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Economic illiteracy, on both sides of the Canada-U.S. negotiating table, is the biggest threat to continental security.

Let’s start with the Canadian side. His doctorate in economics notwithstanding, nothing so plainly illustrates Prime Minister Mark Carney’s economic deficiencies as Ottawa’s apparent treatment of the successor to the long-abandoned Keystone XL pipeline in recent trade negotiations.

Sources familiar with the file told the New York Times that Carney offered to allow the pipeline project to resume. While offering a pipeline is not a particularly odd move, it’s strange that Ottawa appears to have treated it as a concession to Washington.

Gaining additional access to our largest and richest customer is not primarily an American benefit. But under Carney, building a pipeline that allows our most valuable trade commodity to get to market is seen as a great sacrifice. We know the U.S. wants and needs our oil, but Carney would have us believe that we would be doing the Americans a favour by giving them the privilege of buying our commodities.

In reality, the Keystone XL project was cancelled years ago. TC Energy, which proposed the project, proceeded to spin off its crude pipeline business into South Bow, which is now advancing the Prairie Connector pipeline. That project proposes using roughly 150 kilometres of preserved Keystone XL-related pipe and two existing pump stations in Canada, connecting to a new American route.

South Bow has already secured 20-year binding commitments from nine customers to buy 465,000 barrels of oil per day. This is not, in other words, a case of economic charity — actual customers want to pay actual money to move actual Canadian oil.

We should also prioritize additional pipelines to the West Coast. Canada currently sends almost all of its exported oil to one customer , the United States. A barrel that can reach either Chicago or Shanghai is worth more strategically than one that can reach only Chicago.

Beyond the immediate economics, the federal government is trying to convince disaffected Albertans that Ottawa takes their economic interests seriously. To be credible, it can’t dismiss them as a tradable asset for the benefit of Central Canadian political priorities.

Keeping details of the negotiations secret is to be expected. However, there is a difference between negotiating discreetly and keeping Canadians in the dark about major decisions that affect their economic future. So far we have a combination of anonymous American and Canadian sources talking to the media, and a vibrant online rumour mill filling in the blanks. Carney’s statements since the deal collapsed have been concerningly vague and light on details.

Canadians deserve better. We shouldn’t accept without scrutiny the idea that pipelines are trade concessions, rather than a safe, necessary, common and obvious form of critical infrastructure for an energy-producing nation.

On the other side, U.S. President Donald Trump is a known productionist. He measures U.S. economic performance by what the United States manufactures. Conceptually, this makes some sense. The strength of the U.S. economy was historically based on its manufacturing might. The prosperity that it generated created the capital and consumer base upon which America built its modern services economy.

Trump is right that countries need to make things. A state that cannot make weapons, machinery, energy infrastructure and other strategic goods concedes real power. That said, strategic productive capacity alone shouldn’t be used as an all-purpose theory of economics.

Sometimes trade deficits are merely a reflection of regional geography or capital specialization. Yet Trump routinely conflates them with losses. Likewise, he views the decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs as a symptom of foreign exploitation, not a consequence of innovation and efficiency gains.

The U.S. largely produces light crude , while many of its refineries are built specifically to process heavy oils , the majority of which are imported from Canada. Canadian oil is thus a productive input into American refining.

Yet our leverage, if we can call it that, is not immutable. Worryingly, Carney is treating America’s dependence on Canadian crude as a bargaining asset at a time when that asset may be depreciating. Since former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro’s ouster, Venezuelan oil exports to the United States have climbed from roughly 284,000 barrels a day in January to 786,000 in July.

And on Friday, Trump announced a major deal to give the U.S. a stake in Venezuela’s oil reserves. While not much is known about the terms of the deal, and it will take some time before additional supplies come online, it is clear that change is afoot. Even so, the fact that South Bow was able to secure 20-year commitments for its proposed pipeline shows that Gulf Coast demand remains resilient.

Canadian products need as much market access as we can get. It shouldn’t have taken a trade war to realize that we need westward and southward capacity for our most valuable commodity — energy. The United States, meanwhile, needs secure industrial inputs, making pipelines a win-win situation for both countries.

Economic illiteracy is bad for Canadians and Americans. Our shared security suffers if either side thinks that commerce is capitulation, whether on the altars of climate or autarkic fantasies.

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Things that divide us cannot possibly unite us. That much would seem obvious, but as Étienne-Alexandre Beauregard tells Brian Lilley, society has for decades prioritized hyper-individualism and promoted multiculturalism over communitarianism. And that has been eroding western civilization. Beauregard discusses his new book, “Anti-Civilization: The Collapse of Society and the Case for the Common Good.” He explains how the desocialization of younger generations and the fetishization of immigration, among other things, are leading to a backlash from people who crave a more collective meaning and identity. And surprisingly, it’s generation Z that seems most determined to rescue us from our decline. (Recorded Aug. 19, 2026.)

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A week ago, in a spirited, resolute and bombastic press conference, Prime Minister Mark Carney framed the tariff war with the U.S. as nothing less than the survival of Canada.

Carney was determined to “protect Canadian sovereignty,” maintain our “independence and sovereignty,” and “not compromise our sovereignty.”

“The new U.S. tariffs are designed to hurt us and divide us,” he said.

But a week later the prime minister’s belligerent rhetoric is looking increasingly like political theatre. And it is a show where the script has been shared with his ministers.

