A spirited B.C. Premier David Eby took aim at the federal government Thursday over what he says is the unfair treatment of B.C. ferry passengers before accusing Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s aggressive pipeline push of threatening the viability of other projects in his province.
OTTAWA — Justice Minister Sean Fraser says the government’s request to Canada’s top court to set limits on the notwithstanding clause isn’t only about Quebec’s secularism law.
In a statement released today, Fraser says that he hopes the Supreme Court’s eventual decision “will shape how both federal and provincial governments may use the notwithstanding clause for years to come.”
Ottawa filed a factum Wednesday in the landmark case on Quebec’s Bill 21, better known as the secularism law, which prohibits public sector workers in positions of authority — including teachers and judges — from wearing religious symbols on the job.
Quebec invoked the notwithstanding clause of the Charter of Rights when it passed the law.
That clause shields legislation from constitutional challenges based on some sections of the Charter for five years, but the federal government is asking the Supreme Court to define limits on how it can be used.
Both Ontario and Alberta have supported the use of the notwithstanding clause, saying it is an essential part of the Constitution.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2025.
—With files from Maura Forrest and Miriam Lafontaine in Montreal.
The Canadian Press
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has waged an aggressive campaign against the media unlike any in modern U.S. history, making moves similar to those of authoritarian leaders that he has often praised.
On Wednesday, Trump cheered ABC’s suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show after the comedian made remarks about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk that criticized the president’s MAGA movement: “Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
It was the latest in a string of attacks against news outlets and media figures he believes are overly critical of him. Trump has filed lawsuits against outlets whose coverage he dislikes, threatened to revoke TV broadcast licenses and sought to bend news organizations and social media companies to his will.
The tactics are similar to those used by leaders in other countries who have chipped away at speech freedoms and independent media while consolidating political power, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a close Trump ally whose leadership style is revered by many conservatives in the U.S.
“What we’re seeing is an unprecedented attempt to silence disfavored speech by the government,” said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College. “Donald Trump is trying to dictate what Americans can say.”
Is Trump taking cues from Orban?
Trump’s approach to governing has drawn comparisons to Orbán, who has been in power since 2010. The Hungarian leader has made hostility toward the press central to his political brand, borrowing Trump’s phrase “fake news” to describe critical outlets. He has not given an interview to an independent journalist in years.
Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders says Orbán has built “a true media empire subject to his party’s orders” through allies’ acquisitions of newspapers and broadcasters. The group says that strategy has given Orbán’s Fidesz party control of about 80% of Hungary’s media market. In 2018, Orbán’s allies donated nearly 500 news outlets they had acquired to a government-controlled conglomerate, a group that included all of Hungary’s local daily newspapers.
Opposition parties complain that they get just five minutes of airtime on public TV during elections, the legal minimum, while state broadcasters reliably amplify government talking points and smear Orbán’s political opponents. Hungary’s media authority, staffed entirely by Orbán’s party nominees, has threatened nonrenewal of broadcast frequencies to keep outlets in line and forced the liberal-leaning station Klubrádió off the air.
“Here, they bought outlets and replaced editorial staff wholesale,” said Hungarian media analyst Gábor Polyák.
The moves against independent media, along with Orbán’s systematic capture of Hungary’s democratic institutions, prompted the European Parliament in 2022 to declare that the country could no longer be considered a democracy.
Polyák said that while the American media landscape is far larger and more diverse than Hungary’s, he’s been struck by the willingness of major U.S. companies to accommodate Trump’s threats.
“There is a very strange kind of self-censorship in America,” he said. “Even with European eyes, it is very frightening to see to what degree individual bravery does not exist. From Zuckerberg to ABC, everyone immediately surrenders.”
Kimmel suspension is part of a pattern by Trump
Kimmel became the second late-night comic with a history of pillorying Trump to lose their show this year. CBS canceled Stephen Colbert’s show just days after he had criticized the network’s settlement of a lawsuit filed by Trump over its editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s opponent last fall.
CBS said the July move was made for financial reasons, but Trump celebrated it nevertheless while appearing to foreshadow this week’s developments: “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings,” he wrote on his social media platform at the time. “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.”
ABC’s suspension of Kimmel on Wednesday came after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr made a pointed warning about the comedian on a conservative podcast earlier in the day: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” he said.
Carr also launched an investigation into CBS and opened probes into public broadcasting networks after Trump persuaded Congress to defund them.
The Kimmel suspension has highlighted the president’s broader efforts to pressure journalists, media companies, and now comedians and commentators, to align with his views.
