U.S. President Donald Trump continues to consider hitting Canada with
tariffs over the country’s smoke-producing wildfires. But at least one
U.S. politician is countering that what this country needs is help, not
economic threats. And Ontario’s premier dismissed the notion of more
tariffs as “rubbish.”
Trump
and Prime Minister Mark Carney were both in New Jersey on Sunday for
the FIFA World Cup final, and could be seen talking with each other
behind the glass of the viewing platform. ...
“I
told him you’ve got to stop these fires from coming in and poisoning
our air, our air’s been poisoned,” Trump said. “I have a good
relationship with Mark Carney but, you know, we’ve got to stop the fires
up there. If we can help them we’ll help them but maybe they should pay
us some damages or something, or we should do some tariffs?”
(Sidebar: you don't need to lie, Donald. You don't like Carney, and that's okay.)
He
continued: “It was terrible. I mean, you had businesses closing. In
particular Michigan … Detroit Michigan, they had to close everything,
they had to close car plants and a lot of other things. I’ve never
remembered this happening. Over the last four or five years you saw it
starting to take place.”
Edmonton grain millers, Winnipeg telecom providers and bankers in
Yarmouth, N.S. must speak French under draft federal regulations
detailed Saturday by Heritage Minister Marc Miller. The first-ever
requirements follow complaints of “the decline of French in Canada.”
**
Liberal MP Lori Idlout (Nunavut) cannot act as a federal contractor, the
Ethics Commissioner has ruled. Idlout was major shareholder in a
company that received hundreds of thousands to conduct Indigenous
workshops for federal employees: “I am ordered by the Ethics
Commissioner.”
Women and Gender Equality Minister Rechie Valdez’s department is the
first to delete all departmental Twitter accounts. An Access To
Information memo said hurtful remarks by the public on social media
“created significant mental strain for employees.”
Whatever the ultimate truth of President Donald Trump’s allegations of Chinese meddling in American elections, Canadians have no excuse for the kind of
reflexive dismissal in which the CBC indulged Friday.
Despite their ruling class's attempts to hush up and smooth over what
they had allowed to happen, Canadians nevertheless know from what
limited government admissions were made exactly what Beijing is capable
of. Whether what Trump said is the exact or entire truth, or timed to
influence the midterms, is not the point.
This side of the
border, we know the Chinese have tried to influence our elections. (Full
disclosure, I suspect Trump is broadly right: if the Chinese thought
Ottawa worth the effort, Washington certainly would be….)
Justice Marie-Josée Hogue wrote that China was the “most active perpetrator” (Page 39) of foreign interference targeting Canada’s democratic institutions in 2019 and 2021. Her report
describes how Beijing deployed proxies, diaspora networks,
disinformation on WeChat and other platforms, and even suspected fund
transfers to support “pro-PRC” or neutral candidates while undermining
perceived adversaries.
CSIS documented clandestine efforts
to leverage community leaders, exclude “anti-China” voices from events,
and exert control over Chinese-Canadian communities. Later reports
confirm these tactics evolved but persist with mass recruitment via fake
job ads, transnational repression, and influence operations viewed by
Beijing as “low-risk, high-reward.”
The Hogue report rightly (and it must be said, eagerly)
noted that overall election results were not overturned... It is a
fundamental principle of Liberal government in Canada that one does not
need to deal with problems that one can plausibly deny exist.
There are also new details about part of the reason
for a 23-month delay between the last Canadian Security Intelligence
Service (CSIS) briefing about Lu to his employer in February 2021 and
the start of Natural Resources' internal investigation into Lu in
January 2023.
Lu's security clearance was eventually revoked and
an RCMP investigation resulted in criminal charges of breach of trust
and unauthorized use of a computer.
It's alleged that he used his
access to the Natural Resources network to copy a total of more than
2,500 documents onto a USB key and external drive.
He faces trial in Ottawa's Superior Court by a judge alone in January.
Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand’s department last
year fired 25 Canadian diplomats including one caught in secret contact with a
foreign government. Neither the fired diplomat nor the foreign state were
identified: “A report was received from a partner department that an employee
was in contact inappropriately with foreign government officials.”
Cabinet yesterday would not release terms of a
multi-billion dollar concession to the U.S. over the Gordie Howe International
Bridge. Prime Minister Mark Carney confirmed he agreed to share toll revenues
with the United States, a breach of a 2012 agreement: “Carney has negotiated a
terrible deal for Canada.”
It’s just an economy:
Shuv Majumdar just flusters David Cochrane live on air
Cochrane keeps pushing the Liberal script: “Why is Canada the one dilly-dallying? Trump’s the problem everywhere. Mexico’s different...”