“We cannot accept what they have offered and we will not give what they have asked,” said Carney on that Saturday.

By Monday, ministers were on board.

“They asked too much of Canada and offered too little in return,” said Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne.

“We will not accept a bad deal which asks too much of Canada and offers too little in return,” said Industry Minister Mélanie Joly.

It is unfortunate that the Liberal government is still refusing to reveal exactly what the U.S. was asking and why Canada felt unable to accept.

What we do know is that of the three examples that Carney cited on that Saturday as being a threat to our sovereignty one has been settled, and may never have been an issue, and we largely appear to agree on a second.

The third issue, tariff levels on medium and heavy-duty trucks is an outstanding irritant and a large one. The potential economic harm to Ontario especially is such that it is likely to have always been a red line for Canada.

But tariffs on trucks isn’t a sovereignty issue, it’s a trade one and best dealt with at the negotiating table.

Carney told Canadians, “We are masters of our destiny.” Fine, but we are not masters of the U.S. and if they want to impose tariffs, it may be unreasonable, unfair, uneconomic and ultimately disastrous, but that’s what a sovereign nation can do.

However, framing tariffs on trucks as an existential threat to Canada was never going to be enough for Liberals. Arguing over 25 per cent tariffs on medium and heavy trucks is a legitimate aim for trade negotiators but lacks the drama needed by a fiery prime minister to fire up Canada.

A week ago, a steadfast Carney warned that “American was trying to break us so they can own us and I promised that would never, never happen.”

If the backdrop to that was tariffs on trucks, then Carney might have been accused of being less Churchillian and more Shakespearean.

Hence, Carney introduced two other factors: the risk to our language and culture as well as our ability to make trade deals with other countries.

These are things to rile up the masses.

“We cannot control the storm that blows in from Washington,” said Carney beginning his press conference. And he concluded it with, “Canadians don’t submit to the weather, we thrive in it. We don’t wait to see which way the wind is blowing or surrender to the waves to be storm tossed by events. We set our own course. We make our own weather.”

It was all remarkably stirring, but in the days to come would be revealed as hokum.

The risk to “our language, our culture, our sovereignty” was about discoverability rules, it was about whether streaming services should have to be subject to the abysmal CanCon requirements. The U.S. wasn’t particularly happy with discoverability but was never going to war over it, said U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.

Whatever the U.S.’s previous position, Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc appeared delighted it was now a non-issue.

So, the danger to our “language and culture” is not an issue now and wasn’t much of one before. More a storm in a teacup, really.

As for trading with other nations, it appears the U.S. — as part of a Canadian desire for Fortress North America — wanted to align tariffs in certain sectors like steel and aluminum. The purpose was to prevent a third country dumping cheap steel/aluminum in one country — say Canada — which would then make its way to the U.S.

It’s a position Carney appears to agrees with as long as it’s part of a “comprehensive deal.”

It’s the kind of issue that is hammered out between trade negotiators, is detailed on page 143 of the trade agreement, is read by trade lawyers in trade magazines and never actually worries the average Canadian.

In light of these revelations, why aren’t we back at the bargaining table?

Janice Charette, Canada’s chief U.S. trade negotiator, told the CBC that “pens are down, but the door is open.”

It was Carney’s decision to call off the trade talks and presumably he could push for them to restart. That he isn’t making that call speaks to other political motives: is he burnishing his tough guy credentials? Awaiting to see the outcome of the U.S. midterm elections? Gambling on the anger of U.S. states to convince Donald Trump of the error of his ways?

Whatever Carney’s motives, he is playing a bold, dangerous and ambitious game.

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Attempts to paint antisemitism as a form of political expression rather than racism is far from a recent phenomenon. The clearest example of where this idea fermented on the world stage was the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) in Durban, South Africa, which was held 25 years ago.

WCAR was billed as a global gathering to combat racism, xenophobia and intolerance. Governments, international organizations and civil society representatives assembled with the stated purpose of building a shared framework against racism in all its forms. There was a sense that history would be made.

I was there to witness it unfold first-hand. I had not travelled to Durban as an advocate or as someone looking to advance Jewish community concerns. In preparation for the conference, I had been commissioned to produce a report for the Government of Canada’s anti-racism secretariat that examined previous reports and recommendations on racism, racial discrimination and related intolerance. In effect, I arrived in Durban expecting conversations about combating racism in all its forms. Instead, what I encountered there was almost the opposite. And therein lies one of the bitter irony of the experience.

At the parallel NGO Forum, where civil society leaders from around the world were meant to give expression to the victims of racism and discrimination, the proceedings were transformed — or more accurately hijacked — into something much uglier. What should have been a universal anti-racism gathering became, in too many instances, an effort to remove Jew-hatred from the world’s anti-racism agenda. The spectacle was marked by manipulation, propaganda and a stunning willingness to excuse hostility toward Jews and dress it up as anti-Zionism or anti-Israel politics.

Jewish participants from across the political spectrum arrived expecting solidarity. Instead, many of us found ourselves asking whether antisemitism still counted as racism. Some participants described being harassed because they were visibly Jewish. Copies of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” the notorious antisemitic forgery, were circulated. Posters equated Israel with Nazi Germany. Leaflets and slogans blurred, sometimes deliberately, any distinction between criticism of Israeli government policy and hostility toward Jews as a people. Conduct that would have been immediately condemned had it targeted virtually any other minority was tolerated, rationalized or ignored when directed at Jews.

