National Post (Opinions) Archives - Page 11 of 298

The Liberal government is being cheered for its proposed new law, Bill C-5, which is aimed at growing the economy by fast-tracking so-called national interest projects. In one sense, the applause is warranted: Ottawa is finally focused on growing Canada’s wealth rather than simply redistributing it. But, if you look closer, Bill C-5 is not the right solution.

The building Canada act will give cabinet the power to exempt “national interest” projects over the next five years from certain requirements imposed by laws that have caused investors to flee Canada. Yet those laws will remain in place for all other projects.

C-5 is thus a classic case of governments picking winners and losers rather than creating the conditions that will allow the best proposals to succeed, as determined by the markets.

Making matters worse, if the bill passes, Parliament won’t even get an opportunity to sign off on the specific projects, raising the risk that they’ll be carefully selected for maximum political gain for the Liberal Party of Canada.

A better solution would be to simply repeal the laws, or parts thereof, that have prevented the private sector from pursuing these projects in the first place, starting with the unconstitutional Impact Assessment Act (IAA).

The IAA was passed in 2018, replacing the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, which was focused on the federal government’s environmental responsibilities.

The IAA is a stunning federal overreach that purportedly gives Ottawa the power to freeze any large project until the government has assessed its “impact” and the environment minister has decided whether it’s in the “public interest” to green-light.

The assessment is based on a list of 20 subjective factors, including “Indigenous knowledge,” whether the project “contributes to sustainability” and “the intersection of sex and gender with other identity factors.”

The result is that every major project gets mired in years of expensive studies and negotiations, without any ability for investors to predict whether a project will get built.

In its first several years, a single major project — the Haisla Nation-led Cedar LNG facility in Kitimat, B.C. — actually made its way through the marathon federal decision-making phase and ended up declared “in the public interest.” Germany, meanwhile, has manged to not only approve, but build LNG facilities in a couple of years.

In 2023, in a case brought by the Government of Alberta, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the IAA was partially unconstitutional, since it allowed the federal government to control projects that mostly fall under provincial jurisdiction.

Ottawa claimed it could freeze and veto projects based on its exclusive constitutional powers over things like fisheries, migratory birds and “Indians, and lands reserved for the Indians.”

The court pointed out that this didn’t give the federal government the right to control projects within the provinces, which have exclusive law-making authority over property and civil rights, local works and undertakings, along with non-renewable natural resources, forestry resources and energy.

Ironically, Ottawa has the constitutional power to control projects that cross provincial borders, such as pipelines, but Prime Minister Mark Carney recently insinuated that provinces can veto those.

Although the Trudeau government passed minor tweaks to the IAA, the Liberals have decided to mostly ignore the Supreme Court’s ruling, prompting Alberta to threaten another challenge last fall.

Carney should reconsider his pledge not to repeal the act. If Ottawa can exempt big projects from the IAA whenever it wants to for politically popular projects, why not simply repeal it and put in place less complicated laws focused on areas within federal jurisdiction?

The provinces are well positioned to take on the environmental assessments and mandatory Indigenous consultations for projects within their jurisdictions. Ottawa can focus on projects that cross provincial boundaries, like pipelines and electricity corridors.

Doing so would give investors more certainty that their projects will get built as long as they’re economically viable, and they wouldn’t need to worry about successfully lobbying Liberal ministers to get on a special list. That would respect the Constitution and give our economy the boost it so badly needs.

National Post

Josh Dehaas is counsel for the Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF), a non-profit that protects Canada’s constitution through education and strategic litigation. The CCF intervened in the 2023 Impact Assessment Act reference.

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Is it at all possible to shift the ever-amassing waves of global support for Iran to Israel, post-October 7?

So far, it appears not. No history lesson, no media correction, no event, nor circumstance has worked to date.

In response to Israel’s attacks on the almost-fully-enriched uranium sites in Iran, westerners in the United Kingdom and elsewhere took to the streets last weekend to protest against Israel, with adherents carrying mass-produced signs, shouting

phrases

including: “Stop bombing Gaza! Stop bombing Iran!”

Last week, Israel began a series of preemptive strikes on Iranian senior officials, as well as military and nuclear infrastructure. The strategic bombardment followed a

warning

the day prior from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) — the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog — that Iran had breached its non-proliferation obligations and was a short, technical step away from developing potentially nine nuclear bombs,

calling

the situation “a matter of serious concern.”

In response to Israel’s strikes, an X

account

with 1.2 million followers, calling itself “Daily Iran Military,”

wrote

on Friday “Fight them until mischief ends and obedience remains for God. The Noble Quran (2:193)” above an image of a devil-like character surrounded by fire, which, when examined from a different perspective like the famous rabbit-duck illusion, reveals a blatant, antisemitic caricature of a hooked-nosed Jew. It’s unclear exactly who is behind this account, but it features a steady stream of posts advocating the worldview of the Iranian regime.

Whoever is behind it, it is unsurprising that Iran’s army responded in the same spirit as the inarguably antisemitic post. Unlike Israel, Iran’s

bombardment

didn’t seek to target only military sites or leaders. Its ballistic missiles targeted the only democratic nation in the Middle East with complete disregard as to whether they landed on civilian targets or not.

This is consistent with world history and global politics. Iran is run by the Islamic regime, whose leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has denied the Holocaust, calling it Zionist propaganda, and

referred

to Israel as a “malignant cancerous tumour … that has to be removed and eradicated.”

The aforementioned

demand-chant

to “Stop bombing Iran!” was recorded in London’s Parliament Square, screamed out over a crowd of what appeared to be mostly white, middle-aged (and older) Palestinian Solidarity Campaign protesters.

