In September, Canada’s diplomats will begin their yearly descent to New York for the United Nations General Assembly. As has been the case recently, many of the topics on the docket will concern Israel, the war in Iran and recent developments in the Middle East. Canada’s record at the United Nations raises questions about whether Ottawa has a clear strategy for dealing with the region, or simply responds to the diplomatic pressures of the moment. If recent years are any indication, Ottawa will once again call for peace, restraint and de-escalation.

But foreign policy cannot consist of asking everyone to behave better.

The current government wants a seat at the table, a voice in international affairs and a reputation as a country capable of exerting influence beyond our borders. But before that can happen, Canada needs to decide what it actually wants in the Middle East, who its allies are, what threats it considers unacceptable and what kind of international order it intends to defend. Canada clearly understands that the international order is worth defending in Europe. Why should Canada be any less willing to defend it in the Middle East?

Put simply, Canada needs a better Middle East policy: one based not on reacting to the latest crisis, but on clearly defined Canadian interests and a willingness to act on them.

That need for a coherent policy is not simply a matter of Canada’s reputation abroad. It is increasingly a matter of what happens at home.

It is easy for Canadians to think of the Middle East as a distant region whose conflicts have little bearing on daily life at home. But the events of the past three years have demonstrated otherwise, with consequences ranging from higher energy prices , trade disruption and rising radicalization and extremism that has increasingly manifested in Canadian communities.

The dramatic rise in antisemitism since October 7 is perhaps the clearest example. Canadian Jews have watched developments thousands of kilometres away reverberate through their own communities, schools and institutions . Students have seen how quickly conflicts abroad are translated into rhetoric, protests and hostility at home. Canadian foreign policy language, therefore, can no longer afford to ignore events occurring abroad as if they don’t have very real consequences at home.

If events in the Middle East can so quickly reverberate through Canadian society, then how Canada responds to developments in the region matters. Yet Ottawa’s response often ends where its strategy should begin.

Canada’s approach to the Middle East increasingly resembles a cycle rather than a coherent strategy. When the United States and Iran went to war in 2026, Ottawa condemned Iranian attacks and called for civilian protection, but also urged all parties to return to negotiations and pursue a diplomatic resolution . When France and Britain moved toward recognizing a Palestinian state in 2025, Canada followed, calling its decision part of a “ co-ordinated international effort .” In each case, Canada had a position on the immediate event. What remained less clear was the strategy connecting those positions.

The result is that our government has become proficient at responding to developments without articulating what it actually wants to achieve. Is the goal security, prosperity and stronger alliances, or simply avoiding the costs of choosing?

It is in this gap between rhetoric and strategy that the current government’s approach falls short. Ottawa has increasingly emphasized the language of balance and de-escalation without clearly articulating what Canadian interests require beyond the immediate crisis , even when the parties involved have fundamentally different objectives . That language does more than obscure Canada’s interests. It also shapes how Canadians understand conflicts, which, in the case of the 2023-26 Gaza war, shifted attention away from inconvenient truths like who instigated the violence and Israel’s goals compared to Hamas,’ to a simple demand that the fighting stop. Whether Hamas heeds the call or not seems to matter little.

Canada is often clearer about what it wants the parties involved to stop doing than what it wants the region to look like when the crisis is over. That ambiguity may be politically convenient, but it is no substitute for strategy.

If de-escalation cannot be the strategy itself, then Canada needs to decide what outcome it is actually trying to achieve. What do we want the Middle East to look like five or ten years from now?

A Canadian strategy should aim for a region where states can co-exist securely, rather than one dependent on statements and condemnations.

Answering those questions requires Canada to recognize what kind of international order it wants to preserve. The challenge to that order is not theoretical. In the Middle East, it has a name: Iran. Canada’s prosperity and security are inseparable from the Western order: democratic government, the rule of law, free commerce, international alliances and institutions that, however imperfectly, provide a framework for states to resolve disputes without resorting to force.

Iran and the network of terrorist organizations it supports represent a fundamentally different vision of regional order. Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis have demonstrated that they are willing to use violence to advance political objectives, while Tehran has pursued the capacity to become a nuclear power. Canada therefore has to decide not only what it opposes, but what it is prepared to defend.