That was the disturbing innovation of Durban. It helped globalize the effort to recast the hatred of Jews as political opinion. The very language of anti-racism was used to launder antisemitic expression. Jews were not denied the right to be protected in theory; rather, they were told that the hostility directed at them was not really hatred at all, but solidarity with the oppressed, anti-colonial activism or resistance to imperialism.

Rest assured that what happened at Durban wasn’t about Israeli government policy. It placed Israel, alone among the nations of the world, at the centre of the racism agenda. It treated Jewish self-determination as singularly suspect. It transformed Jews from a historically persecuted minority into the symbolic embodiment of oppression. Once that shift occurred, antisemitism could be dismissed as merely a political complaint.

At a spontaneous gathering of Jewish conference delegates, Irwin Cotler, who would go on to become Canada’s justice minister, warned against what he called the “partitioning of prejudice.” The phrase has stayed with me since. Racism cannot be opposed selectively. Human rights lose their moral authority when they are applied conditionally. The moment hatred against a particular people is deemed understandable, fashionable or politically useful, the universalism on which anti-racism depends starts to collapse. Durban revealed that collapse in real time.

To be sure, there was a difference between the official governmental conference and the NGO Forum. The final United Nations declaration did not adopt the most extreme language advanced by activists, and thankfully it did acknowledge that antisemitism is a form of intolerance. But history remembers Durban at least as much for what unfolded in the civil society forum as for what appeared in the official diplomatic text. The NGO Forum exposed a fault line that has widened over the past quarter century: antisemitism is increasingly treated as debatable, contextual or somehow less apparent when conveniently associated with criticism of Israel.

That legacy is now visible everywhere. Jews are often required to prove that what they experience as antisemitism is indeed antisemitism. Expressions that would be condemned instantly if directed at other minorities are parsed endlessly when Jews are the target. The same people who insist that minorities must be trusted to define their own experience of racism suddenly demand footnotes, qualifications and geopolitical context when Jews describe hatred directed toward them.

That is one of the enduring legacies of Durban. It showed how easily anti-racism can be inverted when ideology overtakes principle. A movement that begins by defending the vulnerable can end up deciding which vulnerable people are inconvenient. A discourse built to expose hatred can become a vehicle for excusing it. A gathering convened to fight racism can, in the name of fighting racism, make room for one of its oldest forms.

Twenty-five years later, the deeper lesson arising from Durban is that universality is fragile. Anti-racism cannot survive if it becomes selective. Human rights cannot retain their force if some forms of hatred are condemned while others are rationalized because they fit a preferred political narrative.

That is why the irony of my presence in Durban still troubles me. I arrived having just contributed to Canada’s efforts to take stock of how governments and communities had tried to combat discrimination in all its forms. I left having seen how quickly the global language of anti-racism could be manipulated to exclude antisemitism.

Durban’s anniversary should therefore not be treated as a historical footnote. It should be remembered as a warning. When hatred of Jews is rebranded as politics, when antisemitism is carved out of the anti-racism agenda, the result is not justice, it’s the partitioning of prejudice — and it leaves a badly needed anti-racism project morally compromised.

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The fully tinted-out vehicle is one of the great villains of Canadian traffic. It’s more likely to drive aggressively, ripping through residential zones and weaving through high-density freeway traffic far above the speed limit. Even worse than its road etiquette is what’s inside: people, possibly wanted on warrants, along with their drugs and guns.

That’s why the opaque-windowed car is the perfect target for any province that wants to make substantive change in the fight against organized crime — without depending on the feds.

Window tint is a simple matter of traffic regulation, placing it squarely within provincial jurisdiction. And it’s regulated for good reason: completely darkened windows on the entire car reduce driver visibility and the tint can complicate extraction in an emergency. They also make the job of traffic enforcement much more dangerous for the officers on the front line. It’s a lot easier for the occupants of that tinted-out hellcat to ambush the sheriff who pulled them over if he can’t see inside on the approach.

Generally, the present rules on window tint across the provinces allow for some degree of tint in the back of a vehicle, and no tint at all in the front. But, generally, the consequences across Canada for violating these very straightforward rules are astoundingly low. In B.C., for example, the illegal tint fine is usually $109 , according to the RCMP. If the officer also makes an inspection order to ensure the tint is removed, and said order is not followed, there can be another fine of $598.

Alberta is much the same: earlier this week a tinted-out Ford Mustang whose driver had been speeding on a learner’s licence — go figure — was hit with a $105 fine for the state of the car’s windows. The minimum is $81 , and failure to remove the tint after being ordered to do so comes with a $243 fine. Ontario’s rates are similar: the fine is $85 , which comes to $110 after tacking on the victim surcharge.

It’s pretty clear why cars with all-black windows remain a common enough sight in city traffic. The fines amount to a low cost-of-doing-business charge. The benefits of heavy tint, concealing seedy business and protecting against targeted attacks from rivals, are easily worth that price.

Enforcement, meanwhile, is not happening to the degree it should be. The visible violation of a traffic rule in the form of tint does provide officers an easy justification for pulling over a probable criminal and potentially taking an illegal gun or two off the street — but at great risk. A proper, safety-conscious traffic stop of a fully tinted car is a bigger production than normal because of all the precautions that must be taken, which takes more effort and time. Judging by how frequently front window tint can be observed on the road, the juice doesn’t appear to be worth the squeeze for a lot of officers.

