In an unassuming industrial district littered with warehouses and big box stores in midtown Toronto lies a powerful reminder of the deadly consequences of antisemitism and why Israel is at war.

The

Nova Exhibition

, which is on display until June 8, provides visitors with an in-depth look at what took place at the Nova music festival in southern Israel on October 7.

After passing through security, guests are shown a lively video filled with scenes of young people dancing without a care in the world. In interviews, those who attended the event speak of the transcendence of music, the power of community and the vibes that can only be experienced when 4,000 bodies are all gyrating to the same beat.

Though the short video remains upbeat, it is clear by the end that something ominous is on the horizon: as partygoers gather to catch a glimpse of the sunrise, the skies above are suddenly filled with incoming rockets.

From there, visitors are taken into a dimly lit, smoke-filled room with black curtains on the walls and what appears to be a dirt floor. Inside, large television screens play looping videos of Hamas terrorists tearing down the border fence and streaming into southern Israel, where they drive around in white pickup trucks, shooting at everyone they see.

Guests then walk through a recreation of the Nova festival campsite, featuring the types of tents used by campers, along with recreations of the booths that merchants used to sell their wares. Each one is accompanied by a TV screen featuring testimonies of those who survived and videos from that day shot on the cellphones of those who did not.

Phones scattered throughout display text messages that attendees sent to their loved ones before they were slaughtered in cold blood or shoved into a vehicle and taken to the Hamas tunnels underneath Gaza, where some of them

have languished

for 599 days and counting.

In his

1970 poem

on Black liberation, recording artist Gil Scott-Heron said that, “The revolution will not be televised.” But in the case of Hamas, its “revolution” was

live-streamed

for the whole world to see. Indeed, only in the 21st century could an atrocity such as this be so thoroughly and meticulously documented.

Videos throughout the exhibit feature bodycam and cellphone footage taken by the terrorists themselves as they fire at unsuspecting cars and hunt partygoers like prey, all while expressing glee over their murderous handiwork.

Others show groups of youngsters running in fear to try to escape the weapons fire in the distance, or individuals lying in bushes, recording what they surely suspect may be the last words they ever speak.

The point is further driven home with video testimonies of first responders. In one, a paramedic recounts how he saw women who had been shot in the crotch at close range, people stabbed multiple times postmortem, bodies that were burned to a crisp and partygoers who were tied up, their eyes frozen open in terror as their young lives were snuffed out.

After wandering through the extensive campsite, guests funnel into a large room intended to recreate the atmosphere of the Nova festival dance floor, replete with giant speakers blaring trance music, a tiki-style stage glowing under a black light and large vertical screens showing images of people dancing around an altar intended to represent ancient healing traditions, all under a sprawling purple canopy.

The tour continues with a recreation of a bar littered with half-empty bottles of alcohol and overturned Coke fridges in the background. One woman told the story of how she hid in an ice cream cooler, listening to the sound of gunfire as terrorists murdered others who had found similar hiding spots, with only the thought of returning home to her young daughter to keep her going.

Next to the bar sits the burnt out husks of vehicles, similar to the ones that blocked Route 232, the only road in or out of the Nova site, in both directions, leading to it being dubbed “the death road.”

Behind them are recreations of the small concrete bomb shelters scattered throughout the festival grounds, which turned into death traps. Screens show cellphone video of the terrified people huddling inside, along with footage of a terrorist lobbing a grenade into one of them, extinguishing dozens of lives in one fell swoop.

Another part of the sprawling exhibition features the personal items of those who attended the festival, evoking images of the piles of shoes that can be seen at Holocaust museums like Yad Vashem.

It’s hard to avoid finding similarities between what took place on October 7 and that other dark chapter in history. “I wasn’t around during the Holocaust, but to me, this was a holocaust,” said a rescuer in one of the videos. Another survivor noted that, “I’m a third-generation Holocaust survivor. Now my daughter is a first-generation Nova survivor.”

The end of the tour explores the aftermath of the massacre, showing how young people who were once full of life are now scarred for life.

At certain times throughout the day, live talks are given by Nova survivors. When I visited last Wednesday,

Danielle Gelbaum recounted

her harrowing story of escaping the Nova festival and the post-traumatic stress that has haunted her ever since.

The Nova Exhibition provides an emotional reminder of the pure hatred that Israel is up against, and why it cannot, under any circumstances, allow Hamas to survive and commit similar atrocities in the future.

