We live in an upside-down world where logic, at least when it comes to Israel, has been turned inside out. But perhaps we should not be surprised. Antisemitism has never been about reason. It has always been an emotional impulse — irrational, contradictory and destructive.

Take Australia, for example. This past week, a country that prides itself on democratic values

barred

entry to Simcha Rotman, a democratically elected member of Israel’s Knesset and chair of its constitution, law and justice committee. Rotman had been scheduled to visit the Australian Jewish community to show solidarity in the face of rising antisemitic attacks.

Australia may not like him, but instead of welcoming him, Australia closed its doors — just as it had done months earlier to former Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked. Former Israeli defence minister Benny Gantz

summed up

the absurdity by noting that Australia is quicker to ban representatives of the Middle East’s only democracy than it is to tackle the “ravaging antisemitism” targeting its own Jewish citizens.

Democracies barring representatives of democracies while having little problem rolling out red carpets for tyrants and despots — this belongs in satire, not policy.

Equally surreal is the West’s determination to reward the Palestinian Authority with statehood while ignoring its barbarism. Khaled Abu Toameh

recently described

the PA’s notorious Jericho Prison, nicknamed “The Slaughterhouse,” as a site of extreme abuse and torture. The Palestinian Committee of Detainees’ Families said that the “continued policy of political detention and torture constitutes a crime and a flagrant violation of Palestinian law and international human rights conventions.”

Yet despite the corruption, repression, and complicity with Hamas, western leaders,

including

our own prime minister, insist on talking about “statehood” as though elections had been held recently, as though Gaza were not run by terrorists, as though reality itself could simply be ignored. Statehood for this? That is not logic — it is delusion.

Meanwhile, in astonishing cowardice, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen

declared

that Israel’s elected prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is “a problem.” Not Hamas, not Islamic Jihad, not Iran’s terror proxies, but Netanyahu. Think about that for a moment. The leader of a country still reeling from the most horrific massacre of Jews since the Holocaust is condemned as the obstacle to peace, while the perpetrators of mass murder, rape and hostage-taking are shielded from blame. This is not diplomacy — it is moral collapse.

And then there is Canada’s shameful moment on the cultural stage. The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) initially cancelled (but then reinstated) the screening of a documentary about the October 7 massacre waged by Hamas. The widely cited reason for this? The filmmakers

had not obtained permission

from the perpetrators of the massacre to use footage.

Writing in the Times of Israel, Sarah Tuttle-Singer

captured

the absurdity: while hostages continue to languish in Gaza’s terror tunnels, TIFF effectively said that unless the murderers sign a waiver, the massacre cannot be shown. As comedian Benji Lovitt put it, “Imagine the Nuremberg Trials refusing Nazi footage because they didn’t get Goebbels to sign a waiver.” At Nuremberg, the Allies used the footage because the world needed to see the truth.

TIFF relented only after public outrage, but the fact that such reasoning could prevail at all is shocking. It reveals a willingness to sanitize atrocity in the name of bureaucracy, an abdication of moral clarity at the very moment it is needed most.

Perhaps nowhere is this upside-down reasoning more evident than in the media’s ability to transform terrorists into journalists and journalists into heroes. When Al Jazeera’s Anas al-Sharif was killed in Gaza, headlines around the world mourned the death of a senior journalist. Yet Hillel Neuer of UN Watch

revealed

that al-Sharif was not a journalist at all but a Hamas operative guiding rocket attacks on Israeli civilians under journalistic cover. It is not journalism. It is propaganda dressed as news.

This is not simply about Israel. It is about the enemies of the West itself — those who despise the Judeo-Christian values upon which our democracies are founded. Truth, accountability and moral clarity are being undermined by forces that aim to replace them with an agenda of terror.

Antisemitism has always thrived in irrationality. Today, that fever has spread across governments, cultural institutions and media platforms. Democracies ban democratic voices. Tyrants are rewarded with statehood. Terrorists are granted press credentials. Film festivals seek permission slips from murderers. And prime ministers denounce Israel’s leaders rather than the terrorists who vow its destruction. If we allow this madness to go unchallenged, what comes next?

For now, America is the only emergency break. But what happens the day after?

National Post

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

Here we go again. More announcements that “graves” have been found at former Indian Residential Schools, more flags lowered in mourning and more uncritical press coverage.

And yet times have changed. There is less news coverage of these events, there’s no federal flags flying at half-staff and there appears to be a marked lack of national angst.