Shuv calmly dismantles it: * Points out Canada’s own failures: no strategic critical… pic.twitter.com/2Rc0RD9y66
Consumer spending is up, but that growth isn’t coming
from income for those outside the top 20 per cent earners. The report said that
for the lowest 20 per cent of earners, spending jumped 27 per cent over the
past five years, while disposable income just went up three per cent.
Households are filling that gap and covering their
spending by dipping more on savings, leaning on rising portfolio values and
taking on more debt.
However, much of that increase in spending isn’t buying
goods at all. It’s going towards services, which are driving most of the
growth. These include financial services tied to borrowing and asset-linked
fees, while real spending on essentials is flat. Purchases of cars, furniture
and appliances, on the other hand, are falling.
The report found that the middle 60 per cent are still
spending, but are spending more than their income, a deterioration of roughly
$7,000 per household, meaning their savings and balance sheets are more
comparable to lowest earners.
Meanwhile, the lowest 20 per cent fell deeper into a
negative savings position, with annual savings declining by roughly $15,000 per
household.
Data from Toronto-based fintech Koho Financial Inc.
released Tuesday showed that use of its buy now, pay later financing option
surged 109 per cent over the past year, growing from 0.8 per cent of users in
May, 2025, to 1.71 per cent in May of this year. For perspective, Koho has more
than 2.5 million customers across Canada.
The initial spike coincided with the holiday grocery
shopping season and has remained strong well into 2026, the report said.
“People are trying to find a bunch of different ways to
figure out how to make their budget stretch,” said Faye Lucas, head of consumer
trust at Koho.
Spending on food rose about 5 per cent year-over-year per
user to $275 a month in May, the report found. Shoppers made more frequent
grocery runs and spent more on each trip, even while seeking out discount
retailers. Food delivery purchases grew by 9 per cent.
Opinion: However bad your grocery bill is, it will get
worse
The report’s findings are based on spending and financial
behaviour data from more than 173,000 Koho customers between May, 2025, and
May, 2026.
Buy-now-pay-later financing allows shoppers to split
purchases into two, four or more instalment payments over several weeks, and
usually without interest until a late payment. Koho lets users split purchases
retroactively, charging an upfront fee as well as a $15 charge once a month in
the case of late payment.
The report’s findings come as Canadians continue to
grapple with food price spikes that have outpaced general inflation for more
than a year. In May, rising grocery costs exceeded the overall growth in prices
for the 16th month in a row, according to Statistics Canada data.
Vegetables saw some of the biggest increases, with tomato
prices rising as much as 45 per cent year over year as the end of a trade deal
between the U.S. and Mexico stoked price volatility across the North American
tomato trade.
Overall, grocery prices are up more than 30 per cent
since 2019, TD Bank data showed. Canadian food banks recorded double the visits
in March, 2025, compared to the same period six years ago.
Health professionals in B.C. made 2,807 errors while
managing more than 4,000 euthanasia cases in 2024, according to documents from
the provincial health ministry.
The B.C. oversight unit for medical assistance in
dying (MAID) identified 2,807 cases that required government “follow-up” from
at least 4,169 MAID cases handled that year, according to the documents first
obtained by the news outlet Canadian Catholic News through a freedom of
information request.
The report’s text indicates that 4,169 individuals
requested MAID in 2024, representing an almost 10 percent rise compared to
2023.
The MAID Oversight Unit reported discovering errors
within 51.9 percent of MAID “case outcomes” that necessitated corrective
“follow-up.” The unit defines follow-up as the process of acquiring missing
information or providing clarification on existing details.
The report says that out of the thousands of errors, 353
cases, or roughly 12.5 percent, raised compliance issues and necessitated the
“education” of practitioners and pharmacists to ensure they grasped MAID’s
legal requirements and professional standards.
Data pertaining to the 4,169 MAID cases indicates that
72 percent of these individuals died because they received the procedure, the
report said. An additional 23 percent died from other causes, 4 percent were
deemed ineligible, and 1.4 percent of individuals decided to withdraw their
request.
The law, which Beijing enacted in early July, gives a
legal basis for the Chinese government to prosecute people or organizations
outside China if their actions are deemed to harm the progress of "ethnic
unity."
"It is a textbook example of transnational
oppression," said Mehmet Tohti, executive director of the Uyghur Rights
Advocacy Project.
"Our reaction to China is fading away, day by day,
week by week. And then we don't hear too much about transnational repression or
gross violations of human rights."
