Prime Minister Mark Carney described Canada as the “most European of non-European countries” at a joint summit in Brussels last summer. This eye-raising remark led some political pundits and columnists (including me ) to speculate that his personal mission wasn’t to improve relations with the U.S., but to jump into the “waiting arms” of the European Union.

If that was his ultimate goal, it seemed rather unrealistic from the very beginning.

The EU has the world’s second-largest economy (behind the U.S.) and third-largest GDP (behind China and the U.S.), whereas Canada is a middle power at the best of times. Our country’s water, energy and natural resources may have real value in the free market economy, but the EU’s 27 member states wouldn’t want to pay hefty premiums to purchase them when many options exist in a closer (and cheaper) location.

Meanwhile, Canada and the EU already had a trade deal in place, the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), which was signed in 2017. CETA removes 99 per cent of all tariff lines on products from the two trade partners. What more did Canada have to offer? You can only lower the price of back bacon and maple syrup by so much, after all.

And yet, it appears that a full-fledged Canada-EU alliance may be in the works.

Bloomberg published an exclusive story this week that revealed Canada and the EU are “working toward a new, all-encompassing relationship that will range from trade to security.” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will reportedly address this matter at her state of the union address in Strasbourg, France on Sept. 16. Carney will attend this speech and he’ll then “address European lawmakers the following day.” While the final details haven’t been unveiled, the arrangements will reportedly “aim to cover all areas of the relationship, including trade, security, supply chains and critical raw materials.”

Bloomberg reporters Andrea Palasciano, Alberto Nardelli and Brian Platt pointed out that “It’s not clear whether new legal tools would be needed to formalize the partnership.” This will largely depend on what’s covered in the arrangement, of course.

This announcement coincided with the very same day Canada placed counter-tariffs on various U.S. products in the midst of the ongoing trade war. Which obviously means it was no coincidence! It may also help explain why Ottawa didn’t place the counter-tariffs for more than two weeks after negotiations fell apart to prevent the implementation of U.S. President Donald Trump’s 50 per cent tariffs. This made no logistical sense at the time, but the EU and Canada were evidently putting some finishing touches on the current round of discussions.

To be clear, building or increasing trade with other countries, trading blocs and economic unions is a perfectly acceptable strategy. Canada certainly needs to look at Europe, along with Asia, Africa and other regions in the world, to diversify our trade interests and build additional economic growth. It’s a strategic decision that many previous prime ministers, including Stephen Harper, firmly believed in.

But it can’t be done at the expense of Canada-U.S. trade. That would be a poor political strategy — and a costly one, at that.

“The United States is Canada’s largest trading partner in goods and services,” the Government of Canada directly acknowledges on a webpage related to Canada-U.S. relations, and “Canada is the U.S.’ second-largest trading partner.” Moreover, the Canada-U.S. economic relationship resulted in “nearly $3.6 billion (US$2.6 billion) worth of goods and services (that) crossed the border each day in 2024.”

Trade between Canada and the U.S. has always been the most logical and financially beneficial for both countries. Our close political and geographic ties have always worked to our advantage and to their advantage, truth be told. It’s a huge source of income that can’t be replicated with the EU, trade with China or anything else, for that matter.

Meanwhile, a recent Canadian Federation of Independent Business survey noted that Canadian exporters could potentially lose half their revenue due to Trump’s tariffs. An Oxford Economics report for the Canadian American Business Council mentioned the possibility of hundreds of thousands of jobs lost in both countries due to the tariffs as well as a potential decline in GDP. If you think that a new Canada-EU relationship is going to soften this devastating economic blow in either instance, you’ve got another thing coming.

We all know that Trump has been difficult to deal with on matters related to tariffs and trade. This has been going on not for weeks, months — but years and over two presidential terms. No one is even suggesting that Carney must give in to every whim, demand and desire from Washington. Negotiations on trade, like all matters, is a process of give and take. The Americans may be much larger and more powerful than we are, but Canada has a voice and the ability to speak up.

At the same time, Carney can’t throw his hands in the air and give up because there have been roadblocks and last-minute interventions by the Americans. His obsession with the EU and Europe can’t be the guiding light for Canada’s economic future and destiny, either. It will make us weaker, poorer and less desirable to trade with.