Canada should not be neutral between those seeking to preserve the international order and those seeking to undermine it. If Canada is serious about supporting states that share its interests, one country should be an obvious part of that calculation: Israel. Israel’s importance to Canada extends well beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It has developed precisely the kinds of technologies Canada increasingly needs: defence technology, cybersecurity, startups and security innovation. As Canada struggles with stagnant productivity and an economy in need of greater innovation there is a considerable economic interest in deepening relationships with a country whose economy continues to grow despite war and uncertainty. There is a security interest as well. Canada’s co-operation with Israel can strengthen our capacity to confront threats that increasingly cross into our national borders.

But recognizing Israel as a strategic partner is only one part of what a better Canadian Middle East policy would require. The more important question is whether Ottawa is prepared to act on its interests when doing so requires taking a position.

That choice will not always be comfortable. At the United Nations, in diplomatic negotiations and in moments of crisis, Canada will sometimes find itself in the minority. That is not necessarily a failure of diplomacy. Sometimes, it is evidence that Canada has decided what it stands for.

Canada should not be afraid to stand with its allies simply because doing so may put it at odds with other countries. Ottawa should begin by making its Middle East policy explicit: identify its allies, define the threats it will oppose and align its votes, alliances and diplomatic decisions accordingly. Middle powers do not earn influence by being agreeable to everyone. They earn it by having something worth saying and the conviction to act on it.

National Post

Adam Katz is a political science and history student at the University of Manitoba.

• The Liberals have disastrously mishandled Canada’s relationship with the Trump administration
• Opinion: Anti-Zionists minimize antisemitism on Canadian campuses

It is objectionable that Prime Minister Mark Carney will address the European Parliament before he faces the House of Commons over why trade talks broke down with the Trump administration. There is much to discuss and, so far, Carney has been cagey about what transpired, while American officials are challenging his version of events.

In particular, Carney needs to explain exactly what he meant when he claimed last Saturday that the Americans wanted to insert language that would restrict Canada’s freedom to sign trade agreements with other countries. “One thing we were not going to accept was any restriction on those deals,” he said.

It is this argument that made it easy for Carney to persuade Canadians across the political spectrum to rally around the flag. However, the specific proposals at play appear to be more complicated than what has been debated in the media. To start with, Carney even suggested in that same Saturday speech that the government was open to aligning trade policy with the U.S. under the right circumstances. “We would be prepared to do that,” he said.

On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that this idea didn’t even come from the Americans, but from Ottawa. “Canadian negotiators had gone into the talks suggesting the ultimate goal should be to create a ‘Fortress North America.’” And within this so-called fortress, the Times continued, there would be “ultralow or nonexistent tariffs inside its walls, namely between Canada and the United States, and aligned tariffs for outsiders.”

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer then told CBC on Wednesday that, yes, it was the Canadians who were the ones pushing for Fortress North America. He explained why the U.S. likes the idea. “We can’t have Canada be a place where you can get flooded with steel and aluminum from other countries and be used as a back door into the U.S.,” he said.

Based on what can be gleaned from these partial explanations and anonymous leaks to media, both the Carney government and the Trump administration are aligned on co-ordinating trade policies with third parties, at least when it comes to certain sectors from certain countries.

The difference is that Canada expected that in exchange for matching U.S. tariffs on others, there would be zero or close to zero tariffs on all goods trading back and forth. The Americans liked the concession, but wanted to keep harsh, if a bit lower, tariffs on autos and steel.

We believe that Canada was right to reject that agreement. Canada would be giving up far too much and receiving far too little, and this would have been before entering talks to renegotiate the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), making our hand much weaker. If the U.S. wants to stop steel flooding into Canada from, say, China, which could then enter the U.S. market, keeping high tariffs on Canadian steel and autos is an obvious non-starter.

But the prime minister should spare Canadians the posturing that walking away from the deal was some kind of high-minded stand for Canadian sovereignty. If what we are hearing is true, Carney is ready and willing to give up that very sovereignty for the right deal.

To be clear, any trade deal involves conceding some sovereignty, as it limits a country’s ability to set its own tariff rates. As for limiting trade with parties outside a deal, this isn’t a new feature. The 1965 Canada-U.S. Auto Pact required agreement between the two countries before either could enter a free trade deal on autos with another country.

Most relevant for today, CUSMA, which Trump wanted and agreed to, permits either the U.S., Canada or Mexico to terminate the entire treaty if a “free trade agreement” is entered into with a “non-market economy.”