Some repeated the chant — though not particularly exuberantly — while draped in their keffiyehs. Most had their arms down along their sides, or wrapped around their bodies in a guarded, defensive position, indicating that the defence of Iran might be more than they signed up for.

Perhaps their bodies are telling them that it’s bizarre for a westerner to defend the Islamic Republic of Iran. This isn’t simply because it should never be allowed to have nuclear weapons, either. The Islamic regime’s morality police

detain, arrest and kill protesters with impunity

. They punish women whose public dress and behaviour do not strictly conform to Sharia law. Iranian women cannot show their hair. They cannot dance. They cannot sing.

According to the U.S. Department of State, Iran is the “

foremost state sponsor of terrorism

,” providing “financial, training, and equipment, to (terrorist) groups around the world,” including the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump said, “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. It’s very simple — you don’t have to go too deep into it. They just can’t have a nuclear weapon.” He’s

right.

A 2022

survey

by the Dutch Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran found that over 80 per cent of Iranians

reject the Islamic Republic and prefer a democratic government

. Yet another reason why Israel’s strategic attack on the Islamic Republic should be applauded and not protested against — and not just for the people of Iran, but the entire western democratic world, which Iran sees as its enemy.

Yet, brainwashed westerners have been convinced the problem is Israel, not the Islamic Republic of Iran. They don’t seem to be able to differentiate between the desires of the regime and the people it oppresses.

Activist groups like

Palestine Solidarity Campaign

do not appear to be concerned about unreported money flowing into universities globally from Qatar, which the Institute for the Global Study of Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP)

suggests

is being used to promote anti-democratic and antisemitic ideologies on campuses. In other words, to turn westerners against their own countries and democratic rights, including the right to protest.

Palestine Solidarity Campaign has been organizing marches against Israel since 2019, some jointly, with other U.K.-based groups such as Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, and, ironically, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. I guess alignment on important matters such as nuclear disarmament is only possible when the disarmers aren’t Israelis.

They weren’t the only activists out there embarrassing themselves.

Founded as a feminist anti-war group,

CODEPINK

proudly

listed

its weekly accomplishments on X, including “opposed Israel’s attacks on Iran.” A strange thing to oppose, given Israel’s precision, Iran’s near-complete uranium enrichment and the group’s stated mission.

Interestingly, CODEPINK’s feed is void of feminist issues and contains zero criticism of the attacks on women in Israel on October 7. Notably, they’ve expressed no outrage over the broken body of Shani Louk,

paraded

around by gleeful barbarians in the back of a truck, nor Naama Levy, hauled out of a jeep with the seat of her pants

heavily bloodied

. Nor did they express any concern for mother Shiri Bibas, who was

kidnapped

, terrified and crying, while holding her two red-haired sons, who we’d later find out were all murdered by Hamas.

In fact, there are no posts on or near October 7, 2023 from CODEPINK. The earliest is on Oct. 25, long after horrific videos circulated on Telegram. It

reads:

“A genocide is unfolding before our eyes — who is responsible? … Learn more about these criminals and many others backing Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestine: codepink.org/genocidegang.”

Just this past Saturday, at a pro-Palestine event in Victoria, B.C., a Palestinian woman, Fadi Elarid

gleefully remarked

while being recorded, “Free Palestine. Iran will kill you all.”

Last week, drunk on the desire to be saviours, western protesters who had made a pilgrimage to Egypt to stand with Gaza had their

self-important missionary work

interrupted when they were

attacked

and arrested by Egyptians who never volunteered to take in any Gazans themselves.

And this coming weekend, Canadians can look forward to the same at the CUPE-sponsored “

Hands Off Iran

” protest that will take place in Toronto on Sunday.

Will westerners wake up? It’s hard to say. Critical theories such as white privilege, decolonization and anti-racism coupled with a secular vacuum has turned many into useful idiots marching for the benefit of the Islamic Republic.

These protesters will claim that they aren’t antisemitic, but their masks slip fast when they defend the interests and human rights record of the Islamic Republic of Iran over Israel.

National Post

tnewman@postmedia.com

@TLNewmanMTL

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By Stéphane Sérafin and Kerry Sun

The chief justice of Canada, Richard Wagner, has again made

headlines

for his extrajudicial pronouncements. Responding to a question about U.S. President Donald Trump on June 10, Chief Justice Wagner

remarked

during his now-annual press conference that “there is no doubt that the rule of law and judicial independence are under attack in many countries,” adding that, “when you see governments attacking the media, attacking the judges, attacking the lawyers and universities … there’s a good chance that you’re in front of a dictatorship.”

Chief Justice Wagner’s remarks echo a similar

public statement

, issued last month, by the chief justices of Ontario’s Court of Appeal, Superior Court, and Court of Justice, ostensibly in response to Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s criticism of recent judicial decisions. In that statement, the three Ontario Chief Justices wrote that the principle of judicial independence meant that “a judicial official must be, and must be seen to be, free to decide each case on its own merits, without interference or influence of any kind from any source, including politicians.”

These remarks are unobjectionable if simply meant to reaffirm the judiciary’s important and unique role within Canada’s constitutional order. As with the other branches of the state — the legislative and the executive — the judiciary is allocated certain responsibilities under our system of government. For judicial power to be discharged prudently, judges should be free from undue interference from the other branches.

However, some commentators in the legal community appear to have interpreted these remarks not as a reminder of the judiciary’s constitutional role, but as a warning to elected officials who criticize judicial rulings.

This interpretation is unfortunate. It would be a mistake to equate judicial independence with judicial immunity from criticism, and the rule of law with rule by judges. Such a view is untenable, particularly if one accepts that judges, like all public officials, are fallible human beings whose decisions are never above reproach. Nor is this view compatible with the place of judicial action within Canada’s constitution.

