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TOP STORY

Three months after the federal election, Prime Minister Mark Carney remains smack dab in the middle of his honeymoon period.

An approval rating of 61 per cent. Satisfaction with the government is at highs not seen since the first term of Justin Trudeau. Some polls have Carney’s Liberals enjoying a 10-point lead over the Conservatives.

But much of that vanishes if you omit the one demographic that has always liked Carney the most: Seniors.

A Leger poll from last month showed that while Carney would easily win a majority government in a new election, this was due almost entirely to his wildly outsized support among over-55 voters.

In that cohort, 56 per cent of respondents favoured the Liberals against just 28 per cent prepared to vote Conservative.

Everywhere else, opinions on the Liberals remained divided.

Among respondents aged 18-34, the parties were at a virtual tie: 43 per cent Liberal, 42 per cent Conservative. For those aged 35 to 54, it was 41 per cent Liberal to 40 per cent Conservative.

This continues to make Canada the only Western democracy in which the usual demographics of political leanings have been flipped on their head.

Everywhere from the U.K. to Germany to the United States, young people continue to favour left-wing parties while old people favour right-wing parties.

In the recent Australian general elections, held just a week after Canada’s, the left-wing Labor Party won a surprise victory by sweeping constituencies disproportionately populated by younger voters.

Some of Canada’s peer countries may have conservative parties that are gaining support among young people, or are doing better than usual among younger cohorts. But Canada remains the outlier as a place in which the average 25-year-old is more likely to vote conservative than the average 65-year-old.

During the April federal election, in fact, voters in their 20s consistently emerged as one of the strongest single cohorts showing support for the Conservatives.

In one of the most surprising manifestations of the trend, a straw poll held among Canadian high school students ended up delivering a result that was more conservative than the general electorate. If it had been up to teenagers, Canada would have had a Conservative minority government.

The final days of the election also featured the equally bizarre spectacle of Conservative ads specifically targeting old white men in an attempt to arrest that cohort’s stampede to the Carney Liberals.

In the ad, two older men play golf while discussing the flailing finances of their adult children. One tells the other that his son David has been experiencing a “tough few years” and “can’t seem to get ahead.”

The phenomenon of young Canadians drifting right only started to show up in earnest after the 2022 election of Pierre Poilievre as Conservative leader. The 2021 federal election had generally broken down along conventional lines; young Canadians mostly voted for progressive parties or stayed home.

It was the summer of 2022 when polls first began showing the near-unprecedented phenomenon of the Tories scoring a plurality of support among the under-44 set.

Poilievre had championed the issue of housing affordability during his Conservative leadership run, blaming the problem on a latticework of government “gatekeepers” holding back densification and housing development.

He also aligned with youth in his support for the underlying goals of the Freedom Convoy anti-mandate blockades. Although the movement was broadly unpopular among Canadians, its most vocal supporters were among under-34s, many of whom had borne a disproportionate share of the consequences from pandemic lockdowns. An Ipsos poll from the time found that 61 per cent of 18-34 Canadians may have disagreed with the tactics of the Freedom Convoy, but thought its underlying message was “worthy of our sympathy.”

This youthful migration to the Tories may explain why Conservative support remains strangely high, even after Poilievre was sent into a semi-wilderness after losing his own Ottawa-area House of Commons seat.

In sharp contrast to Carney’s various trips to foreign capitals and summits, Poilievre’s most recent public appearance was at an all-candidates’ debate hosted by the Camrose and District Chamber of Commerce, where he is vying for the House of Commons seat vacated by former Conservative MP Damien Kurek.

And yet, while Conservative leaders have typically seen their stars fade rapidly after general election losses, that hasn’t happened to Poilievre.

Just after the House of Commons broke for the summer recess, an Abacus Data survey found that while Carney was enjoying a post-election surge in support among Canadians, Poilievre remained about as popular as he’d ever been.

In January, when Poilievre was the easy favourite to become Canada’s next prime minister, his favourability rating was 39 per cent. After losing the election and his own seat, his favourability rating remained at 39 per cent.

“Despite narratives painting him as politically wounded, our data suggests otherwise,” wrote Abacus Data’s David Coletto.

The usual explanation for all of this is economic. Among the many social and economic ills plaguing Canada at the moment, almost all of them are hitting young people harder than they’re hitting old people.

Unemployment is far worse among youth than in any other age group, a phenomenon driven in part by an unprecedented intake of temporary migrants employed in entry-level positions.

In fact, the Canadian youth labour market has deteriorated faster than in any other advanced economy. An analysis by Bloomberg News found that over the last two years, unemployment among 15 to 24-year-old Canadians had jumped by 3.6 per cent. It was, wrote Bloomberg, “the sharpest increase among the 25 largest economies in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development — including the U.S., U.K. and Australia.”

Canada also continues to dominate the rest of the OECD in housing unaffordability. And here, the issue has the perverse impact of harming young Canadians to the direct benefit of older Canadians. For every young person priced out of home ownership by rising real estate prices, there is another — and likely older — Canadian who saw the equity rise on a home they purchased before prices began to skyrocket right around the late 2000s.

