The recent U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran may have fundamentally altered the balance of power in the Middle East, but one takeaway stood out glaringly: most Muslim countries did not stand with Iran when it was being pounded by Israeli bombs.

This says a lot about how much the theocratic regime in Tehran has been distanced from the rest of the Muslim world. Even Iran’s partners in the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation — which are largely seen as anti-U.S., anti-western alliances — didn’t lift a finger.

Many Iranians living outside Iran supported the campaign by Israel and the United States to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities. While there were some Iranian dissidents living in the West who passionately supported Hamas and took to the streets to protest Israel after October 7, this time around, there wasn’t much intimidation, bluster or vandalism.

Many of them simply kept quiet, as if tacitly endorsing whatever was happening to the Iranian regime. The apathy of the Muslim world towards the regime spectacularly shattered the myth that its brand of Islam and its pan-jihadism is accepted and supported by a majority of Muslim nations.

In truth, this has never been the case. Iran stands isolated from the Muslim world for a number of reasons. From a political perspective, many countries in the region believe the Iranian mullahs pervert Islam to further their own political ends and are angry over last year’s strikes against Pakistan and the more recent targeting of a U.S. military base in Qatar.

Iran, of course, is a Shiite country, which has historically put it at odds with some of its Sunni neighbours. But even other Shiite nations do not like the fact that when Ayatollah Khomeini was in exile in France in the 1970s, he attempted to forge relations with the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood and brought many of its ideas back with him to Iran.

Then there was the so-called Axis of Resistance, which consisted of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and the Assad regime in Syria. These jihadists use violence as a means of achieving their extremist goals, which usually doesn’t garner much support among the international community. Just look at how many countries stood by Afghanistan after America was hit on 9/11 — almost none.

The Iranian regime is hated both at home and abroad due to its internal oppression (especially of women) and external aggression. This shatters the myth that Muslims across the board are jihad-loving, regressive populations. The resistance of Iranians at home, and in the diaspora, shows that many of them never liked what was happening to their country.

Even people from Lebanon and Syria, the countries where Iran ruled through its terror proxies for years, did not protest when Israel and the U.S. struck Iran. In fact, many Lebanese people did not even try to hide their jubilation when Hezbollah was knocked down from its perch.

One thing that struck us is that, as American and Israeli bombs were raining down on Iran’s nuclear and military facilities, the streets of nearby Dubai remained unusually calm — something that likely never would have happened even 20 years ago. The United Arab Emirates has always lived under the threat of Iranian aggression, but now things seem different.

Something has fundamentally changed in the Gulf security calculus. The calm on U.A.E. streets mean that rulers and businesses don’t think Iran poses a significant threat anymore. The U.A.E.’s warm relations with Israel and the U.S. following the signing of the Abraham Accord adds an extra layer of security and comfort. Perhaps this explains why there was no panic among the ruling elite when war broke out in a neighbouring country, as there was during the first and second Gulf wars.

Now that the last vestige of jihadi Islam has been defanged, the hope is that Muslim rulers and populations will use this opportunity to reset their worldviews and pivot towards a future that brings prosperity and progress.

National Post

Raheel Raza is the president of Muslims Facing Tomorrow and Mohammad Rizwan is a journalist who is currently in Dubai.

• Opinion: The retrenchment of Russian power and influence in the Middle East
• Opinion: The Iranian regime’s new war targets its own people

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow believes that her city will suffer no consequences for reneging on an agreement with the federal government. The city was supposed to amend zoning rules to allow sixplexes as of right across the city in exchange for federal funding, and is refusing, but the mayor doesn’t think Ottawa will pull its subsidy. This despite the fact that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first housing minister, Nate Erskine-Smith, already told the city that the federal government would claw back 25 per cent of roughly $120 million if the city didn’t approve the measure.

“Look at me. Do I look worried?”

Chow asked The Globe and Mail’s editorial board

in a recent meeting, after city council nixed citywide sixplexes.

