In just a little more than a week, the Parole Board of Canada granted to two B.C. men jailed for murdering children temporary passes to leave prison.

Both men are pedophiles who committed their crimes in the early 2000s, and whose victims would now be in their 30s. Both men are believed to have been freed into the Victoria area, but their releases were not accompanied by public warnings.

Shane Ertmoed was convicted of first-degree murder for the 2000 abduction, rape and murder of 10-year-old Heather Thomas.

In a Sept. 2 decision, the parole board granted him 60-day unescorted absences from prison.

Scarcely more than a week later, on Sept. 11, the board then granted the exact same concession to Douglas Lambier, a repeat child sex offender who strangled a nine-year-old boy to death in 2005.

According to a report by the Windsor Star, Lambier is being released from William Head Institution, a minimum-security prison on the outskirts of Victoria, B.C., that has occasionally been dubbed “Club Fed” due to its scenic coastal location and generous amenities, such as an amateur theatre program.

Lambier will be spending his 60 days at a Salvation Army residential facility.

The prison holding Ertmoed was redacted from parole board documents, but Ertmoed was also held at William Head Institution as recently as 2025.

Although both Ertmoed and Lambier were given life sentences, it is standard practice in Canada that even pedophile child murderers will be given unescorted absences from prison, as well as early parole, as part of a program of eventually granting them full release into the community.

In one particularly notorious case, child killer Harold Smeltzer is currently out of prison despite his 1980 abduction and murder of a five-year-old girl who was walking to kindergarten.

Smeltzer began receiving day parole as early as 2008, 27 years after the crime – and would continue obtaining new rounds of parole despite instances of him admitting that he was encountering children in public, and was attracted to them.

Despite receiving a 25-year prison sentence, Ertmoed has been receiving temporary releases since 2021, and his most recent Parole Board decision made reference to his eventual plan to become a plumber.

“At sentencing, the judge described your offence as the most horrific crime known to our law, ‘the killing of a defenceless young girl.’

The judge noted also that you had no remorse,” read the decision, which also noted Ertmoed’s history of “deviant sexual behaviour” leading up to Thomas’s murder.

Nevertheless, the two-member panel decided that Ertmoed’s “risk to re-offend will not be undue,” citing his use of “arousal reducing medication.”

Ertmoed was working as a Surrey construction worker in October 2000 when he lured Thomas into his home on the pretence of looking at picture of birds, before killing her when she resisted sexual assault.

Thomas would have been 36 this year.

In Ertmoed’s most recent parole hearing, as with others, the family of Thomas was in attendance to request that the release be denied. “They do not believe you should have this opportunity and that you should remain in prison until you die. They are fearful that you will re-offend and harm another child,” reads the parole board’s summary of their testimony.

At a similar hearing in 2025 , Thomas’s mother Jody Aspin testified “Shane Ertmoed has been victimizing me and my family for the last 24 years … Every time I get that phone call that there is yet another demand, I am paralyzed with fear.”

Lambier has also been granted repeated releases from prison, with this most recent one being his tenth.

In 2005, Lambier was babysitting his victim, step-grandchild Brandon Burchell, when he smothered the boy after the child resisted a sexual assault.

At the time of the murder, Lambier had already been convicted twice before for sexual assaults on children.

Burchell’s family also attended his parole hearing, only to have their request for Lambier’s continued incarceration denied.

“I don’t think this man should be out of prison at all,” said the victim’s mother Tina Gervais, as reported by the Windsor Star. “It’s not safe for any community. I don’t think people like this change. It’s in their DNA. There is no help for this kind of person.”

William Head Institution has twice been the site of high-profile escapes in recent years.

In 2019, William Head inmates James Lee Busch and Zachary Armitage escaped from the prison and proceeded to ambush and murder nearby homeowner Martin Payne.

In June, the prison reported that another murderer, Ernest Jensen, was at large from the facility – only for Jensen’s body to turn up floating in the Pacific Ocean.

