LP_468x60
on-the-record-468x60-white

Source: National Post (Politics)

The federal government's electric vehicle sales mandate aims to see all new vehicles sold be zero-emission by 2035.

OTTAWA

— The president of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association says the top ask of Prime Minister Mark Carney, who recently met with auto industry leaders, is to repeal the federal electric vehicle sales mandate, adding pressure to the Liberals to revisit the climate policy. 

Brian Kingston met with Carney on Wednesday, alongside the CEOs of Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, which the industry association represents, where they discussed their push to see the policy repealed, saying they have “made the case pretty clearly,” but will ultimately have to wait for what the Liberals decide.

“I think there’s an understanding, and we’re optimistic that there will be a change on the horizon.”

Carney met with the automakers as he tries to negotiate a deal with U.S. President Donald Trump that would see tariffs removed on Canadian products, including on the auto sector, where parts that comply with a free trade agreement between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico are exempt.

While trade and tariffs were one focus of the meeting, Kingston says the other was the government’s electric vehicle sales mandate, which aims to see all new vehicles sold be zero-emission by 2035, with the first target of 20 per cent set for 2026.

“A 25 per cent tariff on Canadian production is a huge challenge for the future of this industry. But at the end of the day, we do not control the outcome of those negotiations,” he said, adding they have “full confidence” in the government’s efforts to see tariffs lifted.

“But we do not control what the president ultimately does,” he says. “What we do control is our own policy framework, and why, at a time when the industry is under pressure, would we keep in place a domestic policy that is hugely damaging to this industry? So that’s why it’s the focus.”

A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister’s Office said it had nothing more to add about the meeting besides the readout it released following Wednesday’s meeting, when asked whether the government was open to repealing or changing the mandate.

That earlier statement did not directly mention the electric vehicle mandate itself, saying the ongoing negotiations with the U.S., was discussed as were the efforts to support the sector, as well as “

opportunities to make Canada’s auto sector more sustainable and competitive in the face of shifting trade relationships, market conditions, and supply chains.”

A request for comment from Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin’s office has yet to be returned.

While automakers have long opposed the federal electric vehicle mandate, industry leaders have been expressing new concern in light of the ongoing trade war with the U.S., and the fact that Trump has backed off its previous electrification plans.

Companies also point to falling electric vehicle sales. Under the mandate, manufacturers must earn credits through either selling zero-emission vehicles, purchasing them from other electric-vehicle makers, or spending on building out charging infrastructure.

Proponents of the mandate lay blame for plummeting sales on the fact that the federal government cancelled the rebate for purchasing these vehicles back in January and has yet to release details on when it will introduce a new $5,000 incentive, which the Liberals promised during the spring election campaign.

Kingston says the years-long request from manufacturers for the federal government to scrap the mandate has taken on fresh urgency, given that the 2026 target is just around the corner and the fact that sales of these vehicles have fallen significantly since the policy was first introduced.

“There is no pathway to hitting that target,” he says.

“The urgency of the issue has now made it to the forefront, because this is no longer theoretical.”

The Liberals introduced the zero-emission vehicle sales mandate back in 2023 as part of their efforts to reduce Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions, taking aim at the transportation sector, which is one of the largest emitters.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has called for the mandate to the scrapped.

In an interview last week,

the head of a national association representing the electric transportation industry called on the government to make “short-term adjustments” to its interim sales targets, at the risk of the policy becoming a “political football” much like the now-cancelled consumer carbon tax.

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our politics newsletter, First Reading, here.

Click here for more Canada

This handout photo released by the European Southern Observatory on Nov. 20, 2017, shows an artist's impression of the first interstellar asteroid, Oumuamua.

Our solar system is playing host to a rare visitor. A comet from interstellar space is hurtling toward the sun at about 68 kilometres per second, or about 245,000 kilometres an hour. And like many a socially savvy out-of-town visitor, it will be

visible on a livestream

, beginning at 6 p.m. ET, July 3.

The object originally went by the name

A11pl3Z when it was discovered by ATLAS, the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System in Rio Hurtado, Chile, on July 1. It has since been renamed 3I/ATLAS by the Minor Planet Center, with the “I” standing for interstellar, and the 3 for it being just the third such object ever discovered.

The first confirmed object from outside the solar system was discovered in 2017 and named Oumuamua, Hawaiian for “first distant messenger.” Its elongated shape and signs of a slight acceleration had some hypothesizing it was a manufactured object, although few believe it. Then in 2019 comet 2I/Borisov was discovered by Gennadiy Borisov, a Crimean telescope maker and amateur astronomer.

Astronomers can tell interstellar objects from more mundane solar-bound rocks because their speed is too fast for the sun to capture them in an orbit, and their path is straighter than regular comets.

According to NASA

, the new object entered the solar system from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, and is currently some 670 million kilometres from Earth. Although it’s estimated to be some 10 kilometres across, it poses no threat to the planet, as it will come no closer to us than 240 million kilometres, which is farther away than the sun.

The space agency says 3I/ATLAS will pass inside the orbit of Mars at its closest approach to the sun around Oct. 30, before leaving our solar system forever next year. It will be visible to large ground-based telescopes until September, when it get lost in the glare of the sun for several months before reappearing in early December.

With that timeline in mind, the Virtual Telescope Project has set up a livestream tonight on

YouTube

and

WebTV

, allowing viewers to watch images from telescopes in Manciano, Italy, weather permitting.

Click here for more Canada

Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith during the First Ministers' Meeting at TCU Place.

OTTAWA — The environment ministers of two of Canada’s biggest provinces are calling on the Liberal government to scrap a host of Trudeau-era environmental and climate policies, saying the policies are holding the country back from meeting its economic potential.

Alberta Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz and Ontario Environment Minister Todd McCarthy said in a letter to federal counterpart Julie Dabrusin that the new, Mark Carney-led Liberal government will need to ditch Justin Trudeau’s net-zero agenda if it hopes to meet its promise to make Canada an energy superpower.

“We are hopeful that (the Carney government) will move away from policies and legislation that undermine competitiveness, delay project development, and disproportionately harm certain (regions) without any quantifiable benefit to the natural environment,” read the letter.

“Canada is poised to become an economic superpower, but achieving that potential depends on strong, constitutionally grounded provincial authority over resource development and environmental management.”

Schulz shared

a copy of the letter

on social media on Wednesday, just as a two-day meeting between federal, provincial and territorial environment ministers kicked off in Yellowknife.

