Just a few weeks ago, a Halifax man named Shondre Jarvis was sentenced to three years’ jail for nearly killing a fellow African Nova Scotian. It happened at a house party in 2024, where adults and children alike had gathered to continue the celebration of their historically Black neighbourhood’s annual festival.

The men had gotten into an argument, and later when the victim went to leave, Jarvis, who was intoxicated at the time, ran at the victim from behind with a knife and stabbed him six times, inflicting life-threatening injuries. Jarvis was disarmed by good Samaritan partygoers, after which he fled and hid in the bush. A police dog sniffed him out. The charge was attempted murder, but he pleaded to aggravated assault.

What’s perhaps more mystifying than Jarvis’ senseless act of violence was the excuse that Nova Scotia’s professional racism experts later offered for it: racial battle fatigue.

Nova Scotia is one of the few provinces in which it is legally required for judges to contemplate racial sentence discounts for Black offenders. The province’s top judges decided this back in 2021 , and it will remain the law until the federal government decides on a more egalitarian system.

The mechanics of racial sentencing in this manner involve the federal and provincial governments paying supposed racism experts to interview offenders and assemble “Impact of Race and Culture Assessments” (IRCAs), which chronicle an individual’s subjective experience of racism as well as their community’s and family’s history of experiencing racism. These reports also tend to frame general disadvantage as systemic or structural racism. The dozens of these reports that are completed in Nova Scotia every year cost the public $7,000 each, according to federal documents obtained by the Post. Not all IRCAs result in a racial discount, but they do bring the fairness of sentencing into question by allowing for lighter sentencing based on race.

In Jarvis’ case, the court had ordered that an IRCA be produced to assist the judge in crafting a fair sentence. The ensuing report painted a picture of a man who had a lot going for him. He was brought up in a loving, supportive home; as a young adult, he had stable employment and a strong work ethic. In his community of Beechville, he had a strong sense of belonging.

The report, however, said that Beechville was subject to “systemic neglect, manifesting through underinvestment, exclusionary planning, and institutional indifference.” It also said that Jarvis had seen the N-word written on walls in high school, that he’d had “White power” yelled at him before, and that undercover police had asked if he sold drugs.

These experiences, wrote the assessor, can cause “racialized battle fatigue and racialized hypervigilance.”

“In applied forensic terms, these concepts help explain how chronic exposure to racialized suspicion and hostility can increase guardedness, mistrust, rapid threat appraisal, and defensive anticipation over time,” went the report. “They do not justify violence; however, they are part of the cumulative stress context which Shondre Jarvis was affected.”

Indeed, “racial battle fatigue” and “cumulative racialized stress” were two factors that brought about the stabbing, according to the IRCA report.

And there was the absurdity in the case. This was a near-murder, waged by one Black man against another, at a celebration of their community … and somehow, racism was to blame. That seems to be the grand theory behind most of these IRCAs: if you zoom out enough, you can blame an offender’s behaviour on abstract causes like colonialism and racism if he falls into a demographic that allows for it.

The judge, in this case, didn’t buy the racial battle fatigue excuse, and seemed puzzled that the IRCA report writer sidestepped the fact that both victim and assailant were African Nova Scotian.

This is not the first time a Nova Scotian court has heard about racial battle fatigue. It was also woven into a different IRCA report for a Black offender named Makayle Skinner back in February .

Skinner was convicted of manslaughter for killing Treyvhon Bradshaw, also a Black man, in 2022 outside a Halifax nightclub. The facts agreed upon in court indicated a case of self-defence: Bradshaw had threatened to shoot Skinner and then went and grabbed a gun from his car. Skinner, who had been a gunshot victim on three separate occasions, predicted an ambush and took a position off to the side of the nightclub entrance, from which point he saw Bradshaw walking back in a crouched stance towards a group of people standing near the door. When Skinner saw Bradshaw’s gun, he fired.

The ensuing IRCA report notes that “Racial battle fatigue further contextualizes Makayle Skinner’s response” — once again blaming an act of violence between two Black men on the unpinpointable force of racism that supposedly saturates Canadian society.