China says the law promotes harmony among the country's
55 ethnic groups, who make up just under nine per cent of the country's 1.4
billion population. The law mandates the use of Mandarin Chinese as the primary
language in education.
The law says all Chinese citizens have a duty to
"forge a common consciousness of the Chinese nation according to law and
the constitution."
It may impact minorities like Tibetans and Uyghurs, who
have protested Beijing policies in the past, including through violent means.
The case has been confirmed by The Bureau through a May
25 court ruling, and was first reported Monday by CBC News, which cited
courthouse records containing explosive allegations: that CSIS briefed Natural
Resources Canada (NRCan) about Dennis Lu no fewer than three times between 2000
and 2021, and that the department finally launched a covert internal
investigation to monitor and search his computer.
NRCan cut Lu’s access to its email and servers in June
2023 — after he had traveled to China and, while there, allegedly sent nearly
2,000 emails from his work account to his personal account. When Lu returned to
Canada and asked why his access was blocked, a manager ordered it reinstated so
his retirement could be processed. Weeks later, Lu allegedly copied more than
2,600 documents from a departmental shared server.
Those circumstances now form a central part of Lu’s
defense, CBC reported. His lawyers, Reem Zaia and Michael Nesbitt, have accused
Natural Resources Canada of operating as an extension of law enforcement — an
agent of the state acting for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and
the Royal Canadian Mounted Police from the moment its surveillance of Lu began
— and have argued that Lu, as an employee, was owed an expectation of privacy
in his workplace.
The prosecution, focusing on the future of clean-energy
technology, lands in the midst of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s sweeping
engagement with China, in which both nations have pledged that Canada will
become a major exporter of energy to the Chinese market. In January, Carney
traveled to Beijing for the first prime ministerial visit since 2017, and his
Energy and Natural Resources Minister, Tim Hodgson, signed a memorandum of
understanding committing both countries to talks on oil and gas resource development
and liquefied natural gas. Carney declared that by 2030 Canada will produce 50
million tonnes of liquefied natural gas each year, all destined for Asian
markets, and Ottawa has set a goal of increasing exports to China by 50 percent
by 2030, with Carney and President Xi Jinping discussing two-way investment in
clean energy and technology.
Lu, 65, researched clean energy for decades at Natural
Resources Canada’s Centre for Mineral and Energy Technology, specializing in
carbon capture and decarbonization, and was fired during the week of his
scheduled retirement in August 2023.
He is charged with two counts of unauthorized use of a
computer and one count of breach of trust. The allegations are unproven. The
alleged breach spans from the day Lu began a leave of absence to travel to
Taiwan and China in 2023 to his arrest in 2024, shortly after he returned to
Ottawa from a year living in China following his departure from the department.
The Chinese leader is intensifying Beijing’s crackdown on
Christians amid a wider purge of top officials, showing signs of an
increasingly paranoid leader.
The country officially recognises five religions,
including Protestantism and Catholicism, but this only extends to churches that
are fully state-controlled, where congregation is expected to sing patriotic
songs before every service and affix Mr Xi’s portrait above the pulpit.
Worshippers at state-run churches must sing patriotic
songs before services and hang a portrait of Xi Jinping above the pulpit
Many Christians such as TJ, who withheld his full name
for security reasons, and his wife have chosen to join unofficial churches – or
underground churches – where they can preach the gospel away from the
government’s oversight.
But attending these places of worship carries its own
risks – not least because they are seen as traitors.
TJ last saw his wife when she was taken to a police
station along with their phones, some books and artwork, and she has yet to be
released. He still doesn’t understand why he was not taken too.
Under Mr Xi’s iron-tight grip, China has expanded its
nationwide suppression of Christians during the last decade, arresting more
than 10,000 people, according to Bob Fu, the founder of ChinaAid, a charity for
victims of persecution in the country.
In the most recent crackdown, armed police stormed the
Early Rain Covenant, an influential underground church, and detained more than
30 members last month.
Chinese police standing guard during a service at the
Early Rain Covenant Church
Chinese police spent months harassing worshippers at the
Early Rain Covenant Church before making a series of arrests Credit: Early Rain
Covenant Church
Mr Xi’s ruthless campaign against these underground
churches aims to ensure the survival of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and
remove any threat to his power.
Mr Fu said: “It’s the emperor playing God. [Mr Xi] wants
to be exclusive, he doesn’t want to have anything treated or worshipped more
superior than him.”
TJ is one of six Chinese Christians who spoke to The
Telegraph who have either been directly targeted by the CCP or have close
relatives that are incarcerated.
