Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week sorbet ...

Remind me again of who you voted for, Canada?:

We’re tapped out.

That’s the message Canadians have for Ottawa in a new Ipsos poll conducted for the Montreal Economic Institute (MEI), which shows 70% of Canadians believe high tax burdens are having a negative impact on their cost of living.

The results, released July 16, suggest a growing disconnect between government spending policy and the priorities of taxpayers. According to MEI’s vice-president of communications Renaud Brossard, Canadians are feeling the stress that high taxes are putting on their lives.

“What they’re seeing is that a lot of what Ottawa is doing doesn’t necessarily seem to be alleviating that,” he said.

Much of the concern surrounds Prime Minister Mark Carney’s plan to establish a so-called “sovereign wealth fund,” Brossard said — a scheme the PM announced in April but isn’t gaining very much traction among Canadians.

“Let’s not forget that this sovereign wealth fund proposal from Ottawa is not a sovereign wealth fund like that of Norway, it’s not built from budget surpluses, and isn’t aimed at generating the highest returns — it’s aimed at subsidizing a bunch of different projects in Canada,” he said.

“It’s not so much like a sovereign wealth fund as it is an industrial policy fund in which people can take ownership.”

Entitled the “Canada Strong Fund,” the proposed fund will launch with an initial $25-billion endowment, managed by an arms-length Crown corporation.

Exact details on the plan and the agency tasked with running it have yet to be released.

Within Canada, Alberta has successfully operated its own $30-billion sovereign wealth fund for over half a century.

Founded by former premier Peter Lougheed, the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund banks profits from the province’s oil and gas resources.

In the MEI poll, 58% said they oppose Canada borrowing $25 billion to finance the fund’s creation.

“The 58% that oppose the borrowing for this new infrastructure bank is quite telling, but more than that, I think the fact that there’s only 20% of Canadians that think it’s a good idea should signal this government that that it should abandon such a plan,” Brossard said.

 **

**

Canada has experienced a sharp decline in business investment per worker over the past decade, in stark contrast to gains in the United States, highlighting a deepening productivity crisis north of the border, a new study suggests.

Inflation-adjusted business investment per Canadian worker fell 18.8 percent from $20,310 in 2014 to $16,493 in 2024, according to findings from the Fraser Institute’s latest study. The United States’s equivalent surged 31.3 percent from $23,263 to $30,555 over the same decade.

The think tank’s study examined business investment per worker from 2007 onward but focused on the 2014–2024 period, when the gap between Canada and the United States widened most sharply.

**

Despite that, a Nanos-Bloomberg poll showed most Canadians are satisfied with Carney’s performance on the economy.

They blame U.S. President Donald Trump for ongoing economic uncertainty over tariffs and the uncertain fate of the Canada-U.S.- Mexico Agreement on trade, which Canada and Mexico wanted to renew while Trump didn’t, leading to more uncertainty as the trade deal will now be subject to annual reviews.

But the root problems in our economy have been around a lot longer than Trump.

A major factor is Canada’s low productivity because of weak business investment.

Low productivity doesn’t mean Canadian workers are lazy.

It means businesses aren’t investing in new technologies giving workers the ability to work more efficiently, leading to a more prosperous economy and higher standards of living.

In March 2024, Carolyn Rogers, senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada, called this a “break the glass emergency.”

Even the Trudeau government acknowledged it during their near-decade in power, where many of their anti-business policies made the problem worse.

In her April 2022 budget speech, then-finance minister Chrystia Freeland described low productivity as the “Achilles heel” of the Canadian economy warning “we are falling behind when it comes to economic productivity.”

Her budget even cited a projection by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development that without reforms, Canada’s real GDP per person from 2020 to 2060, would grow at the slowest rate of any of the OECD’s 38 industrialized countries.

Low productivity results from many factors including government over-taxation, over-regulation, a lack of competition and excessive and indiscriminate immigration policies.

The latter leads to businesses hiring cheap labour as opposed to finding ways for skilled workers to produce goods more efficiently, leading to higher profits, better wages and improved standards of living.

A report by the fiscally conservative Fraser Institute released Thursday compares business investment in Canada to the U.S.

While a lack of business investment resulting in low productivity in Canada goes back decades — with the study by the fiscally conservative tank using data from 2007 to 2024 — it notes that it accelerated after 2014, a year prior to the start of the Justin Trudeau era.

