Mark Carney’s election platform did not include giving himself the power to suspend the entirety of federal law and, by extension, democracy. But that’s what he aims to do with

Bill C-5

, which he hopes to ram through by

Canada Day

.

Conservatives, astonishingly,

haven’t ruled out

helping the prime minister on this front, which is a royal shame since they’re our last line of defence.

Introduced to the House of Commons on June 6, the bill would create a Building Canada Act to fast-track any project the feds consider to be in the national interest. The act would do this by allowing the Liberal government to completely bypass parliamentary scrutiny.

The act would give cabinet the power to

add any project

it likes to a list of “national interest projects” by issuing an order-in-council. Cabinet would also have the power to

make a list

of federal laws that can be suspended at any time, with the stroke of a pen, with respect to any designated national interest project.

To exempt any designated projects from any number of suspendable laws, the feds would simply need to

write a regulation

specifying which laws no longer apply to which projects, and it would be so.

For example, the Building Canada Act would allow Carney and his team to designate all work by his forthcoming home-construction agency as a national interest project, and shield all of its business from conflict-of-interest laws, from transparency rules set out in the Access to Information Act, from the scope of the auditor general, from federal taxes via the Income Tax Act, and from police via the Criminal Code.

The same legal exemptions could be given to a favoured engineering firm, telecom company, construction giant, consulting behemoth, etc., as long as cabinet finds a national interest angle in the work. Foreign entities could even be excused from following the Investment Canada Act, which exists to protect economic and national security.

The Building Canada Act would also allow cabinet to exempt preferred companies from environmental legislation, such as the Impact Assessment Act, the Species At Risk Act, the Canada National Parks Act and the federal carbon tax.

So, if Carney wanted to give a foreign electric vehicle manufacturer a leg up, or allow a solar plant to be built on federal parkland, or free an Indigenous-owned pipeline from the mound of rules that apply to their non-Indigenous competitors, he could do just that. The same could be done for any industry, really: if reconciliation is always in the public interest, why not free Indigenous fishing corporations from the constraints of the Fisheries Act?

Making matters more concerning are Carney’s own potential private-sector interests: he is the former chair and environmental, social, governance (ESG) lead of Brookfield Asset Management. Carney’s publicly traded assets

have been

put into a blind trust, but we’re still waiting on financial disclosures through the ethics commissioner. All considered, he could stand to benefit from the suspension of law in the area of modular housing and green energy, for example, given Brookfield’s holdings.

Aside from the corruption risk, the Building Canada Act could ultimately create the expectation that the feds should selectively suspend clunky laws to get anything of worth built, incentivizing lobbying campaigns and distracting from the actual job of government. If some Canadian laws are so hostile to development that they warrant total suspension, as the Liberals seem to admit by tabling Bill C-5, they should spend their time fixing them. Fast-tracking exceptions aren’t out of the question, either: if Parliament wants to give cabinet the ability to suspend certain pre-determined clauses in certain cases, it can go right ahead.

Indeed, the left decried Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s plan to repeal the burdensome Impact Assessment Act, which hasn’t approved a single project in its six years of existence, and requires proponents to file everything from sociology dissertations to greenhouse gas projections in their applications. But Poilievre’s intent was to replace it with something else — and he certainly didn’t set out to suspend the whole roster of environmental laws, as seems to be Carney’s approach.

Proponents of the scheme will likely defend it by pointing to the fact that Bill C-5, as it’s currently written, proposes a list of only 13 suspendable laws. These include the Impact Assessment Act (and its predecessor, which still applies to a number of projects underway in Canada), the Fisheries Act, the Indian Act, the National Capital Act, the Migratory Birds Convention Act, a part of the Canada Transportation Act, the Species at Risk Act, and a handful of federal laws that govern Canadian bodies of water.

It’s a fraction of the hundreds of federal laws that are on the books — but that’s just for now. The moment the Building Canada Act becomes law, that list can be expanded at cabinet’s pleasure. In that way, Bill C-5 is a Trojan horse.

The Liberals are now moving the bill along at a pace so fast that it escapes the rule of law. The House of Commons transport committee is scheduled to handle the bill this week, with only one day of witness hearings

planned

before MPs hit their deadline to propose amendments. It will simply be impossible to give this wide-ranging bill the full consideration it deserves, as a proposal to allow cabinet to pause any law at any time should take months, not hours.

Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet got it right last week

when

he denounced the bill and promised to fight the Liberals’ attempt to speed it through the House of Commons without any meaningful debate.