They described police officers showing up at their homes
unannounced in the middle of the night. Friends being rounded up and questioned
by authorities, sometimes for weeks on end. Loved ones being convicted on
trumped-up charges such as “using superstition to undermine the law” and
detained indefinitely in crammed, dirty cells. And lawyers were targeted and
suspended from practising law for defending Christians.
The haunting wreck of Terra Nova lies at the bottom of
the Labrador Sea, about 18 kilometres off the southern tip of Greenland.
The geographical society, in partnership with the Woods
Hole Oceanographic Institution, shared images Tuesday of the ship's wide,
ornate bow and two wheels. The images were captured as part of the
organizations' Heroic Age Expedition, which last week took them to the wreck of
Quest, the vessel on which Anglo-Irish explorer Ernest Shackleton died in 1922.
In a way, the expedition is the final chapter of the
stories of two of the most famous figures of the heroic age of Antarctic
exploration, said John Geiger, chief executive officer of the geographical
society.
"There aren't large artifacts of their lives left,
now that the last ships have been properly investigated," he said in an
interview Tuesday. "It's a very special feeling, for sure."
Scott sailed Terra Nova to the Antarctic in 1910, hoping
to be the first to reach the South Pole. He and a crew spent several gruelling
weeks trekking to the pole only to find Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen had
beaten them to the punch.
Devastated, Scott and his crew turned around to head back
to Terra Nova and sail home. But they'd made critical errors in their planning
and they couldn't reach their food cache, Geiger said. In 1912, searchers found
some of their frozen bodies alongside Scott's journals, which detailed their
struggle.
Terra Nova was still intact, and it was ultimately put to
work in Newfoundland's sealing industry, Geiger said. It was based in St.
John's, N.L. for many years.
The wooden-hulled three-masted ship sank in 1943, after
it was damaged by ice while ferrying supplies to Greenland naval bases with the
United States military, according to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Shackleton is perhaps best known for his 1914 exploration
trip to the Antarctic region aboard the Endurance, which got trapped in the ice
and was eventually crushed. He and his crew survived on ice floes and then made
their way to Elephant Island, off the east coast of Antarctica.
Geiger and his team members have been diving to the Quest
and Terra Nova wrecks in the DSV Alvin, the first submersible to take people to
the Titanic shipwreck. They set out from Woods Hole, Mass., on July 3 and have
been at sea ever since, using the Atlantis research vessel as their home base.
While Quest was found draped in fishing nets and home to
a wide variety of fish and other species, Terra Nova was mostly alone on the
sea floor, Geiger said. Some of its features — its double helm, a piece of its
upper deck — were clear and unmistakable, despite being submerged for more than
80 years, he said.
"The ships are decaying at a substantial rate, and
there will be a time in the future when those ships will no longer be
there," Geiger said. "They will have become part of the sea
floor."
The team is using high-tech subsea technology from Voyis,
part of Newfoundland-based Kraken Robotics, to survey the wrecks and build
three-dimensional digital models of Terra Nova and Quest, which the public can
explore. Geiger hopes the work inspires new generations of explorers, adding
that there is still so much of the Earth yet to be known — especially in its
oceans.
Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Bonnie Tyler and Sam Neill:
The decline of family formation is one of the defining social issues of our time, and yet it’s rarely discussed. However, while the
piece is right that for a generation of millennial and Gen Z women, having
children has too often been treated as something that competes with freedom,
ambition, and personal fulfillment rather than being a meaningful part of life
— I’d put the roots of this problem a little differently. It’s less about
Carrie Bradshaw or Hannah Horvath, and more about a generational pendulum swing.
Boomer women were the first generation to truly have the
option of career and/or family after generations of women who did not. Many
understandably raised their daughters with a strong message shaped by a new
world of freedom and choice: be financially independent, build a career, don’t
rely on a man, and don’t let motherhood limit your options. Pop culture
reflected and encouraged that message, but didn’t create it.
The result was a generation of women handed a powerful
vision of independence and career primacy — one that brought real opportunity
and freedom, but also came at a cost: motherhood lost status.
For millennials and Gen Z, what many of us absorbed wasn’t
just that we could have careers — it was that in our 20s, we should prioritize
education, career, travel, fun, financial security and self-development first,
with family to come later — if at all.
Then our 30s arrived, and many women discovered that the
biological clock is real: fertility declines, energy is lower, relationships
are more complicated, and trying to “have it all” is far harder than we were
led to believe.
And of course culture isn’t the only factor. Layer on
housing costs, affordability pressures and high taxes, an ultra-competitive job
market, workplaces still largely built around a one-income/one-full-time-parent
model, and a culture that has not prepared enough men for the realities of
husbandhood and fatherhood (another equally important issue, rarely discussed),
and it’s no surprise so many women feel torn, delayed, and burnt out.
