National Post (Opinions) Archives - Page 22 of 299

Attempts at peace in Ukraine are being drowned out in a war of words between Washington and Moscow. Donald Trump’s charm offensive with Vladimir Putin offering unilateral concessions with nothing in return — all carrots, no sticks — has been a dismal failure. The U.S. president has made empty threat after empty threat regarding imposing further sanctions as leverage to secure movement, but his tactic of mollycoddling the Russian leader, while basically ignoring Ukraine, is bordering on farce. Trump pressures Ukraine, the victim, erratically but bizarrely not Russia, the invader.

Bullying rhetoric has not worked either. When Trump bluntly urged Putin to “STOP” massive drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian civilians weeks ago, followed by a two-hour phone call with Putin on May 19, Russia intensified its attacks. After the call, Trump issued an

upbeat statement

on Truth Social claiming Russia and Ukraine “would immediately start negotiations toward a ceasefire.” But nothing happened. According to the Russian version of the call, Trump “expressed his position on the cessation of hostilities” whereas Putin noted tellingly that Russia is intent on “

eliminating the root causes

” of the crisis. In other words, Ukraine must accept Russian hegemony, a position that Moscow has held to unflinchingly. Trump’s persistent threats of additional sanctions are hollow. He clearly prefers strong words over concrete deeds.

Most recently, Trump

accused

the Russian leader of “playing with fire,” adding “What Vladimir Putin does not realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD.” Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman and Putin stooge, Dmitry Medvedev,

responded

on X with the tired whinge, “I only know of one REALLY BAD thing … WWIII. I hope Trump understands this,” and Trump then again backed off sanctions. The president’s bombastic tweets are not working.

Many observers sense that Trump is being gamed by Putin. (At one point Trump acknowledged that Putin may be “tapping us along.”) The Russian leader will never give up his ultimate objective, reintegrating Ukraine into the Russian Federation. He is confident that Russia is winning the war despite casualties numbering a million or more, and believes that the West, especially the U.S., will tire of the war and that Trump will terminate military support to Ukraine and abandon his pursuit of peace.

Why Trump is soft on Putin is inexplicable. Some claim he is trying to wean the Russian leader away from the strengthening axis with China, but Chinese President Xi Jinping is in the driver’s seat on that relationship, not Putin. Others suggest he believes there are bright prospects ahead for an economic partnership with Russia. Trump needs to learn that, on the vital issues of war and peace, deeds are more productive than bombast, and shared values are paramount. His tactics have produced no discernible benefits for the Ukrainians and have undermined not enhanced America’s global leadership role.

As David Ignatius

observed

in The Washington Post: “Unless Trump finally delivers on his threats, he has folded his hand on what could be the most damaging failure of his presidency.”

The normally subservient Republican Senate may act on its own with further sanctions on Russia. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has 82 co-sponsors on a bill that would target countries that buy Russian oil with 500 per cent tariffs. Energy sales are Putin’s financial lifeline. Combined with new sanctions, the bill would provide arms to Ukraine when the current supply runs out — action that could compel some accommodation by Putin. The question is whether Senate Majority Leader John Thune will bring the bill to the Senate floor and oblige president Trump to accept the hard reality of Mr. Putin’s ambitions.

As a Wall Street Journal May 26

editorial observed

, Trump and his advisers “fancy themselves as steely-eyed realists on foreign policy.” But on Putin, they “are starry-eyed idealists, mouthing ‘peace’ as if they can make it happen by wishing it were so.” The lack of a coherent strategy for peace is obvious and ambiguity only strengthens Putin’s weak hand.

The restless Europeans are trying to fill the moral and strategic vacuums created by Washington. On May 20, the EU announced its 17th

package of sanctions

restricting Russian access to battlefield technologies and curbing its energy resources. They target explicitly Russia’s “shadow fleet” of old oil tankers, their operators and major oil producers like Surgutneftegas.

On the military side, NATO allies are conducting joint exercises in the Nordic and Baltic regions to deter Russia and improve integration, drawing specifically on NATO’s newest members — Sweden and Finland. Gotland, a Swedish island, is a

strategic location

for NATO and is undergoing unprecedented rearmament to become a hub for logistics and defence, adding sensors and long-range weapon systems to support air and sea operations in the Baltic region.

On May 28 Germany

announced

support for Ukraine’s production of long-range missiles, adding there would be “no more range limitation for weapons delivered to Ukraine,” a move that could pave the way for delivery of the long-requested Taurus cruise missiles — a joint German–Swedish product having a range of over 500 kilometres. Germany also confirmed that it will finance a significant portion of Starlink satellite coverage in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is

transforming

its military strategy from grinding trench warfare during much of the conflict with Russia to drones as substitutes for people, and advanced electronic warfare in a time of layered defence and long-range conventional precision strikes. Ukraine is on track to produce more than 2.5 million drones per year, providing low-cost devices to limit Russian drone and missile attacks.

The confusing U.S. position on Russia and Ukraine should be a major topic when G-7 leaders meet in Kananaskis, Alta., from June 15 to 17. In preparatory meetings among ministers, the U.S. representatives sternly rejected calls for action against Russia. If the U.S. Senate approves sanctions, that would provide a needed rallying point for a firm consensus. Otherwise, Trump will be left to explain why he chooses to dishonour the U.S.-led western commitment to Ukraine that has prevailed for more than three years of war.

Ukraine’s spectacular attack that demolished one-third of Russia’s long-range bomber fleet on Sunday illustrates that Volodymyr Zelenskyy does have “cards to play” after all.

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.

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As someone who’s spent a career in newsrooms — reporting, anchoring, and holding truth to power — I’ve never been more concerned about the erosion of credibility in the media and the damage it’s doing to public trust. That concern has only deepened in recent weeks as misinformation — and the careless amplification of it — continues to seep into even our most established Canadian outlets.