The Conservatives are

still on the fence

, but they shouldn’t be. Supporting Bill C-5 in its current form means unleashing the Liberals from the oversight of Parliament, which would be a catastrophic dereliction of duty for the Opposition.

National Post

• Jamie Sarkonak: The Liberal undemocratic plan to let bureaucrats make law on the fly
• Jamie Sarkonak: Recovery from the lost decade means ditching the Impact Assessment Act

A direct military confrontation between Israel and Iran has been decades in the making, but some in the media are naively trying to make the case that the Islamic Republic didn’t pose much of a threat to the Jewish state.

In Canada’s less interesting national newspaper, the Globe and Mail, columnist

Doug Saunders claimed

that the 2015 Iranian nuclear agreement was “a success,” even though it enriched the country’s theocratic regime with funds it used to conduct a global campaign of terror, while doing little to retard Iran’s nuclear progress.

In truth, Iran’s quest to develop nuclear technology, and its genocidal intents, have been well known for decades. At his state of the union address in January 2002, shortly after 9/11, then-U.S. president George W. Bush identified Iran as a member of the “

axis of evil

,” alongside Iraq and North Korea. Unfortunately, Bush attacked the wrong Persian Gulf country starting with the letters IRA, which took out Iran’s greatest regional foe and allowed it to develop its nuclear program unabated.

In 2012, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood in front of the United Nations General Assembly and

warned the world

that Iran was reaching the point of no return. Yet no world leader has had the fortitude to do anything about it — until now.

While it’s true that Iran had yet to take the final step of putting together a working bomb, at least as far as we know, the country has for years been enriching uranium past the point that is needed for civilian purposes. An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

report

released late last month found that the country had stockpiled enough highly enriched uranium to produce nine nuclear warheads.

Although Saunders acknowledged that the IAEA’s board of governors

censured Iran

last week for failing to comply with its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty — including refusing to answer questions about uranium particles found at undeclared sites — he wrote this off as “a familiar tactic practised by Tehran during negotiations over the last 20 years: increasing tension over its nuclear program in order to create a sense of urgency.”

The Globe’s senior international correspondent, Mark MacKinnon, also

brushed off fears

that Iran was racing towards a bomb, claiming that there is “no evidence suggesting Iran was on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon — let alone threatening anyone with it — next week, next month or next year.”

Those claims have been disputed by Israeli intelligence officials, who, according to an

Army Radio report

on Sunday, said that Israel had received information showing that Iranian scientists had been conducting secret nuclear weapons experiments since the end of 2023 and that they were mere weeks away from developing a functional bomb.

We may never know the truth, but claiming, as Saunders did, that there is “no looming nuclear-weapons threat from Iran” is disingenuous, at best. Playing games with nuclear inspectors and threatening to ramp up nuclear activities following the IAEA’s damning resolution may be par for the course for the mullahs in Tehran, but the cost of not taking them and their word is far too high for the Jewish state.

During the Cold War, the principle of mutual assured destruction ensured the Americans and Soviets never unleashed their nuclear arsenals, but this only worked because both governments were rational actors that did not want to bring about Armageddon. The same cannot be said for the Islamists in Tehran, who are far more concerned with collecting their 72 virgins in the afterlife than protecting life here on earth.

For decades, Iranian leaders have been making explicit threats against the Jewish state. Twenty years ago, then-Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave a talk at the “World Without Zionism” conference, in which he

called for Israel

to be “wiped off the map.”

In 2018, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

called Israel

a “cancerous tumour” that must be “removed and eradicated.” A couple years later, his website featured an image calling for a “

final solution

” in Palestine. And in 2019, the deputy head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said the Islamic Republic

intends to

“erase Israel from the global political map.”

It’s easy for us, in a safe country like Canada, to watch from afar and criticize the Israeli government’s policies; to claim, as the Globe’s journalists seem apt to do, that Netanyahu is “addicted to war” and that his decision to go to war was pure “political opportunism.”

But Netanyahu did not start this war. Israel was the victim of a brutal terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023, when thousands of Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists stormed southern Israel, brutally raping and slaughtering 1,200 people, mostly innocent civilians, and took over 250 hostages.

Israel was then attacked by Hezbollah and the Houthis, which are also Iranian proxies. And last year, Tehran turned the long-simmering cold war between the two countries into a hot one when it launched

a direct assault

against Israel for the first time in history.