National Post

There’s no doubt that Prime Minister Mark Carney is a man in a hurry.

During Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit this week, the Ukrainian president revealed that his drone team said a partnership deal could be concluded with Canada within 90 days.

“Then Mark said: ‘Can we have it in nine days? And the team immediately said: ‘Yes, we can’,” Zelenskyy recounted.

The need for speed has been a hallmark of Carney’s time in government. But senior officials complain privately that the federal bureaucracy is struggling to keep up with the prime minister’s pace and ambition.

Frustrations with the public service are said to be at the root of the rumoured departure of the head of the new Defence Investment Agency (DIA), Doug Guzman. (He appears to have been talked into staying , for now at least).

But the failure of the bureaucracy to enact Carney’s agenda will become a recurring feature if ambitious targets are not met.

In his introductory communication to federal employees in June 2025, the clerk of the Privy Council, Michael Sabia, warned that internal procedures have become too complicated and too slow. “The standing operating procedures don’t work anymore,” he said. His mantra, Focus, Simplify and Accountability, have since been drummed into the public service’s 346,000 employees.

There is undoubtedly a culture of caution among the senior mandarins, who head rigid, hierarchical silos that are as intent on making sure negative things don’t happen as on ensuring positive things do.

The public is not impressed. The benchmark annual Confederation of Tomorrow survey suggested last summer that two-thirds of Canadians lack confidence in the ability of the public service to spend taxpayers’ money wisely.

The average public servant, who could rarely be mistaken for a ray of sunshine, wasn’t happy even before recent developments. The government’s public Service Employee Survey for 2024 suggested fewer than half believe senior management in their department make effective, timely decisions, and only six in 10 think the proposal of a new idea would be well received.

Carney and Sabia’s solution has been to try to bypass the bureaucracy on key files by setting up new agencies — the aforementioned DIA, Build Canada Homes and the Major Projects Office — to ensure that their agenda is implemented.

However, one former senior bureaucrat said none of the outsiders brought in to run these organizations have any sense of how the public service works, even though the bulk of their staff often come from legacy departments, such as Public Services and Procurement. He said Shared Services Canada, a relatively new department designed to centralize all IT functions, took 10 years to create.

The argument is that this kind of disruption will shake up the inertia and see a repeat of the bureaucracy’s finest hour during the pandemic, when nearly a quarter of Canadians were out of work and the public service processed 2.4-million Employment Insurance applications in days on a 46-year-old computer system.

But even the trade war with the United States has not produced the kind of bold, collaborative, adaptive response that is being sought.

The former senior public servant, who spoke to National Post on condition of anonymity, said part of the problem is Sabia.

“When he came in, he said all the right things. But you have to ask yourself now that there is an empirical record, what are the results?” he said.

“When you create new machinery, you slow things down. The DIA, the Major Projects Office and Build Canada Homes — they sound like they will speed things up by hacking through the bureaucracy. But the paradox is that they take a lot of bureaucracy to set up.”

He said in his opinion Carney and Sabia should have tried to fix the existing system first, before creating new structures.

“When the prime minister brings in his personal friends, the rest of the system says: ‘Alright smarty-pants, go and figure this out.’ It makes enemies in the existing structure.”

One incident in particular upset some senior bureaucrats; namely, Sabia’s decision to promote Christiane Fox from deputy clerk of the Privy Council to deputy minister of National Defence. Fox was sanctioned by the ethics commissioner for hiring an old university acquaintance in a prior job. “That says to the system that he doesn’t care about the institution,” the former official said.

Another criticism levelled at the senior levels of government is that the approvals process for action has become over-centralized.

Carney and Sabia have been focused on the Canada-U.S. issue for obvious reasons.

But their critics say they have set up a structure where all big decisions have to go through them, creating a logjam in Ottawa on many other files.

The sense that power has become too concentrated was a theme in a speech given by retired deputy minister John Knubley at a testimonial dinner organized by the Public Policy Forum last May.

One of the lessons he passed on from a long career in the public service was that senior leaders should not be the ultimate gatekeepers, and people closer to the problems should be empowered to come up with solutions.