Indeed, the legitimacy of judicial review has traditionally been supported in Canada and elsewhere by the contention that judges are able to offer compelling reasons in support of their decisions. Crucially, those reasons have never been held to be beyond criticism. Even the judgments of our highest court, the Supreme Court of Canada, have been subject to trenchant critique for as long as this country has had legal scholars and commentators. Judicial power is official power, and its exercise must be subject to public scrutiny — as is the case with the decisions of elected officials.

If legal commentators are permitted to scrutinize the reasoning of judges, then it is entirely legitimate for elected officials to do so, as well. After all, the rule of law mandates that each branch of the state remains within its allocated bounds. Where a court exceeds its proper constitutional role, or is in danger of doing so, then elected officials have a right, and a constitutional duty, to contest these uses of official power.

Consider the case that provoked Premier Ford’s comments, which involved a court challenge to his government’s decision to remove bike lanes in some Toronto neighbourhoods. Whether or not their removal was appropriate, it is hard to conceive of bike lanes as a “fundamental right” contemplated by the framers of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. At best, the question is one of urban planning: a dispute over transit infrastructure, about which reasonable people can disagree. It is entirely consistent with Canada’s constitutional order that these questions of policy should be left to the politically accountable government of Ontario. In discharging its unique constitutional role in our democracy, Queen’s Park is entitled to assert its priorities over those of cycling advocates.

Unfortunately, none of these considerations prevented Justice Paul Schabas of the Superior Court of Ontario from

issuing

a preliminary injunction, effectively stopping the government from implementing its priorities. In so doing, Justice Schabas summarily dismissed the elected branches’ constitutional function, asserting that “the government does not have a monopoly on the public interest.” Instead, the learned judge contended, it was for the court to exercise its own judgment as to which public interests the government could and could not pursue.

Next, consider the numerous cases in which Canadian courts have struck down mandatory minimum sentences as unconstitutional, or departed significantly from public sentiment in sentencing criminal offenders. In one emblematic case, the Supreme Court of Canada

declared

a six-month mandatory minimum for child luring to be “cruel and unusual punishment” contrary to the Charter, claiming that it would “shock the conscience of an informed public.” More recently, the Provincial Court of British Columbia has been criticized for a

decision

to impose no jail time upon an offender who possessed what the court characterized as a “relatively modest” collection of child pornography. In these circumstances, it is entirely unsurprising that officials and informed citizens should raise questions about the intelligent exercise of judicial power.

A constitutional democracy that prizes our courts as forums of reason cannot have it both ways. It cannot profess public confidence in the judiciary, while insisting that judicial decisions be shielded from public criticism. Central to judicial responsibility is the task of offering reasoned justifications for one’s decisions. Those reasons are an invitation to the public to examine and critically appraise the cogency of a judge’s decision-making.

There is little reason to think, then, that elected officials are acting inappropriately, much less unconstitutionally, in expressing reasoned disagreement with judicial rulings, or in proposing solutions to perceived problems with those decisions. To the contrary, such criticism is precisely what the rule of law requires, and bearing it with composure is a constitutional duty of the judicial role.

National Post

Stéphane Sérafin is a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law. Kerry Sun is a doctoral student at Merton College, Oxford and a Fortescue Scholar with the Canterbury Institute.

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It’s no secret that labour unions are opposed to capitalism, free markets and globalization. But Unifor’s ludicrous demand that Canadian companies should be penalized if they don’t work to further Canada’s “national interest” is pure insanity.

Lana Payne, Unifor’s national president, wrote a letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney last month, relaying

her union’s concerns

about Canadian manufacturers closing up shop and moving south to avoid U.S. tariffs. Payne

urged Carney

to take “immediate and decisive action using the Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act (FEMA), to prevent corporations, operating in Canada, from offshoring jobs in response to foreign trade policies — particularly those originating from the United States.”

Payne noted that FEMA “allows the attorney general, with the support of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, to issue blocking orders prohibiting compliance with foreign laws or directives that are contrary to Canadian interests.” What would this entail, exactly? “These orders can make it a federal offence to move production out of Canada in response to foreign trade measures, carrying penalties of up to $1.5 million for corporations and up to five years’ imprisonment for individuals,” wrote Payne.

Fines and incarceration for offshoring? Payne and Unifor must be out of their minds! Alas, this is the typical narrow-minded view that many union leaders and members have when it comes to understanding private enterprise and how most businesses operate. The basic concept of outsourcing has long been an important component of the free market economy. It enables companies to be more competitive and achieve greater financial potential, thus protecting workers and their jobs, by focusing on their core competencies.

Entrepreneur

Sam Darwish wrote

in Forbes in 2021 that, “Outsourcing is a great way to help your business as it progresses through its various growth stages.” He highlighted several economic benefits of outsourcing that companies should utilize. It can lead to steady growth “because it’s more affordable to outsource the work than it is to build your own in-house team, and because you can cancel an outsourcing contract without having to put people out of work.” Outsourcing gives a business the ability to retain additional flexibility since it can “staff up before a busy season without the financial commitment of hiring in-house employees, the cost of which can take years to break even on.”

Darwish also pointed out that outsourcing agencies “are capable of attracting top talent to ensure customer satisfaction and competitive results.” Hiring the best-qualified candidates can help build a company’s brand and enhance its reputation, which are both vital to success in a competitive marketplace. Outsourcing enables a company to “provide your customers with consistent customer service,” and allows “your internal team members to focus on their own tasks, helping your business run more efficiently and ultimately increasing your (return on investment).”

