The long list of crimes committed by the Islamic Republic of Iran’s leaders is so extensive, even Hollywood would reject them as too unbelievable to be the villains in a movie. Israel is making the world a safer place by preemptively striking the regime’s nuclear program and military infrastructure. Now, all nations that believe in freedom and security must support Israel and push for regime change in Tehran.

Iran has long posed an existential threat to Israel. In 2005, then-Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

called for

the Jewish state to be “wiped off the map.” In 2018, Ayatollah

Ali Khamenei called it

a “cancerous tumour” that must be “removed and eradicated.” And in 2020,

an image

posted to his website advocated for a “final solution” in Israel, referring to the Nazi genocide against the Jews.

All the while, the regime has been developing weapons capable of carrying out its genocidal intents. Iran has long been enriching uranium to 60 per cent, far above what is needed for civilian purposes and a short step away from the 90 per cent enrichment needed to create an atom bomb. An International Atomic Energy Agency

report

released late last month found that Iran had stockpiled enough enriched uranium to build nine nuclear bombs, and chastised the regime for attempting to hide parts of its nuclear program from inspectors.

But the threat posed by Iran extends far beyond Israel. As it has for many years, in its latest “

Country Reports on Terrorism

,” the U.S. State Department called Iran the world’s “leading state sponsor of terrorism.” In 2023, noted the State Department, “Iran continued supporting acts of terrorism through its proxies and partner groups — such as Hezbollah, Ansar Allah (commonly referred to as the Houthis), Hamas and al-Ashtar Brigades — in Bahrain, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Yemen.”

Iran was the chief benefactor of Hamas, the terror group responsible for the October 7 massacre, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. Following the terror attack, the Iran-backed Houthis spent over a year attacking commercial ships transiting the Red Sea, while Hezbollah, another Iranian proxy, launched repeated attacks against Israel from its base in Lebanon. Meanwhile, according to the State Department, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has supported terrorist “recruitment, financing and plotting across Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas.”

The Islamic Republic of Iran is a regime that was founded in blood and violations of international law. During the Iranian revolution in 1979, 66 American diplomats and civilians working at the U.S. Embassy were

taken hostage

, many of whom were held for over a year. Yet Iran’s contempt for international norms did not stop at its borders. In 1992, an Iranian-linked group claimed responsibility for

bombing

the Israeli Embassy in Argentina. Two years later, an explosion destroyed a

Jewish centre

in Buenos Aires. Iran is widely believed to have been responsible.

Iran has also been accused of orchestrating numerous assassination plots around the world, targeting Iranian dissidents and opposition figures, along with foreign officials, such as

John Bolton, Mike Pompeo

and

Donald Trump

in the United States. A

2022 study

from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point noted that, “Over the past 40-plus years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has targeted dissidents, western opponents, Israelis and Jews in assassination plots, abduction plots and surveillance operations that facilitate both. Iran has carried out such external operations around the world.”

In 2020, the

IRGC shot down

Ukraine Airlines Flight 752 shortly after takeoff, killing all 176 passengers on board, including

55 Canadians

and 30 permanent residents. And the terror inflicted by Iran’s theocratic rulers is not limited to foreigners. It is one of the most brutal and repressive regimes on earth, and Iran is one of the least free places in the world, ranking 163 out of 165 countries on the latest “

Human Freedom Index

,” published by the Cato and Fraser institutes.

In 2022, 22-year-old

Mahsa Amini

was arrested and brutally murdered by police for failing to wear her hijab properly. The government crackdown on the

ensuing protests

resulted in the deaths of an estimated 550 demonstrators and the arrest of nearly 20,000. A

report

submitted by the United Nations human rights commissioner to the Human Rights Council this week found that last year, Iran carried out executions at “an alarming rate,” hanging 975 people, including individuals connected with the Mahsa Amini protests and other political dissidents. It also prosecuted 125 journalists last year for their reporting.

This is far from a full accounting of the crimes committed under the direction of the mullahs in Tehran, and yet, the International Criminal Court has chosen to issue

arrest warrants

for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister for their prosecution of Israel’s defensive war in Gaza, while giving Ayatollah Khamenei and his henchmen a free pass.

Western leaders must give up the false hope that Iran can be contained through diplomatic means. This has been tried for decades and has repeatedly failed. U.S. President Donald Trump must stop dithering and assist Israel by using American bunker-buster bombs to take out the heavily fortified Fordo nuclear enrichment facility. And his allies, including Canada, must make it clear that they will support the Iranian people in any efforts to overthrow their terrorist rulers.

