Information manipulation poses the single biggest threat to Canadian democracy, concluded commissioner Marie Josée Hogue, in her 

final report on foreign interference 

in federal elections, earlier this year.

It probably came as no surprise to the commissioner that emerging technologies amplified the falsehoods during the recent general election.

Generative AI has emerged as a new player in the disinformation game, enabling malign actors to create huge quantities of misleading content.

Cyabra, a company that monitors disinformation online, published a two-part analysis on the use of fake profiles by co-ordinated networks on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and Instagram to target the Liberal campaign and party leader Mark Carney.

Cyabra sampled 2,451 profiles that mentioned Carney between February 19th and March 21st, which generated 3,418 posts and comments.

Negative sentiment dominated around one-third of those posts and, of those posts, 76 per cent referenced a connection with disgraced socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, or implied that Carney had visited an island owned by her former partner, the late American financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The claims were often accompanied by 

fabricated images 

that suggested Carney is a “child-molesting pervert” and were shared as if they were authentic.

A crossover from the online world to the campaign took place at a Liberal rally in Kitchener, Ont., when a heckler was heard shouting: “How many kids did you molest with Jeffrey Epstein?”

Cyabra’s detection systems identified that nearly one-quarter of the X accounts were fake (the software looks for signs like synchronized posting, copy-paste campaigns, fake engagement loops and other bot-like behaviour, such as accounts with no personal bios and using default avatars).

The other Cyabra analysis looked at activity on X between April 14th to 21st and found a surge of inauthentic activity

aimed at creating negative perceptions of the Liberal party and Carney

.

The company analyzed 2011 profiles that generated 2,947 posts and comments.

It found that 28 per cent of the profiles were fake and pushed negative sentiment, such as labelling Carney as an elitist who was trying to manipulate the political process. The profiles portrayed the political system as corrupt and urged people not to vote Liberal.

“These are not abstract data points,” said Jill Burkes, Cyabra’s communications lead. “They show in real time how democratic discourse is being hijacked by actors who know exactly what buttons to push and when.”

The Liberals were not the only victims. Scammers used sensationalist headlines and facsimiles of 

real Canadian news pages

 featuring Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre to lure people into a cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme.

But the Cyabra analysis is a particularly good example of how malicious actors can use social media to spread false narratives across the country before the truth can get its socks on.

AI is helping to undermine trust in a system that is already regarded with suspicion — and it is getting better at doing it.

“AI keeps developing in leaps and bounds,” said Marcus Kolga, founder and director of DisinfoWatch, a Canadian disinformation monitor. “There will come a day when these fake images and videos will be almost undetectable. We need to be prepared for that moment, and I’m not sure we are.”

Thanks to the foreign interference controversies, Canadians are familiar with the ways hostile powers have tried (and are trying) to shape democracy in this country.

The 2025 election proved no different from its immediate predecessor. The Russia Today news propaganda channel actively tried to exploit divisions between Canada and the U.S.

American conspiracy theorists Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones embraced People’s Party leader Maxime Bernier, with the former

calling Poilievre “a fraud

.”

The government’s Security and Intelligence Threats to Election task force intervened mid-election to warn about a

co-ordinated online influence campaign by the Chinese government

on the WeChat social media platform,

including a disinformation operation aimed at Conservative candidate Joe Tay

, a Hong Kong democracy advocate, who lost in the riding of Don Valley North. Tay was subject to an arrest warrant in Hong Kong and a post on Facebook asked: “Is Canada about to become a fugitive’s paradise?”

Nagging worries remain about China’s ability to manipulate the information environment through its effective control of TikTok. Critics argue that the social media platform serves as 

Beijing’s strategic tool

 to advance its political narratives and that it can configure its algorithm to suit its needs. I’ve seen no evidence to suggest the platform intervened on this occasion, but the potential is clearly there.

The most worrying aspect of these shifts is that the Wild West of social media is precisely where younger people source their news. A slide by Relay Strategies during a recent presentation suggested that women between 18 and 34 received only about one-quarter of their campaign information from television, compared to nearly three-quarters for women over 65.