“I don’t think there should be any clawback because our new housing minister has been a mayor and he would understand that it’s not that simple to push things through,” she said of Carney’s current housing minister, former Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson.

“I would dare say we’re more ambitious than the federal government,” she added, bizarrely, of Toronto city council’s pathetic recent decision to allow sixplexes in only nine of 25 wards, after a council debate that made this very mundane form of housing sound like neighbourhood-despoiling blights requiring major infrastructure improvements. (The federal government is not in charge of municipal zoning.)

“(Residents are) not satisfied with ramming through sixplexes in communities that were never designed to house them,” Coun. Stephen Hoyday moaned. Coun. Parthi Kandavel said he worried allowing sixplexes would drive up property values, which would “have a tremendous impact for working- and middle-class families on the path to home ownership.”

I could fill a whole column responding to that. But suffice to say

genuinely

middle-class millennial and gen-Z Torontonians — as opposed to upper-class Torontonians who think of themselves as middle class — aren’t exactly riding a bullet train toward single-family-home ownership to begin with. Many would appreciate the opportunity to live, as owners or renters, in a comfy sixplex in one of Toronto’s famously leafy, un-dense single-family-home neighbourhoods, as opposed to in a soulless condo unit in a concrete forest.

Councillors in wards still not allowing sixplexes as of right include New Democrats, Liberals, one of Chow’s deputy mayors, her budget chief, and the former head of the Toronto District School Board. Nominally progressive baby boomers’ chokehold on Toronto politics has weakened slightly in recent years, but “I got mine, what’s

your

problem?” still might as well be city council’s unofficial motto.

Ironically, nominally conservative former mayor John Tory — who lives in a condo, albeit a very nice one — might have been better placed to make this happen than Chow, whose core constituency bought a house in the 1970s, is now rich because of it, and doesn’t understand what these kids are complaining about.

Chow’s approach is remarkably bold — much bolder than her attempts to strongarm council into approving sixplexes citywide, certainly. I’m not sure she realizes how bold it is.

I claim no insight into Gregor Robertson’s thought processes. But if I were him, I would be properly hacked off at Chow. Robertson was not exactly universally hailed when he took over the file from his short-lived predecessor Erskine-Smith. “Former mayor of Vancouver” isn’t the sort of thing you expect to find on the CV of a federal housing minister dedicated to punching through the brick wall of protectionism,

given the disastrous state of that city’s housing market

. He hasn’t been very vocal since taking office. The biggest city in the country just stuck its thumb in his eye, and its mayor is acting like the chief pirate in Captain Phillips taking over the bridge.

The money at stake (roughly $30 million) is piddling even compared to the City of Toronto’s budget, never mind the federal government’s. But if Robertson is worth anything as a housing minister, he has to make Erskine-Smith’s threat good. It took many years for the Trudeau Liberals to finally, utterly discredit their carbon tax —

by exempting home heating oil,

but not natural gas, and not even really pretending it was anything other than a sop to Atlantic Canada, where they needed votes.

If Robertson and Carney let Toronto get away with this, they will be left with two options: Let every city get away with it, and thus abandon any reasonable claim to be seized with the housing issue; or go with a carbon-tax style double standard right off the bat. Either way they would look weak, unserious and ridiculous, and for what? It’s not as if Torontonians won’t vote Liberal anyway.

National Post

cselley@postmedia.com

• Chris Selley: We’ll thank Travis Dhanraj for ‘pulling back the curtain’ on CBC News
• Chris Selley: Angst over flying the Canadian flag was pure media invention

The CBC didn’t become broken overnight. For decades, concerns were quietly raised about bias, lack of viewpoint diversity, and leadership more focused on an agenda than journalism.

But this week’s very public resignation of Travis Dhanraj changed that. Not because it was shocking, but because it confirmed what so many already knew. Hiring practices, internal politics, and a growing editorial slant weren’t one-offs. They were systemic.

