Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week sunshine ....

 

Saved by the bell, eh, Carney?:

Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday said he has a secret plan to cover “all eventualities” if the United States imposes $28 billion in new tariffs under a Wednesday deadline. Details of the plan were too confidential to discuss in public, he said: “I have a plan that will cover all eventualities.”

 

Was the secret plan being saved by Trump?:

U.S. President Donald Trump said he’s paused a new round of 50 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods that were set to take effect Wednesday.

In a Truth Social post shared Tuesday night, less than two hours before the midnight deadline, Trump said he’s suspended the new tariffs for three days, based on a pending trade deal between Canada and the U.S.

Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a statement that while the two countries have made substantial progress has been made, “there is important work still to be done.”

(Sidebar: oh, shut up!) 

Trump had originally put an Aug. 19 deadline on the two countries reaching a deal before the tariffs would go into effect. The levies would target US$20 billion worth of Canadian goods, including cement and hockey sticks.

 

 

Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote extensively about Article 58 in his book, The Gulag Archipelago.

The article, so dreadfully similar to recently passed bills, was written not punish petty crimes but to crush political criminals.

The Liberals have taken notice of the former Soviet Union:

New records show a federal blacklist of Freedom Convoy sympathizers was privately circulated to thousands of corporations. No account to date has documented the consequences for individuals named under the Proceeds Of Crime And Terrorist Financing Act by a cabinet order subsequently ruled unlawful: “There was no verification.”

 

 

The untenable healthcare scheme and its inevitable results:

At the heart of the problem lies a growing disconnect between physicians and the people they serve. The traditional image of the attentive, compassionate doctor — one who listens, reassures, and treats the whole person — has, in too many instances, been replaced by rushed interactions and transactional care.

Patients increasingly report feeling like items on a conveyor belt rather than individuals with complex needs. Appointments are brief. Concerns are limited — often explicitly — to one or two issues per visit. Additional problems? Book another appointment. Wait weeks. Start again.

This approach is not merely inconvenient — it is dehumanizing. It forces patients into the uncomfortable and often unsafe position of triaging their own health concerns, deciding which symptom deserves attention and which must wait. For individuals without medical training, this is not just unreasonable; it is dangerous.

The result is predictable: missed diagnoses, delayed treatment, and growing anxiety among patients who feel unheard and dismissed.

Physicians enter the profession under the ethical guidance of the Hippocratic Oath — a commitment to prioritize patient welfare above all else. Yet, the lived experience of many Canadians raises an uncomfortable question: has that oath become secondary to other driving forces?

Canada’s prevailing fee-for-service model has created a system where volume often trumps value. Doctors are compensated per visit, not per outcome, and the structure can unintentionally reward shorter, more frequent appointments over comprehensive, patient-centred care.

The consequence is a troubling shift in priorities. For too many practitioners, they are being forced to focus on maximizing billable interactions rather than delivering meaningful care. Patients are left to wonder whether their health concerns are being fully addressed — or simply managed in the most economically efficient way for the other numerous stakeholders.

This perception, whether universally fair or not, is widespread and corrosive. Trust, once broken, is not easily restored.

Defenders of the system often point to physician shortages and burnout as the primary causes of declining care standards. These are real issues — but they are not new, nor are they unavoidable.

Canada has been aware of its doctor supply problem for more than half a century. Yet governments and medical institutions, including organizations such as the Canadian Medical Association, have failed to act decisively.

Medical schools remain highly inward-thinking and increasingly discriminatory, despite no shortage of qualified applicants. Training capacity has not kept pace with population growth or the increasing complexity of healthcare needs. The bottleneck is not talent — it is policy.

This is not an accident. It is the result of decades of decisions that have limited the supply of physicians while demand has steadily risen. The outcome is predictable: overworked doctors, underserved patients, and a system stretched to its breaking point.

Lost in policy debates and funding formulas is the human toll.

Patients are not just inconvenienced by the current system — they are harmed by it. Multiple appointments for related issues mean additional travel, time off work, childcare arrangements, and financial strain. For those in rural or underserved areas, these burdens are even greater.

Beyond logistics lies the psychological impact. Being rushed through appointments, having concerns dismissed, or feeling like a “bother” erodes dignity and confidence. It discourages people from seeking care altogether, leading to worsening health outcomes and increased long-term costs.

“Care delayed is care denied” is not just a slogan — it is a reality for millions of Canadians.

**

Many Canadians have not-so-fond memories of their hospital experiences, suggests a new study that found nearly half of online hospital reviews analyzed involved negative feedback.

A random sample of 1,000 Google review comments involving Canadian acute care hospitals from 2017 to 2022 found people were more likely to leave negative (47.9 per cent) than mixed (19.8 per cent) or positive (32.3 per cent) reviews.

Feedback ranged from “the most frustrating experience in my life” to “great care and attentive physicians and staff.”

Senior author Dr. Dhruv Nayyar cautioned it’s not a fully representative sample of the patients treated in hospitals. People with a negative experience are also more likely to leave an online review, he said. “I would be careful before we make any conclusions that that means half of patients have a really negative experience,” said Nayyar, an internal medicine physician at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.

“Other data sources say that the majority of patients do have a positive experience with their care.”

However, “I think it tells us patients who have a negative experience are motivated to talk about it — that they want to have their voices heard,” he said.

“A negative experience on one of the most vulnerable days of their life when they’re seeking care in a hospital is something that can be very traumatic and can, unfortunately, be a very lasting memory that can stick with people for a very long time.”

A better experience leads to better and safer care, he added. Three-quarters of the reviews were “actionable,” he said, meaning they could be used to meaningfully improve care on the ground.

“Most reviews (74 per cent) were semi-actionable or very actionable,” Nayyar and his colleagues report in the journal, BMJ Open Quality.

“This is the worst crisis that anyone could imagine. We are no longer able to provide the care that is required,” says the study's first author Dr. Kerstin de Wit.

Traditional, standardized patient surveys have their problems, the authors wrote, including that they’re infrequently collected and reported and have low, and falling, response rates.

An unsolicited Google review is “carte blanche,” said Nayyar, a quality improvement researcher with the University of Toronto. “‘Tell us what was salient and meaningful to you about your experience'” as opposed to a formal survey with pre-set questions.

For their study, the authors downloaded Google reviews star ratings and text comments for all Canadian acute care hospitals from 2014 to 2022.

Each review publishes the person’s name and must have a valid accompanying email address, they noted. Google also limits reviews to one review per hospital per email address.

Text comments had to meet a minimum word count (those with fewer than five words were excluded).

From just over 53,000 total reviews extracted, the team analyzed a random sample of 1,000.

The proportion of negative reviews increased from 45.7 per cent in the 2017-2019 time period, to 50.1 per cent in the 2020-2022 stretch.

Positive reviews also increased — from 30.4 per cent to 34.2.

Wait times were mentioned in half of the negative reviews.

About a third mentioned interactions with doctors (33.3 per cent), nurses (32.7 per cent) or “unspecified” staff (33 per cent).

One negative comment reads: “Extremely rude staff. Spend (sic) over 12 hours without seeing a single doctor. After 14 hours, ask for pain killers, nurse ignored and rudely told me to exit the room and to wait my turn. Doctors called a single patient in every 45 minutes to an hour.”

“My grandmother broke her hip and it took 16 hours for them to decide which ward she should go to so she could finally sleep somewhere quiet instead of an emergency room,” another user commented.

One parent described the ordeal their daughter experienced getting gallbladder surgery. “Had a surgery lined up (in city A), we are from (city B) … got to (city A) at 7 am. They took her into day op, prepped her … she came to find me 10 minutes later, they forgot to give a test before the operation. While on the operating room table (the doctor) cancelled my daughter’s surgery… they told us after cancelling our appointment now for the 5th time they don’t have room in ICU for her …surgery is now rescheduled for a month and a half later … if she didn’t need it so badly, I would start the process all over somewhere else.”

Mixed comments included people describing “excellent care” despite “abysmal” crowding. The more complimentary praised “friendly, efficient and competent” staff.

The text comments were analyzed for their ability to lead to clear, practical steps, Nayyar said. “‘This place was no good,’ or, ‘Hey, I had a great experience,’ it’s hard to do much with that,” he said.