Canada has long used outsourcing to its advantage. Statistics Canada focused on outsourcing and gig work when it conducted its Canadian Survey on Business Conditions during the first quarter of 2025. “Over half (52.2 per cent) of businesses reported that they have outsourced tasks, projects or short contracts in the last 12 months,”

Statistics Canada noted

on March 20. That’s pretty extensive, all things considered.

Offshoring is a somewhat different concept than outsourcing, though businesses may outsource certain tasks to companies based overseas. It can be a way for businesses to leave countries and communities with high-tax regimes and statist policies, and move to countries and communities with less government intrusion, more personal freedom and lower tax rates for individuals and businesses. Companies often move to countries that have lower labour costs, because statist policies in advanced countries have made them uncompetitive. But they may also move to avoid tariffs imposed by certain governments.

The threat of U.S. tariffs has created understandable concern for small and large businesses in Canada. They’re worried that they’ll pay more for imported goods, and are fearful that they’ll lose customers and watch their profit margins plummet. At the same time, the Canadian government’s support for counter-tariff policies, which unions like Unifor are in favour of, has the potential to permanently damage relations with the U.S., our closest friend, ally and trading partner. If the

rumoured

economic and security deal between Canada and the U.S. doesn’t materialize, the tariff battle could intensify on both ends, and jobs will be lost.

That’s why some Canadian manufacturers are considering offshoring as a means of ensuring their survival. It’s hard to blame them for exploring economic opportunities in the U.S. and elsewhere. They’re not required to stay in our country if they don’t see a viable and profitable future in the cards — and nor should they be. We don’t live under a tyrannical regime that prevents the free movement of individuals and businesses from province to province, and country to country. If Ottawa ever sided with Unifor’s foolish proposal and used FEMA, with its threat of fines and jail time, to curb offshoring, we would be inching towards an illiberal corporatist economic model. That’s something all Canadians, even the most loyal of union members, should reject wholeheartedly.

National Post

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On day two of the G7 meeting in Kananaskis, Alta.,

Prime Minister Mark Carney issued a statement

saying that, as global threats grow, unity among the world’s most advanced economies matters more than ever.

The G7’s origins date back to 1973, when then U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, George Shultz, convened an informal gathering of finance ministers to promote free trade, multilateralism and co-operation with the developing world (Canada was invited to join in 1976).

But at the G7’s 51st meeting this week, there was no real unity, because its predominant member doesn’t advocate for any of those things anymore.

President Donald Trump headed back to Washington on Monday night, claiming he had “big stuff” to sort out in regard to the Israel and Iran confrontation.

It was a legitimate pretext, but the feeling is that he would have gone anyway. He was like the embarrassing uncle at the wedding who, to everyone’s relief, leaves early.

“I wish I could stay for tomorrow,” the president said, as

Carney turned to French president Emmanuel Macron and winked

Macron barely hides his belief that Trump is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot.

The French president had already upset the president by stopping off in Greenland on his way to Alberta, responding to Trump’s threats to the island’s sovereignty by saying that seizing territory “is not what allies do.”

Macron told reporters in Kananaskis that things are not going in the right direction, “whether it’s Canada or Greenland or our friends in Denmark. That’s why I was there two days ago. We need respect,” he said.

Only Macron and Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni can know what he was talking about when the leaders gathered on Monday morning, and she

rolled her eyes

. But it’s not hard to guess.

Trump’s presence in Kananaskis had the intense gravitational pull of a black hole. The president sat at the centre of this universe, caring nothing for matters beyond the boundaries of his personal event horizon.

The Americans signed on to a

leaders’ statement on Israel and Iran

that called for a “de-escalation of hostilities,” but it was a diluted effort that stopped short of urging a ceasefire.

On his way home, Trump had his revenge upon Macron, by saying on social media that the “publicity-seeking French president” was mistaken in suggesting Trump had left early to work on a ceasefire. “Much bigger than that,” he said. “Whether purposely or not, Emmanuel always gets it wrong.”

Such pettiness undermines the sense of G7 unity, but it doesn’t put pressure on its shared values of pluralism and liberal democracy.

But Trump did that too. Earlier on Monday, in his meeting with Carney,

he complained how unfair it was that Vladimir Putin’s Russia had been kicked out of the then G8

— a subject he raised three times.

“Putin speaks to me; he doesn’t speak to anybody else. He was very insulted when he got tossed out of the G8, as I would be … He’s not a happy person about it,” Trump said.

Such affinity for an autocrat who has the face of a man who enjoys clubbing baby seals to death is baffling.

On Monday night, Russia unleashed one of the most intense barrages of the war against Ukraine’s major cities:

deliberate attacks against the civilian population

that killed 12 and injured 138, according to Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The Ukrainian president met with Carney on Tuesday morning and called it “a difficult night.” He looked bereft, in part because he’d flown halfway round the world to meet a U.S. president who was no longer there.

Carney condemned the “barbarism” of the Russians and revealed a

new package of military and financial aid

— including $2-billion worth of drones, helicopters and ammunition and $2 billion in additional financing — as a sign of Canada’s “unwavering” support.

Macron said that “the common push that is emerging is to say: ‘we need to strengthen sanctions’,” and that the Europeans are preparing much stronger sanctions against Russia than the U.S. has imposed.

However, Zelenskyy was looking for a united G7 front to pressure Russia into an unconditional ceasefire, and Trump’s support for Putin was a signal that there is no such front.

Canadian officials said there would be no G7 leaders’ statement on Ukraine because the Americans wanted to water down comments critical of Russia —

although they later retracted that claim

. Carney issued a chair’s statement at the end of the summit that called on Russia to commit to an unconditional ceasefire, but admitted that some allies wanted comments included that went “above and beyond what is said in the chair’s summary.”