According to the findings, inflation-adjusted business investment in Canada per worker — including spending on equipment, machinery, factories and new technologies (while excluding residential housing construction and government projects) — declined by 18.8% from $20,310 in 2014 to $16,493 in 2024.

During the same period, inflation-adjusted business investment per worker in the U.S., in Canadian dollars, increased by 31.3% from $23,263 to $30,355.

“The economic well-being of Canadians depends in large part on the strength of business investment, so poor business investment is bad news for workers,” said Tegan Hill, co-author of the Fraser Institute study, Comparing Business Investment per Worker in Canada and the U.S., 2007-2024.

 “The waning ability to attract business investment in Canada should sound alarm bells and prompt policymakers to enact immediate policy reforms to make Canada a more attractive and hospitable destination for investment.”

In a speech to the Economic Club in New York in May, Carney said his government is “catalyzing one trillion dollars in investments in Canada over the next five years”, that “foreign investment in Canada is running at twice the rate of our nearest G7 peer and that Canada now ranks as the most attractive country in the world for infrastructure investment.”

An April report by RBC agreed Canada is back on the radar with foreign investors, but also noted, “the renewed interest comes after a decade of weak business investment, stalling productivity, and stagnating living standards. Between 2015 and 2024, more than $1 trillion of investment exited Canada — the largest capital exodus in Canadian history. For every dollar of inward (foreign direct investment), two dollars exited’”

Call it Canada’s lost economic decade under Trudeau.

**

Nearly 13,000 people sleep in cars, alleys or abandoned buildings nationwide according to new data by Housing Minister Gregor Robertson’s department. The count of homeless people, the most comprehensive to date, found another 4,700 slept in tent cities: ‘Unsheltered locations included streets, alleys, parks, transit stations, abandoned buildings, vehicles, ravines and other outdoor locations.’

**

**

Liberals' Gordie Howe bridge strategy:
Announce deal with U.S. before it's finalized
Attack those raising legitimate questions about what's in the deal as misinformed, without providing deal.
Fail to address that U.S. explanation of deal differs from Canada.
Rinse and repeat.

— Lorrie Goldstein (@sunlorrie) July 17, 2026

Trump is sick of Canada’s sh--:

U.S. President Donald Trump imposed an additional 50 percent tariff on some Canadian goods July 20, saying the country has discriminated against American dairy, alcohol, and auto exports.

“President Trump is taking action to hold Canada accountable for its continued discrimination against and unreasonable and unequal treatment of U.S. commerce that has burdened and disadvantaged hardworking Americans,” the White House said in a statement.

The tariffs take effect in 30 days.

Trump said earlier in the day he spoke with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney about the need for Canada to intensify efforts to manage its wildfires. He floated the idea last week of imposing a tariff in response to Canada’s wildfire smoke spreading to the United States.

Trump signed three proclamations Monday to “level the playing field” on dairy, cars and auto parts, and alcohol, he said.

Each proclamation sets a 50 percent tariff covering nearly $20 billion in products ranging from wine to hockey sticks and cement.

 

These forest fires:

More than 950 wildfires are scorching Canada from coast to coast, the national wildland fire summary says. Roughly 241 blazes are out of control.

The fires have prompted Environment Canada to issue air quality warnings from B.C. to Quebec, as well as the Northwest Territories.

**

As a former waterbomber pilot who used to lead an aerial firefighting fleet, I can tell you “send help” is an extremely dishonest framing by the Canadian government.

The Canadian government routinely blocks U.S. firefighting companies from attacking fires in Canada, while… pic.twitter.com/xfFgayDynt

— Tim Sheehy (@TimSheehyMT) July 17, 2026

 

Carney doesn’t care because none of this has anything to do with his stocks in Brookfield.

Prime Minister Mark Carney last night acknowledged new U.S. tariffs will cost Canadians but proposed no new initiatives. Under current law it would take an Act of Parliament to enter negotiations with the United States over dairy quotas: “This trade dispute has raised costs for families.”

 

Wary?

How about opposed?

Who needs children being burned alive, anyway?:

According to a recent poll, just under half of Canadians are opposed to the federal government’s recent decision to expedite Gazan student visa processing.

And I must say, I don’t blame them.

The decision to expedited visa processing for 37 Gazan students and their families was announced last month by Immigration Minister Lena Diab.