This is not to say that what happened at Nova excuses every action the Israeli government has taken since October 7, particularly the withholding of humanitarian aid over the past couple months.

But it does show why steps need to be taken to prevent Hamas from using aid to fund its terror operation, and why calls for Israel to immediately “stop its military operations in Gaza” — as

a joint statement

issued last week by Canada, France and the United Kingdom demanded — are wrongheaded and dangerous.

As fate would have it, at pretty much the exact time my wife and I walked out of the Nova Exhibition into an ominous rainstorm at 9 p.m. last Wednesday, another Jewish couple — young Israeli Embassy employees who were reportedly about to get engaged — left the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., only to be

gunned down

by a suspect who yelled “free Palestine!” when being arrested by police.

Two more promising young people who will never get the chance to grow old. Two more families who will have to carry the pain of losing their loved ones to such vile hatred around for the rest of their lives.

Sometimes the word “antisemitism” gets thrown around a little too frivolously, but what happened at the Nova festival on October 7 and in Washington last Wednesday are sobering reminders of the deadly effects of the world’s oldest hatred.

National Post

jkline@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/accessd

This column was originally published in the Channel Israel newsletter. Sign up here.

• Terry Newman: Nova festival exhibit shows survivors still paying dearly for October 7
• Jesse Kline: Footage of Hamas barbarism shows why ceasefire is not an option

A year ago in these pages, I

criticized

land acknowledgements for implying that non-Indigenous Canadians are “uninvited guests” in their own country. Now, the B.C. government has embraced these labels.

To the applause of her colleagues, NDP MLA Rohini Arora stood in the legislature earlier this month,

encouraging

non-Indigenous British Columbians to describe themselves as a “settler,” “colonizer” and “uninvited guest” living on “Indigenous land.”

This divisive mindset is increasingly being put into action, with a number of parks in B.C. being temporarily closed to non-Indigenous visitors.

The most contentious of these is the

repeat closure

of Joffre Lakes Provincial Park during peak season, with access first denied by the Líl̓wat Nation and the N’Quatqua First Nation in 2023 for 39 days. In 2024, access was restricted for 60 days. Last week, it was

announced

that the 2025 closures will last more than 100 days.

The B.C. government also recently

announced

a short-term restriction on non-Indigenous visitors to the iconic Botanical Beach park on Vancouver Island. If Joffre Lakes is any guide, we can expect longer closures in the future.

The government’s

endorsement

of these closures sets a troubling precedent for other parks and public lands. As B.C.’s former deputy minister of energy and Aboriginal law expert Robin Junger

pointed out

, the Joffre Lakes closures were initiated on the basis of the park being within Líl̓wat and N’Quatqua traditional territory, where Aboriginal title has been asserted but not proven.

While Indigenous rights are protected by the Constitution, this does not give Indigenous groups the right to act unilaterally without consideration of the public interest, especially in cases where Aboriginal title hasn’t been legally established.

If the position of Indigenous groups, and seemingly the B.C. government, is that the mere assertion of Aboriginal title confers the right to prohibit access to public spaces, then there is nothing to prevent similar closures not just of other parks, but of any public lands throughout the province.

After all, virtually all of the province’s land mass is

claimed

as traditional territory by one or more of B.C.’s 200-plus Indigenous groups, which together represent around six per cent of the population.

The issue already extends far beyond parks. The B.C government

was criticized

in February for withholding the details of a significant deal with the shíshálh Nation on the Sunshine Coast until after last year’s provincial election. It

involves

huge amounts of money, transfers of land and

promises

to negotiate Aboriginal title and “exclusive decision-making” powers in the band’s traditional territory.

Ongoing negotiations with the shíshálh Nation are likely to follow the model of last year’s Haida agreement, which Premier David Eby called a “

template

” for other areas of B.C. It recognized Aboriginal title over the million-hectare Haida Gwaii islands. Approved in a referendum held only for Haida voters (even though half the affected residents are non-Haida), it raises

democratic red flags

, as well as legal concerns about

private property rights

and the

constraints it places

on the ability of future governments to act in the public interest.

The Haida agreement followed on the heels of B.C.’s proposed Land Act amendments, which were paused following a public outcry. The amendments would have allowed the government to enter into agreements with individual Indigenous groups to give them control over up to 95 per cent of B.C.’s public lands, despite the absence of

a democratic relationship

between those governing bodies and 94 per cent of the population.

