It was a gracious gesture for King Charles III  and Queen Camilla to come to Ottawa for 24 hours to open Parliament and symbolize Canada‘s close relations with the United Kingdom and other senior Commonwealth nations, but the speech from the throne was so general, we might have reserved the distinction of Their Majesties’ presence for a more substantive policymaking occasion. There was a pledge to make housing more affordable many years after what should have been the starting date for such a policy before millions of otherwise welcome immigrants were admitted to the country, furthering an acute housing shortage among Canadians of modest income. It was also good to hear the King state, on behalf of the federal government, the determination to protect and advance the rights of all Canadians. It would have been useful and pleasing to know if this included a departure from the federal government’s policy of passivity toward Quebec’s suppression of the English language in that province.

One specific point in the throne speech that was particularly welcome was the reference to the federal government‘s determination to eliminate internal trade barriers. If anything useful may ultimately be judged to have come from the current controversy with the United States, it is that U.S. President Donald Trump highlighted the exorbitant cost of some agricultural products as a result of the supplementary payments consumers are forced to make to certain farmers in this country. As I have written here often before, if it is considered public policy to supplement the incomes of these farmers, it should be done directly and not by overcharging the entire Canadian public for important categories of food. In the same category is the government’s implicit promise to contribute more to our own national defence. This has long and justifiably been a sore point with the United States, which effectively has guaranteed Canada’s national security since President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared at Queens university in 1938 that he would not ”stand idly by” if Canada were attacked. Canada has a distinguished military history of only going to war for good causes and never out of national greed, fighting bravely and almost always with volunteers and always on the winning side. We are not freeloaders, but we have been freeloaders in NATO for 30 years and there appears to be a consensus that this should stop.

The King‘s remarks began with the now practically obligatory reference to being on land “unceded” by Algonquin and Anishinaabeg peoples — an experience, the King advised, that reminds us of our “shared history as a nation.” The King has thus been delicately dragooned into the quagmire of the official relationship of Canada with its Indigenous peoples. The federal Parliament may indeed stand on land unceded by the Algonquins and Anishinaabeg, but this should not be allowed to imply that Canada, prior to the arrival of the British and the French in the 16th and 17th centuries, was populated and occupied, in the sense of being ruled and governed, by the Native peoples.

The Native peoples were in almost all cases nomadic and relatively sparse in numbers. The inference has been incited that those who have immigrated, mainly from Europe to Canada, over the last 450 years invaded someone else’s country. I yield to few in my desire to make the country’s policy toward Indigenous peoples more just and productive, but when the Europeans arrived, Canada was unsettled, and in no sense an organized political entity. It was chronically underpopulated, and those who lived within our present borders were talented and skilful tribes and clans sharing what was essentially a Stone Age civilization frequently engaged in internecine violence. Let us by all means pay them homage and embrace them as fellow Canadians, but not in a manner that could be construed as undermining the right of the rest of us to be here and negating the fact that our forebears brought Canada swiftly up to the most advanced conditions of contemporary civilization.

The other noteworthy development of the last 10 days in Canada‘s governance, though very under-publicized, was our adherence to the World Health Organization’s Pandemic Agreement, billed somewhat self-servingly as designed “to make the world more equitable and safer from future pandemics.” That was presumably the motive of the large number of national delegations that embraced this agreement, but it is not immediately clear that any such benign result will be achieved by it. The World Health Organization is dominated by China and is profoundly complicit in whitewashing China’s deliberate negligence in failing to give the world warning of the COVID pandemic. The WHO locked arms with the government of the People’s Republic of China, in trying to suppress the possibility that the COVID pandemic may have originated in a Wuhan laboratory, blindly ignored the Chinese government’s role in conspicuously failing to share information about the pandemic and its origins with the world and has behaved with such egregious deference to the totalitarian regime in Beijing that the United States has withdrawn from it, taking away by far the largest national contribution to its budget.