• Rapist and killer of 12-year-old girl granted leave privileges in parole extension
• Man who raped and murdered 14-year-old boy in 1986 given unescorted leave from prison

Kerry-Lynne Findlay’s impossible tightrope act is over, but the chorus of cheers and jeers now moves from the circus ring of caucus to the raucous stage of stunned party members. The Conservative division of labour, where the party membership hires leaders but the caucus fires them, violates the old conservative maxim that you cannot serve two masters. There is nothing conservative about encouraging two-faced leaders, nor about entrusting the “hiring” part to members in the first place.

Canada’s chief conservative institution is its Westminster system of Responsible Government, the oft-forgottenCanadian triumph of the 1840s. Responsible government rests on two principles that unite the tasks of hiring and firing.

First, Cabinet alone is responsible for governing, because it both introduces spending bills and executes them. Unlike a presidential cabinet, Canadian ministers cannot deflect responsibility for bad laws to Congress.

Second, Parliament alone — typically the majority party caucus — is responsible for hiring and firing that governing Cabinet, as Justin Trudeau eventually learned. Unlike the American House majority, Liberal MPs could not deflect responsibility for a bad executive to voters.

Constitutions do not regulate parties outside government. But the Westminster ethos still led opposition parties to adopt the same structure: party caucuses hired and fired their leaders.

If responsibility doesn’t seem distinctively conservative, just ask progressives, who generally bristle at the “smoke-filled rooms” of “party insider” caucuses. The original Progressive party rode a populist western wave of democratization that may have undermined its own leaders, but impelled both major parties to introduce delegated conventions.

Later, the populist Canadian Alliance used a one-member-one-vote method to hire the unready Stockwell Day, which produced a short and stormy tenure for both leader and party. Yet its democratizing wave effectively pressured all Canadian parties to let members hire and fire party leaders.

In practice, of course, caucuses could always find ways to fire their leaders. But nobody seemed to mind having torn up responsible government. The Cold War was over, democracy had won, and the end of history was nigh. Even British parties democratized their leadership contests.

Yet elsewhere, Westminster history continued unabated. For instance, the conservative Australian Liberal Party maintained its closed-door policy, even if no longer smoke-filled. In both 2015 and 2018, its governing majority caucus quickly and smoothly replaced its prime ministers, turning upcoming electoral disasters into renewed majorities.

Each change put the egg on the face of the leader, not the party. Needless to say, B.C. Conservatives can only dream.

New Zealand’s National Party preserved the same exemplary method. Even its Labour rival, keener to indigenize than even the BC NDP, returned in 2021 to the old caucus selection method. Why are B.C. Conservatives less faithful to their Westminster inheritance than Jacinda Ardern, decolonizer of Aotearoa ?

Even British Conservatives have recently pioneered a clever way to satisfy the demands of 21st-century democracy while re-empowering Tory MPs. Their caucus uses multi-round voting to whittle down the slate of leadership hopefuls to a first- and second-place finisher, then presents the two finalists to party members for their ultimate decision.

But caucus has pressured two of the last four prime ministerial runners-up to stand down before any such membership vote: after all, they whisper, who wants to lead a caucus that prefers their rival? A third runner-up, Liz Truss, lasted 49 days as the members’ choice before caucus got its preferred candidate, Rishi Sunak. If the B.C. Conservative caucus could have ended Kerry-Lynne Findlay’s tenure after 49 days without having to betray the membership, they might have been the ones pushing for an early election.

When caucuses hire their own leaders, they can select for governing skill rather than twittering volume. If their preferred choice goes rogue as leader, caucus can threaten to fire them without inflicting on the party a public race at once uncertain, protracted, and divisive. Caucus squabbles thus remain in-house and drama-free: no private investigators, few Findlay Files, little time for the embattled leader to purge competent party strategists. If (say) Peter Milobar or Caroline Elliott were an obvious caucus-approved leader-in-waiting, the B.C. right might still be united —maybe even under a disciplined Findlay.