I had heard rumblings of anchors questioning producers and writers about choice of guests and slanted scripts. Those arguments were never won by those who raised the questions.

Travis took one for the team: the team of journalists in all news outlets who reflect the values of seeking truth, holding power to account, and bringing in critical thinkers for balance.

The CBC can no longer afford to act like it is untouchable. When you’re funded by the public to the tune of over a billion dollars a year, you owe Canadians a fulfilled mandate — true journalism. And right now, that’s not what Canadians are getting.

Inside the CBC, it appears dissent is discouraged. Editorial framing too often leans one way — a hard-left slant. This isn’t public service, it’s narrative management.

Even though more and more of the public seem to be leaning toward broadcasters and publications that echo their politics, that is not the role of the national broadcaster. And that’s the problem.

The result? Public trust is eroding. And when trust in the national broadcaster falters, it drags confidence in journalism down with it.

There was a time when the CBC didn’t have to prove itself. It was the national broadcaster with unmatched reach, funding, and influence. But along with those advantages came something else: an attitude.

As an observer who worked for private broadcasters for nearly 40 years, I watched the evolution of CBC privilege firsthand. It went from dominating news events with teams and resources — often double what the rest of us had — to expecting to go first when questioning newsmakers. And when those of us with a microphone and a single cameraman dared to go first in scrums, we were met with stares and attitude, as if we’d crossed some unwritten line. The CBC acted as if it owned the right to shape the national conversation. I knew that, eventually, this would not end well. And here we are. After all, arrogance and entitlement always end badly.

But this isn’t just a life lesson, it’s a crossroads for journalism. We must win back public trust, now eroded by the events unfolding at the CBC.

The CBC needs a hard reset. That means doing less, and doing it better. It means getting out of the pundit business and back into the business of reporting. Focus on news — local, regional, investigative. The kind of journalism private outlets are struggling to fund, but Canadians still rely on.

It also means hiring based on merit, not ideology. Bring in people who can ask tough questions, chase facts, and challenge power, not those selected to mirror a particular worldview.

To be clear, there are still smart, principled journalists inside the CBC. But they’re working within a system that’s biased and disconnected from the very people it’s meant to serve.

Canadians don’t want to be managed. They want to be informed. They want facts to let them decide.

If the CBC wants to be relevant again, it needs to return to its mission.

Strip it down to news, and do that better than anyone else.

This isn’t just about saving a broadcaster. It’s about restoring public faith in all people we rely on to tell the truth. And it must be done with a clear mandate to get it right, and soon, say, two years.

A Mark Carney government should put the CBC on notice: reform, or lose it. Effective immediately The billion-dollar subsidy should go on the chopping block.

Leslie Roberts is a former television journalist and news anchor.

National Post

• CBC’s woke, anti-conservative bias blows up in its face
• Terry Newman: Travis Dhanraj is a journalist. He doesn’t belong at CBC

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s slogan during the April federal election was “elbows up.” The hockey reference was intended as a pledge of defiance against tariffs and annexation threats from the United States.

Instead, Carney’s U.S. strategy has consisted almost entirely of concessions and even deference. And on Thursday night, all it yielded was a new threat by U.S. President Donald Trump to slap blanket 35 per cent tariffs on Canadian imports.

In Dear Diary, the National Post satirically re-imagines a week in the life of a newsmaker. This week, Tristin Hopper takes a journey inside the thoughts of Carney’s elbow.

Monday

The slogan was “elbows up.” Not “we’re going to hit you with our elbows.” Or, “I’m intending to use my elbows defensively.” The promise was only that we would proverbially elevate our elbows for an unspecified period of time, and for no declared purpose. We never technically said we would elbow anybody.

Keeping all this in mind, I think you’ll agree there has been no inconsistency in the strategy. The Government of Canada has pursued a course with the Trump administration that, at times, has involved the raising of elbows above their usual relaxed state, which would indeed be an “elbows up” approach.