Outside the criminal context, racial battle fatigue has also been advanced in the case of an Indigenous academic who accused the University of Regina of racism in the course of a labour dispute.

It was also raised by University of Ottawa law professor Rakhi Ruparelia in a 2014 paper in which she claimed to suffer from “racial battle fatigue” after teaching a course on social justice. By her own account, she took an emotional, personally probing approach to teaching about racism. At one point, a white student came to her in tears over how the course made her feel. Ruparelia told the student to examine her privilege and warned her that if she wants to work with non-white clients in the future, she needed to “constantly … reflect on (her) role as a white woman working with these communities.”

“I think perhaps this course made you uncomfortable, which you have framed as guilt, because it forced you to consider your privilege as a white woman…. If you are not willing to do this work, you really have no business working with (racialized) communities.” Ruparelia told the student.

The conversation was “physically and emotionally” draining to Ruparelia, hence her “battle fatigue.” In teaching on these topics in general, she interpreted the hostility of “resistant (even if well-intentioned) white students” as “racial microaggressions” which could be exhausting and harmful to her, seemingly oblivious to her own role in perpetuating classroom toxicity.

The original source of racial battle fatigue theory is University of Utah professor William Smith, who has published on the topic numerous times since 2003. It tries to dredge up an excuse to offset individual responsibility from a sea of past unconnected negative experiences, and it finds an audience among those who already believe in the social justice pantheon. By that same logic, every woman charged with a crime ever should be able to blame “sexism battle fatigue”; everyone who has suffered another’s cruel words should be able to claim “bullying battle fatigue” and so on.

A person’s history of bullying should be relevant to a court if the crime had something to do with retaliating against a bully. In a similar vein, a person’s experience of racism should be considered if their charges had to do with, say, responding to racial aggression. But to give everyone of a particular background the ludicrous pretense of “racial battle fatigue” to defend bad behaviour is to corrupt the system.

National Post

The book on Donald Trump is that he’s unpredictable, unreliable and untrustworthy.

Based on the recent trade talks and Friday’s last minute bust-up, it’s an unfair rap. Every move the U.S. made in the weeks of dickering was predictable and, in the end, reliably untrustworthy. You didn’t have to be an Ottawa insider or politically tuned-in pundit to suspect the negotiations were largely a waste of effort and would end badly. Ordinary Canadians certainly made clear they had little to no faith in Washington’s intentions, expected the worst and were not alarmed by it.

“I’m most useful in a crisis. I’m not that good at peacetime,” Prime Minister Mark Carney boasted in his early days as a politician. Now he has the chance to prove it. If the impact of the tariff blow-up proves as predicted, Canada is in for a financial challenge. Jobs will be lost, prices will be affected. As long as the damage of a tariff war was still theoretical it was easy enough to talk tough and thumb a nose in Washington’s general direction.”Go ahead, do your worst.” How the country reacts now will take patience, resilience and backbone, possibly for some time to come. Canadians are being challenged to show what they’re made of.

The best outcome would be to finally break our addiction to American commerce and find other customers, other suppliers, other countries that are interested in doing business on an equal basis and with more honesty than has become the American norm. There’s been much talk along those lines over the months since Carney delivered his seminal speech in Davos, but — not surprisingly — there’s a natural reluctance to undertake a rupture of that magnitude if there’s even a moderate hope of avoidance.

Carney has jetted around the world at a relentless pace, signing trade deals here there and everywhere, yet outside government hallways the sense of urgency has appeared decidedly less fervent. This month two of Canada’s biggest banks sold a jointly-owned firm to an American buyer, transferring a company that handles about a third of Canadian payment transactions to a private equity operation in San Francisco. On Friday Roots, which turned Canadian iconography into a branding empire, sold itself to New York-based Marquee Brands for about $160 million in a deal identified as “a transaction designed to preserve all that makes Roots uniquely Canadian” — except, of course, the ownership.