Canadian Conservatives even have an opening to follow their British counterparts. In the name of democratization, the Conservative 2014 Reform Act empowers caucus with several prerogatives over the leader: candidate selection, MP expulsion, choice of chair. Why not further boost caucus by re-entrusting them with the ultimate prerogative over their leaders — that of firing and hiring them?

In spite of democratic pressure, most Anglo conservative parties have maintained their responsible conservative approach to leader selection: caucus fires, caucus hires. Oddly enough, their electorates have not discarded them as reactionary proto-fascists, but have instead elevated them to government. Why do Canadian conservatives sabotage both their principles and prospects by forcing their leaders to serve two masters?

Special to National Post

Jeremy Geddert is a Professor of Political Science at Assumption University, and co-editor of the forthcoming book What is Canadian Philosophy?

• Carson Jerema: OK B.C. Conservatives, let’s not do *that* again
• Kelly McParland: Is this the most self-serving snap election in history?

Premier David Eby fired the starting gun for the 2026 B.C. election on Tuesday and then stubbed his toe, tripped and wobbled through the rest of the week. Anticipating a divided B.C. Conservative party, he has been surprised by the quick coming together of the province’s centre-right politicians, who agree above all else on one thing: Eby has to go.

Lorne Doerkson, the newly minted Conservative leader, has exceeded expectations. Chosen to replace the disaster that was former Conservative leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay and her reign of chaos, Doerkson has brought a calm, nonthreatening dad feel to the party.

Gone are the fringe elements and MLAs who had been allowed to flourish under Findlay. The rapid coalescence of a moderate, calm and focused Conservative party has caught Eby off guard. He still seems to think he’s running against Findlay, who he referred to as a “ MAGA regional manager,” and U.S. President Donald Trump.

Eby’s opening press conferences have been replete with references to extremism, Trump and MAGA conservatives. Those accusations may have landed well on Findlay, but they are not sticking to Doerkson, who is widely respected as a salt-of-the-earth, earnest British Columbian.

So far, Eby hasn’t pivoted, and it’s costing him. As he talked of building a “fire break” in British Columbia against Trump, video emerged of Doerkson in the forest actually fighting wildfires. The contrast could not be more stark. Whatever Eby’s qualities and accomplishments may be — and there are few to speak of — they do not include grabbing a hose and jumping on the front lines to combat wildfires.

Indeed, given how awkward Eby generally looks when surrounded by working people, it’s practically an open question as to whether he knows how to open a tap. Pressed on the issue, Eby has had little response to Doerkson’s real-world service, other than implying that he has Trump sympathies. It is risible and beneath the dignity of a premier.

Further, the relentless deflection of blame from Eby to Trump for the sad state of the province after nine years of NDP governance, including nearly four years under Eby, is unlikely to land with voters. At a press conference on Thursday, Eby again blamed Trump for high grocery and gas prices.

Voters, already unimpressed with a cynical election call, don’t appear to be buying this nonsense, and neither is the media. Also on Thursday, an Angus Reid poll put the Conservatives at 43 per cent, with the NDP trailing with 35 per cent, which, if the numbers hold, would result in a massive Conservative majority.

Eby is locked in an echo chamber from which he can’t seem to hear the difficulties affecting British Columbians. His failed drug experiments have harmed public safety. Closed hospitals and interminable wait times have left British Columbians desperate. Never-ending and ever-expanding deficits have left B.C. fiscally weak, and future British Columbians will be paying the debt off for decades. It is a sad state of affairs.

Ultimately, Eby can’t run on his record because his record is awful. British Columbians know this. They also know that while Trump may be a problem in general, he’s not responsible for B.C.’s current sorry state and, above all, he’s not running for premier in this election.

There is still a long, long way to go in this election. But David Eby needs to understand he’s running against Lorne Doerkson, not Donald Trump. And right now, the only real fire break with any street cred is Doerkson.