That reflects the 

generational divide

 found by pollster Pollara last year, which said that 57 per cent of generation Z got its news from social media, compared to just 18 per cent for boomers.

I would be first to admit that legacy media has to do a better job convincing Canadians that it is worthy of their confidence. But the Pollara poll suggests there are still high levels of trust in outlets like CBC, CTV, Global, Radio Canada and TVA in broadcast, and National Post, the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and La Presse in print.

For all the grousing about the mainstream media, you would have to possess the naiveté of Forrest Gump to rank X, Instagram or TikTok as more trustworthy than untrustworthy.

The technology exists to use AI to fight malicious AI. For example, Cyabra’s software can identify mis/disinformation. But, crucially, it doesn’t have the power to remove it. That responsibility lies with the platforms — and they are not minded to moderate their content. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram,

has ended its fact-checking program

and X has pulled out of the European Union’s voluntary code on disinformation.

The EU still has a Digital Services Act that obliges platforms to address the spread of disinformation. However, Canada has no enforcement mechanism, beyond the Canada Election Act’s prohibition on spreading false information about candidates, and the Criminal Code on hate speech.

DisinfoWatch’s Kolga points to Finland’s efforts to counter Russian disinformation as a non-legislative response that Canada should consider.

The Finnish government launched anti-fake news initiatives in 2014 and has since incorporated media literacy and critical thinking into school curriculums. Kindergarten teachers are seen as the first line of defence, and students are encouraged to become digital detectives in the search for disinformation. The Nordic country was recently rated Number 1 in a list of 35 European countries in terms of resilience to disinformation.

“Finland has taken a long-term approach, inoculating its children to disinformation from an early age. That is something we can, and should, look at,” said Kolga.

National Post

jivison@criffel.ca

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• Liberal candidate invited head of suspected secret Chinese police station to campaign event
• China linked to fake ‘wanted’ poster, repression efforts against Conservative candidate

On Wednesday night, the unthinkable happened on American soil: two young Israeli diplomats, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, were brutally gunned down in a targeted, antisemitic attack outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., by a perpetrator who shouted “free Palestine,” as he was being arrested.

Lischinsky had just bought an engagement ring, and was planning to propose to Milgrim on a trip to Jerusalem next week, their love cut so mercilessly short.

The brutal reality is that such an act of utter violence was the logical and horrific consequence of a relentless campaign of demonization, disinformation and delegitimization against the Jewish state — led not by fringe extremists alone, but by western governments and institutions.

Although the blood of these two young diplomats is first and foremost on the hands of their killer, responsibility is also shared by every government that has, in recent months, legitimized hatred against Israel under the guise of international law, diplomacy and human rights.

In recent weeks, we have seen an avalanche of false moral equivalence and political duplicity from the very countries that purport to uphold freedom and justice, and make a show of their supposedly unwavering commitment to combating the scourge of Jew-hatred.

The United Kingdom, for example, once a stalwart ally of Israel, has disgracefully suspended free trade negotiations, imposed sanctions on some Israelis and summoned Israel’s ambassador for a public dressing-down over Gaza, which it has called “intolerable” and “monstrous.”

France has followed suit, embracing punitive rhetoric, while doing little to pressure Hamas to release the hostages and calling for immediate recognition of a Palestinian state.

Canada, under new leadership, has shown alarming signs of softening its support for Israel, while, like the U.K. and France, increasingly parroting Hamas talking points on Gaza and ignoring the grotesque reality of Hamas’s tactics — including embedding weapons in schools, hospitals and civilian homes, and using its own people as human shields in its war of annihilation against the Jewish state.

Earlier this week, each of these three countries were immediately applauded by Hamas, upon announcing an unprecedented joint condemnation of Israel and threats of further sanctions against the Jewish state, if it does not acquiesce to their demands over aid that continues to be systematically diverted and weaponized by Hamas.

This relentless campaign to isolate, sanction and vilify Israel does not occur in a vacuum. It clearly sends a message. A message that Israeli lives are worth less, that Jewish self-defence is unacceptable and that terrorism against Israelis may not only be tolerated, but tacitly justified.