During the federal campaign, this divide often showed itself in terms of what voters thought the election was about. Polls consistently showed that among older Canadians, their top political issue was Donald Trump and his tariff threats against Canada.

But younger Canadians continued to prioritize the same problems they’d had long before Trump’s return to the U.S. presidency.

In an Angus Reid Institute survey held in the election’s first days, respondents aged 18-24 identified their core political issues as being “cost of living” (49 per cent) and “housing affordability” (41 per cent), with only 23 per cent expressing worry over “relations with the U.S. including tariffs.”

Contrast that with respondents over 65; 50 per cent listed Canada’s top political issue as the trade war, against just 17 per cent who picked housing affordability.

The Carney Liberals did indeed make promises to fix housing affordability through an “ambitious” crash program of government-led homebuilding that would feature heavy adoption of modular homes.

But Carney had only to swear in his cabinet before Housing Minister Gregor Robertson was declaring that housing prices would not be going down. Last month, he appeared to backpedal on Carney’s more sweeping housing promises, saying it would takes years before there was any noticeable change in the status quo.

Meanwhile, it’s on the issues most important to young Canadians that the Conservatives are continuing to chart their best numbers.

In June, Abacus Data found that a majority of Canadians liked Carney, thought his government was off to a good start, and approved of the federal government generally.

But when it came to issues of immigration, the economy, crime and the “rising cost of living,” Conservative support remained dominant.

If an election could be held exclusively on the issue of the economy, Tories would win 44 per cent to 37 per cent. On crime, 50 per cent to 23 per cent. On immigration, 59 per cent to 20 per cent.

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In British Columbia, at least 10 members of the province’s expensive drugs for rare diseases (EDRD) committee have

resigned,

not because the government failed a dying child, but because it finally helped her.

This is the kind of sentence that shouldn’t exist in a functioning democracy.

Charleigh Pollock is a 10-year-old girl living with terminal Batten disease. Until recently, she was receiving Brineura, a drug that doesn’t cure the condition but slows its progression and improves quality of life. For Charleigh, it did just that. Her seizures stopped. Her condition stabilized. She went back to school. She played. She laughed. She lived in the way every child should.

Then, in June, B.C.’s NDP government ended her treatment.

Health Minister Josie Osborne

pointed

to recommendations from the EDRD committee and Canada’s Drug Agency, which, she said, claimed there was “no clinical evidence (the drug) would provide further benefits.” That term, clinical, bureaucratic and cold, ignored what was visible. Charleigh’s

family and doctors

saw

stabilization

. Experts in Batten disease, both here and abroad, affirmed the drug was helping her.

Still, the province refused to budge. Funding was denied. Appeals were dismissed. Charleigh’s parents turned to crowdfunding,

launching

a GoFundMe campaign to fund her continued care.

It was ultimately British Columbians, outraged by what they saw and by the painful pleas for help made by Charleigh’s mother Jori Fales, who turned the tide against the government. The public rose up: advocates,

physicians,

editorial boards and thousands of citizens. Petitions circulated. Columns demanded action. People made clear what the government would not: that compassion should never depend on political expedience or private fundraising.

On July 17, after weeks of silence and mounting political pressure, Osborne

reversed

the decision. Funding resumed. Charleigh’s treatment was back on track. Her family could breathe again.

Then came the backlash.

Ten members of the EDRD committee

resigned

, claiming the minister’s reversal amounted to political interference. To them, it wasn’t the denial of a child’s care that crossed a line. It was restoring it.

Let that settle in.

An unelected committee withdrew a terminally ill child’s treatment behind closed doors. A minister intervened only when the political cost of inaction became too high. And when she finally did, the loudest protest came from within the system itself.

This wasn’t just a policy failure. It was a collapse of moral leadership. A failure made worse by how long elected officials remained silent.

Osborne only acted under pressure. Premier David Eby, consistent in his absence, waited until the public outcry made it impossible not to respond.

Nowhere was that disengagement more obvious than in the silence of Charleigh’s own MLA, Ravi Parmar. As his young constituents’ fight for treatment became a province-wide controversy, Parmar was nowhere to be found. No statement. No interviews. No visible advocacy. Nothing that resembled the kind of moral clarity or leadership his office is entrusted to provide.

When the decision was finally reversed, Parmar’s office quietly

claimed

he had been working behind the scenes. But in moments like these, silence is not a strategy. It is abdication. It is complicity by omission.

Leadership is not measured by private emails or whispered assurances. It is measured by the willingness to stand up, publicly and unequivocally, when a child’s dignity is on the line. Parmar failed that test.

To his credit, Eby

has now acknowledged

the problem and promised reforms. He conceded that the process — which operates in secrecy, with no published reports or transparency — gives the impression that politicians are powerless or disengaged.

That impression isn’t wrong.

What Charleigh’s case reveals is a system so burdened by risk aversion and rigid process that it no longer responds to the people it serves. Bureaucrats make decisions behind closed doors. Politicians avoid responsibility. And families are left to plead for compassion from a structure that sees them as exceptions, not priorities.

