister Mark Carney went from being the tough talking Mr. Elbows Up when talking about U.S. President Donald Trump to being a fan boy. Carney gushed about Trump as they met for a bilateral ahead of the official opening of the G7. ...
“The G7 is nothing without U.S. leadership and so and your personal leadership, leadership of the United States, many issues, geopolitics, economic, technology and working hand in hand with the United States, Canada and the United States and the other G7 partners with your leadership. I’m very much looking forward to the meeting and grateful to have you,” he said.
Look, it’s understandable to be nice to a visiting world leader, especially one you are negotiating a trade deal with, but Carney was over the top and effusive.
“A person who worships at the altar of Donald Trump will kneel before him, not stand up to him,” Carney said in speech after warning voters that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre couldn’t be trusted with Trump.
Who’s kneeling and worshipping now, Mr. Carney?
Despite Carney’s rhetoric during the election campaign and since about our relationship with the United States being over and the need to move trade away from the Americans, talks have been ongoing. There was even hope that a deal would be announced before the G7 began, with Trump and Carney even speaking directly as part of those negotiations.
The push for a deal cooled off last week and momentum faded. Still, Trump said he thinks a deal can be had — and soon — though he said clearly he isn’t ready to give up tariffs.
“I think we have different concepts,” Trump said of his view on trade compared to Carney’s.
“I have a tariff concept. Mark has a different concept, which is something that some people like, but we’re going to see if we can get to the bottom of it. Today.”
While Trump said it was possible for a deal to be struck soon, he made clear that he isn’t ready to move off of tariffs, even with Canada.
Way to show up Trump, Carney!
Where is this money going to come from?:
(Sidebar: not here.)
Prime Minister Mark Carney announced wide-ranging new support for Ukraine as he met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, including new sanctions against Russia and $2 billion in military funding.
Carney announced the new package as he began a bilateral meeting with Zelenskyy in Kananaskis, Alta., on the final day of the annual G7 summit.
Carney also promised Trump and Europe things, too:
“People briefed on the negotiations say the U.S. would be guaranteed first right of refusal on Cdn resources. That is quite a prize at a time when countries around the world are scrambling to line up their supplies.”
— Holly Doan (@hollyanndoan) June 17, 2025
Dear @zannymb: Could you please repost this deleted article? pic.twitter.com/zFOuNAUYRx
European Union officials say Canada is likely to sign a defence procurement agreement with the continent when Prime Minister Mark Carney goes to Brussels later this month.
Carney is set to visit the administrative capital of the European Union on June 23 for the Canada-EU summit, where he will meet with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa.
At the G7 summit in Alberta on Sunday, both EU leaders said Canada’s involvement in Europe’s defence architecture is set to deepen.
Carney's move towards Europe is as daft as Justin's move towards China.
This isn't in Canada's best interests, let alone entirely not logistical.
It's called absolutism:
The Prime Minister is attempting to “guillotine” parliamentary debate over a landmark bill on industrial permits, says a former federal housing minister. Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith (Beaches-East York, Ont.) made the comment yesterday while the Prime Minister was out of the Commons on G7 business: “For what?”
(Sidebar: this Bill C-5.)
**
Mark Carney’s election platform did not include giving himself the power to suspend the entirety of federal law and, by extension, democracy. But that’s what he aims to do with Bill C-5, which he hopes to ram through by Canada Day.
Conservatives, astonishingly, haven’t ruled out helping the prime minister on this front, which is a royal shame since they’re our last line of defence.
(Sidebar: real conservatives do not give tyrants a mandate.)
Introduced to the House of Commons on June 6, the bill would create a Building Canada Act to fast-track any project the feds consider to be in the national interest. The act would do this by allowing the Liberal government to completely bypass parliamentary scrutiny.
The act would give cabinet the power to add any project it likes to a list of “national interest projects” by issuing an order-in-council. Cabinet would also have the power to make a list of federal laws that can be suspended at any time, with the stroke of a pen, with respect to any designated national interest project.
To exempt any designated projects from any number of suspendable laws, the feds would simply need to write a regulation specifying which laws no longer apply to which projects, and it would be so.
For example, the Building Canada Act would allow Carney and his team to designate all work by his forthcoming home-construction agency as a national interest project, and shield all of its business from conflict-of-interest laws, from transparency rules set out in the Access to Information Act, from the scope of the auditor general, from federal taxes via the Income Tax Act, and from police via the Criminal Code.