• Nazanin Afshin-Jam MacKay: Iranians must be ready for the day after the Islamic Republic falls
• Jesse Kline: The Globe and Mail dismisses threat from Iran to bash Israel

In the span of just a few days, the ground has shifted beneath the feet of over 90 million Iranians. The sky above roars with the sound of warplanes, sirens, and explosions. Roads are jammed with families fleeing Tehran. Shelters are improvised in metro stations and mosques. The heavy-handed and repressive regime is suddenly exposed, wounded by foreign airstrikes, panicked at the top, and fraying at the edges. And the Iranian people, long silenced, find themselves standing at a rare and dangerous crossroads.

This moment is not about Donald Trump or Benjamin Netanyahu. It is not about the geopolitical ambitions of foreign powers. It is about the people of Iran, the same people who have endured 46 years of fear, oppression, economic despair, and stolen futures under the Islamic Republic. It is about the mothers mourning their children, indiscriminately shot at or left on death row; the dissidents in prison cells; the young women who dared to walk unveiled; and the workers who braved bullets to demand bread and dignity. They are the ones that everyone has forgotten to consult.

Iranians continue to struggle and suffer. Even with the Israel Defense Forces’ precision targeting, there has been collateral damage. Over

200 civilians

have already lost their lives in the past few days due to Israel’s strikes. Bombs do not always distinguish between soldiers and the civilians, between regime assets and innocent children. If nuclear facilities, such as the deeply buried Fordo plant, are targeted, radioactive fallout could spread through the air, soil, and water, posing serious risks to civilian populations.

Iranians who have fled Tehran to the north, trying to comply with Trump’s alarming evacuation orders, now find themselves without enough fuel, food, or medicine.

And yet, we must also speak with clarity: history may not offer a second chance like this where the regime is at its most vulnerable. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), designated as a terrorist organization by Canada, has had its top leadership eliminated and its command structure severely fractured.

The regime’s response to this conflict has been revealing. While bombs fall and buildings burn, instead of concentrating on security and people’s basic needs, its priority remains unchanged: suppress dissent, arrest women for defying the hijab and silence journalists, and punish activists.

The internet has been shut down

and a new bill was just passed in parliament calling for anyone cooperating with Israel to be immediately sentenced to death. Even now, they are more afraid of their own people than of foreign powers. That fear is telling. And it is justified.

Because the Iranian people are not only grieving. They are watching. Waiting. Calculating. Organizing. They understand what is at stake. Many quietly cheer the weakening of a regime that has stolen so much from them, as they see their oppressors fall one by one including the Aerospace Force commander in charge of giving the green light to shoot down flight PS752 killing 176 people, including 85 people with Canadian status.

But Iranians also understand that foreign intervention is not the answer to their wishes and cannot provide stability and long-term freedom and democracy. They know that lasting change can only come from within, by Iranians for Iranians. It must and it will.

So how do we move forward?

First, we must insist that this is not a war called for by the peaceful, freedom-loving Iranian people, but rather one provoked by the brutal regime that has suffocated their fundamental rights and aspirations for nearly half a century and has become the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world. This is more a war between a tyrannical regime and the people it has held hostage and betrayed. The Islamic Republic does not represent the Iranian people. Any international response must reflect that distinction.

Second, we must do everything in our power to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe. Tehran alone is home to over nine million people, many of whom are elderly, poor, or already traumatized by years of deprivation. Fuel is rationed. Medicine is scarce. Food prices are spiking. Those imprisoned in Evin prison, our political prisoners, our national heroes, have no means of escape. War, if it must be waged, must never forget its human cost and carefully calibrated to minimize harm to civilians.

Third, while now is not the time, amid the chaos of war, as the people of Iran focus on physical and mental survival, a moment for action will eventually arrive. After a ceasefire, when conditions permit and a signal emerges from within Iran itself, perhaps triggered by a major event such as the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, that will be the time for mass mobilization: general strikes, student boycotts, and peaceful civil disobedience. The timing and course of action must be determined by Iranians themselves, not by external figures such as Netanyahu, exiled opposition leaders, or armchair critics

When Iranians seize that moment to reclaim their country, not through chaos or vengeance, but with coordination, courage, and a clear vision, it will also be the time to activate civic coalitions capable of providing structure in the aftermath. A broken regime is dangerous, but a power vacuum is deadly. Iran must not become another cautionary tale of a revolution that devolves into civil war or succumbs to new forms of despotism.

A recent op-ed in

The Jerusalem Post

proposed partitioning Iran into ethnic enclaves, if seriously considered as a strategy to keep the country weak, would not only be dangerous but deeply counterproductive. If Israel’s goal is to neutralize the nuclear threat and support Iranians in achieving a change of regime, promoting such ideas risks undermining that very objective. Iranians are fiercely nationalistic and take immense pride in both their territorial integrity and the rich mosaic of ethnicities that form their nation. While the path to change must be led by Iranians themselves and on their own terms, they must also recognize that the window of opportunity is narrow. If they do not reclaim power, more dangerous and destabilizing forces will step in to fill the void.

We must prepare for the day after.