Zelenskyy ended up leaving Kananaskis early too, without receiving the one-on-one with Trump he sought or the moral backing of leaders’ statement of support that included the U.S.

The G7 represents half of worldwide nominal net wealth. It has been a powerful force for international order for more than 50 years.

It still does good work on the margins: a

critical minerals action plan

was released in Kananaskis and endorsed by “outreach” countries like India, as was a strategy on

transnational repression

But Trump’s rejection of the G7’s founding principles puts its future effectiveness in doubt, especially two years from now when the U.S. will hold the rotating presidency.

In his closing press conference, Carney made the case for the G7. He said having just nine people in the room allowed for “direct dialogue and frank exchanges.”

“That is particularly valuable, in my opinion,” he said. By all accounts, he handled himself well. Macron told reporters the prime minister “pacified” debates that got too contentious.

But what hope for free trade, multilateralism and representative government is there when the leader of the free world is a protectionist with despotic tendencies

who has said he believes, as Napoleon did

, that “he who saves his country does not violate any law”?

National Post

jivison@criffel.ca

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The Century Initiative has nothing to offer Canada apart from hubris, desperation and bad ideas. As the G7 Summit concludes in Alberta, a province that is key to unlocking true Canadian prosperity and dynamism, Canada cannot afford to listen to those who helped push the country into stagnation.

Last week, Century Initiative CEO Lisa Lalande

penned an op-ed

in the Toronto Star that not only attacked the federal government’s immigration cuts but also natural resources as a tool of economic growth.

Instead, Lalande outlined a plan for growth that predictably began with returning to the Trudeau-era status quo on mass immigration.

It is time that the Century Initiative takes a seat and stops pretending that its immigrationist schemes should still have any influence over Canadian policy.

The Century Initiative got what it wanted during Justin Trudeau’s government when yearly immigration numbers skyrocketed to nearly

half a million

people per year. From 2014 to now, the Canadian population has expanded by

over five million people

, which is unprecedented in the modern era.

What did Canadians get in return? They got unaffordable housing, strained services and a tight job market that is punishing the youngest members of the workforce.

These terrible policies fundamentally damaged the integrity, reputation and effectiveness of Canada’s once-sterling immigration system. Three years ago, public servants of the useful variety

warned

the federal government that housing affordability was at risk if immigration numbers continued to rise. Trudeau’s cabinet ignored them.

The Aristotle Foundation

released a report

in March that found that the ratio between housing completions and immigration exploded from 2:1 in 2015 to 5:1 in 2023. That is not sustainable, and those who tried to say otherwise at the time were nothing more than gaslighters.

Last week, former immigration minister Marc Miller

lauded

the Trudeau government’s mass immigration policies by claiming that they were vital for GDP growth. That is a self-indictment, not a badge of honour.

Canada’s weak GDP growth over the past decade exposes the failure of this radical experiment. Yearly per-person GDP growth under Trudeau amounted to under 0.3 per cent, the

lowest

in recent history.

Was that worth the explosion in housing prices that depressed the dreams of millions of young Canadians and the ongoing robbery of their entry into the job market? Of course not.

Nobody apart from a few corporate head offices has enjoyed the scarce benefits of the immigration regime, but everyone else has felt the negative side effects, of which there are plenty. Young Canadians, especially university students and recent graduates, are currently

strugglin

g to find jobs of any kind.

It’s not that there has been an exodus or disappearance of the Canadian teenagers who used to work the fryer or operate roller-coasters at the theme park. It’s that they have been replaced.

the words

of Sean Strickland, the executive director of Canada’s Building Trades Union (CBTU), “Canadian workers are now being replaced by international workers at an increasing pace, on work that was previously assigned to Canadian workers.”

Deregulating Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program in 2022

doubled the hiring

of low-paid foreign employees, leaving 200,000 Canadian teens jobless last August.

Alberta’s Minister of Jobs Matt Jones

remarked

last November that slashing the annual intake of people, including temporary workers, could free up better job opportunities for the province’s youth, who suffer from an unemployment rate of 14.3 per cent.

In this current climate, Canada cannot sustain high immigration while ensuring low youth unemployment and attainable housing.

The Century Initiative has no economic or moral high ground from which it can argue against a resource-driven strategy for growth, as it did in the Toronto Star op-ed. Locating, extracting and exporting our minerals and energy should be a national goal, and it enjoys at least nominal support from both the Liberal government and the Conservative opposition.

Canadian oil and gas alone were

valued

at $1.6 trillion in 2022, more than all other resources combined. Canada currently

produces

60 minerals in 200 mines across the country producing almost

$72 billion

in value in 2023.

There are 129 potential projects related to mining that could be pursued in the next decade, and they are worth an additional $93.6 billion.

Combined, there are over

500 possible

resource projects in Canadian soil that could generate an eye-popping $600 billion in private capital and $1.1 trillion added to GDP by 2035.

This is where the real, tangible economic growth will come from. Anybody trying to downplay this is neither serious nor worth listening to.

Obviously, good immigration policy is beneficial. The past decade’s migration policies have been anything but that.

If Canada is to unlock its natural resource wealth, it will need skilled, highly educated professionals from around the world. However, they will not choose Canada over the United States so long as housing in Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver costs more than Dallas or Phoenix, where the salaries are higher.

The

exit of a handful

of left-wing humanities professors from the U.S. to Canada is not evidence that an anti-Trump brain drain is on the horizon. Canada must become a more affordable place to live so international talent can be incentivized to come here.

That will not happen so long as immigration rates continue to vastly outstrip housing starts. Canada has to break the cycle of economic dependence on immigration and take the pain that comes with that.

Leaving aside high-skill immigration, something Canada once excelled in cultivating, there is no justification for continuing to flood the country with low-skill underpaid labour so that fast-food companies can hire from an underclass.