The wisdom of Canada agreeing to the so-called “China clause” can be debated, but the difference between then and now, is that CUSMA is a comprehensive agreement encompassing free trade on nearly all goods that cross the border. Countries are expected to make concessions, even far-reaching ones, in such deals, but the other side is also supposed to make concessions. Right now the U.S. is offering very little.

It might be reasoned that the tradeoff of accepting lowered, but still high, tariffs in certain sectors, and some restrictions on Canadian foreign policy, in exchange for continued tariff-free trade in most sectors is worth it, so long as it provides certainty. But certainty wasn’t even on the table as, according to the Times, the Americans wanted to reserve the right to change any tariff at will at any time.

We’d advise the government to tread carefully here.

The European Union provides an appropriate warning. No members are permitted to sign trade deals with non members; instead, deals are negotiated by the bloc as a whole. The EU also forces member states to align on a host of regulatory measures, including on labour and environmental policy.

With 27 members of varying economic size though, it is difficult for any one country to dominate, even if larger members like France and Germany hold greater influence.

If Canada were to similarly align with the U.S., as Carney seems open to, we wouldn’t even be submitting to some faceless North American bureaucracy, which would be bad enough, but to Washington.

National Post

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Hours after Trump’s latest tariffs on Canadian wine, dairy, and autos took effect, California’s Democratic Governor and likely presidential contender Gavin Newsom posted on X calling Canada America’s “closest ally.” Then a few days after his initial tweet, Newsom did interviews with CBC and CTV, and on CTV he said something very important for Canadians to take note of. When asked if he would remove all of the tariffs Trump has put in place, he waffled for about a minute before eventually coming to say “I can’t guarantee that, but I can guarantee you nothing like this — the level of disrespect, talking about the 51st state.” In the CTV interview, Newsom even explicitly brings up some of the tariffs from Trump’s first term that Biden then kept in place.

This illustrates a crucial point that Canadian voters, policymakers and politicians all need to drill into their heads now: Democrats aren’t coming to save us.

A Democratic president will likely be much nicer to us, end the insults, ratchet down the trade war, try and rebuild and restore some degree of normalcy to a broken relationship. But we aren’t going back to a world in which tariffs in some form don’t exist, and America is not increasingly inward looking and less reliable. Our plan cannot be to just bunker down, wait until 2029 when Donald Trump leaves office and hope everything goes back to normal. This is the new normal now and going forward we have no choice but to adapt. We must reduce our dependence and exposure to the United States no matter who is in the Whitehouse next, or after that.

Let’s start with tariffs. Since the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement in 1989, and NAFTA after that, we’ve had mostly open, tariff-free trade with the Americans. Mostly is the key word here, it’s never been completely tariff free. For example, Canadian softwood lumber has long been the subject of on and off American tariffs since 1982. In 2015, Canada won the right to hit back with more than a billion dollars in tariffs after the Americans passed a law forcing meat sold in the US to be labelled with where the animal was born and raised, which made our beef and pork more trouble to sell there. And there have been others: ongoing fights over dairy, over Bombardier jets, over “Buy American” and so on.

So it could be tempting to read the last year and a half as just more of the same, only louder. That would be a mistake. The old fights could get heated, but they were narrow and focused disputes in which both partners shared the same understanding: that open trade between us was normal and good, mutually beneficial and the fights were about the exceptions.

This is gone now. Washington now treats access to the American market as a privilege others have to pay for, not a mutual arrangement both sides gain from. Trade has been recast on zero sum terms, something you win only if the other guy loses. That’s why the demand isn’t just lower tariffs but that we stop making things Americans would rather make themselves, like cars or steel.

Now perhaps a Democrat comes in and returns to a more traditional understanding of trade as mutually beneficial. That would be great, but for another reason we still should not expect tariffs to go away completely. This reason is more important — money.

In the last full fiscal year in 2025, the Americans collected about $195 billion in tariff revenue, more than two and a half times what it took in the year before (and tariff collection did not begin at the start of the year). This year it has kept climbing: through the first nine months of the current fiscal year the government pulled in roughly $244 billion in gross customs duties, though a Supreme Court ruling in February forced it to refund some US$81 billion of that, leaving around US$163 billion actually banked.

Last year, when Congress and Trump passed a massive tax cut last year, the Congressional Budget Office said tariffs could cover most of the cost, cutting the deficit by up to US$4 trillion over 10 years if they held. The Supreme Court ruling that killed some of Trump’s tariffs has dented that, but even still now that tariff revenue was used to justify tax cuts it becomes much harder for any political party to give that revenue up again.