Given the track record of the WHO, we must strenuously question the wisdom of giving this front organization for the totalitarian Chinese regime more control over global public health measures. Not only has the United States withdrawn from the WHO, but a number of other countries abstained from the vote on this agreement, including Russia and Israel. It is absolutely impossible to conceive of why the authors of this agreement imagine it will “make the world more equitable.” It effectively hands to the Government of China control over pandemic preparedness and the global distribution of pandemic-related pharmaceuticals, without the adherence of the United States, which, in addition to being the chief paymaster of the WHO in the past is also by far the world’s most advanced country in medical research.

Despite all the nationalistic noises of the new federal government, we appear to be plodding on in the mindless globalism of the preceding Liberal government. It was pleasing to hear the King assure us on the advice of the prime minister that Canada was moving into an era of greater strength and unity. Handing authority over pandemic preparedness to a front organization for the People’s Republic of China is not the best first step in charging out of the starting blocks toward this promised era of greater purposefulness.

National Post

• Jesse Kline: Throne speech was a win for King Charles, a challenge for Mark Carney
• Jamie Sarkonak: The King’s land acknowledgement undermined his own authority

Election night can be a glorious occasion for some political parties and governments, and a dismal outcome for others. It’s not unusual for the long knives to come out after a poor result. That’s what some people are suggesting is happening right now within the Conservative Party’s inner sanctum — and the main target is Jenni Byrne.

“Pressure is mounting on Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre to fire Jenni Byrne, his national campaign manager,”

according

to a May 22 CBC News piece, “whom critics hold responsible for the party’s election defeat last month.” Twelve Conservative sources reportedly spoke with Radio-Canada reporter Christian Noel and were “granted confidentiality to discuss internal party matters.”

Many quotes were rather harsh.

“After a loss, heads have to roll,” one Conservative source suggested. “If Jenni Byrne stays, we won’t be able to support Pierre,” said another. “There’s only one head that needs to roll, and that’s Jenni’s. You don’t realize how she treats everyone like garbage,” a third person remarked.

Byrne also reportedly exhibits “toxic and angry” behaviour. She supposedly feels that “everything is a war” in politics. She was called “a bully who operates on threats” and “many MPs are either afraid of her or hate her.” One source even warned, “Pierre needs to change his negative personality and kick Jenni out. Otherwise, it’s the caucus that’s going to kick the leader out.”

People often talk tough when they can hide behind a cloak of anonymity. They wouldn’t dare say these types of things in public. Or to Byrne’s face, for that matter.

Let’s put this rumour to bed. As someone who’s been connected to the Conservative party, movement, and circles of interest for decades, I can confidently say there’s no “pressure” on Poilievre to fire Byrne. Are some Conservatives frustrated with the election result and view it as a missed opportunity? Yes, but that’s par for the course. There’s no inner party revolt brewing, and confidence in Poilievre and Byrne remains strong.

Why did the CBC suggest otherwise? While I’m sure that real people were interviewed for Noel’s piece, my guess is these Conservative sources were largely left-leaning Red Tories, old Progressive Conservative supporters — or both. These individuals have always had it in for Byrne and others who were born, bred and worked in Reform Party and Canadian Alliance circles. It’s a long-standing issue that stems back to the 2003

merger

of the Alliance and PCs. In spite of the fact the Reform/Alliance side was the much larger and more dominant group, the Red Tories and PCs grasp at straws and look for opportunities to regain power. That’s highly unlikely: their numbers are decreasing, and they’re even more irrelevant now than they were before.

Not that this would deter the CBC one little bit. Poilievre has long

supported

defunding the CBC. He

told

Toronto Sun columnist Brian Lilley last December that it would happen “very quick.” Any story that could knock down the Conservative leader a few extra pegs would likely be of some interest. If disgruntled Conservatives also wanted to throw a few stones at him, a slingshot could be provided.