And this message is being received loud and clear — by violent extremists on the streets of London, Paris, Montreal and now Washington, D.C., by radicalized students chanting genocidal slogans to “free Palestine” and to “globalize the intifada” on western campuses, and yes, by the killer who walked up to Israeli diplomats in Washington and ended their lives in cold blood.

Perhaps when the murderer from Washington and the jihadists from Gaza are shouting the same slogans as leaders from Europe and Canada, it might be time to rethink your policy?

What began in the halls of the United Nations, with its endless stream of one-sided resolutions condemning Israel, and the media, which has echoed one blood libel after another, has now metastasized into the language of western foreign ministries and international courts. The result is the normalization and mainstreaming of antisemitism and incitement, under the guise of diplomacy. And now, the consequences are being paid in blood.

This is certainly not the first time that the dehumanization of Jews has led to violence. But it is perhaps the first time in recent memory that it has been so directly aided and abetted by Israel’s supposed allies.

If the international community truly wishes to honour these two murder victims, it must begin by taking a long, hard look in the mirror.

It must start by ending the incessant double standards and opprobrium applied only to Israel — the sole democracy in the Middle East and the only state expected to fight a war against genocidal terrorists with one hand tied behind its back.

It must include a full-throated condemnation not just of the act of murder, but of the poisonous rhetoric and policy decisions that led to it.

This tragedy should be a wake-up call to every western leader. Appeasement of terror and appeasement of those who hate Israel does not bring peace. It brings more violence, more extremism and more death.

Because if your silence continues, if your condemnation remains reserved for Israel alone, then Wednesday night’s tragedy will sadly not be the last.

National Post

Arsen Ostrovsky is an international human rights lawyer and CEO of the International Legal Forum. 

First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.

TOP STORY

In what critics say is a template of things to come, B.C. has begun closing public parks to non-Indigenous residents citing “cultural concerns.”

This week, the B.C. government announced that Botanical Beach — a popular spot along the Juan de Fuca Marine Trail — would be closed for 24 hours over the May 24 weekend “to provide time, space and privacy for members of the Pacheedaht First Nation to harvest marine resources and reconnect with an important part of their territory.”

This follows on a series of similar closure of Joffre Lakes Provincial Park, one of the busiest recreational spots in the province.

From April 25 until May 16, non-Indigenous usage of the park is banned, and “more temporary closures are anticipated”

reads an April 25 bulletin

by B.C.’s Ministry of the Environment and Parks.

The closures are to “provide time and space for members of the Líl̓wat Nation and N͛Quatqua to reconnect with the land and carry out cultural and spiritual practices,” it reads.

It will be the third year in a row that Joffre Lakes has been subject to some sort of closure for non-Indigenous visitors.

The first, in 2023, occurred when the nearby Líl̓wat and N’Quatqua First Nations unilaterally barred public access to the park for more than five weeks.

“In this time of reconciliation, Lil’wat Nation and N’Quatqua First Nation are asserting our Title and Rights to our shared unceded territory to take this time to harvest and gather our resources within our territories,” read a statement

telling the B.C. public

they would be barred access to the park from Aug. 23 “until National Truth and Reconciliation Day” (Sept. 30).

When the Joffre Lakes closure was given official government sanction in 2024, B.C. Environment Minister George Heyman notably stressed that the action would not be a template for future closures of parks to non-Indigenous users.

“There is no universal policy,” Heyman

said at the time

, adding that Joffre Lakes was only being closed because of a “distinction-based approach.”

In a statement to National Post, the B.C. Ministry of Environment and Parks said “these temporary closures represent a critical step forward on the path of reconciliation and an important building block for future conversations on shared stewardship, park management and access.”

It added, “First Nations may bring forward requests at any point during the year and we will work together to explore options to address their interests in balance with ensuring continued conservation and recreational opportunities for everyone.”

In addition to the Botanical Beach and Joffre Lakes shutdowns, B.C. has also seen a series of federally run recreation areas closed to public usage, with authorities also citing cultural concerns.