Case in point: the events surrounding a supposed Israeli attack on a food depot in Gaza on Sunday. Several mainstream Canadian news organizations reported that Israel had killed Palestinians at the site — repeating claims that originated from Hamas without sufficient verification. Their source: Associated Press and Reuters, wire services Canadian media outlets subscribe to for international reporting. Trusted, not fact-checked from here. Within hours, video evidence and detailed reports from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) strongly contradicted that narrative, showing it to be very likely false. It took

almost a full day

to see a single clarification in their reporting. By then, the damage was done. Once again, a claim manufactured by a terrorist group was laundered through respected western media, reaching audiences hungry for truth but served distortion.

I saw firsthand how misinformation spreads during a recent trip to Israel, sponsored by the Exigent Foundation, where the IDF now serves not only as a defense force, but also as a real-time fact-checking unit — challenging falsehoods as quickly as they emerge. In an era of instant outrage and algorithmic amplification, Israel is fighting not only a war on the ground, but a war over truth.

There was a time — not so long ago — when journalists double- and triple-checked the facts before airing or publishing a story. We’d hold back, even under pressure, until we could confirm. We knew that credibility wasn’t just currency — it was everything. Somewhere along the line, the speed of the news cycle began to outrun the discipline of journalism. And we’re all paying the price.

In this case, Jews are asking, is it blatant bias against Israel?

The Jewish community is paying the price most directly. These inaccuracies are not just journalistic failures — they’re fuelling antisemitism across Canada. No wonder some Jewish Canadians are quietly contemplating “an exit plan” if things continue to escalate. Many now say that, if it becomes too much to bear, Israel feels like the only safe place left.

When lies spread faster than facts, and when reputable journalists amplify propaganda from bad actors, our democratic foundation trembles. As Canadians, we pride ourselves on fairness and integrity — but our media must reflect those values. Reporting claims from a group like Hamas without scrutiny is not journalism. It’s a disservice to every honest reporter still doing the work, and to the public that depends on us.

We are at a turning point. Do we double down on truth, context, and clarity — or do we let the noise win? Do we allow ourselves to become a softer echo of the U.S., where polarization paralyzes discourse — or do we reclaim the journalistic standards that once set Canadian media apart?

Canada is not immune to misinformation. But we still have time — and a responsibility — to protect the civility, decency, and shared reality that hold us together. That begins with accountability. And it begins with each of us.

Leslie Roberts is a former television journalist and news anchor.

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This summer, the Ontario government will remove the box that has, for several years, concealed the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald at Queen’s Park. It was in 2020 — after several statues across Canada had been painted, toppled and even beheaded — that Macdonald’s likeness in Ontario’s capital was boarded up.

Uncovering the statue is a welcome move. But if that’s all we do, we are likely to find ourselves back here again before long. Until Canadians are willing to revisit the actual historical facts — and in particular Macdonald’s relationship with Indigenous-Canadians — the cycle of erasure and outrage will continue.

The most widespread and damaging misunderstanding is the idea that every Indigenous child was forced by law to attend a residential school, was taken far from home, kept for years and subjected to routine abuse. This narrative has become almost universally accepted in Canada.

However, the reality is that, in many years, the majority of Indigenous children who attended school went to day schools and most of the students dropped out after Grade 1, whether at day or residential schools. These facts were well known at the time. They were discussed in Parliament and reported in mainstream newspapers.

For example, in 1946, decades after the first residential schools were built, the Globe and Mail reported that, “Of the 128,000 Indians in this country, only 16,000 last year received formal schooling. Of this number, few stayed more than a year and only 71 … reached Grade 9.”

A populist movement towards compulsory education had begun in the 1870s in Canada; by the 1940s, most Canadian children were required to attend school till at least age 15. However, the government in Macdonald’s day, and through many subsequent prime ministers, respected the wishes of Indigenous families, who were not forced to keep their children in school beyond the early grades.

Clearly, neither Macdonald’s government, nor any succeeding one, was engaged in genocide, cultural or otherwise. There were also a number of initiatives of Macdonald’s governments that likely saved tens of thousands of Indigenous lives and are equally inconsistent with the notion that he had any interest in genocide.

Smallpox killed thousands of Indigenous people in Canada in some pre-Confederation years and Macdonald’s governments, in the colonial era, and later when he was prime minister, ran programs to ensure that every Indigenous person in Canada, no matter how remote their location, was vaccinated against it, thus ending the threat.

Similarly, when the buffalo population collapsed, Macdonald immediately initiated what was certainly the largest famine relief operation in Canadian history. Moving supplies across the county when no railway existed was an enormous undertaking, and it had the usual missteps associated with a hastily organized program of this scale. However, the program likely saved thousands of lives and avoided a human catastrophe across western Canada.

A stark difference between the Canadian settlement experience and that of the Americans is the absence of war. The Americans fought a series of “Indian wars” over a period of over a century in which tens of thousands of people died.

Macdonald was determined to avoid such bloodshed. His government’s policy was to ensure that treaties were signed and in place before allowing widespread settlement in western Canada.

Finally, his government created the North West Mounted Police to protect the legal rights of both Indigenous people and settlers, and to deter incursions from the United States. As the famous Siksika Chief Isapo-muxika stated in 1877: “The Mounted Police have protected us as the feathers of the bird protect it from the frosts of winter.” As a result, there were no deaths in Indian wars in Canada.

None of this means we must idolize Macdonald. But tearing down or boxing up his statue doesn’t just erase a man, it erases our shared memory and history. Statues are not about sainthood. They are about significance and shared challenges that have been overcome. Macdonald led Canada into existence. He held it together through rebellion, war and economic depression.