All of this is the predictable outcome of decades of land acknowledgements and divisive language that have constantly segregated British Columbians into ancestry-based groups with unequal claims to the land they live on. It’s the foreseeable product of a provincial government that refers to non-Indigenous British Columbians as “uninvited guests,” even as it

advises against

referring to B.C. citizens as “British Columbians” because it might exclude or offend people.

Many of these policies are being undertaken in the name of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA), which commits the B.C. government to bring all of its laws into alignment with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

While Canadian constitutional law calls for a balancing of the interests of B.C.’s Indigenous groups with the broader interests of the rest of the population, DRIPA provides for no such balance. Aboriginal law expert

Geoffrey Moyse explained

that under Canadian law, Aboriginal title “does not blanket entire claimed territories as Article 26 of UNDRIP insists it does,” nor does it “allow Indigenous groups to have veto authority over government decision-making as Article 32(2) says they do.”

Under DRIPA, it is quickly becoming clear that decisions over public land will increasingly be made by, or require the consent of, small Indigenous governments that have no democratic relationship with the 4.6-million non-Indigenous British Columbians who make up the vast majority of the population.

We’re hurtling toward a future of division, exclusion and resentment, but it’s not inevitable. Let’s remind the government that each of us has as much right to our parks, our public lands and our democratic voice as anyone else.

National Post

Caroline Elliott sits on the board of the B.C.-based Public Land Use Society (publiclanduse.ca). She holds a PhD specializing in democratic theory from Simon Fraser University.

• FIRST READING: Non-Indigenous visitors being turned away from B.C. public parks
• Caroline Elliott: B.C.’s land reforms treat non-Indigenous people like uninvited guests

Canada has become increasingly inhospitable to Israelis and Jews since October 7. Synagogues and Jewish day schools have been shot at. Jewish businesses and neighbourhoods are continually harassed. Endless parades of anti-Israel protesters have called for intifada on our streets. The RCMP has warned that violent extremism is now a “prominent national security threat” in our country. Now — for the safety of Israelis and Jews — a travel warning has been issued against Canada.

On Sunday, a level 2 travel warning recommending taking increased precautionary measures when visiting Canada was

issued

by Israel’s National Security Council

due

to “an increased threat by terrorist against Israelis and Jews in Canada.”

The report points to the fact that, over the last 18 months, Canada has been home to attacks on Jewish institutions and individuals. It warned that the discourse surrounding Walk With Israel counter-protests, which took place this weekend in Toronto and Waterloo, had become more radical, and included calls to “violently harm Israelis and Jews at these events.” As a result, Israel warned that Jews and Israelis should take “

increased precautionary measures, avoid displaying Jewish and Israeli symbols in public and remain extra vigilant while in public.” 

RCMP have warned that — over the last year alone — terrorism charges have jumped

488 per cent

, fuelled by youth radicalization, and that violent extremism is a now “prominent national security threat” in our country.

The

briefing

outlining this increased threat to Canada’s national security was prepared in December, before Parliament was prorogued and Justin Trudeau stepped down as prime minister, but was only released last week.

Canadians, apparently, were on a need-to-know basis — with the Liberals up until now deciding we did not need to know. If they had, it would have been an important election issue.

The RCMP report points to a rise in violent extremism globally. Since 2014, Canada has experienced 18 violent extremist attacks and in the last 12 months alone has foiled six terrorist plots. It highlights the role of youth radicalization in these attacks.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service, for its part, hasn’t raised Canada’s

national terrorism threat

from its 2014 “medium” status — meaning “a violent act of terrorism could occur” — despite these dire warnings and these increased attacks. The next two levels would be high, which means an attack is likely, and critical — meaning highly likely and imminent.

A former CSIS analyst, Phil Gurski, who was interviewed by

Global’s Stewart Bell,

questioned whether the Liberals’ decision to downplay this prominent threat might be political. Gurski pointed out that last year, France raised its threat alert to the highest level.

CSIS spokesperson Lindsay Sloane, also speaking to Bell, didn’t deny the concerning increase in extremist rhetoric and activities, but defended the medium level based on authorities getting better at using deterrents such as terrorism charges and peace bonds and having effectively, so far anyway, “managed the threats” by disrupting attacks.

According to Sloane, Canada’s threat level is in line with Five Eyes partner countries which also includes the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand.