**

Gate-keepers indeed:

“Canadians have only access to eighteen per cent of all innovative medicines that are available around the world. Americans have access to over 90 per cent,” explains Dr. Bettina Hamelin, President and CEO of Innovative Medicines Canada, which represents Canadian pharmaceutical companies. 

“Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, which are the richer countries in this world, have access to about 28 per cent [of innovative medicines]”, Hamelin says from her Toronto office, explaining that the big problems are time and money.

“Right now, Canadians wait an average of two and half years before they can access innovative medicines,” Hamelin explains.

Drug companies have to follow a complex sequential process after getting Health Canada approval before making it into patient’s medicine cabinets.

After a drug is approved by Health Canada, the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board sets a drug ceiling – the most a drug can cost – by comparing prices with other OECD countries. Then the Canada Drug Agency (CDA) makes a recommendation on cost and if the drug should be covered by federal and/or provincial health plans. The Pan-Canadian Pharmaceutical Alliance begins to negotiate drug prices on behalf of the entire country, and then provinces have to determine whether or not they can afford to list the drug on their formularies.

The entire process can take years, and according to Hamellin, can result in some companies reaping the benefits of patent exclusivity for fewer than five years in Canada – where developing a single drug can cost $3.5 billion in investment and 10-20 years of research and testing.

Data available through the CDA reveals that fewer that fifty per cent of drugs approved by Health Canada go onto the next stage, limiting its availability through hospitals, private and public insurances.

“Companies make a decision to not submit for reimbursement because it costs money to drive your business for two and a half years before you can actually make that drug available to Canadians,” Hamelin says.

Essentially, Canada doesn’t have a big enough market for some life-saving and life-extending drugs to justify the expense for some pharmaceutical companies. Therefore instead of an “early launch” country Canada becomes a “later launch” country, which delays or even prevents access to innovative new drugs in oncology, organ diseases and non-life ending disorders and diseases.

**

A Canadian activist against euthanasia says the procedure is increasingly being used as a solution to address gaps in health care and mental health services, criticizing Canada’s ever-expanding medical assistance in dying (MAID) regime.

“I think that euthanasia and assisted suicide are basically the cynical solution to everything that ails us. Palliative beds are really expensive—body bags are not,” said Jonathon Van Maren, author and communications director at the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

Van Maren made the comments while speaking at an Aug. 13 conference on Canada’s MAID regime, organized by journalist Rachel Parker in Lincoln, Ont., just outside St. Catharines. During a panel discussion, Parker suggested that MAID was increasingly being viewed as an “answer to our health-care crisis,” a point Van Maren expanded upon.

Van Maren said he had spoken to an Alberta nurse who told him that people on waitlists for mental-health services die before receiving care “all the time.” He also linked Canada’s health-care challenges and the rise in MAID to the country’s aging population and what he described as an inverted population pyramid.

“[In Canada] you’re having 100,000 abortions every year. In addition to that, you have an enormous number of people who have opted not to have children. So we have an upside-down family tree of four grandparents, two parents, one kid, and that has created inevitable problems that euthanasia ends up being the solution for,” he said.

Deaths through MAID now account for more than 5 percent of all deaths in Canada, according to the government’s 2025 annual report, representing an increase of nearly 7 percent from the previous year. The previous year’s report found that nearly half of people who received MAID whose deaths were not reasonably foreseeable cited “isolation or loneliness” as part of their eligibility criteria.

Van Maren also raised concerns with the wording of Canada’s MAID laws. He noted that most people know someone with an “irremediable” medical condition, such as chronic pain or mental health struggles. Canada’s euthanasia laws state that one may seek the procedure if they are 18 years or older, have a “grievous and irremediable medical condition,” and can give informed consent free of external pressure.

“Imagine that person going into this medical institution, explaining their symptoms, not being able to access care, and getting offered assisted suicide instead. This could happen to anybody,” he said.

**

Ten years after Canada legalized medical assistance in dying (MAID), the safeguards Canadians were promised are looking increasingly shaky. Troubling cases and serious questions about oversight should give Canadians reason to pause before the system is expanded again.

Since 2016, there have been more than 100,000 MAID deaths and Canada has gained an international reputation as a prolific provider of death.

From the very beginning, Canadians knew that legalizing euthanasia would push the boundaries of medical ethics. After all, granting autonomy to individuals who then choose their own death is one thing; expecting medical professionals to deliberately take that life is quite another.

But we were assured that guidelines were in place. There would be no “slippery slope,” and MAID would be an “exceptional” procedure for “rare” cases where individuals are suffering from incurable diseases and facing “reasonably foreseeable” death.

But that key criterion (foreseeable death) was removed in 2021 to allow individuals who have serious diseases, disabilities and/or intolerable suffering to end their lives. In addition, there have been discussions about expanding MAID to “mature minors”—people under 18 considered capable of making their own medical decisions—as well as separate discussions involving infants born with severe malformations. Quebec now allows people to make advance requests if they have a serious illness that could lead to incapacity.

**

In January, Kiano Vafaeian, a 26-year-old man with Type 1 diabetes and partial vision loss, underwent MAID in B.C. after he was repeatedly denied eligibility in his home province of Ontario.

His family was outraged; they said he suffered from cycles of depression and was “obsessed” with getting MAID, so he went “doctor shopping” until he found a physician who was willing to end his life. That wasn’t supposed to happen in Canada because rules were supposed to prevent that. His death certificate was signed by Dr. Ellen Wiebe, a prominent promoter of MAID who has also been a prolific abortion provider.

Kiano died in a Vancouver funeral home. That’s obviously convenient, but is this really death with dignity?

It’s not an isolated incident. Instead, it confirms comments by psychiatrist Dr. John Maher, who told a parliamentary committee that people are getting MAID for “reasons that are frankly illegal.”

Dr. Maher, who is also editor of the Journal of Ethics in Mental Health, testified that prolific MAID providers are offering the procedure to veterans, disabled people, people with treatable illnesses and those on waiting lists for treatment. He said a patient with schizophrenia was approved for MAID based on a treatable skin condition and a sore ankle.

A Toronto woman is going through the courts now to seek an exemption from the laws that currently exclude MAID for mental illnesses. But it doesn’t sound like she needs the courts; she just needs to find the right doctor.

There are also questions about how MAID is being administered. It was reported that a doctor had carried out a MAID assessment on a man outside an Ontario Tim Hortons restaurant. The doctor and patient later exchanged emails and, ultimately, the doctor drove the patient to a morgue where he then carried out MAID. The patient was 45 years old; he suffered from inflammatory bowel disease and depression.

In a separate case, that same doctor was censured for failing to administer one of three drugs used in MAID. The patient resumed breathing after he had been pronounced dead.

This is death with dignity?

In July, Canadian Catholic News (CCN) obtained a confidential report by British Columbia’s MAID Oversight Unit.

The unit examined data for 4,169 MAID requests in that province (even though its own bar graph shows 4,190 deaths) and found 2,807 errors. That’s 51.9 percent of cases. Most errors were considered to be “non-critical” paperwork issues. But 12.5 percent of errors required “education to practitioners and pharmacists” about compliance issues. That’s 353 patients where procedures were not followed correctly.

The province’s own oversight data makes it much harder to dismiss concerns about MAID safeguards as a handful of isolated cases.

Perhaps even more concerning is that CCN could not find any agency to be accountable for the high error rate. The B.C. Ministry of Health failed to respond to requests for comment. The Doctors of BC (B.C.’s medical association) said questions about oversight should be directed to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC. The college stated that its mandate was to regulate physicians, not to comment on health system matters. It suggested that CCN contact the provincial health ministry.

Where’s the oversight?

 

 

It was never about a virus:

Canadian parents remain wary of Covid shots for children even years after the pandemic, new Public Health Agency data show.  Current vaccination rates run as low as 12 percent: ‘They object to what they saw as an attempt to make them feel guilty.’

**

Dr. Anthony Fauci privately raised concerns that the COVID-19 vaccine could “theoretically” be linked to miscarriages in expectant mothers, despite having publicly insisted there were “no red flags” for pregnant women.

