May
27 of this year will be the fifth anniversary of the shocking
announcement that the unmarked graves of 215 missing children had been
found on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.
But the announcement turned out to be a nothing-burger. On the third
anniversary, the band’s leadership admitted that ground penetrating
radar (GPR) had found only “soil anomalies” that were “potential”
graves.
Now, just in time for the fifth anniversary of the
Kamloops non-discovery, the Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation of northern
Alberta has announced the discovery of 62 potential grave sites on its
reserve. They claim they are looking for the remains of “82 children
between the ages of seven and 16, who went to St. Francis Xavier
Residential School between 1907 and 1962.”
In some ways, this
effort is more sophisticated than the Kamloops grave hunt. The searchers
are using multiple imaging technologies, not just GPR. The work is
being supervised by Dr. Kisha Supernant, a prominent archaeologist from
the University of Alberta. And the Nation is avoiding exaggerated claims
about what has been found.
Nevertheless, the conceptual
foundations of the project seem fundamentally flawed. First, who are
these 82 children whose burial sites are unknown? What relation do they
have to the 45 named students who are listed by the National Centre for
Truth and Reconciliation as having died while attending the school?
Second, the searchers are using their equipment in known burial grounds. According to the CBC
story, “Nine of the 62 are not within a cemetery location … but rather
in areas where there's likely to be buried human remains.” Let me
reverse that contorted phrasing in the interests of clarity. Fifty-three
of these 62 possible graves are in recognized cemeteries, and nine are
in other places known to have been used as burial sites.
The true
headline should be, “Searchers find possible graves in cemeteries.” And,
to quote Dr. Supernant, “We have no idea if these are children from the
residential school or not … It's possible that some of them could be,
we really just don't know that yet.” Only the ever-credulous CBC could build a national news story out of such meagre information.
This
is just the latest in a long line of post-Kamloops announcements that
missing children’s remains had been found, or may have been found, or
could be found in the future. But not one verified grave of a child who
attended an Indian residential school has actually been found.
All
this fruitless searching is possible only because of federal government
funding. “Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation is applying for funding to continue
the work through a federal program called the Residential Schools
Missing Children Community Support Fund. ‘I think this is just the
beginning of a lot of research,’ [Chief] Sunshine said.”
Proton VPN has become the latest tech
company to oppose the Liberal government’s proposed legislation on
lawful access to data, saying there is “no universe” in which the
company would scrap its policy against logging users’ data.
Ottawa’s Bill C-22,
also known as the Lawful Access Act, would expand law enforcement’s
authority to access digital information and subscriber information. It
would also require digital service providers to retain metadata about
user activities for up to a year, and force telecommunications and
online service providers to grant authorities access to user data.
The
federal government has said the goal of the bill is to provide law
enforcement with tools to better tackle crime. The legislation is being
studied by the House of Commons public safety committee, where
stakeholders and experts are providing recommendations to improve it.
Proton
VPN, based in Switzerland, said on May 19 that the European Union’s
highest court had “struck down this type of mass data retention
legislation twice already, suggesting it won’t stand up to scrutiny.”
The 2006 EU Data Retention Directive would have
compelled all internet service providers and telecommunications service
providers in Europe to collect and retain subscriber information, but
the European Court of Justice declared the directive unlawful in 2014.
Proton VPN General Manager David Peterson said that complying with foreign surveillance orders without a legal process is a criminal offence under Swiss law.
“We'll
defend our Canadian users and never compromise them. We will fight
C-22’s application by every means available,” he added.
Philosopher Hannah Arendt coined the infamous phrase, the
“banality of evil,” to describe her observation of Adolf Eichmann during his
trial in Jerusalem in 1961. She observed how ordinary Eichmann appeared, how
disturbingly normal. A bureaucratic instrument in the killing of six million
Jews, Eichmann was indeed evil, but he performed his part banally — like part
of a machinery operating routinely. Killing was a strategy. There was no
emotion.
