It’s official: Canada’s race-based sentencing regime applies to Māori New Zealanders — and it’s so powerful that it can shave what should be a seven-year sentence down to one, and protect offenders from being publicly identified.

We learned this from a B.C. meth-trafficking case that was published Friday . It arose from a bust that happened at the Vancouver International Airport back in February 2025, in which a Māori-Tongan woman was intercepted in her attempt to fly 20 kilograms of methamphetamine back to Auckland in her suitcase. In Canada, if sold by the kilo, it was worth between $80,000 and $90,000; in New Zealand, it was worth at least four times that.

The judge said six years was the “low end” for this type of crime. The Crown prosecutor sought an eight-year sentence.

But in this case, the judge landed on two years. The smuggler’s personal background played a large role, which made sense — this judge, Diana Vandor, was once the chair of the B.C. Human Rights Commission. The sentence amounted to time served: the offender had already spent a year and a half in jail, and for that received credit of an additional half-year.

What was so compelling about her backstory? It was tragic, similar to many people who get drawn up into organized crime. The woman’s father was absent and her mother was a drug addict. She witnessed meth use from a young age and bounced between homes, living with her mother some years, and aunts other years.

She dropped out of school at 14 and had a baby at 17 with her boyfriend, a drug dealer. He was abusive, and he was also the person who sent the woman to Vancouver to pick up the shipment of meth that landed her in Canadian jail. For the duration of her imprisonment in Canada, she was separated from her infant child, who was three years old by the sentencing hearing.

These details came out in what is called an Impact of Race and Culture Assessment (IRCA) — a report assembled for court by a writer whose job is to interview non-white offenders, and others in the offender’s circle, to gather their personal history particularly in relation to racism. In the case of the Māori-Tongan smuggler, the report writers did indeed blame some of her plight on colonialism and racism.

“The IRCA report documents a childhood of profound deprivation, neglect, and cultural dislocation,” wrote Vandor. “Trauma compounded the neglect. Although her grandparents retained some understanding of Māori genealogy and heritage, she was not raised within the Māori worldview and does not speak the Māori language. She was considered an outsider by her maternal family and called by a racial slur because of her father’s Tongan heritage and left feeling, in her own words, ‘the odd one out.’ ”

Vandor also found it notable that the Māori comprise 20 per cent of the New Zealand population, but make up over 50 per cent of the country’s prisoners. Altogether, the judge found that the woman’s moral culpability was reduced to the point of deserving a “culturally grounded, rehabilitative disposition rather than a lengthy penitentiary term that would only deepen the dislocation of a young Māori mother far from her child and her community.”

You can perhaps see some problems with the IRCA system from just that alone. Here, the report pointed to prison demographic statistics, and the judge accepted wholeheartedly that this was proof of racism. Even the prejudices of one indigenous group against another were considered factors relevant to the IRCA. Compare this extra consideration to what the rest of offenders get, and it becomes incredibly unfair.

For this woman, the extra consideration played a large role in getting her a sentence of time served. The woman’s infant was still back home and the judge was impressed that the pair had been accepted into a Māori-focused rehab program for mothers with children under age five. The woman had done well with the programming available in Canadian jail, and had co-operated with police from the moment she was caught. Here was an opportunity that would disappear if the woman remained in Canadian prison for much longer — and seeing how there is no prison transfer agreement with New Zealand, the judge thought it best to let the woman go.

Vandor also went an extra mile and censored her decision “by removing the name of the offender and of her daughter, as well as other information, to preserve their privacy to the greatest extent possible.” A gentle approach, but an extremely concerning one. The judge violated Canada’s open court principle because the offender before her had a tragic background, and because she had a child. Widespread adoption of this practice would keep the names of many criminals off of the public record.

To the extent that locking an infant’s mother away for many years may set that infant up for failure, the sentence was a good one. But in every other respect, it was not. Lightening sentences because of racial factors is discriminatory to everyone else. Enabling the meth trade in Canada is a profoundly toxic thing to do. Going easy on Canadian meth exports to New Zealand only paves the way for more harm to that country in the future.

It was just in 2023, by the way, that a 21-year-old New Zealand man died from mistakenly drinking a can of liquid meth from Canada because it was disguised as beer; Canadian police never charged anyone for it.