“I asked around a bit more and another issue came up that you need to be aware of,” wrote Fauci in a Jan. 25, 2021, text exchange with then-Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.

“Since many people have significant cytokines storm and fever after the 2nd dose, this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester,” added the then-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director.

Fauci, Walensky and Murthy had been discussing whether the vaccine posed any risks to women who followed the two-shot regimen earlier or later in their pregnancies.

Walensky responded to Fauci that the first trimester issues he raised were “definitely a good point, [especially] after dose two.”

Days later, on Feb. 3, Fauci said during a question-and-answer livestream with the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that the FDA “found thus far, and we have to be careful, but thus far no red flags about that, about pregnant women.”

 **

🚨Canada's former Minister of Public Safety is on camera calling the COVID agenda "a cover-up of mammoth proportions."

Will Ottawa Chief of Police Eric Stubbs order his prosecutors to retract their punishment demands against Detective Helen Grus before Tuesday morning's… pic.twitter.com/uoB23j4ycQ

— DonaldBest.CA * DO NOT COMPLY (@DonaldBestCA) August 15, 2026

 

Nothing but the best for Canadian citizens:

A third of affordable housing in Canada is in poor or fair condition, CMHC said yesterday. Problems identified by the federal insurer included plumbing, electrical and roofing in need of repair: “1 in 3 units are in fair or poor condition.”

 

 

Not down the memory-hole enough:

An 18-year-old suspected of killing five high-school students, a teacher and two family members in Tumbler Ridge, one of Canada’s worst mass shootings, was “obsessed with guns,” according to court documents filed by RCMP to obtain search warrants.

New details about Jesse Van Rootselaar, the Feb. 10 shootings and its aftermath are contained in the search warrant application materials, also known as information-to-obtain, or ITO, records.

The RCMP applied for the warrants to access Van Rootselaar’s family home and family vehicle, as well as several electronic devices seized from the residence.

The hundreds of pages of documents that were released to the media this month were heavily redacted. In some cases, more than half of the information is blacked out.

Some of the information redacted from the 11 documents, one as long as 110 pages, were the exact times on Feb. 10 that calls were made to police and the times that police responded to those calls. That makes it difficult to determine a timeline of the events that day.

What the documents did reveal were details about the initial response by police and how one officer initially suspected there were two shooters that day at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School.

The documents also said “police were shot at by the suspect” when they arrived at the crime scene.

 

 

The decision to send Canadian troops was “cursory”:

Newly-declassified records show cabinet’s 2005 decision to send Canadian troops into combat in Afghanistan followed cursory discussion. Casualties would number 2,229 including 158 killed in action: “The Canadians would be the best equipped task force in Afghanistan.”

 

 

Some people are special:

The Assembly of First Nations says it rejects any fixed deadline under Prime Minister Mark Carney’s legislated plan to speed approval of “nation building” projects. The group in a report to parliamentarians dismissed Carney’s deadlines as a pressure tactic: ‘It is aggressive.’

 

 

We don’t have to trade with China:

Former Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart says he believes interference by the Chinese regime is likely taking place ahead of the upcoming municipal elections.

Stewart, who led Vancouver from 2018 to 2022, says little has been done to prevent vulnerabilities that he says China exploited and which contributed to his 2022 re-election loss.

“I don’t think it’s resolved itself, and I’m sure there’s going to be interference in this election too, because nothing’s been done,” Stewart said in an Aug. 6 interview with political podcast host Aaron Pete.

Stewart has said that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) worked to interfere in the 2022 election to ensure he doesn’t get elected, as he has been vocal about Taiwan’s independence and pro-democracy issues. The CCP considers the democratically ruled island a part of its territory.

**

Supply management regulates the milk, dairy, and egg industries by controlling the production of these products.

It does this by requiring farmers to purchase quota permits, allowing producers to sell a set amount of product, and limiting the amount of foreign imports.

The quotas and restrictions on foreign imports allow dairy producers to raise prices, because supply stays tight and costs stay high for consumers.

Since its inception, Canadians have been aware the system has been a trade-off: paying a premium for dairy products to keep domestic dairy production strong and protect the Canadian dairy farmer market, exchanging increased prices for stability, predictability and a secure domestic food supply.

But as Charlebois points out, the Chinese dairy giant Feihe constructed Canada's largest infant formula manufacturing facility in Kingston, Ontario, a few years ago, calling it "a major investment in Canada’s dairy sector."

In July 2024, production at the facility was launched, and Canada Royal Milk, a subsidiary owned by Feihe, launched its Niuriss infant formula brand.

What appeared to be a gain for the Canadian economy and dairy industry is actually mostly just a gain for China — government records revealed that planning documents projected 85% of production would be exported to China.

With Canada only projected to represent a very small fraction of the sales.

The documents "strongly suggest that exports have already occurred to markets including China and potentially the United States."

This brings into question problems still left unsolved in Canada — including periodic baby formula shortages and higher prices, with baby formula increasing by more than 70% over the past five years.

Supply management, whose purpose is to protect Canada's food industry, is now allowing a Chinese-owned processor to operate in Canada purchasing quota protected milk while selling the product beyond Canada's borders.

**

On July 14, 2014, a Facebook account belonging to Biwei Zhang, the woman now accused of spying inside NATO’s military command and of membership in a criminal organization, published a photograph of Justin Trudeau speaking from a stage at the Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel, in a ballroom holding several hundred guests seated at banquet tables, phones raised toward the podium.

Five years later, applying for a job in the federal public service, Zhang — by then a university student in Toronto, having come to Canada from China — wrote that she had volunteered on an election campaign for the Liberal Party of Canada. She did not say which one.

Zhang has been held in Belgium since late July, after an investigating judge placed a Canadian national under arrest on charges of espionage and participation in a criminal organization. Belgian investigators have not said which country she is accused of spying for, but Reuters named China, citing government sources. The allegations have not been tested in court, and she is appealing her continued detention.

She has been identified through online profiles by numerous outlets, and a federal source told the Canadian Press this week that officials in Canada are proceeding on the basis that the suspect is Zhang.

The case has raised substantial questions about how she was screened under Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government. Court records, as The Bureau first reported, show Zhang was found to have committed fraud in an application to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), a finding upheld by the Federal Court eleven months before she took up her post at allied command — one of several markers visible in the public record and in her own online profile.

Jody Thomas, the former national security adviser to Justin Trudeau, told CTV News that Zhang’s case raises a lot of questions and that what was known at the time of her vetting has to be explored.

“It’s possible that her record – other than this court finding – was clean, and that she was corrupted once she got to (NATO)… or perhaps, she was sitting, sleeping, waiting for an opportunity to act,” Thomas said.

She said the government will have to do comprehensive “reverse engineering” to understand who Zhang truly is, pointing back to her first Canadian government job, in 2017.

But the July 2014 photographs analyzed by The Bureau pull that timeline back three years further, placing Zhang in proximity to the future Liberal prime minister Thomas would eventually serve — and to the Toronto fundraising networks Trudeau would later have to answer for, after accounts of sensitive CSIS investigations were leaked to The Globe and Mail and to this writer.

**

In late July, a Canadian woman of Chinese descent was arrested in Belgium on serious charges of espionage for China while serving as an intern with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Canadian media have identified the woman as Biwei Zhang, also known professionally as Claire Zhang or Catina Zhang.

Reportedly born in China, she later became a naturalized Canadian citizen. Zhang has a background in systems engineering, computer science, and economics. Before starting her internship at NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Mons, Belgium, in July 2025, Zhang worked at the Canadian Space Agency and Statistics Canada.

SHAPE is described as the central operational command hub for the 32-member NATO alliance. Zhang worked in the IT department. According to The Brussels Times, Zhang’s suspicious behaviors, including “excessive curiosity about her colleagues, a tendency to enter areas to which she was not authorised, and claims that she had accessed files outside her professional remit,” prompted SHAPE security to flag her and refer the case to Belgian intelligence.

Belgian authorities searched Zhang’s home and workplace at SHAPE before placing her in pretrial detention, which was later extended by one month. NATO has stated nothing of importance was compromised. Zhang has made no public comments on the espionage allegations but has appealed the detention order. A decision on her appeal is expected in the coming days.