The best example that things are different is over at the Law Society of British Columbia (LSBC) which has done a stunning reversal in how it sees the residential school graves controversy.

The LSBC is being

sued

by one of its own lawyers, Jim Heller, for libel. Heller claims he was accused of being a racist and a denialist for trying to get the LSBC to insert the word “potential” in educational material by the law society about the 215 “bodies” discovered at British Columbia’s Kamloops Indian Residential School (KIRS) in May 2021.

The original course material that concerned Heller read, “On May 27, 2021, the Tkʼemlúps te Secwépemc Nation reported the discovery of an unmarked burial site containing the bodies of 215 children on the former Kamloops Indian Residential School grounds.” It added, “the discovery confirms what survivors have been saying all along.”

Remarkably, the LSBC has

revised

its educational material which now only talks about how the Tkʼemlúps te Secwépemc Nation has “undertaken extensive investigative work at the KIRS site” and that “preliminary findings” from ground penetrating radar had identified “200 targets of interest at the Kamloops site that are probable burials.”

The revised material is clearly less definitive and is exactly what Heller has been trying to get the LSBC to do from the start.

Although if Heller is an alleged racist and a denialist for trying to get the LSBC to insert “potential” into the material, what does this make the law society now that they are equally tentative about the findings?

And the skepticism shown by LSBC is odd considering that it was only in June this year that Brook Greenberg, the president of the law society,

said

there was no need to change the old language because it was “accurate.”

However, the revised material is to be welcomed if it is an indication that we can start to have a civilized conversation around the issue of newly discovered “graves” at residential schools without people being labelled racist or deniers.

Still, there is a way to go.

There are news outlets that are only too willing to report on this issue with an uncritical, but lurid, eye.

This week, The Canadian Press reported that the shishálh First Nation in Sechelt, B.C., announced 41 “additional unmarked graves” had been found with ground-penetrating radar around the St. Augustine’s Residential School site, bringing the number of suspected graves to 81.

CP reported Chief Lenora Joe as saying that “survivors” had told of children being taken into a forest by staff and not returning.

“We have always believed our Elders. This wasn’t a school, it wasn’t a choice, and the children who attended were stolen,” Joe was quoted as saying.

The news caused the B.C. Legislature to fly its flag at half-staff in

honour

of those who were “mourning and remembering.”

Meanwhile, earlier this month, The Times Colonist

informed

us in a headline, “Archival research has found 171 confirmed deaths at Kuper Island residential school, 50 more than previously thought.”

The story went on to relate how one survivor saw a nun killing a young girl by pushing her out a third-floor window; that a furnace near the school was believed to have been used to dispose of children and infants; that an area behind the school was used to bury victims of sexual assaults by nuns and priests (aborted fetuses and murdered infants were buried there as well) and that some children were put in burlap sacks, weighed down with anchors and tossed into the sea.

It is unfortunate that First Nations are reluctant, or unable, to provide precise details in these cases since they almost certainly warrant some kind of criminal investigation even at this very late date.

Money certainly wouldn’t be an issue.

Since Kamloops, the federal government has

given

$246.7 million (as of March this year) “to Indigenous communities and organizations to support community-led and Survivor-centric initiatives to document, locate and commemorate the children that did not return home and unmarked burial sites associated with former residential schools.”

And the money appears to be just the beginning. The government’s statement says that the current knowledge gathering, archival research and non-invasive fieldwork “is necessary before work can begin on exhumation, identification and, if it is the wish of families, repatriation of remains.”

To date, no “graves” have been exhumed, but if that is to happen, the costs will surely rise.

If the public, like the LSBC, are becoming more skeptical it may be because four years after Kamloops, we constantly hear about truth and reconciliation but finding that truth is increasingly elusive.

National Post

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The United States is Israel’s main ally and the largest country where the world’s single majority-Jewish state enjoys the

greatest support

. But even here, Israel’s popularity is eroding. And no wonder, with prominent news outlets publishing photographic evidence of children starving in Gaza as a result of Israel’s forceful military response to Hamas’s murderous October 7 attack. But those photos don’t stand up to scrutiny, with one after another revealed as depicting kids with chronic diseases. In fact, the media seems to be letting itself be used as a tool for Hamas’s cruel propaganda campaign.

Writing for Politico last week, Tufts University’s Daniel W. Drezner, a professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy,

noted

that this year, “the political tide has turned against Israel.” A big part of the reason, he added, is that “images of starving Gazan children have ricocheted across the globe.”

