Over the past century, British Columbia has been built by the calloused hands of hardworking loggers, truckers, shipbuilders, welders, electricians, rig workers, farmers and mechanics.

And there have been no shortage of instances when B.C. Premier David Eby references these British Columbians, who are now struggling to make ends meet. Take, for example, his recent appearance at the 2025 CUPE BC Convention, where he waxed poetically about how “we stand on our own two feet with an economy that serves working people,” while describing a Utopian “strong B.C. … where no one gets left behind.”

Yet while his rhetoric about looking after the interests of blue-collar workers throughout the province is continuous, the past few months clearly demonstrate how far the Eby government has strayed from those very workers.

But don’t take my word for it. The New Democratic Party provincial council — comprised of historically strong supporters like the B.C. Federation of Labour, the United Steelworkers and CUPE BC — just condemned the government with a stinging motion in support of B.C.-only procurement rules.

The eruption of the NDP’s current civil war was prompted by BC Ferries’ recently announced decision to award a contract to a Chinese state-owned shipyard that’s worth over $1 billion. The widespread criticism proved to be too much for the premier, who subsequently made calls to labour leaders condemning their decision to air their grievances publicly rather than behind closed doors.

Yet muzzling dissenters isn’t going to make David Eby’s problems go away. His abandonment of British Columbian workers could prove to be a decisive moment in his tenure as premier and a turning point for a government defined by double speak and broken promises.

Nowhere is this more apparent than with the NDP’s backtracking on their 2020 election pledge to stop shipbuilding from “being outsourced to other countries” by “making strategic investments that will keep B.C. shipyards modern and competitive” and “able to win more contracts and create more jobs.”

Fast-forward to 2025, when both the premier and his minister of transportation, Mike Farnworth, are refusing to step in to cancel the purchase from China, hiding behind the flawed logic that BC Ferries is an independent company.

But the fact of that matter is that there’s a long history of course corrections from Crown corporations or quasi-independent entities following government intervention.

In 2022, Eby’s own NDP government applied pressure for leadership change after details of a major conflict of interest within BC Housing emerged. In 2017, they overruled the B.C. Utilities Commission to continue construction on the Site C dam project.

And in 2004, the government of the day delved into BC Ferries’ operations to dispose of the disastrous “fast ferries” and the resulting $450-million debacle the NDP government of the late 1990s left for B.C. taxpayers.

In other words, if Eby and Farnworth wanted to kill this disgraceful BC Ferries deal, they could do so today.

Sadly, this is only one of many recent examples of the NDP betraying the interests of British Columbia’s workforce. Their open disdain for a nation-building pipeline project, typified by comments from Energy Minister Adrian Dix about how “the premier has expressed … non- support for that,” puts tens of thousands potential B.C. job opportunities at grave risk.

The same applies to their complete inaction with regards to protecting the safety for B.C.’s frontline health-care workers. Despite a report from the BC Nurses’ Union that nearly 40 per cent of their members are exposed to a weapon at least once a month, Health Minister Josie Osborne remains silent on any measures to upgrade security policies and procedures at hospitals.

When one contrasts this record with the way NDP insiders have been rewarded with outrageous patronage contracts, David Eby’s priorities become that much clearer.

A no-bid, single-source contract that was going to be given to Michael Bryant to provide recommendations on the Downtown Eastside would have been worth $325,000 for a year’s work.

A just-signed engagement with former NDP minister George Heyman to consult on public-sector negotiations comes in at up to $58,000 for under three months’ of work.

Former Vancouver Coastal Health board chair Penny Ballem has earned nearly $1.4 million in various roles over the past four years.

This is only the tip-of-the-iceberg for NDP appointees receiving fat contracts with little to no public scrutiny.

By contrast, working folks are the people a Conservative government will consider in every decision and expenditure it makes. We believe in putting British Columbians first. We believe in building in B.C., hiring in B.C. and keeping jobs in B.C. And we believe that a government should have the backs of the men and women who get up early, work hard and make this province run, even if it costs a little more to do so.

The future of British Columbia doesn’t belong in the hands of foreign governments or global corporations. It belongs to us — to the workers, the builders and the families who call this province home.

National Post

John Rustad is the leader of the Conservative Party of British Columbia.