On April 15, Parks Canada announced the indefinite closure of a section of Gulf Islands National Park Reserve of Canada.

Cabbage Island, the site of a large day-use area and several wilderness campsites, is now subject to a “prohibited activity order”; anybody caught using the site now risks prosecution under the Canada National Parks Act.

“The purpose of this order is to protect the natural and cultural resources of the park,” reads a Parks Canada warning

posted around the site

.

A section of Pacific Rim National Park Reserve has also been shuttered for the 2025 season, with

an official alert

saying it is being done for “National Park Reserve management and cultural purposes.”

The restricted area is Willis Island, the site of several kayak-accessible campsites. Although in this case the inciting incident was a November 2024 windstorm that littered the island with toppled trees. “To ensure public safety and address infrastructure repairs, Tseshaht First Nation and Parks Canada have temporarily closed the island,” read a notice

published after the storm

.

The Joffre Lakes closure has previously attracted criticism from Kevin Falcon, who served as Opposition leader until B.C.’s October 2024 provincial election. Last summer, he told a news conference that he opposed the closure of public parks in principle, and that any Indigenous accommodation of the site “should be done in the context of ensuring that this park is still available to the public.”

But one of the most widely circulated critiques of the policy is a

May 8 video

by Caroline Elliott, a former candidate with the now-defunct political party BC United.

Elliot said that the Joffre Lakes closure was precipitated via the Lil’wat and N’Quatqua’s mere assertion of title over the park — even though this claim has never been formally confirmed.

B.C. differs from much of Canada in that most of the province sits atop land that has never been formally ceded via treaty, aside from a handful of small 19th century treaties and

four modern treaties

struck in the 21st century.

Those modern treaties do allow Indigenous control over provincial parks, such as Nisga’a Memorial Lava Bed Protected Area, which is jointly managed by the Nisg̱a’a Nation, the signatory of B.C.’s first modern treaty in 2000.

But that’s not the case with Joffre Lakes, which is simply within an area that Lil’wat and N’Quatqua have claimed as their traditional territory. The nations’ 2023 statement announcing the sudden closure of the park cited the authority of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

“We’re now in a place where the mere assertion of title confers the right to prohibit public access to public spaces,” said Elliott, noting that every single hectare of untreatied land in B.C. is subject to at least one or more Indigenous territorial claims.

“We have to ask; what would prevent more closures like this, not just in parks, but in relation to any other public land?” she said.

IN OTHER NEWS

Although it appears like former prime minister Justin Trudeau won’t be hitting the speaking circuit for a while, he is already benefiting from the

extremely generous perks

extended to ex heads of government. According to calculations by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation,

Trudeau will begin receiving a $141,000/year pension when he turns 55 in two years,

and another $73,000 when he turns 67. And that’s in addition to the $104,000 in severance he received by virtue of not being an MP anymore.

Get all of these insights and more into your inbox by signing up for the First Reading newsletter here.

• Canada Post turns down potential strike delay offer from union
• Liberal MPs considering voting for power to trigger leadership review after Trudeau experience

The Government of Canada’s Indigenous Justice Strategy, released in March,

promises

to build a parallel criminal justice system for Indigenous people while reforming the rest of Canadian law to “address systemic discrimination.” It’s hardly necessary, considering how Indigenous people might even fare better in the criminal justice system than their white counterparts.

Indeed, earlier this May, a freshly released Statistics Canada report, covering justice system outcomes of white and Indigenous accused persons in the justice system from 2016-17 to 2020-21,

concluded

that “after controlling for the severity of the offence, Indigenous accused were equally likely as White accused to experience a guilty decision.”

The report made additional findings: one, that Indigenous people were 100 per cent more likely than white people to have their charges stayed; white accused were 20 per cent more likely to have their charges withdrawn, which has about the same effect as a stay.

Another was in the area of sentencing: among those found guilty, Indigenous offenders were more likely to receive a jail sentence — an effect that was particularly pronounced among first-time offenders. However, among all offenders sentenced to custody, Indigenous people were more likely to receive short sentences, while white offenders were more likely to receive medium-term and long-term sentences.