“I worry about what’s happening in Ottawa today,” Knubley said . “While I very much like the shape of directions being set, there are signs only the smart guys at the top are making the decisions.”

Every government that I have covered this century has talked about reforming the bureaucracy to focus on outcomes.

Sir Humphrey Appleby, in the classic British sitcom Yes Minister, dismissed such efforts as being comparable to drawing a knife through a bowl of marbles.

In this case, everyone appears to be on the same page when it comes to grasping the opportunity to bolster Canada’s sovereignty and make the country more prosperous and resilient.

But the anecdotal evidence is that the prime minister’s expansive agenda lacks buy-in from many of the people it relies on to implement it.

National Post

jivison@criffel.ca

• Zelenskyy and Carney sign deal to boost drone production before heading to Banff retreat
• Mark Carney’s support surge coming largely from former Conservatives, poll finds

There’s no doubt that Prime Minister Mark Carney is a man in a hurry.

During Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit this week, the Ukrainian president revealed that his drone team said a partnership deal could be concluded with Canada within 90 days.

“Then Mark said: ‘Can we have it in nine days? And the team immediately said: ‘Yes, we can’,” Zelenskyy recounted.

The need for speed has been a hallmark of Carney’s time in government. But senior officials complain privately that the federal bureaucracy is struggling to keep up with the prime minister’s pace and ambition.

Frustrations with the public service are said to be at the root of the rumoured departure of the head of the new Defence Investment Agency (DIA), Doug Guzman. (He appears to have been talked into staying , for now at least).

But the failure of the bureaucracy to enact Carney’s agenda will become a recurring feature if ambitious targets are not met.

In his introductory communication to federal employees in June 2025, the clerk of the Privy Council, Michael Sabia, warned that internal procedures have become too complicated and too slow. “The standing operating procedures don’t work anymore,” he said. His mantra, Focus, Simplify and Accountability, have since been drummed into the public service’s 346,000 employees.

There is undoubtedly a culture of caution among the senior mandarins, who head rigid, hierarchical silos that are as intent on making sure negative things don’t happen as on ensuring positive things do.

The public is not impressed. The benchmark annual Confederation of Tomorrow survey suggested last summer that two-thirds of Canadians lack confidence in the ability of the public service to spend taxpayers’ money wisely.

The average public servant, who could rarely be mistaken for a ray of sunshine, wasn’t happy even before recent developments. The government’s public Service Employee Survey for 2024 suggested fewer than half believe senior management in their department make effective, timely decisions, and only six in 10 think the proposal of a new idea would be well received.

Carney and Sabia’s solution has been to try to bypass the bureaucracy on key files by setting up new agencies — the aforementioned DIA, Build Canada Homes and the Major Projects Office — to ensure that their agenda is implemented.

However, one former senior bureaucrat said none of the outsiders brought in to run these organizations have any sense of how the public service works, even though the bulk of their staff often come from legacy departments, such as Public Services and Procurement. He said Shared Services Canada, a relatively new department designed to centralize all IT functions, took 10 years to create.

The argument is that this kind of disruption will shake up the inertia and see a repeat of the bureaucracy’s finest hour during the pandemic, when nearly a quarter of Canadians were out of work and the public service processed 2.4-million Employment Insurance applications in days on a 46-year-old computer system.

But even the trade war with the United States has not produced the kind of bold, collaborative, adaptive response that is being sought.

The former senior public servant, who spoke to National Post on condition of anonymity, said part of the problem is Sabia.

“When he came in, he said all the right things. But you have to ask yourself now that there is an empirical record, what are the results?” he said.

“When you create new machinery, you slow things down. The DIA, the Major Projects Office and Build Canada Homes — they sound like they will speed things up by hacking through the bureaucracy. But the paradox is that they take a lot of bureaucracy to set up.”

He said in his opinion Carney and Sabia should have tried to fix the existing system first, before creating new structures.

“When the prime minister brings in his personal friends, the rest of the system says: ‘Alright smarty-pants, go and figure this out.’ It makes enemies in the existing structure.”