Zhang’s espionage case is not an isolated security lapse. It is a symptom of a deeper reality: Canada does have a China problem, due to a security culture that has repeatedly subordinated rigorous vetting and threat assessment to commercial and diplomatic engagement with Beijing.

It is concerning because Canada is a member of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, a longstanding partnership that also includes Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The alliance shares some of the world’s most sensitive intelligence, particularly signals intelligence (SIGINT), as well as information on foreign interference, cyber threats, espionage, and military developments. China is one of the primary targets of this collective effort. As Canada deepens economic and diplomatic ties with Beijing, despite clear evidence of screening failures and a pattern of prioritizing commercial interests, allies are entitled to ask whether Ottawa can still be trusted with the most sensitive intelligence.

Since Zhang’s arrest, The Globe and Mail has revealed a troubling “history of fraud.” While applying for a position at the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) in 2019, Zhang submitted two similar applications under different names and email addresses on the same day. This deceitful strategy allowed her to take the eligibility exam twice within 24 hours, apparently a blatant attempt to manipulate the hiring process. When “asked directly” about the double applications, Zhang refused to acknowledge what she had done. A 2023 investigation by the Public Service Commission confirmed the finding, which a federal court upheld in 2024. As a consequence, Zhang was mandated to complete an ethics course and inform the commission before accepting certain public service roles.

This finding occurred well before Zhang’s NATO internship. Still, Global Affairs Canada granted Zhang the necessary security clearance for the SHAPE role after assessments from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and criminal-record checks by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). It is alarming that her documented fraud and use of dual identities did not prompt more rigorous scrutiny or result in the denial of clearance for a sensitive posting with allies.

Since NATO relies on member states to conduct security checks and clearances for their personnel, Zhang’s case has raised serious questions about Canada’s security screening processes for government-linked roles and internships at sensitive international organizations.

Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree has pledged a review of security screening protocols to uncover the facts behind this situation. Whether that review produces meaningful change remains uncertain.

In his recent newsletter, China specialist Sam Cooper pointed out that Global Affairs Canada, the agency responsible for granting security clearance to Zhang despite her history of fraud and multiple identities, was headed by Deputy Minister David Morrison from October 2022 to March 2026. Morrison was then promoted to senior diplomatic and international affairs advisor to Prime Minister Mark Carney. Morrison, along with his former minister Mélanie Joly, has a documented record of prioritizing trade and diplomatic engagement with Beijing over national-security concerns. This approach was not unique to them; it reflected a broader tendency within the left-wing Canadian government.

In June 2023, Cooper revealed a draft National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians report finding that Canadian leaders frequently ranked “trade and political objectives over security concerns.” That prioritization has been linked to a pattern of discounting warnings from Canada’s spy agency that Beijing is the “’foremost perpetrator’ of foreign interference in Canada,” as well as to allegations of Chinese interference in Canadian elections and political processes between 2019 and 2022.

Since Carney came into office, he has been positioning Canada for closer ties with China, seeking to reduce dependence on the United States while resisting pressures from the Trump administration. In January 2026, Carney made the first official visit to China by a Canadian prime minister since 2017. He and Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced a new strategic partnership emphasizing trade, energy collaboration, and “cultural exchanges.”

As part of the arrangement, Canada will allow limited imports of Chinese electric vehicles, up to 49,000 units at a reduced tariff rate of 6.1 percent, down from 100 percent. This decision comes despite repeated U.S. warnings about security risks “related to data collected and transmitted by modern [Chinese] vehicles.” Following the announcement, U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra stated that Chinese electric vehicles imported into Canada will not be allowed to cross the U.S. border.

Zhang’s case is a warning: Until Ottawa rebuilds credible screening, prioritizes national-security considerations over short-term commercial gains, and demonstrates it can protect shared allied secrets, partners — especially the United States — should reasonably limit what they share.

 

 

It all started in 1945:

Russia on Tuesday rebuked Japan’s ambassador to Moscow after Japan protested Russian President Vladimir Putin’s first visit to a disputed island off Hokkaido last week.

Bilateral relations have long been strained over the Northern Territories, known in Russia as the Kurils.

The Soviet Union seized the islands in 1945, near the end of World War II, then expelled the Japanese population.

Putin on Thursday visited the island of Etorofu, one of four off the east coast of Hokkaido, prompting Japan to summon the Russian ambassador in protest — and Russia to follow suit.

After being summoned to Russia’s Foreign Ministry, Japanese Ambassador Akira Muto was told that “Russia’s sovereignty and jurisdiction over the southern Kuril Islands are unshakable,” according to Moscow’s readout.

It added that, in light of Japan’s support for Ukraine, Moscow would reserve the right to “take appropriate countermeasures.”

Putin’s visit was the first trip to the islands by a Russian president since Dmitry Medvedev in 2010.

After Putin’s stop, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said the islands “are an inherent part of Japan’s territory, both historically and under international law.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday called those statements “anti-Russian” and expressed a “strong protest.”

 

Also:

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s “work, work, work, work and work” credo may be taking a toll on her after she spent 6½ hours at a hospital — just weeks after revealing that she routinely gets very little sleep.

Takaichi entered a Tokyo hospital at around 10 a.m. on Monday and returned to her official residence that afternoon. Officials close to the prime minister said doctors examined her hands and conducted other health checks, adding that the results showed no particular problems.

The prime minister suffers from rheumatoid arthritis and visited the same hospital in February after injuring her right hand while greeting voters during campaigning for the Lower House election.

The Japanese leader said the injury aggravated her existing condition, and she was subsequently seen wearing a protective brace.

“Two fingers were considerably bent, so I was worried that they might be broken,” Takaichi wrote on social media platform X after the February examination. Tests found no fracture, she said, and doctors told her that she should recover once the inflammation and pain subsided.

While Monday’s visit might have been routine, the lengthy checkup has cast a renewed spotlight on Takaichi’s health and on whether her relentless work style is sustainable.

In a July 20 post on X, the prime minister said getting between zero and three hours of sleep each day “had become a norm after assuming office.” She even expressed relief that she had managed a rare five hours on a day off.

The same post offered a glimpse of her demanding schedule. Takaichi described weekends spent reading thick policy papers from early morning until late at night, “battling mountains of documents” and preparing for parliamentary questioning.

On weekdays, paperwork frequently kept her awake until dawn.

Even during o-Bon, one of Japan’s largest holidays, Takaichi stayed busy attending a war memorial ceremony and updating her social media posts.

The health ministry advises adults to aim for at least six hours of sleep each night, though it acknowledges that individual needs may vary. Takaichi’s self-reported sleeping habits fall far below that benchmark.

An extraordinary parliamentary session and expected personnel changes this autumn will likely offer little respite for the hard-driving leader.

And Carney spent his vacation at some Brookfield villa in Tuscany:

Is Carney pulling a Trudeau(Aga Khan Vacation)?? Carney is in Tuscany,the very same place his Brookfield buddy Bruce Flatt has a residence and has been scrutinized for having political figures there. pic.twitter.com/GJQXwUJC86

— Bradshaw (@myabradshaw78) August 11, 2026

It's Just An Economy

Let them eat whatever:

The average Canadian family spends more of its income on taxes than it does on the basic necessities of food, shelter and clothing, a new report reveals.

Numbers from “Taxes versus the Necessities of Life: The Canadian Consumer Tax Index, 2026 Edition” by The Fraser Institute found that the average family loses 41.9 per cent of its income to a variety of taxes, while food, shelter and clothing combined eat up just 36 per cent.

It wasn’t always this way. Back in 1961, the first year for which the report has data, just 33.5 per cent of the average family’s income went to taxes, while more than half (56.5 per cent) covered basic necessities.

The report notes that, until about 1980, Canadians paid less on taxes than they did on the three categories of basic necessities. Taxes then outstripped necessities as a percentage of income until about 1992, when they were briefly about the same. But since then the gap has widened to where we see it today.

“At a time when the cost of living is top of mind across the country, taxes remain the largest household expense for Canadian families,” said Jake Fuss, director of fiscal studies at the Fraser Institute and co-author of the report.

**

A middle-class society is one where ordinary work creates a real path to ownership. A useful education should lead to a job that pays enough to buy a home and save, leaving room to absorb a setback or take a risk. That is how wages become agency, and how families acquire a durable stake in the country.