U.S. total national debt surpassed US$40 trillion this August. Days later the government paid 5.2 per cent just to sell a 30-year bond, the highest rate in a quarter century, and yields kept climbing after that. Interest on the debt is already over a trillion dollars a year, the third biggest thing in the federal budget after Social Security and health care. Every bit those yields rise makes the whole pile more expensive to carry. That means more borrowing, which pushes yields higher again.

The next president, regardless of what party they come from, and many presidents after them, will be dealing with the consequences of this debt. Because of this, giving up revenues, and potentially having to raise other taxes as a result, is a hard political sell. Democrats, even if they want to try and normalize trade relations with countries like Canada, may still end up keeping much of this because they’ve become addicted to the revenue.

And there’s another reason tariffs are hard to kill once they exist, namely rent seeking. Every tariff comes with a list of exemptions and carevouts that benefit some companies and not others. This has created intensive lobbying in Washington. Ordinary Americans pay more, but a small group of well connected insiders benefit from tariffs, which creates motivated constituencies to push to keep them in place. Dispersed costs and concentrated benefits, which makes them sticky once in place no matter who’s in office.

But beyond tariffs, the last year and a half has left real damage that will be hard to fix no matter who succeeds Trump. Even a friendlier president shouldn’t, and won’t likely make us forget the insults, threats, talk of annexation, tearing up of agreements, unprovoked economic attacks that have made us question the reliability of a country we are deeply integrated with and dependent on. When a friend turns on you, even if they say sorry, you can’t always trust them again.

Throughout Trump’s second term, various people from different political perspectives have floated the idea of “Fortress North America,” the idea of a tighter bloc with a shared external wall against other countries, China particularly, in exchange for guaranteed U.S. access. A Democrat, as part of an attempt to mend our relationship, might offer this sort of arrangement to us. But deepening integration in the future returns us to a state of dependency that means if something likes this happens again, we’ll have done nothing to make ourselves less vulnerable to the psychotic breakdowns America seems increasingly prone to.

Carney said it plainly on election night last year: “Our old relationship with the United States, a relationship based on steadily increasing integration, is over.” He said that with Trump in mind. It’s just as true whenever a Democrat takes his place. Tariffs or no tariffs, Republican or Democrat, Canada has no choice other than to reduce its dependency on the United States, which means strengthening ourselves at home and seeking other opportunities abroad. This is a lesson we must remember, no matter how nicely the next president speaks to us.

National Post

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• Michael Higgins: And just like that, the French language is protected …

Over her long and delightful career, people stopped laughing at Dolly Parton and simply began loving her.

She had joined in the jokes from the beginning, defusing the disdain they contained for the hillbilly girl from the hovels in the hollers, who took the bus to Nashville the day after her high school graduation, her belongings packed into four shopping bags from the local Piggly Wiggly.

She wanted to be a music star and the 18-year-old who grew up in a one-room cabin with neither electricity nor running water was utterly confident that she could be. With an astonishing songwriting ability — her publishing catalogue contains thousands of songs — and a voice to match, she stepped into her high heels and marched out of grinding poverty, becoming one of the most glamorous figures in country music.

At five-foot-nothing, she created an outsized persona, the buxom blonde in big wigs and tight costumes, all glitter and rhinestones. She revelled in it even more than those who ridiculed it. She never appeared in public without being fully made up, telling all and sundry that “it takes a lot of money to make me look this cheap!”

When she arrived in Nashville in the 1960s, there were few female country music stars. They knew well that certain good ol’ boys might seek to take advantage of what they likely regarded as a dirt-poor dumb blonde, desperate to make it. The grand old dames assured Dolly that they had her back.

“It’s not my back the old fellers are interested in,” Dolly laughed back.

It turned out that Dolly could take care of herself, proving to be more savvy than the old fellers in the business of music. Famously, she declined to let Elvis Presley cover her “ I Will Always Love You” when his manager insisted on 50 per cent of future royalties. Whitney Houston would later make it one of the monster hits of all time, and Dolly made so much money that she chuckled, “I could buy Graceland!”