In fact, Gallup

polling

at the end of July found that Israel’s military campaign against the terrorist organization that killed roughly 1,200 on October 7 is now supported by 32 percent of Americans. That’s down 10 points from last year. The lowest level recorded so far.

But while Drezner acknowledges that Israel faces “disproportionate criticism” for its conduct from the international community, he doesn’t mention that many of the alleged images of starving Gazan children have turned out to be nothing of the sort. An

investigation

for The Free Press by Olivia Reingold and Tanya Lukyanova of 12 photographs of allegedly starving children revealed that every single one of them “were already facing grave situations because of their health, irrespective of any third-party action.”

Reingold and Lukyanova point out that, after publishing a photo of an emaciated Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, The New York Times had to

revise the story

to acknowledge he “had pre-existing health problems affecting his brain and his muscle development” (

other photos

of the child showed his brother to appear healthy and well-fed). The paper also added a brief

editor’s note

to the piece. Children portrayed in other images published by the AP, CNN, and other outlets suffered from ailments ranging from cystic fibrosis to cerebral palsy to genetic wasting conditions.

But, as the

saying

has it, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”

Unfortunately, this is part of a pattern of behavior by the press. Even before the recent flurry of “starvation” photos from Gaza, The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) and the Rutgers University Social Perception Lab

published a report in July

cautioning that too many journalists have been uncritically citing the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry on conditions in Gaza. “The result is a narrative that masks its source and misleads the public about who is to blame.”

The report added, “the default frame — that of U.S., Israeli, and GHF (Gaza Humanitarian Foundation) culpability

—

is repeated in headlines both explicitly and implicitly, even when the reality is unresolved or points elsewhere.”

A

more recent report

from NCRI addresses the photos. It alleges “multiple cases of potential journalistic malpractice by major Western media outlets in their portrayal of alleged famine in Gaza.” As did The Free Press, NCRI “uncovered clear evidence that the depicted individuals had long-standing, confounding medical conditions such as cerebral palsy, traumatic brain injury, or chronic illness” that were generally revealed in the original Arab-language sources of the images but omitted when republished in the West.

According to the report, “this pattern of laundering narratives, particularly from unvetted or partisan sources, appears widespread in Western media.” The result, the authors warn, has been “a distorted portrayal of humanitarian conditions in Gaza, misleading policymakers, misinforming the public, and exploiting vulnerable individuals for political gain.”

That Hamas would exploit the suffering of its own people is no surprise. In June 2024, when October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar was still alive and running Hamas, The Wall Street Journal published an

analysis of his correspondence

that revealed he saw his own people’s suffering as a weapon to use against Israel and the West. In dozens of his messages to negotiators and fellow Hamas members, Summer Said and Rory Jones

wrote

for the paper, “he’s shown a cold disregard for human life and made clear he believes Israel has more to lose from the war than Hamas.”

They point out that Sinwar openly told an Italian interviewer: “We make the headlines only with blood … No blood, no news.”

Famine seems to be as effective a tool as blood for capturing coverage, especially when it’s depicted in photographs of starving children. That the children so portrayed really suffer from other ailments is an inconvenient detail to Hamas’s leadership and a minor concern to too many journalists and their editors.

That’s not to minimize the suffering in Gaza. After all, Hamas launched a war against Israel from that tiny territory. Its people have been living through the results of Israel’s response and have been used as human shields by terrorists. And yes, the Israeli government is fair game for criticism for excesses, mistakes, and immoral actions. A war zone means violence, injury, disrupted supply networks, and death — and we already know that Hamas sees gain in its people’s pain. Israel should act accordingly.

But much of the press is complicit in shifting blame for the suffering. As NCRI points out, the media often points fingers at Israel, the U.S., and the GHF for problems in Gaza. But Hamas instigated the conflict and could end it by surrendering. And the GHF was founded as an alternative to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which is

heavily infiltrated

by terrorists (UNRWA’s then-head

conceded

in 2004 that “there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll.”) Some of UNRWA’s employees

participated in the attack on Israel

.

Now, the UN refuses to work with GHF. Last month, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies

reported

that the UN rejected offers by the GHF “to deliver much-needed humanitarian aid to Gazan civilians that is sitting undelivered inside the Gaza Strip despite the United Nations’ own warnings about widespread hunger.” Over 800 truckloads of aid sat neglected because of the impasse.