In just three weeks Carney will host the Canada Investment Summit, a first-ever gathering of “the world’s largest investors” in a bid to lure some of the $100 trillion they reportedly control Canada’s way. According to the prime minister, “they will find a Canadian economy that has never been more connected or more ambitious.” That would be nice. It would be real progress if all they went away with was an impression Canada has more to offer than a range of successful firms willing to be snapped up at an attractive price.

One thing Carney won’t face, at least for a time, is lack of public fervour. It’s doubtful Canadians have ever been as united in their disgust at anything as they are at the U.S. president and his underlings. If Carney was ever tempted to hold his nose and accept the U.S. proposal, Canadians made it crystal clear they had no appetite for compromise or concessions. When the time came for a final decision, it must have been obvious he’d never be able to sell the deal being offered.

Trump, on the other hand, is piling up the failures. He can’t get along with Canada, he can’t get along with Denmark, he can’t get along with Italy, he can’t get along with South Korea, he no longer gets along with Israel, he wants to bomb Oman and occupy Greenland, and his idea of forging new friendships means cozying up to North Korea, the world’s last truly Stalinist dictatorship.

While his war on Iran is a disaster, the U.S. debt now tops US$40 trillion, almost double its level when Trump first won election. His solution is to temporarily lower tariffs on imported beef in the hope 90 days of cheaper hamburgers will pacify Americans long enough to get past midterm elections that are threatening Republicans in Congress. Typically enough he upset U.S. ranchers in the process, who noted that “undercutting American farmers and ranchers with inferior product from foreign competitors does nothing to create market confidence or encourage rebuilding the herd.”

There’s nothing to gain in continuing to wonder how Americans could let all this happen to their country, or whether they’ll ever get energized enough to put a stop to it. There’s more to Friday’s blow-up than a disagreement over trade. Being friends with the U.S. has become a risky position. It’s entirely in Canada’s interest to use the moment to break from what’s become an abusive relationship. That means accepting whatever challenges emerge as well worth the drive to build a stronger, self-assured and more self-reliant country.

Donald Trump’s greatest legacy may be in uncovering the depth of the rot at the centre of American public life. It’s been there for some time, mouldering away, eating at the foundations of the values the country claims to hold as a people. Trump’s brought it all to the fore, glorying in it, putting it on a display that’s impossible to ignore.

Americans twice elected Trump, they have to put up with him. We didn’t, don’t and shouldn’t.

National Post

• William Watson: Carney not signing trade deal was good, war talk wasn’t
• Carson Jerema: Mark Carney’s path from here is surprisingly obvious

Jaw-jaw is better than war-war , said Winston Churchill, who was well-versed in both. Of course, Churchill never jaw-jawed with Donald Trump, notorious bad-faith bargainer.

Near the end of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s news conference Saturday the National Post’s Christopher Nardi asked whether we were now in a trade war with the United States. “We were attacked,” Carney answered, “You’re at war when you get attacked. We got attacked.” So we are “at war” with by far our most important trading partner. It was a candid offhand remark that provided the lead to many news reports of Carney’s comments and is bound to have been noted in the White House. Firm action is good. Not signing a bad deal is good. Taunting a hair-trigger megalomaniac isn’t.

The prime minister’s opening speech, which he read off a teleprompter in a monotone a little less enervating and a French slightly more fluent than when he first took office, was fine. Or at least half of it was. The first 10 minutes addressed the failed negotiations with a seriousness that met the gravity of the moment. The second 10 re-hashed all the good things the federal government has done — or at least announced — since coming to office to “Build Canada Strong” and make us more resilient, independent of the U.S. and connected to the world. It sounded a lot as if a second Carney v. Trump federal election may be coming, this one with Carney as Trump-defier rather than Trump-whisperer.

Being more connected with other countries is certainly good. The prime minister touted our new free trade agreement with the United Arab Emirates, which we negotiated in just 47 days (which suggests it may not be deep or comprehensive). But in 2025 our exports to the UAE were US$2 billion , so just half a per cent of our US$409 billion of exports to the U.S. Is a country really more connected if it loses one big connection but picks up a lot of little ones? We will need 200 more UAEs to equal the economic weight of the U.S.