The reappearance of his statue at Queen’s Park is not the end of the conversation. It should be the beginning, with a plaque that tells the truth — good and bad — and with school curricula that examine his record in full. We can’t build a better country by forgetting the people and the blood, sweat and tears that got us to this point.

National Post

Greg Piasetzki is a senior fellow at the Aristotle Foundation and an intellectual property rights lawyer in Toronto. He contributed a chapter on Sir John A Macdonald to “The 1867 Project: Why Canada Should Be Cherished, Not Cancelled.”

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Will Prime Minister Mark Carney’s national infrastructure dreams be kiboshed by Canada’s First Nations? That’s the question hanging over Ottawa this week — and if Carney’s not careful, the answer could well be yes.

At Monday’s First Ministers’ meeting in Saskatoon, the PM rolled out his big plan: slash approval times for “national interest” infrastructure projects from five to two years. He got buy-in from the premiers, hoping to stimulate growth, counter U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs, and pull Canada together as one economy. Despite a shortage of specifics, there finally appears to be a willingness to get things done and reconcile the interests of East and West. Quebec Premier François Legault said he’s open to a pipeline, Ontario Premier Doug Ford was positively giddy about energy corridors, and even Alberta’s Danielle Smith was cautiously optimistic.

Indigenous leaders, however, are not impressed. National Chief Cindy Woodhouse of the Assembly of First Nations warned that the plan risks

trampling Indigenous rights

and took umbrage at being given

seven days

to review draft proposals. Regional Chief Scott McLeod of the Anishinabek Nation

went further

, suggesting that Canada could see a new indigenous protest movement along the lines of

Idle No More

. That movement arose in 2012 in response to Bill C-45, legislation advanced by then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper that sought to streamline the project approvals process, and spawned protests and rail travel disruptions across the country.

Now, Carney could face the same opposition, made worse by the actions of his own party and other progressive politicians over the past ten years. Their version of reconciliation did little to advance Indigenous people economically, but much to reinforce the idea that non-Indigenous people are guests in their own country.

From the denigration of Canadian historical figures like John A. Macdonald, Henry Dundas and Egerton Ryerson, to the performative and divisive repetition of land acknowledgements, to the spreading of

falsehoods about the existence of mass graves

at residential schools, Canada was depicted as the country that could do no right by its First Nations. Little wonder, then, that many Indigenous people don’t see themselves as part of Canada and have little interest in pulling together for the “national interest.”

There is no question that a succession of Canadian governments implemented policies that damaged generations of First Nations people, including the Indian Act, the residential school system, the

pass system

, and the

potlatch ban

. But guilt will not help fix current problems facing First Nations. Nor will opposition to development. It will actually hurt, by weakening Canada economically and reducing its capacity to fund real change in indigenous communities, such as ending all boil water advisories and building adequate housing and schools.

It may also open a door to Trump’s dream of a 51st state, by weakening the federation and opening another fault line for Washington to exploit, in addition to Western alienation. That’s not just bad news for Ottawa, but for Indigenous communities, who could arguably fare worse under a U.S. model of tribal sovereignty than under the nation-to-nation approach of the Canadian federation.

At the same time, Canada can’t be “decolonized” like countries in Africa or Asia, where colonial rulers physically and legally withdrew. Here, more newcomers arrive every year, and no one is going anywhere. Most Canadians alive today had no connection to historical abuses yet are lumped together with long-dead politicians accused of genocide.

We can’t afford to continue “othering” each other. At some point, the country either pulls together, or it risks coming apart. Carney needs to reach out to Indigenous leaders, but be clear that Canada must advance economically to be less dependent on a volatile and increasingly hostile United States. If national projects are permanently stalled by unresolved identity politics, it’s not just infrastructure dreams that will be lost — Canada could be, as well.

Postmedia News

Tasha Kheiriddin is Postmedia’s national politics columnist.

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I am the ambassador of a country that was built by unexpected leaders.

The founders of the State of Israel were not aristocrats or members of a wealthy elite. They were refugees and immigrants — men and women who arrived with little more than determination and hope. They fled violence, persecution, and antisemitism from every corner of the world: pogroms in Europe and Asia, attacks by mobs and ultimately expulsion from Arab lands, and the unthinkable horrors of the Holocaust.

While Jews have had a continuous presence in the Holy Land for millennia, modern Israel was forged in the crucible of exile and survival. Today, Israel is a thriving liberal democracy with a diverse and multicultural society, a dynamic economy, and a strong defence force.

We are proud of these achievements. But we have never forgotten an important lesson from Jewish history: false narratives, when left unchallenged, have violent consequences.

One need not look far to understand why this lesson is so deeply ingrained in our psyche. Theodor Herzl, the father of modern political Zionism, was moved by what he witnessed during the infamous Dreyfus Affair in late 19th-century France. A Jewish army officer, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, was falsely accused and convicted of treason. The campaign against him was led by the virulently antisemitic press — particularly La Libre Parole, which pushed a dangerous narrative: that Jews were inherently disloyal.

Given our history, we are highly attuned to the moments these falsehoods begin to surface. That’s why, when I woke up Sunday morning to headlines from nearly every major Canadian media outlet — except National Post — about an alleged incident at a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid hub in Rafah, I was immediately concerned.

This war has shown us, time and again, how Hamas manipulates facts on the ground, creating stories of atrocities that either didn’t happen or happened in a very different way. The media often amplifies these claims uncritically, and by the time the truth emerges, the damage is done.

The most egregious example came just weeks after the October 7 massacre. The Hamas-run Palestinian Health Ministry claimed an Israeli airstrike had killed hundreds at Al-Ahli Hospital. Israel immediately launched an investigation — but the media didn’t wait. The story exploded across front pages and screens around the world.