That means activating a nonpartisan,

technocratic transitional team,

drawn from trusted figures inside and outside the country, to guide Iran through the perilous weeks ahead. It means securing humanitarian aid corridors, stabilizing critical infrastructure, and convening the right experts to ensure the path to a democratic system. Eventually, there must be a referendum and free and fair elections that determine a government by and for the people, not imposed from abroad, nor beholden to factions, foreign interests or false prophets.

To the world: Support Iranians. Listen to them. Protect them, by providing internet and satellite, humanitarian aid, but do not speak for them.

To the diaspora: Amplify them. Resource them. But do not lead them without direction from within.

To the regime: Your time is up. Your lies are exhausted. Your terror no longer works. Defect now and receive amnesty or reduced sentences, otherwise face prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.

And to the Iranian people: you are not alone. You are not forgotten. You are the soul of a nation that refuses to die. You have already endured what no people should have to. You have every right to rebuild, reach your full potential and join the peaceful family of democracies.

Nazanin Afshin-Jam MacKay is an award-winning human rights and democracy advocate, co-founder of the Iranian Justice Collective and Stop Child Executions, and organizer of a network of over a hundred Iranian diaspora groups and other high-profile advocates from around the world. She was born in Iran and fled to Canada when she was two-years old after her father was imprisoned and tortured by the revolutionary guard. She grew up in Vancouver and now lives in Nova Scotia with her husband, Peter MacKay, and three children.

• Vivian Bercovici: Iran could fall any day, and Carney could not be more irrelevant
• Adam Zivo: Canadians stuck in Israel abandoned by embassy that closes at 4:30 p.m.

Thirty years ago, the Sacred Assembly, a national meeting on Indigenous affairs organized by Elijah Harper, called for a “National First Peoples Day,” the first of which was observed the following year on June 21, 1996. It coincides with the summer solstice, highlighting the importance of the sun in various Indigenous

religious beliefs

. It has been observed ever since, now using “

Indigenous Peoples

” rather than “First Peoples.”

Four hundred years ago, in June 1625, French Jesuit missionaries —

Jean de Brébeuf

amongst them — arrived in Quebec, whence they would launch their religious and cultural work in Huronia, northwest of what is now Toronto, amongst the Wendat (Huron) people.

Exactly a century ago, on June 21, 1925, Brébeuf and his martyred Jesuit companions were beatified in Rome, with a contemporary celebration at what is now the Martyrs’ Shrine in Midland, Ont. They were canonized five years later, in 1930.

Ten years ago this month, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) released its executive summary and 94 “calls to action.” Justin Trudeau, then the leader of the third party, announced that he would accept the TRC report and all its claims without exception. By December 2015, when the entire six-volume report was released, he was prime minister.

The TRC was massively influential. Eighteen months after its full release, the 2017 celebrations of the sesquicentennial of Confederation were relatively muted. The TRC recasting of four centuries of history through the singular prism of the residential schools made the entire Canadian project out to be an unrelenting campaign of genocidal brutality, a massive criminal enterprise. What then to celebrate at Canada 150?

In 2021, the apparent discovery of “mass graves” in Kamloops set off a global firestorm, the flames of which were fanned by the prime minister himself. Statues of his first predecessor, Sir John A. Macdonald, were splattered, shattered, scrapped and shuttered.

A new statutory holiday was rushed through in a matter of weeks, the

National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

, observed for the first time on Sept. 30, 2021.

That was the TRC’s impact. In the 1990s, Indigenous leaders had called for a day to celebrate Canada’s aboriginal heritage. It is a day of commemoration, but not a statutory holiday. The TRC statutory holiday, in contrast, says, in effect, that the residential schools are the most important thing in Indigenous history.

Just four years ago, the future of Canada’s history seemed to be definitively different from its past. And then much changed.

In 2022, the exaggerated false claims about Kamloops were exposed — not least by journalist Terry Glavin

in these pages

— but not as a whitewash of Canadian history, and certainly not as exculpatory of the residential school policy. Quite the contrary in fact.

That summer Pope Francis visited Canada on a “penitential pilgrimage” and offered apologies, but he also

said things

that had not been said for a long time, praising the good work that the European missionaries did, not least in preserving Indigenous languages and defending them against the depredations of colonial authorities.

The upshot is that now, four hundred years after the Jesuits’ arrival in New France, three hundred years after their beatification, 30 years after the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 10 years after the TRC, a more truthful — and thus more reconciling — history is now being told.

A significant step came last year with the publication of

Crosses in the Sky: Jean de Brébeuf and Destruction of Huronia

 by

Mark Bourrie

, who writes meticulous history in bracing style. (He recently published a biography of Pierre Poilievre.)