Tuesday

I would remind everyone that the National Hockey League officially considers elbowing a penalty, with the act

warranting punishments as severe

as game misconducts, fines and suspensions.

As a government committed to the rules-based international order, we obviously would never condone a violent and inherently menacing act such as the bellicose use of an elbow.

And, as stated, that was never the intention. If you check Mr. Carney’s rhetoric on this account, I think you’ll agree he was mentioning elbows mainly as a means to demonstrate the articulative quality of the human arm.

Elbows up, to my read, was only ever a friendly gesture of greeting in which the speaker is demonstrating the functionality of their joints as a symbol of their own flexibility. “See how my arms bend, foreign state, they are the arms of someone who will peacefully bend to your own appeals.”

Wednesday

I feel uniquely qualified to assure the Canadian people that Mr. Carney has certainly made full use of his elbows in attempting to resolve the current impasse with the United States.

At the G7 summit in Kananaskis, I was employed to deliver a friendly nudge to U.S. President Donald Trump, along with the comment, “Hey Donald, you like Mount Bogart over there? What if it was Mount Trump?”

After phone calls between Mr. Carney and the U.S. leader, he will often lay his elbows on a table to cradle his head for hours at a time — I assume to ponder a new genius tactic. Yes, this truly has been an elbows-heavy response to one of our greatest national crises.

Thursday

Despite everything, I think we can all agree that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre would have completely and utterly folded in the face of aggressive U.S. trade policy. Had he won in April, my least pessimistic estimate is that by now he would have surrendered at least two provinces and one great lake, and he would have appointed Rudy Giuliani as Governor General.

I need only point you to his public statements: No mention whatsoever of elbows, knees, digits or any other body part. Mr. Trump is a man who deals best in the tactile world. Any failure to open negotiations with at least one reference to the corporeal form is, frankly, akin to immediate surrender.

Friday

Last night’s developments are certainly not what we’d hoped for, but it’s all part of the process. We fully planned for this: We would unilaterally cede to perceived U.S. demands, the Americans would respond with another round of ruinous tariffs and vague grievances, and then we’d cede some more. This is called bilateral diplomacy; it’s a messy process but it ultimately arrives at a place of mutual benefit.

I can only shudder to think how worse it would be if not for the masterful statecraft of Mr. Carney. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to assist him in elbowing up some more Valium.

• ‘Is a Canadian team allowed to win me anymore?’ Imagined thoughts of the Stanley Cup
• ‘You’re welcome, Canada’: The imagined thoughts of Justin Trudeau

Prime Minister Mark Carney came into office promising to deal with the trade threat from the United States and get our economic house in order. But he’s likely quickly realizing that he’ll also have to deal with his predecessor’s reckless spending habits. If Canada is to avoid fiscal doom, Carney and his finance minister will need to take a page out of the playbook of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, and get serious about cutting spending.

Last week, the C.D. Howe Institute released

an alarming report

estimating that this year’s budget deficit could surpass $92 billion — a 115 per cent increase over the government’s estimate in December. And the overspending isn’t expected to be temporary unless drastic changes are made: while the government’s

fall economic statement

forecast that the deficit would steadily decline to $18.7 billion by the 2029-30 fiscal year, C.D. Howe predicts it will remain above $77 billion for each of the next four years. (Attempting to paper over the mess by separating the operating and capital budgets, as Carney plans to do, won’t change this stark reality.)

It appears as though the government has taken notice. This week, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne sent letters to his cabinet colleagues asking them to find ways to

cut spending

by 7.5 per cent in 2026-27, 10 per cent the following year and 15 per cent in 2028-29. Within days, public servants working in numerous departments

received letters

informing them about an impending spending review and warning that job losses could follow.

The mood in Ottawa is a little like it was in the mid-1990s, when Canada faced a debt crisis that the newly elected Chrétien government took drastic steps to address. The big difference back then, however, was that the Liberals campaigned on

a platform

to “reduce the deficit,” “implement new programs only if they can be funded within existing expenditures” and “exercise unwavering discipline in controlling federal spending” by “cancelling unnecessary programs, streamlining processes and eliminating duplication.”