One incident in particular upset some senior bureaucrats; namely, Sabia’s decision to promote Christiane Fox from deputy clerk of the Privy Council to deputy minister of National Defence. Fox was sanctioned by the ethics commissioner for hiring an old university acquaintance in a prior job. “That says to the system that he doesn’t care about the institution,” the former official said.

Another criticism levelled at the senior levels of government is that the approvals process for action has become over-centralized.

Carney and Sabia have been focused on the Canada-U.S. issue for obvious reasons.

But their critics say they have set up a structure where all big decisions have to go through them, creating a logjam in Ottawa on many other files.

The sense that power has become too concentrated was a theme in a speech given by retired deputy minister John Knubley at a testimonial dinner organized by the Public Policy Forum last May.

One of the lessons he passed on from a long career in the public service was that senior leaders should not be the ultimate gatekeepers, and people closer to the problems should be empowered to come up with solutions.

“I worry about what’s happening in Ottawa today,” Knubley said . “While I very much like the shape of directions being set, there are signs only the smart guys at the top are making the decisions.”

Every government that I have covered this century has talked about reforming the bureaucracy to focus on outcomes.

Sir Humphrey Appleby, in the classic British sitcom Yes Minister, dismissed such efforts as being comparable to drawing a knife through a bowl of marbles.

In this case, everyone appears to be on the same page when it comes to grasping the opportunity to bolster Canada’s sovereignty and make the country more prosperous and resilient.

But the anecdotal evidence is that the prime minister’s expansive agenda lacks buy-in from many of the people it relies on to implement it.

National Post

jivison@criffel.ca

• Zelenskyy and Carney sign deal to boost drone production before heading to Banff retreat
• Mark Carney’s support surge coming largely from former Conservatives, poll finds

There’s no doubt that Prime Minister Mark Carney is a man in a hurry.

During Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit this week, the Ukrainian president revealed that his drone team said a partnership deal could be concluded with Canada within 90 days.

“Then Mark said: ‘Can we have it in nine days? And the team immediately said: ‘Yes, we can’,” Zelenskyy recounted.

The need for speed has been a hallmark of Carney’s time in government. But senior officials complain privately that the federal bureaucracy is struggling to keep up with the prime minister’s pace and ambition.

Frustrations with the public service are said to be at the root of the rumoured departure of the head of the new Defence Investment Agency (DIA), Doug Guzman. (He appears to have been talked into staying , for now at least).

But the failure of the bureaucracy to enact Carney’s agenda will become a recurring feature if ambitious targets are not met.

In his introductory communication to federal employees in June 2025, the clerk of the Privy Council, Michael Sabia, warned that internal procedures have become too complicated and too slow. “The standing operating procedures don’t work anymore,” he said. His mantra, Focus, Simplify and Accountability, have since been drummed into the public service’s 346,000 employees.

There is undoubtedly a culture of caution among the senior mandarins, who head rigid, hierarchical silos that are as intent on making sure negative things don’t happen as on ensuring positive things do.

The public is not impressed. The benchmark annual Confederation of Tomorrow survey suggested last summer that two-thirds of Canadians lack confidence in the ability of the public service to spend taxpayers’ money wisely.

The average public servant, who could rarely be mistaken for a ray of sunshine, wasn’t happy even before recent developments. The government’s public Service Employee Survey for 2024 suggested fewer than half believe senior management in their department make effective, timely decisions, and only six in 10 think the proposal of a new idea would be well received.

Carney and Sabia’s solution has been to try to bypass the bureaucracy on key files by setting up new agencies — the aforementioned DIA, Build Canada Homes and the Major Projects Office — to ensure that their agenda is implemented.

However, one former senior bureaucrat said none of the outsiders brought in to run these organizations have any sense of how the public service works, even though the bulk of their staff often come from legacy departments, such as Public Services and Procurement. He said Shared Services Canada, a relatively new department designed to centralize all IT functions, took 10 years to create.

The argument is that this kind of disruption will shake up the inertia and see a repeat of the bureaucracy’s finest hour during the pandemic, when nearly a quarter of Canadians were out of work and the public service processed 2.4-million Employment Insurance applications in days on a 46-year-old computer system.

But even the trade war with the United States has not produced the kind of bold, collaborative, adaptive response that is being sought.