By the time the investigation revealed that the explosion was caused by a Palestinian rocket, which was confirmed by the

Canadian Forces Intelligence Command,

millions were misled. Worse, some politicians — including Canada’s own foreign affairs minister at the time — rushed to condemn Israel before the facts were known.

In the case of Sunday’s reports out of Rafah, we’re already seeing the familiar pattern unfold. By Monday, the BBC

issued a correction,

noting that the video initially used to implicate the Israeli military in alleged shootings was actually filmed at a different location and at an entirely different time.

Rather than rushing to publish unverified claims, the media should be asking a more pressing question: why is Hamas so eager to spread this lie? The answer can be found in what’s happening on the ground. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is beginning to shift the dynamic. It’s getting food and aid directly to civilians — bypassing the usual pattern of supplies being siphoned off by Hamas or rerouted through compromised international agencies. For Hamas, this is a threat not just to its control but to its entire narrative.

But the damage caused by these false reports doesn’t stop at distorting the public’s view of the conflict. It also endangers lives beyond the Middle East.

Just hours after the Rafah reports went global, the world learned of a horrifying antisemitic attack in Boulder, Col. At a peaceful rally in support of the 58 Israeli hostages still held by Hamas, a man used a flamethrower to set attendees on fire while shouting, “Free Palestine.” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar rightly called the attack “pure antisemitism, fuelled by blood libels spread in the media.”

Two weeks earlier, following another sensational — and ultimately debunked — BBC report claiming 14,000 children will die of starvation in just 48 hours, tragedy struck again. In front of the Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. a man radicalized by the pro-Palestinian movement murdered two Israeli Embassy staff members, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim. According to witnesses, he boasted, “I did it for Gaza.”

This is not to suggest that the media bears all the blame. Clearly, hatred runs deep within both perpetrators. But it is worth asking whether false reports served as a catalyst — intensifying emotions, reinforcing dangerous narratives, and perhaps even triggering the eventual acts of violence.

While the media has a duty to verify information, the words of our political leaders carry even greater weight.

It was notable that Prime Minister Mark Carney unequivocally condemned the Washington attack as “a violent act of antisemitism.” As Hamas grows more desperate, this kind of moral clarity will be more essential than ever. Whether it’s unverified reports of attacks, reckless claims of genocide, or calls for unilateral Palestinian statehood that will only embolden Hamas terrorists, we cannot allow dangerous narratives to shape the conversation.

What’s at stake is more than just the future of the Middle East — it’s about the safety and security of vulnerable communities everywhere, including right here in Canada.

Iddo Moed is the Ambassador of Israel to Canada

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First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.

TOP STORY

By overseeing one of the most dramatic immigration surges of modern times, Canada has cratered housing affordability, kneecapped productivity and concealed the true state of its economic growth, according to a new profile by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The OECD is a club of 38 countries that effectively comprise the developed world. Every two years, each member state receives a comprehensive “economic survey” prepared by OECD economists.

Canada’s

most recent survey

— published just last week — focuses in particular on the issues of housing affordability and worker productivity, two areas in which Canada now ranks among the worst in the developed world.

And in both instances, the OECD fingers record-high immigration as having made the problems worse.

“Rapid population growth has exacerbated previous housing affordability challenges,” reads the report, adding the blunt recommendation that “housing supply should keep pace with immigration targets.”

Similarly, the OECD warns that Canada has been packing millions of new workers into its labour force without any comparable increase in “productivity-enhancing investment.” With the economy thus remaining relatively stagnant, Canada’s workers are receiving an increasingly small share of the overall economic pie.

On top of this, the report notes that while Canada used to prioritize high-skilled immigrants such as doctors and engineers, its migration flows are now mostly comprised of low-skilled workers.

“The skill composition of recent immigration, which included many students and temporary workers, has also likely reduced average labour productivity,” it reads.

The OECD’s

own stats

have long shown that Canada is an outlier in the realm of housing affordability. The OECD’s most recent tally of the “price to income” ratio of Canadian housing shows that it is the highest of all their member states save for Portugal.

Over the last 10 years, Canada has also been one of the worst performers in OECD rankings of GDP growth per capita.

From 2014 to 2022, Canada’s rate of per-capita GDP growth was

worse than any other OECD country save Luxembourg and Mexico

Across those nine years, the average Canadian saw their share of overall GDP rise by just 0.6 per cent per year.

Canada’s “GDP per capita growth has lagged in recent years, particularly compared to its close neighbour, the United States,” wrote the OECD.

In the U.S., GDP growth per capita from 2014 to 2022 was nearly three times higher than Canada, at 1.7 per cent.

The report isn’t entirely downcast on Canada’s economic future. In a summary, the authors declare that Canada’s economy is “resilient” and endowed with “robust public finances.”

But the document is one of the first outside sources to detail the unprecedented surge of Canadian migration overseen by Ottawa in the immediate wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Canada’s population grew rapidly, by 3.0 per cent in 2023 and 2.6 per cent in 2024. This is much faster than in other OECD countries such as the United States or countries in Europe,” it reads.

About six times faster, in fact. In 2023, the average OECD country

grew by just 0.5 per cent.

This worked out to about one million newcomers entering Canada each year. At the beginning of 2022, the Canadian population stood

at about 38.5 million

. Now, it’s at 41.6 million, an increase of more than three million.

It’s a surge in voluntary population growth like few in history. Although other OECD members have experienced comparable population surges, at least in the short term, they’re usually the result of war or other displacements.

The report also confirms a phenomenon that Canadian analysts have been warning

about since 2023

: That Canada has been in a “per capita” recession for several years, with overall GDP only seeming to grow because of rapid population growth.

The injection of three million people has seemed to increase GDP, simply because all the newcomers are paying rent, buying groceries and increasing the amount of money circulating in the economy.