But that detail was little covered by media outlets that want to place all blame on Israel and the U.S. for the consequences of a war that Hamas started. No wonder the Jewish state is losing public support.

National Post

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On paper, it seemed like a sure win for Air Canada. Its flight attendants would strike, paralyzing air transportation in the country. The strike would be extremely unpopular, as Canadians would accuse the flight attendants of disrupting their travel plans for exaggerated salary demands. The government would intervene to force the flight attendants back to work, to the public’s applause. Binding arbitration would enforce a settlement that the company could very well live with.

Nothing went as Air Canada expected it to, and the flight attendants won generous pay increases and pay for work done on the ground, an industry precedent. What happened?

What happened is that most Canadians took the side of the striking flight attendants, and the former Crown corporation overwhelmingly lost the crucial communications fight.

First and foremost, Air Canada grossly underestimated how damaged its reputation is in Canada. Blinded by its

high rankings

in the Skytrax international surveys, the company believed that Canadians would put the blame for the labour dispute on the union and the workers. In fact, an

Angus Reid poll

showed that a majority of Canadians supported the flight attendants’ demands. Indeed, most people blamed the company for mismanaging the situation, not communicating with its passengers and offering little support and covering no or little of the passengers’ additional expenses. (Air Canada

finally announced

on Tuesday an “exceptional disruption policy” to help cover “transportation expenses which customers may have incurred to get to their destination during this disruption.”)

Canadians have very high expectations for what they consider “their” national airline. Yet, there are plenty of people who have travelled with Air Canada and can share at least one horror story of delay, cancellation, bad food and atrocious communications with stranded passengers. Therefore, Air Canada began the dispute with its flight attendants with a two-strike count.

Second, Air Canada poorly communicated its offers to the union, while the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), representing the 10,000 flight attendants, was wise to focus its communications on ground work pay rather than on the steep salary increases it was demanding. Most Canadians did not know that flight attendants were not paid for work done before the airplane takes off and, naturally, found it unacceptable. Air Canada’s lame explanation that this was industry practice convinced no one. Neither did its unexplained offer of a “

new provision for ground pay 

.”

Thirdly, CUPE representatives were everywhere in the media. Air Canada spokespersons were not as ubiquitous. The company’s CEO, Michael Rousseau, was invisible, giving only

one

shaky interview to Bloomberg BNN; Rousseau was apparently more concerned with calming shareholders than with reassuring passengers.

The Carney government assumed that Canadians would enthusiastically support its intervention by invoking Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code, forcing the flight attendants to return to work, and that CUPE would comply. However, when the union leadership announced that they would rather go to jail than have the flight attendants come back to work, there was barely any condemnation from the public. Realizing this, Minister of Jobs Patty Hajdu announced that she would review unpaid ground work in the airline industry, calling the practice “deeply disturbing.” Too little, too late: the communications fight had already been lost. Air Canada agreed to resume negotiations, and a deal was quickly reached, the airline presumably granting concessions that it was not expecting to make at the outset of the dispute.

Anyone who has been part of a unionized employer’s management team knows how annoying unions can sometimes be. Yet, it is also clear that unions serve a crucial purpose. That, as

confirmed

by the Supreme Court of Canada, the right to strike is “an essential part of a meaningful collective bargaining process in our system of labour relations.” And that a negotiated settlement is always better than an imposed one. Those lessons from labour history appear to have been lost to Air Canada.

The flight attendants’ strike will have cost Air Canada tens of millions of dollars. More importantly, it will have weakened the already fragile trust between Canadians and the company. “Following this disruption, we know confidence has been shaken,” the company

admitted

on Tuesday. Restoring this trust will require a lot of time and hard work. Better communications with the public and its passengers should be a crucial part of that effort.

National Post

André Pratte is a communications consultant and a former senator.

CBC News’ industrious Taryn Grant 

gives us a fresh occasion to peep at Nova Scotia

, that parched corner of Hades wherein it is currently forbidden to go for an invigorating saunter in the woods. A couple of weeks ago I discussed 

the controversial and suffocatingly broad travel restrictions imposed by the province

 in response to dangerous wildfire conditions. Nova Scotia, not content with everyday tools of regulation like campfire or vehicle bans, has 

almost totally denied its citizens

 access even to privately owned woodlands. When critics outside the province yoinked a few questioning eyebrows upward, they were told they failed to understand the precious communitarian spirit of Nova Scotia or its particular vulnerability to forest fire.