In the case of this young New Zealand mother, there was a just path available. Had the judge not trivialized the serious crime of supporting the Canadian meth business (and attempting to supply New Zealand’s vulnerable communities with the drug), the woman might have been sentenced to several years in prison. At that point, it should have been up to the justice minister to do the right thing. Summon the New Zealand ambassador, explain the unique circumstances of the offender, and arrive at an agreement to transfer this particular prisoner to a New Zealand facility so that she can access prison programming closer to home — and more importantly, have access to her child.

The onus should be on the federal justice minister to make special arrangements in situations like these. It should not be on judges to bend the law so much that sentences fall comically short of even the “low end” of what’s acceptable. If the Canadian justice system is going to start concerning itself with the fate of vulnerable communities abroad, it could start by reflecting on its own contributions to their destitution.

National Post

A government that can take your land before buying it is not merely building a railway. It’s testing the limits of property rights.

In 2025, the federal government announced plans for a new high-speed rail line, called Alto, to connect Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City. Funded primarily by taxpayers, cost estimates range between $60 billion and $90 billion.

To clear the path, in 2022, the government created a Crown corporation to oversee the Alto project and later designated it a “transformative project” to expedite regulatory and environmental reviews. Those developments create political momentum. They do not establish necessity.

Under the framework, which was enshrined in law with the passage of the High-Speed Rail Act earlier this year, Alto could potentially expropriate private property along the proposed route without first trying to purchase it from owners. That should concern anyone who believes ownership means more than holding land until the government finds another use for it.

Expropriation is sometimes necessary. A government cannot allow every landowner to veto a hospital, bridge, utility line or highway. But there are reasonable limits. And a government’s declaration that a project serves the “public interest” is not proof that it does.

High-speed rail is not an emergency service. It is a transportation choice for commuters and travellers, and on the government’s part, it is a policy choice of where to invest in infrastructure. That does not make Alto illegitimate, but it does mean the burden of justification should be higher before the state compels someone to surrender a home, farm or business.

The relevant question is whether the benefits are sufficiently clear, broad and substantial to justify taking Canadians’ land. That requires evidence, not just assertions.

The government should publish its estimates of ridership, economic growth, environmental gains and operating costs. It should explain who benefits — frequent travellers, urban centres, developers near the stations, the public — and who bears the costs — taxpayers, rural communities that won’t use the service and property owners whose land falls within the corridor.

The benefits of Alto may be widely advertised, but the burdens will be personal. One family could lose land. Another could see a rail corridor divide fields, undermine drainage or obstruct farm equipment. A business could lose a location. A homeowner may retain part of a property but lose privacy, access, value and peace of mind.

Market-value compensation matters. Full compensation for relocation, business losses and damage to remaining land matters even more. But a cheque does not make an involuntary transaction voluntary. A farm is not merely a number of acres. A home is more than its square metres. For their owners, they may bear intangibles that money cannot buy.

Moreover, property rights provide security: the confidence that one may invest, build and plan without the government casually changing the rules. That is why Alto must meet a property-rights test.

First, it should demonstrate a substantial public need — not a government preference. Second, it should show that the benefits are broadly shared and sufficiently certain to justify compulsory acquisition. Third, it should compare less intrusive alternatives, including upgrades to existing rail lines and alternative routes.

Most importantly, Alto must prove not only that a railway is useful, but that the route is necessary. The project is planned to eventually span roughly 1,000 kilometres. Yet the route has not been finalized, land rights have not been secured and environmental and impact assessments remain incomplete. Active development does not mean every parcel within a prospective corridor is destined for public use.

If several routes can substantially serve the same purpose, the government should not automatically select the cheapest option while imposing the greatest burden on private landowners. The cost of disrupting hundreds of homes, farms and businesses is a real project cost. It cannot be dismissed after the route is chosen.

Negotiated acquisition should be the rule. Expropriation should be the true last resort. Making compulsory acquisition easy creates the wrong incentives and encourages planners to treat private land as an available input rather than a right deserving respect. It weakens the incentive to negotiate, redesign routes and avoid harm. This approach is neither fair nor wise and can generate the resistance, distrust and litigation that delays infrastructure.

Canada does not need to choose between building major infrastructure and respecting property rights. In fact, it will build better infrastructure if it respects them. Alto may deserve to be built. But before it takes anyone’s land, the government should establish more than desirability. It should establish necessity, broad public benefit, proportionality and the absence of less intrusive alternatives.