It’s also fair to point out there have always been Conservative sources, including staffers, with mixed opinions about Byrne’s leadership style and thought process.

She’s not perfect and makes mistakes. She’s strong-willed, determined, picks a political lane and rarely abandons it. She’s had her share of disagreements with Conservative leaders, staffers, pundits and columnists. I’m one of them. Byrne and I haven’t always seen eye-to-eye when it comes to policy and strategy. We’ve agreed far more than we’ve disagreed, and my respect for her remains intact.

Byrne is intelligent, strategic and talented at her job. She’s an invaluable source of knowledge, wisdom, foresight and political communications. Poilievre, who

dated

Byrne for years, knows this better than almost anyone. He’s aware of what she brings to the political table as a strong woman and fierce campaigner, and appreciates her guidance and advice.

It’s also easy to point fingers at Byrne when, in reality, the election results were likely out of her and the party’s control.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs single-handedly changed the course of the Canadian election. The Conservatives witnessed a near-25-point lead

dissipate

in about a month due to this threat.

Some Canadians angrily blamed Trump for creating this situation — and felt Poilievre was the other side of the same political coin. The comparison was ridiculous: Poilievre and Trump have different ideologies, policies and personalities. The president also knew this. “I think his biggest problem is he’s not a MAGA guy, you know? I mean, he’s really not…a Trump guy at all,” he

told

Ben Domenech during an interview with U.K.-based The Spectator magazine. Many Canadians chose to ignore this.

Byrne, like Poilievre, attempted to combat this unexpected turn of events. They did the best they could during this difficult situation, and even

pivoted

Conservative messaging to oppose Trump. Alas, there’s only so much that could have been done to stop the bleeding when many Canadians refused to listen. It was one of those rare moments when outside forces, rather than political insiders, decided the fate of an election.

That’s why Poilievre’s strategy is crystal clear. Ignore the noise and faux outrage in Conservative circles and elsewhere — and let Byrne run his next national campaign.

National Post

SDEROT, Israel — Wednesday marked 600 days since the Hamas attack on Israel. War still rages, civilians suffer and die, hostages languish and no end is in sight.

In recent weeks, demands from even the staunchest allies of Israel, including the United States, have been mounting — demands for Israel to allow greater supplies of humanitarian aid to flow into the Strip, demands to end the war.

Perhaps surprising to some is that nearly

70 per cent

of Israelis agree with those demands. They want an end to the war and an end to the barbaric captivity of the hostages languishing in Hamas tunnels. They want an end to the intolerable strain with which Israelis and Palestinians have been living since October 7.

The challenge, of course, is how to bring this about. It is a geopolitical mess requiring the deftest of touches — sticks brandished at the right times, and carrots presented with care. The Middle East is not a region that responds to subtlety. But, paradoxically, complex nuance permeates every speck of land.

This is a historic moment suited only to the most thoughtful of diplomatic efforts, and it appears that Prime Minister Mark Carney could learn a thing or two, possibly even from the Trump administration.

On May 19, Carney joined with French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in issuing

a statement

that earned them praise and gratitude from Hamas’s leadership. The western troika emphasized their view that sole responsibility for the allegedly imminent famine in the Gaza Strip was attributable to Israel.

No mention was made of the longstanding Hamas practice of hijacking aid trucks and hoarding supplies, to be sold to civilians at extortionate prices.

In recent days, Carney’s preferred narrative has been exposed and debunked. A severe food shortage has moved Gazans to overcome their fear of Hamas brutality. On Wednesday, throngs of civilians overran a warehouse in central Gaza that was full to the rafters with food supplies. Hamas

fired

into the crowd. Four people were reportedly killed. More were injured. Carney and his diplomatic allies were silent.

I recently interviewed Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib at length about the situation in Gaza. Alkhatib was raised in Gaza City and moved to the United States at age 15 to participate in a special high school program. He has resided in America since, but over the decades has visited Gaza often and he maintains very close ties with friends and family there.