Well, let’s concede that the government of Nova Scotia is answerable primarily to the people of Nova Scotia. In our usual sunny, optimistic way, I scanned for the glint of a silver lining in the exotic, ambitious ban on walking in or through the forest. Perhaps, I remarked, it betokened a new no-nonsense approach to the regulation of public amenities.

“If ‘extremism in defence of public property is no vice’ is to be the new rule in Canada, we are surely going to see a lot of big changes to urban public parks and other land patches, which, for a decade, have been beset by nomadic tent-dwellers who make copious and inveterate use of propane tanks, electrical heaters, camp stoves, improvised wiring from hijacked power supplies, and open fires.”

Well, don’t hold your breath. The CBC has now inquired into the possibility that some members of the Wandering Fire-Bringer class may be testing the Nova Scotia fire ban. Turns out it’s made of vapour. The province’s Department of Opportunities and Social Development estimates that an estimated 137 rough sleepers are still living in the Nova Scotia woods and “cannot be convinced” to leave. They’ve been visited repeatedly by a team of “outreach workers” who themselves enjoy an exemption from the travel rules. A few of the tent-dwellers, worn down by social-worker nattering, agreed to move on or accept spaces in urban shelters. Most have stayed put as if they’d grown roots.

And the state turns out to be helpless, even though one fire may already have been started at an “encampment.” It seems to be generally agreed that there is no point in fining any of the fairy folk of the forest. The provision in the provincial fire proclamation that allows for $25,000 penalties is reserved exclusively for those who might conceivably have such a sum to cough up.

Well, what about the ordinary police powers of arrest and detention? After a fortnight of hearing Nova Scotians insist that the current forest-fire risks are unprecedented, and that the traditional mobility privileges of citizenship must necessarily shrivel into abeyance, I am suddenly assured by a legal-aid lawyer that anyone collared for being unlawfully encamped “would have to be quickly released, as the offence would not warrant being detained.”

This ultra-confident prediction leaves me confused. One struggles to understand, from outside N.S., how forest protection can be so important as to justify a ministerial fiat of extraordinary and unprecedented character — but not so important as to be at all enforced.

National Post

Free money alert: next Monday, the federal agriculture department will begin accepting

applications

for cash handouts that fund garden boxes, refrigeration units, greenhouses, ATVs, snowmobiles, tractors, hydroponic systems and more. But there’s a catch — anyone who receives these funds must use them to directly support “food production for equity-deserving groups.”

The program, called the Local Food Infrastructure Fund, expressly refuses to fund projects that “are not addressing food security for equity-deserving groups.” On the other hand, “Priority will be given to projects that predominantly serve equity-deserving groups, particularly those that are led by or focus on Indigenous and Black communities.”

Quite clearly, this is a discriminatory program — one of many that continue to exist in this new era of Liberal leadership.

It wasn’t always this way. Back when the Local Food Infrastructure Fund was first created in 2019, initially with a pool of $50 million to be given out until 2024, it was aimed at supporting the food security of “at-risk populations.” At least on its surface, it did not discriminate according to identity.

Applicants

back then

were asked to “include any available data on rates of food insecurity in the community where the project will be implemented” in their application forms. On the top end, multi-million dollar recipients

included

Food Banks Canada, the Breakfast Club of Canada and the Salvation Army.

From there, the Local Food Infrastructure Fund was

extended

for another three years. From 2025 until 2027, it will hand out $63 million in grants between $25,000 and $500,000 — now on the basis of identity. (This is not to be confused with the department’s

AgriDiversity grant

, which is also identity-based.)

No longer do the program materials ask applicants to produce data about food insecurity. Nowadays, they’re

asked

to state whether they support diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI); whether they’re “Black-led or Black-focused”; whether they have a DEI staffing plan; which “equity-deserving” groups they serve; and whether they’re majority-owned by women and individuals whose gender is “gender outside of the ‘woman—man’ spectrum.”

On Tuesday, a spokesperson for Agriculture Canada downplayed the change over time, stating that the new focus on “equity-deserving groups” was a matter of complying with a new federal language guide.

Whether the fund targets “at-risk populations” or “equity-deserving groups,” the spokesperson added, the target has “always included” the same people. He provided a long list: non-white people, Indigenous people, women, LGBT, the disabled, “persons who are homeless or street-involved,” low-income families, rural and northern communities, “groups with social or employment barriers including literacy and numeracy,” new immigrants and refugees, youth, seniors and official language minorities.