As for house arrest, Indigenous offenders were 25 to 35 per cent more likely to receive it as a sentence, depending on the year, in relation to white offenders. Probation and fines, on the other hand, were more prevalently given to white offenders.

Finally, white offenders were more likely to be acquitted.

Interestingly, much of the authors’ analysis attributed their findings to the existence of systemic racism against Indigenous people. The fact that Indigenous people had more prior convictions was blamed on society: “criminal history reflects the influence of various factors in addition to prior actions, including socioeconomic marginalization, racism and systemic discrimination.” The higher likelihood of Indigenous people to breach court order conditions was blamed on historical systemic discrimination and “cultural differences and ambivalence towards the Western justice system.”

On the other hand, the authors attributed the equal rates of guilty findings between white and Indigenous offenders to be a potential result of the elimination of racism.

But overall, the study showed that the creeping evil of systemic discrimination that has allegedly corrupted the justice system (and, really, all of Canada) isn’t actually there. Yes, it’s true that Indigenous people are overrepresented in the justice system, but that’s just a function of that population being charged with more crimes. Accounting for offence severity, they’re guilty at just the same rate as the privileged whites. And, on a number of metrics, they receive gentler outcomes, as well: stayed charges, shorter prison terms, house arrest.

There’s even room to suggest white people are treated with more punitive force: the study found that half of Indigenous offenders had five or more prior convictions, compared to one-quarter of white offenders. “This finding is important,” the authors noted, ”because evidence suggests that accused with more prior convictions are more likely to be reconvicted.” If that’s the case, and both groups were found guilty at equal rates (when accounting for severity), one could infer that the criminal history of white offenders is taken into greater consideration.

Then, there’s the fact that white offenders were given more long-term sentences, and were less likely to get house arrest. That tracks with the aggressive nudging the federal government has been giving the courts regarding Indigenous offenders: lower jail sentences and more house arrest. The federal prosecution deskbook even tells Crown prosecutors to seek

lighter sentences

for Indigenous offenders. Heck, it’s the law: the Supreme Court has required judges to consider race-based discounts for Indigenous people since the 1999 decision of R v. Gladue.

White offenders did indeed have a higher acquittal rate, which could be attributed by some to anti-Indigenous racism by the courts — but it could also be a result of more white accused persons being taken all the way to trial. If weaker cases against Indigenous people are being habitually dropped, but the same isn’t being done for white offenders, you’d likely see relatively more white acquittals. Indeed, federal prosecution guidelines

instruct

Crowns to consider Indigenous identity and “the impact of systemic racism” in deciding whether to drop charges.

Another explanation for the relatively higher jail rate for Indigenous offenders could be their greater likelihood to commit “administration of justice offences” — these include charges for not showing up to court, as well as breaches of bail and probation conditions. These offences theoretically come with a greater likelihood of jail, because the offender has demonstrated trouble following court orders while out in the community. So, if a group was committing them at greater rates, one would expect that group to end up in jail at greater rates. Which is exactly what was found.

There are still plenty of unknowns in the data, but what is certain is that we don’t have definitive proof of a systemically racist justice system. Liberals will point to the demographics of the prison population as a sign of Canada’s sins, but any further perusal of the data shows that the system isn’t, in fact, tilted in all ways against Indigenous people.

And yet, the Liberal government is almost certain to carry on with the Trudeauvian crusade against “systemic racism,” which involves doling out vast sums to Indigenous groups and assisting them in setting up a parallel justice system, a “decarceration strategic framework” and all sorts of other racially-restricted programs that erode the notion of equality in Canada. Evidence-based policy, indeed.

National Post

• Jamie Sarkonak: Court defers to ‘sentencing circle’ to cut violent criminal’s jail term
• Jamie Sarkonak: Canada’s criminal sentencing discounts for non-citizens are unfair

Some readers may be familiar with Frédéric Chopin’s “Piano Sonata No. 2” and its haunting third movement,

the funeral march

. Canada should consider playing this as we march toward the seemingly inevitable funeral for Canada Post.