It’s important to remember that

Israel

is a small country — less than half the size of

Nova Scotia

— and it’s surrounded by mortal enemies. According to the

Nukemap

website, a 150 kiloton nuke, the size of the one tested by North Korea in 2017, would take out Tel Aviv and some of its suburbs, killing an estimated 214,000 people and wounding around 278,000; a 100 megaton bomb, the world’s largest, dropped on Tel Aviv would destroy all of central Israel and kill millions.

In the current conflict, Israeli

officials estimate

that five to 10 per cent of the missiles fired by Iran have penetrated Israel’s air defences. As tragic as it is to see whole apartment buildings destroyed, the effects of even one nuclear warhead detonating within Israeli territory would be catastrophic (and would surely invite a second strike that would bring about even more death and destruction).

In the end, the calculation for Netanyahu was simple. He has the solemn duty of protecting the world’s only Jewish state, home to around two-thirds of the global Jewish population, from experiencing a repeat of the Holocaust. And he is faced with a regime in Tehran that has explicitly stated that it wants to annihilate Israel and has been developing weapons capable of realizing that goal.

It’s fair to question Netanyahu’s timing and his strategy, but anyone who didn’t see this coming, or thinks that, barring regime change, this standoff wasn’t eventually going to lead to war, hasn’t been paying attention.

National Post

jkline@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/accessd

• Jesse Kline: Did Anita Anand get ChatGPT to write her Israel-Iran tweet?
• Jesse Kline: Shame on Liberals for sanctioning democratically elected Israeli politicians

The United States Supreme Court is seen to be sharply divided between conservative and liberal jurists so it is noteworthy when it speaks with one voice. In Ames v. Ohio, liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a unanimous decision that is viewed by some as resetting the diversity, equity and inclusion debate.

Marlean Ames is a heterosexual woman employed by the Ohio Department of Youth Services, initially as a secretary, subsequently promoted to program administrator and applying in 2019 to enter management. Her application was unsuccessful when the department instead hired a lesbian and demoted Ames from her administrative position — restoring her to a secretarial post — and replacing her with a gay man. Alleging discrimination because she is straight, she sued under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, unsuccessfully at trial and in the circuit appeals court, but successfully on appeal to the Supreme Court. Justice Jackson observed, with emphasis, that the Act makes it unlawful “to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge ANY INDIVIDUAL, or otherwise to discriminate against ANY INDIVIDUAL with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, colour, religion, sex, or national origin.” That Ames was a member of a non-gay majority did not affect the result; “the law’s focus on individuals rather than groups (is) anything but academic.”

The case was remitted to the lower courts for correction, but it is Justice Jackson’s emphasis on individuals that is important here. It is individuals who have equality before the law and it is individuals who must be protected from discrimination based on race, colour, religion, sex or national origin. This does not preclude considerations of race, colour, or other traits, when addressing comparative advantage or disadvantage; it insists only that the focus must be on individuals when making these comparisons.

Taken along with the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling affirmative action unconstitutional, it is clear that the United States and Canada part ways on issues of equality, discrimination and affirmative action. Their laws on these subjects are similar: the U.S. Civil Rights Act and Fourteenth Amendment, and Canada’s Charter Section 15(1) and its equivalent in provincial human rights codes, guarantee equality before the law and protection from discrimination based on immutable conditions. But here the similarities end. The unconstitutionality of affirmative action and the emphasis on individual rights in the U.S. stand in marked contrast with the extensive practice of affirmative action and emphasis on group rights in Canada.

The American experience has lessons for Canadians; we, too, need to reset the DEI debate. Although some group rights are recognized in our Constitution (e.g. Indigenous peoples and minority languages), they do not mandate special treatment apart from their specific texts. The issues here are broader and more fundamental: do we see affirmative action, sanctioned by Section 15(2) of the Charter, as an exception to a general rule prohibiting discrimination, or does its extensive practice in our public institutions suggest that the exception is becoming the rule? Should we re-emphasize

individual

rights as a unanimous Supreme Court did in Ames v. Ohio? Is DEI a benign practice or an ideological cover for discriminatory practices? If we do not face these questions, test them in our courts, and develop a social consensus around them, differences among Canadians that we have seen to date will pale beside those to come.

National Post

Peter MacKinnon has served as the president of three Canadian universities and is a senior fellow of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and the Aristotle Foundation.