The former senior public servant, who spoke to National Post on condition of anonymity, said part of the problem is Sabia.

“When he came in, he said all the right things. But you have to ask yourself now that there is an empirical record, what are the results?” he said.

“When you create new machinery, you slow things down. The DIA, the Major Projects Office and Build Canada Homes — they sound like they will speed things up by hacking through the bureaucracy. But the paradox is that they take a lot of bureaucracy to set up.”

He said in his opinion Carney and Sabia should have tried to fix the existing system first, before creating new structures.

“When the prime minister brings in his personal friends, the rest of the system says: ‘Alright smarty-pants, go and figure this out.’ It makes enemies in the existing structure.”

One incident in particular upset some senior bureaucrats; namely, Sabia’s decision to promote Christiane Fox from deputy clerk of the Privy Council to deputy minister of National Defence. Fox was sanctioned by the ethics commissioner for hiring an old university acquaintance in a prior job. “That says to the system that he doesn’t care about the institution,” the former official said.

Another criticism levelled at the senior levels of government is that the approvals process for action has become over-centralized.

Carney and Sabia have been focused on the Canada-U.S. issue for obvious reasons.

But their critics say they have set up a structure where all big decisions have to go through them, creating a logjam in Ottawa on many other files.

The sense that power has become too concentrated was a theme in a speech given by retired deputy minister John Knubley at a testimonial dinner organized by the Public Policy Forum last May.

One of the lessons he passed on from a long career in the public service was that senior leaders should not be the ultimate gatekeepers, and people closer to the problems should be empowered to come up with solutions.

“I worry about what’s happening in Ottawa today,” Knubley said . “While I very much like the shape of directions being set, there are signs only the smart guys at the top are making the decisions.”

Every government that I have covered this century has talked about reforming the bureaucracy to focus on outcomes.

Sir Humphrey Appleby, in the classic British sitcom Yes Minister, dismissed such efforts as being comparable to drawing a knife through a bowl of marbles.

In this case, everyone appears to be on the same page when it comes to grasping the opportunity to bolster Canada’s sovereignty and make the country more prosperous and resilient.

But the anecdotal evidence is that the prime minister’s expansive agenda lacks buy-in from many of the people it relies on to implement it.

National Post

jivison@criffel.ca

• Zelenskyy and Carney sign deal to boost drone production before heading to Banff retreat
• Mark Carney’s support surge coming largely from former Conservatives, poll finds

Canada needs to re-learn a distinction: anti-Muslim bigotry is not the same as criticism of Islam.

That distinction is no longer just academic. In the 25 years following 9/11, Canada has spent a lot of time building official machinery around the word “Islamophobia.” A Canadian Press report marking the anniversary this week argued the country has fallen behind, pointing to Ottawa’s decision to fold its Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia into a broader advisory council.

Asmaa Malik, a journalism professor quoted in the piece, called that decision a step toward “dismantling the concept of Islamophobia” altogether. Canadians should refuse anti-Muslim bigotry without qualification. They should refuse, just as firmly, to let “Islamophobia” become the official lens through which one religion is placed beyond the reach of ordinary scrutiny.

I was born in Iran, a country culturally shaped by Islam and the birthplace of the Islamic Revolution of 1979. My mother attends mosque faithfully every Friday and is deeply committed to her faith. My uncle left his graduate studies at UCLA, tore up his green card and returned to Iran to join the revolutionary fervour.

The conversation about Islam is therefore not foreign to me. It runs through my family and my country’s history.

Yet what drew my family, along with millions of other immigrants, to the West was precisely its protection of freedom of religion, speech and conscience. These liberties are secured not only by law but by a cultural tradition that allows people with radically different beliefs to live together.

That tradition depends upon a vital distinction: people must be protected from persecution, but ideas must remain open to scrutiny.

Anti-Muslim bigotry targets Muslims as people. It appears as hatred, discrimination, intimidation or violence directed at individuals because they are Muslim. It has no place in a free society.

Criticism of Islam is something entirely different. Islam, like Christianity, Judaism, Marxism, nationalism or secular liberalism, makes claims about God, morality, law, history and the proper ordering of society. Christian sects the world over await the second coming of Christ and the culmination of history. Religious Jews await the descent of a third temple. Such claims inevitably enter the public square, and none of them, Islam included, can claim immunity from examination.