Contrast that with the situation we face today. For years, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau governed like a Soviet kid in a candy store, inventing costly new social programs and increasing the size of the federal public service by a whopping

43 per cent

over 10 years. To deal with the effects of the pandemic, he doubled the national debt. And when the threat of the virus subsided, his government pointed to its relatively low debt-to-GDP ratio and rock-bottom interest rates as reasons why the spending spree should continue unabated.

Then Carney came along to clean up Trudeau’s mess. But instead of campaigning on an austerity platform, as Chrétien did in 1993, he promised voters more goodies —

$130-billion worth

over the next four years. Now, he’s facing a public service that’s grown fat on a diet of foie gras and caviar, and an electorate that’s not at all primed for the drastic changes that will be necessary to turn the fiscal ship around.

Although the situations faced by Carney and the ’90s-era Liberals may be different in style, there are remarkable similarities in terms of substance. It’s true that the federal government’s debt-to-GDP ratio is much lower now — 50 per cent in 2023, compared to 65 per cent in 1996, according to

IMF data

. But that’s partly because many services were unloaded onto other levels of government. Add in provincial debt and

the ratio

rises to 107 per cent — even higher than in 1996, when it topped out at 100 per cent.

We are very much in uncharted territory when it comes to government deficits and debt. In 1992-93, the last year of the Mulroney government, the

budget deficit

sat at $39 billion, which is equivalent to $75 billion in today’s money. And the national debt topped out at

$562.9 billion

in 1996-97, or just over $1 trillion in real dollars. Today, Canada is facing a deficit that could max out at over $92 billion and a

debt load

of over $1.266 trillion.

Meanwhile, unlike in the ’90s when Canada was signing free-trade deals with the U.S. and Mexico, we’re now in the midst of a trade war with our largest trading partner that threatens to tank the economy, thus reducing tax revenues and increasing demand for social services. Carney has also promised much-needed reforms to make Canada more competitive and ensure we’re capable of defending ourselves in an increasingly volatile world.

But the promised tax cuts and hefty increases in defence spending will place a significant burden on the public treasury. And the Liberals have already pledged not to cut transfers to other levels of government — which represent about one-fifth of all government expenses — or Trudeau’s costly social programs, such as socialized dental care, pharmacare and childcare.

Canadians would thus be right to be skeptical about the Liberals’ sudden conversion from free-spending socialists to nominal fiscal conservatives. But the experience of the 1990s — when both the Chrétien government in Canada and the Clinton administration in the U.S. balanced their respective budgets — teaches us that sometimes left-wing governments have an easier time making necessary cuts than their conservative counterparts. It’s somewhat of a political paradox, but one we hope Carney takes seriously as he attempts to dig Canada out of Trudeau’s fiscal hole.

National Post

• Michael Taube: NDP leadership race looks dismal. Will anyone even vote?
• Geoff Russ: Macdonald’s critics don’t just hate our first PM. They hate Canada

I’ll never forget the day we landed in Canada, moving back here after 45 years away getting my PhD in the U.S. and remaining there for the rest of my academic career. After I retired, the cost of health insurance for my wife and myself was about US$1,700 a month. That expense, and the overall dysfunction of the U.S. government and the polarization of American society led to our decision that a move back to Canada — and in particular to one of the most beautiful parts of Canada — was a good idea.

All started out well. Within a day of arriving, Health PEI gave my wife, who had applied for permanent residency status but had not yet been approved, a health card allowing her medical coverage immediately. That was very impressive. Then, my 100-year-old mother moved in with us, and within a week of arriving was hospitalized for a month. She was kept that long so she wouldn’t be discharged until she was fully fit … something I wouldn’t have expected had we been in the U.S. I knew from my experience there that she would have been rushed out much earlier to make way for someone else to pay for the expensive hospital bed she occupied. Her care was free, including the cost of the ambulance! I thought, “This is why we moved back!”