The good news? That calculation is easy to change. Traffic fines can be cranked up with the stroke of a pen at a moment’s notice — to $3,000, $5,000 or even, for subsequent violations, $10,000 and beyond. Seize the vehicles of those who insist on eating the massive fines.

Admittedly, this would be a pain to those who simply tint their front windows for the love of the game, but it’s not like they should have been doing that in the first place. Whatever protest they make in response to such a rule change would be worth the wrench it would throw into the criminal underworld.

Four- and five-figure fines would actually serve as a painful punishment to the people who make thousands off of moving cocaine. And with more traffic stops of a city’s sketchiest vehicles will come more criminal charges. It’s common enough that the driver is caught intoxicated or with open alcohol ; or that some vehicle occupant is in the midst of violating bail conditions , wanted on a warrant , or that the car contains illegal firearms , cash , substances or stolen goods.

One traffic stop in Ottawa in 2024 actually yielded a whopping 21 charges after an officer stopped a car for tinted front windows. He noticed an improperly stored vape pen in the front and judged this to be a Cannabis Control Act contravention; the ensuing search yielded pills, cash, white powder, a scale, a handgun, 9-millimetre ammunition. The driver, it turned out, had a history of violently robbing banks and had been previously caught robbing a Rideau Centre jewelry store. Alas, a judge ended up throwing the charges out in 2025 by declaring the search illegal, but one wonders how an appeal would have gone. In any event, the search got a handgun off the street and added to the paper trail of a notorious Ottawa criminal.

Provinces can’t amend the Criminal Code — that’s entirely up to the feds — but they can create the conditions for better enforcement by tackling what’s well within their jurisdiction instead of wasting time lobbying Ottawa for changes to criminal laws. Audit the suspicious restaurants that are obviously buying stolen meat and cheese from thieves; name and shame the trucking companies whose fleets are found to be moving drugs; come down hard on problem properties that sow the surrounding blocks with disorder. And of course, hunt down the opaque-windowed menace responsible for cutting off many a law-abiding driver. The people will love you for it.

It’s clear from their decade in office that the Liberals prefer writing ineffective reverse-onus bail provisions that don’t make a practical difference in court and engineering new ways for judges to ignore “mandatory” minimum sentences. Take it as an opportunity. There’s more pride in being the premier who roots out organized crime than being one who helplessly points to Ottawa with each brazen robbery or extortion.

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Doug Ford had a rough spring and a summer that wasn’t going much better.

His government’s ill-advised purchase of a private jet blew a hole in his everyman persona so much that he might as well have started showing up to public events with a top hat and monocle. Spending scandals followed, solidifying the image of his governing PCs as a party that was self-satisfied, sloppy or both.

The Ontario premier’s poll numbers sagged, so much so that the PCs were behind a Liberal party that doesn’t even have a permanent leader.

But Ford, who sailed to re-election last year on the back of a Captain Canada persona, has found his footing again in a new role: Bad Cop.

You know the character: Where Mark Carney is the Good Cop, trying to deal with Donald Trump and his administration of yes-men and stooges patiently and diplomatically, Ford is the maverick who doesn’t play by the rules. He’s shooting his mouth off, calling the U.S. president a bully and a loser, and inviting him to kiss his behind. In the movie version, Carney would be in the interview room telling the criminal suspect that he’d better answer their questions soon, because he just doesn’t know what his crazy partner will do next. He could fly off the handle at any minute!

This happens to be an excellent role for Ford. Already prone to bluster and unrehearsed statements in relatively quiet times, his belligerence in the face of Trump’s trade threats perfectly reflects the Canadian mood at the moment. While there is broad public support for Carney’s decision to walk away from trade talks at the last minute, what Canadians really want to do is tell Trump to, well, kiss our collective behind.

Not surprisingly, Ford’s poll numbers have rebounded right after he suggested the president do such a thing.

A Liaison Strategies survey released on Wednesday shows the PCs holding a four-point lead (39 per cent vs. 35 per cent) over the second-place Liberals, while the Official Opposition of Marit Stiles and the NDP are another 15 points back at 20 per cent. Ford’s approval rating has also shot up by 12 points since July, although the survey of 1,500 Ontarians still shows him at only 36 per cent approval, hardly the stuff of an enamoured public.

It’s not as if there isn’t precedent for a Trumpian intervention to upset a political picture north of the border that looked fairly hardened. His trade wars and annexation musings reversed the fortunes of the federal Liberals, making a prime minister of Mark Carney after Pierre Poilievre had spent months readying himself for the role.

Ford is now riding a similar wave. Where most of the talk over the last few months has been how his PCs had been suffering through the kinds of doldrums that often afflict a tired government, Trump has given him renewed purpose and a resonating message. That Trump has insulted Ford specifically only increases his bona fides with his countrymen.

And now comes the part of the column where we must introduce some caveats. As the Canadian politician who is leading the charge for a strong reaction to Trump’s tariffs, calling for oil, electricity and potash to be used as weapons in an escalating trade war, Ford could also bear significant blame for any economic hardship that might follow. He’s insisted that such tactics are necessary in response to Trump’s bullying, and Canadians who are spoiling for a fight are inclined to agree. But if such a fight ends up devastating, say, Ontario’s automobile industry, Ford won’t be able to claim that he was out there calling for cooler heads and civil diplomacy.