Meanwhile, both the United Kingdom and Australia have increased their threat levels to substantial (likely) and probable, respectively.

The RCMP’s report fails to classify where the threat to our national security is largely coming from. Its “Hot Issue — Violent Extremism” section fails to categorize or number the sources of terrorism threats to our country whether it be from far-right groups or radical Islam. Strangely, you will not find the names of ISIS, ISIL, al-Qaeda, or any other group mentioned even once. Why not?

We know that from 2013 until today there have been 13 attacks in the name of Islamism, three of which caused deaths: In 2014, Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent was killed in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., Cpl. Nathan Cirillo was killed at the National War Memorial, and a Toronto woman was killed with a hammer in 2020. Ten plots were thankfully foiled, two were attempted in 2013, and five were attempted in 2024 alone.

Addressing the threat to our national security will require coordination from various institutions, law enforcement and government.

If terrorism is rising among youth, then the Youth Criminal Justice Act needs to be reformed. No youth in Canada who has committed a murder or planned a terrorist attack should have the luxury of having their name protected from the public. This was the case in December when a Toronto youth’s name was protected and was released on a

terrorism peace bond

.

Canada’s international student visa program needs improved security standards. In December, Muhammad Shahzeb Khan came to Canada on a student visa and quickly started

planning

an ISIL attack on Jews in New York City, which was, thankfully foiled. Also, the al-Qaeda-inspired thwarted 2013 VIA rail attack was planned by Chiheb Esseghaier who was a PhD student at Université du Québec and a Palestinian with Canadian permanent residency, Raed Jaser.

The American justice department is

following the money

when it comes to the Muslim Brotherhood funding universities. Are CSIS and the RCMP? University donations from foreign countries may also be a threat to national security. These donations should be required to be public and several countries should be barred from making them, including Qatar, which, according to a U.S. report, has “had a substantial impact on fomenting growing levels of antisemitic discourse and campus politics at US universities, as well as growing support for anti-democratic values within these institutions of higher education.”

Political student organizations should be shuttered for the time being, and intelligence services should be paying close attention to what happens on campuses. McGill has had to

break ties

with its student union because its leadership “has been neither unanimous nor explicit in dissociating itself from or rejecting groups without recognized status at McGill that endorse or engage in acts of vandalism, intimidation, and obstruction as forms of activism.”

In July 2024, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines released a

statement

informing Americans that the Iranian regime was “posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.” There’s a non-zero chance the same is happening here.

On a smaller scale, local police should be enforcing already existing laws. They should not be

buying anti-Israel protesters coffee

or distributing operational guides to their officers which accuse Israel of

ethnic cleansing,

as Toronto police have done. City mayors should also regularly stand against antisemitism in our cities, instead of fuelling it symbolically with their absences.

The growing threat to our national security is not separate from the threat to Jewish Canadians. They are one in the same. If there’s one thing that terrorist Islamist sects like al-Qaeda, ISIL and Hamas have in common, it’s hate for Jews and our western way of life.

It’s time our institutions began to acknowledge this.

tnewman@postmedia.com

@TLNewmanMTL

Please, I am begging, whatever prime minister appoints the next Governor General, please pick someone who has a clue of what they represent, of how Canadian government operates, and who is the actual head of state. Because Governor General Mary Simon’s office just committed, on Monday afternoon, perhaps the most embarrassing gaffe possible while King Charles III is visiting.

A post, dated 4:46 p.m. ET on Monday, from the official Governor General of Canada X account made a total mockery of this country, and for good measure, insulted the King, who is in Ottawa to deliver the Speech from the Throne on Tuesday.

The post started off in the typical way. “#GGSimon was honoured to have an audience with His Majesty King Charles III at @RideauHall as part of Their Majesties’ Royal Visit to Canada,” it read.

But then, the post added, “These ongoing conversations deepen the meaningful bond between our nations. 🇬🇧 🇨🇦.”

Again, I want to stress that this is from the official account of the Governor General, and if anybody should know that the King is not here representing another “nation,” as he is the King of Canada, it is her.

The post, which was presumably written by a staffer, was mercifully deleted shortly after 6 p.m. ET, but that hardly provides much comfort. Simon, as a servant of the Crown, acts on behalf of the King, and the fact she suggests he is representing another nation is an appalling misstep.

For Charles III is both King of Canada and King of the United Kingdom.