The Crown corporation is on its last legs. A

devastating report

released last week by the Industrial Inquiry Commission (IIC) highlighted how serious the problem is. Canada Post is

facing

an “existential crisis: it is effectively insolvent, or bankrupt,” IIC commissioner William Kaplan noted in the report. If immediate action isn’t taken, “its fiscal situation will continue to deteriorate.”

Things have become so bad, the federal government lent Canada Post

$1 billion

in January. The belief was that it would allow the Crown corporation to maintain operations during this period of “significant financial challenges.” That perception turned out to be wrong, as the IIC painted a very different picture.

“Canada Post was categorical: without the Government of Canada loan or line of credit, it would not at some time in 2025 have been able to meet its obligations,” including paying its employees and redeeming $500 million in bonds that come due this summer, the report found. “The crisis was not manufactured: it had long been apparent for all to see and could no longer be ignored.”

The IIC report, to its credit, made some reasonable recommendations, including: using part-time employees; ending moratoriums on closing rural post offices and switching over to community mailboxes; and phasing out daily door-to-door delivery for households.

The idea of phasing out home delivery was

proposed in 2013

and supported by former prime minister Stephen Harper’s government, but was ultimately reversed by his successor, Justin Trudeau.

While Canada Post executives have clearly seen the writing on the mailbox, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) has continued to ignore reality. “CUPW would not adjust its bargaining demands to address the problem,” Kaplan wrote in his report, “making it impossible to reach a collective agreement setting out a financially sustainable forward path.”

And nothing has changed: this week, CUPW

informed Canada Post

that its 55,000 postal workers are scheduled to hit the picket line on Friday. This will be the second Canada Post strike in six months.

While some Canadians were frustrated during the first strike due to the fact that it took place during the holiday shopping season, an Angus Reid poll conducted in the middle of the strike found that 79 per cent of Canadians were only affected “a little” or “not at all.”

In an age in which people rely more on email, texting and electronic billing, will many Canadians care the second time around? I believe they should. Even if our reliance on physical mail has declined, it’s impossible for us to completely avoid sending letters, envelopes and packages.

Hence, we should be demanding competitive rates for postage stamps and overnight courier services, supporting cost-cutting measures to reduce wasteful spending and promoting fiscally sound strategies for rural delivery and the use of community mailboxes in the suburbs.

It’s time to either fully privatize Canada Post, or open up the free market to create real competition for mail delivery and postage rates. The privatization model that should be studied and emulated is Lysander Spooner’s privately-run post office.

Spooner, a 19th-century lawyer and political thinker, embraced a mishmash of libertarianism, anarchism and the odd-sounding free market socialism. He launched the American Letter Mail Company in 1844 to directly compete with the U.S. Postal Service monopoly, which had long frustrated him due to excessive government interference, extensive regulation and high postage rates.

As he

argued

in “The Unconstitutionality of the Laws of Congress Prohibiting Private Mails” that the “power given to Congress, is simply ‘to establish post-offices and post roads’ of their own, not to forbid similar establishments by the states or people.”

Spooner established offices in major cities like New York, Boston and Philadelphia. His company offered significantly

lower rates

for stamps. Agents travelled with the letters by train and boat, and passed them onto messengers who delivered them. The company flourished in its first few years, and customers were seemingly satisfied.

But the U.S. government was furious and set out to eliminate its competition. Spooner was eventually taken to court, and although a U.S. Circuit Court judge sided with Spooner and questioned the legitimacy of a government monopoly on mail delivery, he ultimately proved to be no match for the U.S. Congress.

“In 1851, Congress again lowered rates and simultaneously enacted a law to protect the government’s monopoly on the distribution of mail,” Lucille J. Goodyear

wrote

in American Legion Magazine in 1981. “Whereas threats of jail had not fazed or dampened Spooner’s zeal in the fight, the latter move by Congress forced him into defeat.”