Similarly, what we learned this week with the timely release
of Israel’s Civil Commission report on October 7 sexual violence, aptly titled
“Silenced No More,” was eerily similar. The sexual crimes that were committed
on that tragic day were implemented by fanatics and psychopaths but were
pre-planned by Palestinian commanders much like the Nazi Eichmann. I refer to
them as “Palestinian” and not as “Hamas” so as to strip away the mask we often
use to pretend they are someone else — as we did by referring to “Germans” as
“Nazis”.
Shortly after that horrific day, I walked the grounds of the
Nova music festival where over 360 young people were murdered and raped. The
ground was soaked in blood. The grass was charred. Personal effects littered
the landscape. Witnesses described scenes of horror. People mutilated. Dead.
Bleeding out. The road nearby was still scorched. The trees that many of the
rape victims had been tied to leaned toward the ground, as if they themselves
had been violated.
Silenced No More follows other critical reports on sexual
violence including The Dinah Project. This latest report however is
significantly more extensive. Its authors say it is the “first to
systematically assemble, verify and analyze the evidence on sexual and
gender-based violence during the attacks and in captivity.”
As the report says, “what emerges is not a collection of
isolated incidents, but a coherent and repeated pattern of violence, carried
out across multiple locations and phases, from the initial attacks, through
abduction and transfer, to prolonged captivity and deliberate digital
circulation of abuse.”
In other words, the sexual crimes themselves were heinous
beyond comprehension. But they were planned and then executed by Hamas leader
Yahya Sinwar’s henchmen, not dissimilarly to the banality of evil Arendt
described. Nazi commanders in Berlin drew up plans and motivated the SS to
commit mass murder. Palestinian commanders went one step further beyond cold
murder: barbaric rape, torture, and humiliation to terrorize an entire nation.
Israel’s detractors have tried to silence the rapes and
heinous crimes that occurred on October 7. Feminist groups still refuse to
condemn them. It took the United Nations months to acknowledge they even
happened. Now this week, The New York Times published a controversial opinion
piece that unleashed a firestorm by alleging rapes of Palestinian prisoners.
This was done at the very same time the Silenced No More report was released.
Coincidental? To the casual observer, it appears this was an attempt to distract
and muddy the waters with controversy.
Either way, The New York Times article says it drew its
alleged evidence from just 14 people. Conversely, the 300-page Silenced No More
report drew its evidence from 430 testimonies and interviews; 10,000
photographs and videos and 1,800 hours of visual material. The researchers
found rapes and gang rape, sexual torture, and mutilation, forced nudity,
executions linked to sexual violence, post-mortem sexual abuse and sexual
assaults carried out in the presence of family members — something none of us
can possibly imagine.
What is unique especially was the Palestinian weaponization
of digital media: “Perpetrators recorded, livestreamed and distributed acts of
abuse and torture through social media and victims’ own digital accounts. In
many cases, families first learned of the fate of their loved ones through
images and videos sent by perpetrators.”
The people who committed these atrocities were Palestinians
from Gaza who broke through the fence on the morning of October 7. Some were
part of Hamas; many were ordinary civilians. All were Palestinians who
committed heinous war crimes and crimes against humanity. Each of their victims
had a name, had a family and lived a life. Silence No More is a report that
will ensure they are not forgotten and that those who committed these evil
atrocities will be held to account.
“Morale is at an all-time low,” said Tracy Saldivia-Oda, a
communications representative for the Ottawa region of the Registered Nurses’
Association of Ontario.
“It’s at the height of tension, and we’re in very serious
disagreements. Hundreds of nurses in the Ottawa area were just laid off,” she
said.
The tension she’s referring to is, in part, between
registered nurses and the Ontario government, which continues to change funding
for hospitals, resulting in workforce cuts.
In April, The Ottawa Hospital announced it would cut about 400
workers. Most of them would be nurses.
“If anyone says there are lots of nursing jobs in Ottawa —
there are not,” Saldivia-Oda said.
Without good staffing ratios, says the Ontario Nurses’
Association, Canada’s largest nurse union, there will be even longer wait
times, possibly life-threatening delays and unreasonable workloads. While
staffing ratios vary and are often not achieved in practice, the 2024 Patient‑to‑Nurse
Ratios for Hospitals Act says a 1-to-1 staff-to-patient ratio is ideal within
critical care, for example.