The Crown has been divided, this way, for nearly 100 years, since the 1931 Statute of Westminster, where Britain relinquished control over most remaining powers it held over Canada, mainly foreign affairs. Carleton University political scientist Philippe Lagassé summed it up like this in a 2013 essay: “the divisibility of the Crown,” meaning one King or Queen holding multiple distinct roles, “was necessary to ensure the self-governing colonies could be fully independent.”

So, even though the King of Canada and of the King of the United Kingdom is embodied by the same monarch, the Crown serves both roles independent of one another.

To suggest that the King’s visit will “deepen” the “
meaningful bond between our nations,” betrays an astounding ignorance. 

The Governor General’s office should understand this and avoid such obvious errors, at minimum.

It is one thing for MPs for the separatist Bloc Québécois to moan about the “humiliation” of having to swear an oath to the King, pledging to advance a bill that would make the oath optional, while boycotting the throne speech. It is a nonsense position for a duly elected member of the Canadian Parliament to take, but Bloc MPs are in overtly political roles.

It is quite another thing altogether for the Governor General to behave as though the King is a foreign monarch. This is the result of decades of mostly Liberal prime ministers going out of their way to degrade the Crown in Canada for their own purposes. This includes, appointing Governors General, who serve some political purpose completely divorced from the position’s constitutional responsibilities.

A basic understanding that the Canadian state, or, more accurately, the Crown, personified by the King, exercises authority through the Governor General cannot be fully grasped by someone who doesn’t understand that the King of Canada is not a foreign king. If Simon does not recognize the nature of her role, how can she be relied upon to competently exercise her constitutional responsibilities.

National Post

Contrary to what many in the West believe, some countries dislike democracy, preferring the strongman, the firm ruler, the dictator.

So it is with the Liberals who have shunned accountability and democracy in favour of the autocratic leader.

Considering the problems the Liberals had with the last guy, it must be the case that some turkeys really do vote for Christmas.

On Sunday, a majority of the Liberal caucus voted down a motion to adopt the rules set out in the  Reform Act, a decade old law to give MPs more power.

One of the central planks of the Reform Act would give caucus members the right to trigger a review of the party leader.

The private bill sponsored by Conservative Michael Chong passed its third reading in the House in 2014 with an impressive 260 votes for with only 17 against.

At the time, Chong

said

, “I don’t expect that all the rules will be adopted all at once, but in the long run, party caucuses will democratize themselves and empower themselves.”

After each federal election, parties vote on whether to adopt Reform Act rules or not.

The Liberals, despite overwhelmingly voting in favour of the act, have always chosen not to adopt it.

But the failure not to vote for it this time is baffling.

Former Liberal leader Justin Trudeau refused to relinquish power and attempts to get him to go bordered on the farcical.

During a caucus

meeting

last October, a letter from MPs was read to Trudeau urging him to step aside. The letter was signed by two dozen Liberal MPs, but such is the fear ingrained in MPs that the letter presented to Trudeau at the caucus meeting did not contain any names.

Trudeau responded defiantly within 24 hours

saying

that he would be leading the Liberals into the next election.

Many Liberal MPs critical of Trudeau preferred to remain anonymous with New Brunswick MP Wayne Long being one of the few who was open and vocal.

The calls within the party for Trudeau to go kept getting louder and yet the prime minister held on to power tenaciously, gripping it with his fingernails as events tried to prise him from it. By December, a majority of his caucus was

demanding

he resign; then Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland

quit

cabinet and with a twist of the knife accused Trudeau of “political gimmicks,” and perhaps most damning was the lack of public support, the

approval rating

for Trudeau was at an all-time low and support for the Liberals stood at a mere 16 per cent.

In the face of all this, Trudeau went skiing and it wasn’t until January that he bowed to the inevitable.

And yet on Sunday the Liberals had the power to vote for Reform Act rules, which would make such a shambolic state of affairs history, and they refused to do so.

The Conservatives have adopted the rules and used them in 2022 to

oust

then-leader Erin O’Toole.

What’s stopping the Liberals? Cowardice, perhaps. Shakespeare said it was conscience that made cowards of us all, but we should also not rule out plain fear.

The Liberals’ failure to democratize themselves stems in part because of the increasing power of the leader who is chosen, not by caucus, but by the party members. The leader also gets to sign off on who can run as a candidate.