Indeed, the greater the claim an idea makes over human life, the greater the public’s right to examine it.

That scrutiny is nothing new to Islam itself. Muslim scholars have debated their own tradition for 14 centuries: school against school, reformer against traditionalist, one reading of the Qur’an against another. Treating Islam as too sensitive for outside examination flattens that tradition into a single untouchable claim.

That machinery did not build itself. Debate has given way to prescription: citizens are told which conclusions about religion are acceptable, and which questions may not be asked. Canadians who read a religious text for themselves, or hear it from an influential cleric online, and then voice concern, risk being told they have committed “Islamophobia.”

Here lies the paradox: enforced this way, “Islamophobia” can suppress legitimate criticism of Islam and, in doing so, contribute to the very anti-Muslim bigotry it claims to prevent.

When prominent clerics and Islamic movements proclaim the eventual triumph of Islam over other religions and societies, the message travels the world. Yet when people respond or defend their own beliefs, they risk being accused of hatred.

Islam has never confined itself to making claims about Muslims alone. In the seventh century, the Qur’an revisited the prophets and scriptures of Jews and Christians, presenting itself as their divine correction. The Jesus of the Gospels became the Isa of the Qur’an: not God incarnate, not the crucified and risen redeemer, but a prophet within Islam’s own account of history.

Christians and Jews were placed on the theological defensive from Islam’s beginning. The Qur’an has every right to make those claims in a free society, but Jews and Christians have the same right to answer them. No free society can accept an arrangement in which one religion may challenge all others but cannot itself be challenged.

Suppressing debate does not make disagreement disappear. It drives it underground, where frustration, fear and resentment accumulate. Instead of confronting particular doctrines, texts or political claims, people may begin to direct their hostility toward Muslims themselves. The effort to prevent offence can thereby help create the conditions for genuine bigotry. Debating those disagreements openly does the opposite: it drains the tension that bigotry feeds on.

Canada is now witnessing both anti-Muslim hatred and an alarming rise in antisemitism. Communities can trade statistics over who has suffered more. But beneath these conflicts lies a broader failure: a weakened culture of serious debate.

The Canadian answer is to restore the social contract of open debate: citizens free to question, challenge and rebut each other’s rival claims about God and history, while still owing each other basic decency. Pretending those claims are all the same, or all private, only forces a false peace. A Muslim’s person, property and freedom to worship must be protected. So must the freedom of Jews, Christians, atheists and others to examine and dispute Islamic teachings.

The constitutional tradition Canada inherited from Britain was built through centuries of painful conflict over religion, authority and conscience. That tradition did not end disagreement. It gave Canada something more durable: the capacity to hold disagreement without persecution or violence.

That inheritance inspired millions of immigrants to come here and breathe the air of freedom. We should not surrender it now.

The way forward lies neither in hostility toward Muslims nor in silence about Islam, but in a renewed commitment to a simple principle: protect people, scrutinize ideas.

Bigotry against Muslims must be opposed, without exception. “Islamophobia,” treated as an official paradigm for governing how Canadians may discuss Islam, must be refused just as firmly. Criticism of Islam, its theology, history, texts and political claims, must remain part of legitimate public debate.

Muslims have the right to speak. So do those who disagree with them. That reciprocity is freedom.

National Post

Ali Siadatan is a fellow at the Ideological Defence Institute and the head of education at Tafsik. Follow him at @AlispeaksX.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, my biggest problem was a permission slip.

I was 12 years old and in Grade 7 at PS 89 in Tribeca, about a block from the World Trade Center. My class was supposed to go on a field trip to the Bronx Zoo that morning. When my humanities teacher, Mrs. Garvey, asked everyone to bring their signed permission slips to the front of the classroom, my stomach sank.

I had forgotten to get my mother’s signature.

I asked to be excused and went downstairs to the school office to call her. My mother, a single parent, worked for American Express at 3 World Financial Center, directly across from the World Trade Center.

I asked her to come over and sign my permission slip. She said she would.