A railway can connect cities. It must not sever the principle that citizens own what is theirs.

National Post

Joseph Quesnel is a senior fellow with the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy.

• Opinion: High-speed rail project just an expensive fairy tale
• FIRST READING: What Canada could do with the $90B it’s blowing on high-speed rail

Quebec voters had one last opportunity Wednesday to hear the party leaders during the final televised debate. Parti Québécois leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon (PSPP) rose to the occasion and stood out as a premier in waiting, more than ready to take the reins of power on Oct. 5.

A Léger poll published on Tuesday put the PQ ahead at 29 per cent, the Quebec Liberals at 23 per cent, the governing Coalition Avenir Québec at 20 per cent and the Conservative Party of Quebec at 17 per cent. But the most important finding is where support lies among francophone voters, with the PQ sitting at 37 per cent and the CAQ behind13 points at 24 per cent. This advantage among francophone voters puts the PQ within striking distance of a majority government.

CAQ Leader and Premier Christine Fréchette, who tried to play the Trump card early in the campaign and build her electoral narrative on the need to protect Quebec’s economy from the Americans, is witnessing her house of cards collapse around her. As the campaign progressed, she could not keep the narrative alive. Her momentum deflated, she desperately needed a strong performance during this final debate.

Unfortunately for her, the CAQ’s record kept holding her back. While she tried to talk about new initiatives in health care, her opponents were quick to remind viewers that during eight years of the CAQ government, emergency room waiting times increased by more than 40 minutes , or that her government failed to deliver on its promise to ensure everyone in the province had a family doctor. Fréchette tried to argue the economy was her strength, but she could not hide from the fact the province is facing some of the largest deficits in history. Liberal leader Charles Milliard had a good moment when he said that Quebec faces two major problems: the state of its economy and immigration, and pointed out that Fréchette had been the minister responsible of both during the François Legault years.

Fréchette sounded like a candidate running on a record from which she was also trying to escape. Whenever she could, she tried to bring the debate back to the possibility of a referendum on Quebec independence under a PQ government, but her rehearsed lines fell flat and uninspired. The CAQ does still retain meaningful support, but it is spread inefficiently across the province, leaving the party at risk of winning only a handful of seats or potentially none at all.

While Fréchette was busy sinking her own boat, the PQ leader did not miss his chance to showcase that he was ready to become premier. He was true to his principles, calm and held fast when attacked by the other leaders. He needed to show Quebeckers that his party, despite winning only three seats in the previous election, was mature enough to assume the reins of power and he did so successfully. PSPP was natural and appeared to speak from the heart. In his first 45 seconds, he wasted no time reminding voters the PQ was the party of change. Curiously enough, he was the weakest on sovereignty. Clearly, the threat of Trump’s tariffs has complicated his referendum ambitions, and he appeared uncertain at times about his own plans for independence.

One of the leaders who shone on the referendum issue was Conservative leader Éric Duhaime, suggesting he could become the leader of the federalist “No” camp in any referendum campaign. He was passionate and energetic, noting that he had voted Yes in 1995, but argued that it would be crazy to go down that route again, as it would weaken Quebec’s political power.

Despite leading a party with no members in the National Assembly, Duhaime continues to run a disciplined and principled campaign. He was unapologetic when talking about more private sector involvement in health-care to take pressure off the public system. He was not afraid to declare he would cut subsidies to businesses and made clear he favours cutting red tape and brining in substantial tax cuts. Duhaime brilliantly portrayed his four opponents as offering more of the same, with him being the one to offer a break with the Quebec model of massive state intervention in the economy. Without question, his best debate yet.

While Duhaime knows he won’t be able to form government, he asked Quebecers to elect as many Conservative MNAs as possible to hold the parties that refuse to break with the status quo to account.

As for Milliard, while in good spirits, he could not create a big enough moment to set himself up as a serious challenger to PSPP. Milliard might have succeeded if he worked harder at portraying himself as the candidate of stability now that Fréchette has failed at occupying that space.

Far left Quebec Solidaire leader Ruba Ghazal performed well enough, given that her party sits at 10 per cent in the polls. She will likely be able to save a handful of ridings on the island of Montreal. However, with Quebec Solidaire proposing more of the same state intervention, Ghazal could hardly position herself as a change candidate.