• Jordan Peterson: At long last, my re-education ‘coach’ has been chosen
• Jamie Sarkonak: He mildly questioned DEI. His law school calls that ‘misconduct’

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s surprise pledge to meet NATO’s defence spending target is long overdue, but without real reform, leadership and a shift away from bureaucracy and social experimentation, it risks falling short of what the moment demands.

Canada committed in 2014 to spend two per cent of its gross national product on defence — a NATO target meant to ensure collective security and more equitable burden-sharing. We never made it past 1.37 per cent, drawing criticism from allies and, in my view, breaching our obligation. Now, the prime minister says we’ll hit the target by the end of fiscal year 2025-26. That’s welcome news, but it comes with serious challenges.

Reaching the two per cent was always possible. It just required political courage. The announced $9 billion in new defence spending shows intent, and Carney’s remarks about protecting Canadians are encouraging. But the reality is our military readiness is at a breaking point. With global instability rising — including conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East— Canada’s ability to defend its territory or contribute meaningfully to NATO is under scrutiny. Less than half of our army vehicles, ships and aircraft are currently operational.

I’m told the Treasury Board has already approved the new funds, making this more than just political spin. Much of the money appears to be going where it’s most needed. Pay and benefit increases for serving members should help with retention, and bonuses for re-enlistment are reportedly being considered. Recruiting and civilian staffing will also get a boost, though I question adding more to an already bloated public service. Reserves and cadet programs weren’t mentioned but they also need attention.

Equipment upgrades are just as urgent. A new procurement agency is planned, overseen by a secretary of state — hopefully with members in uniform involved. In the meantime, accelerating existing projects is a good way to ensure the money flows quickly. Restocking ammunition is a priority. Buying Canadian and diversifying suppliers makes sense. The Business Council of Canada has signalled its support for a national defence industrial strategy. That’s encouraging, but none of it will matter without follow-through.

Infrastructure is also in dire shape. Bases, housing, training facilities and armouries are in disrepair. Rebuilding these will not only help operations but also improve recruitment and retention. So will improved training, including more sea days, flying hours and field operations.

All of this looks promising on paper, but if the Department of National Defence can’t spend funds effectively, it won’t matter. Around $1 billion a year typically lapses due to missing project staff and excessive bureaucracy. As one colleague warned, “implementation (of the program) … must occur as a whole-of-government activity, with trust-based partnerships across industry and academe, or else it will fail.”

The defence budget also remains discretionary. Unlike health transfers or old age security, which are legally entrenched, defence funding can be cut at will. That creates instability for military suppliers and risks turning long-term procurement into a political football. The new funds must be protected from short-term fiscal pressure and partisan meddling.

One more concern: culture. If Canada is serious about rebuilding its military, we must move past performative diversity policies and return to a warrior ethos. That means recruiting the best men and women based on merit, instilling discipline and honour, and giving them the tools to fight and, if necessary, make the ultimate sacrifice. The military must reflect Canadian values, but it is not a place for social experimentation or reduced standards.

Finally, the announcement came without a federal budget or fiscal roadmap. Canada’s deficit continues to grow. Taxpayers deserve transparency. What trade-offs will be required to fund this? If this plan is just a last-minute attempt to appease U.S. President Donald Trump ahead of the G7 or our NATO allies at next week’s summit, it won’t stand the test of time.

Canada has the resources, talent and standing to be a serious middle power. But only action — not announcements — will prove whether we truly intend to be one.

National Post

Michel Maisonneuve is a retired lieutenant-general who served 45 years in uniform. He is a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and author of In Defence of Canada: Reflections of a Patriot (2024).

• Tasha Kheiriddin: Liberals finally making Canada’s defence a priority
• Canada’s boutique military: ‘Should we not be able to defend ourselves?’

When

Buzz Hargrove

spoke, you listened. He was an electric public speaker that drove his message through compassion and wisdom. He could carry the room with his knowledge.

He would never ask you to do anything he wasn’t prepared to do himself. He led more plant occupations and corporate dust-ups than anyone in the country. He knew how to win and gave us all the confidence to fight against great odds. “You can’t win if you are not prepared to fight,” he would often say.

I was fortunate to have a front row seat as one of Buzz’s assistant’s in the final years of his presidency of the Canadian Auto Workers. I was able to watch the master in action. He was brilliant in battle but compassionate and articulate in life.