National Post

• Carson Jerema: OK B.C. Conservatives, let’s not do *that* again
• Vaughn Palmer: Doerkson loses no time dealing with Eby’s allegation of Conservatives’ Trump leanings

I have the painful duty of advising that I consider the basic points Prime Minister Mark Carney tried to make in his address on Sept. 27 to the European Parliament in Strasbourg profoundly mistaken. Readers should be aware that the European Parliament has no power whatsoever. The member states nominate commissioners in the different administrative fields, like cabinet ministers. The government apparatus in Brussels deluges the entire membership with decrees purporting to regulate an almost unlimited variety of activities, most of which the principal Atlantic English-speaking countries have considered unsuitable for government interference.

The great achievement of the European Common Market, and then the European Economic Community was to reduce economic barriers between the Western European countries and to promote the peaceful and conciliatory settlement of differences between the constituent countries. This was done in lock-step with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which under unquestioned American leadership, has guaranteed the security of almost all of the member states of the evolving European Community. Eventually, President Reagan‘s plan to shelter the western world under what aspired to be a leak-proof anti-missile defence, confronted the Soviet Union, which was spending approximately half of its GDP on military matters, to contemplate the loss of it status as an equivalent nuclear deterrent power to the United States. The reform regime of President Gorbachev did not possess the will of Russian rulers from Peter the Great to Stalin and Khrushchev and even Brezhnev to suppress ethnic and political dissent in the polyglot, Soviet Union, and the whole Soviet concept became demoralized and simply disintegrated.

This inspired American strategic policy of containment of Soviet communism, as well as the heavy economic assistance of the United States and proportionately Canada, under the Marshall Plan and parallel activities revived war-ravaged Western Europe as relatively free market democracies. The relevance of this to Carney‘s address is that he advised the European Parliament that “Freedom was won thanks to the heroism of the European resistance during the war.” Freedom was in fact, won in two stages. In the first stage, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, proportionately to their populations, liberated France, and Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, and Norway, and occupied approximately three quarters of Germany. As many millions of Germans plodded westward ahead of the Soviet Red Army, the Western Allied armies ended up organizing the post-war government of nearly 80 per cent of the Germans.

The Americans, British, and Canadians with modest participation from others, resurrected liberty in Western Europe. Canada’s participation was especially remarkable as they were almost all volunteers and Canada, unlike Britain and the United States, had never been attacked or threatened by the Axis Powers. It was a courageous and unprovoked contribution to the pursuit of freedom throughout the world.

In the second phase of freedom’s triumph, the patient and comprehensive containment strategy devised and executed under American leadership throughout the Cold War emancipated the former Soviet satellite countries and several republics of the U.S.S.R. The principal benefactor in this triumph of human liberty was the United States of America, resentment of the power and influence of which, though not explicitly stated, was incandescently clear in the prime minister‘s message in Strasbourg, which renders that message incoherent, to say the least. Even in recent years, the Europeans were effectively financing the aggressive Russian war against Ukraine by buying Russian oil and gas, while beseeching the Americans to assert their influence across the ocean again and assist Ukraine in repulsing the Russians in the heart of Europe. Canada has been commendably unambiguous in its support of the Ukrainians and played a significant part in training up the Ukrainian forces in the arts and skills of self-defence.

The second serious problem with Carney‘s address is that while the central structures of European government have contributed admirably to assuring relative cooperation amongst the 27 constituent countries and massaging what would be called in Canada equalization payments, from the richer to the less developed areas of Europe, as an administration, it has not been successful. As I mentioned in this space last week, in 2008, Europe and the U.S. had approximately equal GDP’s and the United States now has 140 per cent of the GDP of the EU.