Ford could also run into challenges within the confederation, if his counterparts seek compromise with the United States, as already seems to be the case with Alberta. Would the Bad Cop act still be supported if it turns out that his intransigence is standing in the way of a trade deal that Carney and other first ministers are ready to take? Sometimes the lieutenant has to step in and tell the detectives that their antics are going to get them both fired.

Ford also still has longer-term concerns. This Trump bump, unlike the last one, is not coming amid an election campaign, and by the time Ontario goes to the polls again Trump will no longer be president. Eventually he will have to face all those questions about affordability and the cost of living that have generally dogged incumbent governments in recent years, coupled with the wreckage of whatever the trade war produces.

But for now, a premier who was facing daily questions about how he was out of touch with the everyday folks he has long championed is now echoing their concerns entirely. All he needed was an outburst from the villain of the hour to put him back in his preferred crime-fighting role.

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Former Cambridge Professor Jason Arday — who until recently was lauded as an anti-racist prodigy — died by his own hand last week after being exposed as a plagiarist and pathological fraud. His story should be remembered as a cautionary tale of how radical diversity initiatives can corrupt academia, yet some progressives are spinning him as a martyr and prosecuting a witch hunt against anyone who helped expose his lies.

Arday emerged as a niche celebrity in 2023, when, at age 37, he became the youngest-ever Black professor appointed at Cambridge University. As an academic, his work fixated on popular social justice topics — such as “whiteness” and “decolonization” — which he tackled by regurgitating fashionable jargon and incoherently calling everything “racist.”

Progressive white academics, in an apparent effort to appease their own racial guilt, heaped unearned praise upon this charlatan, as did university administrators. Media outlets showered him with adulatory coverage , often emphasizing his extraordinary life story.

Arday claimed that, thanks to his autism, he only learned to speak when he was 11 years old and could not read or write until age 18. Despite these self-reported developmental delays, he began his undergraduate studies at age 20 and eventually obtained a PhD in education from Liverpool John Moores University.

This narrative stretched credulity, because the type of intellectual catch-up Arday allegedly experienced seemingly has no precedent in medical literature . He further ornamented his biography with a litany of outlandish claims — most of which were shared in media interviews and in various drafts of his recent memoir, which was published posthumously this month.

Arday wrote in his memoir proposal, for example, that a car accident in his teenage years left him in a three-month coma where he experienced “locked-in syndrome.” He claimed that doctors recommended taking him off life-support, only for him to miraculously recuperate. For whatever reason, this story did not appear in the memoir’s published final draft.

He also professed to have had a brain tumour while completing his postdoctoral degree, and that this tumour was surgically removed two weeks before he orally defended his thesis, leading to a stroke that caused him to entirely forget his research. He similarly declared at one point to have survived testicular cancer , a story which he also later abandoned.

In yet another exciting twist, Arday claimed to have run 30 marathons in 35 days — a feat that would have placed him among the world’s greatest endurance runners — with the last nine being allegedly completed despite a fractured and heavily swollen leg. He separately claimed to have run 600 miles in six days, an achievement that would have come close to a world record.

He also told the media that he raised £5 million (C$9.4 million) over the course of 20 years, and that he had installed water points in South America and West Africa.

Over time, skepticism arose over Arday’s honesty and academic integrity. A respected British professor contacted Cambridge in 2023 and alleged that one of Arday’s 2018 papers was extensively plagiarized. Although Arday was forced to issue extensive corrections, Cambridge declined to investigate as the research predated his employment with them.

Then, in 2025, Times Higher Education reporter Jack Grove meticulously documented extensive plagiarism within Arday’s 2015 PhD thesis. When Grove politely emailed Arday a list of related questions, he responded by calling the police on the reporter, baselessly alleging harassment, and retained a high-powered law firm to successfully crush the story using meritless defamation claims.

No mainstream media outlet seemed willing to criticize Arday until Nathan Cofnas, a professor admittedly infamous for his views on race and intellect, published an in-depth Substack article last month carefully detailing the fabulist’s dishonesty. The article quickly went viral.

Cambridge initially denounced Cofnas’ accusations against Arday as a “ vile campaign to undermine his credibility,” and over 10,000 people, including prominent academics, signed an open letter defending him. But soon a deluge of media stories shredded his fabricated biography.

Reporters belatedly acknowledged that many of Arday’s claims were fantastical and unsubstantiated. Among other things, they discovered that Arday had fundraised only around £10,000 (C$18,900) and that WaterAid did not , in fact, send volunteers abroad. They learned that a book he claimed to have published had, in fact, never been written, and that one of his masters degrees almost certainly did not exist .

In another bizarre incident, Arday told The Guardian that masked intruders had accosted him in his faculty office on two separate occasions and threatened him with a knife, and that someone had sent a severed pig’s head to his family home, which, he said, had prompted a police investigation. Yet, the newspaper discovered that these “intruders” had somehow remained undetected by the building’s CCTV and that no colleagues had reported anyone suspicious. The police also “categorically” denied that any investigation into a severed pig head had occurred.

Cambridge announced on Aug. 5 that it was opening an investigation into Arday. He resigned from his post that same day and then killed himself a week later.