The Leger poll, commissioned by the HR Canada Charitable Organization, asked respondents whether, like some, they believed the policy would help students whose education had been disrupted by war, or whether they thought “speeding up the process could make it more difficult to adequately identify potential security risks, including individuals with extremist affiliations.”

Forty-three per cent of respondents opposed the decision to expedite visa processing, 38 per cent supported it, and the remaining 19 per cent answered, “I don’t know.” These results demonstrate significant public concern and uncertainty for accelerating Gazan student visa processing because of perceived security risks of allowing radicalized Palestinians into Canada.

The survey was conducted last month, between June 19 and June 26, among a representative sample of 1,528 Canadian adults.

Respondents’ opposition and uncertainty should not be surprising. Gaza, after all, is governed by the terrorist group Hamas, which was responsible for the heinous attack of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, during the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah. At least 1,500 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists breached Israel’s borders by land, air and sea. In total, 1,195 people were killed, including infants, children, elderly and peace-festival attendees. Families were murdered in their homes, some, burnt alive, while others were executed in bomb shelters. Those kidnapped and taken hostage numbered 251 .

Keep in mind that polls conducted inside Gaza revealed that 72 percent of respondents felt the decision for Hamas to conduct the October 7 massacre was “correct” given the outcome.

“Canadians have witnessed an explosive rise in extremist rhetoric, ideological radicalization, and politically motivated violence, along with an unprecedented rise of antisemitism,” the HR Canada Charitable Organization commented in a statement . “As concerns about public safety have grown. . .so too have questions about how governments balance humanitarian objectives with security considerations.”

 

Now, hear me out -  Rubio and Vance in 2028.

Here is why:

These are numbers that would shock most Americans today, because we’ve been taught to believe that this kind of political violence, it simply doesn’t exist, or it’s being exaggerated. But it does exist, and we’re actually underestimating it, and our nations bear the scars to prove it. And today, we face a new wave of this old evil.

 Here in the United States, the share of left-wing terrorist attacks and plots has risen to levels not seen in decades. In Germany, far-left violence has jumped by more than 40 per cent in just the last year alone. In Greece, more than 80 per cent of radical violence is now driven by far-left and anarchist actors.

These are not abstract statistics. Americans have seen what those numbers mean. An all-out assault on our immigration officers, sniper attacks, explosives, armed ambushes, a transgender shooter opening fire on Catholic elementary school students as they pray, his gun marked with slogans like, “Where is your God now?” A health-care executive executed in cold blood in the streets. Multiple assassination attempts on a sitting president. And the murder of the greatest conservative activist of a generation, a man who happened to also be a husband and the father of two young children, shot and killed while speaking to a crowd of students.

This is a distinctive and unique evil. It has always been driven by a hatred, above all else, a hatred for civilization itself. It is a revolt of the worst against the best, a revolt of the weak and the cowardly against the strong and the good. It is perpetrated by those who cannot build, who cannot create, who cannot achieve great things and take their revenge upon the world for their own inadequacy by seeking to destroy those who can. This is what radical leftism is. It may wear various different slogans and ideologies across place and time. They can call themselves “anti-capitalists” or “anti-imperialists” or “communists” or “anarchists” or “Marxists,” but the fundamental character is always the same. It’s always the same.

It is a poisonous resentment, cloaked in the language of equality and justice and liberation, an overwhelming need to tear down what greater men have built, to wreck what is beautiful and what is right, on behalf of people who are only filled with ugliness and have nothing else to offer the world. Through violence and through terror, they once again seek to impose their ugliness on all of us. The old dogma was wrong. The old dogma was wrong. None of this is driven by idealism. It is not Utopian. In fact, it is the opposite.

One of the criticisms you sometimes hear of communism, for example, is that it sounds good in theory, but it never works in practice. That’s actually not true. Communism does not sound good in theory. The world it envisions for all of us is small, flat, grey, levelled of all exception, drained of all that is good and noble in the human soul. The world it envisions is a world without courage, a world without creativity or ambition, a world without heroes or glory or great causes to strive towards. A world without miracles, without myths, without men who rise above the rest to do incredible and extraordinary things. And the world communism envisions is a world without God. For these architects of revolutionary violence, the towering achievement of our civilization, for them, it’s an unbearable humiliation, a reminder of what they cannot do and a reminder of what they cannot be.