Liberal democracy depends on the accessibility of that stake. Citizens who can see themselves advancing have reason to build institutions and accept obligations to the people around them. But when work no longer offers a plausible route upward, the material basis of citizenship begins to erode.

Financial Times columnist John Burn-Murdoch recently calculated how long a median-wage earner saving 15 percent would need to climb from the bottom quarter of the wealth distribution to the top in several Western countries. Mufan Li, an assistant professor of statistics at the University of Waterloo, replicated the method for Canada and Ontario. In 2000, the climb took about 23 years. Today, it takes 55 years nationally and 60 in Ontario, against a working career of roughly 40.

Simply put, income from labour in Canada has lost power to change a person’s class position.

There is also a policy verdict buried in the arithmetic. If a career of diligently saved wages can no longer cross the wealth distribution, then clearly wages are too low and the taxes loaded onto them are too high.

**

Rents in Canada are so high that minimum-wage earners have to allocate much of their full-time work hours to cover the average cost an apartment, thereby jeopardizing their push for financial independence, according to a new report by Zoocasa Realty Inc.

“Financial independence and stable housing have long been seen as markers of adulthood, but for many young Canadians, these milestones are slipping out of reach,” the report released on Aug. 10 said.

The Zoocasa report said 29 of the 60 cities it looked at required minimum-wage workers to dedicate 120-plus hours of an average 174-hour work month at eight hours a day to cover their rent. People in only eight cities could work less than 100 hours a month to cover rent.

But in North Vancouver, a minimum-wage employee would need to direct 95 per cent or 164 hours from the month toward rent, based on a provincial minimum wage of $18.25 and the average rent for all apartments, which is $2,983.

The other top five cities where rent gobbles up the most working hours are clustered in British Columbia and Ontario.

In Vancouver, 87 per cent of their hours worked would need to be earmarked for rent, while it’s 84 per cent in North York, part of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), tech-hub Kanata, just outside Ottawa, and the City of Toronto.

The report said all the areas in the GTA were “uniformly high-cost,” requiring between 118 and 146 hours of work.

Ontario had the widest variance between hours needed to cover rent, ranging from the lowest at 95 in Sarnia to a high of 146 hours in North York.

Zoocasa said the cross-provincial gaps are due to the cost of rent rather than to different minimum wages.

“Since provinces set minimum wage uniformly, any variation in the number of work hours needed to afford rent comes entirely from differences in local rent levels, making rent the key lever for closing the affordability gap, not wage policy,” it said.

For example, B.C. has the highest provincial minimum wage at $18.25 an hour, but that isn’t helping with affordability. Four B.C. cities ranked among the top 10 for most hours needed to cover rent.

Alberta, meanwhile, has the lowest minimum wage at $15 an hour. Affordability problems have risen in communities around Calgary.

In Airdrie, just outside the oil capital, workers need to dedicate 79 per cent of their work hours to rent compared with 73 per cent in Calgary.

The situation is better in other Alberta cities such as Edmonton, Red Deer, Lethbridge and Medicine Hat.

In Saskatchewan, where Zoocasa said “rents haven’t escalated the way they have in B.C. or Ontario,” 95 hours of work in Regina will cover rent.

Halifax ranked sixth for the number of hours needed to cover rent at 143, or 85 per cent of people’s time on the job. The most affordable place nationally was St. John’s NL, where 74 hours of work would cover rent for the month.

**

Debt levels for the working poor are now “staggering,” says one of the country’s largest credit monitors. Equifax Canada yesterday in a report to the Commons industry committee said financial circumstances for millions are much worse than headlines indicate: “This gap has widened drastically.”

**

As U.S. President Donald Trump’s Wednesday tariff deadline looms, there are worrying signs that Canadian manufacturers are going to pack up and move south of the border. This is unsurprising for a country that imposes high costs on businesses and seems to have resigned itself to being Trump’s whipping boy.

Last month, KPMG Canada released the results of a survey of 275 Canadian manufacturers conducted in May, which found that 42 per cent of them have considered, or are currently considering, moving production south of the border. Eleven per cent said they’re thinking of moving their head offices to the United States.

A few weeks later, the Financial Post reported that Vancouver-based Interfor Corp., one of the world’s largest lumber producers, plans to “shift its corporate and functional support operations” from British Columbia to Georgia, largely due to Trump’s crippling 45 per cent tariffs on softwood lumber.

Coercing manufacturers to relocate production to the U.S. is, of course, exactly what Trump hoped to achieve. It also explains why the president has singled Canada out for disproportionate punishment: while the U.S. can’t compete with developing countries on labour costs and moving operations from Europe is a costly endeavour, Canada is situated right next door, has an economy that’s already highly integrated with the U.S. and has relatively high wages and an uncompetitive tax system.

 

What did the failed banker and his ”strong” plans do to avoid this?

Did he remove the pre-existing tariffs on the US?

Did he lower corporate taxes?

Did he eliminate mandates for Chinese-made EVs?

No, that took a much longer time.

Carney did nothing.

It’s not like his Brookfield stocks will fold if Canada goes under.

**

An executive who questioned why Canadians “glorified this idea of homeownership” yesterday was named chair of cabinet’s latest housing agency, Build Canada Homes. Evan Siddall as $459,000-a year CEO of CMHC also financed research into a home equity tax but dropped the scheme when Blacklock’s made it public: ‘Mr. Siddall brings deep experience.’

Leaving Canada

The place is no longer what anyone recognises:

Reporting on antisemitism for the Post, I often told people, felt like whack-a-mole. One day, I’d cover Jewish union members led by people boasting the October 7 attacks illustrated the “power of resistance” and, the next, university students suing schools for “poisoned” learning environments. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve referenced synagogue shootings, Jewish children bullied in schools and empty promises like, “There is no place in our country for hate or antisemitism.”

However, there was ample room. Since October 7, I have seen antisemitism so many times that I’ve become desensitized to it. At street protests, I saw terror group paraphernalia and hook-nosed cartoons of Jews splashed on billboards. In my ears I heard chants demanding Jews “Go back to Poland!” and public pledges of support for designated terror groups. Discriminating against Jews became mainstream. Anti-Zionism became a voguish belief as Canada broke antisemitism records year after bleak year. …

In the span of my lifetime, we went from a country where the middle class could own a home near a city and have children before the age of 30 to living in 500-square-foot apartments ringing the suburbs. My parents, in their third decade, owned a 2,500-square-foot home with a front and backyard. My cousin, in his mid-30s, lives in a two-bedroom apartment with three children: both he and his wife have what once were middle-class jobs.

In the span of three decades since my childhood, Canada became one of the most expensive places on earth, while America remained far more attainable. Driving these differences are a few things: Canadians are bunched up in just a handful of cities and our biggest provinces have the most restrictive building codes.

Our economy has struggled to keep pace as life’s become more expensive. Despite humble bragging about our superior decorum and international standing compared to America, in the last decade our gross domestic product (GDP) has stagnated as theirs continues to climb. Our economy has languished as America invests more in its workforce and poaches our highest earners, coaxed by deeper labour markets and better tax brackets.

Despite the hype of Canada’s immigration website crashing following Trump’s election, the rate of Americans seeking permanent residency in Canada has declined in consecutive years of the latest Trump administration, as have American temporary foreign worker applications. Meanwhile, thousands of Canadians are scanning their own personal horizons and coming to the same conclusion. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, over 125,000 people left Canada for America in 2022, a 70 per cent increase from a decade earlier. The pain is felt most among highest earners: the Bank of Canada found that roughly 40 per cent of the top 1 per cent of Canadians have flocked south, alongside between a third and half of those of the following nine percentiles. …

“We do not welcome the world’s hatreds,” Carney told Jewish attendees at a Toronto synagogue in early June. “When you come to Canada, you bring your faith, your tradition, your language, your story. You leave behind your animosities.”