While recording chart-topping and award-winning songs in the 1970s, Dolly shifted from something of a caricature to become an admired character with the 1980 movie 9 to 5 , where she held her own with established actresses Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda. The comedy told the story about working-class women who were badly treated by the old fellers. The eponymous song was a hit. Underneath the fake hair and fake nails was a woman who told true stories — her own and those of so many such women — with sincerity and sympathy. And the songs were so very good.

At the end of the 1980s, Dolly returned to the big screen in Steel Magnolias , taking her place this time alongside accomplished actresses Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis, Sally Field, Julia Roberts and Daryl Hannah. It was an endearing tale of Southern women telling stories about being Southern women, pretty as flowers and strong as steel. Dolly wrote “ Eagle When She Flies” for the film, though it was not used. She released it later herself, telling her story in song; indeed she would later call herself a “songteller.”

“She’s a woman/ she knows how to dish it out or take it all,” Dolly wrote, as much about herself as her role. “Her heart’s as soft as feathers, still she weathers stormy skies/ And she’s a sparrow when she’s broken/ But she’s an eagle when she flies.”

“Gentle as the sweet magnolia, strong as steel her faith and pride/ She hurts deep, and when she weeps, she’s just as fragile as a child … Oh, bless her, Lord.”

The screenplay for Steel Magnolias allowed Dolly’s character — Truvy Jones, the hairdresser who owned her own beauty parlour — to speak as Dolly, the storyteller.

“There is no such thing as natural beauty,” Truvy declares in her salon, where women share burdens, wisdom and gossip.

“Laughter through tears is my favourite emotion,” Truvy says, explaining many of Dolly’s greatest hits. “I really wish I had some words of wisdom but I don’t so why don’t just focus on the joy of the situation.”

Or put more directly: “I have a strict policy that no one cries alone in my presence.” When Dolly sang sad songs, it was so that others might be a little less sad.

Forty years ago, Dolly opened the Dollywood amusement park in the marvellously monikered Pigeon Forge, Tenn., in her native Sevier County and near the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Dollywood was the flagship enterprise of the Dolly Parton business empire, making her one of her generation’s most successful women entrepreneurs.

With her profits she pioneered a different kind of philanthropy, in addition to the usual things rich people do, like donating to the children’s hospital in Knoxville, Tenn., which bears her name after an undisclosed “generational” contribution.

Ten years ago, she sent $1,000 cheques for six months to families in Sevier County who lost their homes in the Smoky Mountains wildfires in 2016.

Growing up one of 12 children to a hard-working, creative but illiterate father, Dolly started the Imagination Library 30 years ago, sending free books to families in Sevier County — one book a month from birth to six years old. The Imagination Library, now in partnerships across the U.S. and abroad, including in Canada , has sent more than 322 million books to young children. Songtellers first need to read stories before they can write their own.

When Taylor Swift was looking for a philanthropic dimension to her summer wedding last month, she gave $2 million to the Imagination Library.

At Dollywood there is a pavilion for bald eagles that cannot live in the wild due to injury or disability. At daily exhibitions, visitors can witness the beauty and majesty of birds which would otherwise be overlooked, beaten down by life, hidden away in the hollers.

Broken like sparrows, the eagles have a place at Dollywood, and in Dolly’s heart, which was the biggest thing about her.

National Post

• Nashville mourns country music legend Dolly Parton
• Country music legend Dolly Parton has died aged 80

Over her long and delightful career, people stopped laughing at Dolly Parton and simply began loving her.

She had joined in the jokes from the beginning, defusing the disdain they contained for the hillbilly girl from the hovels in the hollers, who took the bus to Nashville the day after her high school graduation, her belongings packed into four shopping bags from the local Piggly Wiggly.

She wanted to be a music star and the 18-year-old who grew up in a one-room cabin with neither electricity nor running water was utterly confident that she could be. With an astonishing songwriting ability — her publishing catalogue contains thousands of songs — and a voice to match, she stepped into her high heels and marched out of grinding poverty, becoming one of the most glamorous figures in country music.

At five-foot-nothing, she created an outsized persona, the buxom blonde in big wigs and tight costumes, all glitter and rhinestones. She revelled in it even more than those who ridiculed it. She never appeared in public without being fully made up, telling all and sundry that “it takes a lot of money to make me look this cheap!”

When she arrived in Nashville in the 1960s, there were few female country music stars. They knew well that certain good ol’ boys might seek to take advantage of what they likely regarded as a dirt-poor dumb blonde, desperate to make it. The grand old dames assured Dolly that they had her back.