We do not elect officials to defer to panels. We elect them to lead. When the process fails, leaders must step in, not after a media storm, but before one ever begins.

Committee members have argued that political involvement undermines medical integrity. But they miss the point. Legitimacy doesn’t come from secrecy or protocol. It comes from justice, empathy and the ability to recognize when rules get it wrong.

Justice in this case required listening. It required adapting. It required choosing humanity over institutional habit.

Charleigh is 10 years old. Her life has already been shaped by pain that no child should experience. But her family’s fight should never have been necessary. It should not take petitions, fundraisers or media campaigns to convince a government that a child’s life matters.

She deserved better. Her family deserved better. And the people of British Columbia deserve a government that leads with conscience, not one that waits to be shamed into action.

We cannot undo the decisions that led us here. But we can demand better. We must hold leaders accountable before another child is forced to fight the very system that promised to protect them.

National Post

JERUSALEM — Central to the international pressure on Israel for a ceasefire with Hamas are claims of widespread starvation and even accusations that Israel is deliberately using hunger as a weapon. But The Press Service of Israel’s (TPS-IL) closer examination of the humanitarian aid pipeline found that a combination of United Nations policies, Hamas looting and black market profiteering prevents much aid from reaching Gaza civilians and inflates the prices of items that do reach market shelves.

Most damningly, according to the UN’s own numbers, a staggering 85 per cent of the aid entering the Gaza Strip by truck since May 19 has been stolen.

“There is some hunger in Gaza, and it exists only in places Hamas is pursuing it, not in other areas,” said Prof. Eytan Gilboa, an expert in international relations and media at Reichman University in Herzliya.

UN bottlenecks and bad assumptions

Recent data suggests that Israel continues to facilitate large-scale humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip — far exceeding prewar levels. According to a July 2025

report

by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, claims of deliberate starvation are not supported by facts on the ground.

Before the war, around 150–300 trucks entered Gaza daily, though only a fraction carried food. Data from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) shows that in 2022, an average of 292 trucks crossed daily, with just 73 of them carrying food — around 25 per cent. Despite this, there were no signs of famine. Public health indicators such as infant mortality and life expectancy matched those in Jordan and Judea and Samaria.

The report also refuted flawed assumptions about local food production. While Amnesty International claimed that local agriculture provided 44 per cent of Gaza’s food needs, the report argued that this number was based on financial expenditure, not caloric intake. In reality, local production accounted for no more than 12 per cent of caloric supply. The majority of calories came from imported grains, oils and food aid — largely delivered by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and the World Food Programme.

Israel

suspended aid shipments

temporarily in March 2025 due to Hamas’s systematic looting, but resumed deliveries in May. By the end of May, 170 trucks were entering the Strip each day.  As of July 27, all aid crossings have reopened, and additional airdrops are being carried out. The Gaza Humanitarian Fund (GHF),

launched in May

, now supports alternative aid distribution networks.

According to official Israeli sources, humanitarian aid currently flows through two main channels. The first includes direct food packages — primarily shelf-stable items such as canned vegetables, lentils and nutritional supplements — distributed by international organizations through secure hubs.

The second channel involves community-level solutions such as bakeries and communal kitchens, operated by the World Food Programme (WFP) and non-governmental organizations like World Central Kitchen, using vetted local partners to deliver cooked meals.

As of July 24, the number of trucks at the Kerem Shalom border crossing waiting for pickup by international relief organizations was reportedly more than 800. In an email response to questions from TPS-IL, a UN spokesperson attributed the delay to strict Israeli security protocols. “Kerem Shalom isn’t a walk-up warehouse,” the spokesperson said.

“For 11 weeks, the Israeli authorities blocked the entry of any items — regardless of how critical they were for civilians’ survival. So, images of supplies piling up inside closed, militarized compounds in fact show what aid workers have not been facilitated in collecting and delivering,” she wrote.

But legal expert Anne Herzberg blames the UN for the necessity of time-consuming inspections. She told TPS-IL that the UN knew that Hamas was using the aid convoys to smuggle weapons but turned a blind eye to the problem. Herzberg is the legal advisor to NGO-Monitor, a Jerusalem-based non-profit that monitors the activities of non-governmental organizations.

“Had they been more proactive in trying to block weapons smuggling and aid diversion, they wouldn’t need any inspections,” she insisted.

According to the UN’s World Food Program, as of July 25, there was “roughly 3,500 MT (metric tonnes) of WFP cargo (the equivalent of 300 trucks) ready to be collected from holding areas for collection and distribution inside Gaza.”

The WFP also noted a shortage of truck drivers, saying only 60 have been vetted and approved to make deliveries in Gaza.

An Israeli security source stressed to TPS-IL that collecting and distributing aid is the UN’s responsibility, not Israel’s. “They are not doing their job well. Only when pressure is put on them do they start collecting. We allowed them delegations and time frames and they do not meet the co-ordinated times, but arrive late and for a few hours,” he said.

