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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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:

 

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