Canadians want reforms to immigration, and the data has consistently supported that for nearly two years. This is not because they are misinformed or infected with disinformation; it’s because their children cannot find employment and have to remain housed in their basement because an apartment is too expensive.

The last thing Canada needs is more lectures from immigrationist ideologues who continue to advocate for a failed policy regime that is killing the futures of young Canadians and keeping families locked out of home ownership.

It is time to move on.

National Post

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Khalila Mohammed had a hell of a day on July 7, 2023

. When an alleged drug-related robbery outside the Toronto supervised-injection clinic where she worked led to a shootout, in which an innocent passerby was killed, she decided to help the wounded alleged robber

(who is not accused of firing a shot, but is charged with manslaughter)

: tending to his injuries; stashing away his bloody clothes; facilitating his fleeing the scene; advising him to lay low; and lying to police about what happened. She later pursued a romantic relationship with him.

Whoops!

These are agreed facts, per Mohammed’s

plea of guilty to being an accessory to manslaughter.

Mohammed was a worker at the South Riverdale Community Health Centre and a

supporter of harm reduction and drug decriminalization

. The victim was passerby, Karolina Huebner-Makurat, by all accounts a much-beloved mother of two.

Ironically, considering her apparently beyond-reason devotion to the harm-reduction (or drug-taking?) cause, Mohammed, and indeed the clinic where she worked, also played a significant role in knocking centrist Canadians and even generally-lefty Torontonians away from harm reduction as a model for coping with the opioids crisis. Mohammed’s lawyer, the estimable Brian Greenspan,

said she developed “misplaced compassion”

even toward the people selling the clinic’s clients the garbage that supervised-injection facilities are supposed to protect them from, should they overdose on the garbage in question.

Not even a month after the shooting outside the South Riverdale Community Health Centre,

the same facility was found to be offering chocolate bars in exchange for used needles

— not just to their clients (which really isn’t a bad idea), but on a sign in their front window to the general public, effectively encouraging people (say, neighbourhood kids) to hunt down dirty drug needles.

“In an exuberance to get used needles off the street one of our staff posted a sign that was never meant for the public. In no way, shape, or form was that communication meant for children,” Jason Altenberg, CEO of the facility, bizarrely told National Post at the time.

Who is “exuberant” about cleaning up needles in the vicinity of supervised-injection facilities? One of the

selling points

of such facilities was they were supposed to lead to

fewer

used needles scattered around the neighbourhood. For myriad reasons, it hasn’t worked — or if it has, the effects have been swallowed whole by the larger opioids problem, which (fingers crossed!) reached its nadir during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Harm-reduction efforts didn’t cause this crisis. Many people who might have overdosed alone or without recourse to help have been saved at facilities like South Riverdale. And now that facility is one of many that don’t offer supervised-injection services anymore, in no small part because people like Mohammed and the rogue chocolatier lost the plot and practically begged the provincial government to shut them down,

which it did

earlier this year. So, well done, everyone.

Anyway, no word of a lie, Khalila Mohammed won’t spend a day behind bars for her astonishing series of decisions on July 7, 2023 — not unless she violates the terms of her so-called “house arrest,” which allows her to leave home for work, education, to go to the gym, for counselling, for family emergencies, to perform community service … well, OK, it’s less “house arrest” than a “regular daily routine,” but she’s not allowed to be out after 11 p.m.

The Crown, to its credit, argued for a proper custodial sentence that somewhat fit the crime: two years behind bars. “People who have done less have been put in jail. A conditional sentence is not sufficient,” prosecutor Jay Spare told Ontario Court of Justice Judge Russell Silverstein. “Denunciation and deterrence require actual jail.”

This is a crucial point that often seems lost in modern mainstream criminal-justice discussions: The notions of denunciation and deterrence aren’t relics of the Dark Ages;

they’re explicitly stated goals of criminal sentencing

. The victim’s widower, Adrian Makurat, seems to be an uncommonly forgiving and magnanimous fellow — more than I think I could be,

if my minding-her-own-business wife had been cut down by a bullet allegedly fired by a man out on bail.

But that could have been anyone’s wife or mother walking along Queen Street East that day in July 2023. It could easily have been one of Mohammed’s apparently beloved clients at the health centre. This concerns all of society.

Criminal justice is usually complicated, and reactionism is often unhelpful, but neither is always the case: This “sentence” is an abomination. Someone needs to answer for it — and for many other sentences besides — and in this case, it’s not Prime Minister Mark Carney or his predecessor Justin Trudeau. Silverstein is a provincial appointment.

The maximum sentence available under the law was 14 years

in prison. Mohammed got zero, and two hours a day to work out at her local GoodLife Fitness, which — in the absence of any government or judicial action — should perhaps consider cancelling her membership.

National Post

cselley@postmedia.com

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Monday must have been painful for President Donald J. Trump. On the tenth anniversary of his

escalator descent

from the gaudy heights of Trump Tower, he was confined to a modest conference table, one amongst the G7, in a Kananaskis, Alberta room decorated in modest alpine themes, rather than late-Saddam gilded baubles. By evening he was gone, back to Washington to preside over the Israel-Iran war. Given that his G7 counterparts are perpetually on tenterhooks should he launch an eruption, his early leave-taking was likely unlamented.

There was urgent business back home, which Trump even addressed in Kananaskis. The leading — there is a vigorous competition for the title — malign agitator of MAGA world, Tucker Carlson, was

suggesting

that Trump had been sucked into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s warmongering. That is more than a bit sensitive, as it would suggest that Trump’s thrashing about on tariffs and trade was also operative in foreign policy.