Carney’s speech was murky, a fine misting of pleasantries that obscured what his actual plans were. There was no mention of Zionism or the febrile passion among pockets of Canadians that the Jewish state cease to exist. The central question Carney let sit in the haze that June night was one that Jews across the country want clearly articulated: who is driving this surge of antisemitism and what can be done about it. …

But over a quarter (28 per cent) of Canadian Muslim respondents in Brym’s study agreed that Jews were “largely to blame for the negative consequences of globalization” and over a third (34 per cent) said Jews “talk too much about the Holocaust.” They are also far more likely to believe in conspiracies of Jewish control of banks and media, in line with the views expressed by their co-religionists across Europe.

While the size of the Canadian Jewish community has inched slowly upward since my birth, Muslim immigration has skyrocketed, growing from less than 100,000 in 1981 to over 1.75 million in 2021. In barely four decades, Canadians Muslims went from representing half a per cent of the country to nearly 5 per cent. Regardless of Carney’s wishes, the views and baggage of many immigrants from Pakistan and Lebanon and Syria and Afghanistan have been planted in Canadian soil. …

Canadian Jews have become endangered because Canadian values have become endangered. A national insecurity has descended across the country, triggered by leaders questioning whether there is something worth preserving, whether the next generation should be proud of the heritage being passed down.

Entrenching the multicultural legacy of his father, Justin Trudeau articulated the miasma of nothingness modern Canadianness ought to embody. “There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada,’’ he told the New York Times a decade ago. He spoke of generic values “openness, respect, compassion, willingness to work hard, to be there for each other, to search for equality and justice,” which made Canada “the first postnational state.’’

National icons were shuffled off stage during his years in office, boxed up and crated off, never to see the light of day again. Statues of Sir John A. Macdonald, our closest thing to a founding father, were graffitied and destroyed from coast to coast. Egerton Ryerson, the former namesake of Ryerson University (today Toronto Metropolitan), was toppled. Nothing about our history was sacred in the vortex of our swirling postnational moment. The poppy, a rare national symbol honouring Canadian veterans, founditself in the crosshairs when Don Cherry was disappeared for saying he didn’t see many Canadian newcomers wearing one and showing solidarity.

The threadbare identity weaved under Trudeau’s leadership culminated in 2021, after misreadings of ground-penetrating radar seemingly mistook geologic anomalies for Indigenous mass graves. Trudeau placed a teddy bear in a pastoral Saskatchewan field, beneath which no remains were ever found. Indeed, no bones were located anywhere despite countless alleged burial sites emerging. Trudeau ordered flags lowered for more than five months, the longest period in Canadian history.

It was a fitting and ultimate act of virtue signaling, deepening self-doubt across the country. Calls mounted to cancel Canada Day celebrations. “Muted” was the word on people’s lips as Canadians were informed of our fraught history, of our mistreatment of minorities, that our flag was steeped  in white supremacy. That force continues today: in June, a statue of Samuel de Champlain, a French explorer who once was viewed as a figure of “national unity,” was removed in an Ontario town.

Canadianness in the last decade felt hollow and reactionary; a petty patriotism trumpeted in response to American bullying, not an eternal flame that burns brighter in times of crisis. Out of the depths of our national insecurity, Canada regained its footing courtesy of Trump’s return to the White House in 2024.

 Canadian nationalism under the threat of tariffs became a corporate marketing bonanza rivalling Pride Month. Companies raced and bent over backwards to signal they were on board. Maple Leaf Foods, overnight, became “Proudly Canadian.” So did Crave, the streaming platform whose value proposition rests entirely on its access to American-made HBO.

Driving through rolling Pennsylvania farmland and upstate New York this July, we saw a sense of pride where flags draped porches and people took off their hats during the national anthem. Americans also toppled statues during the past decade, largely Confederate military figures and explorer Christopher Columbus, but the deeper self-loathing seems confined to the progressive fringe.

The level of pride I witnessed from the heart of diverse big cities to rural communities was something unrecognizable in Canada. The nationwide celebrations of 250 years of independence were everywhere: we couldn’t escape the flags, stickers, hats, air shows, bumper stickers, fireworks and pro-America graffiti murals. My wife and I want to be in a place where people are proud of their history, who feel their country is a force for good in the world, no matter how imperfect it looks to our modern eyes. …

I met many of these people sitting shiva for my grandfather in June. I lost count of the number of people who came up, offered their condolences and were soon volleying questions about how to get to America. People with established careers and retirees. Old Jews and young Jews. They were fearful of the direction Canada is heading and saw across their own lifetimes the country become unrecognizable; to be a Jew, a rapidly vanishing minority, in a country that couldn’t articulate how to protect them. …

One close family member flew a Canadian flag in front of his house as long as I can remember growing up. Patriotism in Canada, especially in cities and suburbs, I’ve found to be a rare sight. He was the lone house on his street that kept the red-and-white up until the early winds of winter blew in around October. He was Canada-proud and didn’t need a trade war or the Olympics to stir his pride.

It felt perpetual. Timeless. Every April, he would unfurl a new, crisp flag above his garage. Months in the Toronto sun and rain and wind slowly eroded these flags, and every year was an occasion to take down the old weathered one and replace it with a fresh one.

But the spring after October 7, he didn’t replace it with one right out of the box; he hoisted up the old tattered one. He felt Canadian Jews had been let down by the government, scapegoated and left to fend for themselves as antisemitism became tolerated and ignored. “It’s symbolic to me of Canada right now,” he confided to his wife when she asked him at the time why his tradition had suddenly changed.

As the scenes unspooled, I realized the Canada I saw then was better, far better, than the one I currently inhabit today …

But I just don’t see any better alternative at this point.

The writer's feelings are not vague.

Now, I see a country of apathetic and reactionary bobbleheads who still believe that Canada stands head and shoulders above everyone and that conflicts exist in faraway places.

No one will think back even as far as their childhoods to a culture of high-trust, prosperity, and community.

Those days are gone.

Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week yard sale ...

It’s just an economy:

Canadians continued to file for insolvency in the second quarter at levels not seen in more than a decade as the housing market slump and rising costs caught up with consumers, according to the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy.

OSB data released on Monday shows 37,523 Canadian consumers filed for insolvency in the second quarter – a 6.9-per-cent increase compared to the same period last year, and the highest quarterly volume since 2009. There were 402 more insolvencies during Q2 as compared to the first quarter of the year. The increase marked two consecutive quarters above 2009 levels; that was the all-time highest full year for consumer insolvency filings.

The uptick can be attributed to historically high consumer credit-card and tax debt, said Scott Terrio, a manager of consumer insolvency at Hoyes, Michalos & Associates, a personal insolvency service firm. He added that the increase in insolvencies could also be because of Canadian homeowners reckoning with the heavy borrowing that took place during the housing boom of the 2010s.

**

For more than four decades, I have sat across the table from financially distressed Canadians. For most of that time, the people who came through our doors had a debt problem. Something had gone wrong. A divorce, an illness, a layoff, a stretch of poor decisions. We could usually name the event that put them in the chair.

That is changing. More and more of the people we meet cannot point to an event at all. Nothing went wrong. Their budget simply no longer works.

The distinction matters. A debt can be restructured and, in many cases, eliminated outright. A budget can only be trimmed, and it cannot be trimmed below what a family needs to live.

Our offices receive roughly 10,000 calls a year from Canadians looking for relief. Consumer proposals and bankruptcies remain powerful legal tools, and they work. We negotiate with creditors. We eliminate unsecured debt. We stop wage garnishments and end the collection calls. The law also requires us to provide financial counselling, and that counselling does genuine good: people leave understanding their cash flow, often for the first time in years.

But counselling teaches someone to manage the money they have. It does not create money they do not have.

We cannot raise a client's income. We cannot lower the price of groceries, gasoline, electricity, or rent. We can cut expenses at the margin, and we do. Increasingly, the margin is not where the problem lives.

Read the whole thing.

**

No one cares what Canadians think:

New polling shows 63% of Canadians oppose the federal government’s plan to hike fuel taxes next month.

Carney suspended the federal fuel tax in April to give Canadians a break at the pumps, saving 10 cents per litre of gas and 4 cents per litre of diesel.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation pushed for gas tax cuts for decades because cutting taxes is the simplest, fastest and easiest way for governments to make life more affordable for everyday working people.

Federal fuel tax relief also makes life more affordable for all Canadians every time they buy anything trucked to store shelves, a point even the federal government acknowledges.

