OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney says the Canadian government will “steadfastly” defend workers and businesses following the latest trade threats by U.S. President Donald Trump.

In a post on social media, Carney says Canada will continue to work to secure a trade deal with the U.S. by a revised deadline of Aug. 1.

In a letter to Carney on Thursday, Trump threatened to impose 35 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods by that date, evidently setting a new deadline for the trade talks that had been looking to wrap by July 21.

Trump wrote if Canada works to stop the flow of fentanyl into the United States he may consider a tariff adjustment.

It is unclear whether there’d be any carve out for goods compliant with the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement on trade in Trump’s latest threats like there are under the so-called fentanyl tariffs announced earlier this year.

Canada also faces additional U.S. tariffs on steel, aluminum and automobiles, as well as a U.S. plan to introduce tariffs on copper, also on Aug. 1.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 11, 2025.

The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — The federal government will explain today how it plans to reimburse auto dealers who were left hanging when Ottawa suspended its electric vehicle rebate program earlier this year.

In January, Transport Canada paused its popular Incentives for Zero-Emission Vehicles program — iZEV — after its funding ran out. Ottawa spent nearly $3 billion on iZEV during its five-year lifespan.

The program provided up to $5,000 toward the purchase of a new zero-emissions vehicle. But with the abrupt suspension of the program — only three days after the government suggested it would be paused when the funds were exhausted — hundreds of dealerships were forced to swallow the cost of any rebate claims they hadn’t yet submitted.

“It was a shocking series of events in January when they shut down the program after giving notice that the program would go through an orderly wind-down,” said Huw Williams, public affairs director with the Canadian Automobile Dealers Association, which represents about 3,500 auto dealerships.

He said that, collectively, dealers are out about $11 million.

Tesla submitted rebate claims worth more than $43 million for 8,600 EVs on the weekend before the program was suspended, according to analysis by the Toronto Star.

In March, Transport Minister Chrystia Freeland said Ottawa was pausing payments to Tesla in order to investigate the claims it had made.

A spokesperson for Freeland’s office would not offer an update on the Tesla investigation.

Williams said his organization has asked the government to explain what happened with Tesla’s claims.

“Every taxpayer should want to know how Tesla was allowed to game the system over such a short period of time, and were all the rules followed and was there any inside notice given to them,” Williams said.

“We don’t know that, and we’re not alleging that, but we think these are reasonable questions to ask for sure.”

EV sales have sagged since the iZEV program was suspended. EV sales under the program peaked in December 2024 at 18.29 per cent of all new vehicles sold — the last full month before the program was suspended.

Sales fell in January to 11.95 per cent and slid further to 7.53 per cent in April, according to the most recent data from Statistics Canada.

Federal ministers have said the government is working toward bringing back consumer incentives for EVs — a promise also made in the Liberal party’s election platform.

Automakers are warning that sales are slumping further as buyers wait for the rebates to come back.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 11, 2025.

Nick Murray, The Canadian Press

If it seems like your phone has been blowing up with more spam text messages recently, it probably is.

The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre says so-called smishing attempts appear to be on the rise, thanks in part to new technologies that allow for co-ordinated bulk attacks.

The centre’s communications outreach officer Jeff Horncastle says the agency has actually received fewer fraud reports in the first six months of 2025, but that can be misleading because so few people actually alert the centre to incidents.

He says smishing is “more than likely increasing” with help from artificial intelligence tools that can craft convincing messages or scour data from security breaches to uncover new targets.

The warning comes as the Competition Bureau sent a recent alert about the tactic because it says many people are seeing more suspicious text messages.

Smishing is a sort of portmanteau of SMS and phishing in which a text message is used to try to get the target to click on a link and provide personal information.

The ruse comes in many forms but often involves a message that purports to come from a real organization or business urging immediate action to address an alleged problem.

It could be about an undeliverable package, a suspended bank account or news of a tax refund.

Horncastle says it differs from more involved scams such as a text invitation to call a supposed job recruiter, who then tries to extract personal or financial information by phone.