“Israel is ready to facilitate and do much more than is required, such as providing logistical assistance, fuel for the trucks, walkie-talkies so they can talk to each other… We (recently) announced humanitarian corridors and

tactical truces

to facilitate the collection of equipment,” he said.

Hamas’s manufactured crisis

Israeli army sources told TPS-IL that the real obstacle to feeding Gaza is Hamas. This accusation is backed by UN figures.

According to data on the website of the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS), 2,013 trucks carrying 27,464.5 tonnes of of aid — almost entirely food —  entered Gaza since May 19. Of that number, 1,753 trucks carrying 23,353.3 tonnes of aid never reached their destinations. All 85 per cent of the missing food was designated by the UNOPS as “intercepted” — “either peacefully by hungry people or forcefully armed actors, during transit in Gaza.”

UNOPS is the operational arm of the UN that helps implement humanitarian, development and peace-building projects.

A record 90 trucks carrying 1,695 tons of aid were looted on May 31 alone, according to UNOPS.

The data showed that 98.6 per cent of the stolen aid was food, with the remainder designated as “solid fuel,” nutrition” and “health.” In addition, 90.3 per cent of the stolen aid belonged to the World Food Program. The remaining aid belonged to World Central Kitchen, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the International Committee for the Red Cross and International Medical Corps Gaza.

UNOPS did not refer to Hamas by name, but Israelis and Palestinians did.

“From the start, Hamas has tried to make the humanitarian distribution by GHF fail,” an Israeli military official told TPS-IL. “They intimidate civilians and threaten anyone who approaches aid centres.” The same official confirmed a June incident in which grenades were thrown at American aid workers.

Gaza activist Hamza al-Masri, who runs a popular Telegram channel, wrote, “Every Gazan knows who holds weapons. If someone has weapons, either they are Hamas or they bought them from Hamas. There are no secrets here.” In a comment under the post, a user named Samer Bashir asked whether the attackers were Hamas. Al-Masri responded: “All the thugs and thieves are Hamas and work for Hamas.”

Videos circulated on July 29 show aid trucks passing through Deir al-Balah while armed men fired into the air to disperse civilians. Eyewitnesses claim the gunmen are affiliated with Hamas. Similar accounts point to the terror group’s systematic interference with humanitarian operations.

The accusations are further supported by internal Hamas documents seized by Israel, intercepted communications and verified images. During the initial stage of the war in October 2023, Hamas diverted 25 per cent of all incoming UN aid. By early 2024, this quota was redistributed as follows: seven per cent to Hamas’s Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, four per cent to Hamas’s civil administration, four per cent to the group’s political leadership.

Intercepted documents also reveal the threats against aid workers and deliberate efforts to sow chaos in Gaza’s streets, such as closing markets, stirring unrest and preventing civilians from reaching distribution points through intimidation or gunfire.

Discussing the army’s roles in aid distribution sites, convoys and air drops, Israel Defence Forces spokesperson Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin told reporters on July 27, “Hamas, on the other hand, is actively obstructing the process — stealing aid, storing it in tunnels, and using disinformation to spread the false claim of famine in Gaza.”

Tactics used by Hamas include physically seizing UN trucks, blocking civilian access to aid sites, impersonating aid workers and inserting operatives into UN convoys. A parallel distribution network has reportedly been established — selling confiscated aid at prices 300–500 per cent above market value, taxing local vendors and using food control as a political tool.

The situation has reached the point where some humanitarian organizations are reluctant to collect or distribute aid due to fear of violence or being seen as co-operating with Israel.

“Hamas’s goal is to get rid of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distributing food in Gaza,” said Gilboa. “They want to be the only ones ensuring Gazans’ survival and have been very successful in mounting a campaign portraying hunger everywhere.”

Black market profiteering off donated food

Despite the surge in aid deliveries, Palestinians in Gaza City’s Al Sahaba market told TPS-IL the prices are too expensive.

“Today I saw fruit for the first time in four months. Mangoes, bananas … but they’re selling them for 200 shekels (C$80). People can’t afford it. We see it, smell it and walk away,” one Palestinian told TPS-IL on July 28, one day after the airdrops and new aid protocols began. “It’s an injustice and it’s a sin.”

Another woman told TPS-IL how her children ask for fruit they hadn’t tasted in months. “I can’t buy four pieces even for my kids. It’s like a dream on display,” she said.

A third Palestinian told TPS-IL, “The flour — when it enters Gaza, they steal it. And now they’re going to raise the price from 30 to 60 shekels. It’s unbelievable.”

Footage from the market confirmed the disparity: shelves stocked with aid-labelled goods resold at prices unaffordable to the intended civilians.

Official Israeli sources explained to TPS-IL that all trucks currently entering Gaza carry humanitarian aid provided by the UN, international NGOs or donor states — and that Gaza’s private sector is not currently authorized to import goods. The absence of commercial shipments for Gaza merchants raises questions about how donated flour, fruits, vegetables, water, canned goods and more end up in markets with inflated prices.