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The Middle East has entered a precarious calm. On June 24, a ceasefire brokered by United States President Donald Trump brought a sudden halt to a week of escalating hostilities between the U.S., Israel, and the Islamic Republic of Iran. The missiles have stopped — for now — but the implications of what unfolded are still reverberating across the region, and far beyond it.

This was not just a military flare-up. It was a decisive geopolitical moment that revealed a strategic realignment — and the unmistakable reassertion of American power.

For Iran’s regime, the confrontation exposed its growing vulnerability. For the United States, it marked the end of ambiguity. And for the world, it was the clearest evidence in years that America is not withdrawing from the world — it is re-engaging with purpose.

This was not merely an Israeli campaign. It was a moment of joint resolve between Washington and Jerusalem. For the first time, the United States gave explicit operational backing to Israel to strike deep into Iran’s strategic core. The long-standing policy of restraint — a combination of caution and geopolitical fatigue — was abruptly discarded.

Israel took the operational lead in the opening days of the campaign, targeting Iran’s military infrastructure and command-and-control systems with surgical precision. These strikes laid the groundwork for what followed. Once Iranian air defences and key communication nodes were degraded, U.S. B-2 stealth bombers

entered the theatre

and delivered the coup de grâce: coordinated precision strikes on Iran’s three most sensitive nuclear enrichment sites: Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan. These were not symbolic targets. They were the beating heart of Iran’s atomic ambitions.

The damage was most acute

at Fordo

— the most important of the three sites, and once thought untouchable — where early satellite imagery analysis suggests that extensive subterranean infrastructure may have been compromised. The message was unmistakable: the West not only knows where Iran’s weapons infrastructure lies, it now has the political will and operational reach to neutralize it.

Trump, who had long vowed that Iran would never be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, followed the strikes with a

televised addres

s from the White House. The message was stark: Iran must choose peace or risk further devastation. Three days later, under intense pressure, Tehran accepted a ceasefire. Whether that choice holds is uncertain — but the balance of risk has now shifted.

The United States did not just confront Iran’s proxies. It confronted the regime directly. That marked a Rubicon moment.

For the Islamic Republic, the week of strikes marked its most dangerous crisis since the revolution of 1979. Already crippled by sanctions, riven by internal dissent, and

diplomatically cornered

, it now saw its nuclear and missile infrastructure laid bare. Iran’s deterrence posture — based on ambiguity, asymmetry, and impunity — cracked under the weight of co-ordinated force.

Its proxies, long used to shaping regional dynamics, were caught off guard. Hezbollah, the Houthis, and militias in Iraq offered little but bluster in response. Iran, for once, had no escalation ladder to climb.

But the collapse of deterrence does not mean the arrival of stability. A weakened regime is not a safer one. Iran is a deeply divided, multi-ethnic state with overlapping centres of power. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is not just a military arm — it is a shadow state with its own economic empire. Regime fracture could spark internal chaos, regional spillover, or the uncontrolled spread of nuclear and cyber capabilities.

That said, the West must not confuse military success with strategic resolution. The most dangerous phase may lie ahead.

For Israel, this is a moment of historic vindication. After decades of warnings — often ignored — about Iran’s nuclear intentions, it now acts with the overt backing of the United States. What could have been a lonely pre-emptive campaign became a joint operation. For the first time in years, Israel is not reacting to threats. Its adversaries are reacting to it.

And for the United States, this was more than a regional intervention. It was a statement of renewed global posture. After years of perceived withdrawal — from Kabul, from multilateralism, from leadership — the world had begun to assume that American power was in retreat. That assumption has now been shattered.

We may not all agree with Trump’s approach to international trade — where confrontation has often taken precedence over consensus. But in the realm of hard power, there is no denying that he arrived at this week’s NATO Summit in The Hague with a significant win under his belt — and, however grudging, a new measure of respect from U.S. allies. He has demonstrated that Washington is not paralyzed by hesitation, and that American leadership — when exercised — can still shape the course of international events.

Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran are all taking notice. They may not like it. But they no longer doubt it. The United States has demonstrated that red lines still exist, and that it will act when they are crossed.

The war may be on pause, but the message is clear: the age of American ambivalence is over.