So they choose instead to destroy. They attack pipelines, they attack railroads, they attack power grids and laboratories — the physical, embodied symbols of power and invention and achievement. This is the nature of the terrorism we face today. They despise the West because the West is great. This is an international conference because we are facing … a transnational threat. These are not distinct and isolated cells. They are interconnected networks. They do not recognize our borders. They do not believe, in fact, in the nation state itself. They co-ordinate, they communicate, they travel, they train and they act together, sharing the same infrastructure, sharing the same enemies, sharing the same mission.

 

We can’t have anything this nice in Canada.

We can’t even launch a rocket into space.

 

Because Bill C-9 - the Bible and thought banning bill -  passed, this thing totally happened under penalty of a life sentence and probably getting your dog shot:

Does David Eby now believe as well that FN chiefs can speak to the dead? This is a legitimate question to put to the leader of this province: Do you, @Dave_Eby, accept as valid evidence that dead people can speak to us from the ground? https://t.co/A25V9pq5x7

— Dallas Brodie (@Dallas_Brodie) July 19, 2026

Totally happened.

(wink)

Now agree or you'll get some windows smashed.

Your Incompetent, Wasteful, Petty, Corrupt Government and You

How long are we stuck like this?:

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.”

 

And Carney doesn't care.

It's not like it affects him.

(Sidebar: Spain, which won the World Cup, is also experiencing forest fires.) 

** 

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.”

 

(Sidebar: the grift has to stop somewhere.)

** 

If you don't like the heat, stay out of the ... twitter ... or something:

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.” 

 

(Sidebar: was it something you said, did, instituted with taxpayer cash?)

We Don't Have to Trade With China

Welcoming the new overlords:

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….)

Trump’s speech (here unedited) highlighted Chinese efforts to compromise U.S. voter data and influence outcomes.

Here’s the Canadian story, documented in the Hogue Commission’s final report (January 2025) and repeated in CSIS assessments. These documents paint a clear picture of systemic Chinese Communist Party (CCP) interference in our federal elections.

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.

** 

Carney will squander Canada's middle power advantage by allying with China

** 

The country's top spy agency says Natural Resources Canada approached it with concerns about former federal scientist Dennis Lu more than two decades ago, not the other way around — and has made a rare disclosure of one of its documents in court to set the record straight, CBC News has learned.

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.

 

 

Mid-Week Post

 Your middle-of-the-week something ...

They should be fired … out of a cannon:

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.”

 

 

Details are for little people:

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

— cbcwatcher (@cbcwatcher) July 13, 2026

** 

Savings have deteriorated for a majority of Canadians, particularly the bottom 80 per cent of Canadian households, as spending significantly outpace income growth, according to research by Boston Consulting Group.

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.

**

Canadians are increasingly financing daily expenses through instalment loans as food prices continue to strain household budgets, according to a new report.

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.

 

It was never about a virus:

A Niagara Conservative MP Conservative MP wants Canadians injured from COVID vaccines to share their stories.

Niagara West MP Dean Allison has announced an unofficial, citizen-led inquiry to investigate COVID-19 vaccine injuries in Canada.

The public hearings for the Allison COVID Inquiry are scheduled to take place from September 8 to September 11th.

Citizens can submit their personal stories online through the official portal at AllisonInquiry.com

 

Errors?

You mean deliberate acts:

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.

 

 

We don’t have to trade with China:

Ottawa's reaction to a new Chinese law on ethnic unity is tepid and does not live up to Canada's promise to stop foreign governments from threatening diaspora abroad, a Uyghur rights activist said.

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.

**

A senior Natural Resources Canada scientist who court records say collaborated with Chinese counterparts on government energy research has been charged with breach of trust and unauthorized use of federal computers, as an Ontario Superior Court judge has ordered Canada’s national security agencies — including the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Privy Council Office — to disclose volumes of sensitive records in a high-profile foreign interference prosecution now heading to trial in Ottawa.

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.

**

TJ knew what his family’s crime was: being Christian and worshipping a God that was not Xi Jinping. In China, following a church that is not state-controlled is punishable.

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.

 

And now for something completely different:

A mission led by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society has captured detailed, up-close images of the ship that carried explorer Robert Falcon Scott's doomed 1910 voyage to Antarctica.

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:

 

**

Canada the Cruel

No life matters:

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?

This:

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.