But on an individual basis, the average Canadians’ wealth and purchasing power has only been dropping.

The OECD report highlights this disparity with two duelling charts. On a measure of “real GDP,” Canada is able to keep up with the OECD average perfectly. But when ranked by “real GDP per capita,”

Canada’s economic performance suddenly falls dramatically behind.

“GDP growth has been supported by high population growth,” according to a subtitle.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has recently highlighted the issue of diminishing Canadian productivity, saying in a speech last week that it was making “life unaffordable for Canadians.” Carney’s proposed remedy is to reduce internal trade barriers and

embark on a series of “nation-building” projects

The OECD noted that Canada has backed off the peak highs of its immigration intake, writing that the Liberal government “has adjusted and recalibrated its immigration targets … and population growth has since begun to slow.”

Nevertheless, even under these new figures, Canadian immigration is set to be far higher than its pre-COVID levels.

Canada’s 2025 immigration targets are still set to bring in more than one million newcomers this year, mostly in the realm of non-permanent residents. Under the federal government’s

latest Immigration Levels Plan

, this year will see 395,000 new permanent residents, 305,900 new international students and 367,750 new temporary workers.

IN OTHER NEWS

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith met with Prime Minister Mark Carney on Sunday. These things are often pretty tense, and Smith left

with the impression

that

while the Liberal government is talking a big game about fast-tracking “nation-building projects,” she’s seen no evidence that this includes oil pipelines.

In a statement after the meeting, Smith highlighted four Trudeau-era barriers to oil development that are set to remain in place under Carney: Restrictions on Pacific Coast tanker traffic, an emissions cap on the oil sector, “net zero” mandates on electricity production and the Impact Assessment Act, which adds years of additional screening to new resource projects. “Without movement on these issues, there will be no significant investment in oil and gas,” she wrote. Carney’s reaction was that the meeting was “constructive.”

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The famous genderless washroom in the 1990s TV show Ally McBeal was a plot device meant for comedic purpose. These days it is no laughing matter. Across Canada, separate men’s and women’s restrooms are rapidly being replaced with unisex facilities.

In Kitchener, Ont., recent renovations have left the 2,000 seat

Centre in the Square

, the city’s premier music auditorium, with five multi-stall gender-neutral washrooms. These require men and women to line up together to access a series of individual stalls that each contain a toilet, paper dispenser and garbage can. Such an arrangement, which upends centuries of sex-separated bathrooms, brings with it plenty of double-takes, puzzled looks and awkward moments. (Including when I took my 89-year-old mother to the Nutcracker.) But it is by no means unique.

In Montreal, a new washroom at the Université de Montreal’s student services building features a unique circular design with study rooms and couches meant to encourage users to linger all day. It also includes 12 individually-ventilated stalls with floor-to-ceiling doors, and a common area for washing up. Numerous public schools across B.C. have similarly done away with separate boys’ and girls’ washrooms. And the same is planned for the current renovation of Centre Block on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, the seat of Canada’s democracy.

While these bathroom changes have all been presented as bold steps forward for “inclusivity,” there’s one thing genderless washrooms lack. Amid current efforts to rid restrooms of any vestige of traditional male and female differences, the urinal — a uniquely male waste management device — is at risk of disappearing forever. It’s time someone stood up for this unloved, overlooked and occasionally smelly necessity.

The current campaign against urinals finds its roots in efforts to solve the eternal dilemma of why the line at the ladies’ room is always longer. Kathryn Anthony is a professor of architecture at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a well-known advocate for “potty parity.” As Anthony explained in an interview, “Potty parity means equal speed of access to public toilets for men and women. Women simply take longer to go due to our anatomy and the need to disrobe.” To this end, she has spent decades campaigning for larger women’s washrooms to compensate for the extra time requirement.

More recently, however, the potty parity movement has made common cause with trans-gender activists who seek to eliminate any evidence of biological sex by promoting the concept of universal washrooms, which entail one bathroom line for all. And no urinals. “As we see more and more unisex restrooms,” Anthony said, “we will see fewer and fewer urinals. And not too many people are going to be sorry about that.” That remains to be seen.

While walls and fence posts have served the purpose throughout time, the modern urinal dates back to the Industrial Age, when it became necessary to find a way for working men to relieve themselves quickly on the job. And beginning in the 1830s, Paris began installing streetcorner

“pissoirs”

to improve public health by giving impatient male passersby a proper place to go. While its male-only concept may suffer for public support today, the urinal remains a marvel of utility and efficiency.

Among its foremost advantages is speed. “Urinals have always served an important purpose in allowing men to pee standing up,” said Klaus Reichardt, founder of Waterless Co. Inc., a California-based company that makes waterless urinals. “And that means we can get in and out of the restroom quicker.” While Reichardt’s system uses no water whatsoever — a major selling feature in drought-wracked California — all urinals save water, which brings up their second major benefit.

Canada’s

National Plumbing Code

requires that a urinal consume no more than 1.9 litres per flush. That compares with 6 litres for toilets designated for industrial, commercial or institutional use. A standard urinal uses one-third the water to perform the same task as a toilet. Forcing men to urinate in unisex toilets thus wastes up to 4.1 litres of potable water per flush. Scaled up over hundreds of millions of flushes, this is an enormous waste. Advocates of genderless washrooms typically see themselves as equity crusaders, but they are also proponents of an environmental calamity.

Urinals are also excellent space-savers since they take up less than half the square footage of toilet stalls, leaving room for other things, such as larger women’s washrooms. And they offer the opportunity to harvest a product very high in nitrogen and phosphorus. Reinhardt eagerly supplies several studies revealing the efficacy of using his product to collect undiluted urine for fertilizer, including a January 2025 study by Spanish researchers, impishly titled “Urine Luck,” that found a cubic metre of “yellow water” can produce 2.4 tons of hydroponic tomatoes.