Change is coming. PSPP and the PQ may fall just short of a majority, but one does not have to look far to see who could help keep them in power. Éric Duhaime is on the rise. We could see an alignment of autonomists and sovereigntists in power for years to come. Duhaime, who could deliver the party’s first representation in the assembly since 1935, might be in a position to influence the course of Quebec politics for the next decade.

This last debate has consolidated the PQ’s path to government and the Conservatives readiness for the big stage.

National Post

Marc-Olivier Fortin is the former national Vice-President of the Conservative Party of Canada (2016-2018) and campaign manager for the CPC in Quebec (2021). He is now a regular commentator at RDI and on COGECO radio and works for Transfert, a firm specialized in social acceptability in mining, energy and heavy industry sectors.

“To the victor belong the spoils,” U.S. President Donald Trump told the assembled diplomats and heads of state at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday. Meant as a realpolitik rationale for his expropriation of Venezuela’s oil wealth, the banality serves just as well to explain quite a lot about the stubborn reluctance of America’s traditional allies to throw themselves behind Trump’s calamitous misadventures in the Strait of Hormuz.

After all, if the U.S. war on Iran is just another smash-and-grab operation that would leave the Khomeinist regime intact in the same way that the White House has colluded with the Bolivarian regime to dispossess the Venezuelan people of something like 65 million barrels of oil, what would be the point?

During his visit to Ireland earlier this month, Trump reiterated the preference he’s more than once expressed for an Iranian endgame involving some kind of collaboration with a faction of the Khomeinist regime that would be allowed to stay in power. Trump said the U.S. would sooner or later end its military entanglement “unless ⁠we decide to stay and keep the oil like Venezuela.” In this way, he inadvertently answered the question he posed on his Truth Social platform on Sept. 1: “When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight?”

The Iranian people did rise up and fight, in their millions, roused in no small part by Trump’s pledge in January: “Iranian Patriots, keep protesting – take over your institutions!!! Help is on the way.” And they did keep protesting, and they died in their thousands, and help came in the form of a war that has engulfed the Middle East, sent shudders through the global economy, alienated the United States’ traditional allies in the region and strengthened America’s primary adversary: the People’s Republic of China.

As recently as June, a reasonably creditable poll showed that public opinion in Iran was divided, with 44 per cent of respondents expressing a positive attitude towards their erstwhile American saviour and 44 per cent expressing a negative view. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, the last person on Earth you’d call accommodating of the regime in Tehran, earned a 51 per cent favourable rating. One shudders to think what a similar poll would show now.

Back in January, after U.S. Special Forces swooped in and extricated Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, from their palace in Caracas, Venezuelans were over the moon. A Meganálisis poll shows that 92.2 per cent of Venezuelans held Trump in high regard. Embattled Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado went so far as to present Trump with her own Nobel Peace Prize medal, a prize Trump said should have gone to him.

But it soon became evident that it was Trump’s intention to expropriate the spoils of the Venezuelan operation in collusion with Maduro’s vice-president, Delcy Rodriguez . The Bolivarian regime was left fully intact in an arrangement Trump described in his UN speech as “perhaps the biggest deal ever made.” The latest Meganálisis poll shows Trump’s favourability among Venezuelans has plummeted to 9.7 per cent .

Roughly 80 per cent of Venezuelans oppose the joint-venture oil deal, and U.S. Congressional investigators still can’t find where the first $13 billion in profits from Venezuelan oil sales has gone, exactly. Nearly $10 billion remains wholly unaccounted for.

Europe has declined to get behind U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s “Economic D-Day” plan to wholly isolate Iran from the global financial system — a plan that leaves Chinese banks undisturbed. China buys roughly 80 per cent of Iran’s oil exports. After all, the Trump administration has chafed against European sanctions targeting Russia and has more or less cut off Ukraine from all American military aid. The U.S. Congress recently passed a massive sanctions package targeting Moscow’s interests, but Trump hasn’t committed to putting the sanctions into effect.

These indecencies have not gone unnoticed in Canada, but Mark Carney’s Liberal government is similarly content to accommodate Beijing’s appetite for fossil fuels. China is the world’s largest oil importer, and by last month, China’s oil imports from Canada had risen by more than a third , year on year. Over the same period, China’s imports of Canadian LNG more than tripled.

After having lost his trade war with China last year, President Trump settled for a truce. U.S. negotiators are hoping to extend that arrangement to deal with competition in the Artificial Intelligence boom, in technologies and regulation. That will be at or near the top of the agenda in Trump’s summit with Xi Jinping this week. In advance, Beijing laid down its red lines . No talk about human rights. No talk about Taiwan.