The general increase of prosperity in the world and the decline of poverty and illiteracy, as well as the spread of democracy and the free market economy, have been magnificent in the years since the end of the Second World War. This has been the third longest period of absence of extensive wars between the principal peoples or governments, after the Roman Imperial Peace from 96 to 180 AD and the Pax Britannica from 1815 to 1914. But Europe has done terrible damage to itself in economic competitiveness, largely by excessive commitment to suppression of fossil fuel use, a cause strenuously championed by Mark Carney for many years, including, quite inappropriately, from his position of governor of the Bank of England. This is the largest single element in the comparative economic decline of Europe and of Canada and is already being painfully reversed in parts of Europe. This horribly mistaken policy in much of the western world has caused $16 trillion to be spent combatting climate change without saving a single life and in a period when the world’s temperature has not moved much in 30 years. Carney hinted in Strasbourg that he wished to continue this policy.

Europe has become so enfeebled, the Chinese automobile industry has acquired about 10-12 per cent of the European auto market, and Brussels is reduced to asking China voluntarily to cap its penetration at 15 per cent, which the People’s Republic has naturally refused to do. (Carney also made a mockery of the independence of the Bank of England by turning it into a bellicose parrot of the Cameron government in the Brexit debate, scaremongering and promising the collapse of British prosperity if it departed the European Union. It is sobering for Canadians to recognize what little value he attached to the British institutions of government that have evolved fairly continuously over more than 800 years-he was happy to warn and frighten the British into abandoning all of this in favour of the unfledged and authoritarian machinery of Brussels.)

In accord with his practice of invoking famous intellectual leaders of the past with whose actual works comparatively few of his listeners would be familiar, Carney produced a lot of elaborate metaphors about the transplantation of trees between Vimy and Milliken, Ont., and imputed to Johann von Goethe a much less complicated view of national sovereignty and human liberty than he actually advocated. Goethe was a friend of Napoleon and had mixed views on the wars of alleged liberation of his time. Finally, in his complicated paean to the reticulation of the roots and branches of European and Canadian trees, the prime minister completely ignored the fact that Canada sends approximately 70 per cent of its exports to the United States and only six per cent to Europe. He ignored the fact that while President Trump has engaged in a good deal of verbal pyrotechnics, his actual tariff increases only apply to about six per cent of Canadian exports. Before escalating his war with the American president further, Mr. Carney should take careful measure of the risks of doing so: the United States is responsible for a third of Canada‘s economy, and we are responsible for three percent of the economy of the United States.

Underlying it all is Carney’s contention that “a strong economy is not an end in itself, but the means to a just society.” This is consistent with his turgid and striving book: “Values, Building a Better World for All,” which is less an economic program than a field guide for polysyllabic eagle scouts. His address in Strasbourg was less a romantic escalation of Canada‘s relations with Europe than a wistful reflection on the failure of Canada and Europe to produce a superior political ethos to that of the United States while being economically uncompetitive with it.

Until we can recover the comparatively equivalent prosperity with the United States that we enjoyed up until 10 years ago, we are in no position for our prime minister to go to the Rhine and preach Wagnerian forest murmurs to the Lorelei as he did last week.

National Post

When European Commission President Ursula von der Leyan used her State of the Union address to invite Canada to become the EU’s first ever “Associate Member,” Conservative critics were beating the immigration drum as soon as the news broke.

Conservative immigration critic Michele Rempel Garner warned that Canada risks importing Europe’s migration crisis through further integration, while MP Roman Baber argued that the EU is unable to control its borders and that Canada shouldn’t open our borders to the EU. Even Pierre Poilievre bundled the prospect of the visa-free travel and labour mobility with Europe’s migration issues suggesting that Brussels could have a say over Canadian immigration policy.

Canada replicating Europe’s migration woes would be concerning, but that concern doesn’t survive a quick look at a map of the world.

Europe’s migration strain has one structural cause that Canada can not replicate, because Canada has no land border with Europe, and is separated by thousands of kilometres of ocean. Geography, plain and simple, prevents a scenario where someone enters the Schengen zone and then enters Canada with no further checks. Canada could never join the Schengen Area because every EU member needs to approve it. That universal approval is why Romania and Bulgaria, despite being EU members since 2007, weren’t approved to fully join the Schengen until 2025. It taking nearly 20 years for two member states to join Schengen should be a dose of reality for anyone thinking that is possible for Canada.