“These changes meant that instead of MPs having the power to choose the party leader, the leader effectively had the power to choose who could serve as the party’s MPs,”

noted

an article in the Canadian Parliamentary Review, a publication for legislators.

The article went on to argue that MPs were reluctant to vote for the new rules “out of the fear that such support will be seen as challenging the authority of their party leader.”

Fear of retribution and a culture resistant to change has resulted in the “subservience of caucus to the leadership.”

In 2015, with Trudeau being

voted

one of the most stylish politicians on the planet, no Liberal would have foreseen that the leader would have to be dragged kicking and screaming out of office.

Now the Liberals have Mark Carney, the world’s

rock-star banker

and “a quiet

genius

” according to some reports.

Still, some MPs, chastened by the Trudeau experience and afraid that history might repeat itself, were looking to implement the Reform Act rules.

“I’ll tell you, the Trudeau experience is the key reason for that,”

said

one MP only days ago.

But such defiance appeared to evaporate on Sunday.

“The Reform Act was voted down,”

said

newly-elected Liberal Caucus Chair James Maloney. “What happens in caucus stays in caucus, and you’re going to hear me say that today, and tomorrow and every day going forward.”

Trudeau’s ridiculous ousting wasn’t an aberration, it was a consequence of putting too much power in the hands of a leader. Should Carney linger long past his shelf life, the Liberals will be in the exact same position, unable to get rid of a leader who is no longer wanted or needed by the party or the public.

The Liberals may come to rue their decision. Unfortunately, so might all Canadians.

National Post

• Ben Woodfinden: King Charles III and the glorious weirdness of Canada’s monarchy
• Leigh Revers: Microaggressions are passé. Welcome to the new world of micro-niceties

When King Charles III delivers the Speech from the Throne on Tuesday, it will be only the third time in our history that a monarch has done so, with both previous times occurring under the late Queen Elizabeth II. This is Charles’ first visit to Canada as monarch, and the timing is not a coincidence. U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated talk of making Canada the 51st state likely triggered the invitation from the prime minister, and will make the delivery of the speech by our sovereign and head of state all the more symbolic — a visible reminder of our unique history and distinct institutions.

But part of what makes the Crown, and all the pomp, the tightly controlled customs and conventions, and rituals around it, worth celebrating is how strikingly odd and weird it all is. This isn’t a knock against the monarchy; it’s a visible reminder that part of what makes our unique form of government worth preserving are all the strange idiosyncrasies that come along with it.

During his visit, the King will journey to the Senate to deliver the speech in Canada’s traditional state landau, a regal horse-drawn carriage reserved for royal and viceregal ceremonies. The grand procession will feature 28 RCMP musical ride horses, with 14 leading and 14 following, creating an impressive spectacle. Upon arrival at the Senate, the King will receive full military honours, including a 100-strong guard from the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment, an inspection of both the guard and the band, and a 21-gun salute. After the King arrives, the Usher of the Black Rod will be sent to summon members of Parliament to the Senate chamber. This historic role dates back to 1348.

The spectacle is weird. Gloriously so. But more importantly, the constitutional conventions and oddities surrounding the visit are equally idiosyncratic. When Charles delivers the speech, he will be doing so in his capacity as the King of Canada. This differs from Charles’ role as King of the United Kingdom. If you ever point out to people that it is incorrect to say that our head of state is the “King of the United Kingdom,” people often reply with “so what, he’s the same person.” But this visit actually illustrates a subtle but important reason why this matters.

Media

reports

have suggested that behind the scenes, there are some disagreements between the Canadian and British governments over exactly what Charles should say and do while here. Trump is a fan of the monarchy, and the British government has tried to leverage this to curry favour with Trump. During a visit to the White House in February, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer hand-delivered a letter from the King to Trump inviting him for a state visit. This was while Trump was making repeated comments about making Canada the 51st state, and during the height of the tariff fight. Carney criticized this move a few weeks ago on British television.

The Crown is an important symbol, and what is clear is that just as the King of Canada and King of the United Kingdom are not the same, so too in rare moments like this are Canadian and British interests not fully aligned. The Canadian government advises the Sovereign in his capacity as King of Canada, just as the British government advises Charles in his capacity as King of the United Kingdom.

This incident illustrates the uniqueness of our system of government. Over a millennium it has evolved and adapted in ways that were not rationally planned. This is something to be preserved and cherished, not discarded.