“Cutting the tax on gasoline and diesel,” according to the prime minister’s office, “will reduce operating costs for truckers and businesses in the food, agriculture, housing, construction and delivery sectors.”

Making it cheaper for truckers to deliver goods to the store makes it more affordable for Canadians to buy those goods once they get there.

But relief is about to disappear. Carney plans to crank the gas tax back up on Sept. 8, just as Canadians are driving their kids back to school.

Canadians don’t support the gas tax hike. Most Canadians in every demographic — gender, age and province — oppose the increase, according to Leger polling. The demographics who typically support Carney’s Liberals, women and people 55 and older, are more likely to oppose the gas tax hike. Among Canadians who’ve made up their mind, 71% oppose the gas tax hike.

**

Federal and provincial government spending on “corporate welfare” increased by 142 per cent between 2019 and 2024 — an expense that leaders at the Fraser Institute call “wasteful spending.”

The independent think tank published a study on Tuesday which found that there was a marked increase in spending on corporate subsidies beginning in 2015.

Between 2007 and 2015, the data shows, spending on subsidies increased from $22.2 billion to $25.1 billion when adjusted for inflation, or 12.8 per cent. But from 2015 until 2019, spending increased more rapidly, by 44.2 per cent.

After the pandemic, spending on corporate subsidies increased each year from 2022 to 2024, with the inflation-adjusted level of spending in 2024 at $87.7 billion, more than triple the figure from 2015.

The Fraser Institute defines “corporate welfare” as “payments from government to private businesses intended to achieve specific objectives that are not payments for goods or services rendered.” They are paid with an economic objective, such as job growth or to boost a particular industry.

The study found that, when accounting for both inflation and population, spending on subsidies has increased in every province and at the federal level between 2015 and 2024.

**

Despite all of this spending, the study said, “an extensive body of research shows there is little connection between sustained, widespread economic growth or job creation and corporate subsidies.”

“The massive recent increase in government spending on corporate welfare should concern all Canadians,” said Alex Whelan, co-author of the study by the fiscally conservative think tank, Eliminating Corporate Subsidies in Canada: An Opportunity to Boost Growth.

“It’s wasteful spending at the expense of Canadian taxpayers and places government in the position of picking favoured businesses. Better policies exist to drive economic growth.”

The study argues that by eliminating corporate welfare and applying the savings to broad-based corporate income tax relief, the federal and provincial governments could lower business taxes today by more than 80%, removing another anchor on the Canadian economy.

 

Don’t worry, though.

The banker will be all over this.

Eventually.

Like, after his vacation.

 

 

A spiritually rudderless country will end up going nowhere.

You cannot live a life without a higher purpose nor can you defend a principle on your feelings.

(Sidebar: consider that Canadians voted for a failed substitute drama teacher three times and wore masks while riving alone in their cars. There is no way in hell the mysteries of the cosmos can be solved by such people.)

The removal of God has its reasons:

To jog memories: A 2023 Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) directive updating a 2013 military policy told chaplains to avoid using religious symbols at public events, to filter religious expression through “Gender Based Analysis” to avoid asking anyone to remove a hat or headwear during their presentations, and, most infamously, to replace prayer with nebulous, sanitized alternatives called “spiritual reflections.” This new document, taking the form of Military Personnel Instructions, clarifies that such reflections “do not use religious specific language” but rather “reflect upon lessons learned, beliefs, values, and experiences to inspire gratitude, remembrance, hope, and integrity.”

I feel spiritually enriched already!

**

 And what an enlightened country we are!:

An 83-year-old Canadian grandmother was euthanized under the country’s Medical Assistance in Dying program on July 10, 2026, despite having previously declined it because of her Christian faith and without providing what her family describes as a final verbal confirmation of consent.

Brigitte Stegemann, known lovingly to her family as “GG,” died by lethal injection at The Pearl (formerly E.J. McQuigge Lodge), a long-term care facility in Belleville, Ontario, where she had lived for the previous two years.

She had been diagnosed with untreatable Stage IV stomach cancer about five months earlier.

Her granddaughter, also named Brigitte, held legal power of attorney and had served as her primary caregiver and advocate for more than 12 years. Facility staff routinely contacted the granddaughter for decisions about medications, treatments, and daily care.

Approximately two months before her death, Stegemann was asked about Medical Assistance in Dying.

According to her family’s public statement, she “clearly stated that she did not wish to pursue it.”

As a devout Christian, she said the practice conflicted with her personal beliefs and faith. She wanted to die naturally.

While the granddaughter was away on a 10-day vacation, facility staff held private discussions with Stegemann about MAiD without informing her family or any advocate. The family was never given a clear answer about who initiated those conversations, a serious concern given Stegemann’s diminished capacity, severe hearing impairment—she was completely deaf in her left ear and had very limited hearing in the right—and frequent periods of lethargy and unresponsiveness.

When the formal assessment occurred on July 6 and 7, the family described Stegemann’s sudden alertness as anomalous after days of near-unresponsiveness. During the capacity evaluation, the physician had to repeat questions repeatedly because of her hearing loss.

Stegemann repeatedly gave incorrect answers to basic questions about her own life.

When asked if she had any siblings, she said she had none—though she was the second-youngest of 14 children. She also said none of her siblings were still alive, even though some were and she had spoken with one the previous week.

She became disoriented, began to cry, and said, “I forgot about the grandkids,” confusing her living siblings with her great-grandchildren.

The family corrected the vast majority of her answers and the granddaughter objected directly, questioning how Stegemann could possibly be deemed capable of consenting to her own death.

The physician explained the procedure in language the family found euphemistic and misleading for an elderly woman of Stegemann’s background, describing it as receiving medication, feeling peace, falling asleep, and promising she “would not lose control of her bowels.”

The family was then ordered to leave the room.

The power-of-attorney holder’s request to remain was denied. When the physician emerged, she stated flatly, “I have deemed her capable of making her own decisions,” and informed the family that Stegemann had consented.

The procedure was scheduled for July 10.

The family was left “shocked and distressed.”

They later discovered that the death date had been set before any official MAiD application paperwork was completed. Facility staff, including the home manager, then filled out and witnessed the forms themselves without notifying the power of attorney, despite the family’s daily visits.

On July 8, the date was briefly advanced by a full day simply because the physician had an opening in her schedule. The home manager admitted she had personally completed the paperwork.

On the morning of July 10, the family took Stegemann outside to the patio for fresh air and a scoop of her favorite strawberry ice cream while waiting for her pastor to arrive.

Her clear wishes to be surrounded by family and to have her pastor present were treated as secondary to the schedule.

After returning to her room, an intravenous line was inserted amid what the family described as a significant, alarming amount of blood covering Stegemann, the bedding, and the surrounding area. When the physician arrived, Stegemann remained silent, her hands held in a prayer position, and gave no verbal response.

The family had been strictly assured that Stegemann would be asked for a final, explicit verbal confirmation on the day of the procedure to ensure she still wished to proceed.

“Tragically, we were left alarmed and horrified when the clinical team completely ignored her silence and carried the procedure forward regardless,” their statement said.

Stegemann was dead shortly afterward.

**

Called in as the chaplain for a dying woman a few years ago, Father Rodney Clark recalls the harsh administrative reality that immediately followed her death.

 The woman was homeless and had chosen medical assistance in dying at the Joliette, Que., hospital after her cancer metastasized.

But with no relatives around or financial resources, her body was essentially abandoned.

“There was no one around her who could cover the costs for transport and cremation,” said Clark.

He quickly tried to find a donor to pay the bill so he could claim her remains before they were sent to a local funeral home.

The hospital gave him less than a day to find the money, an affordable undertaker and to sign all the necessary paperwork, he said.

But Clark said by the time he organized everything, including a free marked grave, it was too late.

Less than 24 hours after her death, she’d already been cremated and buried in a common grave in Joliette, becoming one of hundreds of Quebecers whose bodies remain unclaimed every year.

What a sh---y country this place is!

The comments following the article confirm this, as well.

**

If I have to pay for it, you can damn well look at it:

The pronouncement came down from a labour arbitrator who decided last Tuesday that anti-abortion displays at Calgary’s Mount Royal University constituted a psychological hazard which the administration “did not adequately control.”