Since October 7, Alkhatib has devoted his professional efforts to giving voice to what he maintains are the views of the majority of Gazans, who oppose the hard-line, Islamist Hamas government.

They are fearful of speaking out, Alkhatib explains, because of “the behaviour of Hamas and how it is embedding itself in hospitals and in medical facilities … in schools, and is acting ruthlessly and is stealing a lot of supplies and aid.…

“So many Palestinians from Gaza are unable to speak out because of the blow-back on their families. And Hamas kills opposition members or opponents or those who speak out. Hamas kills protesters and throws them outside of their family’s homes. Hamas is a despicable ISIS-like organization at this point.”

This week, Amnesty International issued

a scathing report

on Hamas’s conduct in the Gaza Strip, condemning the group’s violence perpetrated on its own people for the slightest of infractions, real or imagined.

In recent weeks, many highly regarded Israelis — people who held top jobs in the military, intelligence services and civilian government — have boldly challenged the Netanyahu government’s handling of the war.

A

statement

posted on X by former Israeli Air Force Gen. Amos Yadlin on Thursday — in which he called for a “smart victory” that would see Israel accept a U.S. proposal that would lead to a return of the hostages and a dismantling of Hamas in exchange for an end to the war — is but one example of the prevailing view in Israel.

Several weeks ago, when meeting with hostage families in Tel Aviv, Steve Witkoff, U.S. special envoy to the Middle East,

reportedly remarked

that he did not understand what a renewed war in Gaza was meant to accomplish at this stage. The destruction and disarming of Hamas, as well as its removal as a governing force, he implied, can only be accomplished through diplomacy.

And yet, Carney only offers criticism of Israel — no tangible solutions and no offers to further the diplomatic process.

Meanwhile, the civilized world has been taken aback by the rampant antisemitic violence in Canada. Carney seems unperturbed by it all, aside from one or two nods to the how Canadians should be free to worship and attend school in safety.

But Canadian Jews are constantly being harassed — physically and verbally. Demonizing Jews and holding them responsible for everything that is wrong in the Middle East has been normalized in Canada. And on that, Carney has been silent.

In an extraordinary travel advisory issued on May 25 by Israel’s National Security Council (NSC), Israelis and Jews were warned of an elevated threat in Canada. Jews and Israelis, the advisory stated, have been the targets of sustained hatred and threats in Canada.

The

NSC recommends

Israelis “exercise increased precautionary measures, avoid displaying Jewish and Israeli symbols in public and remain extra vigilant while in public,” because, “In the past few days, the discourse … has become more radical, including what could be understood as calls to violently harm Israelis and Jews.”

This, it must be emphasized, was issued mere days after the murder of two staff members of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C.

There is a wide consensus in Israel that continued war will not resolve this mess. And this fact should have been understood and acknowledged by Carney and his cabinet colleagues.

This crisis must be managed by military pressure, in concert with thoughtful diplomacy that engages regional powers, along with the U.S. and other western countries.

Carney’s rather constrained perspective regarding this issue — that the blame rests with Israel — has emboldened Islamist and “progressive” interests targeting Canada’s Jewish community with violence and incitement to hatred.

Over the past 600 days, Canada’s federal leadership has indulged this ever-intensifying and aggressive antisemitic violence. When Jewish people and institutions are openly targeted and attacked violently, when threats are made against Jews — when such conduct is normalized, it is difficult to see how that is not treated as a national security threat.

Yet Prime Minister Carney seems oblivious to that reality, or the fact that his misguided diplomacy may be contributing to this very dark trend. It is time for the law to be applied to protect Canadian Jews and address the institutionalized antisemitism that flourishes in this country. Things are getting really ugly, and the world is noticing.

National Post

Vivian Bercovici is a former Canadian ambassador to Israel and the founder of the State of Tel Aviv.