The letter calls for a repeal of the federal Impact Assessment Act, as well as a full repeal of the legislation authorizing

the consumer carbon tax

. Carney

set the tax to zero

shortly after becoming prime minister in March.

The

recently passed Bill C-5

allows projects deemed by Ottawa to be in the national interest to bypass some parts of the federal impact assessment process.

Alberta has repeatedly called for this process to be either massively streamlined or eliminated altogether.

The letter also calls for Ottawa to cede more power to the provinces in the areas of clean electricity, carbon reduction and ecological protection.

“Provinces have proven to be the best stewards of such decisions, as leaders of electrification, industrial innovation, public transit and other low-carbon initiatives,” write

Schulz and McCarthy.

The two environment ministers also called for the reversal of the incoming federal emissions cap and clean electricity regulations.

The letter also calls on

Dabrusin to scale back federal endangered species legislation and refrain from re-introducing Bill C-61, or the First Nations Clean Water Act.

Heather Exner-Pirot, director of energy, natural resources and environment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, says that Bill C-61, while well intentioned, is a clear example of federal overreach.

“In addition to First Nations lands, the bill seeks to regulate adjacent lands and source waters. These are things that clearly fall under provincial jurisdiction.” says Exner-Pirot.

Exner-Pirot also says the bill uses overly vague language in several sections.

Bill C-61 was drafted in response

to a court settlement

between Ottawa and multiple First Nations over drinking water advisories.

National Post

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

Click here for more Alberta

Former kickboxing champion and alleged sex trafficker Andrew Tate has described himself as an unapologetic misogynist.

Boys as young as 11 and 12 are “idolizing and parroting” the misogynistic rhetoric of Andrew Tate and other masculinist influencers at school, posing a risk to women teachers and the girls who witness it, Canadian researchers are reporting.

Tate, a British-American influencer who has amassed more than 10 million followers on social media platforms, and his brother, Tristan Tate, are facing a string of sexual violence and human trafficking charges in the United Kingdom, the U.S. and Romania. Both brothers have denied all allegations against them.

A former kickboxing champion, Tate has described himself as an unapologetic misogynist, women as “inherently lazy” and has suggested women “bear responsibility” for sexual assaults. Since his rise to social media prominence, the alleged sex trafficker’s male supremacism and violent declarations against women have made him a “both reviled and revered” public figure, according to researchers at Dalhousie University and the University of Toronto. Despite a “near-total” ban from posting on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube, “Tate’s images, video clips and messages remain easily accessible and almost omnipresent in the feeds of teenage boys and young men,” the researchers wrote in a study published in the journal 

Gender and Education.

Tate was his most popular when the 2022-23 school year launched. His name was the most searched name on Google in July 2022. The researchers set out to explore what impact the influencer’s “brand of new-wave misogyny” was having on teachers and classrooms.

Rather than survey teachers who might be reluctant to speak frankly, they scraped data from a free and open online community of teachers from the social media site Reddit.com. The researchers pulled more than 250,000 posts and comments from a subreddit community from June 1, 2022, to Jan. 31, 2023, then filtered the dataset down to the 2,364 posts where Andrew Tate was mentioned in the post title or text.

It’s impossible to know how many in the Reddit teachers’ subgroup are Canadian teachers, but the researchers said most posts and comments skewed heavily towards North American classrooms. In addition, two ongoing studies using Canadian datasets are revealing similar sentiments.

“This rhetoric is very much having an impact on teachers and schools,” said co-author Luc Cousineau, co-director of research at the Canadian Institute for Far-Right Studies and faculty at Dalhousie University in Halifax.

Studies out of Australia and the United Kingdom have reached similar conclusions.

“It’s easy to think ‘that’s a young person’s internet culture,’ and not worry too much about it,” Cousineau said.

“Young men are saying, ‘I don’t have to listen to you or respect you’ to their women-identified teachers, solely because they’re women. It’s an old story made new again by this re-invigoration of really overt and strong misogyny.”

Middle and high school teachers, as well as some elementary school ones, reported that boys were “actively parroting male supremacist rhetoric at school,” devaluing women teachers and making classrooms less safe, the study found.

“There were a group of them, all friends, who to the (vice principal’s) face told him that they would only respect/pay attention in classes taught by men and would not behave in classes taught by women,” one teacher posted.

“If they already have trouble respecting someone simply because that person happens to have a vagina, then they aren’t going to listen to that person with a vagina explain how disrespecting people with a vagina is harmful,” another commented.

“Seemingly, ninety per cent of my work is trying to talk white teenage boys off the alt-right ledge,” according to another comment researchers paraphrased using an AI tool because the user didn’t respond to requests to use verbatim quotes.

Another knew of a 7th grade teacher who said the boys in his class “have taken to calling all women and girls ‘holes’ and anybody who is friendly or polite to girls a ‘simp.’”

While some teachers remarked that female students pushed back and called out male classmates for spouting Tate-inspired anti-woman hate, teachers also worried that the rise in misogynistic rhetoric will lead to “tangible safety threats like gender-based violence in schools,” the researchers wrote.

“I had a student write a paper in graphic detail bout (sic) how SA (sexual assault) victims ‘deserved’ it and ‘all women were asking for it’ and a lot of other extremely alarming sentiments,” one user commented. “The paper topic was nowhere close to anything like this, but he wrote it anyway.”

“I’ve never heard such vitriol from young boys since this Andrew Tate guy came on the scene,” another said.

Some teachers suggested that boys were imitating Tate for attention. “That kind of young boy likes to be ironically edgy because they’re testing boundaries…. Since their intention is to insult and appall the more you resist this kind of behaviour, the more it rewards them,” one wrote.

Teachers sometimes said that when they told their administrators a boy had made lewd or sexual comments towards them or other girls it was brushed off as “boys will be boys.”

“Sometimes it’s a little more overt than that,” Cousineau said. “There are some illusions to folks saying, ‘I think my administrator actually agrees with them.’”

“We really wanted to demonstrate this is happening in real time, and it’s having some significant impacts,” he said. “There are real and tangible dangers to continuing to do nothing. Not recognizing this as a real issue allows it to proliferate and continue.”

This isn’t just the immature actions of some boys. “While it is tempting to be reductionist about a problem like this, we have zero social tolerance for overt racism, especially in the classroom. Why should we tolerate identity-focused hate based on gender,” Cousineau said.