The case arose from a string of complaints by a staff member from 2019 to 2024. She had a miscarriage some 15 years prior, and was retraumatized at the sight of posters displayed by the anti-abortion, or “pro-life,” group that assembled regularly in a high-traffic part of campus.

“The images displayed on the obscenely large posters that the group chooses to convey their message is frighteningly similar to what I saw when I miscarried,” she wrote in a 2022 health and safety complaint.

The staffer had first requested the removal of the protesters from campus in 2019, but out of concern for free speech, the university sought compromise. It had an app which it used to send out safety notifications, so it set up a new type of notification to alert subscribing users of when and where anti-abortion displays popped up, and when they left. The university also had security staff place six or seven “WARNING GRAPHIC MATERIAL” signs in the areas leading to the protest display. Eventually, QR codes linking to support services were added to these signs.

(Sidebar: let that sink in. There is an app to warn adults of hurty words and images. Yep.)

The staffer approached her concerns in a number of ways. She spoke to human resources about it in 2019 but was rebuffed for free speech reasons; she made a health and safety complaint in 2022; she yelled and swore at the protesters in 2023, a video of which was published by Rebel News. And finally, she got her union to file a grievance in 2024.

Throughout this time, Mount Royal University made what appears to be a fair attempt to juggle the interests of the protesters and the staffer. Beyond the notification system and the dedication to posting warning signs, it consulted with the provincial health and safety agency in 2023 and was advised that the sign-notification system was adequate. In 2024, it began asking the protesters to provide 30 minutes’ notice the following year so that the signs and notifications could go out beforehand. All the while, it maintained that free expression meant allowing these protests on campus.

In the spring of 2025, the university stopped sending out notifications for the protests because, went the evidence, the person in charge feared that the volume of notifications would cause people to stop using the app. It was a strange concern because only those who signed up for these specific notifications were supposed to receive them. After some pressure from the campus community, the notifications resumed in the fall.

When this all fell on the labour arbitrator’s lap, he took a look at Alberta’s definition of workplace hazard, which is a “situation, condition, or thing that may be dangerous to health and safety.” Did the images of bloody fetuses meet that definition? To answer that, the arbitrator looked to the staffer’s experiences. She testified to her trauma; colleagues testified to instances where she shook and cried; even the Rebel video helped her case — the arbitrator said that the yelling and swearing was evidence of emotional dysregulation. She took medical leave in April 2024 and testified that she sought counselling that month.

“Based on the impact on (the staffer’s) mental health and emotional well-being, I have no difficulty concluding that exposure to the graphic images regularly displayed by the Pro-Life Demonstrators on campus is a situation or condition that is dangerous to (her) health and safety,” wrote the arbitrator. “Hence, I agree that the graphic imagery constitutes a ‘hazard’ within (health and safety) legislation requiring the University to take appropriate steps to control the hazard, as the University originally concluded.”

While Mount Royal University had taken steps to accommodate those who did not wish to see the protesters’ posters, the arbitrator said it had not gone far enough. In his view, the university should have required the protesters to give advance notice far earlier in the process; it should have limited them to use only one side of the high-traffic area where they demonstrated to make it easier for people to avoid the images; and it should have set up a personal notification system for this particular staffer — phone call, email and text. He ordered the university to do this going forward.

One should not be surprised that a Canadian university ruled this way.

It’s not like universities are places for higher learning or anything.

 

 

Never forget who ruined us:

Early in 1968, Justice Minister Pierre Trudeau released a government White Paper he wrote entitled A Canadian Charter of Human Rights. It was his initial proposal for what would become the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982.

At the outset, Trudeau’s proposal was not universally welcomed. Many scholars and political leaders recognized it to be a radical alternative to Canada’s existing system of individual rights protection. But because of the widespread fawning over the Charter of Rights today, many Canadians do not know about the significant opposition it received when it was first proposed.

One of the early outspoken opponents of Trudeau’s Charter was James C. McRuer, Chief Justice of the High Court of Justice of Ontario. At the time Trudeau’s proposal was released, McRuer was serving as the head of the Ontario Royal Commission Inquiry into Civil Rights, a position he was appointed to in 1964. The commission — the purpose of which was to recommend changes to strengthen protection for individual rights — would release its report in five volumes over a period of three years.

Part four of the report was issued in 1969, and in this volume McRuer took direct aim at the Charter proposal. As political scientist Donald Smiley wrote at the time, McRuer demolished “the superficial case for the constitutional entrenchment of rights made by Mr. Trudeau.”

Unfortunately, McRuer’s debunking of Trudeau did not generate enough opposition to prevent adoption of the Charter.

Trudeau’s key argument in favour of the Charter was that Canadians’ individual rights were not guaranteed because they were not entrenched in the constitution. Our rights, he alleged, were vulnerable until they were enumerated in the constitution through his Charter.

Because Trudeau was ultimately successful in achieving his goal, many Canadians today seem to think he gave us our rights, as if we didn’t have individual rights before his Charter. That view is complete nonsense.

The fact is, Trudeau did not like Canada’s method of protecting individual rights, which relied on historical practices inherited from Britain. Citizens were recognized as holding rights which included freedom of speech and freedom of religion, although these rights were not spelled out in a constitutional document. Nevertheless, Canadians enjoyed individual rights as good or better than any country in the world at that time.

Trudeau much preferred the American system of enumerated rights. He wanted Canada to entrench a document in the constitution with an explicit list of protected rights. Sounds good, right? Who wouldn’t want their rights defined in the constitution? Answer: Chief Justice McRuer and many others who understood Canada’s historic system.

 In the American system, the US Supreme Court becomes the final arbiter of the meaning of rights in the Constitution. What’s wrong with that? As McRuer wrote, “This means that, with the very rare exception of a constitutional amendment, the Supreme Court has everyday final power over the democratic legislative bodies of the country. The result is that not infrequently the Court has denied the respective legislative bodies the right to pass laws which they have considered to be necessary to advance the social well-being of the people.”

In other words, the country is ultimately ruled by Supreme Court judges. As McRuer explained, “no legislative body representative of the people has any power to reverse or alter the law as declared by the Court.”

This is precisely the kind of system Pierre Trudeau wanted for Canada. But McRuer smelled a rat. Trudeau’s proposal, he wrote, amounted to “a proposal that we should adopt the sweeping degree of judicial supremacy that obtains in the United States.”

McRuer rejected it outright: “We cannot agree with a philosophy of government that deprives the people of the ultimate right to determine their own social affairs through democratic processes and transfers the final power of decision in certain wide areas to appointed officials — the judges.”

He went on to summarize the issue this way: “Is the American system of judicial supremacy, at the primary level of social policy decisions and law-making, preferable to the principle that has dominated in Canada and the Provinces until now, namely that parliamentary supremacy and not judicial supremacy prevails at the primary level of social policy decisions and law-making?”

In other words, is policy-making by unelected judges a better system than policy-making by elected officials who are directly accountable to voters? Trudeau favoured the former and McRuer the latter.

Unfortunately, Trudeau prevailed in 1982, and since then, judges — especially at the Supreme Court level — have become the highest political authorities in the land, at least on several controversial issues.

But we had been warned. Chief Justice McRuer, writing in 1969, told Canadians what would happen if Trudeau got his Charter. His distant early warning was ignored.

So today we have rights entrenched in the Charter, and the limits of those rights — as well as many contentious policy issues — are solely determined by nine Ottawa judges who are unaccountable to Canadian voters. Over the last few decades, they have consistently pushed policies in a leftward direction, and there’s little Canadians can do about it. The only consolation is the much-maligned Notwithstanding Clause, i.e., Section 33 of the Charter, which provides a limited avenue for democratic responses to judicial overreach.

Despite the best efforts of Chief Justice McRuer, Pierre Trudeau succeeded in transferring considerable political power from voters to a tiny judicial aristocracy.

 

Let’s hear it for censorship!:

Parliament’s 2023 passage of the Online News Act left Canadians, especially those in rural areas, too reliant on mainstream media and “official voices” in news coverage, says a report to the Commons heritage committee. The Act provoked a Facebook news ban that left communities “lacking credible information on the platform they used most,” it said.