• Terry Newman: Canada’s terrorist threat too great — for Jews and all Canadians
• NP View: When progressives become indistinguishable from Islamists

The U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) issued a decision yesterday that annuls 

various salvos of surprise economic tariffs

, including ones on Canada, that have been enacted by President Donald Trump since his inauguration in January. I won’t lie to you: I had the same initial reaction to this consequential news that you probably did, which was “Hooray!” and then “Huh, there’s a U.S. Court of International Trade?”

This court is surely unfamiliar even to most Americans, no doubt because much of its work involves settling issues like “Do 

hockey pants

 count as ‘garments’ or ‘sports equipment’ under customs law?” Nevertheless, the CIT does have exclusive jurisdiction over civil actions involving U.S. trade law. It’s just that no president has ever before rewritten the tariff schedule of the republic in the half-mad fashion of a child taking crayons to a fresh-painted wall.

The American Constitution, from day one, has unambiguously assigned the right to set international tariffs to Congress. Congress is allowed to delegate its powers to the president and his agents for limited or temporary purposes, but it can’t abandon those powers to him altogether. Defining this legal frontier is what the CIT was asked to do, and their demarcation of it will now swim upward through higher appellate courts (its decision has been put on hold

in the meantime

).

The lawsuit was actually two parallel suits raising overlapping objections to the tariffs. One was brought forward by 12 U.S. states, and the other was filed by a group of tariff-exposed American businesses, including manufacturers of bikes, electronics kits and fishing equipment. The latter set of plaintiffs was roped together by the usual posse of heroic libertarians and legal originalists, including George Mason University law prof Ilya Somin.

About 24 hours after Trump originally announced the “Liberation Day” worldwide tariffs, Somin quickly blogged about 

how insanely unconstitutional the whole idea was

, and concluded his article essentially by saying “I’m darn well gonna do something about this nonsense.” I don’t mean to suggest he deserves primary credit; I only intend to call attention, once again, to U.S. libertarians being 

the best friends Canada doesn’t know it has.

The world-befuddling Trump tariffs all depended explicitly on a Congressional statute granting the president authority to adjust trade law in a national emergency: namely, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977. 

Courts have hitherto been pretty relaxed

 about presidential uses of the IEEPA powers. But, crucially, no president before Trump ever used the act to adjust tariffs at all; it has mostly been used in a relatively surgical way to apply economic sanctions and freeze foreign assets.

There is, in fact, no clear and explicit language in the act that allows the president to impose tariffs. It just says the executive branch can, in an emergency, “regulate … importation.” 

The CIT found itself obliged to interpret those words in a way that does minimum violence to the Constitution

.

Which was far from the only problem faced by the justice department’s lawyers. They tried to argue that the definition of an “emergency” for the purposes of the IEEPA is exclusively up to the president, and is a political question upon which courts cannot tread. The CIT observed that “emergencies” are defined by statute and past caselaw, and it found that the president’s improvised “national emergency” claims about longstanding trade deficits and fentanyl conspiracies were dubious on their face.

That is an issue that us goober newspaper columnists just raised as quickly as Somin did, but the court accepted other, more subtle arguments against the tariffs. To take just one example that will delight anyone with even a smidgen of a lawyer-brain, the language of the IEEPA allows the president to borrow Congress’s tariff authority in order to “deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat.”

The potential for argument over “unusual and extraordinary” is pretty obvious. (American trade deficits could in fact be best described as “both usual and ordinary.”) But, ah, what about “deal with”?

The CIT agreed with the view that this statutory verbiage requires a specific causal nexus between the asserted threat and the presidential regulation proposed to address it. If Canadian smugglers were pouring megatons of fentanyl into the United States by hiding it in barrels of delicious icewine, the president might, under the IEEPA, be entitled to ban imports of Canadian icewine. What he can’t do is to invent new taxes on Canadian potash and aluminum in order to chastise naughty Canada for having half-assed police. However much, mind you, as we might in some sense deserve it.