The same legal exemptions could be given to a favoured engineering firm, telecom company, construction giant, consulting behemoth, etc., as long as cabinet finds a national interest angle in the work. Foreign entities could even be excused from following the Investment Canada Act, which exists to protect economic and national security.
This bill, which will pass, would be giving Carney powers unprecedented in Canadian history.
People voted for this.
There will be no pipelines:
When Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks of "decarbonised oil," it seems like a contradiction in terms. But, there they were in Saskatoon June 2nd, the premiers along with Mr. Carney, talking about a laundry list of nation building projects to enhance Canadian economic sovereignty. And stunningly for many Western Canadians who know what oil is, the take away was Carney's open-ness to another oil pipeline to the West Coast — as long as it transported "decarbonised oil."
What? According to DeSmog and other left-of-centre news agencies, decarbonised oil is about as legit as vitaminized cigarettes — nothing more than marketing talk.
Meanwhile, to Alberta engineers and scientists, we know that decarbonised hydrocarbons is technically the same as hydrogen. Given Alberta is already the largest producer of hydrogen in Canada, surely Mr. Carney is making reference to something altogether different.
Well, he IS a member of the unaccountable and unelected class, so ... :
On Wednesday, Richard Wagner, the chief justice of Canada, gave his annual press conference, intending to talk at length about his manifold achievements throughout the year. But he became visibly uncomfortable when National Post reporter Christopher Nardi asked him why the Supreme Court refuses to disclose the identity of the donor of a bust of Wagner that is on display in the lobby of the Supreme Court.
The head of what is supposedly “one of the world’s most transparent and accessible apex courts” said that he had no idea who paid for the bust, and claimed that it was put on public display before his retirement at the artist’s request (the sculptor has denied this).
When pressed on his non-answer, he began to ramble about the pens and ties he’s received as token gifts from foreign judges, instead of his bust, which cost around $18,000. Pressed again, he denied even knowing whether the bust was a gift or not. “I don’t know who paid for that, so how can there be a conflict of interest?” he finally said with a contemptuous shrug, his customary bonhomie having all but vanished.
Wagner’s evident discomfort at the question is understandable. Putting aside the obvious conflicts of interest and ethical problems involved, it is both unprecedented and deeply vulgar for a sitting Canadian judge to have a sculpture of himself in his court’s lobby, a decision he must have personally endorsed, and which, as far as I know, has no parallel in any other court in the common law world.
Speaking of unaccountable ... :
Housing Minister Gregor Robertson yesterday said he would “demonstrate integrity” but could not explain why he failed to publicly disclose millions in real estate investments including a $2.4 million Pacific Coast penthouse. Robertson again declined to discuss his share in British Columbia property assessed at $10.85 million: “The only thing getting built under the housing minister is his personal fortune.”
Only the political class can have cars:
MPs last night by a 194-141 vote upheld a federal mandate to ban new sales of gasoline-powered cars by 2035. Commons critics challenged the measure as costly, impractical and Draconian: “How will they do it?”
**
Doug Ford says masked suspects tried to steal a car out of his driveway
— 6ixBuzzTV (@6ixbuzztv) June 17, 2025
“4 thugs come racing down my street, masks on, ready to take the car out of the driveway. Surprise surprise two police cars are there. The chase is on” pic.twitter.com/SnFL0RnkD4
Toronto Police are being heavily criticized online for what many consider a shoulder-shrugging approach to the rash of car thefts that continue to plague the Greater Toronto Area.
At an Etobicoke safety meeting last month, Cst. Marco Ricciardi advised residents to leave their key fobs in a faraday pouch in a convenient place for thieves as a way to lessen the risk of violent confrontations.
“To prevent the possibility of being attacked in your home, leave your fobs at the front door because they are breaking into your home to steal your car; they don’t want anything else.
“A lot of them that they’re arresting have guns on them and they are not toy guns,” he ominously added. “They are real guns. They’re loaded.”
That advice sparked an angry reaction on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“This is bizarre,” wrote one X user. “Toronto Police advising the public to leave your fobs near the door. They suggest this because invaders are primarily entering homes to steal your cars. Why not hang your keys outside the door? Or better yet, just leave them in the car.”
“This is failed state-level insanity,” another added. “Hey guys do you mind making it easier for people to steal your cars so that they won’t break into your house instead? Thanks.”
Apparently, there are no pressing matters in Manitoba:
The Manitoba government has signed an agreement with an area of Ukraine to support reconstruction efforts.
Premier Wab Kinew made the announcement in Calgary following the G7 leaders’ summit in nearby Kananaskis.
In a just country, this cow would be rotting in prison until she stopped breathing.