“It’s not my back the old fellers are interested in,” Dolly laughed back.

It turned out that Dolly could take care of herself, proving to be more savvy than the old fellers in the business of music. Famously, she declined to let Elvis Presley cover her “ I Will Always Love You” when his manager insisted on 50 per cent of future royalties. Whitney Houston would later make it one of the monster hits of all time, and Dolly made so much money that she chuckled, “I could buy Graceland!”

While recording chart-topping and award-winning songs in the 1970s, Dolly shifted from something of a caricature to become an admired character with the 1980 movie 9 to 5 , where she held her own with established actresses Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda. The comedy told the story about working-class women who were badly treated by the old fellers. The eponymous song was a hit. Underneath the fake hair and fake nails was a woman who told true stories — her own and those of so many such women — with sincerity and sympathy. And the songs were so very good.

At the end of the 1980s, Dolly returned to the big screen in Steel Magnolias , taking her place this time alongside accomplished actresses Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis, Sally Field, Julia Roberts and Daryl Hannah. It was an endearing tale of Southern women telling stories about being Southern women, pretty as flowers and strong as steel. Dolly wrote “ Eagle When She Flies” for the film, though it was not used. She released it later herself, telling her story in song; indeed she would later call herself a “songteller.”

“She’s a woman/ she knows how to dish it out or take it all,” Dolly wrote, as much about herself as her role. “Her heart’s as soft as feathers, still she weathers stormy skies/ And she’s a sparrow when she’s broken/ But she’s an eagle when she flies.”

“Gentle as the sweet magnolia, strong as steel her faith and pride/ She hurts deep, and when she weeps, she’s just as fragile as a child … Oh, bless her, Lord.”

The screenplay for Steel Magnolias allowed Dolly’s character — Truvy Jones, the hairdresser who owned her own beauty parlour — to speak as Dolly, the storyteller.

“There is no such thing as natural beauty,” Truvy declares in her salon, where women share burdens, wisdom and gossip.

“Laughter through tears is my favourite emotion,” Truvy says, explaining many of Dolly’s greatest hits. “I really wish I had some words of wisdom but I don’t so why don’t just focus on the joy of the situation.”

Or put more directly: “I have a strict policy that no one cries alone in my presence.” When Dolly sang sad songs, it was so that others might be a little less sad.

Forty years ago, Dolly opened the Dollywood amusement park in the marvellously monikered Pigeon Forge, Tenn., in her native Sevier County and near the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Dollywood was the flagship enterprise of the Dolly Parton business empire, making her one of her generation’s most successful women entrepreneurs.

With her profits she pioneered a different kind of philanthropy, in addition to the usual things rich people do, like donating to the children’s hospital in Knoxville, Tenn., which bears her name after an undisclosed “generational” contribution.

Ten years ago, she sent $1,000 cheques for six months to families in Sevier County who lost their homes in the Smoky Mountains wildfires in 2016.

Growing up one of 12 children to a hard-working, creative but illiterate father, Dolly started the Imagination Library 30 years ago, sending free books to families in Sevier County — one book a month from birth to six years old. The Imagination Library, now in partnerships across the U.S. and abroad, including in Canada , has sent more than 322 million books to young children. Songtellers first need to read stories before they can write their own.

When Taylor Swift was looking for a philanthropic dimension to her summer wedding last month, she gave $2 million to the Imagination Library.

At Dollywood there is a pavilion for bald eagles that cannot live in the wild due to injury or disability. At daily exhibitions, visitors can witness the beauty and majesty of birds which would otherwise be overlooked, beaten down by life, hidden away in the hollers.

Broken like sparrows, the eagles have a place at Dollywood, and in Dolly’s heart, which was the biggest thing about her.

National Post

• Nashville mourns country music legend Dolly Parton
• Country music legend Dolly Parton has died aged 80

On Friday last week, Global Affairs Canada published an official advisory telling Canadian businesses to stay away from an entire category of lawful commerce. The document warns of “significant legal, financial and reputational risks” tied to Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and advises companies against “investments, financial transactions, procurement, purchases and tourism” connected to them. Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand framed this warning as an extension of Canada’s “long-standing position” that the settlements are “illegal under international law” and “constitute a serious obstacle to a just and lasting peace.”

This advisory threatens to sanction both Israelis abroad and Canadians.