National Post

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For too long, Canada has been a modest contributor on the global economic stage. But modesty is no longer a virtue in a world demanding bold leadership. On the campaign trail, Prime Minister Mark Carney promised to make Canada both the strongest economy in the G7 and an energy superpower. That ambitious goal is not only necessary, it is within reach — if we unleash the full potential of Canada’s natural resources sector, including responsibly expanding our energy and critical minerals industries.

This isn’t about nostalgia or propping up legacy industries. It’s about strategic economic renewal rooted in reality. Our economy is stagnating. Much of our recent GDP growth has come from population increases through immigration, not from productivity gains or rising wages. While newcomers bring immense value, we cannot build a prosperous future on demographics alone. We must grow the economic pie, not just slice it thinner.

If Canada is to become the strongest economy in the G7, it must deliver not just for global partners, but for its own people. It must deliver for young Canadians who are losing hope, for families squeezed by rising costs and for workers who want to build meaningful careers in industries that matter. Energy and critical minerals are the industries of Canada’s future. Low-emission oil and gas, hydrogen, liquid natural gas, uranium, lithium, copper, nickel and rare earth elements are the ingredients of the 21st-century economy — and Canada has them in abundance.

We must recognize that the world has changed. U.S. President Donald Trump’s provocations were a wake-up call. For the first time in decades, natural resources development was a significant issue during a federal election campaign. Canadians seem to better understand how trade dependent we are, and how valuable our resources are to a world that’s desperate for secure, reliable and responsibly sourced inputs.

We’ve elected a new government — one with a minority mandate but arguably more freedom to act boldly than any in modern Canadian history. Even public opinion in Quebec — long seen as a barrier to major energy infrastructure — appears to be shifting. Many Quebecers are now open to pipelines and energy projects that could ease the chronic energy insecurity of eastern Canada, while unlocking massive economic benefits.

When business leaders gathered in Ottawa in the middle of May for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s Business 7 Summit, they acknowledged what many of us already know: Canada has a pivotal role to play in the future of global energy, critical minerals and clean economic growth. This is a generational opportunity to reshape the trajectory of our country for the next century. We must act boldly — and swiftly. This message has been shared with G7 leaders in advance of their summit, which Canada will chair in Kananaskis, Alta., in June.

Early signs give reason for cautious optimism. The appointment of Tim Hodgson as minister of energy and natural resources was welcomed across the sector and his first major speech in Calgary struck the right tone, declaring that Canada would be “defined by delivery.” Carney’s recent mandate letter to his ministers also reflects a sense of urgency and seriousness about the economic promise of Canada’s natural resources. But let’s not mistake intention for action.

To be clear, a push for urgency does not absolve us of our constitutional responsibilities to Indigenous peoples, give the federal government license to trample on provincial jurisdiction or grant us permission to abandon our commitment to environmental stewardship. What it does require is a co-ordinated, respectful and united “Team Canada” approach, for the good of Canadians and our global partners.

We must also come to terms with another truth: not every bet will pay off. Some investments may under-deliver. Some projects may fail. It’s a reality we should work diligently to minimize — especially when taxpayer dollars are on the line — but we must accept that the far greater risk lies in doing nothing at all. The cost of inaction, delay and missed opportunity will be paid in lost jobs, growth, relevance and a diminished ability to meet global demand.

Canada needs to break the cycle and stop undermining our most productive sector — whether through 1,000 cuts of poor policy or by trapping it in a never-ending labyrinth of government consultations. The window of opportunity won’t stay open forever. Major projects take years, even decades, to complete, and governments and public opinion change.

Canadians are watching closely, and many are beginning to ask: if the potential loss of our sovereignty, prosperity and future is not sufficient to compel us to act, then what will it take — and will we ever rise to the occasion? If we don’t seize this moment, we may not get another. Because if Canada doesn’t step up, others will.