A parole board hearing scheduled for June 18, will give a Nova Scotia convicted killer a chance to persuade members and the public that she is not the same person who admitted to packing twine in the trunk of her car in 2008 before murdering her 12-year-old daughter.
Now 51, Penny Boudreau is serving a life sentence at the Nova Institution for Women in Truro, Nova Scotia, where she works as a cleaner and orders groceries for her unit. Seventeen years ago, Judge Margaret Stewart sentenced Boudreau to 20 years without eligibility for full parole for confessing to killing her only child, Karissa. That would have meant a release date of June 13, 2028. However, under the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, she is now eligible to apply for unescorted passes, including day parole, three years prior to completing that sentence. ...
Boudreau’s decision to apply for unescorted release — viewed by the public as “early” release — has provoked a backlash in a case that has gripped Atlantic Canada for almost two decades. Etched in many people’s memory is the mother’s televised pleas for the public’s help finding her daughter as she concocted a story to make people believe her child was alive and may have been abducted from a grocery store parking lot.
Also:
Khalila Mohammed had a hell of a day on July 7, 2023. When an alleged drug-related robbery outside the Toronto supervised-injection clinic where she worked led to a shootout, in which an innocent passerby was killed, she decided to help the wounded alleged robber (who is not accused of firing a shot, but is charged with manslaughter): tending to his injuries; stashing away his bloody clothes; facilitating his fleeing the scene; advising him to lay low; and lying to police about what happened. She later pursued a romantic relationship with him.
For some reason, these men will never be deported:
Two Oakville, Ont., men are facing human trafficking charges for allegedly exploiting three Mexican men who worked at their sushi restaurant, Halton police said Tuesday.
Police said they launched an investigation in March after being tipped off that three workers were being exploited at August 8 — a franchise sushi restaurant — in Oakville.
Warrants were carried out at the restaurant and two Oakville homes, police said.
At the homes, "individuals were found living in cramped, overcrowded, and unsanitary conditions," police said in a news release.
"The victims were subjected to control that left them feeling powerless and dependent, with violations extending to their sexual integrity," police allege.
Investigators said more victims came forward following the searches.
A 46-year-old Oakville man who police said owns the August 8 franchise in the town faces a slew of charges, including but not limited to: three counts of trafficking in persons, possession of the property of crime over $5,000, and unauthorized employment of foreign nationals.
The restaurant's 27-year-old head chef also faces human trafficking charges and is additionally charged with three counts of sexual assault.
Khalistan is a bit of fiction.
It's horrible that people had to die for it:
Majar Sidhu recalls how excited his sister, Sukhwinder, was to travel to India in June 1985 so her 10-year-old daughter, Parminder, and son, Kuldip, age nine, could meet their paternal grandparents.
The young widow, who lived with her brother and family in South Vancouver, decided at the last minute to change their tickets to an earlier Air India flight out of Toronto.
Another relative took Sukhwinder and the kids to Vancouver Airport on June 22, 1985, as Sidhu had to work. They stopped at the nearby Sikh gurdwara on Ross Street to pray for a safe trip.
Children were blown out of the sky and the supporters of this still spread their rancid ideologies.
If Canada was a just and serious country, no sitting MP would have shares or outside interests of any kind.
This would ensure impartiality:
Physician MPs on the Commons health committee yesterday proposed that all witnesses be compelled to disclose any conflict of interest, a parliamentary first. The suggestion followed complaints that pharmaceutical lobbyists “infest Parliament Hill.”
No country for anyone:
Anti-Israel protestors who published website endorsements of election candidates accusing Jews of genocide were not engaged in “partisan activity,” Elections Commissioner Caroline Simard has ruled. Access To Information records showed Simard’s office disregarded complaints the unregulated activity breached the Canada Elections Act: “The group’s activities were not election advertising or partisan.”
**
Last week, Israel began a series of preemptive strikes on Iranian senior officials, as well as military and nuclear infrastructure. The strategic bombardment followed a warning the day prior from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) — the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog — that Iran had breached its non-proliferation obligations and was a short, technical step away from developing potentially nine nuclear bombs, calling the situation “a matter of serious concern.”
In response to Israel’s strikes, an X account with 1.2 million followers, calling itself “Daily Iran Military,” wrote on Friday “Fight them until mischief ends and obedience remains for God. The Noble Quran (2:193)” above an image of a devil-like character surrounded by fire, which, when examined from a different perspective like the famous rabbit-duck illusion, reveals a blatant, antisemitic caricature of a hooked-nosed Jew. It’s unclear exactly who is behind this account, but it features a steady stream of posts advocating the worldview of the Iranian regime. ...