Alan Kessel is a former legal adviser to the Government of Canada and deputy high commissioner to the United Kingdom. He is currently a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

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On Monday, Prime Minister Mark Carney

said — not for the first time — that Canada is “the most European of non-European countries.”
He said it in May, too

, in France; and Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said it as well, in an interview with BBC. So it’s obviously a deliberate talking point. What’s weird about it is that Carney and Joly offer no explanation. They just say it as if it’s an established fact that all Canadians accept — which they obviously would not.

“I want to ensure that France and the whole of Europe works enthusiastically with Canada, the most European of non-European countries,” Carney said Monday in Paris. “Canada is a reliable, trustworthy and strong partner.”

It’s not conspicuously incorrect; it’s just an odd thing to say, even (or maybe especially) when deliberately currying favour on his European tour. Canada is certainly

one of

the countries outside Europe that’s most superficially reminiscent of Europe, along with New Zealand and Australia. But there really aren’t many such countries, and none of them are much like Europe at all. (That’s to the extent Europe, from Lisbon to Bucharest to Helsinki or Moscow — to say nothing of the small towns and rural areas in between — can be considered one thing.)

It has been fascinating to watch people on social media earnestly appreciate Carney’s remark. Many point to our gun-control laws, our universal health care and our robust social-safety net. But that’s not how we’re “like Europe”; that’s how we’re not like the United States. Europe in general has stronger gun control than we do. Many European countries have more robust social safety nets. And they all have universal health care, as do all developed nations other than the U.S. — in many cases more universal, efficient and effective than in Canada.

Indeed, I suspect what most people heard when Carney said “most European” was yet another variation on “not American.”

“Not American” is the bedrock so much Canadian nationalism, and never more so (in my lifetime at least) than during the age of President Donald Trump. Dismal as it can be, there is nothing unnatural about it. Mice are always going to resent their elephant neighbours.

But mice often find ways of co-operating with their elephant neighbours. For all their historic troubles, Irish and British citizens are free to live, work, study and receive full government services in both countries — independently of the European Union. On Monday

came news that London-born David “The Edge” Evans

, guitarist for the oppressively Irish U2, had only just taken out Irish citizenship at the age of 62. He hadn’t needed to, and didn’t have to.

New Zealand and Australia have a similar agreement (though a much friendlier history, of course). And the European Union is the ultimate example. Minnows like Malta and Cyprus swim freely with sharks like Germany and France, and many more minnows at least theoretically aspire to jump in the pool: Montenegro, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Washington is a uniquely tricky partner. But the fact is, Canada is far more like the U.S. than it is like anywhere else. We mostly eat the same fast food. We mostly watch the same television (Quebec being an exception). Our downtowns and suburbs look mostly like their downtowns and suburbs. Our infrastructure deficits are both enormous. Many Europeans, while discerning differences between Canada and the U.S., simply refer to the two together as “America.”

Canada co-operates with the U.S. on issues of mutual importance far more than most Canadian politicians want to highlight. But good luck suggesting any agreement between the two countries on free movement of labour or residency, or access to health care. We can barely manage that

within Canada

. And as Trump has demonstrated, Canada doesn’t even really believe in free

trade

between nations: Even as Ottawa pounds its collective chest in the name of free markets,

the first bill passed by Parliament in this session

protected supply management in the dairy and poultry industries.

It was a bit like passing a law protecting gravity. Supply management needs no further protection. Canadians pay well over the odds for generally crummy butter and cheese — and a very limited selection of both — and no party with a seat in the House of Commons is willing to do anything about it. The aforementioned bill passed in the House with unanimous consent.

That is

distinctly

un-European, of course. Restrictions still exist within the European single market, but that was the original idea behind the EU. There’s a free market in airlines: No one bats an eyelash at flying an Irish carrier between Spain and the U.K., or a Spanish carrier between Croatia and France. There’s a free market in telecommunications, which is part of why using a cell phone in Europe costs next to nothing. Some EU countries even allow foreign ownership of media companies.

There’s a free market in professional athletes, even: European teams don’t “draft” players and then “own their rights.” They go out there with their chequebooks and see what they can buy. And yes, there is free trade in dairy.

There is no sign of Carney’s government moving in such a direction — not even rhetorically, never mind substantially. And that’s what makes his “most European” comment so confusing.

He has self-identified

, in the past, as both Irish and European. Questions of patriotism aside, on the trade front, that perspective could be beneficial to Canada — even to Canadians who deplore the idea of becoming “more European.” (Many Canadians’ forebears did abandon Europe on principle, after all.)