This, combined with Spooner’s heavily depleted financial resources, led to his company’s regrettable closure.  Yet Spooner’s 19th-century experiment proved that a privately owned mail company could offer affordable stamp prices and efficient services in a competitive marketplace. If today’s Canada Post is going to survive, this is the right way to deliver it to Canadian consumers.

National Post

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• Sabine El-Chidiac: Canada Post union addicted to irrelevancy

It was the best of budgets, it was the worst of budgets, it was the age of restraint, it was the age of profligacy, it was the epoch of the legislature, it was the epoch of the executive, it was the season of open debate, it was the season of closed doors, it was the spring of Canada, it was the winter of America. Or possibly the other way around.

The confusion arises because as a patriotic Canadian I keep hearing how U.S. President Donald Trump is

an American Mussolini

who has abolished the last vestiges of the old Republic, so we should drink rye not bourbon or some other decisive action easily performed while sitting down. Yet the news media mysteriously insist that the Bad Orange Man is having trouble getting his budget through some quaint relic called the United States Congress while Green Mark Carney isn’t bothering to get his spending plans rubber-stamped by some quaint relic called the Canadian Parliament. How can it be?

Tuesday’s the Morning newsletter from the New York Times, which is no MAGA outlet,

reads

: “Speaker Mike Johnson has a math problem. He wants to pass a megabill before Memorial Day to deliver President Trump’s legislative agenda.” But with only three spare votes in the House, “there are way more than three G.O.P. dissenters, and they don’t agree on what the problem is. Some think the cuts to Medicaid are too large. Others think they’re too small. Some want to purge clean-energy tax breaks. Others want to preserve them because their constituents have used them.”

Likewise The Atlantic, part of the thundering herd of independent liberal American minds,

says

: “The struggle to pass Donald Trump’s second-term agenda in Congress has never been between Republicans and Democrats … it’s been a battle between the House and Senate GOP, between moderates and hard-liners, and, most salient, between Republicans and reality.”

Egad. What manner of rambunctious folly is this? Open debate within the Maximum Leader’s own party? Dictatorship! By contrast here in decorous Canada can someone remind me which inane or malicious measures from former prime minister Justin Trudeau were ever put at risk by the principled courage, truculence or mere pandering even of his NDP coalition non-partners, let alone the trained seals in red?

Periodically one would bark. But which ever bit?

To be sure

, as the Canadian Press noted on Sunday, “Prime Minister Mark Carney says the Liberal government will present a federal budget in the fall, allowing time for clarity on some key economic and fiscal issues to emerge.” But if there’s going to be a brawl, it will be inside his office, or head, with his finance minister promising to brush aside Parliament with an “economic statement” before Carney overrode him, saying the government would introduce “a much more comprehensive, effective, ambitious, prudent budget in the fall.”

Ah. Ambitious and prudent. Nothing to see here, folks … and no way to see it if there were. Now it should also be conceded that First Citizen Carney will face Parliament briefly in late May for a throne speech, before dismissing the wretched chattering monkey-house for months and governing by fiat, including signing executive orders that don’t even exist in Canada and spending tens of billions who knows how because who’s going to stop him?

Speaking of reality, it should also be conceded that on substance the fiscal follies are roughly equivalent in both countries, with governments living far beyond their means or ours, buying support from comfortably privileged organized voters at the expense of the young and excluded while chortling “Après nous, le déluge” as they hurtle toward insolvency. And some in the Canadian Parliament, mostly muzzled and leashed Tory backbenchers, went into politics to fight debts and deficits and will one day regret not having said something. But in the United States they aren’t merely numerous and vocal, they influence the process.

Not enough, and here Trump is a villain not a hero, like most Republican leaders who gave up half a lifetime ago on actually shrinking government or even slowing its rate of growth. Could a search party now find senators like

Alan Simpson

, or

legislation

like the bipartisan Gramm–Rudman–Hollings Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 and its 1987 follow-up? So long ago, so little to show.