Just this past Saturday, at a pro-Palestine event in Victoria, B.C., a Palestinian woman, Fadi Elarid gleefully remarked while being recorded, “Free Palestine. Iran will kill you all.”
Last week, drunk on the desire to be saviours, western protesters who had made a pilgrimage to Egypt to stand with Gaza had their self-important missionary work interrupted when they were attacked and arrested by Egyptians who never volunteered to take in any Gazans themselves.
And this coming weekend, Canadians can look forward to the same at the CUPE-sponsored “Hands Off Iran” protest that will take place in Toronto on Sunday.
(Sidebar: this sponsored event. A real country wouldn't let a union take fees and use them to support rogue regimes across the globe.)
Since 1979, Iran has held the world, particularly Israel and the US, at bay.
Led by mad theocrats who strangled the population (sometimes literally), Iran has forced Israel's hand to capably destroy key targets.
Now the US, as Israel's ally, must step in as the arbiter:
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rejected U.S. President Donald Trump's demand for unconditional surrender on Wednesday, as Iranians jammed the highways out of Tehran fleeing from intensified Israeli airstrikes.
In a recorded speech played on television, his first appearance since Friday, Khamenei, 86, said the Americans "should know that any U.S. military intervention will undoubtedly be accompanied by irreparable damage."
"Intelligent people who know Iran, the Iranian nation and its history will never speak to this nation in threatening language because the Iranian nation will not surrender," he said.
Trump has veered from proposing a swift diplomatic end to the war to suggesting the United States might join it. In social media posts on Tuesday he mused about killing Khamenei, then demanded Iran's "UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!"
A source familiar with internal discussions said Trump and his team were considering options that included joining Israel in strikes against Iranian nuclear sites.
Global Affairs Canada says approximately 3,500 Canadians are in Iran and another 6,700 are in Israel amid an escalating conflict between the two countries.
The department says that count is based on the voluntary registration of around 80,000 Canadians in the Middle East and doesn’t fully reflect how many of them may need help getting out of the region.
Also - screw you. You are not a Canadian and you never were.
Among them was Toronto-based comedian Nour Hadidi. In a Friday Instagram video, Hadidi said “we were stopped at a checkpoint, they took our passports, they have detained us.” She added, “they have put us in a barrier like animals.”
Hadidi then followed up with an appeal for supporters to petition Canada’s Egyptian embassy for help. “As a Canadian citizen, I am reminding you of your duty to act when Candian (sic) are in danger in Egypt,” read the suggested text.
The official Instagram account for Canadian participants in the Global March for Gaza complained of “harrowing” treatment for its members.
The account quoted an unnamed “member of the Canadian delegation” who alleged that participants were forced onto waiting vans after refusing to board them voluntarily. “They eventually dragged us up violently into vans. They treated my black Muslim sisters horribly especially,” it read.
The account is in line with other activists reporting rough treatment from Egyptian authorities.
We don't have to trade with China:
FBI Director Kash Patel on Monday evening turned over to Congress an intelligence report raising concerns that China had mass-produced fake U.S. driver's licenses to carry out a scheme to hijack the 2020 election with fake mail-in ballots for Democrat Joe Biden.
The newly declassified intelligence reports from August 2020 weren’t corroborated or fully investigated and instead were recalled from intelligence agencies at about the time that then-FBI Director Chris Wray testified there were no known plots of foreign interference ahead of the 2020 election in which Biden defeated Donald Trump, officials told Just the News.
The new documents were turned over to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who had first raised concerns to the bureau that the intelligence hadn’t been fully vetted, and instead was just dismissed even though there was evidence of the fake licenses.
"Thanks to the oversight work and partnership of Chairman Grassley, the FBI continues to provide unprecedented transparency at the people's Bureau,” Patel told Just the News in a statement. “To that end, we have located documents Chairman Grassley requested, which detail alarming allegations related to the 2020 U.S. election.
“Specifically, these include allegations of plans from the CCP to manufacture fake driver's licenses and ship them into the United States for the purpose of facilitating fraudulent mail-in ballots – allegations which, while substantiated, were abruptly recalled and never disclosed to the public,” Patel also said.
Cuba has had several decades to prove that socialism is success.