Making sense of Tucker’s ravings is a fool’s errand, but that he got such adverse attention from Trump is noteworthy. Trump had started the week insisting, as per usual, on a deal with Tehran, and concluded it — after waiting overnight to better align himself with the prevailing side — by backing Israel’s preemptive strike.

Thus, Netanyahu has taught the world something about how to handle Trump — which was, in fact, the principal, if unspoken, agenda item at the G7. Better, actually, to discuss all that with Trump out of the room.

Netanyahu has been threatening strikes against Iran since long before Trump glided down the escalator. Former administrations were opposed and took that option of the table in favour of various combinations of diplomacy and sanctions. The original Obama deal with Iran was opposed by Netanyahu, and he was pleased when Trump ended it during his first term. The Israeli leader — next year celebrating the thirtieth (!) anniversary of first becoming prime minister — has a longer view than Trump’s permits himself. Washington may be governed by social media, but Jerusalem isn’t.

Netanyahu knew that the Trump administration — governed by the desideratum that any deal is another addition to the oeuvre of the art of the dealer — would, given enough time, make a bad deal with Iran, one that did not protect Israeli interests. Just last month, Trump

sidelined Israel

in declaring a ceasefire with the Houthis in Yemen, having failed to knock them out with military strikes. Then, Trump

negotiated directly with Hamas

to release an American hostage, separating that case from the other Israeli hostages. Then, Trump

signed a massive arms deal

with Saudi Arabia in Riyadh, a carrot that had been previously tied to an extension of the Abraham Accords. Trump gave it up prematurely.

If all that happened in May, it was clear that Trump could well capitulate to Iran in June. Evidence from elsewhere confirmed Trump’s irresoluteness. He has alternately been badgering Ukraine and Russia with greater or lesser ferocity for months, only to see aerial missile and drone strikes increase. He backed down on tariffs with China when it cut off mineral exports. He backed down on deportations when his friends in the luxury hotel business complained about difficulties in exploiting cheap labour.

Thus, Netanyahu knew that time was running out — not with Tehran’s progress toward a bomb, but with Trump sidelining Israel again. While in the past — under Biden, Obama, or all the way back to Reagan — Israel may have feared repercussions in acting against American policy, Netanyahu knew that Trump would back down. Even more, if the strikes were successful — and if they made for good television, which aerial strikes often do — Trump would be eager to claim that he was playing four-dimensional chess all along.

The president was annoyed that the

acronym

“TACO” — Trump Always Chickens Out — has been applied to his tariff and trade policy. It’s a bit unfair, but it has some truth in it. He doesn’t chicken out as much as recalculate constantly and adjust to the prevailing winds of the day, unburdened by principle or long-term strategy. The TACO taunt can be preserved, but awkwardly: Trump Accommodates as Circumstances Oscillate.

If the circumstances change, or can be changed, Trump can abandon any position in favour of a new one. That was Netanyahu’s calculation, and last week he was vindicated inasmuch as he got what he had long wanted — direct strikes on Iran with American backing. That Trump had a different position at the beginning of the week proves that TACOs can be considered fast food.

While it is too soon to know how the Israel-Iran war will develop, Netanyahu’s strike has taught the region — and the world — a valuable lesson about how to navigate the feckless and floundering world of Trump policy. Change the circumstances, even against Trump’s will. Then serve the tacos.

National Post

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Well, at least he didn’t walk out. While U.S. President Donald Trump left the G7 meeting in Kananaskis Monday night, it wasn’t in
the huff
the world witnessed at Charlevoix in 2018. This time, after a day of huddles and the signing of a U.K.–U.S. mini-deal that slashed auto tariffs, Trump
hurried back
to the White House because of “what’s going on in the Middle East.” His exit left Prime Minister Mark Carney and the remaining five leaders to hammer out the rest of the agenda, from trade to security to artificial intelligence, while keeping a nervous eye on the Iran-Israel war.

Throughout the meeting, Carney didn’t step on any mines, but did make a major pivot. In welcoming Trump to Canada, Carney diplomatically
thanked him
“for his leadership” and that of the United States in the G7, and praised Trump further at the start of the meeting. It’s a far cry from his tone during the spring election campaign, when Carney depicted Trump as an existential menace to Canadian sovereignty that only he and the Liberal party could contain.

Since taking office, however, Carney has switched gears. He avoided getting Zelenskiied
at the White House
in early May, and then paved the way for this week’s G7 with personal texts and phone calls to Trump, which the President
has reportedly appreciated
. Carney also finessed the summit’s agenda, putting economics and energy at the top of the list, while climate change was an also-ran.

The goal was not just to run a smooth meeting: Carney wants a trade deal before the summer is out. And he may get one. Trump
committed to doing a deal within 30 days
, despite the two leaders’ very different philosophies on tariffs. Trump and Carney talked for 30 minutes of a larger 70-minute Canada-U.S. bilateral meeting, which Carney
later described
as “Fantastic.”

But the summit’s most revealing moment came not from Carney or Trump, but from Brussels. On Monday, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen
conceded bluntly
, that “Donald is right” on the threat posed by China, which is flooding international markets with state-subsidized goods. While the EU’s solution is greater trade among allies, instead of an international tariff regime, the end game is the same: isolate Beijing and undercut its economic and geopolitical influence.

This will be Carney’s next big domestic test, and he has a lot of voices competing for his attention. Container traffic from China through the Port of Montreal is
up sharply
since Trump’s first-round tariffs. Western and Eastern premiers are clamouring for a deal with Beijing to remove punitive tariffs on Canadian canola and seafood. Meanwhile, former CSIS and RCMP investigators have
called for a public inquiry
into a “Buddhist monastery” linked to the Chinese Communist Party that has bought thousands of acres of Prince Edward Island farmland, alleging that is it
establishing a stealth CCP beachhead
in our own backyard.