What I didn’t know was that my mother had been heading toward the underground shopping complex beneath the World Trade Center to run an errand before work. My call brought her back toward my school. By the time she left, she decided to skip the errand and head directly to her office at American Express.

On the way, she noticed an airplane flying alarmingly low over Lower Manhattan. She wondered whether a movie was being filmed.

Then she watched it strike one of the Twin Towers.

She initially thought she had witnessed some kind of movie stunt or a horrific accident. Then she saw a second plane strike the other tower and realized it wasn’t an accident.

Inside my classroom, we didn’t know what had happened. I remember the room shaking and pencils falling from desks. I thought perhaps one of the custodians had dropped a heavy cleaning cart on the floor above us.

Then we felt another violent shake.

Our classroom windows faced Stuyvesant High School, so we couldn’t see the World Trade Center. Eventually an announcement came over the PA system. As I remember it, we were told there had been a “minor accident” at the World Trade Center. Teachers were instructed to take us downstairs to the cafeteria to be picked up by our parents.

I didn’t go directly to the cafeteria.

I was a curious 12-year-old who needed to know what was happening. I slipped away and took another staircase toward the schoolyard.

What I saw outside has remained with me for 25 years.

Manhattan had stopped moving.

Growing up in New York, I had never seen anything like it. People were standing motionless on the sidewalk, staring upward. For a moment, my 12-year-old mind couldn’t make sense of what could cause an entire street of New Yorkers to stop at once. I remember wondering if there had been some kind of alien landing.

Then I followed their eyes.

I saw the World Trade Center burning.

Smoke poured from the tower. Tiny objects appeared to be falling from high above. At that age, I assumed I was watching debris. Only later did I understand that some of what I saw may not have been debris at all.

I returned to the cafeteria. One of my classmates was crying because she, too, had someone close to her who worked at the World Trade Center.

I didn’t know where my mother was.

There were no smartphones showing someone’s location on a map. I couldn’t text her and ask if she was safe. I could only wait.

Eventually, she appeared. She hugged me, and we left.

Outside, my mother encountered a colleague who had also made it out. They stopped to talk. I don’t remember much of their conversation, but I remember becoming anxious.

I tugged on my mother’s coat and told her we needed to leave.

Not long afterward, I watched one of the towers collapse.

Then we ran.

We fled north through Lower Manhattan with thousands of others. The subways downtown were inaccessible, and returning home to Brooklyn wasn’t an option. Eventually, we reached Midtown and stayed with one of my mother’s friends.

We were extraordinarily fortunate. My mother survived. I survived.

For 25 years, I have occasionally wondered about that unsigned permission slip.

Had I remembered to get my mother’s signature the night before, I would never have needed to call her from school that morning. She might have continued with her errand beneath the World Trade Center instead of turning back toward me.

I will never know whether, by forgetting that permission slip, I inadvertently saved my mother’s life.

I only know that forgetting it changed where my mother was that morning.

Others around us were not so fortunate.

My Grade 6 social studies teacher, Mr. Lee, was one of the people who made history fascinating to me. I remember him telling our class that his brother had been killed aboard one of the hijacked aircraft.

After September 11, I remember seeing the effect that loss had on him. The energetic teacher I had known seemed changed.

That morning didn’t end for us when the smoke cleared. My school was displaced. My mother’s workplace at 3 World Financial Center was damaged, and her job was temporarily relocated to New Jersey.

I was a child. I didn’t have the vocabulary to understand everything I had witnessed.

I do now.

That is why, 25 years later and now living in Toronto, I was stunned to read reports that internal CBC guidance instructed its journalists not to independently describe September 11 as a “terrorist attack.”

CBC has since changed that guidance, allowing its journalists to directly describe September 11 as a terrorist attack. That was the right decision.

Twenty-five years later, September 11 is increasingly history rather than living memory. Millions of adults today weren’t alive when the towers fell. For them, what happened that morning will increasingly be something they learn about rather than remember.

The words we use to describe it matter.

Nineteen al-Qaida hijackers seized four civilian airliners in a co-ordinated attack that killed nearly 3,000 people.

The terror wasn’t an incidental consequence. It was the point.

I remember the classroom shaking and pencils falling.