At Friday morning’s event at Oat Couture cafe on Gladstone
Avenue, ONA representatives handed out flyers to local health-care workers and their supporters outlining the
consequences of the recent cuts.
The hot topics of the morning also included the reduction of
Ontario Student Assistance Program funding, low wages for nurses working in
community health care as opposed to hospitals, changes to the Canada Health
Act, difficulties in navigating the health-care system and violence towards
nurses in hospitals.
The Canadian Armed Forces are asking military personnel in
the National Capital Region to return some field gear, including vests to hold
body armour, to address what the Forces describe as “critical equipment
shortages” for deployed operations.
A May 13 e-mail from National Defence Headquarters in
Ottawa, obtained by The Globe and Mail, cites this inventory shortfall.
It directs all Canadian Armed Forces members in the region,
if they are not assigned to a “deployable unit,” to hand in several pieces of
personal kit, including backpacks and fragmentation vests, which are used to
hold armour plates to protect the wearer from shrapnel and shell fragments.
“Your co-operation is essential to the success of this
effort,” the e-mail says, including photos of the requested gear, which members
of the Forces would have acquired over the course of their duties.
The message says it was sent on behalf of Colonel Jeff
Toope, commander of Canadian Forces Support Group Ottawa-Gatineau and commander
of an area Forces base.
Department of National Defence spokesperson Daniel Blouin
confirmed the e-mail in response to questions from The Globe. He estimated the
message was sent to roughly 10,000 people.
Collection dates for the gear have been set for later this
month and in early June at the department’s Carling Campus in Ottawa’s west
end.
Experts have said for years that the Canadian military was
chronically underfunded. It is now absorbing an infusion of new cash after
Prime Minister Mark Carney in 2025 committed to boost spending by more than
$84-billion over five years, in order for Canada to meet NATO targets and take
more responsibility for its own defence.
National Defence said the military has been running low on
some items.
“Several procurements are currently ongoing to replenish
stock levels for these items.”
She said members of the Forces in non-deployable units do
not require this equipment for day-to-day duties and the returned goods will be
used to equip troops as required for deployed operations.
Canada is in the midst of significantly expanding its
military presence in Latvia, where it leads a multinational NATO brigade and
has committed to expanding its presence to 2,200 troops by 2026, up from 2,000
in August, 2025.
The new gear may go to Latvia, but could also be destined
for new recruits and training exercises, Mr. Blouin said. As the Canadian
government announced in April, more than 7,300 people signed up to join the
military’s regular force over the past year – the highest number of enrolments
in more than three decades.
Mr. Blouin said the military has issued a return equipment
request before, such as in the later years of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan.
Christian Leuprecht, a professor at the Royal Military
College of Canada and Queen’s University, said a shortage of basic gear
indicates there is still a “mismatch” with National Defence and the Forces as
they grapple with buying enough equipment to supply a growing organization.
(Sidebar: it's not a mismatch. It's a deliberate policy of crippling a vital organ of the nation.)
He said there’s still a disconnect between the “requirements
of the Armed Forces, the procurement system to be able to deliver on those
requirements, and the ability to deliver the type of equipment that the
Canadian Armed Forces need in a timely fashion.”
Prof. Leuprecht said the Forces and National Defence are
clearly trying to meet the expectations of Mr. Carney, but for decades have had
to follow constraining policies that ensure these organizations don’t “spend
too much money and ideally returns money at the end of the year” to federal
coffers.
The department said that there was a 50 per cent decrease in
reported hate crimes in 2025 (231) compared to 2024 (443) but that reported
hate crimes are up 40 per cent so far in 2026 compared to this period last
year. In 2023, there were 372 reported hate crimes, the department said.
In 2025, there was also a 37 per cent decrease compared to
2024 in the number of criminal charges (217) brought against the 73 people
arrested for hate crimes. Those arrested for hate crimes in 2025 were likelier
to be charged (32 per cent) than they were in 2024 (25 per cent).
In a May 12 appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast, Saad said
he had accepted a post at the University of Mississippi. He said repeated death
threats had made it untenable for him to continue as a marketing professor at
Concordia University.