On its face, that list doesn’t make sense: race alone doesn’t render a person “at risk,” nor does speaking French in non-Quebec Canada, nor does living outside a city. Typically, in English, that term is used to describe homeless and low-income people.

The agriculture department’s explanation isn’t reflected in the actual record, either. The applicant guide for the Local Food Infrastructure Fund presents a closed list of “equity-seeking groups” that a potential grant recipient can claim to help: Indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, visible minorities, women, youth, 2SLGBTQI+, “Not applicable” and “Decline to identify.” The government (which actually prefers the term “equity-denied group” over “equity-deserving group) limits the scope of the

definition

to race, gender, sexuality, religion and disability.

What’s certain is that the scope of this grant program is unclear, and that public-facing documents are giving potential applicants the impression that food programs serving, say, low-income, country-dwelling white seniors of Saskatchewan aren’t deserving of government support. Neither would be a replacement freezer for a food bank serving the poor — regardless of race — in small-town Atlantic Canada. A curious choice for the minister of agriculture, Prince Edward Islander Heath MacDonald.

Meanwhile, a free set of raised beds for a community garden in an upper- to middle-class, predominantly non-white neighbourhood of Toronto would appear to meet the program’s stated criteria, even though such endeavours are largely recreational. Indeed, the same can be said for low-income communities. Neighbourhood gardens can’t achieve the economies of scale found in industrial farming or the year-round stability of the grocery store, which is why a local Loblaws or Metro does a lot more for food security than a few raised beds.

This is just one grant, but it’s emblematic of the whole federal government’s approach to public service. It’s not enough to support food programs for the poor; the feds must also support the gardening hobbies across the cultural mosaic. Similarly, it’s not enough to hire deserving students as youth employment

hits 20-year lows

; the feds must

select

their new hires on the basis of identity. It’s not enough that Supreme Court justices are highly competent in the law — instead, they must be half-decent at their craft, bilingual and be the first person with their combination of diversity characteristics to join the court.

To the feds, managing a diverse population doesn’t just mean ensuring that discrimination doesn’t happen — it means actively discriminating to redistribute the goods of society. Even something as essential as food isn’t immune.

National Post

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After a three-hour summit meeting in Anchorage last Friday, which most observers described as a “big win” for Vladimir Putin, U.S. President Donald Trump met in Washington on Monday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and key European leaders for in a stunning display of high-stakes global diplomacy. Most significantly, they agreed to NATO Article 5-style security safeguards for Ukraine, involving European and possible U.S. monitors on the ground, as a key element in peace negotiations, a concept Trump claimed Putin had supported in principle in Alaska. The Russian foreign minister later walked back that claim,

stating

“Moscow won’t agree with collective security guarantees negotiated without Russia.”

Nevertheless, the consensus in Washington is that the two meetings are expected to lead to a trilateral (U.S., Ukraine and Russia) summit to discuss peace before the end of this month at a place still to be determined.

Trump’s position on Ukraine has oscillated widely since the early days of his administration. He has spent much time trying to woo Putin while occasionally chastising Zelenskyy for his perceived lack of gratitude, as in February’s

explosive meeting

at the White House. Trump often seems to have difficulty distinguishing the victim from the aggressor in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, often acting as if he is a neutral arbitrator, not Ukraine’s backstop ally.

When Putin arrived at a red-carpet welcome in Anchorage, the optics were all in his favour. The meeting seemed to be a chummy affair — due in part to the hasty preparations. There was little or no engagement on points of friction, or on leverage or Ukrainian interests. Putin offered no concessions on his basic objectives, rejected the notion of a ceasefire — which had been Trump’s sole objective — and continues to intensify his war campaign.

The Americans emerged from the Alaska summit essentially empty-handed. No ceasefire and “no tangible step toward peace,” which Trump’s Special Envoy, Steve Witkoff, had earlier confidently predicted. Despite his failure to get a ceasefire Trump still described his meeting with Putin as a “10 out of 10.” He remains unwilling to use the enormous economic leverage the U.S. has, which could cripple Russia’s war-fuelled economy. In fact, he deferred yet again on further sanctions. Vacillation is the antithesis of former U.S. president Ronald Reagan’s motto “Peace Through Strength.” The only tangible example in Anchorage was the impressive flyover of a U.S. B-2 bomber and accompanying advanced fighter aircraft.