Every single European resident entering Canada under the terms of whatever an “Associate Membership” means will have to, by virtue of geography and political reality, enter Canada via an official point of entry and through a Canada Border Services Agency checkpoint. There is no walking into Canada like there is between EU member states.

Those travelling to Canada from Europe, whether it be for study, tourism, or for a job, would still be screened by CBSA. Screening doesn’t magically disappear if a work permit exists, it happens at the airport as it always has, for the same traveler, carrying the same passport.

And, we’ve already tested what visa-free travel can look like with Europe, because citizens of any EU member state can already enter visa-free for stays up to six months, which has been in place for years. This has never resembled anything remotely close to a crisis because the Electronic Travel Authorization (eTA) and admissibility check never went away. Those Europeans just don’t need a visa stamped in advance. A labour mobility deal would change what a CBSA officer was authorized to approve, but it doesn’t remove the officer, the biometric check, or the port of entry standing between any traveller and Canadian soil.

A reciprocal labour mobility deal with Europe would allow for a Canadian company to recruit European tradespeople and professionals to fill holes in the labour force, but that prospective employee would still be processed through the same system for every other traveller to Canada. It would, on the flip side, give Canadians the opportunity to work anywhere from Lisbon to Helsinki without the hurdles of a work-visa or lottery system. None of the benefits from that openness require Canada to adopt EU migration policy, asylum rules, or border management because none of that governs how a person physically reaches Canada. One would think that it would be obvious that nothing decided in Brussels operates in place of the checkpoint at Pearson or Vancouver International Airport.

Setting aside the misguided grievances over EU immigration policies creeping into Canada, we shouldn’t just accept any deal Brussels puts in front of us, and it certainly shouldn’t become a backdoor on adopting EU law. If Canada were to, for example, follow the Norway Model with the EU we would be absorbing their single market laws with no vote or say on how those laws are written. The prime minister could not take that offer and erosion of decision making, while citing that type of erosion for the pullback from a deal with the Americans.

Any form of membership with the EU should, first and foremost, advance the free movement of goods alongside the opening of mobility. Freer trade with Europe coupled with increased mobility would be a win-win for both parties, so long as our trade reps insist that we are not a “rule taker” on regulatory matters.

For example, Canada shouldn’t adopt European style agricultural regulations. Our sector is internationally competitive precisely because we don’t follow Europe’s lead on policy. There are well documented reasons why farmers protested en masse throughout Europe in opposition to Brussels’ heavy hand. Canada as part of the EU, in any form, would be the bloc’s fourth largest economy only behind Germany, France and Italy. And, we produce more than five million barrels of oil per day, in comparison to less than half a million barrels for the entire EU.

Ottawa can and should flex its weight here to ensure that increased openness does not equal European rules and regulations, and that is what the Conservatives should be pressing on.

Free trade and mobility, without the Brussels bureaucracy, is where the real debate sits, not with migration woes we structurally can not inherit.

David Clement is the Policy Director at the Consumer Choice Center.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has just returned from a pivotal European trip, as Canada looks to deepen ties with other allies amid a deteriorating relationship with the United States. However, are we overlooking one of Canada’s most important and long-standing allies?

Canada and the United Kingdom have a deep shared history, shared values, and shared interests. It’s why, as one prominent British thinker puts it, the true “special relationship” is between Britain and Canada. In this interview, Rob Breakenridge speaks with Daniel Hannan, independent peer in the U.K. House of Lords and former long-time Member of the European Parliament, who makes the case for deeper Canada-U.K. ties as both countries navigate political challenges in the U.S. and Europe. Hannan also advocates for a broader “CANZUK” alliance, involving Australia and New Zealand, which could mean freer trade and greater security and defence cooperation between the four nations. We’ll also get his insight on the political risks of Canada’s outreach to the European Union and what Canada can learn from the British experience. WHAT THE FULL INTERVIEW DIRECTLY BELOW.