Palestinian sources inside Gaza told TPS-IL that much of the food in the markets originated from international aid for months — including American shipments — but is resold at inflated prices, sometimes 300 per cent. Basic staples like flour and rice, originally meant for free distribution, are reportedly diverted to private vendors.

“They distribute the aid to traders instead of families,” one Gaza resident told TPS-IL.

Eyal Ofer, an expert on Gaza’s economy, explained to TPS-IL that, “Market prices are the core problem fuelling Gaza hunger.” He blamed “endless cash being funnelled in” by the UN and Palestinian Authority, enabling looting and price inflation.

“Hamas is taking 45 per cent of every UN cash transfer without even touching the aid,” he said. “The people who get the money can afford the inflated prices; those who don’t, starve.”

He added, “I’ve been proposing for a long time is to stop the cash flow. You don’t eat cash.”

The Press Service of Israel

• Vivian Bercovici: Carney, and the media, simply don’t understand the complexities of ‘Palestine’
• Mike Fegelman: The evidence is clear — there is no famine in Gaza

Former U.S. vice-president Hubert Humphrey once observed that “foreign policy is really domestic policy with its hat on.” This deceptively simple phrase captures a profound truth: a country’s stance on international affairs is almost never just about abstract ideals or global ethics. It reflects, and often redirects, domestic pressures, political calculations and the ideological currents coursing through national life. Canada’s proposed recognition of Palestinian statehood is a prime example — a foreign policy move with far-reaching consequences for our national and international security.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that Canada would recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly in September, under the conditions that Hamas disarm, release the remaining hostages, and not participate in a future Palestinian government. This came a day after his government promised $10 million to support the Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank.

On the international front, recognizing a Palestinian state at this moment in history is not a step toward peace or security, as the prime minister claimed. It is, rather, a reward for terrorism. Hamas — a listed terrorist entity in Canada — committed the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust on October 7, 2023, proudly documenting its atrocities for the world to see.

The Palestinian Authority (PA), often held up as the “moderate” alternative to Hamas, represents a moral distinction without a difference. It is riddled with corruption, brutally cracks down on internal dissent, and

until February,

enforced a “pay-for-slay” policy that financially rewards Palestinians who murder Israelis (many

claim

the policy continues, just under a different guise). Mahmoud Abbas is currently in the 21st year of his first four-year term as leader of the PA. To suggest that he and the PA are the foundation for a future state is a disturbing display of either ignorance or wilful blindness.

Worse still, what does it mean for Canada to lend legitimacy to a people whose institutions have, for generations, educated children to hate Jews, glorify martyrdom and reject coexistence with the West? Palestinian school curriculums, children’s television programming and public messaging remain

saturated

with antisemitic indoctrination and

incitement to violence.

This is not merely a concern for Israel’s security. It is a question of what kind of state the world is being asked to recognize, and what values Canada is endorsing in doing so.

Recognition now sends a clear message: the international community will deliver statehood not in exchange for reform or reconciliation, but in response to terrorism, incitement and rejectionism. It encourages Hamas to continue holding (and torturing) hostages and prolonging conflict, knowing that pressure will build not on them — but on Israel. It also signals to other terrorist organizations worldwide that decades of violence, extremism and indoctrination can be vindicated with the ultimate political prize: a state of their own.

But the dangers are not only global — they are also acutely domestic.

The Carney government, facing economic stagnation, a trade relationship with the United States that is increasingly precarious, ballooning deficits far exceeding promises and at least one

scandal-plagued cabinet minister

, is using foreign policy to distract from its failures at home. It is an old political trick: when domestic problems mount, find a foreign cause that appeals to an agitated base. But in this case, the price of distraction is dangerously high.

Canada’s streets have become theatres of escalating political extremism that threatens our very democracy by seeking to break all boundaries. Pro-Palestinian protests have crossed the line into intimidation and lawlessness —

threatening

elected officials,

breaking into

MP offices,

vandalizing

public property,

glorifying

terrorist groups and

blocking

critical infrastructure. Jewish Canadians have been

assaulted,

harassed and made to feel unsafe in their own neighbourhoods and places of worship. By moving to recognize Palestinian statehood at this time and under these conditions, Carney is sending an unmistakable message: disruptive, threatening and unlawful behaviour works. Those who scream the loudest and break the most rules will set the foreign policy agenda.

This is not just a betrayal of Canada’s Jewish community. It is a signal to every group in this country — on every side of every issue — that the path to political relevance runs not through lawful protest or democratic engagement, but through confrontation, coercion and chaos.

Canada’s foreign policy must not be allowed to become a political balm for a flailing government. And it certainly cannot become a prize for those who are actively eroding democratic norms at home, let alone those who commit atrocities abroad. If foreign policy is domestic policy with its hat on, then Carney’s hat is one of capitulation — to extremists, to mob pressure and to a worldview that undermines both Canadian and global security.

This decision must not stand unchallenged. Not just for the sake of Israel, or even for the future of the Palestinian people, but for the integrity of Canadian democracy itself.