Violent misogyny is never fine. “It only takes one violent misogynist to carry out a Toronto Van Attack or another Ecole Polytechnique.”

In 2018, Alex Minassian drove a rented van into pedestrians on a busy sidewalk on Toronto’s Yonge Street, killing 10. Minassian once told a psychiatrist after the attack that he realized his victims were random pedestrians and was “wishing for more females.”

In December 1989, 14 women in a mechanical engineering classroom were killed by gunman Marc Lépine at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique.

How to monitor what kids are exposed to gets into thorny territory, he said. “Do parents know what their kids consume online? Are lots of parents having in-depth, connected conversations with their kids about what they’re consuming and what the implications of that are? Generally, no.”

“These are really hard things to do. But if we don’t know what kids are exposing themselves to, and we’re not engaging with them, that stuff might not come out at home,” Cousineau said. “It might come out at school.”

“We have evidence in this country, and many other places around the world, of the most extreme form of these kinds of violent misogyny, and nihilistic violent misogyny, where young men go out and kill people because of these ideas,” said Cousineau.

Those acts of violence don’t come out of nowhere, Cousineau said. People grow into them. “All of the data we have about radicalized violence show us they develop over time,” he said.

“We need to be addressing it young and at source.”

Emelia Sandau, a master’s student at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, co-authored the study.

National Post

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

Click here for more Canada

A newly installed flag pole stands on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, June 18, 2025.

Now that Canada’s trade war with America has surged back into public consciousness like a blast from the recent past, a new poll suggests Canadian frustration with and mistrust of the U.S. remains high, despite a slight easing.

In March, for example, polling showed a dramatic realignment of Canadian attitudes toward its southern neighbour. Europe and Britain were suddenly the countries Canadians felt best about, and Canadians were starting to feel about America the way they felt about Russia.

But lately, with U.S. President Donald Trump’s attention mostly elsewhere, there are signs of a slight bump back from this low point, despite troubling news developments like the death of a Canadian citizen in U.S. immigration custody.

More than half of Canadians now say they “no longer feel welcome in the United States,” for example, and this sentiment is strongest among women and older people.

During the recent Canadian election campaign with its looming threat of crippling tariffs and annexation, there was a “worrisome intersection” in the Canadian mind of the American government and the American people, according to Jack Jedwab, president of the Montreal-based Association for Canadian Studies (ACS).

But in this latest poll, he sees a “healthy development” of Canadian anger and frustration being focused primarily on the American government, and less so the American people.

Back in April, barely one Canadian in five (21 per cent) said they trust Americans in a similar poll. But in the latest poll, that figure has rebounded to 34 per cent, which is historically normal, about the same as it was near the end of Trump’s first term, but still considerably lower than the 59 per cent it reached in October 2023, Jedwab said.

Asked if they trust the United States, the country as opposed to the American people, those numbers drop substantially. A majority of 53 per cent said the country could not be trusted, and only 21 per cent said it could. That distrust is greater among Canadians older than 65. It is also stronger among residents of British Columbia, and lowest among Albertans and Atlantic Canadians.

The poll was taken by Leger for the ACS between June 20 and 22, so it does not reflect Canadian reaction to Donald Trump’s latest cancellation of trade talks last weekend, which prompted Prime Minister Mark Carney to rescind a digital industries tax, which targeted American tech firms, in order to restart negotiations.

But the poll shows a silver lining in an otherwise gloomy picture of this longstanding national friendship, military alliance, and economic partnership.

“We just don’t trust the motivation behind the re-opening of trade,” Jedwab said. “We’re persuaded we’re the kindler, gentler nation, and we’re being bullied by their president.”

Overall, a majority of Canadians feel unwelcome in the United States, the poll suggests. They regard the borders as secure, but 45 per cent of Canadians say the United States is not a trusted security and defence partner, compared to just 32 per cent who say it is.

The poll also shows Canadians overwhelmingly feel Canada’s trade rules for the U.S. are fair, but the U.S. trade rules for Canada are unfair. Fully 75 per cent say American rules governing trade are unfair to Canada, whereas only 12 per cent feel Canada’s rules are unfair.

“I think that trust is the key predictor of Canadians feeling unwelcome in the United States and it also hampers our ability to fix perceived problems between our two countries,” Jedwab said. “The lack of trust a key indicator in trade negotiations and we will need to build or re-build trust if we re going to succeed. That won’t be simple because in effect the U.S. President is not perceived to be a trusted ally by Canadians.”

Despite all that, the poll also shows a majority of Canadians believe they have more in common with Americans than with any other people in the world.

This poll was conducted through an online panel survey, so a margin of error cannot be calculated. But a randomized poll of similar size, with 1,579 respondents, would be considered accurate to within 2.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

Click here for more Alberta

RCMP Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, which is used for patrols along the Canada--U.S. border in southern B.C.

OTTAWA — The RCMP has renewed the contracts for three Black Hawk helicopters to patrol the Canada-U.S. border, despite

accusations by the industry association that the contracts

are the opposite of the government’s “elbows up” approach and that the choppers don’t meet the government’s own safety regulations.

RCMP spokesman Andrew DiRienzo confirmed that the federal police has decided to rehire the three helicopters for at least the next three months. The contracts for the second-hand helicopters, purchased by private contractors after the U.S. military decided to update much of its own fleet, kicked in on Canada Day.

The new contracts follow a National Post investigation that revealed that four Black Hawks were purchased by Canadian contractors who then signed patrolling contracts with the RCMP for three of them. The other was hired by the Alberta government.

The existing RCMP contracts for three of the choppers, worth an estimated $16 million, expired June 30.

Documents showed that the Canadian helicopter industry had accused Ottawa of breaking its own rules, for example, by allowing the used choppers to carry passengers or even flying over developed areas. The Black Hawks have been used mostly to patrol the border in search of illegal migrants, drug smugglers and other illicit activities.

Trevor Mitchell, chief executive of the Helicopter Association of Canada (HAC), said he was very surprised that the RCMP would sign another contract to lease the American Black Hawks, while Canadian manufacturers offer rival products that can do at least as good a job. “I can’t see how any of this transpires into an elbows-up policy, or a Canada-first policy.”

According to the government’s Canadian Civil Aircraft Register, the four Sikorsky Black Hawk UH 60As were imported into Canada between 2022 and last year. They were granted highly unusual special exemptions by Transport Canada that, according to a series of letters to senior government officials from the Canadian helicopter association, allowed the four choppers to do non-military jobs in Canadian air space.