For as long as Canada has existed, we have been skirmishing with the Americans over trade. Even longer, in fact. The U.S. abrogated the first free-trade agreement between us in 1866, the year before Confederation, when they terminated the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854. There have been irritants and bickering ever since, but also major policy achievements like the Auto Pact, Canada-U.S. free trade and NAFTA.

So nobody’s pure on trade. But Carney is right: the U.S. clearly started this round. We were attacked. And there was no attempt to deny it: President Trump has said many times he wants to “re-shore” our steel, aluminum and auto businesses. In this fight we clearly have the moral high ground.

We and China are the only countries, the U.S. whines, to have retaliated against their tariff blitzkrieg. That speaks well of us and China and poorly of all the other countries bullied into bad deals.

But saying we’re now at war with the U.S., trade war at least, and sending return salvoes, won’t hold the high ground. The Americans’ stockpile of trade ammunition is way bigger than ours. And Americans who oppose Trump’s aggression against us, including many in Congress who will remain chicken-hearted until he’s a burnt-crisp lame duck, will find our escalation of language an excuse for continued fowl behaviour.

Retaliation is also not best calculated to keep Trump under control. Does anyone doubt his response will be still more tariffs? You don’t like 50 per cent, he’ll fume, how about 100? You want a war, here’s a war. He hasn’t won a lot of wars lately. He’ll figure he can win this one.

Ottawa’s position is that we should not sign a bad deal. Any deal with a supposed free-trade partner that codifies permanent double-digit tariffs in important industries like steel, aluminum and autos is a bad deal. Compared to the 1988 free trade deal, NAFTA and even CUSMA, this is a bad deal.

The only reason you would sign a bad deal is if you thought all other potential deals were worse. Ironically, that’s non-signer Mark Carney’s forecast.

Preston Manning says the definition of a Canadian optimist is someone who thinks things could be worse. A pessimist of any nationality is someone who thinks things will be worse.

Which means Carney himself is the world’s leading trade pessimist. He spent much of his time Saturday arguing, as he told Canadians during his leadership and election campaigns and the global elite in his famous speech at Davos, that the good times for trade are now permanently dead, essentially because U.S. support for free and open world trade has gone and it ain’t coming back. Which is why we’re now undergoing a state-directed diversion of our economy away from the U.S. — effectively giving up on them forever.

But not even the sharp minds in the PMO can foretell the future. On election night 2025 Carney himself said the most important Canadian value was humility. Yet now, quite un-humbly, he’s dead certain about America’s future trade policy evolution. And it’s Trump, Trump, Trump as far as his eye can see.

But Trump’s lifelong almost fetishistic fascination with tariffs is not widely shared. Nor is his antipathy to this country. Nor is either in line with long-term U.S. national interests.

So, yes, spend a rising share of what’s likely to be a declining national income helping out workers and businesses hit hard by Trump’s tariffs — though keep the help strictly temporary.

But retaliation, however good it feels to Canadians who are retired or work in services or protected industries, mainly hurts everyone else.

We have made our substantive point very clearly with our initial retaliation and by now walking away from the deal. Escalating with war talk won’t work and choosing to escalate taints us with aggression even in a fight we clearly didn’t start. Trump’s days are numbered: 580 down, only 881 left to go — though Trump Maximus — POTUS Totus, as it were — may end Nov. 3, just 72 days away, if the Democrats get control of the House and/or Senate.

Yes, Trump’s successor is likely to be more protectionist than Ronald Reagan, the two Bushes, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. And the status quo always has the political advantage of creating vested interests that work for its preservation. But my bet is the next president won’t be a Trump on trade. Which means better deals lie ahead.

National Post

• Carson Jerema: Mark Carney’s path from here is surprisingly obvious
• Michael Higgins: Just how bad was this deal?