National Post

Bryan N. Detchou is senior director of natural resources, environment and sustainability at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

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Some Canadian academics are accusing the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) of straying from its core mission of advocating for academic rights and fair working conditions to pursuing a politicized agenda that undermines its fundamental purpose. Specifically, they accuse CAUT of — issuing an unsubstantiated U.S. travel advisory, producing a likely skewed academic freedom report with soon-to-be added anti-Israel rhetoric, and encouraging administrative overreach into equity-based hiring that risks faculty autonomy — betraying its founding principles.

Addressed to CAUT’s president Robin Whitaker as well as the association’s Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee, the

open letter,

which began circulating on Monday, currently has 165 signatures from current and former academic staff from British Columbia to Newfoundland, working in diverse fields ranging from Film to Physics. What they all have in common is their opposition to the politicization of CAUT.

And they appear to be correct. CAUT’s scope has, indeed, gone far beyond its original purposes.

Founded in 1951, CAUT was

envisioned

as a national association that might help faculty members deal with “salaries and pensions, sabbatical leave and academic freedom” issues — basic, bread and butter issues for its

members

who now total 75,000 teachers, librarians, researchers, and other academic staff in over 130 Canadian colleges and universities across the country.

Over time, CAUT’s role expanded to include other, non-controversial concerns, such as the protection of intellectual property, necessary for the digital age, advice on legal support and collective bargaining, and fair employment, which includes organizing against the increasingly precarious conditions of contract workers.

Fast forward to 2025. CAUT’s scope is now far more ambitious, political and global.

In its own words, CAUT sees itself as advancing “equity and human rights for academic staff across Canada.” Its assumed responsibilities don’t stop at our borders though. Despite originally being an organization concerned with the basic issues of labour for academic employees here at home, CAUT now sees its role as global, telling members, “We partner with national and international allies to defend human rights.”

It appears CAUT wants to be an academic United Nations.

In addition to these, no doubt, well-meaning, yet, lofty goals, CAUT now sees organizing to push for equity hires as part of its purview. “With our member associations and allies, we press for the Indigenization of our colleges and universities and justice for all,” it notes.

This is one of the complaints in the open letter.

While taking no issue with fairness in pay amongst genders, “two individuals who have different genders but comparable positions, experience, accomplishments,” the letter argues that advocating for targeted equity hires goes beyond the scope of CAUT’s mandate and actually promotes administrative control over hiring, conflicting with CAUT’s role in preventing administrative overreach, as hires are typically decided amongst faculty members, not university administrators, because doing so would go against academic freedom.

Campaigns like these — targeting hires from particular identity groups — arguably go against fairness for all existing and prospective members, including those in these groups who, even as the best candidate for the job, may end up feeling like a token diversity hire.

On April 15, CAUT issued a

statement

advising academics against non-essential travel to the U.S. As pointed out in the open letter, the statement went far beyond the updates made to the Canadian government’s own

travel advisory page

, which advised Canadians at the time to take “normal security precautions” and simply reiterated

already existing travel norms

concerning border screening and the discretion individual border agents have in making decisions.

CAUT behaved as if it were an association responsible for something between Canada’s travel advisory and national terrorism threat websites.

It told its members: “Travellers leaving or returning to Canada, particularly those traveling to the U.S., are increasingly vulnerable to preclearance zones and border searches that may compromise research confidentiality and academic freedom.”

Among the list of individuals identified as vulnerable to these searches, CAUT included transgender individuals, those who “have expressed negative opinions about the current U.S. administration or its policies,” and “those whose research could be seen as being at odds with the position of the current U.S. administration.”

The open letter rebuffs these warnings: “CAUT provided no data with which to substantiate this claim, has no special expertise in security or Canada-U.S. relations, to their knowledge, and, has not cautioned against travelling to any countries other than the U.S. — even though many other countries (including Canada) also allow comprehensive border searches.”