In a March 20 letter to Transport Minister Chrystia Freeland, the association said even the conditions attached to the exemptions have not been followed. “We urge you to direct your department to ensure the safety restrictions attached to these aircraft are strictly enforced for the balance of the RCMP’s contract and that the Force be urged to select a certified aircraft before the contract expires.”

HAC also says that the twin-engine Black Hawks didn’t come with “type certificates,” which act like recipe books for new owners in that they provide details about the aircraft’s parts and how it should be maintained.

Freeland has not responded to interview requests on this subject for the last three weeks. A spokesperson has not responded to specific questions but instead released a prepared statement that emphasized the importance of safety. The statement also said that the exemptions from Transport Canada allowed the aircraft to operate in Canada in specialized roles “subject to strict conditions,” such as not being allowed to carry fare-paying passengers or cargo.

Despite its reluctance to discuss the matter, the federal government is well aware of the situation involving the Black Hawks and the industry’s concerns.

An RCMP Black Hawk helicopter patrols the border in Emerson, Manitoba in January.

In the spring of 2024, following interactions with HAC, former Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez directed his officials to pause the issuing of special exemptions for the Black Hawks. But in September of that year, Rodriguez resigned from the federal cabinet to run for leader of the Quebec Liberal party.

He was replaced at Transport for about seven months by Anita Anand, now the Foreign Affairs minister. She was then replaced in the new year by Chrystia Freeland, after Mark Carney became prime minister. Neither Anand nor Freeland has clarified the government’s view of the situation or publicly commented on the special exemptions for the Black Hawks.

Although the Black Hawk contracts pre-date the re-election earlier this year of U.S. President Donald Trump, Canada’s enhanced border patrol is in sync with the White House’s escalation of concern about illegal migrants and illegal drugs entering the U.S. from Canada, Mexico and elsewhere.

But it’s not like there aren’t other – even domestic – options beyond Black Hawks.

Mitchell says Canada has about 200 companies that offer helicopter services and pilots to fly them. Their collective fleets comprise about 1,700 choppers, many of which might be better suited than Black Hawks for patrol duties because they’re smaller and equipped with infra-red cameras that allow them to work in the dark.

The military and the RCMP also have their own fleets. But if the RCMP’s own helicopters weren’t enough, Mitchell said, it would have no problem finding private contractors to help them patrol.

Helicopters are valued for their versatility and mobility. In Canada, they’re mostly used for search and rescue, fighting forest fires, helping combat floods, and commercial applications in remote areas such as mining and electrical lines.

But five-seat helicopters are typically used for patrol because they’re more nimble and cheaper to operate than a larger, 14-seater such as Sikorsky’s Black Hawk.

According to a February 10 letter by HAC to RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme, the choppers have not been approved by Canadian or American authorities for civilian purposes.

The RCMP’s Black Hawk contracts overlap with Carney’s vow to increase Canada’s military spending so that it reaches the NATO target of 2 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). Carney has also vowed to do more to support Canadian business and to rely less on the U.S.

Industry sources say the older Black Hawks were selling in recent months for about $1 million each, as the market became flooded with supply. The market for used helicopters has grown in recent years as the U.S. military has modernized its fleet, including the purchase of a newer model of Black Hawks, called the UH-60M.

That has pushed a number of older, but still functional Black Hawks to the second-hand market. Prices of new and used aircraft vary widely, depending on a range of factors. But a new five-seat helicopter, including those made in Canada, sells for about $6.5 million, while a new 14-seater, similar in size to the Black Hawks, goes for about $12 million.

Bell Textron, a subsidiary of Fort Worth, Tex.-based Textron, makes commercial helicopters at its Mirabel, Que. facilities. Its lineup of models includes the Bell 412, which could be used for border patrol.

Airbus Helicopters Canada, formerly MBB Helicopter Canada, has a 300-employee site at Fort Erie, Ont. That location focuses largely on sales, repair, engineering and composite manufacturing.

The Black Hawk, made by Sikorsky Aircraft, is a four-blade, twin-engine, medium-lift chopper in the “military utility” product niche. Stratford, Conn.-based Sikorsky was founded by the Russian-American aviation pioneer Igor Sikorsky in 1923.

Carney, meanwhile, issued a statement earlier this month saying that Canada plans to boost its defence spending by $9.3 billion to $54.3 billion. The money will be used on a range of items, including submarines, ships, armoured vehicles and aircraft, as well as new drones and sensors for monitoring the Arctic and seafloor.

In the government’s latest signal that it intends to create some distance from the U.S. since Trump imposed a wide range of debilitating tariffs on Canadian exports, Carney said Canada wants to reduce how much of its defence budget goes to purchases of American equipment. The prime minister has said that about 75 per cent of Canada’s capital spending on defence heads to the U.S.

National Post

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

Click here for more Alberta

Nosakhare Ohenhen has lost his bid to recover $32,000 Toronto police seized from his home during the investigation of a deadly hit and run.

A man who claimed $32,000 police found at his home was casino winnings, after he was allegedly spotted in the passenger seat of a car that killed a pedestrian in downtown Toronto in April 2022, has lost his bid to get the cash back.

And the fact that Nosakhare Ohenhen appears to have used artificial intelligence in his legal fight against forfeiture likely didn’t help his case in Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice.

“Mr. Ohenhen submitted a statement of legal argument to the court in support of his arguments. In those documents, he referred to at least two non-existent or fake precedent court cases, one ostensibly from the Court of Appeal for Ontario and another ostensibly from the British Columbia Court of Appeal. In reviewing his materials after argument, I tried to access these cases and was unable to find them,” Justice Lisa Brownstone wrote in a recent decision.

When the judge asked Ohenhen to provide her with the cases, he “responded with a ‘clarification,’ providing different citations to different cases.”

Brownstone asked for an explanation as to where the original citations came from, and whether they were generated by artificial intelligence.

“I have received no response to that query,” said the judge.

“While Mr. Ohenhen is not a lawyer with articulated professional responsibilities to the court, every person who submits authorities to the court has an obligation to ensure that those authorities exist…. Putting fictitious citations before the court misleads the court. It is unacceptable. Whether the cases are put forward by a lawyer or self-represented party, the adverse effect on the administration of justice is the same.”

Brownstone said she didn’t attach “any consequences to this conduct in this case,” but if Ohenhen does it again, he should “expect” some. “Other self-represented litigants should be aware that serious consequences from such conduct may well flow.”