“I’m now leaving in large part because it became difficult
for me, if not impossible, to be a high-profile Jewish professor who supports
the right of Israel to exist,” he said.
Saad confirmed the move in a Victoria Day social media post,
thanking Concordia “for the complete freedom that I was granted to pursue any
research stream and any professional endeavour that I desired.”
He added, “I did face some difficulties over the past few
years stemming from the unfolding realities in Montreal but I walk away with
some sadness (I’m sentimental).”
Concordia University has long been a focal point of
anti-Israel radicalism. As far back as 2002, an anti-Zionist riot at the school
prevented a planned appearance by Israeli politician Benjamin Netanyahu, who is
now prime minister.
More recently, the university was the scene of a November
2024 anti-Israel riot that saw the school’s main lobby dominated by masked mobs
calling for Intifada and charging lecture halls to interrupt classes with bells
and shouted slogans.
Saad told Joe Rogan that in 2017, online threats had forced
him to follow a safety protocol in which he had to be escorted by security
while on campus — and the doors of his classrooms locked to keep out potential
assailants.
“I would lecture, I would be ushered out, my wife would be
waiting for me and I would let out a deep sigh, ‘Thank God I survived another
week,’” he said.
In 2022, Saad said he was walking with his nine-year-old son
when a man asked him if he was Gad Saad, to which he replied that he was.
As Saad told Rogan, “then he kind of composes himself to
deal with the hatred he feels and he goes ‘I’m not going to do anything to you
out of respect for your son today.’”
Shortly afterwards, Saad took leave from Concordia in order
to accept a post with the Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of
American Freedom at the University of Mississippi.
Saad told Rogan he is in the United States on a work visa,
but hopes to obtain permanent residency and ultimately citizenship. “Maybe we
can turn the Saads into Americans,” he said.
Saad’s departure marks the second time in 16 months that an
influential Canadian academic has left Canada for the United States, blaming
local political conditions for hounding them into exile.
My former colleague isn’t alone. More and more Jews are
leaving Canada for Israel. According to the International Christian Embassy in
Jerusalem, Canadian aliyah rose a record 51 per cent in 2025 from 2023. They
are leaving this country at record rates and many are relocating to the United
States, as well.
My ex-colleague, Henry Topas, had been a successful
businessman in Montreal and doubled as a cantor in one of the most hallowed
synagogues in the city, Beth Tikvah. The synagogue was the target of
antisemitic firebombing attacks — twice. Both attacks came after the Hamas
terrorist invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Topas, now 75, and his wife had
considered making aliyah even before October 7 because he has children and
grandchildren in Israel, but the couple became so fed up with Montreal and
Canada in general that they moved to the Jewish state permanently last March.
“I became increasingly disillusioned with the level of
security for the Jewish community,” Topas told me from his new home in Israel.
“It was extremely frustrating.”
No guff. Organizations have documented a rise in
antisemitism — vile antisemitism, in Canada. Only last week, there were two
more shootings outside synagogues in Toronto.
“The truth is, the wave of antisemitism in contemporary
Canada is not only a matter of fearing for our safety in the synagogue,” said
Sam Eskenasi, an Orthodox Jew in Thornhill, Ont., and a father of six. “It has
much broader impact on us, as well. It has affected my family and me in the
pocketbook. So are we thinking about moving to Israel? Absolutely.”
Eskenasi revealed that, before the October 7 rapes and
murders in Israel, he had a working relationship with a number of schools and
community centres that expressed fondness for his plan to construct a portable
museum. It was designed to educate Canadians about what Jewish life was all
about, as many had, and still have, no frame of reference.
“Once the job was completed, and this was after October 7,
the others decided to quietly back out. I was informed that there was
reluctance because the museum was perceived by them as too much of a political
statement. The museum is now sitting in my garage,” he said.
“So I’m sure you can see what I mean. Will I have to worry
about my visibly Jewish children getting a fair shake in Canada?”
It is a fair question, really.