Railroads were foundational to Canada’s early growth and prosperity. Up until the 1950s, practically all mid-sized towns were connected to a rail network. But as Tristin Hopper explains, trains may be vulnerable to the same fate as the horses it replaced.

Watch the video or read the transcript below.

If you spend any time with a transportation engineer or urban planner, they’ll inevitably tell you that Canada needs a lot more trains.

Intercity rail is more efficient than freeways or air travel. Urban cores are better served by streetcars and light-rail than by streets clogged with idling cars.

All of which is obviously true. A train uses less fuel, carries way more people, and is an exponentially more efficient use of materials.

That’s a big part of why Canada used to be an extremely railed country. The only country on earth that arguably owes its entire existence to a railroad.

Right up until the 1950s, you could take a train to almost every mid-sized settlement on the Canadian map.

Once in those cities, you got around on streetcars. Even in very small cities like Cornwall, Ont. or Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, you had surprisingly extensive networks of electric trams.

As to why all of this ended, I’m afraid the answer is that riding trains — all else being equal — kind of sucked.

It was far superior to what it replaced — walking or canoeing or riding a horse. But by modern standards it’s slow, uncomfortable and inconvenient.

And it’s why, if you look at what caused Canadians to abandon rail travel en masse, the answer is that they usually did it as soon as they could afford to.

They stopped riding trams as soon as they could afford cars, and they stopped riding intercity passenger rail as soon as they could afford airplane tickets.

All of which was well-acknowledged at the time.

Starting in 1959, the Government of Canada convened a royal commission to investigate why passenger rail ridership was dropping off a cliff.

Representatives from the Canadian Pacific Railway showed up and told the commission that it was simple; nobody wanted to ride trains anymore.

Quote, “with the increased use of automobiles, the convenience and frequency of bus travel, and technology in the air industry lowering the cost per seat-mile of air travel, it is impossible to forecast a resurgence of effective demand for rail passenger services,” they said.

The main reason passenger rail continued at all is because this was when the government started subsidizing it.

And it wasn’t just Canada. Australians experienced this trend. So did Americans. So did New Zealanders. Even in Europe, whose small size and high population density kept train travel popular, it’s the rare European rail network that isn’t smaller than it was before the advent of cars and air travel.

Cars and planes mean less demand for trains. In population-dense Japan or Europe, that trend wasn’t enough to kill passenger rail. But in giant, sparsely populated countries like Canada — where the population is rich enough to afford alternatives — viable passenger rail didn’t stand a chance.

In 1983, for instance, it cost $123 to fly from Moncton to Montreal, and the trip took an hour. By train, it cost $119, took 14 hours, and included a crossing of the U.S. border.

And if you think this is just an infrastructure issue, I’ll remind you that we’re shipping more freight by rail than ever before. So are the Americans. When passenger comfort and convenience isn’t at issue, this country loves trains. When it is at issue, the plane and car almost always win.

In that sense, riding trains is no different than a lot of folksy, charming things we used to do, only to stop doing it the moment we could afford not to.

A lot of Canadians may look back fondly on Blockbuster Video, for instance. Ignoring the fact that, much like railroads, there is a government subsidized version of Blockbuster Video that lives to this day in the form of DVD-lending public libraries. But here’s a guess you haven’t bothered going because the alternative is easier.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) has an idea for promoting his pet wealth tax. To prosperous Californians who say their wealth is tied up in businesses that create value but don’t offer a lot of liquid cash to pay massive tax bills, the progressive politician responds that the government could loan them the money secured by pledges of corporate stock. That sparked a dispute with entrepreneur Mark Cuban who argues that it sounds more like a plan for creeping nationalization than for raising revenue.

At a time when socialists are on the rise in the Democratic Party, that’s very likely what it is.

“The California Democratic Party and the California labor movement just stood with @BernieSanders and me in supporting 5% wealth tax on 250 California billionaires,” Khanna posted on X on Aug. 15. “California voters want a Democratic Party that will stand up for the working class over the billionaire class.”