Trump and Xi get along just fine, and as the rules-based order that sustained the world’s liberal democracies vanishes in the flames of a post-American bonfire, Xi has never been more confident of China’s place in the world. And the Trump family is doing just fine.

The president’s personal wealth has nearly tripled since January of last year to $6.3 billion, with holdings in foreign sovereign wealth funds, Wall Street trades and crypto currency.

After all, to the victor belong the spoils.

National Post

• Trump ‘no longer working’ in best interest of Americans, Trudeau says in U.S. speech
• At UN, Trump threatens Iran with ‘hell,’ then after reveals the two sides had ‘very productive’ talks

A ruling expected shortly by the International Court of Justice in the Hague could pave the way for a host of countries, including Canada, to stand trial for genocide.

In the case of Gambia versus Myanmar the ICJ has been asked to lower the threshold for genocide and if the judges agree it would almost certainly lead to an avalanche of lawfare cases.

The World Court would find itself less concerned with justice than politics.

Indeed, politics is at the heart of the effort to reduce the standard for genocide. A lower standard would make it easier for South Africa to make its case at the ICJ that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza.

But if the ICJ lowers the threshold merely to appease those who wish to punish Israel then it makes a mockery of itself.

Genocide is the “crime of crimes.” Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer, coined the word in 1944, writing, “By ‘genocide’ we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group.”

Four years later, the Geneva Convention defined genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

To prove genocide involves making the case that there was a “specific intent” to destroy a group, in whole or in part.

Alan Kessel, a Canadian lawyer and diplomat who represented Canada in the early stages of the Myanmar case, said, “Genocide is probably the most difficult issue to prove and it was designed that way. It was particularly made difficult because we do have war crimes, crimes against humanity, but genocide would be the most heinous.”

Canada, along with Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom intervened in the Myanmar case “in order to set out their interpretation of the relevant provisions of the Genocide Convention before the Court,” said a statement from the Canadian government in 2023.

Ireland was also granted intervenor status but in its submission it asked the ICJ to broaden its interpretation of what constituted a genocide. It has made a similar submission in South Africa’s case against Israel.

Kessel, who has retired from the federal government but was the assistant deputy minister for legal affairs at Global Affairs Canada, said Ireland has been pushing for countries to be found guilty of genocide on the basis that they “should have known of the natural and probable consequence of the conduct.”

“That is not a test that any of us uses and it’s not a test that we would want to see the ICJ use because that would be open to incredible mischief,” said Kessel, now a senior fellow at the Macdonald Laurier Institute.

“The ‘should have known’ basis is not what we consider a clear intent. It’s a much lower basis. I mean, anybody should have known or could have known or might have known.”

Kessel believes that in the Myanmar case there is enough evidence for it to be found guilty of genocide using the current high standards of proof and intent. Myanmar is accused of using genocidal policies against its Muslim Rohingya population. Thousands were killed and more than 700,000 fled to neighbouring Bangladesh during an army crackdown in 2017.

But he believes some countries want to use the Myanmar case to reconfigure the definition of genocide so it can be used against Israel. South Africa is claiming Israel has committed genocide in Gaza with its military operations in the wake of the horrific October 7 massacre by Hamas.

However, lowering the standard wouldn’t just punish Israel, it would leave Western democracies open to prosecution for genocide as well.

“If you water down a definition such as this, that would not be in the interests of NATO or the Western Alliance or many other Western nations. If you narrow everything down and everything becomes genocide, then you are in a really difficult place as Western democracies who have particular political or policy reasons for engaging in military activity and particularly defensive military activity,” said Kessel.

Orde Kittrie, a U.S. law professor and author of Lawfare: Law as a Weapon of War, said the ICJ had long had a stringent definition of genocide.

“If you lower the threshold, it will not only pave the way for a genocide finding in South Africa’s pending case against Israel, but it would unleash genocide claims against the U.S. and other NATO organization members and their officials in international courts and foreign courts,” he said.

Canada could find itself in the crosshairs because of any future peacekeeping role or for past conduct in Afghanistan, for instance.

“The Canadian military, the militaries of the Western Alliance are watching this like hawks and are concerned as to what will come out of that court,” said Kessel.

He sees immense potential for hostile countries to engage in mischievous lawfare.