Jewish life in Canada, as we know it, is being
systematically targeted by a number of vocal, anti-Israel groups who are
campaigning to shut down Jewish schools and camps. And, as the National Post’s
Tristin Hopper reported in March, eight Canadian Jewish non-profit
organizations have been stripped of their charitable status by the Canada
Revenue Agency.
Concerns about bias and political pressure in Canada on Jews
are increasing daily. It is unfathomable that Jew hate of this magnitude is
taking place in our country in 2026. It is maddening. It is depressing. And,
what’s worse, it isn’t only in Canada. Nefesh B’Nefesh, a non-profit
organization that facilitates aliyah from Canada and the United States, last
year registered a worldwide surge in diaspora Jews planning to move to Israel,
with a 70 per cent increase in both countries and a 400 per cent increase in
France. Similar spikes occurred in the United Kingdom, South Africa, Brazil and
Argentina.
While many Jewish-Canadians feel now is the right time to
make aliyah by moving to Israel, countless other Canadian Jews are
investigating the idea of moving to the United States, particularly Florida.
“I get at least five serious inquiries from Canadian Jews
every day,” said Lauren Cohen, a cross-border investment and immigration lawyer
who has held virtual town hall events and private counselling sessions for
Jewish-Canadians pondering permanent moves to Florida. “The number of inquiries
I am getting from Jewish-Canadians is unprecedented.”
Author of the book, “Finding Your Silver Lining in the
Immigration Process,” Cohen moved from Thornhill to Boca Raton, Fla., 25 years
ago. Not only Jews from Canada have been seeking her advice, she said, but
non-Jews, as well.
“But so many are Jewish because they are looking for a safe
place to reside, and Florida, for the most part, is pro-Israel,” she said.
“Antisemitism in Canada has been manifesting under the Canadian governments the
past 10 years.”
**
Canada’s ports rarely make front-page news until something jams: a strike, a
backlog, a tariff shock, or a container stuck between rail, road, and
sea. Now Ottawa has put a far bigger question on the table: whether
parts of Canada’s port system should be merged, restructured, opened to
more private capital, or even divested.
The
Carney government has not announced a port sale. But a new federal
discussion paper says future recommendations could include the
“amalgamation” of key ports and the “divestiture” of others. That single
word matters. Ports are not just docks and warehouses; they are
gateways for groceries, cars, grain, minerals, energy, construction
materials, and the goods that keep Canadian households and businesses
moving.
**
Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday proposed a trillion-dollar
expansion of the power grid but would not say who would pay for it.
Analysts have warned of substantially higher costs for ratepayers: “Get
it wrong and Canadians will pay higher utility bills.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney called Honda’s decision not to
move forward with its electric vehicle project in Alliston, Ont., a
“disappointing decision.”
“It’s a decision that reflects the broader strategic
position and financial position of that company,” said Carney, during a press
conference in Ottawa on Thursday. “It’s part of a global series of decisions
that they’ve taken.”
Carney said despite Honda’s decision, the shift to lower
emission zero emission vehicles will likely continue to progress globally and
here in Canada.
“But those are choices for Canadians,” said Carney, alluding
to consumer sentiment in the car market.
No, those are things foisted on the Canadian public, things that no one asked for.
The
U.S. administration said the move stemmed from concerns that Canada is
not meeting its defence commitments. But more could be at play given the
current strained ties between the North American allies.
The announcement came by way of U.S. Under Secretary of War Elbridge Colby in an X post
on May 18. Colby said his department is pausing the Permanent Joint
Board on Defense to “reassess” how the body benefits shared continental
defence.
Colby also posted a link to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s
January speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in
which he used thinly veiled criticism directed at U.S. policies and
called on middle powers to resist the “coercion” of great powers.
“We
can no longer avoid the gaps between rhetoric and reality,” Colby said
in his post, adding that “real powers must sustain our rhetoric with
shared defense and security responsibilities.”
Although
Carney dismissed the significance of Washington’s decision to suspend
the board when commenting on the issue on May 19, it is unlikely he
missed the signal. Whether it changes his calculus in managing the
broader Canada-U.S. relationship, or affects the upcoming July review of
the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), remains to be seen.