Even before Californians vote on the wealth tax proposal in November, the plan has already driven some high-net-worth individuals to leave the state . In January, venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya estimated that US$1 trillion of wealth had fled from California to avoid getting an expensive financial haircut that might be repeated in the future. Unsurprisingly, non-fans of punitive taxation pushed back against Khanna’s boast.

Mark Cuban, a Texas resident who has amassed billions of dollars from repeated tech startups, pointed out that no matter their paper worth, most company founders “are the definition of cash poor, stock rich.” He asked Khanna, “How are you going to tax them? Make them borrow money against their shares, if they can?” He emphasized that banks are already leery of debt-heavy startups, and unlikely to loan more money just to cover tax bills.

Khanna responded that if banks won’t loan the money the California government should.

“Allow illiquid founders to pledge shares with a loan from the government to pay tax. The loan period is long but not infinite (e.g. 10 years),” the lawmaker suggested. “The loan is non-recourse: at the end of the period, the loan is either paid back in cash, or the government assumes the shares.”

Cuban snapped back that having the state government loan entrepreneurs money to pay taxes to the state government makes no sense “(u)nless of course you want the gov to own shares.” The Texas businessman added that the implications would be demoralizing for investors who backed motivated founders only to see them muscled aside by state officials. “Cali, You make it. We take it!” he snarked.

Palmer Luckey, founder of companies including Anduril Industries, complained that the proposed tax “makes founder-led companies practically illegal” since it taxes founders not just on their ownership interest, but on their voting power in the company. “If a founder-CEO of a $1B private company owns 3% but keeps 100% of the voting power, he gets taxed on the value of the whole company.“

Luckey reiterates a point raised by the Tax Foundation’s Jared Walczak early this year . He cautioned that because of “aggressive design choices and possible drafting errors, the actual rate on taxpayers’ net worth could be dramatically higher” than the much-discussed five per cent. He called out language in the measure that specifies “the percentage of the business entity owned by the taxpayer shall be presumed to be not less than the taxpayer’s percentage of the overall voting or other direct control rights.”

As an example of what this could mean in application, Walczak pointed out that DoorDash founder Tony Xu owns 2.6 per cent of the company but controls 57.6 per cent of voting rights. His $2.41 billion ownership interest could turn into a much larger tax bill. “Since selling his shares incurs capital gains tax, moreover, and the entire value of these shares is capital gains for him, his total tax liability for his DoorDash shares would be $4.17 billion — 173 per cent of their value.”

Such a tax bill would be crippling, even to a wealthy entrepreneur. Watching just a few founders suffer such highway robbery would quickly drive the startup market out of California — except for those companies essentially seized by the state government as payment, of course.

Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman also jumped on Khanna’s proposal. He warned : “Under @RoKhanna’s plan, if the company fails, the founder has debt forgiveness income (DFI) which is taxable at ordinary rates.” Lots of startups fail, of course, and the progressive lawmaker’s plan would ensure that “the penalty for a failed startup is insolvency and the government garnishes your wages for life.”

That would be yet another deterrent to starting future companies in California and risking the partial success of high paper valuations that could put founders in the crosshairs of state tax collectors long before businesses are well established and generating liquid cash. Overall, the wealth tax scheme and Rep. Khanna’s clever idea for turning it into a tool for incremental government takeovers of California-based companies threaten to act as a powerful repellent for founders and investors.

Khanna’s main comeback is that the revenue is necessary to pay for California’s policy preferences. “If folks hadn’t supported Trump and his medicaid cuts, maybe we wouldn’t need this,” he responded .

But strongly desiring a whole lot more money than you have to pay for an ambitious and arguably unaffordable spending program doesn’t make tax schemes wise or viable. If they’re counterproductive and destructive, it doesn’t matter how much progressive politicians wish the truth were otherwise.

Ben Horowitz of A16z, the prominent venture capital firm, called the wealth tax proposal “the best strategy I’ve seen” to break Silicon Valley’s tech dominance, and he didn’t mean that as praise.

The last word should probably go to Mark Cuban, since his sentiments very likely represent those of many other investors who decide which startups to fund.