It is, but not how people think:
Every year since 1992, the U.N. General Assembly votes on a resolution brought forth by Cuba’s government regarding the need to end the U.S. embargo. Each time the resolution is brought, Cuba’s government attributes the country’s economic hardships—such as shortages, rationing, and limited access to goods—to the long-standing U.S. embargo, which it frames as a form of “economic warfare.” In its 2023 estimate, Cuba claimed that the embargo has cost its economy a total of $1.34 trillion, adding roughly $13 million in losses each day over the past year. This is an enormous number—and just as enormous a pile of rubbish.
The Cuban government attributes the figure to lost export revenues, trade reallocation costs, and disruptions in production and services. While these categories may sound reasonable at first glance, the regime assumes that all such disruptions are caused by the embargo, not by its own dysfunctional socialist policies. To top it off, the government even attributes emigration and talent loss—4 percent of the total cost—to the embargo, as if decades of central planning and political repression had nothing to do with people fleeing the country.
Finally, it assumes that all losses in tourism are due to the embargo and not the nationalization of hotels, bars, and restaurants (in the 1960s) or the tight price controls and rationing (which continue today). Together, these fudged numbers account for 45 percent of the total cost, and that assumes the rest is based on the “true” number.
The point of this exercise in statistical deception is to shift blame.
Cuba used to be one of the richest countries in Latin America. Its living standards—in the 1920s—even matched those of some poorer American states. Globally, Cuba was among the wealthier nations. Today, it lingers near the bottom of international rankings. To deflect blame for the disastrous effects of the socialist policies implemented by Fidel Castro after 1959—and largely maintained ever since—the regime points to the U.S. embargo. It wasn’t Castro and his successors who slowed Cuba’s growth and impoverished the nation by global standards. No, it was the Americans and their embargo that kept the revolution from bearing its true fruits.
The problem is that there is no doubt that embargoes make nations poorer! The U.S. embargo clearly makes Cubans poorer—this is a near consensus. But by how much? As long as that question lingers, Cuba’s government can get always with promoting rubbish studies that serve to legitimize their rule.
Fortunately, there is now a way to disentangle the effects of different factors explaining Cuba’s economic evolution since 1959. Alongside João Pedro Bastos and Jamie Bologna Pavlik, we separated the effect of Cuba’s socialist policies from those of the embargo and those of Soviet aid to the country.
This was possible thanks to two new advances. The first was a new series for gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in Cuba that is consistent over time and which can be matched with Soviet transfers to the country; this way, we can evaluate Cuba with and without transfers.
The second is a relatively novel method in economics—the synthetic control method, which can be used to estimate the causal effect of an intervention (i.e., a treatment just like in a laboratory experiment). It consists of constructing a weighted combination of control units (here: other countries) that approximates the characteristics of the treated unit before the intervention. For Cuba, the intervention is Fidel Castro’s socialist policies. This “synthetic control” serves as a counterfactual—what would have happened in the absence of the treatment (i.e., Cuba continues with a non-socialist and non-democratic regime as was the case before 1959). The difference between the observed outcomes of the treated unit and its synthetic counterpart after the intervention provides an estimate of the treatment effect.
Combined, this allows us to observe the trajectory of Cuba’s economy net of Soviet transfers but still accounts for the effects of the U.S. embargo. By 1989, our results show that Cuba was approximately 55 percent poorer than it would have been in the absence of both socialism and the embargo. In other words, even before the collapse of Soviet support, the costs of central planning and isolation had already taken a severe toll on Cuban living standards.
So what about the embargo? After stripping out the Soviet subsidy, we can use trade data to simulate how much trade openness was lost because of the embargo. Trade openness—measured as the ratio of total trade (exports plus imports) to GDP—plummeted after 1960 as Cuba was cut off from its most natural trading partner and was forced to reallocate to less efficient trading partners (European countries, Soviet bloc countries, other developing nations). Simply put, Cuba was forced into inefficient trade relationships. This, in turn, affected productivity.
By reapplying the synthetic control method using trade data, we can construct a counterfactual level of trade openness in the absence of the embargo. The resulting gap provides a measure of lost openness attributable to the embargo, which can then be converted into a cost figure by using standard estimates of the growth effects of trade openness. This approach yields an estimate of the economic cost of the embargo independent of domestic policies.
So how big a deal is the embargo? At worst, it accounts for about 10 percent of the economic gap attributable to the combination of the revolution and the embargo; at best, it explains less than 3 percent. In other words, yes—the embargo has made Cubans poorer, and it may even have helped the regime endure longer by providing a convenient scapegoat. But it simply doesn’t explain much. The true source of Cuba’s decline is the regime’s own policies. These policies placed the country on a trajectory that dragged it from the top tier of global rankings to the bottom.
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