Many conservatives have used Arday’s story as a cudgel against radical DEI policies. Would such a charlatan have risen so high — and enjoyed so much institutional protection — had he been white? Probably not. Progressive academics and administrators evidently saw him as someone who could do no wrong. By indulging him, they made a mockery of academic and professional standards, let alone their own intelligence.

While a minority of Arday’s critics have seemingly been animated by racism , the motives of the reasonable majority, along with their broader arguments against DEI, are still credible. The Arday affair indisputably raises questions about institutional integrity and trust amid academia’s enduring wokeness.

Rather than engage with these issues, though, many progressives have responded by whitewashing Arday and misportraying him as the blameless victim of a harassment and “lynching” campaign. Tens of thousands of supporters gathered in London a few days after his death to pay tribute to the disgraced conman, and some British progressive leaders are now demanding an inquiry into how the press covered Arday — because exposing fraud through accurate journalism is now a bad thing, apparently.

Some of Arday’s defenders have resorted to lying about whether he plagiarized his work, or, in a similar vein, are trying to redefine “plagiarism” to exclude his extensive copying of other people’s writing.

Worse yet, some have called for the establishment of a new law that will limit press freedom by regulating how many stories can be written about certain public figures. Incredibly, this idea has received support from Amnesty International, a once-venerable institution.

Meanwhile, Cofnas, has been made into a scapegoat . Progressives are now threatening him with violence and death. His university even suspended him last week for the crime of accurately describing Arday’s academic malpractice.

Even in Canada, The Hill Times published a column claiming that Arday’s death was caused by the western media’s “complicity with the rise in fascism and coddling of white supremacy.”

This response is deeply unhealthy. Arday was not a martyr. No amount of revisionism, censorship, bullying and histrionic rhetoric can change that reality.

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The resurgence of socialism in the United States, mainly through the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), should serve as a warning to Canadians. Ideas once associated with Soviet socialism and later cultivated in Western activist movements and university campuses, are increasingly finding their way into mainstream campaigns and electoral victories in the United States.

This ideological movement does not end at our border. A small, highly organized group of anti-capitalist activists has gained influence within parts of Canada’s public-sector labour movement. They may not be operating directly through the DSA, but the playbook is similar: using the resources and the political power of labour unions to advance an anti-capitalist agenda.

This should concern Canadians as history has shown us what unchecked socialist power can lead to — repression, economic ruin and the loss of individual freedom. These consequences stem from the concentration of economic and political power at the expense of private enterprise and individual choice. Socialism views capitalism as a driver of inequality and moral evil, favouring greater government intervention. It uses the language of class solidarity, anti-oppression, social justice, equity and collective action — language increasingly reflected in the principles of social unionism within parts of Canada’s public-sector labour movement .

For socialists, this means that unions are no longer simply about bargaining collective agreements; they are vehicles for fighting capitalism and driving broader political and social change. Social unionism reflects this expanded role, positioning unions as vehicles for activism beyond the workplace.

The growing relationship between Canada’s public-sector labour movement and anti-capitalism is illustrated by Avi Lewis. Lewis decisively won the NDP leadership in March on a more radical, socialist platform than previous NDP party leaders, advocating for publicly owned grocery stores, public phone and internet utilities, and a state-run housing developer.

Lewis’s socialist agenda found a powerful ally in parts of Canada’s public-sector labour movement. Before winning the NDP leadership, he secured endorsements from CUPE Ontario , multiple CUPE locals , a PSAC local and the Peel Regional Labour Council (PRLC), which includes members of CUPE, ETFO, OSSTF and United Steelworkers.

Everywhere you look now, socialism appears to be embedded in union policy. CUPE Ontario’s drafted Action Plan from May, for example, advocates for greater government intervention, organizing political campaigns, pursuing “climate justice,” participating in international solidarity campaigns, and organizing political activism beyond the workplace.

It’s also not completely new. In 2016, the CUPW President openly advocated for socialism, declaring that capitalism could not solve society’s crises and called for a “democratically controlled economy.” Later, in 2020, CUPW congratulated Bolivians for “restoring the Movement for Socialism.”

These developments go beyond routine labour support for the NDP or negotiating better contracts. Organized labour activists are taking advantage of their political influence and resources to advance anti-capitalist candidates and policies.

In 2021, CUPE Ontario even adopted leadership oath committing its executives and elected members to “anti-racist, anti-oppression, working-class and social unionism principles.” Language that aligns closely with the anti-capitalist principles commonly associated with socialism.

Those connections extend beyond Canada’s borders. In 2017, CUPE Ontario collaborated with the DSA on an article for The Socialist Project and, then in February 2026, CUPE Ontario welcomed Gustavo Gordillo , co-chair of the New York City chapter of the DSA, as a keynote speaker at its Presidents’ Conference. Gordillo, a key architect of Zohran Mamdani’s socialist campaign, has attracted attention for advocating that land be redistributed from “from landowners to the landless” and for suggesting that no one “should have the constitutional right to double-digit returns on their investments.”

CUPE has praised Cuba as a “socialist society where people’s needs are prioritized” and called its socialist economic system an “inspiring” alternative to neoliberalism and sent delegations to Cuba to deepen ties with workers and supporters of the Cuban Revolution.