“People who would be watching this clearly would be the likes of Russia and China, the North Koreans, the Iranians, and the like who would like to see a major discussion as to the lowering of the standard of genocide.”

Kessel added that while trying to lower the standard of intent looked benign “many of these decisions can tie our hands. And that’s probably the last thing that the Western Alliance wants at this time, especially with the Alliance in a bit of disarray.”

It is unfortunate that the word genocide has been tarnished and debased with its use as a mere political slogan. But courts are places where words and definitions matter and where the notion of a genocide isn’t just a military action, or even a war, but the most horrific crime imaginable.

In an article last year, Kessel wrote, “If we are to honour Lemkin’s legacy, we must use his word with the care, clarity, and weight it demands.”

The World Court is concerned with justice, not politics, and unless it wants to see its reputation sullied and its judges derided it should reject lowering the standard for genocide.

National Post

• David Kaufman: Mamdani’s anti-Netanyahu provocations could plunge New York into chaos
• Vivian Bercovici: Belleville shooting is the inevitable result of unchecked Jew-hatred

“For Jewish people, the personal has always been political and the political always personal. This year I’m reflecting on the fact that we failed to do our part to stop an ongoing genocide committed in our name,” federal NDP leader Avi Lewis wrote, calamitously, on the occasion of Yom Kippur .

Pithy counterpoint, courtesy of Liberal MP Anthony Housefather : “Holding Canadian Jews and Jews across the world collectively responsible for events over which they have no control is despicable,” he wrote. That’s about the size of it.

Indeed, I’m old enough to remember the aftermath of 9/11, when New Democrats — and many others, particularly on the left — admonished us not to do to Muslims precisely what Lewis did to his fellow Jews. (The admonishment was often a bit much, but I fully agreed with the message and still do, no matter what group we’re talking about.)

One very common commentary trope back then was, “Well why can’t Muslims at least apologize for what was done in their name?” It was ugly and un-Canadian, and it rightly got called out. And now, a quarter-century later, Lewis is doing the same thing.

Anyway: By way of follow-up, Lewis bizarrely insisted that he had not held Jews collectively responsible for the wreck of Gaza … which he unambiguously had, including himself among the guilty. He accused those criticizing him of being “partisan.” Lewis’s fellow travellers insisted, among other things, that Lewis’s critics were acting “in bad faith”— which is, ironically, a very bad-faith argument.

I also have to say I’m intrigued to know what Lewis imagines he or any other Jewish Canadian should have done to stop what he claims is an “ongoing genocide.” Does he have special powers we don’t know about? The anti-Israel rabble isn’t easily placated by empty statements of support and solidary from their politicians. They want Canada to Do Something , or at least be more virulently anti-Israel in its policies and messaging.

People like Lewis rely on the notion that “criticizing Israel is not the same as criticizing Jews,” which I certainly agree with. But you don’t hear that argument so often nowadays. Protestors seem less and less interested in picking targets that we’re supposed to believe are extra -supportive of Israel. Once you start marching through Jewish-populated neighbourhoods, the argument is laughable. You don’t know who lives there. This is just pure harassment.

Does Lewis realize he’s inviting misery upon himself , for that matter? It’s not hard to imagine the rabble turning on him. They don’t care who he is, or who his father was, or where he sits on the political spectrum. They just want more Canadian politicians to say they hate Israel. And Lewis just made that quit a bit easier.

National Post

cselley@postmedia.com

NEW YORK CITY — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu is speaking at the United Nations in New York this week. But he’s unlikely to cross paths with the city’s Israel-obsessed Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has called for the premier’s arrest on numerous occasions.

Last year, while campaigning to lead New York, Mamdani promised to arrest Netanyahu if he steps foot in the city under his watch. This year — in a fiery video branding Netanyahu a “war criminal” and the “architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people” — the mayor frustratingly admitted he’s powerless to place Bibi in handcuffs.

Perhaps the White House had something to do with Mamdani’s reluctant about-face. In July, U.S. President Donald Trump declared that Netanyahu would not be arrested in the United States, “in any way, shape or form.” The very next day, Mamadani conceded defeat.

But Mamdani is far from finished. True, the mayor may be unable to jail Netanyahu. Nor, as he announced last week , will he personally demonstrate against Bibi. But like Glenn Close’s infamous character Alex Forrest in “Fatal Attraction,” Mamdani will not be ignored during Netanyahu’s time in New York. Mamdani has repeatedly reminded New Yorkers that they “have the right” to protest while Bibi is in town.