National Post

Sheryl Saperia is CEO of Secure Canada, a non-profit dedicated to combating terrorism and extremism by creating innovative laws, policies, and alliances that strengthen Canada’s national security and democracy.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s post-midnight

response

to Washington’s latest escalation of its tariff war was calm, measured, sensible and appropriate, everything the current regime in Washington is not.

Canada, Carney said, will continue to negotiate in search of a reasonable agreement, notwithstanding the absence of any indication the U.S. is open to reasonable negotiations. What Washington wants is to continue operating what amounts to a global extortion racket, threatening all America’s best customers with dire consequences if they refuse to bow to its demands and offer up supplication to whatever notion occurs to President Donald Trump at any given moment.

It’s well and good that Ottawa should keep up the attempt, even if the odds seem set against success. There’s no use pretending this is a situation that can be handled in the traditional manner of friends and trading partners: a search for a fair-minded and equitable agreement that serves the interests of both parties. But we should keep trying, if only to demonstrate that the qualities of civility haven’t broken down altogether, despite the U.S. administration’s every apparent effort to ignore them.

From the Trump administration’s point of view, extortion has been working marvelously well to date. Japan has

reportedly

agreed to more than a half-trillion dollars in investments and loans in return for lowered tariffs. South Korea,

according

to Trump, will “give to the United States $350 Billion Dollars for Investments owned and controlled by the United States, and selected by myself.” The European Union

accepted

a pact to buy US$750 billion in energy and invest US$600 billion in the U.S., a deal virtually none of Europe’s leaders were happy with, and which France openly denounced.

Lesser entities have been similarly cowed. Paramount Pictures

agreed

to a $16 million payoff rather than risk challenging a spurious suit that threatened a much-sought US$8 billion merger. Columbia University is to

pay

the government US$221 million rather than lose access to federal funding. Harvard initially put up a determined

effort

to resist federal threats, but is said to be open to a $500 million settlement.

Many of the agreements are fuzzy and open to interpretation. All have resulted from one thing: the fear and uncertainty generated by the knowledge that the U.S. government has become a one-man operation that operates solely by the whim of a president shown unfailingly to be unpredictable, unreliable and contemptuous of the law, of accepted standards and even of his own word. There is nothing to be gained by betting the prosperity of Canadians on any assurances offered up by Washington as long as Donald Trump remains president. What must be done is to defend the country’s integrity, its sovereignty, its independence and its standing as a place where fairness, trust, honesty and dignity are still treated seriously as core values, even if other entities are willing to bargain theirs away.

The extent of the danger in bowing to Washington was underlined in the last hours before the supposed Aug. 1 negotiating deadline. Upset that Ottawa would join France and Britain in declaring plans to recognize a Palestinian state, Trump declared it would make it “very hard” to finalize a trade deal, effectively seeking to control Canada’s foreign policy in addition to its economic practices.

Trump has been president for just seven months and has been fortunate thus far in avoiding the forecast consequences of his policies. The stock market has been up, overall growth has been reasonable, and his targets have been capitulating rather than retaliating. But it’s early days, and no winning streak lasts forever. It takes time for the impact of bad ideas to filter through. Already, the decline in tourism is being felt as people avoid the U.S. “Where Did All the Las Vegas Tippers Go?” the Wall Street Journal

wondered

, noting that visits to the gambling mecca have fallen so drastically that Trump’s “no tax on tips” law has had little benefit.

The rise in stock prices has been credited largely to Wall Street’s belief that Washington wouldn’t follow through on its tariff threats — Trump was the TACO president, as in Trump Always Chickens Out. Except this time, he didn’t. The latest economic

figures

aren’t encouraging: hiring has slowed, unemployment has risen,

imports

fell sharply in the second quarter after increasing in the first, sales are struggling, and second

quarter

growth figures still leave the economy at less than half the rate of a year ago.

The U.S. dollar is weakening, the spiralling debt and burgeoning deficit are a direct threat to health and pension benefits many Americans depend on, and which have already been cut back under Trump’s “big, beautiful” mega-bill. The Brookings Institute

notes

that federal debt is at the highest level since the Second World War, and warns that spending at this level is unsustainable.

MAGA world, meanwhile, shows signs of splinters. America being what it has become, the discord arises not from tariffs, economics, or the brutalizing of immigrants, but from anger at Trump’s handling of the Epstein

affair

and his obvious reluctance to share full

details

of his involvement in it. The U.S. position on Israel is causing similar ructions. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, MAGA to her soul,

denounced

Israel’s actions, asserting that while the October 7 Hamas attack was “horrific… so is the genocide, humanitarian crisis, and starvation happening in Gaza.”

Trump has been forced to backtrack on his relations with Israel’s prime minister, his reluctance to ship weapons to Ukraine, his relations with Russian president Vladimir Putin, and on

numerous

pledges and threats that

ran

into spirited pushback. Bullying and bluffing are central to his demeanour, but he doesn’t recoil from retreat when required; he just insists it’s another success.