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers also appears to have a soft spot for Cuba. It’s a member of the Canadian Network on Cuba which openly promotes the Cuban Revolution and its socialist principles.

Unions don’t exactly hide their political activism, but many members don’t realize how their mandatory union dues are being spent. The Rand Formula gives unions broad control over dues that can fund political campaigns, outside organizations and causes beyond collective bargaining. This gives a small activist minority of some union leaders and members the means to advance political and socialist ideas in the name of broader membership, often without member knowledge.

History offers a warning. The Soviet Union , Maoist China and Pol Pot’s Cambodia all demonstrated the devastating consequences of socialist regimes: repression, economic devastation, loss of individual freedoms and the deaths of millions. Their histories expose the dangers of concentrated power, weakened private enterprise and centralized control.

Capitalism is not perfect, but it has lifted billions from poverty, increased longevity, driven innovation and created unprecedented prosperity. Canadians should be wary when public-sector unions use workers’ resources and trusted institutions to promote anti-capitalist and socialist ideologies.

It’s time for Canadians to ask whether public sector unions are using member dues to fight for Canadian workers or advance an agenda that undermines our freedoms. Once an ideology becomes embedded in the institutions we fund, change becomes much harder. The time to remove these ideologies from our unions is now.

National Post

Lauren Frenkel is a health care provider and union member.

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Following the collapse of trade talks between Canada and the United States continentalism is apparently dead in Canada, again. It would not be the first time that the demise of North American integration has been celebrated prematurely.

In the 1911 federal election, the then-protectionist Conservatives triumphed over the Liberals and their program of conditional commercial reciprocity, which meant equal tariffs on identical goods traded with the U.S., rather than free trade.

At the time, the Toronto World proclaimed , “CONTINENTALISM IS DEAD. ELECTORS DUG ITS GRAVE,” while the Montreal Daily Star matched it with “RECIPROCITY IS REPUDIATED!” The graves of continentalism and closer relations with the U.S. were dug to great fanfare. However, like a zombie rising from the dirt, neither continentalism nor the pursuit of closer relations was really dead.

The temptation in Canada to deepen ties with the U.S. has been cyclical. Whenever the White House appears benevolent and Canadians are not thinking twice about vacationing in Florida, such a shift appears inevitable and further concessions are made. Then, when Washington becomes belligerent, cries or thoughts of “ Yankee Go Home ” proliferate.

In the current climate, with a clear pattern of dishonest, brutish behaviour from Donald Trump’s administration, continentalism is political suicide in Canada. There has not been such a spiritual and political retreat from North America in living memory. Even if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2028, the residual distrust is unlikely to dissipate.

Beyond integration, calls for full-blown annexation by the U.S. have always been made by a loud, albeit unpopular, minority. In 1849, an unlikely alliance of English-speaking businessmen in Montreal joined hands with francophone republicans to support the annexation of the then-Canadian colonies. The British Empire had ended the preference for colonial goods in matters of commerce, ruining the business model of the colonies.

However, the annexationists never gained popular traction, and the 1854 Reciprocity Treaty signed between Britain and the U.S. restored stable cross-border trade, decisively withering their movement.

In 1891, Wilfrid Laurier’s Liberals banked on a program of unrestricted reciprocity with the United States. Led by sick, dying Sir John A. Macdonald, the Conservatives replied that an economic union would subordinate Canada’s sovereignty, first economically and then politically. Macdonald called Laurier’s reciprocity “veiled treason which attempts by sordid means and mercenary profit to lure our people from their allegiance.” On election day, the Conservatives thumped the Liberals.

Laurier tried again two decades later in the 1911 election, this time as the most dominant prime minister of the post-Macdonald era. His narrow reciprocity agreement focused mostly on natural products. Unfortunately for him, American politicians got excited and began publicly stating that reciprocity was the first wedge toward annexing Canada.

Once again, the Conservatives, led by Robert Borden, warned that the choice was between economic sovereignty and gradual absorption, and the voters again turned on the continentalist Liberals, ejecting them after 15 years in government.

It must be said that no party or faction has demonstrated a monopoly on defending Canadian sovereignty or pursuing friendship with Washington, as the century after 1911 proved.

By 1988, it was the Progressive Conservatives championing not mere reciprocity but full free trade with the U.S., while the Liberals fiercely opposed it. For a laundry list of reasons too long for this occasion, the parties had changed positions on North American trade at the time.

Liberal leader John Turner used language almost identical to that of Macdonald and Borden during the election, framing it as a choice for voters between independence and the surrender of Canadian sovereignty. This time, the PCs’ continentalism prevailed, only for the Liberal government that replaced them in 1993 to ratify the North American Free Trade Agreement without changing its text.

From then until last year, there was a consensus on deep or deeper economic ties with the U.S., and Canadians settled into a mostly comfortable, laid-back approach to their neighbours.

President Donald Trump has made that consensus completely untenable outside the Alberta separatist movement and the more committed free-trade ideologues on the right.

The president’s endless bait-and-switch on tariffs, along with the jabs and threats from his administration, jesting or serious, has made continentalism political suicide. That shift rescued the Liberals in the 2025 federal election, which became a competition with the Conservatives to see who could wave the Canadian flag harder. No doubt, accusations of being “crypto-American” have always been tossed around in Canadian politics, but now the label is deadly if it sticks.