While urinals outperform toilets on every conceivable measure of efficiency, particularly for men, there is one category in which their disappearance will leave women noticeably worse off. Here we refer not to efficiency, but

accuracy

. Where urinals are replaced with unisex toilet stalls, men will inevitably use them to pee standing up. And because their aim is not always very good, women who enter immediately after a man has just left can face an annoyingly messy situation.

A 2015

survey

of women by U.S. bathroom manufacturer Green Flush Restrooms reveals that “two-thirds of respondents ‘agreed’ or ‘definitely agreed’ that they prefer to use restrooms that are only used by women.” Why? Respondents expressed “the frustration of sitting down on a toilet seat that men have urinated on.” Plus, many women consider the washroom to be a female-only sanctuary where they can relax and chat with friends; having to share it with men destroys that ambiance.

The battle over urinals thus comes down to a clash between strict equity on one hand, and efficiency, cleanliness and cultural preference on the other. Tim Huh is a professor at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business whose typical research milieu concerns the optimization of business systems such as call centres. In 2019 he applied his analytic toolkit to the issue of optimizing bathroom fairness.

“Universal bathrooms are one way to equalize wait times,” he said in an interview. “There are no equity issues if everyone has to wait in the same line.” But, he added, “urinals are very efficient” and removing them imposes some very large costs on society.

His research suggests that beyond making men wait longer, a shift to genderless, urinal-less washrooms is unlikely to produce significant gains for women since they must now compete with men for the same stalls, and those men will take longer to do their business in the absence of urinals. Universal washrooms, his report concluded, “may not be a proper solution to ensure potty parity.” Instead of getting rid of gender-specific washrooms altogether, he found it makes more sense to enlarge women’s washrooms. And under no circumstances should urinals be eliminated.

Urinals save time, space and water. And while women can’t use them, their mere presence improves their lives as well. Keep in mind, without urinals, many men will out of necessity find other places to go, harkening back to the smelly and unhygienic situation that led to their invention in the first place.

Mandating universal washrooms and getting rid of urinals will leave almost everybody and everything worse off. So why are we even considering such a thing?

Peter Shawn Taylor is senior features editor at C2C Journal, were the longer, original version of this story first appeared. He lives in Waterloo, Ontario.

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Elon Musk’s departure from his temporary role with the Trump administration creates an opportunity to assess the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that he created to shape a smaller, leaner federal government. There’s no doubt that the job is necessary; government in the U.S. and especially at the federal level has metastasized over the years in

size, scope, and power

beyond affordability — or the bounds of respect for people’s liberty.

Unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, DOGE has so far delivered something between disappointment and failure.

When the idea of DOGE was first floated, Musk boldly predicted that

$2 trillion could be cut

from the federal budget. Predictably, after the election was won by Donald Trump and his Republicans, Musk hedged a bit,

saying

“I think if we try for $2 trillion, we’ve got a good shot at getting $1 (trillion).”

That was a walk-back, but still a credible effort to address a federal government that is on its way to spending

$6.75 trillion

this year and takes a growing bite from the economy. As the U.S. Department of the Treasury

puts it

, “since 2015, the spending to GDP ratio has increased from 20 per cent to 23 per cent.”

One trillion dollars might sound like a lot to cut from the federal government, but it’s just a bit more than half of the

$1.83 trillion deficit

the federal government ran last year. The U.S. federal government has consistently

spent more than it takes in for a quarter of a century

, borrowing to make up the difference in an ongoing unofficial policy of fiscal irresponsibility. It has run up a national debt that currently stands just shy of

$36 trillion

or around

100 per cent of gross domestic product

if we just look at debt held by the public and not money the government owes itself.

But despite its high-profile efforts over the protests of flustered federal workers and frenzied advocates of ever-expanding government, DOGE hasn’t cut $2 trillion. DOGE hasn’t cut $1 trillion. On its website, Elon Musk’s creation

boasts of saving $175 billion

. And that may be a bit of an exaggeration.

According to a

Reuters analysis

, DOGE’s own data reveals cuts that “add up to less than half of that figure.” Worse, the analysis found the federal government “spent about $250 billion more during the first months of Trump’s administration than it did during the same period of time last year.”

Part of the disparity between DOGE’s claims and the Treasury figures comes from tallying errors by the cost-cutters. Also, judges reversed or delayed spending cuts and agency closures. The huge federal debt also plays a role, with interest payments up by about 22 per cent from last year. The federal government’s ongoing borrowing spree is not just displacing other federal priorities, but also the ability to reduce the cost of government — leaving the taxpayers with bills to pay for expenditures years in the past.

Also, DOGE is an advisory agency with no enforcement power of its own. Even a president inclined to slash the size and power of the federal government can’t do so unilaterally. That requires congressional approval. And legislators aren’t inclined to tell their constituents that it’s time for tough fiscal medicine; a bill set to be introduced this week will contemplate all of

$9.4 billion in DOGE-recommended

cuts.

Whether this constitutes a disappointment or a bitter failure lies in your opinion of the government’s openness to reform. At Reason magazine, where I’m a contributing editor, Christian Britschgi

called

DOGE a “smashing success” for cutting anything at all from an institution that embodies Leviathan. He argued that “making the federal government a less secure place to work and a less reliable funding partner means fewer people will want to work for it, and fewer organizations will rely on it for funding.”

By contrast, his colleague Eric Boehm

labeled DOGE a failure

for refusing to address the entitlement spending that’s rapidly consuming the entire budget. It also tried to cut costs before asking Congress to reduce the power and role of federal agencies that spend so much money. Still, like Britschgi, Boehm allowed that DOGE’s results were probably better than we’d get in its absence.