He’ll be gone in three years or so. He has effectively humiliated the Republican party, turning it into a personal vehicle of the sort common in the autocracies he admires. It’s far from certain whoever succeeds him will manage a similar level of control. Republican heavyweights are frightened of Trump, debasing themselves in their willingness to cower before him, but no one likes to be humiliated, and it’s just as likely his departure sets off both an ugly battle to replace him and a determination to ensure no other figure ever gains a similar ability to dictate their actions.

Carney is correct in stating that Canada’s job now is to focus on “what we can control.” Our dependence on the U.S. has long been recognized as overdone and dangerous; it’s just been too easy to resist. Trump has shown us the consequences of our own lethargy.

Caving to Washington now buys us nothing. Trump’s unpredictability means nothing he agrees to can be treated with certainty. No one wants to invest in a country whose economy is controlled by a foreign renegade who operates by whim. Canada’s task is to set our own course and deal with the short-term consequences, as Ukraine has done in a far deadlier conflict, but one bearing the same choice: to stand by its independence as nation, protect its sovereignty, its pride and its heritage. It will be painful, but a country that values itself too little to withstand temporary distress soon risks being a country at all.

National Post

• Irwin Cotler & Noah Lew: We support a two-state solution. But not this way
• Michael Higgins: Mark Carney abandons Canadian principles for pinky promises on Palestine

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Fifty years ago, Leonid Brezhnev, general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, achieved a long-desired diplomatic triumph by signing the Helsinki Accords on Aug. 1, 1975. Sixteen years later though, the Soviet Union itself was thrown on the ash heap of history. What happened?

Brezhnev did not realize — nobody did — that in signing the accords, he was moving the Cold War onto unfavourable ground for the communist tyrannies. Onto the moral high ground, to be specific, ground that was owned by the courageous dissidents behind the Iron Curtain and their allies in the democracies.

By the early 1970s, 25 years after Stalin’s subjugation of Eastern Europe at the conclusion of the Second World War, the West was growing weary of the Cold War and wary of catastrophe in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Détente was the

mot du jour

, a desire to lower tensions with Moscow and to advance nuclear arms control agreements.

The Helsinki process took place under the auspices of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), a meeting of 33 European countries, including the Soviet Union, as well as the United States and Canada — hence its boast that it promoted co-operation from Vancouver to Vladivostok.

By 1975, Brezhnev had realized that the Soviet Union could not keep pace with the West economically, and therefore, militarily. The Soviets were thus increasingly reliant on the madness of MAD — mutually assured destruction — for their security. Soviet foreign policy thus sought a sort of “cold peace,” a recognition of the territories gained by the Red Army in the Second World War.

The CSCE meetings rambled on in Geneva until the grand summit in Helsinki. There, the 35 countries signed the final document. U.S. President Gerald Ford had been in office less than a year and was excoriated — along with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger — for being soft on communism. In the presidential election of 1976, Ford was denounced by both Ronald Reagan, his Republican primary opponent, and Jimmy Carter, the Democratic nominee, for his weakness at Helsinki.

It produced a pivotal moment in the Ford-Carter presidential debate. Helsinki was the context for an exchange in which Ford said that “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,” an astonishing gaffe that may have cost him a close election against Carter.

What had Ford given away at Helsinki that earned him bipartisan ire? In the first “basket” of the accords all 35 countries agreed to respect the international boundaries of post-war Europe. This had been a Soviet goal since the 1950s, and Brezhnev regarded Helsinki as legitimating the internal Soviet empire regarding the Baltic countries, the external empire of Poland and its neighbours and the division of Germany.

Carter agreed with Brezhnev on that reading and attacked Helsinki as “legitimizing Soviet domination.” Reagan considered the accords a moral abandonment of the enslaved nations of what he would characterize eight years later as the “evil empire.”

Everyone got it wrong. As Kissinger himself would write later: “Rarely has a diplomatic process so illuminated the limitations of human foresight.”

To get his de facto recognition of empire, Brezhnev conceded to the inclusion of “basket three” in the Helsinki accords. Those provisions committed the signatories to permitting the peaceful changes of international borders, allowing states to leave or join alliances (NATO and Warsaw Pact) and, most remarkably, committed the Soviets to “the universal significance of human rights and fundamental freedoms … in conformity with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

The Soviets had solemnly signed a promise to honour human rights. Brezhnev thought he had made an easily ignored concession to gain a hard-won recognition of Russian imperial ambitions. He was wrong.

“Helsinki became, in short, a legal and moral trap,” in the judgement of leading Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis. “Without realizing the implications, Brezhnev thereby handed his critics a standard, based on universal principles of justice, rooted in international law, independent of Marxist-Leninist ideology, against which they could evaluate the behaviour of his and other communist regimes.”

By 1976, a “Public Group to Promote Observance of the Helsinki Accords” was operating in Moscow with the endorsement of Andrei Sakharov, the leading scientist-dissident. “Helsinki Groups” were established in other communist countries, and the regimes were unable to silence them, given that they existed to monitor what the Soviet regime had itself promised.