But actions need to match words, and vice versa. Right now, Carney’s do not.

National Post

cselley@postmedia.com

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On Sunday morning, June 23, 1985, shortly after 8 a.m local time, Air India Flight 182 disappeared from the air traffic control radar screens at Ireland’s Shannon Airport. The Boeing 747 Kanishka was heading east towards London at an altitude of 9,400 metres, roughly 100 nautical miles southwest of County Cork’s Sheeps Head Peninsula, and then, suddenly, it was gone.

In the wheelhouse of the the 23,000- tonne British vessel Laurentian Forest, which was carrying a cargo of Canadian newsprint to London, the radio picked up an SOS broadcast from the Irish Coast Guard station on Valentia Island. Captain Roddy McDougall responded immediately, diverting his ship towards the coordinates where the airliner was reported to have vanished, 37 miles away.

Two hours later and first on the scene, McDougall’s ship came upon scattered pieces of wreckage and corpses floating in a sheen of jet fuel. Equipped with only a single lifeboat, the 26 officers and crew of the Laurentian Forest spent the next 12 hours frantically searching for survivors and retrieving the dead from the sea, wrapping the corpses in improvised body bags. The Laurentian Forest was soon joined by the Irish naval vessel L.E. Aisling. Eventually 18 ships joined the search, assisted by the Royal Air Force and the U.S. Air Force.

There was nothing to do by then but collect the dead and the detritus of the worst mass murder in Canadian history and the bloodiest act of terrorism in the history of aviation prior to the al-Qaida atrocities of September 11, 2001. The bombing of Air India Flight 182 was also the worst failure in security intelligence in Canadian history, the most outrageously bungled police investigation and the most humiliating rupture in the administration of justice in Canadian history.

There has never been a full and proper reckoning for any of it.

It’s not just that the Khalistani terrorists who hid the bomb in luggage placed aboard Air India Flight 182 in Vancouver were well known to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and to Canada’s fledgling spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. That same day, at Narita Airport in Japan, another Khalistani bomb from Vancouver, placed aboard another Air India plane, exploded prematurely, killing two baggage handlers.

It’s not just that the operation was carried out by Babbar Khalsa, which Ottawa preferred to leave unmolested as a perfectly legal terrorist organization, or that Babbar Khalsa godfather Talwinder Singh Parmar and his accomplices were under active surveillance as they planned and carried out their plot. It’s not just that in the weeks before the SOS call went out from the Coast Guard station on Valentia Island, the RCMP and CSIS and the Communications Security Establishment were well aware that a terror attack targeting Air India was in the works.

The obscenity at the heart of this story isn’t even that only one person, the bomb maker and perjurer Inderjit Singh Reyat, has ever been convicted on charges related to the June 1985 atrocities, or that Reyat was released from custody in 2017 after having never expressed remorse. It’s that it remains commonplace at Khalistani events in Canada to see sword-carrying fanatics carrying placards bearing Parmar’s image and shouting slogans that wish for the assassination of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, and we are all expected to express shock at the possibility that Modi may be looking the other way while his goons busy themselves in Canada’s Punjabi gangland underworld, devising bullseyes for the backs of the sword-carriers.

At these routine public displays of barbarism you will also see placards held aloft that bear the image of the Khalistanis’ long-dead Osama bin Laden figure, Jarnail Singh Bhinderanwale. It was Bhinderanwale’s reign of terror, directed from the sanctuary he’d seized within the Golden Temple Complex in Amristar — the Vatican of Sikhism — that led to the deaths of thousands of innocents during the 1980s, and to Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi’s bloody rout of the Sikh terrorists from the Golden Temple Complex, which led to her own assassination in 1984.

The thing to notice is what B.C. Supreme Court Judge Ian Bruce Josephson said when he threw up his hands from his bench behind bullet-proof glass in a Vancouver courtroom and dismissed the

prosecution’s incompetence

in the case against Parmar associates Ajaib Singh Bagri and Ripudaman Singh Malik, back in 2005. It is the matter of “fanaticism at its basest and most inhumane level,” Judge Josephson called it, and it has not gone away.