Nevertheless, he says a text scam might be quite sophisticated since today’s fraudsters can use artificial intelligence to scan data leaks for personal details that bolster the hoax, or use AI writing tools to help write convincing text messages.

“In the past, part of our messaging was always: watch for spelling mistakes. It’s not always the case now,” he says.

“Now, this message could be coming from another country where English may not be the first language but because the technology is available, there may not be spelling mistakes like there were a couple of years ago.”

The Competition Bureau warns against clicking on suspicious links and forwarding texts to 7726 (SPAM), so that the cellular provider can investigate further. It also encourages people to delete smishing messages, block the number and ignore texts even if they ask to reply with “STOP” or “NO.”

Horncastle says the centre received 886 reports of smishing in the first six months of 2025, up to June 30. That’s trending downwards from 2,546 reports in 2024, which was a drop from 3,874 in 2023. That too, was a drop in reports from 7,380 in 2022.

But those numbers don’t quite tell the story, he says.

“We get a very small percentage of what’s actually out there. And specifically when we’re looking at phishing or smishing, the reporting rate is very low. So generally we say that we estimate that only five to 10 per cent of victims report fraud to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.”

Horncastle says it’s hard to say for sure how new technology is being used, but he notes AI is a frequent tool for all sorts of nefarious schemes such as manipulated photos, video and audio.

“It’s more than likely increasing due to different types of technology that’s available for fraudsters,” Horncastle says of smishing attempts.

“So we would discuss AI a lot where fraudsters now have that tool available to them. It’s just reality, right? Where they can craft phishing messages and send them out in bulk through automation through these highly sophisticated platforms that are available.”

The Competition Bureau’s deceptive marketing practices directorate says an informed public is the best protection against smishing.

“The bureau is constantly assessing the marketplace and through our intelligence capabilities is able to know when scams are on the rise and having an immediate impact on society,” says deputy commissioner Josephine Palumbo.

“That’s where these alerts come in really, really handy.”

She adds that it’s difficult to track down fraudsters who sometimes use prepaid SIM cards to shield their identity when targeting victims.

“Since SIM cards lack identification verification, enforcement agencies like the Competition Bureau have a hard time in actually tracking these perpetrators down,” Palumbo says.

Fraudsters can also spoof phone numbers, making it seem like a text has originated with a legitimate agency such as the Canada Revenue Agency, Horncastle adds.

“They might choose a number that they want to show up randomly or if they’re claiming to be a financial institution, they may make that financial institutions’ number show up on the call display,” he says.

“We’ve seen (that) with the CRA and even the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, where fraudsters have made our phone numbers show up on victims’ call display.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 11, 2025.

Nicole Thompson and Cassandra Szklarski, The Canadian Press

TORONTO — As a major funding shortfall looms over Pride Toronto, some prominent LGBTQ+ advocates say it’s high time to rethink the organization’s corporate partnerships and return to its political grassroots.

Ahead of last month’s Pride parade, organizers sounded the alarm over Pride Toronto’s $900,000 shortfall after sponsors such as Google, Nissan, Home Depot and Clorox pulled their support.

Pride Toronto executive director Kojo Modeste attributed the corporate withdrawals to backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States, though some of the companies said their decisions were made solely because of budgetary considerations.

Although this year’s festivities went ahead as planned, Modeste warned that next year’s Pride festival may have to be scaled back.

Fatima Amarshi, a former executive director of Pride Toronto, says this is the right moment for a reset.

Amarshi led the organization for three years starting in 2005, right after Canada legalized same-sex marriage, and helped lay the foundation of its current funding model.

At that time, she said Pride Toronto vetted corporate sponsors only to ensure their internal policies were supportive of LGBTQ+ employees and the broader community.

“We weren’t looking at how corporate sponsors were funding arms manufacturers or fossil fuels or efforts to suppress Indigenous land claims. We were linking queer rights to human rights at the level of state repression and legislative oppression, but not via those who fund those efforts,” she said.

During her tenure, Pride Toronto’s budget grew from a little under $1 million to around $3 million, Amarshi said.