For months, local Jewish groups have bemoaned such provocations, casting blame on Mamdani for contributing to New York’s historic spike in antisemitism. “Sowing chaos” is how Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon described Mamdani’s protest pleas.

Netanyahu released a video on Monday blasting Mamdani “for inciting riots against New York Jews,” before adding, “I’m coming to the UN. I’m going to tell the truth about our heroic soldiers, and I’m going to tell the truth about you.”

But Mamdani’s moves are actually far more calculating than they may appear, and his threats could have implications that go far beyond the city’s Jewish community. Mamdani is not simply laying out a case for legitimizing protests against Netanyahu in New York, he’s openly encouraging them — with consequences that could easily extend to Washington, D.C., and beyond.

Back in the summer of 2020, New York City was an epicentre for the mass protests stoked by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in late May. Then, as now, Trump inhabited the Oval Office, from which he threatened to unleash the army upon America’s cities if the chaos failed to subside.

By early June of that year, some 5,000 National Guard troops were deployed by Trump in Washington, D.C., whose governance falls under White House control. And thousands more troops were dispatched by like-minded governors across the nation. It was the largest National Guard activation since the civil rights movement.

The arrival of the National Guard achieved its goal and within weeks the number of BLM-related protests plunged from nearly 3,500 to 500 nationwide, according to a report by the nonprofit Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) project. But with some 95 per cent of the nation’s protests characterized as non-violent by ACLED, critics suggest the troops were ultimately unnecessary.

Now comes Netanyahu to New York — along with thousands of anti-Israel agitators. And with them, if past melees serve as a guide, protests that are far more violent and chaotic than anything seen during the BLM era.

Barely weeks after the Hamas attack on Israel nearly three years ago, for instance, Jewish students found themselves barricaded inside a Manhattan college campus as pro-Gaza crowds chanted around them. Two weeks later, pro-Israel protester Paul Kessler was dead from a head injury sustained during a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Los Angeles.

In June 2025, 82-year-old Karen Diamond was killed by a makeshift Molotov cocktail thrown by an Islamist while attending a demonstration in Colorado in support of Israeli hostages. Make no mistake, nothing is less “peaceful” than anti-Israel demonstrations demanding “peace in the Middle East.”

Although Netanyahu announced over the weekend that he’s shortening his Thursday visit to mere hours, the pro-Gaza crowd is expected to arrive in full force. Indeed, across social media, anti-Israel organizations are rallying supporters worldwide to confront the prime minister.

“Netanyahu Wanted for Genocide” is how People’s Forum NYC announced its planned march in Manhattan on Thursday, eerily echoing the mayor’s words. Many more anti-Israel organizations are expected to join.

With “accountability” and “escalation” the Gaza crowd’s favourite rallying cries, this week’s anti-Netanyahu rallies could be the most violent yet. Their boogeyman is finally in town and the blood-lust is frothier than ever. Add in the spectre of the mass security and gridlock that accompanies every UN General Assembly and New York City could literally be shut down for Gaza.

By the time Netanyahu speaks on Thursday, Trump — who met with Mamdani on Monday — will be safely back in Washington. But ever-eyeing his hometown, the president is unlikely to allow New York to combust unimpeded.

Well before he entered city hall, Mamdani made clear he would resist any attempt by Trump to deploy federal forces in New York. Although such a confrontation has yet to arrive, Mamdani may finally get his federal face-off this week.

Indeed, should mass violence erupt at the UN’s doorsteps — with the global political elite in attendance and the entire world looking on — Trump could easily declare this a national emergency worthy of Oval Office intervention. And federal troops or guardsmen could quickly be deployed.

Mamdani, of course, would likely front as horrified, while secretly feeling giddy within. After all, such a confrontation would provide the mayor with what he’s always wanted most — proof that Trump, like Netanyahu, is heartless and criminal.

Despite the photo-friendly smiles at that last-minute visit between Trump and Mamdani on Monday, the latter has likely always believed the former to be an arch ideological foil. Socialism has no room for Trump’s capitalist greed. And Trump has little patience for Mamdani’s self-indulgent brand of socialism.