In the end, no survivors were found in the waters off the Irish coast. Of the 329 passengers and crew aboard Flight 182, 268 were Canadian citizens. Only 131 bodies were recovered. Twenty-one years later, in testimony before retired Supreme Court judge

John Major’s

Commission of

Inquiry

into the bombing’s scandalously botched investigation, Mark Stagg, third officer aboard on the Laurentian Forest, recalled the day’s horror. He remembered lifting a child, seemingly uninjured, from the waves. He held the dead boy’s face to his cheek.

“The boy in me died that day. I don’t recognize this until years later, but I feel the passing. I felt it then and I feel it now, and every day my mind is drawn there,” Stagg testified. “My faith in goodness, and God, and sense and normality died then.”

And here we are, 40 years later, and the atrocity’s anniversary this week allowed the opportunity that such anniversaries tend to provide to delicately touch upon certain facts that ordinarily no one is particularly interested in hearing. Like the fact that it has been convenient for Canadian politicians to treat the bombing of Air India Flight 182 as just a sordid affair involving inscrutable foreigners. And the fact that in respectable circles in Canada, it is considered bad form to dwell on the mainstream political influence of powerful Khalistani elements that have come to hold sway over much of Canada’s Sikh community. It should come as no surprise that

Angus Reid’s

latest polling shows that we all remain largely unaware of or otherwise oblivious to what occurred off the Irish coast all those years ago.

It’s just so much easier to defer to the World Sikh Organization, or Sikhs for Justice, or former NDP leader

Jagmeet Singh

or ranking

Liberal MP Sukh Dhaliwal,

and to tolerate their insinuations that the Air India mass murder of 1985 was the handiwork of perpetrators other than Sikh separatists. It’s easier to do that than admit that what happened off the coast of Ireland 40 years ago was the work of bloodthirsty Khalistani extremists, right here in Canada, and our own government allowed it to happen.

National Post

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• Adam Pankratz: B.C. premier doesn’t seem to think B.C. should even exist

B.C. Premier David Eby is unique among provincial leaders for many reasons, but perhaps the most striking is that he seems to not really believe the province he governs should even exist.

Recent land management decisions and deals made by Eby and his NDP government explicitly state that the Government of British Columbia is no longer the final arbiter of what happens in this province, as control is ceded to First Nations in backroom deals.

This is not reconciliation in action, it’s high-handed abuse of B.C.’s Crown lands that will only result in resentment and lost opportunity for the province and its citizens.

The most recent episode in Eby’s abuse of public lands is a deal agreed to with the Tsilhqot’in Nation. Know as the

Teẑtan Biny Agreement

, it seeks to resolve mineral tenures in the Teẑtan Biny (Fish Lake) area. Stated explicitly in the agreement is the fact that there will be no mining activity without “the free, prior and informed consent of the Tŝilhqot’in Nation.”

The agreement then specifies that the “Tŝilhqot’in Nation’s consent to a proposed mine project … is necessary for that mining project to proceed,” and that the parties have agreed to negotiate a “consent-based decision-making agreement.”

There, in black and white, is what Eby and the NDP envisage as their interpretation of the much-debated meaning of “free, prior and informed consent”: a veto.

The Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (

DRIPA

), which was passed in 2019, aimed to bring B.C. laws into alignment with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (

UNDRIP

). The UN document, however, was never intended to become law.

At its core, it’s aspirational about the rights of Indigenous peoples in countries in which they continue to be actively persecuted. In fact, Article 46(1) of UNDRIP purposely points out that the declaration is not intended to impair or supersede the sovereignty of a state.

As a result, UNDRIP’s true relevance to Canada was always limited, as we already have constitutionally guaranteed Indigenous rights and other strong legal protections.

There has, for some time now, been a concern that the “free, prior and informed consent” requirements of DRIPA would give First Nations a veto over large infrastructure and resource projects, but the government frequently

rebuffed these claims

.

The Teẑtan Biny Agreement makes plain that this is not the case. First Nations will have veto power in all but name if the NDP are allowed to implement their vision for public lands in British Columbia.

Making matters worse, the Teẑtan Biny area is not even within the established Tsilhqot’in Aboriginal title area. The area is clearly Crown land, which makes the B.C. NDP’s decision not to defend these public lands, or the users of that land, even more troublesome.

Further, the agreement also begins a land use planning process on a larger area of Crown land that the nation asserts as the “Dasiqox Nexwagwezʔan,” without engaging the relevant rights holders.