Things however began to take a turn for the worse when we tried to find a family doctor for regular care. I was told I had to do this through the province, and I contacted the relevant office and registered our names for the wait list in our area. I was told it could be up to three years before we were allocated a doctor.

We have now lived in P.E.I. for over four years, and still nothing. Recently I met individuals who have been here for more than eight years and still haven’t gotten a family doctor. Not having a primary-care physician makes it near difficult or impossible to obtain regular non-emergency care, or to schedule procedures with a specialist. Normally a referral from a primary-care physician is required.

During my mother’s long hospital stay I became friends with her attending physician, and while he does not have a family practice, thankfully he has been able to prescribe renewals for the medications I have regularly taken. But his help only goes so far. For example, when I turned 70, a year ago, I asked about scheduling a routine colonoscopy. I had a colonoscopy when I turned 60, and I knew that getting one every decade is a standard prophylactic procedure, and gives good early warnings of possible dangerous issues.

In the United States, when I had scheduled my earlier colonoscopy, the process took about two weeks from contacting the relevant facility to scheduling and completing the procedure. I turned 71 two months ago here in P.E.I. and I still have not received a call back from the specialist’s office, even after numerous attempts on my part to reach out to them.

I recognize that medical care is harder to maintain in smaller and more rural communities. But the situation in P.E.I. has reached dangerous levels. I wrote a year ago about the problems with staffing emergency rooms at hospitals in this province. Because of a shortage of doctors, those who staff these facilities have schedules that resemble those of early medical residents. But on-call requirements are often unacceptable to established physicians. As a result, it is extremely difficult to recruit senior physicians to the province to alleviate the current shortage.

We are moving away from P.E.I. this year, in part due to the medical shortage here. We are moving to a somewhat more urban environment on Vancouver Island, and are hoping that, because of the relatively large number of retired couples on the island, there may be a larger number of family doctors to accommodate them.

But, in our case there is another reason to live there. It is just a short ferry ride to Port Townsend, Wash. Having worked in the U.S. for my entire adult career, I have Medicare coverage, which covers about 80 per cent of the cost of medical procedures. In the case of catastrophic illness, the residual expense can be large, which is why individuals in the U.S. who can afford it purchase private health care. But in my case, I plan to be able to schedule routine procedures in Washington State if I need them and find they are not available at home.

The irony of returning to the U.S. for medical care, when that was one of the factors that led to our leaving that country, is not lost on me. I believe in government-financed health care as a right for citizens. Clearly however, the system in Canada as it is currently set up isn’t working. My wife once lived in Australia, which also has a government health plan. She was able to pay into an additional plan to access some physicians directly, if necessary. Clearly such a private option removes the burden from the public system and also allows doctors supplemental income. Something like that seems like a good option for Canada, especially in rural areas, which are currently underserved.

Finally, at a time when there is such concern about immigration, it is important to recognize that there are well-qualified physicians from around the world who would be happy to relocate to Canada if they were easily able to do so. Federal and provincial governments should consider fast-tracking permanent residence status for such sorely needed professionals.

When I left the U.S., I heard horror stories about Canadian health care. I tend to view these as apocryphal. For urgent cases, both from my own experience and those of friends, the country appears to allow individuals to generally get access to necessary expertise in a relatively timely way, without bankrupting them. But the cost to individuals, and the country, of not universally providing more routine preventative health care is great. Something needs to be done to fix a system that appears to be broken.

National Post

Lawrence M. Krauss, a physicist, is President of the Origins Project Foundation and is a Senior Fellow with the Aristotle Institute. His newest book, The War on Science, will be released July 29.

• Canadians faced longest ever health-care wait times in 2024, study finds
• Shawn Whatley: Politics trumps patient care when governments are failing

What if the NDP had a leadership race and no one showed up to vote? While this is an obvious exaggeration on my part, it may not turn out to be that far from the truth.

