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attentive, compassionate doctor — one who listens, reassures, and treats the whole person — has, in too many instances, been replaced by rushed interactions and transactional care.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.
**
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.
**
“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.
**
“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.’
**
“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."
— DonaldBest.CA * DO NOT COMPLY (@DonaldBestCA) August 15, 2026
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
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.”
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.
**
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.
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.
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