At City Journal, Christopher F. Rufo

concluded

that DOGE’s big error was taking a technocratic approach to reforming the government when it should have focused on forcing true believers in an intrusive state out of federal employment. He believes “the fight for fiscal restraint is not over, but the illusion that it can be won through efficiency and memes has been dispelled.“

Among those disappointed by DOGE is President Trump himself. According to The Wall Street Journal, he

asked his advisors

“was it all bullshit?” of the cost-cutting project’s promises to cut trillions in spending.

But Elon Musk also sees fault in a federal government run by people who like to talk about reform but have no interest in the tradeoffs it requires. Before leaving the Trump administration, he criticized the House-passed version of President Trump’s “

big, beautiful bill

” full of domestic policy priorities. Musk

said

he was “disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit.”

After all, there’s little point in DOGE proposing spending cuts if Congress is going to more than offset them with expensive new boondoggles intended to buy votes in the next election.

The ultimate failure of DOGE is probably baked into the U.S. federal government itself. By most reports, it has been (and continues to be) a sincere if not always competent effort to reduce the size and cost of federal agencies, supported in principle by the White House and some lawmakers. But the federal government thrives on purchasing goodwill from the public with unaffordable programs. And its employees gain status and fulfillment by expanding their reach into every nook and cranny of life.

Without major course correction — not as yet provided by DOGE — the government will continue to grow.

According to the Congressional Budget Office’s

latest alternative scenario projections

, if federal spending and revenues continue on the path they’ve followed for 30 years “federal debt held by the public in 2055 would exceed 250 per cent of GDP.” That’s well over the maximum 200 per cent of GDP that economists at the

Penn-Wharton Budget Model believe the federal government can sustain

before “defaulting on its debt,” with all of the ensuing mayhem that you’d expect to result.

In the end, it doesn’t matter whether DOGE’s shortcomings are a failure or just a disappointment. In either case, the U.S. federal government and the American people face looming financial disaster.

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I’ve been reading various election post-mortems this weekend, or catching up on them, having sensed that I ought to try to understand the federal Conservative arguments over whether to keep Pierre Poilievre as leader or dump him. This is probably harder than usual from an Alberta vantage point. The election was (foreseeably) decided in Ontario, and whenever I manage to talk myself into some convincing account of how the Ontario boomer swing voter thinks, I always end with “But these same people keep electing Doug Ford.”

And that makes me suspect that the secret to politics is maybe just being lucky in your opponents, which Pierre Poilievre in 2025 just really wasn’t. Don’t get me wrong: I understand that Premier Ford has incredible, probably unsurpassed retail-politics ability. He’s built from the ground up to be what he is — an accessible, authentic sort of super-mayor of English Canada. But the political analysts keep saying that Poilievre was somehow too much like Donald Trump to win at a moment when Real Trump was sowing chaos and fear in Canada.

Get real, everybody. If you are really looking for the most Trump-like figure anywhere in Canadian politics, the person whose campaigning approach, sense of humour and overall demeanour are the most like Trump’s … the answer is really, really obvious. It’s the guy who keeps winning in Ontario, and who, like Trump, wins despite having little identifiable concrete political achievement beyond the winning itself. What was it George Orwell said about seeing what is in front of one’s nose?

Poilievre has attracted critics inside his party despite a genuinely impressive election result. He is haunted by the rapid evaporation of a gigantic lead in the between-election polls, a lead that he and his controversial inner circle somehow developed. Many of the election coroners are convinced that Poilievre has a personality problem, that he lacks a “softer side” and just can’t connect with Ontario’s suburban boomers. If so, it must be a problem that he suddenly developed this year, right around the time Justin Trudeau effed off into the gloaming. And the Conservative platform obviously wasn’t the problem, since the Liberal victory was built unapologetically on its stolen planks.

What’s obviously true is that the Conservative strategy was over-indexed on Trudeau, and that they didn’t anticipate the Liberal abandonment of consumer carbon taxation — a cause for which they had squandered oceans of money, planetary volumes of public and provincial goodwill, and the best years in the lives of innumerable lawyers. Everybody knew long before the election that there was a possibility that Trudeau could be talked by his caucus and cabinet into leaving, and that Mark Carney, central banker to the stars, might end up being the replacement.

But carbon pricing with consumer incentives was essential to Carney’s very being as a political philosopher — to all appearances, an absolute

sine qua non

. It was hard to imagine that he could be cynical enough to take the empty throne of the Liberal Party, cut off the head of the carbon tax, and hold it up to the crowd, happily bathing in the gore it effused. It must have been harder still to imagine that this would work. Trudeau departed at literally the last possible moment, and left Carney as little runway as he could possibly have — but the suddenness of the shuffle was almost certainly an advantage for Carney in the end.

Althia Raj’s multi-part election analysis for the

Star

reveals that on election night, senior Liberals were convinced

they had sewn up a majority

, and were dismayed at strong Conservative outcomes in the decisive parts of Ontario. Poilievre’s anomalous loss of his own seat — which awaits a proper explanation beyond “The dude who beat him is friendly and intelligent and worked really hard” — has obfuscated this crucial success. Under the circumstances, I don’t expect anybody to buy the idea that the Conservative campaign was fairly deft and responsive by the party’s own standards, and that it actually yielded an impressive late comeback hidden within an apparent fall from grace. But I wonder.

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The parade of premiers complimenting Mark Carney before and after the first ministers meeting in Saskatoon made for a curious spectacle.

These events have tended to leave prime ministers looking like Oliver Twist handing over stolen goods to a roomful of Fagins and Artful Dodgers.

Yet this time the mood reflected what one senior Alberta official called “a special moment”: more about seizing a potentially transformative opportunity than squeezing the federal government for the maximum number of taxpayers’ dollars.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said the meeting was “all about Team Canada, about telling the world that Canada is open for business, so come and invest.”