But as that budget expanded over the years thanks to major corporate sponsors, some criticized the increasing commercialization of the annual Pride festival at the expense of its original purpose. More recently, Pride Toronto has faced calls to cut ties with corporations that allegedly profit from Israel’s offensive in Gaza.

Gary Kinsman, one of the founding members of the Lesbian and Gay Day Pride Parade – the organization that eventually became Pride Toronto – resigned in 2024 over that issue and what he called the organization’s refusal to hear the demands of the group Queers in Palestine.

Founded in 1981, the Lesbian and Gay Day Pride Parade was a grassroots picnic and political march formed in response to increasing right-wing opposition to the LGBTQ+ community and a series of violent raids by Toronto police at bathhouses in the city. The first event involved a march down a much shorter strip of Yonge Street in front of the police detachment that organized the raids.

Kinsman said the grassroots spirit of the festival continued throughout the 1980s, but a turning point came in the ’90s when organizers started looking to involve corporate sponsors, which prompted early signs of division that came decades later.

“This begins to change its (Pride) character fundamentally. It moves quite sharply from being a community-based organization to becoming an organization not defined by communities but by alliances with corporate forms of organization,” Kinsman said in an interview.

Pride Toronto did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

For Beverly Bain, who along with Kinsman co-founded a group called No Pride in Policing, the growing calls to break Pride Toronto’s ties with corporate sponsors is long overdue.

“Pride Toronto, as it exists today, is a corporate pinkwashing Pride. I do not think it’s an organization that should be continuing to exist,” Bain said.

Pride Toronto hasn’t adequately highlighted issues that disproportionately affect the LGBTQ+ community, such as poor access to housing, mental health struggles and increased substance use, Bain said.

“We go back to the political roots of Pride … a political struggle for the liberation of queer and trans and non-binary and those who are racialized and those who are Indigenous and two-spirited and Indigenous and queer.”

Monica Forrester, executive director of Trans Pride Toronto, said she started attending the Pride festival in 1998, when it was still very much a protest organized by local shops, bars and community centres.

“We were still in a time of the bath house raids … and the transphobia and violence that a lot of queer people were facing, not only by people, but by systemic violence. It was really a time where we stood up to show our visibility, that we were here, we were queer and we weren’t going anywhere,” Forrester said.

But that changed over time, with corporate sponsors appearing to be at the forefront of Pride events, Forrester said. The fact that some of them have pulled support for the festival is “a testament that they were never really our allies,” she added.

Faisal Ibrahim, a spokesperson for the Coalition Against Pinkwashing, said it would be a “bare minimum” for Pride Toronto to cut ties with sponsors who financially benefit from Israel’s war efforts in Gaza, and agrees with Forrester that a heavy corporate presence can detract from the overall message of Pride.

Looking back, Amarshi said it was “incredibly short-sighted” to bring corporate sponsors into what she said has been a vital institution in advocating for queer rights.

“If Pride doesn’t find a way to manoeuvre and be accountable to the community and continue to be in a position where the community feels it legitimately represents them, the community will find its own voice and will find its own path forward.” Amarshi said.

“It’s never needed scale. It’s needed to be loud and it’s needed to be brave. That’s what started Pride and that certainly hasn’t gone away.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 11, 2025.

Cassidy McMackon, The Canadian Press

With a fresh wave of patriotic calls for Canada to scale its domestic tech sector, industry players say there are opportunities to better attract and retain homegrown talent and knock down barriers that are preventing companies from growing.

Sheldon McCormick, CEO of Kitchener, Ont.-based tech hub Communitech, said he is seeing “growing momentum” behind the idea that Canada needs to “build, buy and own more of its own innovation” across areas like artificial intelligence and health tech.

Executing on this, he said, would require protecting data and intellectual property as well as attracting the talent needed to “anchor economic value here at home.”

The challenges in attracting and retaining talent highlighted by those in the tech space span compensation, government support and the cost of living.

Benjamin Bergen, president of the Council of Canadian Innovators, said there was a spike in U.S. tech talent coming north during Donald Trump’s first term as U.S. president, but that doesn’t appear to be materializing currently.