Attempting the “first secular” biography of Brébeuf, Bourrie is not writing hagiography. It’s not obvious that a “secular” telling can capture the lives of saints, who are, almost by definition, outside the usual historical categories. His assessment of Brébeuf would offend many pious ears, even as he insists that we ought not “judge the people of these worlds through a 21st-century lens.”

It is a worthy project, history seeking truth, rather than today’s politics shaping history. The truth can be difficult to read. Bourrie shows how the Huron and Iroquois were war-making peoples, and that the gruesome martyrdom of Brébeuf by the latter followed their usual practise of torture. The 17th-century was like that; Brébeuf left Europe in the midst of the bloodletting of the Thirty Years War. The Europeans were war-making peoples with their own tastes in torture.

Would Biblioasis, the impressive new publisher in Windsor, Ont., have published

Crosses in the Sky

 just five years ago? Perhaps, as they seem a doughty band. Would it have been received to

critical acclaim

then? Unlikely.

Earlier this year, the Jesuits from Martyrs’ Shrine took the Jesuit relics across Canada on a

tour

to commemorate their anniversaries. The relics were received with honour by Indigenous leaders at the Seven Chiefs Sportsplex near Calgary. A more complex, more accurate, history is now being told, 10 years after the TRC buried its own research under a political agenda.

The proper response to incomplete truths — or even falsehoods — told in the past is not compensation with more incomplete truths and falsehoods. The only answer is more truth, the fruit of more open discussion, more free enquiry.

Ten years after the TRC, a year after Bourrie’s book, four hundred years after the Jesuits arrived, that work ought to be taken up anew.

National Post

The other day a U.S. news network emailed me to see if I wanted to do a radio interview about Canada’s Stanley Cup drought, which, as you all know, has just had its 32nd birthday; I presume somebody has done the decent thing and gone out and bought it a nice terry-cloth bathrobe or perhaps a stylish quarter-zip. I begged off from the request, citing pathological gloom, and resumed staring at the ceiling, an activity I intend to resume after I’ve written a few hundred words here. Nice to be back, by the way: please don’t ask how my little Oiler-fan break went.

The email brought a thought I’ve often had back to the surface of my mind, like a hunk of strawberry in a smoothie. People often blame high Canadian taxation for our Stanley Cup crisis; in a league bound by a collectively bargained salary cap, U.S. states with low income taxes have an obvious advantage in attracting free-agent players, an advantage generally accompanied by nicer weather, prettier golf courses and other features of American economics and culture.

There can’t be any doubt that this is a real contributing factor to the ongoing drought, although when I look at the roster of the victorious Florida Panthers I don’t see the cruel talon of the taxman. Honesty requires me to report that Florida’s just effing full of tough, capable players that other teams, mostly Canadian ones, flat-out gave up on and dealt away.

But this reminds you that the tax burden influences every level of a competitive business that is even a little bit complicated. When it comes to the effects of onerous Canadian taxes, it’s relatively easy to see that a free-agent player facing near-equal contract offers is likely to be tempted by the lower-tax jurisdiction. And the thought that keeps recurring to me is: “We could fix that part. We could fix it easily. We could fix it overnight.”

I’m frankly amazed that some banzai backbencher with ambitions hasn’t picked up this flag — advocating a large, explicit tax cut for NHL players in Canada, with the stated goal of giving Canadian teams a positive advantage in contesting the Cup (which, you will surely recall, is morally and lawfully the property of the Canadian people and not the National Hockey League).

Oh, sure, our governments would be forgoing some tax revenue from a particular category of rich people that we have decided we want to encourage, reward and retain; I suppose we can’t countenance that sort of thing, except when it comes to, say, 

the inclusion rate

on capital-gains taxes paid by corporations and trusts. If a government wanted to give more favourable tax treatment to professional hockey players, it could probably do so in a shrewdly disguised way. But it might be smarter to do it openly: declare that we’re not going to fight for the Cup with one hand tied behind our backs.

Any such tax design would be criticized as a subsidy for “millionaires” by the same people who weep blood when somebody looks slightly askance at arts funding or tax credits for Hollywood movies. For that matter, I notice that my money and yours is unflinchingly poured without qualm into buildings for hockey whose economic benefits are promptly devoured by billionaires with a B.

The mere multimillionaires out on the ice in the NHL playoffs are the elite of a distinctively Canadian cultural activity, of a uniquely Canadian contribution to human happiness, and when they play for Canadian teams, they are making awesome personal sacrifices in Canadian causes whose importance everybody recognizes. They’re not even paid extra for the playoff games, come to think of it — and yet we’re now in the special post-season period where they are suddenly 

free to exhibit

the disgusting lacerations and lesions they earned in the late stages of playoff warfare.