He understood that the most important role of the union was how we impacted the lives of the rank and file through collective bargaining. With that in mind, Buzz was the best. He knew better than anyone that our collective solidarity fused together as one, created unlimited strength. When facing the pillars of the corporate community, he was like a pit bull terrier with an abscessed tooth. Brains and brawn that drove success regardless of the situation.

He really was a legend respected by all whose lives he touched.

Buzz above all was a rank and file leader. He came from the shop floor and was proud of it. His working class roots are what defined him. He would often say that you can’t build a union surrounded by lawyers and academics. They had a role but they just couldn’t lead it. He believed that the rank and file’s heart and soul was the foundation on which to build.

Meeting and marrying Denise Small made Buzz the happiest man alive. He loved her for all her strength and support.

We will miss you Buzz. You were one of a kind.

Rest in peace.

Jerry Dias is a former national president of Unifor.

The G7 meeting in Kananaskis, Alta. hadn’t even kicked off in earnest when Mark Carney began to wear the look of a man who had lost control of events that were starting to control him.

The

prime minister’s meeting with Donald Trump in front of the cameras Monday morning

started well enough, with him flattering the president by saying that the G7 is “nothing without U.S. leadership.”

Trump responded by commenting that he has developed a “very good relationship” with the Canadian prime minister, whom he called “Mark.”

But Trump can’t pass a fire without putting an iron in it. Without prompting, he mused on how the G7 used to be the G8, before former president Barack Obama and “a person named Trudeau” kicked Russia out.

In fact, Russia was suspended after its invasion of Crimea in 2014, a year before Trudeau became prime minister, but the president does not let the facts interfere with his preconceptions.

“I would say that was a mistake. You wouldn’t have had a war if Russia was in, or if Trump was president,” Trump said.

Carney would have been well advised to use his prerogative to get Trump the hell out of the room before the president started taking questions. But, too late, Trump was quickly in his preferred environment as the centre of attention.

U.S. officials suggested ahead of the G7 gathering that Trump

wants to show progress on trade deals

. He was asked what is holding up a deal with Canada and responded that a deal is “achievable” but that he has a “tariff concept,” while Carney has a “much more complex idea.”

“I’m sure we can work something out,” he said.

He sidestepped questions about the U.S. getting involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran, but he was happy to make the case for Vladimir Putin and Russia, again and again and again.

By this stage, Carney was sweating spinal fluid and gesturing to his team to cut the press conference short.

But Trump was asked about his request in a late-night social media post Sunday for Immigration and Custom Enforcement to

target America’s big cities

, and by this time the president was like a sausage, fizzing and popping in its own grease.

“I want them to focus on the cities, because that’s where the people are. I look at New York. I look at Chicago. I mean you got a really bad governor in Chicago and a bad mayor … That city has been overrun by criminals. Look at L.A., those people weren’t from L.A. They weren’t from California.

“Biden allowed 21 million people to come into our country. Of that, vast numbers were murderers, killers, people from gangs, people from jails. They empty their jails out into the U.S. Most of those people are in the cities, all blue cities. All Democrat-run cities and they think they’re going to use them to vote. It’s not going to happen.”

Trump’s Sunday night

Truth Social post went further

, saying “illegal aliens” are being used to “cheat in elections.” He said Democrats are “sick of mind” and people who “hate our country” — this just a day after two state Democrats in Minnesota were targeted by an assassin, and

lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark were killed

.

With the implicit threat hanging in the air that Trump is going to use federal law enforcement to target Democrats, Carney was caught in a cruel dilemma: nothing he could say would do much good and anything he said could do a great deal of harm to Canada’s national interest.

With the prospect that the next question could be on the president’s bête noire — trade imbalances with the U.S. and his views on Canada’s sovereignty — the prime minister politely urged an end to the proceedings.

“If you don’t mind…,” he said.

The media minded a great deal, sniffing headlines like bird dogs detecting a partridge. They continued to shout out questions, but the prime minister’s team were uncharacteristically insistent on shutting things down.

It was an ominous start to the proceedings.

The G7 process is based on consensus. The agenda was focused on finding common ground on things like drug trafficking and energy security.

But it was a reminder that no democratic leader can find communion with this president. Trump’s base, his sympathies and his prejudices are too narrow for anyone who has a different outlook, and wants to maintain their or their nation’s self-respect.

National Post

jivison@criffel.ca

• Ivison: President Trump, the G7 and Canada’s new ‘realistic’ foreign policy
• John Ivison: Carney’s new defence plan takes seriously the darker world we live in

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