Much like Bibi fighting for his political life back in Jerusalem, both Trump and Mamdani would profit greatly at the spectre of guardsmen battling demonstrators across New York City for Gaza. The president would revel in his city-saviour status while Mamdani could rally his fellow socialists around White House overreach just in time for the midterms.

Both men may get their wish on Thursday.

National Post

David Christopher Kaufman is a New York-based journalist and former New York Post editor and columnist. Sign up for his Substack newsletter, Counterintuitive.

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At one point in Tuesday night’s Toronto mayoral debate, Brad Bradford, the councillor running to unseat Olivia Chow, was decrying the city’s reluctance to uncover wasteful spending.

City Hall, he said, is “defined by a culture of status quo.”

Well, yes. And that is basically the problem that Bradford must overcome.

It is hard to imagine that many Toronto voters would argue things are running along tickety-boo these days. Chow, the NDP stalwart, brought in steep property-tax increases in her first two years in office, but problems related to traffic, public transit and housing affordability remain severe. The municipal government doesn’t own any of those files on its own, but Chow had a habit on Tuesday of claiming victories on matters that were, at best, incomplete.

She crowed about vest-clad traffic agents — “they are so effective!” — in response to a question about the city’s perpetual gridlock, as though it were just a matter of hiring a few dozen more stewards to blow whistles and point fingers to ease the endless jams.

She talked up her proposed weekly fare cap on the TTC, an odd solution for a transit operator that is already facing a massive budget shortfall, and said city finances would be in better shape just as soon as she gets a new deal with Premier Doug Ford, who may or may not have endorsed her last week depending on your interpretation of events.

And in what might have been the best indication of her tendency to just smile through a crisis, she responded to a question about overcoming local resistance to new housing developments — a problem that is far from unique to Toronto — by explaining that it wasn’t really an issue at all.

“Neighbours are not the problem,” she said. “You can always work with them to find a solution.”

If there were any urban planners in the audience, it’s possible their heads exploded upon hearing the mayor declare that NIMBYism was, in fact, fake news.

Chow, though, is in a comfortable position in the race because she has that status-quo thing working for her. Bradford, the would-be “change” candidate who has been positioning himself for such a run for many months now, staking out conservative positions on issues like government spending and public safety, doesn’t have anything like Chow’s name recognition. He was also joined, late in the game, by former federal Conservative MP Chris Alexander, whose presence in the race remains somewhat mystifying.

Alexander, the former diplomat whose last act in politics was touting the proposed “barbaric cultural practices” hotline as immigration minister in the dying days of the Stephen Harper government, represented Ajax-Pickering federally until 2015 and had never shown any interest in Toronto politics until he was suddenly running to lead the city. It’s a little like John Tavares deciding he wants to play outfield for the Toronto Blue Jays.

Alexander’s performance on Tuesday night, at a debate hosted by the Board of Trade and the Toronto Star, was actually pretty decent. After Bradford finished a lengthy complaint about the city’s finances, Alexander noted he has been a councillor for eight years. He told Chow that her plan to cap TTC fares for frequent riders was, considering the state of its finances, “not remotely sound.” There’s an argument to be made that Alexander is the more credible “change” candidate since in political terms he’s arriving to City Hall like a visitor from another planet. But there were also times on Tuesday, as Chow and Bradford were debating their contrasting policies, where his presence seemed odd. You half-expected one of the other two to look over at him and say, “Sorry, why are you here again?”

And yet Alexander may yet play the kingmaker. Or queenmaker, as it were. A Liason Strategies poll released this week had Chow at 47 per cent support, with Bradford at 40 per cent and Alexander way back at 10 per cent. It doesn’t require a great deal of mathematical analysis to conclude that, absent Alexander’s presence in the race, Chow might be holding a within-the-margin-of-error type of lead. Bradford needs to make up a lot of ground quickly, which could explain his Tuesday promise to freeze property taxes for a year. It’s an attractive pledge to voters who have seen their tax bills spike, even if it is likely to just bring a larger hike in Year Two. (Bradford is staking his financial plan on would-be savings found by an independent budget review that he insists is long overdue. He might be right, but he also wouldn’t be the first politician to discover that great piles of cash are not, in fact, hiding in plain sight amid the budget’s many items.)

Chow may yet see her advantage dwindle, as we enter the business end of the race that will end on Oct. 26. But incumbency has its benefits, especially when two candidates are splitting the vote to oust her. She only has to ask her friend Doug Ford about that.

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