Seventy-six per cent of Canadians supported the federal government walking away from the latest proposed trade deal, which would have seen Canada’s ability to trade with other countries curtailed , along with concessions in our critical-minerals sector. Those who disagree that economic integration is the first step toward full political assimilation certainly have their work cut out for them.

If a Democrat succeeds Trump in 2028, reversing some of the current tariff policies and restoring more congenial language, there will be no going back to the era of good feelings. The shock of seeing treaty obligations ripped up and market access so crassly converted into leverage cannot be forgotten.

Hoping and praying that the right candidate wins every U.S. election is a terrible strategy for the future. Nevertheless, the dual impulses of continentalism and Canadianism are likely eternal in the national psyche, in one form or another, and this will not be the last era in which they clash.

Many, including myself, have treated continental free trade as a sign of national maturity and confidence. Within Canada itself, however, our economy remains chopped up and divided by interprovincial trade barriers and provinces that are strangely divorced from each other in matters of commerce. Perhaps correcting that is the true act of national maturity, rather than making our sovereignty dependent on the Electoral College.

National Post

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Alberta patients no longer have to wait for MRI, CT scans, ultrasounds, and X-rays, if they are willing to pay for the tests themselves. Patients also no longer need a referral to access scanning.

Canadian Doctors for Medicare , Friends of Medicare , and the Alberta Medical Association warn that Alberta’s changes undermine medicare, that self-pay and self-referral will increase costs, worsen wait times and expose patients to unnecessary risks.

In reality, critics seem to care most about protecting the medicare system, not improving patient care itself. They make hypothetical arguments and reference isolated cases of poorly designed health care.

Alberta has forced a debate: do we care most about patient care or medicare?

Certainly, no one copies Canadian health care anymore. We have the last government monopoly single-payer system that eschews private medical insurance, a holdout in a crowd of better options. Indeed, given the critics’ warnings, it’s a wonder that the 30 other high-income universal healthcare systems in the world function at all. Somehow, they have minimal wait times , universal care, lower costs and cover medical appliances and medications, not just medical services.

These critics argue Alberta will divert doctors, nurses and technicians to work in the private sector, increasing wait times in the public system. They warn that patient self-referral will create false positive tests, adding work for the public system to sort out. They believe that only physicians and nurse practitioners should order tests; patients cannot decide on their own. They argue that Alberta should instead improve system efficiency by training more staff, expanding digital solutions, purchasing more medical equipment and adopting central referral systems.

Finally, critics claim that self-referral and self-pay normalize direct access, which could push Canada toward a two-tier U.S.-style approach to health care.

What’s really going on?

Certainly, Canada faces healthcare staffing challenges. But the idea that medical professionals are abandoning Canada for private-pay systems is a bait and switch. Staff shortages often exist because the strain of working within the current medicare system drives professionals out of practice. For instance, a 2025 study found that nearly 40 per cent of all Canadian nurses under 35 quit the profession within five years of graduation citing complaints including involuntary overtime, high stress and working conditions.

When Canadian medical professionals do leave for the U.S. or beyond, it is often not by choice. For instance, The Globe and Mail reported in 2019 that nearly one in five specialist doctors couldn’t find full-time work in Canada after graduation: “Those who want to practice can’t get their foot in the door,” said a senior official with the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.

Surgeons with hospital privileges in Canada can only access a fraction of the operating time available per surgeon in the past. Dr. Brian Day wrote that in the 1990s, surgeons in B.C. had more than 22 hours of operating room time per week plus unlimited access while on call after-hours. Today, they have less than five hours per week and must ask permission before starting any emergency operation after-hours.

Meanwhile, Canadian doctors are experiencing higher levels of burnout compared to their international peers. Pre-pandemic, the average retirement age for Ontario community physicians was 70.5 years. Post-pandemic, it’s closer to 55.

Fear of losing health-care workers assumes a zero-sum, fixed-pie system: gains in one area can only come from losses somewhere else. This assumption rests on the logic that the only way to increase care is to spend more, train more and hire more clinicians.

This zero-sum assumption is false. Saskatchewan’s Surgical Initiative offers a case in point. They used private, for-profit clinics to deliver medically necessary care. As a result, between 2010 and 2014, provincial wait times dropped from 26.5 weeks down to 14.2 weeks, with private clinics costing 26 per cent less for the same procedure as delivered in the public system. Patients got more access, closer to home, with shorter waits, because Saskatchewan allowed blended funding.

Finally, worries about self-referral increasing demand on public resources are a stretch. A clinician can see, examine and reassure a patient that her headache is most likely a migraine or tension headache, if she already has a self-paid normal MRI result. It takes far more time, follow-up appointments, referrals to specialists and publicly funded tests to reassure someone she does not have a brain tumour.

Most patients seek faster access to a test because their physicians told them they needed it.

Wealthy people have accessed more tests with shorter waits for three decades in Canada. We’ve lost the moral high ground. It’s time to move past fear-mongering.

Given long wait times, most Canadians support access to care outside medicare. Alberta’s policy change puts patient care first, while protecting the public system. Let’s hope the federal government doesn’t shut it down.

National Post

Dr. Shawn Whatley is a physician, author, and a Munk Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. A past president of the Ontario Medical Association, Whatley’s most recent book is When Politics Comes Before Patients – Why and how Canadian Medicare is failing

Source: National Post (Opinions)

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