Ford said it was the best first ministers meeting in 10 years. “I’m very, very confident there’s hope,” he said.

The gathering did not produce a definitive list of projects that will receive fast-track federal approval, but the Ontario premier said there was no expectation that it would.

Manitoba’s Premier Wab Kinew said he will remain positive, even if his province’s proposals do not appear on the list of national projects to be fast-tracked.

“This is Team Canada. It doesn’t matter if you’re there for the puck drop or if you’re killing penalties. At the end of the day, everyone’s going to have their time on the ice and everyone is going to have a role in building up this great country,” he said.

Scott Moe, the Saskatchewan premier, said he is in agreement with Carney’s aspirational targets — making Canada the strongest economy in the G7 and building the country into a global energy superpower — but that words will have to be matched with action. He called the project-selection process “a generational opportunity for Canadians.”

That would require a regulatory shift to remove barriers to investment, but Moe acknowledged that the federal government is talking about introducing legislation that would circumvent the Impact Assessment Act (the former Bill C-69) that many blame for blocking projects.

Even Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, often an outlier among first ministers, said there seems to be an appetite for building pipelines to get oil to markets other than the United States. She said she was “encouraged by the change of tone” evident in Saskatoon.

She reportedly sent Carney a letter last month saying an oil pipeline has to be on the prime minister’s list of “nation-building” projects to be fast-tracked, or it will send an “unwelcome” signal to investors and Albertans concerned about Ottawa’s commitment to national unity.

Carney said there is “real potential” to move forward on pipelines full of “decarbonized” bitumen.

Smith said that decarbonization could be achieved using carbon-capture technology, but that

the Pathways project being proposed by oil sands companies

to do just that was a big-ticket item. Estimates are $10 to 20 billion.

However, she said a million-barrel-a-day pipeline to the northwest coast of British Columbia would generate $20 billion a year in revenue.

“It would be a good value proposition if both projects could proceed at once,” Smith said. “Let’s call it a grand bargain.”

Nobody is holding hands and singing Kumbaya.

B.C. Premier Dave

Eby remains opposed to ending the moratorium on tanker traffic off his province’s northern coast

One Albertan official said his federal counterparts are “oozing sincerity,” but absent an unequivocal public declaration that overhauls the regulatory regime, industry will not invest in engineering and designs of new projects.

“Past Liberals created this mess; these Liberals don’t want to take advantage of this special moment and make changes,” he said. “There are discussions, but so far, no compromises. It’s early, but not as promising as it could be.”

Still, we are a long way from the days in mid-January, after prime minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation and just before President Donald Trump’s inauguration, when it truly felt that Canada was drifting rudderless towards the falls.

Maybe a more accurate analogy would be the eve of the fall of Saigon. Federal ministers were more focused on their re-election prospects and the Liberal leadership contest than the threat of a trade war, while the bureaucracy downed tools in preparation for a new government.

The lack of a sense of collective mission was apparent in a communiqué from the premiers in January saying they would ensure a robust response to Trump’s tariff threats —a

document Danielle Smith refused to sign

Trump’s modus vivendi — dividing and conquering — was working and there were worries that the centre might not hold.

Five months on, Canada is in a much better place and voters have noticed.

new poll by Spark Insights

suggests two out of three voters approve of the way the federal government is handling its responsibilities, even though current voting intentions remain similar to where they were on election day.

Nearly four in 10 right-of-centre voters agree the government is performing well, as does a small majority of Albertans.

The main reason seems to be personal approval for Mark Carney as prime minister, with voters judging him intelligent, hard-working and likeable. Carney seems to have convinced even many Conservatives that he is in politics for the right reasons, despite being pilloried as being a tax cheat, a radical leftist and an elitist during the election.

Bruce Anderson, Spark’s chairman and a Carney supporter, suggested Canada has become less polarized than many might assume.

“Voters generally won’t dig into the substance of policy choices but they are as astute as hell when it comes to knowing what a clear vision, empathy and honesty looks and sounds like,”

he wrote this week.

But it goes beyond a recognition of likeability. I would argue the bipartisan support for the government’s performance is a collective realization that Canada once again has a serious, grown-up government.

Unlike its predecessor, its priorities are almost exclusively economic, not social; its focus is on stability, not its perception of morality; and it is policy-driven, not politically driven.

A good example of this more seasoned approach is the appointment of Marc-André Blanchard, Canada’s former ambassador to the United Nations, as Carney’s chief of staff. It was a move that was hailed on social media by former Harper-era ministers,

Lisa Raitt

and

Rona Ambrose

Blanchard has

his critics for positions taken at the UN

or when he was in business, but few doubt his competence.

He has also articulated the role of modern government better than most.

In a speech to the Public Policy Forum in April, he said the breakthroughs that shape the next generation will be made when public and private sectors truly collaborate.

He acknowledged that the distance between ideals and actions has never been so radically exposed as now, and conceded that citizens need to see better results from their institutions.

He concluded that engagement must be built on trust and there is no shortcut to that happy destination.

“There is only steady, honest, uncelebrated work of listening; of engaging with people who disagree with us; not thinking we know better; of standing in someone else’s shoes; of doing the right thing.

“And the right thing is often not theoretical perfection but a good, old-fashioned Canadian compromise, even when it’s hard,” he said.

At the end of the first ministers meeting, Carney said Ottawa will now refine the list of projects over the summer. They will be judged against the benchmark criteria: whether they bring the country together; make it more resilient; diversify its markets; and have a good prospect of Indigenous partnership.

The new prime minister has already built a new relationship with the premiers.

It’s a promising start. But to justify that trust, he will need to make the most of this “special moment” and deliver results.

National Post

jivison@criffel.ca

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