Trump also has targeted social media giants, claiming Meta dropped its fact-checking program partly because of his threats, which included jailing founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Even powerful media owners have appeared to bend under pressure. Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, whose companies have significant government contracts, killed an editorial endorsement of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris before the 2024 election and, like Meta, donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration. Disney-owned ABC News agreed to a $15 million settlement to resolve a Trump lawsuit.
Media crackdowns in other countries
Hungary is not the only country where similar patterns to erode an independent media landscape have been playing out. In neighboring Serbia, populist President Aleksandar Vucic has faced accusations of curtailing media freedoms since coming to power over a decade ago.
Critics have cited a combination of political pressure, public smear campaigns and financial pressure on the media as the means Vucic’s government has used to establish control over mainstream outlets and the public RTS broadcaster.
Journalist safety in Serbia has worsened since the start of student-led protests some 10 months ago that have challenged Vucic’s firm rule. The Media Freedom Rapid Response group — which monitors press freedom in Europe — said in a recent report they were “gravely concerned” that Serbian journalists “have been reporting under immense political pressure, faced with physical violence, censorship, smear campaigns, abusive lawsuits, and daily death threats.”
In Russia, President Vladimir Putin consolidated control over national television early in his rule and later expanded restrictions on civil society, independent journalism and online platforms. Authorities later used a flurry of laws to restrict freedom of speech.
The restrictive label “foreign agent” has been slapped on the few remaining independent media outlets and scores of journalists, and the government has steadily tightened controls on the internet. Putin’s crackdown has only intensified after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, when new laws criminalized criticism of the war and forced many journalists into exile.
In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rise has coincided with mounting pressure on comedians and satirists. Police have arrested performers for jokes deemed offensive to Hindu deities or critical of Modi’s party. Comedians such as Kunal Kamra and Vir Das have faced lawsuits, show cancellations and harassment from nationalist groups for skewering the government.
___
Riccardi reported from Denver. Associated Press writer Jovana Gec in Belgrade, Serbia, contributed to this report.
Justin Spike And Nicholas Riccardi, The Associated Press
A Jewish law professor has lost her bid to get a court to quash Toronto Metropolitan University’s decision not to discipline students who signed an open letter “condoning, if not outrightly encouraging the Hamas terror attacks on October 7 and denying Israel’s right to exist.”
Sarah Morgenthau, who complained those who signed the letter had breached TMU’s student code of conduct, took her case to Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice after an external review conducted by a retired judge determined the opposite and that the signees should not be disciplined.
“The applicant, who is Jewish, saw the open letter as antisemitic and condoning violence against Jews and Israelis,” said a recent decision from the three-judge panel.
It notes that the open letter, from “a group calling itself the Abolitionist Organizing Collective” was released “less than two weeks after Hamas’ October 7 attacks in Israel.”
While the open letter “referred to Hamas’s ‘recent war crimes’” it also “asserted that Israel had also been committing war crimes,” said the court decision. “The letter characterized ‘so-called Israel’ as an ‘apartheid state’ and ‘a product of settler colonialism.’ It claimed that Israel was ‘responsible for all loss of life in Palestine’ and called on the (Lincoln Alexander School of Law’s) administration to issue a statement demanding that the Canadian government take certain actions, including demanding an immediate ceasefire. The authors also asked that the administration recognize ‘Palestinian resistance as fundamentally just and as a means of survival for Palestinians.’”
According to the decision, Morgenthau “considered the open letter to have instigated violent rhetoric against the Jewish community, which crossed the line into unacceptable conduct, particularly since the signatories were law students — and therefore future lawyers.”
The court declined Morgenthau’s application for a judicial review of TMU’s decision to apply the results of former Nova Scotia chief justice Michael MacDonald’s external review, which cleared those who signed the letter, to her complaint.
“I do not believe it is appropriate for the Divisional Court to intervene in the process undertaken by TMU to resolve an issue that affected the entire university community,” Justice Karen Jensen wrote in a Sept. 4 decision from the panel.
“The external review process was designed to reflect TMU’s values and its approach to conflict resolution in a collegial learning environment.”
The court heard Morgenthau was an adjunct professor at TMU’s Lincoln Alexander School of Law when 72 students signed the letter in question on Oct. 20, 2023.
“Following the circulation of the open letter, the applicant submitted a formal complaint under TMU’s Student Code of Non-Academic Conduct and the Discrimination and Harassment Prevention Policy,” said the panel’s decision.
A week after students signed the letter, TMU “announced that it would appoint an independent external expert to conduct a review of the open letter and related events, petitions, and concerns, and to determine whether any of the actions and incidents related to the open letter were in breach of TMU’s policies and procedures,” said the decision, which notes the university subsequently appointed MacDonald as the external expert.