The Crown, and our entire constitutional architecture, are unique. The British North America Act of 1867 declared that we have “a Constitution similar in principle to that of the United Kingdom.” But the very act of writing this down, and creating a written constitutional document, instantly made us distinct from the British system, and created a unique Canadian Westminster model. Our Crown, system of federalism, bilingualism, the Crown’s unique relationship with Indigenous peoples, powerful courts that have the power to review and invalidate laws passed by legislatures, and the fact that we have a formal written constitution on top of a broader unwritten constitution and a set of constitutional conventions and customs are just some of the features that make our system a hybrid model like nowhere else in the world.

And at times, this system is messy, and not fully rational. It cannot all be fully accounted for in systematic abstractions. The minor dispute between our government and the British government over the words that the Canadian government will have the King say in the throne speech and during his visit are a good illustration.

Canada’s institutions are organic, slowly evolving alongside other social and cultural developments. In other words, our institutions are a fitting reflection of our human nature.

Human beings aren’t fully rational creatures. We are not born into the world as rational decision-makers. We are formed by society and by others without having any control over this, and the ways we think and see the world are shaped, without knowing and whether we like it or not by all sorts of idiosyncratic cultural baggage and history. Fully rationalized and planned political systems, designed based on abstract principles and imposed on societies, fail to fully reflect the messy and complicated nature of human beings and the political communities we live in.

By having an individual be the personal embodiment of an impersonal state and, through centuries of development, actually unable to wield that power and only act on the advice of their democratically chosen government, a government that is responsible to a legislative body that also evolved over a millennium, we humanize our entire system of government in a bizarre but gloriously idiosyncratic way.

Trump’s 51st state threats have triggered a welcomed resurgence in patriotism. But too often, being Canadian gets reduced down to facile “elbows up” caricatures.

If we are to remain a distinct and independent country, we must look deeper at what makes us unique. And our weird and idiosyncratic institutions, perhaps best embodied by the Crown and all the unique customs, pageantry, and quirks that come along with it, are exactly the sorts of things we ought to look to with renewed interest and celebrate. I am Canadian, God Save the King.

Ben Woodfinden is a former director of communications in the office of the leader of the opposition.

• Carson Jerema: Canada’s eroded Crown a much greater threat than Trump
• Jamie Sarkonak: Education student punished for questioning decolonization sues UWO

As Prime Minister Mark Carney settles into his new role, bathing in the afterglow of the Donald Trump-fuelled good fortune that secured his narrow victory against a surging Conservative wave, the hope that Canadian institutions will undergo ideological reform is now rapidly fading.

There’s a good deal that’s been written in recent times about the prevalent social pathology that beseeches us all to “just be kind.” Advocates of this superficially anodyne sentiment — one that is difficult in our modern era to contradict without being labelled a “bad person” — have ushered the tiresome concepts of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) into every corner of our lives.

In his bestseller, “The Parasitic Mind,” Gad Saad identifies this status quo as having been motivated in large part by the collective suicidal tendencies of a swathe of people who have been infected with an ideological virus. The parasitized victims are easily identified by their consequentialist approach to life: they seek short-term rewards afforded by the stockpiling of social capital, rewards that in turn lead to career advancement and higher pay.

One symptom of this disease is the acceptance of microaggressions, an idea that has spread even as far as

the science laboratory

. This concept has transcended mere impoliteness or veiled prejudice and now frames every unguarded comment, every passing joke and every criticism as an affront to someone’s — anyone’s — dignity as a human being, which must then be punished with disproportionate force.

Even more hard to stomach are the non-scientist academics who are advancing dubious novel theories that intentionally feign scientific credibility by bolting prefixes like “micro” onto words to create new terms.

Even as leading universities hurry to divest themselves of DEI initiatives, three woke professors at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management have been busy shape-shifting the social justice terrain by rapidly planting signposts announcing a repertoire of new concepts they collectively term “micro-affiliations,” but might just as well be called “micro-niceties.”

In an

article

published in last month’s edition of Insights Hub, Rotman’s newsletter, professors Xian Zhao, Geoffrey Leonardelli and Soo Min Toh duly elaborate with admirably straight faces by introducing four new portmanteau categories of these micro-affiliations.