A recent Research Co.

poll

included a question about favourable and unfavourable opinions of potential NDP leadership candidates running to replace Jagmeet Singh. Former NDP MP and House Leader Ruth Ellen Brosseau had the

highest favourability

rating with 18 per cent, followed by MP Jenny Kwan (17 per cent), MP Heather McPherson (16 per cent) and former MP/Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart (16 per cent). Conversely, left-wing filmmaker and activist Avi Lewis had the

highest unfavourability

rating with 16 per cent, followed by Stewart at 15 per cent and four candidates at 14 per cent: Kwan, McPherson, former B.C. MLA/MP Nathan Cullen and MP Gord Johns.

That’s not the interesting part, however.

Every single potential NDP leadership candidate

scored

above 50 per cent when it came to this response,

“I don’t know who this person is.”

The highest was Johns at 59 per cent, which makes sense, since he’s one of the least well-known names. Close behind was Lewis, one of the more well-known names, who was tied with MP Leah Gazan at 58 per cent. Other notable candidates like Cullen (55 per cent), Brosseau (54 per cent) and Kwan (53 per cent) suffered a similar fate.

These numbers will likely change once the leadership race is off and running. It still doesn’t excuse the fact that it’s an embarrassing start to this forthcoming campaign. Then again, we shouldn’t be surprised by the NDP’s dismal state of affairs. The party is a shell of its former self. It’s broken in ideology, popular support and ability to

pay back

its national campaign expenses. While it’s not dead or dying right now, it’s certainly been on political life support for quite some time.

Singh’s leadership is the main reason for the NDP’s decline. He took the massive electoral gains earned by the late Jack Layton in the 2011 federal election, and partially maintained by Tom Mulcair until 2017, and almost immediately turned them into dust. That takes talent, and not the good kind.

The icing on the cake was this year’s federal election. The NDP dropped from 24 to 7 seats out of a possible 343 ridings. They fell below the 12-seat requirement for official party status in the House of Commons and won’t receive the annual research allowance of $18,600 per member as

outlined

in the Parliament of Canada Act. The NDP finished fourth in the popular vote with 6.29 per cent, which meant they were behind the Bloc Québécois, which only runs candidates in one province. To top it off, Singh lost his own seat and immediately resigned.

To provide some additional perspective, this was the worst election result in the party’s history. Even the NDP’s predecessor, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), had a slightly better result in its first election campaign. The party won 7 out of 245 seats, with 8.77 per cent of the popular vote, in the 1935 federal election. Then-CCF leader J.S. Woodsworth, who had served as an Independent Labour MP since 1925, didn’t lose his seat, either.

Some political analysts have suggested Singh’s downfall can be largely attributed to the majority of Canadian progressives holding their collective noses and voting for Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney as the best choice to take on U.S. President Donald Trump and his tariffs. When he lost traditional NDP support, he had nowhere to go but down. That’s partially true, but far from the entire story. Singh caused immeasurable damage as party leader between 2017 to 2025 that the NDP will struggle to overcome.

For instance, Singh propped up former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberals in the supply and confidence agreement for far too long. If he had walked away from this contentious agreement, which ran from March 2022 to Sept. 2024, at a much earlier date, he would have lost his lifeline to government policy but would have earned the respect of many progressive voters. It’s entirely possible that Singh’s NDP could have leapfrogged Trudeau’s Liberals in an election — some polling data seemed to

indicate

this — and he could still be an MP and party leader today. Blind ambition, the quest for power, and his desire for a gold-plated pension likely put an end to this.

Singh also took many far-left positions on politics, economics, race, religion and gender as NDP leader. Some of this was in keeping with his party’s ideology, but not all of it. His support for costly, state-run policies like national dental care and pharmacare, which were both rejected by most voters in elections but slid in during the supply and confidence agreement, will cost taxpayers dearly for generations. His obsession with progressive policies — such as

racial profiling

, political correctness, climate change,

opposition to pipelines

,

rejecting the monarchy in favour of republicanism

,

criticism of the Israeli government during the war in Gaza

, and other loony left ideas — likely earned him far more detractors than supporters.