Both Putin and the European leaders shamelessly flattered Trump during the Anchorage and Washington meetings, albeit in different ways. Putin stated that the war would not have happened if Trump had been in office and, according to Trump, also said the 2020 U.S. election “was rigged.” The Europeans effusively stated that Trump was the “only person” who could initiate peace negotiations, strongly echoing his basic desire to “stop the killing.” All of this was music to Trump’s ears (and his hopes for a Nobel Peace Prize), and it worked in both sessions. (Although Canada’s prime minister joined the flattery queue in his

statements

to the media, he conspicuously was not invited to the session in Washington.)

Putin is a thug, an indicted war criminal and an international pariah. The Alaska invitation brought him in from the diplomatic cold, for which he paid no price. For more than his 25 years in office he has pursued his goal of restoring the Russian empire. That cannot happen if Ukraine remains a viable, independent nation. Putin is adamant that Ukraine has no claim to sovereignty, while Ukraine has fought valiantly for more than three years to safeguard its existence. That illustrates the wide gap on any peaceful resolution of the conflict.

Ukraine sees the war in moral and existential terms. For Putin, it is fundamental to his objective of resuscitating the Soviet empire. Underscoring that objective, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov wore a T-shirt in Alaska emblazoned with the “CCCP” Soviet logo, evoking memories, particularly for Canadian hockey fans, of the former Soviet Union.

The Europeans have more directly at stake with Russia and they are less likely to be played by Putin. Especially those close to Russia fear that, if Russia wins in Ukraine, he will not stop there. Similarly, many Americans fear that, if Putin wins on Ukraine, Beijing will be emboldened to deliver on its aspirations regarding Taiwan.

While explicit security safeguards, backstopped by European troops on the ground and possibly the U.S. air force, are key to a successful peace negotiation, other major obstacles persist. Russia will not want to give up the territory it occupies and, in fact, wants more than the

19 per cent

of Ukraine it currently controls. The segment in Donetsk that it does not yet occupy, but which it is demanding, is crucial to the defence of Ukraine’s homeland. Ukraine may have to live with “de facto” but not “de jure” control of some of its occupied regions, but remedial efforts are needed, especially for the 20,000 Ukrainian children

kidnapped

by Russian forces.

The economic dimension is critical. Rehabilitation from the damage inflicted by Russia on the Ukrainian people and their civil infrastructure must be compensated. Frozen Russian funds provide a partial answer, but more will be needed.

The biggest question mark, however, will be Donald Trump and whether he is really committed to a just peace. He is obsessed with performance and headlines, not geopolitical strategy. His position fluctuates daily, operating more on impulse or whim, not the benefit of expert advice, especially when none is readily available. He changes tactics and goals on a dime, as his tariff terror campaign aptly demonstrates. Unlike in his first term, there are no anti-Russian hawks in his administration or in Congress willing to place guardrails on his behaviour. And he is not, at least not yet, constrained by the prospect of a third term.

The saving grace may be the new-found solidarity demonstrated by the Europeans in Washington. When the American position seemed to be deteriorating, they rallied swiftly to establish clear red lines for Ukraine and, together with their five per cent NATO pledge, established greater credibility with the U.S. administration. Whether their sudden, yet solid, unity with the U.S. will prevail if and as negotiations begin will determine whether we are witnessing a genuine breakthrough or a continuing stalemate.

National Post

Derek H. Burney is a former 30-year career diplomat who served as Ambassador to the United States of America from 1989 to 1993.

• Raymond J. de Souza: Trump pledged to end Ukraine war in 24 hours. How’s that working out?
• Adam Zivo: Zelenskyy meeting with Trump a resounding success

“Canada’s biggest airline is hiding a secret,” warned

unfaircanada.com

, a website campaigning on behalf of Air Canada flight attendants and their union during recent contract negotiations. “Their cabin crew is being forced to work for free during the most critical moments of your flight experience.” Except it

wasn’t exactly true

that they were being forced to work for nothing, and it was never a secret.

In the end, it didn’t matter that the Unfair Canada campaign wasn’t being completely honest. What mattered was that the union’s message — “Tell Air Canada and the Carney government unpaid work is a true crime” — had its intended effect on Canadians and their elected officials.

On Monday, before the labour dispute was resolved, Jobs Minister

Patty Hajdu said

that the flight attendants’ claim that they were forced to work for free when planes weren’t in the sky was “deeply disturbing” and

announced a probe

into “unpaid work in the airline sector.” If the inquiry finds the allegation to be well-founded, Hajdu pledged to introduce legislation to outlaw the practice.