I do not say that an income-tax break for NHL players is a good idea: I say only that the case could be made. The problem is that it probably wouldn’t work. The issue Canadian teams have in signing free-agent players is one nugget amidst an Everest of gravel. Hockey teams are also competing for front-office and coaching talent, and players are all looking ahead to careers and businesses they might try after retirement, and if you have children while playing in the U.S., they’re born with an economically sizable gift called an “American passport.” Of course, we’re all supposed to believe that our taxes make our country a nicer, better place to live overall — in which case there shouldn’t be any problem. See you in year 33!

National Post

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On a recent mission to Israel, it broke my heart to hear a young Jewish Canadian question whether he had a future in Canada. One participant responded: “Only the Prime Minister of Canada can answer that.”

So, Prime Minister Mark Carney, I ask you plainly: Do Canadian Jews have a safe and secure future in this country? Because if the answer is yes — and I hope it is — then you need to start showing it. Now.

Since October 7th, Canadian Jews have watched in horror as Hamas terrorists unleashed unimaginable brutality — murdering, raping, torturing, and kidnapping innocent Israelis. It was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. And yet, from your government, we’ve heard equivocation, moral hedging, and, increasingly, empathy for everyone but the Jewish people.

You’ve spoken — repeatedly — about Palestinian suffering. And yes, there is deep suffering in Gaza. But why is your empathy so one-sided? Why does your language suggest that Jews are the aggressors, Israelis the oppressors, and the Jewish state, somehow, less worthy of defence than any other democracy under attack?

You have failed to clearly condemn Hamas. You have failed to affirm Israel’s right to self-defense. And you have failed to stand with Canada’s Jewish community at a time when we are being vilified — physically, emotionally, and institutionally.

To many Jews in Israel and around the world, it is still October 7th. And now, with the direct war between Israel and Iran, we are reminded that October 7th was not an isolated atrocity, but part of a much larger campaign by those who seek to destroy the Jewish state and destabilize the region. The trauma continues, because the crime continues. Fifty-three

hostages

remain in Gaza. Israel believes about 20 are still alive — women, children, and elderly. Until every last one is freed, there can be no healing. That should be a matter of universal outrage. And your foreign minister’s remarks have only deepened the sense of abandonment among Canadian Jews.

Here in Canada, synagogues are vandalized. Jewish schools threatened. Students assaulted on university campuses. Protesters wave Hamas flags in our streets. And your government responds with platitudes instead of protection.

This is not theoretical for me.

My grandparents were murdered by the Nazis. And just months ago, my grandchild and his mother — my daughter — were verbally attacked on a Toronto subway for being Jewish. Three generations have suffered. One through extermination. One through fear. One through open hatred — right here in Canada. I hope you can see why I’m worried.

The double standard is impossible to miss. Your reluctance to confront the normalization of antisemitism in Canada has been chilling. And your silence as Jewish Canadians wonder whether they still belong here is, frankly, unforgivable.

We are no longer asking for reassurance. We are demanding it.

Because this is not just about foreign policy. It’s about what kind of country Canada will be under your leadership.

If you want the over 400,000 Jews who call this country home to stay here — to raise our children here, to invest, serve, and believe in Canada — then we must be treated as full citizens whose security and dignity matter just as much as anyone else’s.

That means:

· Calling Hamas what it is: a genocidal terrorist organization.

· Affirming Israel’s right to exist and defend itself.

· Condemning antisemitism — clearly, loudly, and without hesitation.

· Demanding the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.

· Rejecting narratives that turn Jewish students into targets and Jewish Canadians into pariahs.

And one final, urgent request: Go to Israel.

Every other G7 leader — except Japan — has made that trip since October 7th, as have many NATO allies. Canada has not. Your absence is noted — not just in Jerusalem, but in Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, and every Jewish community across this country. If you stand against terror, against antisemitism, and with democratic allies, then show up. In person. On the ground. With purpose.

Leadership is not about balancing narratives. It’s about moral clarity. Go to Israel, prime minister, and show us where you truly stand.

We are not asking for special treatment. But we will not accept abandonment. We are proud Canadians. But pride only survives when it is matched with protection.

So again, Mr. Prime Minister: Do Canadian Jews have a future in this country? With the ground shaking in Israel and the skies filled with Iranian missiles, your response cannot wait.

Rick Ekstein is a proud first-generation Canadian, son of Holocaust survivors, businessman and philanthropist.

National Post

I have had some fun in the past

at the expense of the Liberal Party of Canada’s

distinctly upper-class obsession with the Great Outdoors

— this notion that every Canadian has soloed a canoe through morning mist amidst the haunting call of loons, or if they haven’t, then something has gone awry.

I’ll have a bit more fun with it here now that

details of the “Canada Strong Pass” have been released

… but that’s not to say there’s nothing salvageable from this endeavour.

Two of the main items offered free or at a discount this summer are travel on Via Rail (free for kids travelling with an adult; 25 per cent off for 18-to-24-year-olds), and campsites at national parks, which will be free to visit during the day this summer.