On the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly this week, Prime Minister Carney pledged an additional $100 million toward Palestinian assistance. This amount is in addition to the $600 million Canada has given to the Palestinians since 2023, mainly funnelled through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), some of whose staff have been accused of participating in the October 7 massacre.

In his announcement at the UN, Carney made a point of stating that $20 million will be directed to “peace and security capacity building,” including the continued funding of an RCMP training program for Palestinian police. This is despite warnings that the Palestinian police are becoming more like a 70,000-strong military force that could eventually threaten Israel. That money would have been better spent responding to the synagogue attack in Belleville, Ont., by supporting our own police officers who are putting their lives on the line to protect Canadians.

Canada’s foreign policy is built on dispensing our hard-earned money to have a seat at the table. Carney tweeted a photo of himself from the UN sitting at the head of a meeting he “co-hosted” with French President Emmanuel Macron, U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham and Saudi representative Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, on how to facilitate a “two-state solution.” Our government is pretending we are in the big leagues, when in fact we are not even on Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” for the reconstruction of Gaza.

We are seeking legitimacy and international standing by giving Palestinians more of our hard-earned taxpayer money and trying to force a two-state-solution. This is despite a Sept. 15 Pew Research Centre study that found that 68 per cent of Palestinians and 56 per cent of Israelis “don’t think a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is possible.”

As taxpayers, we should be concerned about Ottawa wasting money on the Palestinians, who haven’t yet fulfilled their pledges to Canada for statehood. We should be asking, “What about us?” Our economy is fragile and we are in a trade dispute with America that is affecting countless jobs. To make matters worse, 4.5 million Canadians — 11 per cent of the population — live under the poverty line, according to Statistics Canada figures from 2024. In Nunavut, the poverty rate rises to 31.7 per cent of the population.

What about the 2.4 million Canadian children living with food insecurity ? As a country, we should not be taking responsibility for the Palestinians, who have squandered billions of dollars of aid money by building tunnels instead of skyscrapers. Our own people are in dire need. What about the homeless in our country? In 2025, it was estimated that 65,083 people were experiencing homelessness in 75 Canadian communities.

Take a drive to any Canadian town or small city like London or Windsor, Ont., and you will be shocked by homeless people and drug addicts on the streets. Homelessness has risen by some 59 per cent over the past five years and it’s estimated that some 119,574 people used an emergency shelter at some point in 2024.

Why are we not helping our own citizens while directing hundreds of millions to people who are enriching themselves? In 2022, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office found that Hamas’s leadership controlled assets of more than US$500 million . Meanwhile, it is believed that Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal is worth US$2.6 billion while Hamas financier Musa Abu Marzook is worth US$2 billion to US$3 billion. Additionally, a U.S. District Court document alleges that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his family may be worth more than US$100 million .

Whatever the amounts, it is widely suspected that Palestinian leaders have enriched themselves and their families. Meanwhile, Canadians are suffering. Our health infrastructure is crumbling and our poverty rates are skyrocketing.

The bottom line is that Canadians deserve as much help and even more from our government as the Palestinians are receiving. The funds directed to the Palestinians will not make a difference due to corruption and failure by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. We should be redirecting our hard-earned tax dollars to help our own citizens in need, rather than satiating political egos in an attempt to get noticed on the world stage.

A stop at the Sons of Jacob Synagogue in Belleville, on the way to the United Nations to give away our money, would have gone a long way in terms of taking care of your own people, Mr. Carney.

National Post

Avi Abraham Benlolo is the Chairman and CEO of The Abraham Global Peace Initiative, a made-in-Canada think-tank.

• ‘You are going to die for the Jews,’ said Belleville shooting suspect: police
• Vivian Bercovici: Belleville shooting is the inevitable result of unchecked Jew-hatred