The Attorney General of Ontario applied to the court to keep the cash police seized on April 22, 2022, from Ohenhen’s home, arguing it was proceeds of crime.

The search came about after a hit and run 10 days earlier killed a 30-year-old woman near Spadina Avenue and King Street West.

“After the accident, the car entered the underground parking garage at 295 Dufferin Street Toronto, where Mr. Ohenhen lived. Mr. Ohenhen came out of the car and handed something that appeared to be a set of keys to the driver,” Brownstone said. “The two then sat in another car, which was registered in Mr. Ohenhen’s name.”

According to the Toronto Police Service, Ohenhen “provided the other person, the driver, with access to his car to enable the driver to escape after the hit-and-run.”

Investigators arrested the driver the next day “for failure to stop at the scene of an accident that caused death, dangerous driving causing death, obstruction and public mischief,” Brownstone said.

They also arrested Ohenhen as a result of the hit and run and searched his home “where they found six cellular phones and $32,000 in cash, in $100 bills. There were three bundles that total $30,000 bound with elastics in the safe, and $2,000 in two bundles on a table.”

Ohenhen was charged with failure to stop at the scene after an accident resulting in death, obstructing a peace officer, public mischief, and being an accessory after the fact to commit an indictable offence, said the judge, noting those charges are pending.

According to Ontario’s Attorney General, “Ohenhen has an extensive criminal history involving convictions for possession for the purpose of trafficking, possession of schedule 1 substances, assault, assault with intent to resist arrest, failure to comply with a recognizance, possession of prohibited or restricted firearms, assault causing bodily harm, robbery, and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence.”

The AG argued that, “on a balance of probabilities, the currency at issue here … was likely acquired as a result of, and used in the commission of, the unlawful activity of trafficking and possession for the purpose of trafficking, and possession of the proceeds of crime.”

But “Ohenhen states that the money comes from casino winnings and from his business.”

However, according to the judge, “the records provided do not in any way support Mr. Ohenhen’s statements that the cash was from his business or casino winnings. The records show that his business income, like his casino winnings, was received electronically, not in cash.”

Brownstone found “there is no credible and reasonable answer for the suspicious circumstances in which the money was found.”

The judge was “satisfied that the Attorney General has established on a balance of probabilities that the funds were proceeds of and an instrument of unlawful activity. There has been no ‘credible and reasonable’ answer to the suspicious circumstances outlined above, that is, that the significant amount of funds was in 100-dollar bills, bundled together, in cash in Mr. Ohenhen’s home, not in a bank.”

According to court documents, police arrested Ohenhen on Aug. 21, 2008, in the Parkdale area of Toronto after they stopped his dark green Jaguar. “He was charged with seventeen offences: assault police, resist lawful arrest, eleven charges in relation to illegal possession of a loaded restricted firearm and breach of prior prohibition orders, two counts of possession of cocaine and one of marijuana for the purposes of trafficking, and possession of proceeds of crime.”

Ohenhen was sentenced to nine years in prison. But he successfully appealed that conviction after serving nearly five years in prison, and a judge acquitted him in a new trial.

In September 2016, Justice Michael Quigley found that Ohenhen had been arbitrarily detained, unreasonably searched, and that his constitutional right to retain and instruct a lawyer without delay “was totally and shockingly ignored by the police.”

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

Click here for more Canada

Bonnie Critchley.

OTTAWA — Bonnie Critchley is used to breaking the mould.

A trailblazer in uniform,

Critchley

was just 17 years old when she became the second woman ever to serve as an armoured crewman in her unit. She and reservist dad Steve later made history as the first father–daughter gunnery crew in the Royal Canadian Armoured Corps.

She’s now looking to take out Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre in one of the safest Conservative ridings in Canada, running as an independent in the upcoming Battle River—Crowfoot byelection.

Critchley, who’s been traversing the rural Alberta riding for about a month, says she sees a path to an upset victory over Poilievre.

“Honestly, a good result for us would be a win,”

Critchley told the National Post on Wednesday.

She said that Poilievre is starting off on the wrong foot after yanking popular incumbent MP Damien Kurek out of the seat and

creating a hefty byelection

bill for taxpayers.

“I’ve been talking to a lot of ‘small-c’ conservatives around here who aren’t thrilled that the ‘big-C’ Conservatives are spending an extra two million dollars on a mulligan for a guy who failed in his duty to his constituents and was fired,” said Critchley.

Poilievre lost his Ottawa-area riding to Liberal Bruce Fanjoy by a five-point margin in April’s federal election, after holding the seat for two decades.

Critchley also says that the Calgary-born Poilievre has put off residents by donning western-style cowboy attire in his visits to the riding.

“Whether it’s

the backwards cowboy hat

at the Wainwright Stampede or sitting in a truck in Drumheller, it just isn’t landing,” said Critchley.

A 22-year army reservist who later rode her bike across Europe to raise money for veterans and first responders, Critchley has a CV that would be attractive to any major political party.

She says she’s running an an independent because she’s grown disillusioned with partisan politics.

“One of the things that I think we’re having issues with is team politics. It’s my team versus your team, and it doesn’t matter what my team does or says, my team is better than your team,” said Critchley.

She added that she’s finds it especially concerning when party politics prevents constituents from being properly represented, pointing to the Poilivre-Kurek switcheroo as a prime example of this problem.

Critchley calls herself a centrist and says she objects to “performative policies” on both the left and right.

She was one of many who welcomed the termination of the Liberals’ consumer carbon tax, calling it more symbolic than substantive.

“I’m not going to offer soft, easy answers to complex questions,” said Critchley.

She’s also said that she’ll work to repeal Trudeau-era gun control laws if elected to Parliament.

Critchley, who is a lesbian, says she also objects to right-wing points of view on trans issues.

She said that a

recent Alberta court injunction

stalling the province’s ban on transgender medicine for minors was “good news.”

“The (previous) supports for trans youth were in place to prevent youth suicides,” said Critchley.

Critchley said that she’ll be spending the next few weeks convening town halls to hear from voters in the riding.

She’s pre-emptively putting out an invitation to both Poilievre and Liberal candidate Darcy Spady to join her at one of these town halls.

“I will be welcoming those two for sure,” said Critchley.

Critchley has been less welcoming to some other potential candidates, though. She

released an open letter to the Longest Ballot Committee

— an activist group protesting former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s broken 2015 election promise on electoral reform — asking the group to “not come here and muddy the waters further.”