But it’s the third week of June. Most people — people who aren’t politicians, for example — will already have booked their vacations by now. And if they haven’t, good luck finding a nice campsite before Labour Day (when the discounts terminate). Those reservations became available in January and February, depending on the park, and they go

very

quickly. (Perhaps ironically, those who booked

before

the Canada Strong Pass became official will be eligible for partial refunds.)

Via, for the record, directly services a single national park: Jasper. I found a “discounted” youth fare from Toronto to Jasper on July 2 … for $503. That gets you a plain old seat, for 70 hours and 35 minutes. Airlines will get you as far as Edmonton in 4 hours for less than that.

I found a rare available berth on Via — a seat that converts into a semi-private bunk — for the Aug. 31 departure, but the youth discount doesn’t apply to those. And if it did, it would still be 25 per cent off $1,612.

Of course Via is more useful between cities in Eastern Canada; trains don’t sell out months in advance the way the long-distance routes do. But the Canada Strong Pass is framed as a national unity exercise, and at this point in our history, transporting Ontarians and Quebecers back and forth on summer holidays probably isn’t going to offer much of a nationalist boost. Two Solitudes is an 80-year-old book; Canada contains more solitudes now.

Having vented my spleen, let me also say the notion of building national unity by encouraging domestic travel isn’t at all daft, and nor is offering free or discounted entry to national museums and historic sites. Many Canadians are appallingly ignorant of the things they might learn there.

So the question then becomes: Is this a one-off,

the fulfilment of an election promise

designed mostly to capitalize on anti-Trump sentiment and a precipitous decline in Canadians’ travel to the U.S.? Or could it be part of a coherent longer-term strategy to introduce or reintroduce Canadians to their shared history and culture, and to each other?

If it’s the latter, the feds certainly can’t do it alone: Provincial parks, historic sites, museums and galleries are just as important to Canada’s story as their federal analogues — as are municipal ones and many privately managed facilities. And the feds certainly can’t be in charge of getting Canadians physically on the move. They run a cruel mockery of a passenger railway, which services only five of 10 provincial capitals, plus Ottawa, and some ferries on the East Coast.

Subsidizing airline fares might not go over very well — carriers would probably just jack up the prices to compensate anyway — but we could at least open the airline market to domestic routes by foreign carriers and see what effect more competition has. We could try to make air travel less miserable by enforcing customer-service standards and compensation rules the way most First World countries do.

There’s also good old-fashioned bus travel, as well, some of which is subsidized as it stands (as is Via, of course, to a far more outlandish extent). An almost improbable number of

Laurentian baby boomers will jaw your ear off

about back when they took the train out to Banff or Jasper to work for the summer as young people. Lifelong memories, fancy-free romance in the berths, singsongs, all that good sepia-toned stuff.

But it was an expensive way to travel even then: In its Summer 1975 timetable, CN listed peak fares of up to $103 between Toronto and Vancouver, or $159 with a berth. That’s $921 today. I’d wager a good few employees at Jasper Park Lodge and Banff Springs have some equally fun stories about taking the bus or hitchhiking (now: ridesharing) west.

It’s not an easy job. Many of the factors that send Canadians abroad instead of elsewhere in Canada are innate. The way some people don’t like canoe trips, a lot of people would prefer to spend their vacations on a beach escaping the winter … and we don’t have any winter beaches. But since we’re supposedly breaking down internal barriers to trade, we might as well extend that to internal barriers to tourism as best we can.

National Post

cselley@postmedia.com

• Chris Selley: No jail time for accessory to a killing? Is anyone OK with this?
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After Israel closed its airspace last Friday due to the threat of Iranian missile attacks, about
40,000 tourists

—

including
over 6,600 Canadians
— were left unable to return home on their own. While many countries are scrambling to evacuate their citizens by land and sea, some Canadians say that they have been abandoned by their government and left to fend for themselves.

With passenger flights indefinitely cancelled, options for leaving Israel are limited. It is impossible to escape northward, into Lebanon or Syria, as the border areas of these countries are infested with violent militias, including the remnants of
Hezbollah
and
ISIS
. The risk of being kidnapped, injured, tortured or murdered there is not insignificant.
 

The same goes for escaping southward into Egypt’s Sinai peninsula. While
most of Egypt
is fairly safe for travellers, the peninsula is a sparsely populated desert
plagued by Islamist insurgencies
— particularly in the
lawless north
. Traversing this vast, lethally desolate region by car is not recommended, meaning that commercial airports are functionally inaccessible from the Israeli border.

There are safer routes, though.
 

In the west, boats are transporting stranded tourists to Cyprus, but the price tag is hefty —
around $4,300 CAD
in some cases — and it can be difficult to discern whether some vendors are scammers.
 