This is a serious problem. This decision does not come from a Canadian court or statute. It was not made by members of Parliament. It comes from Ottawa deciding, on its own authority, that the matter is closed. There is an important distinction Ottawa is blurring: Canada’s foreign-policy position is not the same thing as Canadian law. Parliament has debated the issue. NDP MP Heather McPherson introduced Motion M-28 in March calling for, among other things, targeted sanctions connected to settlements. But Parliament has not enacted a general prohibition on Canadians doing business connected to Israeli settlements. This matters.

The advisory’s argument appears to rest on a single premise: Israeli settlements are “illegal under international law.” This claim rests on a contested interpretation of Article 49(6) of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention , which says an occupying power “shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” The treaty does not define “transfer” in that provision or expressly say civilians are prohibited from moving voluntarily. The legal dispute is over how broadly “transfer” should be interpreted and what degree of government encouragement, assistance or involvement is sufficient to constitute one. Credentialed international lawyers have disputed these questions for decades.

In the advisory, Ottawa points to the United Nations as the source of its reasoning. Fair enough. But let’s be precise about what the UN has actually said and done.

UN Security Council Resolution 2334 calls the settlements a violation of international law. But it was passed under Chapter VI of the UN Charter, not Chapter VII, which authorizes enforcement. Whatever diplomatic and legal significance Resolution 2334 carries internationally, it does not itself make settlement commerce a crime under Canadian statute. A UN Security Council resolution addressed to states does not, by itself, make it illegal under Canadian law for a Canadian to buy a bottle of wine, for instance, produced in a West Bank settlement. Wine is not unique, it is simply a useful example because settlement-produced wine has already been tested in Canadian courts Canada has dealt with precisely such wines before, the resulting Canadian litigation concerned how they could be labelled, not whether Canadians were prohibited from buying them.

Ottawa’s strongest argument is the International Court of Justice’s 2024 advisory opinion . But an advisory opinion is not legally binding, and several judges issued separate or dissenting opinions. A government may consider it, but it should not relay it to its citizens as Canadian law they break at their peril.

Here is the honest truth. There is a strong international consensus against the settlements, but there is also a decades-old legal dispute. Ottawa can acknowledge both. What it cannot do is turn international consensus into settled Canadian law.

None of this requires minimizing settler violence. There have been serious and documented attacks by extremist Israeli settlers against Palestinians, and those responsible should be investigated, prosecuted and, where justified, sanctioned. Canada has already sanctioned specific individuals and entities connected to extremist settler violence. That proves the point: target those responsible through defined legal mechanisms. Do not use their crimes to cast suspicion over every Israeli who lives beyond the Green Line , or every Canadian who lawfully does business with one.

Ottawa knows the difference. It has not asked Parliament to make settlement commerce illegal. It has not pursued a Canadian court ruling that it is unlawful. Instead, it is using an advisory to discourage conduct Parliament has not prohibited. This advisory casts a cloud of legal risk over a sweeping range of otherwise lawful activity, from investment and purchasing to tourism, without actually prohibiting any of it. It is prohibition by insinuation.

Then comes the part written to be skimmed past. Businesses that decline to comply “may result in the withdrawal of Trade Commissioner Service support and potential future support from Export Development Canada and the Canadian Commercial Corporation.”

This consequence is real. A Canadian business engaged in commerce that no Canadian law prohibits can risk losing federal support simply because Ottawa considers that commerce connected, even “indirectly,” to a settlement. But what does “indirectly” mean? A supplier? An investment fund with distant exposure? Ottawa does not draw the line. Businesses are left to guess, and the safest choice is obvious: walk away. That is how an advisory becomes a chill on lawful commerce without Parliament ever banning it.

You can hold any view you like about the West Bank and still see what this is. This is not about whether settlements are wise, good or just. It is about who gets to decide that something is illegal, by what process and with what accountability. Governments confident in their legal grounds pass laws. Governments that suspect they would lose the vote, or lose in court, issue advisories.

Ottawa reached a verdict against a defendant it never charged, in a case no court has heard, and now bills Canadian businesses to enforce it.

If this trade is illegal, prove it. Table the legislation. Name the conduct. Define it. Put it to a vote, and defend it before a judge who can strike it down. That is what the rule of law requires.

Until then, stop leaning on citizens you are unwilling to legislate against. Withdraw the advisory.

National Post

Matthew Taub is the founder and executive director of Unapologetically Jewish. A nationally registered non-profit fighting antisemitism.

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