“I think part of the challenge is just some of the new realities around the economy. I think there has obviously not been the same amount of tremendous hiring that you’ve seen in past periods,” Bergen said.

“Donald Trump being in the White House is not a strategy for our tech sector. It can be slightly beneficial, but it’s not any big mover in terms of being able to attract meaningful talent.”

MaRS Discovery District CEO Grace Lee Reynolds is seeing a slightly different trend in her tech universe though.

“Anecdotally, it certainly feels like a lot more people are talking about it. You hear anecdotal stories of someone about to make that type of change,” she said regarding tech talent moving to Canada from the U.S.

“It’ll be interesting then to be able to see that over a longer period of time. I think this is really critical.”

Bergen said that realigning Canada’s economic interests would allow the country to build and develop more successful tech firms that could, in turn, attract more talent. Specifically, he said government procurements could be a critical aspect.

“One of the reasons why Silicon Valley is Silicon Valley is because of all the procurement that the U.S. government initially did and continues to do with companies in the region,” Bergen said.

Comparatively, Canada procures its own domestic solutions less, making it harder for companies to grow since they don’t receive the same level of purchase orders from the government, he said.

Elaine Kunda, the founder and general partner at Disruption Ventures, said government procurements may not be an all-encompassing solution.

“If you feel like it’s not a growing economy with investors that are buying into the sector, government procurement is not going to solve our tech sector challenges. It’s actually making it more government-dependent,” she said.

Instead, she thinks the industry would significantly benefit from business tax credits that incentivize people to take more risks.

Compared with Canadian tech firms, U.S. companies have a “much easier” ability to raise capital and find purchasers for their product, Bergen said.

Lee Reynolds also sees access to capital as a barrier to growth, calling it one of the classic challenges that Canada has.

“Capital, especially at that early stage, to be able to grow and scale your business. There’s not quite enough here.”

Given the current moment, Lee Reynolds said it’s important to keep talent in the country as people see opportunities in Canada “from a values perspective.

“Call it then working with government, or call it working as an ecosystem together, to unlock more early-stage capital funding for ventures to grow,” she said.

As Canadian tech firms work toward scaling their businesses, Lucy Hargreaves, the CEO of tech-focused think tank Build Canada, says the challenge becomes attracting top talent from around the globe and preventing homegrown workers from leaving Canada.

“The first thing is to make sure that the people we have don’t leave. It’s great to bring in new talent to the country, but we have incredible talent in Canada,” she said.

“We graduate extremely highly talented and capable people from our universities every year, including programs that are world-renowned in the tech space at universities like Waterloo. So I think the first thing is, how do we get those people to stay?”

Compensation is a significant issue for tech workers who might consider moving to or remaining in Canada, according to Hargreaves.

“Salaries are definitely a big part. If you look at salaries in the tech space and other industries right now, in Canada, they’re not generally competitive. There may be some exceptions, but generally speaking, not competitive with salaries in U.S. dollars that are being offered in Silicon Valley,” she said.

A 2023 study conducted by The Dais, a think tank at Toronto Metropolitan University, found U.S. tech workers earned an average salary of $122,604, while Canadian workers in the industry earned an average of $83,698.

When adjusting for the exchange rate and cost of living, the study found U.S. tech workers earned about 46 per cent more in salary.

“The cost of living in Canada is not much cheaper,” Bergen said.

“And often what we’ll hear from our member companies is that they are maybe looking to, let’s say, hire or bring over an amazing CTO or CFO. But candidly, the cost of living is higher or at the same level as it is in other big jurisdictions.”

Bergen said Canadian companies looking to attract U.S. talent might have to pay “a lot more” to offset cost of living issues and a weaker dollar that has created a “bigger and bigger gap.”

Overall, he said some “super talented individuals” may choose to work in Canada based on the nation’s values, but he would like to see the government strengthen opportunities for domestic tech firms to be successful.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 11, 2025.

Daniel Johnson, The Canadian Press