The group, which

gets headlines by swamping the ballot

with dozens of candidates, also targeted Poilievre’s Ottawa-area riding of Carleton during the federal election in April.

Critchley said the “tomfoolery” would only make it harder for a candidate like her to knock off Poilievre in  the August byelection.

National Post

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

Click here for more Alberta

Data from Flightrader24.com shows the point where the Boeing aircraft suddenly dropped and reduced speed.

A Japan Airlines flight from Shanghai to Tokyo made an emergency landing this week after plummeting almost 8 kilometres in less than 10 minutes. Once the plane was safely on the ground, passengers were given 15,000 yen (Cdn $142) in compensation, plus a free night’s accommodation, according to reports.

According to

People magazine

, Monday’s flight JL8696 was operated by Spring Japan, a low-cost subsidiary of Japan Airlines, and was scheduled to fly from Shanghai to Tokyo, a two and a half hour journey.

However, about an hour into the flight the plane

descended rapidly

from a cruising altitude of about 11,700 metres down to just 3,000 metres while reducing its speed from 880 kph to 560 kph. It then levelled out at the new altitude and, about 45 minutes later, made an emergency landing in Osaka, Japan.

None of the 191 passengers and crew on board the Boeing 737-800 was injured. Reports said the pilots contacted air traffic controllers when the aircraft triggered an alert about an irregularity in the pressurization system that maintains cabin air pressure.

Reports noted that oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling during the descent, and that passengers feared the plane might crash.

According to the Hong Kong news site

The Standard

, one passenger said she drafted a farewell note to her husband during the descent, while another described the cabin falling eerily silent as the masks dropped and she imagined she might perish. A third recalled being on “the verge of tears” as they scribbled a will and wrote down details of their insurance and bank card PINs.

The aircraft was diverted to Kansai International Airport in Osaka and landed at about 8:50 p.m. local time. It then spent about an hour on the tarmac before passengers were able to deplane.

Spring Japan subsequently posted a

notice on its website

, cancelling the Shanghai-to-Tokyo run and its return flight for the next two days, citing “aircraft scheduling.” It apologized for the inconvenience and offered full refunds within 30 days, or no-charge rebooking in the same time period.

The Associated Press reports that an investigation into the cause of the incident has begun as of Wednesday morning. National Post has reached out to Spring Japan for more information.

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

Click here for more Canada

Antoinette Twiver, 28, snaps a selfie of herself with her first hormonal shot for egg freezing.

The first time Shania Bhopa considered freezing her eggs was over dessert during Christmas Day dinner with her family a couple of years ago.

Bhopa was only 24 years old at the time but already had a promising career ahead as a published children’s author, running a non-profit organization with her sister and was pursuing a PhD in global health.

Her older sister, a physician, broached the topic.

“Shania, you don’t seem like you would have kids early,” Bhopa recalls her sister saying. “But I know you’ve always wanted to be a mom. Have you ever given any consideration as to what your plan looks like?”

“No,” Bhopa replied.

Her sister asked a new question. “Well, have you thought about freezing your eggs?”

The question caught Bhopa by surprise. She had heard of egg freezing before — overhearing conversations between her sister and her friends — but until that moment had never talked about it or thought of it as a family planning or fertility option. She had always assumed egg freezing was a last resort for those who had already tried and failed to have a child by traditional means.

“Why would I be proactive when it’s a reactive procedure?” she recalled thinking. Her sister, however, was persistent and so Bhopa decided to investigate the topic.

As an academic accustomed to research, she dove deep. She read every paper she could find, and by the end of it she was convinced.

“It was kind of like just a really logical decision,” she said. “I researched, statistically, at age 35 the egg quality and count, and the risk of abnormalities there, and if that’s the age I perceive my career starting to stabilize, then I should probably freeze my eggs.”

Bhopa’s story is an unusual one and for good reason: There aren’t a lot of stories told publicly of women in their early 20s who have considered or decided to freeze their eggs as a way to preserve their fertility down the road.

Encouraged by her sister and partner, Bhopa, a well-established influencer with over 108,000 followers on Instagram and even more on TikTok, vlogged her

egg freezing journey online

and became a viral sensation for her story, hailed as the “girl who decided to freeze her eggs at 25.”

Along with her own vlogs, she has hosted Q&As, interviews with experts and inspirational reels meant to shed light on the process and educate her followers on the concept.

Looking back, Bhopa is surprised that she and her friends, many of whom are in medicine and academia, had never thought to talk about egg freezing before.

“We all have such long roads ahead of us,” she said. “In retrospect, I’m like, ‘Oh, I can’t believe none of us were talking about it.”

Egg freezing — known medically as oocyte preservation — has been in the works since the 1980s, primarily as a last resort for those undergoing major surgeries or with serious medical illnesses. Rarely was it considered as a family planning alternative. The latter, better known as social egg freezing, became more mainstream after the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) deemed the procedure “non-experimental” in 2012.

“It definitely raised the awareness that egg freezing is now commercially available,” said Dr. Ari Baratz, one of Canada’s leading fertility experts and part of the medical team at the Create Fertility Centre in Toronto. “That really sparked demand.”

In the years since, it has increasingly become an option in family planning. This has forced a re-examination of “fertility” — what that means and how it is discussed among individuals and couples, and patients and their doctors.

For those with ovaries, it has meant being able to “realize their reproductive autonomy” and providing a sense of agency in one’s own reproductive aging — in other words, being liberated from their biological clocks. For couples, both heterosexual and those within in the LGBTQ+ community, it has meant being able to be more strategic about parenthood in terms of timing or priorities such as careers or financial stability or even relationship stability.

It’s a conversation of the modern age, bolstered by lifestyle, career and societal changes. As recently as 2022, social media platforms saw a surge of videos, vlogs and posts shared on the topic, by doctors looking to educate, and by people who have gone through the process and wanted to share their experiences.

Reproductive rights were hotly contested during the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Donald Trump made headlines when he proposed expanding access to invitro fertilization (IVF) treatments by having them paid for either by government or by insurance companies, a move criticized by some conservative groups for the practice of discarding unused embryos after a successful live birth via IVF.

The U.S. president issued an executive order in February to expand IVF access, although it’s unclear how long it could take to see changes to out-of-pocket costs.

Any conversation about reproductive rights comes with ethical quandaries, and in the case of egg freezing, it’s the thorny matter of “biological insurance.” What level of autonomy does it truly offer those considering it?