“IMO, if this passes, only idiot startup founders stay in Cali,” Cuban concluded about the wealth tax proposal. “I will make NOT being in California a prerequisite for an investment.”

Californians will vote in November on whether to implement the proposed wealth tax . Polls show a slight advantage for the scheme though the outcome is still uncertain. The final vote tally could very well transform the state, and not necessarily in ways intended by voters.

National Post

• J.D. Tuccille: Anthony Fauci destroyed trust in public health experts
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Kerry-Lynne Findlay, leader of the Conservative Party of B.C. since May 30, is out for blood.

Her party’s new attack ad on NDP Premier David Eby , scored with a Soviet Red Army-esque anthem, features the premier dressed as some type of decorated communist dictator. In an AI-generated scene, Eby spreads a map of the province on a war room table, a squad of silhouetted soldiers standing at attention behind him. The opening text is a quote attributed to Eby: “Conservatives are bringing culture wars to B.C.!”

It reads: “British Columbians have been living through the NDP’s culture war for nearly a decade.” It goes on to show images of a burning church ; the toppling of Gastown’s Gassy Jack statue ; a screenshot of a National Post story regarding a government guideline discouraging usage of the term “British Columbian”; clips of NDP MLAs using terminology about “settlers,” “uninvited guests,” “colonizers” and a B.C. “genocide”; and a book used to teach schoolchildren about “gender identity.” Eby’s map is then shown littered with pinned NDP flags, symbolizing his complete ideological conquest. The ad finishes by blaming Eby’s NDP for bringing a culture war to our beautiful province — while lying about who started it.

Nothing the attack ad explicitly states is false. Eby’s NDP has sown division and has abetted the ideological capture of our institutions with identity politics. It’s also true that Conservatives (big and small-c alike) are admonished with accusations of initiating or inflaming “culture wars” the moment they push back against the radical legislation or policies of leftist parties. This is a recurring and manipulative tactic of the left, not just in British Columbia. But will the image of the B.C. premier in communist regalia resonate with undecided voters, or turn them off the party entirely?

There appear to be three consistent reactions to the ad on social media: the party’s base is exultant; their detractors are indignant; and others appear perplexed.

Personally, I was delighted by the ad’s boldness — but I’m accustomed to life in the culture war trenches. The ad felt like an invitation for non-combatants to hop into the filth with seasoned soldiers. I’m not so sure they’ll like what they see.

The ad invites criticism for its historical invocations, which is exactly how one former Conservative MLA responded. Independent MLA Elenore Sturko, who defected from BC United to join the Conservatives and was then booted from the party by its former leader, John Rustad, condemned it heartily. “Millions of people have been murdered by totalitarian dictatorships and communist regimes. Millions suffer today. Making a mockery of that shows how unserious the BCC really is,” she quipped on X .

Few in B.C. bat an eye at the inflammatory rhetoric typically deployed by B.C.’s left (or left adjacent flip-floppers). Accusations of racism, transphobia, genocide, ableism, sexism, being “MAGA” — we are regularly inundated with flimsy — and outright false — examples of each. The political right, however, isn’t afforded the same artistic license with their rhetoric.

Perhaps it would have been more powerful to accuse Eby of launching our interminable culture wars without also dressing him up like a communist dictator. The facts speak for themselves, and so will the polls.

In May, the then-leaderless Conservatives had a 10-point lead over Eby , whose approval rating had tanked to 33 per cent. This week, Research Co. released a new online poll (taken prior to the attack ad) showing that the B.C. NDP has pulled ahead of the Conservatives, 44 to 39 per cent. It also revealed that the Conservatives “dropped five points among decided voters aged 55 and over” since the start of summer. While it’s only a single poll, Findlay (who still must win a seat in a by-election) and her party remain in a precarious position until the scheduled 2028 provincial election. Eby’s party has plenty of time to dump him as leader and bring in someone who at least appears moderate — a strategy that worked wonders for the Liberal Party of Canada and Mark Carney.