The first of these, so-called micro-celebrations, embodies the very worst kind of patronizing insincerity, couched in typically stilted language. Micro-celebrations, it appears, are “deliberate expressions of … appreciation for differences in culture that can help … celebrated groups feel like their identities are acknowledged and appreciated.” In short, coworkers are expected to tip their hats throughout the year, not just on days of religious or cultural significance.

The thought of being wished a happy Pride by gullible straight coworkers who are brainwashed to sermonize about trans inclusivity — oblivious of the trans movement’s embodiment of

modern-day homophobia

— fills me with dread. This, then, is the ignorant majority feeding delusional bromides to gays who instinctively know better.

Similarly, according to the authors, equitable colleagues must recognize and offer accommodations to Muslims during their religious observance of Ramadan. The article even suggests workplace nods to Uyghur Muslims, a people who are undeniably oppressed in China. This conjures a mental picture of Huawei executives hotfooting into the Shenzhen office to micro-celebrate their Uyghur employees, though that’s unlikely to happen any time soon.

Farcically, the authors at once argue for the foregrounding of differences while urging us that, “Instead of viewing ‘American’ as equal to ‘white,’ micro-celebration may allow members of all ethnic groups to be equally perceived as Americans.” As if any American in their right mind born after the civil rights movement would be this deranged.

When it comes to avoiding the social faux pas of mangling a foreign name, the new mot du jour is “micro-normalization” — small charitable acts that seek to embrace our commonalities. Unsurprisingly, the authors opt to finger-wag at anyone failing to rhyme the Arabic name “Nader” with “ladder.” Yet I can attest that most Canadians can’t correctly pronounce my Anglo-Saxon Christian name, either. Yet, somehow, I’ve survived without filing a workplace grievance.

Other micro-normalizations include the insufferable habit of slapping Progress Pride stickers on office doors and wearing an orange shirt on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. This is all virtue-signalling in its purest form.

Astonishingly, these professors also believe that “to engage in micro-normalization, non-African American workers may participate in Black Lives Matter protests,” revealing that these academics still think there is glory in the movement that saw corrupt executives siphon off millions of dollars to fund their private real-estate ventures.

Listed third is “micro-socializing,” which is academic speak for “work junkets.” The authors’ examples are sparse and comical, including going “bowling or visiting a farmers’ market on a weekend morning.” That employees might react with contempt at such forced teaming — driven by the widespread acknowledgement that work outings are excruciating — has not occurred to these academics.

The final category is something called “micro-affirmation.” Essentially, a micro-affirmation is a compliment. The idea that we need three top-flight eggheads — two of whom cost the province nearly $693,000 a year — to remind us that complimenting your colleagues is a boon to the workplace reveals a lot about the current state of higher education.

Indeed, these brilliant minds point to compliments as a way to combat alienation — what they jarringly term “belongingness threat” — in a competitive workplace. It’s an argument in pursuit of mediocrity that advocates for endless, aimless backslaps for people going about their jobs on a daily basis. How exhausting.

They conclude with the profoundly dubious prospect that micro-affiliation theory “provides a welcomed breath of positivity in approaching the world’s commitment to becoming a kinder and more caring place.”I use the word “dubious” because it reeks of unrealistic utopianism.

The truth of the matter is that in recent years, workplaces have become far less tolerable places. They have been infused with unending diktats handed down by intellectual elites that sharpen cultural awareness and amplify sensitivities.

For the average employee, it’s more like navigating a no-man’s land fenced with razor wire. Put it this way: if these pricey Rotman professors had their way, we would all inevitably find ourselves far happier in the workplace — by order of the management.

National Post

Leigh Revers is associate professor at the Institute for Management & Innovation at the University of Toronto Mississauga.

• Leigh Revers: There’s no longer anything to be proud of about Pride
• Leigh Revers: Why are science students being taught about microaggressions?

Jews get arrested in Toronto for standing up to Hamas cheerleaders; Jewish students hide their identity while public school teachers extol Islam; progressives, along with media and politicians, compare Israel to Nazi Germany and cast Palestinians as blameless martyrs. These are among the reasons cited by Brendan O’Neill, author of “After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation,” for why he thinks the West has been successfully taken over by people who hate our society, heritage and values. He explains to Brian Lilley how they’ve weaponized the fight against Islamophobia to return us to an era of systemic antisemitism. And they’ve made it fashionable again to persecute Jews as the scapegoat for all the world’s ills. (Recorded May 8, 2025.)

• Jesse Kline: How woke progressivism drove a surge in antisemitism in the West
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