The ire for the current abuse of public lands by the B.C. NDP should be squarely directed towards David Eby’s government and its new minister of water, land and resource stewardship, Randene Neill.

It’s entirely natural that First Nations want the best deal they can get. But by selling the rest of B.C. down the river, Eby’s NDP is doing serious damage to our future prosperity and to reconciliation efforts.

The implications of the agreement on mineral tenure and land use in the Teẑtan Biny area should concern all British Columbians. If the future of the province is to be one where Crown lands can be accessed freely by all, secret deals of this type, in which the government abdicates its responsibility to defend the rights of all B.C. residents to the benefit of a few, must end.

National Post

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Thursday or Friday, the Senate will hold its final vote on bill C-5, which contains two bills in one, one on internal free trade, the other the Building Canada Act. By all indications, a large majority of senators will vote in favour of the bill. They shouldn’t.

The Building Canada Act will give Prime Minister Mark Carney’s cabinet the authority to identify “national Interest projects” and to bypass the normal legal and regulatory processes, especially the cumbersome Impact Assessment Act (bill C-69, adopted in 2018), to authorize said-projects. The government would essentially have arbitrary power to determine under what conditions those projects go forward.

I agree with the prime minister that, especially in the current geopolitical context, Canada needs to build infrastructure projects that will strengthen our economy and reduce our dependence on the United States. I also agree that federal laws and regulations, including C-69, unnecessarily slow down the approval of such projects. But, as explained on these pages by lawyer

Josh Dehaas,

the solution is not to legalize the arbitrary bypass of those laws and regulations, but to amend or repeal them.

Bill C-5 was tabled in the House of Commons on June 6. A bill like this one, with wide-ranging consequences, requires close examination by interested parties, experts and legislators. This is impossible to do in a mere three weeks. Let us consider what is happening here: the government is asking Parliament to give it extraordinary power to ignore acts that were democratically adopted, without allowing legislators the time to study the bill thoroughly. This is extremely concerning. Members of Parliament, their hands tied by partisanship, agreed to this pact with the devil. But senators, whose role is to provide “sober second thought,” and who never miss the chance to trumpet their independence, should rebel against this potential abuse of power.

As it has often done in the past, the government argues that it needs to act fast, that we are in an emergency. Yes, we need major infrastructure projects, and we need them to be built as fast as possible. However, there are no shovel-ready projects at the moment; a few more weeks of parliamentary study would not make a difference… except that we would end up with a better, more balanced piece of legislation.

When I was in the Senate, the government urged us to move expeditiously on an omnibus bill creating the Canada Infrastructure Bank. Several senators disagreed, arguing that legislation creating a $35 billion government institution should be looked at thoroughly. After a close vote, the bill passed. Yet it took years for the bank to get going. There was no need to rush.

To be fair, senators did hear several witnesses last week, and have been asking the government tough questions about C-5. But what use is it to hear witnesses if you cannot amend the bill? Essentially, government representatives have responded by asking legislators to trust them, that cabinet will do the right thing. This is not how Parliament should legislate. Once a bill is adopted, what matters is the precise language of the act, not the intentions, however good, expressed by the government of the day.

There is a lot of pressure on senators this week to vote in favour of C-5 as is. The argument is always the same: it is not the unelected Senate’s business to interfere with legislation adopted by the House of Commons. I disagree. Either the Senate exists and does its job, or the Red Chamber is nothing more than an expensive ornament. If senators are serious, and I know them to be, they should protest when the government allows them only a few days to analyze a major piece of legislation. In the current situation, this means that the Senate should defeat C-5, or at the very least amend it to curtail cabinet’s arbitrary power. No doubt this would make the government angry. They would have to recall the House of Commons, and vote on the bill again, with or without the Senate’s amendments. The Senate would then likely relent and submit to the elected chamber’s decision, as it should in the end. But it would have done its duty, in this case by highlighting the careless and undemocratic process imposed by the prime minister’s haste.

This is not what will happen this week. The Senate will almost certainly bow to the government’s pressure and vote in favour of C-5. Unfortunately, the Red Chamber will thereby confirm its naysayers presumption that its proclaimed independence is nothing more than window-dressing.

André Pratte is a former Canadian senator.