End result? Singh’s ineffective leadership has set back the NDP by at least 2-3 election cycles. Any hope of recovery likely won’t rest with the next unknown party leader chosen at a sparsely attended political convention. Or the one after that, it seems.

National Post

• Avi Benlolo: Report on Oct. 7 sexual violence should shame feminists who failed to condemn attacks
• Josh Dehaas: Nationwide encampments are coming. Police and protesters need to understand laws

Just months after the atrocities of October 7, I wrote to the dean of a Canadian university expressing outrage. The university’s sexual assault centre director had

publicly questioned

whether the rapes of Jewish women and girls by Hamas terrorists had even occurred. To its credit, the university swiftly dismissed her. But the moment left a bitter aftertaste — a disturbing confirmation of something I had long feared: when Jewish women are raped, the outrage dies in silence.

Now, the recently released

Dinah Project report

has exposed the full horror of the sexual violence perpetrated on October 7. The report is exhaustive and damning: “Hamas used sexual violence as a tactical weapon, as part of a genocidal scheme…with the goal of terrorizing and dehumanizing Israeli society.” The evidence is clear and organized into a rigorous framework:

Survivor testimonies from 15 released hostages.

Eyewitness accounts of gang rapes and mutilation.

Reports from 27 first responders across six locations.

Forensic evidence from morgue workers.

Photographic and video documentation of sexual humiliation.

We now know this: women were stripped, raped, and mutilated. Some had objects forcibly inserted into their genitals. Others were tied to trees and executed. Girls were paraded in the streets for sexual degradation. In captivity, they were assaulted, harassed, and threatened with forced marriages. Most were murdered. The few survivors are too shattered to speak.

And yet — the silence from the feminist community has been deafening.

Where are the women’s groups, sexual assault centres, and human rights advocates who claim to stand for all women? Where are the vigils, the solidarity marches, the campaigns for justice? When Jewish women are raped, silence isn’t just indifference — it’s complicity.

Six months after the massacre, even the UN issued only a

watered-down acknowledgement

: that there are “reasonable grounds to believe” sexual violence occurred on October 7. But even that was buried in general language about “both sides,” failing to confront the specific, systematic targeting of Jewish women.

Imagine for a moment if any other minority group had been subjected to such atrocities — at a concert, in their homes, in front of their children. Would anyone dare suggest we needed “more evidence”? Would feminist organizations fail to issue statements? Would sexual assault centres look the other way?

Of course not.

But for 20 years, the pro-Palestinian movement has

seeded campuses

and institutions with rhetoric that justifies resistance “by any means necessary.” And now we see what “any means” truly means. Rape. Mutilation. Silence. Excuses.

In cities across Canada, demonstrators hold signs reading “by any means necessary.” We know exactly what they mean. And the worst part? Children are being taught that rape and murder of Jews is part of that resistance.

If that makes you uncomfortable to read, imagine living it.

So here is what I ask of you. This week, take action. Visit The Dinah Project

website

. Read the report. Then write to your local women’s centre, your local sexual assault organization, and your local feminist group. Send them the link. Demand they issue a public statement condemning the rapes of October 7.

Ask them plainly: Do Jewish women matter to you?

And then let me know what they say. Let’s publicly acknowledge the organizations that show moral courage — and call out those that don’t.

We cannot allow the rape and murder of Jewish women to be ignored, minimized, or rationalized. The feminist movement must not fail its most basic test: to stand for all women, regardless of religion, race, or ethnicity.

October 7 was not only a massacre. It was a moment of truth — one that revealed who would stand with Jewish women and who would stay silent.

History is watching. And so are we.

Avi Abraham Benlolo is the CEO and Chairman of The Abraham Global Peace Initiative, a prominent Canadian think-tank.

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