“I don’t think we’re completely going to put the brakes on fertility,” Baratz said, adding that egg freezing was always meant to be viewed as a way to “augment the ability to have a baby or even a larger family.”

The ‘stigma’

Bhopa is no stranger to the spotlight. As a child, she acted in television shows and currently teaches a curriculum on artificial intelligence. “I always did public stuff,” she said.

Her persona on social media, before posting about her egg freezing, was “more guarded,” she said. “This is the place where I have to be professional.”

If it hadn’t been for her sister and her boyfriend encouraging her, Bhopa said she wouldn’t have considered sharing her egg-freezing story on a public platform.

Bhopa recalled her sister telling her: “You know, when I was your age, I just wish I had someone to look up to, to even start this conversation.”

Her boyfriend, also a physician, had stressed that being vocal about her journey would be “pushing so many barriers for women.”

“For example,” Bhopa adds, “talking about not having kids right after you get married or not having to get married right after you’ve done school, and just pushing the gender norms that are often circulated.”

She was initially reluctant — “I was very, very, very hesitant to share this journey online,” Bhopa explained in a YouTube video. “It’s a very intimate thing.” But she decided to

share her journey

to encourage more open conversations around fertility and family planning and postponing pregnancy.

“I think that fertility, women’s health and planning for a family can be quite taboo for very many people and many cultures worldwide,” she continued. “And breaking down that stigma a little bit and opening up the conversation about fertility … and taking control and being empowered about making the plans necessary, to allow you to feel comfortable about your decisions.”

It was the same stigma and lack of public conversation that kept Missy Modell, an American comedian, influencer and businesswoman from deciding to go through egg freezing until her late 30s.

“The reason I waited so long was because I didn’t see anyone captured in this way … like, the day-to-day,” she said. “I run a company. I have to be high functioning. I was also terrified of doing that to myself. What are the hormones going to do to me?”

Like Bhopa, Modell decided to publicly vlog her journey to push back against the social stigma and take control of the conversation.

“I was terrified to freeze my eggs because of all the unknowns and questions and shame and insert my excuse,” she posted to

her stories on Instagram

on the first day of her egg-freezing journey. “I wanted to pull back the curtain and hope that if some people were really on the fence for reasons that had nothing to do with the outcome … I wanted to help people feel comfortable with it.”

The stigma, while much less palpable than it might have been five or 10 years ago, “is not completely smashed,” Baratz said. “Obviously, it is still a personal issue.”

In 2018, U.K. researchers interviewed 31 women who had undergone egg freezing to better understand their experiences. “Few women perceived freezing as involving physical risks,” the researchers wrote. “However, many participants reported the process of egg freezing as emotionally challenging, primarily linked to feelings of isolation and stigma due to their single status.”

A 2021 Canadian study yielded similar results. It found that 89 per cent of the 224 women who took part said they chose to freeze their eggs because they were single and had not yet found a partner.

By the time social egg freezing arrived on the scene, a woman was statistically more likely to have her first child by the age of 28, according to Statistics Canada — a noticeable jump from the 1970s, when a woman would typically have her first child by the age of 24.

However, unlike men, who remain fertile long into their senior years, a woman’s fertility peaks between her teen years and late 20s, and is likely to decline after age 30, presenting a conundrum for those looking to balance their professional lives with their desire for parenthood.

For those looking to further their careers without the fear of running out the biological clock, social egg freezing became an attractive opportunity to have it all. Initially, women, mostly in their late 30s and 40s, attended consultations, information sessions and “egg-freezing cocktail parties” hosted by fertility clinics wanting to rebrand egg freezing as something positive, rather than a bleak last resort.

“Originally, it started as a way for the older demographic of people with ovaries to hold on to their fertility,” said Carolynn Dube, the executive director for Fertility Matters Canada. “And people still use it for that reason now, but we’re seeing a younger group of people considering it for future use. It’s like an insurance plan.”

Jeanette Chen, 40, who works in human resources, said she first considered freezing her eggs a decade ago, around the time of a big breakup.

The breakup, she said, played a part, but her decision to pursue egg freezing was largely motivated by age. Chen was turning 28 and getting older meant becoming more conscious of “social conventions” around marriage and motherhood, as well as thinking about her fertility aging, she said.

However, the newness of the idea and lack of access around it curtailed her understanding of what egg freezing really meant. “I knew this idea of egg freezing existed, conceptually what it was like and what it was intended for,” she said of her conversations with friends back then. “Some of my friends might say, ‘Oh, I’m thinking about egg freezing,’ but that’s it. It’s like a blanket statement.”

By the time she finally decided to go ahead with the process at 38, the scene had shifted substantially, she said. Several of her friends had frozen their eggs, either as part of an IVF treatment or otherwise. “I do think it’s a bit better now because people are more open about it,” Chen added.

Access to information, both socially and regionally, can play a big role in an individual’s understanding and willingness to talk openly about fertility, Dube explained. For big urban centres such as Toronto and Montreal, the conversation might be more prominent than in less-populated regions, where access to fertility specialists and clinics may not be as easy.

“It’s still a relatively new process in a lot of parts of the country outside of these bigger cities,” Dube explained. “I think just having access to the knowledge and experts geographically is one piece.”

Dube notes the surge in conversations about egg freezing online, especially among young professionals. “But openly sharing it, especially in a place where an employer or a potential employer could find you, is problematic,” she said. “Because it opens you up to someone saying, ‘Oh, she’s thinking about having children someday,’ and you’re internally thinking about how that might impact your growth at the company.”

Bhopa acknowledged that much of her own hesitation to share her story came from the same place. “I’m going to be an academic and have students and colleagues and principal investigators for grants that could potentially

see this

,” she said.

Even among friends and acquaintances, the subject isn’t exactly a trending topic. Antoinette Twiver said she learned about egg freezing in university while watching an episode of The Mindy Project, a popular sitcom on the life of a lovelorn gynecologist. She didn’t know how many of her own friends had considered or had gone through the process until she made the decision to freeze her own eggs at age 29, in 2023.

She was “surprised” when she learned a number of friends “have been going through this process as well and maybe not sharing it.”

Twiver, who has a following of over 42,000 on TikTok, shared her experience on her TikTok to help others learn more about the process — “if this video helps even one person learn a little bit about the process then it would be worth it,” she said.

“I do think that it is something that is tiptoed around a bit,” Chen said. “It’s a hard topic for people to initiate because people aren’t sure about the circumstances of the other people.”