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U.S. President Donald Trump finally acts like the leader of the free world he is supposed to be by bombing Iran’s nuclear sites, and his critics in the media are giving themselves a concussion trying to spin it as a bad thing.

There has been the usual chorus of complaints from left-wing and some conservative (ugh) commentators, along with Democrats. The arguments are largely recycled from the opposition to former president George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, or any argument marshalled against the U.S. doing anything useful in the world whatsoever: Trump was acting unilaterally; the strikes were unlawful or unconstitutional; the consequences are unpredictable; there was not enough time for diplomacy; Israel is just as bad as Iran; or my personal favourite, Trump did the right thing, but it is now the wrong thing because Trump did it.

The opinion pages of the

Globe and Mail

,

New York Times

and the

Guardian

have been littered with these arguments in the lead up to, and in the days since, the U.S. strikes. The most ill-informed, head shaking and downright immoral of them all, however, came from Globe columnist Gary Mason,

who posted on X on Saturday:

“I’m hoping someone will soon explain to me why it’s okay for Israel to have nukes but not Iran. I’m sure there is a perfectly good reason. I’ve just not heard it yet.”

Mason, who eventually deleted the post, implied that democratic Israel, which is surrounded by enemies wishing genocide upon it, is somehow morally equivalent to an oppressive, warmongering theocratic dictatorship that is the world’s chief sponsor of terrorism. It is obvious why Israel has a nuclear deterrent, though it has never threatened to use its arsenal and barely even acknowledges it exists.

The Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies have been responsible for terrorist attacks throughout the Middle East and it supports terrorist planning around the world. The regime is dedicated to the annihilation of Israel, and has been trying to develop a nuclear weapon for over 20 years. The Trump-ordered bombing on Saturday was the correct thing to do.

Iran had enough enriched uranium to build nine nuclear bombs, and it tried to prevent UN inspectors from monitoring its nuclear program. Trump had given the Islamic Republic 60 days to come to a deal that would allow for peaceful nuclear development and the lifting of sanctions. The regime refused.

Former U.S. president Barack Obama’s

appeasement

of dictators in Russia, Iran, Syria, China and elsewhere is one of the primary reasons why the relative global stability that existed at the end of the Cold War has vanished, causing the world to become unmoored. It is unsurprising that Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, as another former Democratic president, Joe Biden, practically invited him to.

With that in mind, the notion that Iran could successfully be negotiated with, at least without a show of force, is fantastical thinking. American deterrence needed to be restored, and whatever other foreign policy failings Trump has — on international trade, or his lack of support for Ukraine — striking Iran’s nuclear sites was necessary. Even if the Islamic Republic’s enriched uranium cannot all be accounted for, the Americans have signalled forcefully that they are willing to defend and assert their strategic interests in the Middle East.

As for whether or not the attack was unlawful, Trump probably should have sought congressional approval, but as the New York Times

reported

on Sunday, “Congress has made formal war declarations in only five conflicts, and none since World War II.”

The Times added that the last president to seek support of any kind for the use of military force was Bush before invading Iraq: “There has been a legal equivalent from Congress that President George W. Bush was the last American leader to successfully seek: an authorization for the use of military force, often called an AUMF.”

Both Biden and Obama

ordered bombings

on presidential authority alone. Congress has effectively given up its war-making powers.

Ultimately, criticism of Trump’s bombing of Iran rests on either the belief that Iran was really serious about diplomacy, that Israel is somehow equivalent to it or that Trump should be held to a different standard than Democratic presidents because he is Trump. The latter argument has been popular among nominally conservative critics of the U.S. president.

Atlantic writer, and former Bush speechwriter, David Frum

argued

on Sunday that the attack was correct, but fatally flawed because it was ordered by Trump, and not someone else: “Trump did the right thing, but he did that right thing in the wrongest possible way: without Congress, without competent leadership in place to defend the United States against terrorism and while waging a culture war at home against half the nation.”

Frum fails to note that apart from the point about seeking support in Congress, much the same could have been, and was, said about his former boss.

On this side of the border, Globe columnist Andrew Coyne made a similar point to Frum,

noting on X

that he has “no confidence whatever” in Trump or “his team” to “assess” or “manage” the risks involved in a military confrontation with Iran.