So far, this government has ignored the issue of foreign interference. It hasn’t established a foreign agents’ registry or taken steps to implement the Hogue report. Carney has taken a tougher stance on fentanyl and money laundering, as evidenced by the government’s
new border security bill
, motivated by Washington’s demands, not domestic politics.

But, Carney will have to choose sides. And if he wants that cozy relationship with Trump to continue, and get a trade deal with the U.S., it’s clear where he needs to come down.

Fortunately, it’s the same side that Canada should have picked for the last decade. If there’s a silver lining in the current chaos, it’s that Trump’s economic realignment will move allies to act in concert against the bigger threat: the hegemonic ambitions of Beijing. America may not be the friend it once was, but in this brave new world order, it’s still the better choice.

Postmedia News

Tasha Kheiriddin is Postmedia’s national politics columnist.

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Mark Carney’s election platform did not include giving himself the power to suspend the entirety of federal law and, by extension, democracy. But that’s what he aims to do with

Bill C-5

, which he hopes to ram through by

Canada Day

Conservatives, astonishingly,

haven’t ruled out

helping the prime minister on this front, which is a royal shame since they’re our last line of defence.

Introduced to the House of Commons on June 6, the bill would create a Building Canada Act to fast-track any project the feds consider to be in the national interest. The act would do this by allowing the Liberal government to completely bypass parliamentary scrutiny.

The act would give cabinet the power to

add any project

it likes to a list of “national interest projects” by issuing an order-in-council. Cabinet would also have the power to

make a list

of federal laws that can be suspended at any time, with the stroke of a pen, with respect to any designated national interest project.

To exempt any designated projects from any number of suspendable laws, the feds would simply need to

write a regulation

specifying which laws no longer apply to which projects, and it would be so.

For example, the Building Canada Act would allow Carney and his team to designate all work by his forthcoming home-construction agency as a national interest project, and shield all of its business from conflict-of-interest laws, from transparency rules set out in the Access to Information Act, from the scope of the auditor general, from federal taxes via the Income Tax Act, and from police via the Criminal Code.

The same legal exemptions could be given to a favoured engineering firm, telecom company, construction giant, consulting behemoth, etc., as long as cabinet finds a national interest angle in the work. Foreign entities could even be excused from following the Investment Canada Act, which exists to protect economic and national security.

The Building Canada Act would also allow cabinet to exempt preferred companies from environmental legislation, such as the Impact Assessment Act, the Species At Risk Act, the Canada National Parks Act and the federal carbon tax.

So, if Carney wanted to give a foreign electric vehicle manufacturer a leg up, or allow a solar plant to be built on federal parkland, or free an Indigenous-owned pipeline from the mound of rules that apply to their non-Indigenous competitors, he could do just that. The same could be done for any industry, really: if reconciliation is always in the public interest, why not free Indigenous fishing corporations from the constraints of the Fisheries Act?

Making matters more concerning are Carney’s own potential private-sector interests: he is the former chair and environmental, social, governance (ESG) lead of Brookfield Asset Management. Carney’s publicly traded assets

have been

put into a blind trust, but we’re still waiting on financial disclosures through the ethics commissioner. All considered, he could stand to benefit from the suspension of law in the area of modular housing and green energy, for example, given Brookfield’s holdings.

Aside from the corruption risk, the Building Canada Act could ultimately create the expectation that the feds should selectively suspend clunky laws to get anything of worth built, incentivizing lobbying campaigns and distracting from the actual job of government. If some Canadian laws are so hostile to development that they warrant total suspension, as the Liberals seem to admit by tabling Bill C-5, they should spend their time fixing them. Fast-tracking exceptions aren’t out of the question, either: if Parliament wants to give cabinet the ability to suspend certain pre-determined clauses in certain cases, it can go right ahead.

Indeed, the left decried Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s plan to repeal the burdensome Impact Assessment Act, which hasn’t approved a single project in its six years of existence, and requires proponents to file everything from sociology dissertations to greenhouse gas projections in their applications. But Poilievre’s intent was to replace it with something else — and he certainly didn’t set out to suspend the whole roster of environmental laws, as seems to be Carney’s approach.

Proponents of the scheme will likely defend it by pointing to the fact that Bill C-5, as it’s currently written, proposes a list of only 13 suspendable laws. These include the Impact Assessment Act (and its predecessor, which still applies to a number of projects underway in Canada), the Fisheries Act, the Indian Act, the National Capital Act, the Migratory Birds Convention Act, a part of the Canada Transportation Act, the Species at Risk Act, and a handful of federal laws that govern Canadian bodies of water.

It’s a fraction of the hundreds of federal laws that are on the books — but that’s just for now. The moment the Building Canada Act becomes law, that list can be expanded at cabinet’s pleasure. In that way, Bill C-5 is a Trojan horse.

The Liberals are now moving the bill along at a pace so fast that it escapes the rule of law. The House of Commons transport committee is scheduled to handle the bill this week, with only one day of witness hearings

planned

before MPs hit their deadline to propose amendments. It will simply be impossible to give this wide-ranging bill the full consideration it deserves, as a proposal to allow cabinet to pause any law at any time should take months, not hours.

Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet got it right last week

when

he denounced the bill and promised to fight the Liberals’ attempt to speed it through the House of Commons without any meaningful debate.

The Conservatives are

still on the fence

, but they shouldn’t be. Supporting Bill C-5 in its current form means unleashing the Liberals from the oversight of Parliament, which would be a catastrophic dereliction of duty for the Opposition.

National Post

Source: National Post (Opinions)

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