Contrary to Brezhnev’s securing the legitimation of communist rule at home and in the near abroad, Gladdis concluded that, “the Helsinki process became instead the basis of legitimizing

opposition

to Soviet rule.”

Five years after Helsinki, Pope John Paul II had visited Poland and shook the regime to its foundations; Lech Wałęsa was leading the strikes that would lead to Solidarność, the Polish trade union that heralded an end to communist rule; Václav Havel had formed Charter 77 to advocate for human rights in Czechoslovakia; Margaret Thatcher was in Downing Street and Reagan was on his way to the White House.

The Cold War had always been at heart a moral argument, but the realpolitik of the 1970s sought to minimize that. Helsinki was realpolitik in intention, but massively not in effect. It restored the language of morality, of good and evil, to the Cold War. And once that was done, the end happily came sooner than expected.

National Post

Canada’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state will likely change little in the world, as our country has refused to play a constructive role in the region for many years, but it confirms for Canadian Jews that their government is not really for them.

Since the October 7 attack on Israel, Canada has witnessed an explosion of hate targeting the Jewish community. Jews in Canada have had their businesses targeted, synagogues and schools have been shot at and firebombed, neighbourhoods have been harassed and Ottawa’s National Holocaust Monument has been defaced.

In the wake of all this, media reports, in

this paper

and

elsewhere

, indicate that there are a growing number of Jews who have simply had enough and are fleeing the country — some to Israel (during a war, no less) and others to places like Florida, where hateful protesters aren’t allowed to regularly take to the streets to call for the death of Jews.

Canada’s certainly not the only country that’s experienced a dramatic rise in anti-Jewish hate. Hamas has so successfully captured the narrative that there are few places in the world that have been untouched by the toxic rise in antisemitism. Yet few countries have fallen as far as Canada, which not long ago was one of the best places to be a Jew — ever, in the history of the world.

It would be disingenuous to place all the blame for this at the feet of the federal Liberals. But our leaders’ response to the explosion of hate has consisted of little more than holding conferences and creating duelling antisemitism and Islamophobia czars that have only served to increase tensions.

Moreover, despite giving lip service to the atrocities committed on October 7 and their desire for Hamas to release the hostages, prime ministers Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney have only seemed interested in putting pressure on the victim of that heinous crime.

In April 2024, former foreign minister Mélanie Joly announced that Canada would cease future arm exports to Israel, leading Israeli Ambassador Iddo Moed to

accuse the Liberals

of trying to “increase pressure on Israel,” rather than pressuring Hamas to release the hostages.

The Liberals also

continued funding UNRWA

, even after an internal investigation found that some of its staff participated in the October 7 massacre.

In the latest slap in the face to Israel, Carney held a press conference on Wednesday announcing his intention to recognize a Palestinian state, but spent much of the time

criticizing

Israeli government policy, leading to the inescapable conclusion that coercing the Jewish state was one of his primary motivations. (The British were more explicit: agree to a ceasefire or we’ll recognize Palestine as a state.)

Carney did condition Canada’s support on “the Palestinian Authority’s commitment to much-needed reforms, including the commitments by Palestinian Authority President (Mahmoud) Abbas to fundamentally reform its governance, to hold general elections in 2026 in which Hamas can play no part and to demilitarize the Palestinian state.”

He also earmarked $10 million to “support the Palestinian Authority’s role in stabilizing and governing the West Bank.” But he is foolish if he believes it will lead to any such thing with the notoriously corrupt administration in Ramallah.

It also begs the question: why would we declare Palestine a state now, before elections are held in 2026? Does anyone really believe Abbas will follow through on such a pledge? And what happens if he doesn’t? Do we say that we changed our minds and Palestine is no longer a state?

There’s also no reason to believe that a democratic Palestinian state would be any less hostile towards Israel, or that, like Gaza in 2007, it wouldn’t be taken over by terrorists.

According to a

May poll

by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, half of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza support Hamas’s decision to launch the October 7 massacre. Asked who they’d support in a hypothetical election, a plurality (32 per cent) said they would cast a ballot for Hamas.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. It’s well known that Palestinian schools and institutions indoctrinate their youth to hate Jews (something UNRWA, which Canada continues to fund, has played a large part in). Any attempt at recognizing a Palestinian state should acknowledge this and include a plan for de-radicalization, which Carney has not put forward.

On October 7, Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people, including at least seven Canadians. Instead of treating it as our fight — as we did after 24 Canadians were killed on 9/11 and after ISIS began terrorizing the Middle East — our leaders seemed intent to blame the victims and continually pressure Israel to end what clearly started as a war of self-defence.

Now, Carney is rewarding the terrorists by recognizing a state that has no basis in reality. Geopolitically, it is rather meaningless. But it will certainly embolden those who erroneously paint Israel as an evil occupying power, and vilify Canadian Jews in the process.

• Jesse Kline: Carney’s futile attempt to will a Palestinian state into existence
• Michael Higgins: Mark Carney abandons Canadian principles for pinky promises on Palestine