I remember being told there had been an accident.

I remember walking into the schoolyard and seeing Manhattan standing still.

I remember looking up.

I remember waiting for my mother.

I remember tugging on her coat.

I remember watching a tower collapse.

And I remember running.

Twenty-five years later, we should be able to examine the history and consequences of September 11 without losing sight of the simplest truth about what happened that morning.

It was a terrorist attack.

I was 12 years old.

I was there.

Special to National Post

Jay Nyandak is a University of Toronto graduate and an IT Systems Administrator in Toronto who grew up in New York City.

For political observers, the Toronto mayoral election has been going on for months. But for the general public, the race gets underway this week.

Voters will cast their ballots in a little over six weeks, deciding whether to give incumbent Mayor Olivia Chow another term or opt for one of the main challengers: Councillor Brad Bradford or former federal minister Chris Alexander, a last-minute addition to the race.

Before they can make that decision, however, they will need to consider both Chow’s record and what she is promising for a second term as mayor.

One reason the race is only firing up now is that the period from May (when registrations opened) to October is a long campaign. People tune out during the summer. It’s natural to consider the stretch after Labour Day the real campaign, with the earlier months serving as a warm-up act.

The other reason, though, is that the incumbent has declined to campaign until now. While Chow registered for re-election at the end of May to make her intentions known, she’s so far done little to no campaigning.

She only launched her campaign Wednesday night. Before then, there were no policy announcements or campaign events. And her campaign website offers no substance.

This contrasts with Bradford, who has been vigorously campaigning since registering in May. Opinion polls have consistently shown Chow in the lead with Bradford in a close second. But what will they show now that she’s ramping things up?

Once she starts campaigning, everything changes. The question is how. Chow’s lead could significantly widen. Or, if she fails to meet the moment and doesn’t read the electorate’s pulse, she could fall behind.

The other month, I watched Chow deliver a speech to Scarborough Business Association members that was clearly designed to test out campaign themes.

The mayor focused on reducing 911 response times and keeping taxes low. These aren’t themes you’d expect from a longstanding NDP politician, especially one who has spent the past three years raising property taxes significantly higher than inflation .

Chow has since confirmed that lower tax increases will be her goal for a second term, arguing that the first round of larger increases was necessary to fix the budget and that lower rates can now be enjoyed.

This is the municipal version of how provincial and federal leaders always manage to drum up a balanced budget right when re-election time comes around. Let’s see if the voters buy it.

Chow is no political novice. She was first elected to public office over 40 years ago as a school board trustee. Long before her late husband Jack Layton was federal NDP leader, he ran for mayor of Toronto in 1991, and Chow won a council seat that year.

Chow’s mayoralty didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s been decades in the making and the prize is not something she and her team will give up easily.

Her campaign slogan, unveiled Wednesday , is a “caring, affordable, and safe city.” The re-election strategy may not be complicated. It could just be to pivot to the centre, say little and lean into the incumbent advantage.

After all, Bradford’s aggressive campaign to unseat Chow goes against what has become a local political truism in Toronto — that an incumbent mayor can’t be beat.

Chow was elected just over three years ago in a by-election triggered by John Tory’s sudden resignation. That campaign lasted three months and about 10 major candidates sought the leadership of the country’s largest city.

One reason so many candidates put forward serious campaigns was that, without an incumbent, the race was anyone’s to win.

Recent Toronto political history shows that, since megacity amalgamation in the 1990s, few serious candidates have stepped forward to challenge an incumbent mayor.

When Tory ran for re-election in 2018, the only serious challenger came in second with 24 per cent of the vote. Then when he ran for his third term in 2022, he was virtually unopposed. This pattern wasn’t unique to Tory; similar scenarios played out during the re-elections of the right-leaning Mel Lastman and the left-leaning David Miller.

From now until the election, I look forward to offering regular dispatches examining the campaign’s issues, personalities and themes.

My first regular gig with the National Post was covering the iconic 2010 election won by Rob Ford and then I experienced the 2023 mayoral election as one of the leading candidates, so this is familiar terrain.

National Post

Anthony Furey is a former journalist and past Toronto mayoral candidate who now works in corporate consulting.