 

Meanwhile, in the east, tourists are evacuating to Jordan, a relatively stable country by regional standards. While some terrorist groups operate on Jordanian territory, they are concentrated along the Syrian and Iraqi borders, far from Israel, and attacks in major cities are rare.
 

Still, the Canadian government advises that citizens
avoid non-essential travel
to Jordan, and individuals I spoke with in Israel considered the Jordanian routes to be somewhat unsafe.
 

They worried about being struck by the debris of intercepted missiles, and argued that the country’s political volatility, particularly in the context of this new war, means that the threat of violence is never truly far away. Individuals who are visibly Jewish face additional risks, including potential harassment from antisemitic border officials.
 

There are three crossings into Jordan: a north, central and southern route. Incidentally, the most popular and direct of these options (central) passes through the West Bank, where violence is commonplace. The Palestinian Authority, which administers the area, lacks the capacity to guarantee visitors’ safety, but there have apparently been no reports of attacks against fleeing tourists yet.
 

Navigating these escape routes can be daunting and, in some cases, expensive, which is why
many foreign countries
— e.g. Poland, Greece, the United States — have already organized evacuations for their own citizens. This has typically meant chartering buses to transport evacuees to Jordan and Egypt, and then using government aircraft to fly them to commercial airports.
 

Use of military aircraft has allowed Greece to set up an
e
vacuation point in Egypt’s Sinai region
, bypassing the peninsula’s land-based security threats. The United States, on its end, is exploring
using cruise ships
in conjunction with flights.
 

Some countries have been late to the game, though. Japan and Australia are just now launching their evacuation efforts and, according to several Canadians I spoke to who are stuck in Israel, Ottawa has been doing almost nothing.

On Wednesday night, I conducted phone interviews with three politically-connected Canadians who are in the process of returning home. They had come to Israel last week for a trip organized by the
Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs
(CIJA), and were all dismayed by the Canadian government’s lacklustre rescue efforts.
 

Michelle Ferreri and Rick Perkins, two former Conservative MPs, were in Eliat, a small town at the southernmost tip of Israel, where they were waiting to cross the border into Jordan.
 

“This is literally one of the most historical wars of our time and there’s nothing in place. There’s nothing happening,” said Ferreri about the Canadian government’s response. According to her, the Canadian embassy has predominantly sent out automated emails containing superficial information on safety and evacuation routes (she provided copies of the emails to National Post).
 

The former parliamentarian was particularly aggravated by the fact that, according to these emails, the embassy could only be contacted during
regular office hours
— 8:30am to 4:30pm on weekdays — despite the presence of an obvious emergency where lives are at risk.
 

“They had this same issue after October 7. They didn’t do a good job then … why wasn’t there something put in place to ensure, if and when this ever happened again, that there was a fast, rapid response to evacuate Canadians?” she said.
 

Perkins concurred that it was “ridiculous” that the embassy was only accepting phone calls during normal business hours, and criticized the government’s reliance on automated messages and its lack of human support.

 

Ferreri told me that she was able to evacuate to Jordan because of “friends who have stepped up and are taking care of me,” but worried about the vast majority of Canadians in Israel who lack comparable connections. “Where is their Canadian government?,” she asked, describing their situation as “screwed.”
 

Karen Restoule, a Senior Fellow with the
Macdonald-Laurier Institute
, had made it to Jordan when we spoke over the phone. She said that she had originally been offered a speedy evacuation to Egypt through an American friend, but it fell through after the Canadian government failed to help her get an expedited Egyptian visa. “I had to basically decline a relatively quick and easy exit from the country because everyone was largely unresponsive,” she said.
 

Restoule did, however, receive a “wellness check” phone call from the Canadian government. She wondered whether it was prudent to allocate limited resources on such check-ins when many other supports, and evacuation services, have been largely absent.
 
 
 

On Tuesday morning, I spoke with two Canadian hockey players who were stuck in Tel Aviv. An Iranian ballistic missile had landed 200 metres away from their apartment the previous day, ravaging their building. As I am currently in Israel
reporting for The News Forum
(a
Canadian television station
), I was able to witness the damage first hand: shattered windows, cracked ceilings, a door blown off its hinges and so on.
 

“The Canadian government’s not really being clear with us on the embassy side of things. So we don’t know when we’re getting out of here,” said Panagiotis Mavridis, a Greek-Canadian dual citizen. While he found it impossible to get a hold of the Canadian government, the Greek embassy returned his call within hours and “explained everything in great detail.”
 

His friend, Joe Martin, said that he felt abandoned by the embassy and was annoyed by their reliance on automated emails. His frustration towards the Canadian government was palpable, yet he said that, even though his apartment had been damaged in the bombing, he felt safe in Israel, because of the ubiquitous bomb shelters and organized system of alerts.
 

“I think we gotta put our trust more in Israel’s hands than Canada right now,” he concluded.
 