Findlay’s new attack ad might signal that she is unafraid of spooking undecided voters. It could also mean that her party is convinced that what they lacked under Rustad’s leadership was daring and nerve. She evidently has bucketfuls of each. But does she have the right strategy, or a willingness to adjust?

After all, Conservatives must win an election before they can win the culture war.

National Post

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Prime Minister Mark Carney always said he would walk away from a bad deal and has now done so.

But as the prime minister urges us to rally round the flag — again — he also needs to give Canadians full details as to why the trade talks with the United States collapsed.

The Liberal government is pointing out that it was U.S. demands that led to the collapse of the latest round of trade talks. It may well be that it was the uncompromising American president and his negotiators who brought us to this point where we are about to engage in potentially catastrophic tit-for-tat tariffs.

But how exactly did we get here and why? How is it that Carney suspended trade talks after reports that we were close to a deal? It is not enough to point fingers. What Canadians need are the full details of what was being offered and why it was rejected.

In a late statement Friday night, the prime minister addressed none of those concerns.

“Canada has what the world wants. And we will not allow any nation to determine our future. We will set our own course to keep building Canada strong for all,” said the prime minister in his statement .

In a press conference Saturday, he repeatedly made the same refrain.

“We can’t control the storm that blows in from Washington,” he said in his introductory remarks. “We can, however, chart a new course by building Canada strong at home and diversifying our trading relationships abroad.

“We are masters in our own home and an excellent partner abroad.”

He later said, “Canadians will always take care of each other. We know we’re stronger together. In the last year and a half, Canadians have met this moment with resolve, with purpose, with strength.”

So here we are, back in Elbows Up territory. At least one good thing to come out of this trade war is that it will unite a majority of the country.

In his statement and his press conference, Carney said he decided to walk away from the trade negotiations because of unrealistic demands by the Americans.

“There were some things we wouldn’t do. We were not prepared to compromise Canada’s sovereignty or to undermine our key industries. We were not prepared to accept any compromise on our sovereignty, protection of the French language and our culture,” he said.

When pressed on specifics, Carney gave a few examples of friction between negotiators.

One was the auto sector. Earlier this week, the CBC reported that the U.S. was considering reducing auto tariffs down from 25 per cent to 15 per cent. But Carney said the U.S. wanted to limit the level of tariffs to cars only and exclude medium and heavy autos and light trucks. This would have made Canadian production “uneconomic,” he said.

Another major sticking point, said Carney, was the U.S. introducing at the last minute language that would have restricted Canada’s ability to make trade deals with other countries.

That was simply “unacceptable,” said the prime minister.

A third example, said Carney, was that the U.S. made “efforts to restrict our protections of our language, our culture, and in effect, our sovereignty.” The prime minister did not clarify what those efforts were or provide specifics details.

“In short, they asked too much and they offered too little,” said Carney.

Not surprisingly, the U.S. blamed Canada for the collapse of the talks.

The New York Times quoted U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer as saying, “Tonight, Canada declined to finalize the trade deal under the terms agreed earlier this week, despite the U.S. offer to Canada to receive the best treatment of any major exporter to our market.

“New demands and walk backs of other commitments by Canada have upended the careful balance reached in the past days.”

Carney can expect that the majority of Canadians will be fully supportive of his decision to walk away if America was negotiating in bad faith or simply trying to bully us into a bad deal.

But it is Canadian workers who will bear the brunt of this decision and transparency demands the government release full details of the negotiations, the offers and counter offers, the last minute demands, as well as what we were prepared to concede and not.

Trump’s 50 per cent tariffs could lead to up to 90,000 job losses, predicted University of Calgary economics professor Trevor Tombe this week. But with Canada pledging to impose retaliatory tariffs on a dollar-for-dollar basis, the economic fallout will worsen, he tweeted on Saturday after the deal collapsed.

Meanwhile, Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, said in a statement , “The impact on small businesses will be immediate and significant.”

Canadians who are going to suffer the consequences have a right to know just how bad of a deal was on the table.

National Post

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