The former judge released his external review in late May 2024.
“He concluded that none of the participants in the open letter had breached the Student Code of Conduct. Therefore, the students were not disciplined,” said the panel.
While MacDonald found “the open letter was troubling and offensive to many, the students’ participation in it, when placed in context, was nonetheless a valid exercise of student expression,” said the panel’s decision.
In his report, MacDonald indicated that the principles of freedom of expression “give wide latitude for students to apply their experience and learning, and to experiment with written advocacy. The standard is not perfection. Students are entitled to make mistakes, and even cause harm, without necessarily facing sanctions.”
The retired judge pointed out that the students who signed the open letter had “been under the jeopardy of this review, subjected to a barrage of threatening hate mail, their personal information has been doxed, and they have likely lost existing and future professional opportunities. It’s time for them to move forward in their legal education and their professional careers.”
MacDonald also “found that the open letter was not antisemitic because it did not refer to Jewish people or Judaism, nor did it explicitly or implicitly equate Israel’s actions with those of Jewish people, whose views do not necessarily align with those of the state of Israel.”
Just over a month after his report landed, TMU informed Morgenthau “that it would not be proceeding with the investigation of her complaint because it had determined that the MacDonald Report and the External Review had fully and appropriately addressed the substantive issue raised in the complaint,” said the decision, which notes TMU told Morgenthau she couldn’t appeal that decision.
She applied for a judicial review of TMU’s decision not to proceed with her complaint.
“In the present case, the panel declined to undertake judicial review because it is not appropriate for this court to second guess TMU’s decision not to discipline the students who participated in the open letter,” said the decision.
Conservative and Liberal MPs sparred Thursday in the House of Commons over reforms to Canada’s bail system, as the Official Opposition emphasizes crime early in the fall sitting.
OTTAWA — The Conservatives are pushing for a “three strikes” law to deny bail to repeat offenders and tougher sanctions for domestic violence.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre made crime a central focus of his election campaign in the spring, and on Thursday he brought that message to the House of Commons.
The Conservatives brought forward a motion calling on the government to introduce what they call a “three-strikes-and-you’re-out” law to prevent people convicted of three “serious” offences from getting bail, probation, parole or house arrest.
Speaking in the House of Commons during his first speech of this parliamentary session, Poilievre blamed the Liberals for laws he said “turn criminals loose on our streets so that they can offend and offend and re-offend with no consequences.”
“If the Liberals are not prepared to reverse their own mistakes, then get out of the way and let Conservatives make Canadians safer,” Poilievre said.
The Conservatives also introduced a private members’ bill in the House of Commons Thursday that would make the murder of an intimate partner a first-degree crime.
Conservative public safety critic Frank Caputo said the bill would treat such crimes the way the Criminal Code currently treats the murder of a peace officer.
Caputo told a press conference on Parliament Hill the bill would create a new offence of assaulting an intimate partner.
He said the bill would also create a mechanism for judges to order a risk assessment of an individual charged with intimate partner violence who is on release.
A Conservative party press release said that means people accused of intimate partner violence could be detained for a risk assessment “at any time.”
Caputo said the bill could move quickly through the parliamentary process and called on the Liberals to help advance it.
Poilievre told the House of Commons the Conservatives are “here to oppose the bad the government does, expose their corrupt behavior, but also propose solutions that will improve the lives of the Canadian people.”
“We call on the government to stop the obstruction, put aside the partisanship, work with us on the solutions that all Canadians have asked for and bring about the real change that Canadians are demanding,” he said.
— With files from Sarah Ritchie
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2025.
Anja Karadeglija and Catherine Morrison, The Canadian Press
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney is appointing his principal secretary and former justice minister David Lametti as Canada’s next ambassador to the UN.
Lametti will replace former Liberal leader Bob Rae, who has held the role since 2020.
The Prime Minister’s Office says Carney will also appoint Vera Alexander as Canada’s next ambassador to Germany.
More coming.
Kyle Duggan, The Canadian Press
Canada Post says it will be sending new offers to the Canadian Union of Postal Workers in an effort to move negotiations forward.
OTTAWA — As Ottawa warns its symbolic recognition of Palestinian statehood next week won’t immediately lead to a full embassy, pro-Palestinian activists say the Liberals should not be imposing conditions on Palestinian sovereignty.
Prime Minister Mark Carney announced in July that Canada would recognize Palestinian statehood at the United Nations next week, adding that recognition would depend on governance reforms and a free election next year.
Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand told the Toronto Star the Palestinian Authority must meet those conditions before Ottawa fully normalizes relations and upgrades the authority’s delegation in Ottawa to a full embassy.
Tatiana Harker of the Montreal group Palestine Vivra says the conditions Ottawa is imposing amount to “blackmail” and prevent Palestinians from exercising their sovereignty.
Nima Machouf, a former NDP candidate who is taking part in a flotilla to Gaza, says Ottawa is trailing its European peers on recognizing Palestinian statehood while offering half-measures.
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs says Anand’s comments speak to ongoing concerns about the Palestinian Authority, and argues Ottawa’s offer to recognize Palestinian statehood has undermined ceasefire negotiations.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2025.
Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press
Ontario Liberals did the right thing when they
pushed out leader Bonnie Crombie on the weekend
. She will be 69 by the time of the next election, doesn’t have a seat in the legislature, and has not created a clear image for herself or the party.
Crombie had to go. She’s a hard worker, but not a smart politician.
Crombie’s fatal flaws are indecision and lack of political instincts. The fact that Crombie at first didn’t want to resign immediately after mediocre 57 per cent support at the convention illustrates the problem. First she said she’d stay on as leader. Then, after others pointed out the folly of that plan, she changed her mind and quit.
It’s what she should have done after a
disappointing election result in February
. Yes, the Liberals got 30 per cent of the popular vote, but only 14 seats. Crombie couldn’t even win her own riding in Mississauga, a community where she had served as mayor for a decade. That left her with the impossible task of trying to lead the party from outside the legislature. It’s telling that no one in her caucus offered to give up their seat to help their leader.
Voters can be forgiven for not knowing what Crombie stood for. That seemed to be a mystery to Crombie, too. Early on, she
said she’d govern from the centre-right,
then later said she had misspoken. How do you misspeak on your own political philosophy?
Crombie wanted an election about health care but failed to deliver a simple, memorable policy on that important issue. PC leader Doug Ford talked non-stop about American tariffs, seizing the political moment. His party also cleverly spiked Crombie’s health-care push by offering a plausible plan to expand primary care coverage.
The Liberals seemed to be caught unprepared for the widely telegraphed premature election. If a leader and her team are not good at strategy or tactics, there isn’t much left.
The Liberals are taking a risk by switching leaders. After all, this is the party that thought Steven Del Duca could be premier. It’s difficult to imagine why.
This time, they need to be smarter than when they picked Crombie and Del Duca. That starts with insisting that the new leader come from their caucus. The Liberals simply must have a leader in the legislature. Some second-tier federal Liberals might want the job, but they will have the same no-seat problem as Crombie.
The Liberals’ little caucus has limited name recognition, but some of them have good resumes. The prize should go to the contender who can identify the party’s target audience and articulate policies that appeal to them. Young people shut out of jobs and housing would be a good start.
Returning the Ontario Liberal party to power is not the hopeless cause it might seem. While Ford’s PCs are miles ahead in vote intentions, there is a troubling weakness behind those numbers.
New research by the Angus Reid Institute
shows three-quarters of those polled say the Ford government is performing poorly on their most important issues; cost of living, health care, and housing affordability.
As formidable as Ford seems now, there is a possibility than he won’t run in 2029. Ford will have been in office for 11 years by then. A fourth term is a big challenge, although there isn’t an obvious successor in the PC ranks.
There is an opportunity there for the Liberals, but they need some strategic thinking. Some will want to push the party to the left, as if their competition is the NDP. That’s true only if your goal is second place.
To win, the Liberals need to take votes and seats from the PCs. Crombie wasn’t wrong when she briefly advocated governing from the centre-right. That’s territory Ford himself has largely abdicated with his big deficits and uncontrolled spending.
It was encouraging this week to see Liberal finance critic Stephanie Bowman, a chartered accountant and former bank executive,
attacking the Ford government for its deficits
.
Ford is often criticized for governing like a Liberal, but without the sanctimonious rhetoric. There’s certainly some truth to it.
With the PCs becoming less conservative under Ford, the door is open for the Liberals to become more like traditional PCs. It sounds odd, but then in the recent federal election Liberals stole Conservative ideas with the enthusiasm of a looter during a riot and it didn’t seem to bother voters.
Ontario’s Liberals have challenges aplenty, but they’ve taken the first important step in meeting them. The chances of Crombie ever becoming premier were slim to none. In accepting that reality, the Liberals are at least showing that they expect success, unlike the NDP, which seems to welcome failure.
It’s a start.
National Post
randalldenley1@gmail.com