This Thursday, amid rising pressure, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said that
Canada will station consular officials
on the other side of certain border crossings and facilitate commercial flights for Canadians trying to return home. While the solution is a step forward, it nonetheless falls far short of what other countries have pledged to their own citizens.
 

Global Affairs Canada did not respond to a request for comment by Friday afternoon.

National Post

No other country on Earth has endured the same relentless combination of verbal abuse, threats of annihilation, and actual terrorism that Israel has faced at the hands of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Since 1979, the Iranian regime — led by its Ayatollahs — has pursued an obsessive, violent campaign against the Jewish state, not only with words but with actions. There is no land disagreement between the two nations. This is hatred — pure, genocidal, and unapologetic.

From the moment Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in the Islamic Revolution, Israel became a target not just of criticism, but of declared extermination. And while the world often dismisses rhetoric as just that — rhetoric — what followed proved otherwise: embassy and community centre bombings in Argentina, Hezbollah’s reign of terror in Lebanon, suicide attacks in Bulgaria and beyond, the funding, arming and training of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, drone and missile barrages, and most recently, the horrific massacre of over 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023.

Behind it all, directing and enabling the violence: Tehran.

In April 2024, Iran made history by launching over 300 drones and missiles directly at Israel — a historic and unprecedented escalation. It marked the first time the regime attacked Israel directly from its own territory. That wasn’t just a strategic military move. It was a message of hatred from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose decades of speeches have called Israel a “cancer,” a “tumour,” and a “rabid dog” that must be “uprooted.”

Who can forget former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s threat to “wipe Israel off the face of the map.” In any other context, these words would be disqualifying for a world leader. But in the world of international diplomacy, Iran has been coddled, empowered, and allowed to spread its hate at the United Nations and across Europe, where this antisemitic terrorism has been tolerated and sometimes endorsed.

But Iran’s campaign goes even deeper — it’s not only aimed at Israel’s destruction,

but at the erasure of Jewish memory itself

. In 2006 and again in 2016, the Iranian regime sponsored global Holocaust cartoon contests, inviting participants to mock the systematic murder of six million Jews. This grotesque state-sanctioned denial of history reveals the depth of Iran’s antisemitism: it is not enough for the regime to threaten Israel’s future — it seeks to defile the Jewish past.

Let us be clear: the only other time in recent history when the Jewish people were threatened with total extermination was under Adolf Hitler. Like Hitler, Ali Khameinei cloaks his genocidal aspirations in ideology — this time not in racial purity but in extreme religious fanaticism. And like Hitler, he and his predecessor has used Jews and Israel as a convenient scapegoat to validate his existence, distract from his domestic failures, and rally radicals to his cause.

This is not just about Israel. This is about the world. Iran’s regime funds terrorism on nearly every continent, suppresses its own people, and builds nuclear weapons while lying to the international community. It undermines democracy, freedom, and peace wherever they try to take root. America’s hesitance in joining the war feels eerily similar to its hesitance to entering the Second World War and bombing the Nazi railroad that led into Hitler’s gas chambers. There must not be hesitance to eradicating evil.

And now, the Ayatollah’s hatred has begun to recoil upon him. Israel has struck back hard — destroying weapons depots, hitting key figures in Syria and Lebanon, and, most symbolically, bombing Iran’s own state broadcaster to send a powerful message: the propaganda ends here. Karma, it seems, has found its way to Tehran.

History teaches us that those who promote violence and glorify hate — especially against the Jewish people — never prevail. Hitler is gone. And so too shall Khamenei follow. The Ayatollah’s hatred is now turning back on himself. That’s how history works. Hate is a fire that always burns the arsonist.

When the dust finally settles, the Iranian people will hopefully be free from the yoke of this hateful, repressive regime. They deserve better. The world deserves better. And yes, the Jewish people — so often targeted, so often scapegoated — deserve to live without fear. Israelis and Iranians deserve a better future.

We are called the “Chosen People” — not because we are special, but because we were chosen to safeguard the world through “tikkun olam,” the repair of the world. We have been chosen to fight evil through pogroms, inquisitions, and genocide to show the world what strength, freedom, and moral clarity look like in the face of hate.

Let the world hear this truth: there is no room in the international community for governments that preach annihilation and deny the Holocaust. There is no justification — religious, political, or otherwise — for calling for the destruction of another nation or people. It’s time the world stopped tolerating Iran’s genocidal rhetoric and started holding it accountable.

Good riddance to hatred. Good riddance to the Ayatollahs’ twisted vision. The world must rise — on the side of life, peace, and liberty. The Jewish people will not be silent. We have lived through slavery, expulsions, crusades, blood libels and a genocide. And we will live through this. Stronger, prouder, freer.

National Post

Avi Benlolo is CEO and chairman of the Abraham Global Peace Initiative.