Whether the announcement was simply a means of placating the labour movement after

Hajdu ordered

the Canada Industrial Relations Board to force the flight attendants back to work, prompting

allegations

that the Liberals were siding with management, is an open question. It’s very possible that the probe will be swept under the rug now that the airline is resuming operations.

But should the government follow through on its promise, it will find that Air Canada’s pay structure was

the industry standard

, and that the practice dates back around four decades. It only became an issue in 2022, when Delta Air Lines agreed to pay its cabin crews for boarding in a bid to prevent them from unionizing.

In 2024, the union representing flight attendants at American Airlines lobbied hard for a similar pay structure and

announced

last August that it had reached an agreement to become “the first unionized workgroup to lock in pay for boarding.” Workers at Alaska Airlines ratified a

similar collective agreement

in February.

Given this trend, it’s no surprise that the Unfair Canada campaign was launched late last year, months before the flight attendants’ collective agreement was due to

expire

on March 31. By making it sound as though your friendly stewardesses were being treated no better than the children at a Bangladeshi garment factory, the union knew it had a winning public-relations strategy.

It certainly helped that many press reports repeated the union’s claims verbatim. To bolster its cause and increase political pressure, CUPE also c

ommissioned a poll

showing that the majority of Canadians sided with the flight attendants (59 per cent) over the company (12 per cent), and that 88 per cent think “flight attendants should be paid for all work-related duties, not just time in motion.”

Yet no one should be shocked that the public tended to support the people who serve them drinks and clean up their children’s vomit over the company responsible for their cancelled flights and lost baggage. And some of the survey’s findings were based on some fairly loaded questions.

The one about compensation, for example, was setup as follows: “Some people say that because boarding, deplaning, delays and safety checks are all part of a flight attendant’s workday, they should be paid for that time. Others say flight attendants’ pay should only start once the plane is moving, as is current practice. Which is closer to your own view?”

It’s little wonder that only 12 per cent of respondents chose the latter. But although these positions may have represented the views of the parties at the bargaining table, it’s unlikely that too many Canadians were arguing in favour of unpaid labour at the dinner table. Nor does this question fully encapsulate how flight attendants were paid under the previous agreement.

According to a

press release

issued by Air Canada at the start of the month, “Time spent onboarding and similar tasks performed on the ground (are) captured within the formula pay defined by the collective agreement, which covers the duty period (commencing one hour prior to flight departure / ending 15 minutes after flight arrival). If the employee is requested to be on duty outside of these times or to perform service to passengers on the ground, the collective agreement provides for additional compensation.”

The

text

of the agreement also says that, “Where an employee is required to report for duty prior to or remain on duty following the termination of a duty period … s/he shall be paid at one-half of the hourly rate of pay.” Similar terms were offered when employees were required to “provide meal, bar or beverage service to passengers on the ground.”

Other parts of the agreement discuss hourly wages, which started at $25.13 for new hires and rose to $87.01 for some in-flight managers, along with meal allowances and incentives, such as discounted flights, pensions and health benefits.

Being a stewardess is certainly not the most lucrative career, but painting them as destitute labourers forced to dumpster dive for food is a bit of a stretch. And although flight attendants can be forgiven for wanting a better deal, let’s not pretend as though they didn’t agree to the pay structure outlined in the last agreement, or the ones before that.

The risk for flight attendants, however, is that if they get too greedy, many of their jobs could one day be automated, at least as soon as someone realizes that much of what they do could be replaced by a vending machine strapped to a Roomba and sent down the aisle to serve food and drinks. Heck, the service on some flights may even improve!

Perhaps the solution is to allow them to accept tips. I’m fully aware that we’re all sick of being asked to tip every time we reach for our credit cards, but I’d certainly be willing to chip in a few extra bucks if it meant someone would actually come when I press the flight attendant call button and stop giving me excuses about why they can’t pour me a double gin and soda.

Ultimately, the workers and management settled on

a tentative deal

that will reportedly guarantee at least an hour of ground pay at half their hourly rate for each flight, with a pay bump of five per cent per year. Which sounds fair enough. But such decisions should always be up to those who are being hired to perform a specific task and the people who are hiring them. Patty Hajdu and her Liberal colleagues should stay on their own runway.

National Post

jkline@postmedia.com

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