Marland makes an important point: a life ordered entirely
around material success is not, for many people, a deeply fulfilling one.
Personally, no one — not school, university, pop culture, or
even my own mother — ever taught me that motherhood might become the most
meaningful part of my life. Like many women, I had to discover that myself.
Historically, that is a remarkable shift: for most of human history, motherhood
and childbearing were understood as central to family and societal continuity.
In much of the modern West, by contrast, motherhood is often treated as
secondary to other forms of achievement and self-development.
What has replaced the important vocation of motherhood?
Urban women over 65 are most likely to worry over climate change,
Statistics Canada said yesterday in a rare psychosocial questionnaire.
No reason was given: “Climate-related hazards in Canada and abroad can
have a mental health impact with some people experiencing symptoms of
post-traumatic stress disorder, depression or anxiety.”
Ugh.
**
Three years ago, Kathrin Mentler — a woman in her thirties —
went to a Vancouver hospital to seek help for depression and suicidal thoughts.
There she was told by a clinician that our health-care system is “broken” and
the wait to see a psychiatrist would be long. The clinician asked if she had
ever considered euthanasia, as it would be more “comfortable” than suicide by
overdose.
Such an outcome was, it turns out, a concern that led Ms.
Mentler to visit the hospital that day. As she put it, “I very specifically went
there that day because I didn’t want to get into a situation where I would
think about taking an overdose of medication.” Ms. Mentler went to hospital to
avoid death, only to have death mentioned as something to consider.
This is only one of the many disturbing stories about
euthanasia in Canada. This year marks ten years since euthanasia came to this
country. At least 76,475 Canadians have died as a result, while some estimates
suggest the total has already surpassed 100,000.
Euthanasia started here in 2016 only for those nearing
death. A few years later, it was expanded to individuals who were not dying,
and whose disability or illness would not cause their death. In 2023, a
parliamentary committee recommended allowing euthanasia for minors, and for
those who wish to request euthanasia in advance of losing their mental
capacity.
Due to stories like that of Kathrin Mentler, we are
awakening to the unsettling realities of euthanasia. In June, a parliamentary
committee called on the federal government to cancel the forthcoming
legalization of euthanasia for mental illness. This form of euthanasia is
currently scheduled to become legal in March 2027.
I hope this call represents a turning point. I hope we are,
as a society, rediscovering the truth that every person is precious, equally
valuable to all other persons, and possesses an inherent worth and dignity that
can never be lost. These are fundamental beliefs of the church to which I
belong, but these beliefs are also universal truths that sit at the bedrock of
any civilized society.
Every human being has a dignity — a priceless worth — that
can never be erased. No matter how dire our circumstances may be, this dignity
never fades. As human beings, we are not perishable goods that go bad. We are
not items with a shelf life. We are not burdens on society. We are not problems
to be solved. It is heartbreaking to read the stories of individuals who have
contemplated or sought euthanasia because of a perceived loss of dignity, or
due to disability, vulnerability, isolation or adversity.
Canadians living with disabilities have been
disproportionately affected by euthanasia. Offering euthanasia to Canadians
living with disabilities instead of providing them with the support they need
puts their lives at risk and discriminates against them. It tells these
Canadians they are less valuable than others and that between living with a
disability and not being alive, the latter might be better. These lies must be
confronted. Lives are at stake.
As for the notion that euthanasia respects autonomy, freedom
of choice is often an illusion with euthanasia. When nearly 50 per cent of
individuals who seek euthanasia say they perceive themselves as a burden on
their families, friends, or caregivers, autonomy is far out of view. The same
is true when individuals cite isolation or loneliness as a reason for seeking
euthanasia.
Euthanasia invites us to endorse a flawed understanding of
autonomy that rests upon harmful messages about our worth and value. Euthanasia
suggests we can cease to matter and encourages us to view ourselves and each
other based on whether our “best before” date has passed. The legalization of
euthanasia imprints these messages in our hearts and minds, often by misguided
appeals to compassion, care and love.
Compassion, care and love never translate into terminating a
person’s life. These concepts are incompatible with killing. The compassionate,
caring and loving response to a person who is suffering is to provide every
possible assistance to ease suffering and seek healing.
Euthanasia does not cure illness or provide care; it ends
the person. Everyone deserves a dignified death, and to die with dignity is not
to hasten death through lethal injection but to be accompanied, comforted and
supported until the very last moment of our natural lives.
Countries that embrace death like this don't come back from that brink.