Some might even point to former prime minister Jean Chrétien’s deficit-fighting in the 1990s and say that our feeble parliaments are better than their rowdy congresses because ours can’t stop a man on horseback from galloping in and cleaning up the mess. But if we prefer tyranny to democracy because we can go broke more efficiently or maybe even get whipped into line more efficiently, let’s say so. And stop calling the U.S. a dictatorship for making the other choice, however ineffectually.

Otherwise, put a budget before Parliament, even if MPs then have to do their jobs right into June. And let them do their jobs … almost like congresspersons.

National Post

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• Kelly McParland: Trump behaving like a self-serving monarch

It’s not déjà-vu, Canada Post might indeed go back on strike as early as this week. Canadians will remember with much anxiety that Canada Post workers recently went on strike in November, right as the holiday season was in full swing. That strike was perfectly timed to wreak as much havoc as possible in order to strengthen their bargaining power, destroying the most profitable time of year for charities and small business in Canada. Since the postal union and Canada Post ultimately could not reach an agreement, they were forced back to work by the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB), but not without securing

a five per cent raise from Canada Post first.

The CIRB placed a due date on further negotiations to come to an end by May 22, 2025, hence the predicament Canadians now find themselves in. The postal workers union has

served

Canada Post with a strike notice, and as many 55,000 workers could walk off the job as early Friday at midnight. Once again, charities and small businesses will potentially be affected, and consumers will also suffer further in the era of tariffs and trade wars that are already making life more expensive. Despite the chaos and massive loss of business that the last postal strike cost, little has been done to alleviate this situation since the deadline has been set.

When a postal strike is called, small business owners relying on cheaper shipping for their customers through the national postal service

have to start charging customers upwards

of $15 for shipping, and for those whose products average $10-$40 like one jewelry maker from Ottawa

 I spoke with,

that cost is far too high. Coupled with the backlogs, price hikes, and delays that carriers such as Fed-Ex would have to deal with when they pick up Canada Post’s slack, small businesses still struggling to get back on their feet after the pandemic are going to take another devastating financial hit.

The solution remains the same as when Canadians were held hostage at the holidays: breaking up the Canada Post monopoly. The Canada Post Corporation Act gives special

privilege

to the Crown coporation, which allows it to be the only ones who can deliver letter mail in Canada. European countries have already broken up their monopolies: as Canadian economist Vincent Geloso

has pointed out,

an EU directive has made it so that all letters have been open to competition since 2013, which effectively ends state-owned postal monopolies. Some European countries have gone as far as to privatize their postal system, and watched as prices for postal servic

halifax.citynews.ca/…/canada-post-strike-key-issues-in-the-dispute-thats-holding-up-mail-delivery

es fell as much as 17 per cent in Germany. That shows that privatization and breaking up a longstanding monopoly is possible, and beneficial, to citizens just trying to run their business, raise money for their charities, or just send a card to their grandmother.

Possibly the most frustrating part of this new potential strike is that

one of the demands

of the postal union is to curb the same innovation that their competitors thrive off. For example, workers want “improved protections against technological change” since Canada Post is “always looking for new technology.” However, halting innovation is also a quick way to put their workers out of a job permanently as competitors begin to speed by, leaving Canada Post in the dust and potentially shutting its doors. Experimentation and innovation are requirements for growing and maintaining a stable business in any field, and for meeting consumer needs.

Maintaining the postal monopoly in Canada is a recipe for disaster for the Crown corporation, especially as mail isn’t as lucrative as it use to be, when so much communication is done digitally. Rather than putting more pressure on an already ailing Canada Post as Canadians watch helplessly from the sidelines, it is still time to look at breaking up this monopoly rather than having to head back to the negotiating table every few months, or shut the doors on the Canada Post for good.

Union members should be able to strike, but they should no longer be able to bring Canadian businesses, charities, and consumers to their knees. Without a monopoly, workers could strike, but the effect on actual Canadian lives would be significantly less harsh. Canadians need to seriously consider breaking up the monopoly before the next strike. However, here we are again, treating a Crown corporation as untouchable, and suffering for it as usual.

Sabine El-Chidiac is the Canadian Policy Associate at the Consumer Choice Center