The letter also notes that: “CAUT has not issued any sort of travel advisory for the

100+ countries

that the Government of Canada lists as higher risk for travellers, including several with significant authoritarian policies that threaten faculty members’ academic freedom (arguably to a much greater extent than those of the current U.S. government). CAUT’s advisory therefore gives the appearance of being primarily an anti-Trump political statement rather than a reasoned recommendation to protect the rights of faculty members.”

There doesn’t appear to have ever been a travel warning from CAUT for Iran, even though Iranian-Canadian anthropology professor Hooma Hoodfar was

arrested

by authorities there in 2016 while on a personal and research visit.

Hoodfar was detained in Tehran’s

notorious

Evin prison for 112 days without medicine for the rare neurological disease she suffers from. Iran’s press reported that she was charged with “collaborating with a hostile government against national security and with propaganda against the state” with the prosecutor there accusing her of “dabbling in feminism.” Hoodfar researched sexuality and gender in Islam at the time.

While CAUT actively campaigned for Hoodfar’s release, they did not issue a travel advisory for Iran at that time, or afterward, to protect academics.

The letter also accuses CAUT of engaging in political advocacy rather than objectively studying post-October 7 academic freedom on campuses.

It claims that CAUT’s March 2025 “

Report on Academic Freedom in Canada after October 7, 2023.”

focused “almost exclusively on alleged incidents of suppression of pro-Palestinian viewpoints” in its compiling of cases that occurred from Oct. 7, 2023 to March 2025. While CAUT admits the report is not exhaustive, reading it would lead readers to believe that Zionist voices are largely unsuppressed as the report contains only three examples of such suppression over that period.

The letter claims the report is methodologically unsound, as its non-random sampling relied on cases which were widely reported or brought to the attention of CAUT. One disadvantage of non-random sampling is that it often systematically excludes key subpopulations, in this case, pro-Israel voices.

CAUT stated that it did not attempt to investigate or determine the merits of the cases it lists in its report, yet contradicts itself by weighing in on the case of Université de Montréal (UdeM) lecturer Yanise Arab who was suspended after being caught in a

video

yelling, “Go back to Poland” at Concordia University students. CAUT claims the audio is “unclear,” and conveniently leaves out the word he uttered following that: “sharmuta” which means “whore.”

As if this weren’t bad enough, CAUT members

voted

on May 2, 2025 to amend this report by adding what the letter refers to as “blatantly anti-Israel language” including the “war waged by Israel on Gaza, now widely considered genocidal in both intent and practice” as “context” to the earlier report.

This all doesn’t sit well with CAUT members like Rachel Altman, an associate professor of Statistics and Actuarial Science at Simon Fraser University in B.C., who has no choice but to associated with CAUT because her union is. She told me in an email, “Some of us (myself included) are legally mandated to be members of our bargaining associations — which then use our dues, in part, to pay for membership in CAUT. It’s outrageous that I and others are being forced to support an association whose activities are inconsistent with its purposes — especially when those activities are contrary to our interests.”

The open letter calls upon CAUT to address these issues by withdrawing the report and its amendments and ensuring that ensuring rigorous methodology and impartial presentation is used in all future reports and studies. As well, it asks that CAUT either removes the U.S. travel advisory or justify it with evidence and an explanation as to why they did not issue similar warnings for higher-risk countries. They ask that CAUT eliminates recommendations for equity hires, to prevent administrative overreach in departmental hiring decisions.

Lastly, it recommends that CAUT adopt an “institutional voice,” as per Harvard, where it’s already been recognized that “universities and their leaders should not issue official statements about public matters that do not directly affect the university’s core function.” According to Altman, several Canadian universities, including Laurentian University, University of Toronto, Simon Fraser University, University of Waterloo, and University of New Brunswick, have already adopted similar policies.

It’s time for CAUT to catch up.

tnewman@postmedia.com

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