But Coyne couldn’t even acknowledge that the strike on the Islamic Republic was the right thing to do: “I’m open to persuasion of the merits of taking out Iran’s nukes, in principle — even with all of the enormous risks involved.”

Open to persuasion? Back when he was a National Post columnist, Coyne was the one doing the persuading for U.S. military intervention, supporting the Iraq war and later advocating for U.S. involvement in Syria. “If all the choices are bad, you might as well do the right thing,”

he wrote in a 2013 column

, where the “right thing” was military intervention.

When Obama failed to react forcefully enough to former Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Coyne

noted

: “You think the Iranian regime, for example, is not watching all this with a cool and appraising eye?” He then called Obama’s subsequent engagement with Iran “the bitterest part of the farce.”

It is quite obvious that 2013 Coyne, not the 2025 edition, was right.

A distaste for Trump has robbed the common sense of too many commentators, even otherwise sensible ones.

National Post

• Michael Higgins: After Trump’s airstrikes on Iran, the world is a safer place
• Anthony Koch: Sometimes, war is the answer

What a difference six months make. In December, Canada’s Conservatives were in the catbird seat with 48 per cent support, while the Liberals dropped to 19. Practically everyone pegged Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre as Canada’s next prime minister.

Then Justin Trudeau stepped down, Donald Trump took office and Mark Carney got elected Liberal leader. One federal election later, the Liberals have a minority and would likely have a majority if a vote were held today. It’s a reversal of fortunes worthy of a Shakespearean play (or, for the gen Z crowd, a Netflix drama).

The lesson is that politics is all about timing. While Poilievre was the perfect foil for the hapless Trudeau, it’s not clear how he counters Carney. Apple chomping videos won’t cut it. In the current climate, they look positively juvenile. The world sits on the brink of another world war, Canada is trying to get a trade deal with the U.S. and we just inked a defence agreement with the European Union. This is a game for grownups, not social media stars.

It also doesn’t help that the Liberals are implementing much of the Conservative agenda, starting with a carbon tax cut, an income tax cut and legislation to speed up major projects and resources development. The latter, Bill C-5, passed with the help of the Conservatives, and despite opposition from Indigenous and environmental groups, both key constituencies for the previous Liberal government.

Such a thing would have never happened under Trudeau, for whom electoral calculus and virtue-signalling trumped the national interest. He said it was a shame that a female president hadn’t been elected instead of Trump.

He apologized for abuses at Canada’s residential schools, but turned a blind eye to the torching of churches. And he trashed Canada’s relationship with India to gain favour with Sikh voters, while turning his back on Israel to court the Muslim vote.

In contrast, Carney is emerging as a non-ideological pragmatist. He’s hell-bent on getting Canada what it needs: a trade deal with the U.S., diversified partnerships in trade and security and a renewed relationship with India.

At the G7 summit, he praised Trump, hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and managed expectations of a final communique even before the confab began. He may not be an experienced politician, but he is a diplomat, and it showed.

That’s not to say Carney doesn’t have a belief system, notably on climate change. Left-wing outlets may decry his embrace of oil and gas, but if they read between the lines, it’s clear that he prefers a greener path. However, he realizes that unless you do both, he won’t pass Go: it’s not just the Trump administration that takes a dim view, but hard-up consumers who are also turning their backs on electric vehicles.

And on the other end of the political spectrum, Carney is also raising eyebrows. At a press conference with EU leaders, he described Canada as “the most European of the non-European countries,” and talked of “increased harmonization of our regulatory frameworks.” The EU is famous for its byzantine and overweening regulations, from the ingredients in baguettes to ESG mandates to rules governing the digital economy — an approach that’s curiously at odds with the get ‘er done spirit of Bill C-5.

But this quixotic approach may be exactly what keeps Carney in power, because it marginalizes both the left and the right, squeezing them into more extreme spaces that centrist voters eschew. For Poilievre, it’s bad news: if he meets Carney on his middle ground, he risks alienating the anti-globalist crowd, but if he panders to those voters, he will drive even more “progressive conservatives” to Carney. For the Conservative leader, it could be a long, hot summer, indeed.

Postmedia Network

Tasha Kheiriddin is Postmedia’s national politics columnist.

• Kelly McParland: Carney and Poilievre struggle to distinguish themselves
• FIRST READING: Poilievre now further from electoral victory than at any point since winning leadership