The medical side of egg freezing

For close to 20 years, Dr. Sony Sierra has worked in the medical field as a reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist. The physician is deputy medical director with TRIO fertility, a chain of fertility clinics in the Greater Toronto Area that receives patients for a range of fertility issues.

She has seen the conversation around egg freezing and preserving fertility change dramatically in the years since the ASRM ruling to deem the procedure as non-experimental.

“Ten years ago, I barely did egg-freezing cases,” she said. “And now it’s hugely busy, our egg-freezing program. And I think a lot of it comes from the knowledge of it being an option.”

Before the ASRM 2012 decision, doctors and experts largely viewed the procedure as reactive rather than proactive, mostly suggested in cases of infertility or a serious illness or major surgery that could impact a person’s fertility.

Since the ruling, the number of cases around the country has soared — from 94 in 2013 to more than 1,500 in 2022, according to CARTR, a Canadian database that tracks fertility procedures performed in Canada.

Ten years ago, less than two per cent of patients who visited Sierra’s clinic came to consult or pursue egg freezing. By 2022, 15 per cent of patients visiting TRIO planned to pursue egg freezing, prompting the team to open

EVOLVE

, Canada’s first egg-freezing clinic, in March 2023.

As part of

the process,

a woman injects herself daily, for two weeks, in the belly or upper thighs with hormonal drugs to stimulate her ovaries to produce around 10 to 15 mature eggs. The more eggs to freeze, the more likely one of those eggs, once thawed, will be fertilized with sperm and lead to a pregnancy.

Once the optimal size and number of eggs has been generated, the eggs are retrieved from the ovaries via an ultrasound-guided needle, flash-frozen and stored in tanks of liquid nitrogen.

“We (get) about 200 inquiries a month,” Sierra said. “And that’s just people picking up the phone or emailing through the website. That doesn’t include physician referrals that come from doctors and gynecologists out there in the field.”

Opening up a separate clinic, she explained, allowed the team to be more proactive in offering support to people reluctant to come to a typical fertility lab, “where there are married couples who are very stressed out trying to conceive,” Sierra explained. “A waiting room in a fertility clinic, it’s a different environment.”

Reproductive awareness

Fertility education is a relatively new concept. As recently as 2017, the term “fertility awareness” was introduced as a definition in the International Glossary on Infertility and Fertility Care.

The fertility conversation, Baratz explained, has long focused around the don’ts rather than the dos. “A lot of sexual health education is based around infection prevention and healthy lifestyle, but also avoiding unwanted pregnancy. … We’ve forgotten how to turn that message off.”

Medical providers have become more aware of the proactive role they have to play in discussions with patients, he said, initiating conversations about reproductive health and asking questions such as, “Have you thought about how you’re going to approach building your family?”

Medical professionals are increasingly being invited to universities and schools to talk to younger people about their reproductive health and to heighten awareness around fertility. And more than 50 private fertility clinics have popped up across the country providing resources to individuals looking for fertility consultations.

The conversations about egg freezing, however, have an added layer of complexity. Not only are there the details of the process — the costs, the side-effects of hormone treatment, the risks — decisions must be made on how the eggs will be used and stored.

Baratz said that means asking a patient if they have a plan for their eggs: Do they plan to use the eggs as a first or last resort when trying to have a child? Are they able to afford the cost of yearly storage? How many children do they plan to have, with or without the eggs? Have they considered other alternatives to fertility planning?

“In a responsible consultation, egg freezing is just a handle to discuss the full spectrum of what’s available.”

It also means addressing the popular perception of egg freezing as biological insurance — “that’s part of informed consent,” Baratz added.

Maybe, baby

Freezing your eggs, experts stress, does not guarantee the birth of a child. The overall success rate of egg freezing can depend on any number of factors, such as a person’s age and the number and quality of eggs retrieved. It’s also possible for eggs to not survive the thawing process or not be successfully fertilized by sperm.

At EVOLVE, the rule of thumb is, the more, the better. “For example, individuals aged 30 to 34 have an 80 per cent chance or higher of a live birth later. In contrast, freezing between two and eight eggs results in a 20 to 52 per cent chance of a live birth,” the clinic explains on its website.

“At the same time, with increasing age, research shows it may take more frozen eggs to achieve a successful pregnancy”.

The American Society of Reproductive Medicine issued the same caution when announcing their decision to drop the “experimental” label — that the procedure is not a guarantee for having a baby.

“We think we should proceed cautiously in using this as an elective technique, especially in older patients,” stated Dr. Eric Widra, chairman of the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology practice committee in 2012.

“There is an inherent conflict between the desire to freeze eggs and the need to freeze eggs. Freezing eggs for the future sounds like a good insurance policy but may not be an insurance policy that needs to be cashed in,” he stated.

Baratz chooses his words carefully when describing the risks and benefits of the procedure. “It can be referred to as biological insurance with big quotes around it, because that may not solve the story,” he said. “What we always tell you as part of the consent process is that you’re doing this as part of your fertility journey.”

And, compared to other procedures, which may involve greater medical risks, egg freezing is a relatively safe procedure, Baratz added.

“So, the downside is very minimal, other than the cost of the procedure … But if they’re in the right demographic where it’s feasible, it’s a great option.”

Insurance and the costs of egg freezing

For many, being able to afford the cost of freezing eggs is where the barrier to access comes in.

Below Bhopa’s TikTok video — titled, “4 takeaways after freezing my eggs at 25” — the most common question asked was about the cost.

“How much did this cost? I’m thinking of doing this?” one user asked.

“What’s the cost?” asked Leslie&Mj.

“How much was it? Does your insurance cover it?” a TikTok user who goes by Kathleen posted.

In a separate video, Bhopa broke down the costs of her egg freezing process. “Eighty per cent of my medication was covered by insurance,” she explained in the video, “but the total cost without insurance would have been $4,000.”

“My procedure was not covered by insurance, but for a lot of people it is,” she said, adding that the cost for her egg retrieval came to $9,750, which included the fees for storing the eggs for five years — $500 per year, according to Bhopa, who displayed her invoices in the background of the video as she detailed the costs of the process.

“So, the actual cost of the procedure alone, including anesthetic and everything like that, is $7,000.”

Bhopa went on to explain that she was able to afford it by getting a second job that same year and “saving up extremely well.”

“It’s an investment like any other and I’m really empowered by it,” she added.

But she acknowledged that without insurance covering the cost of medication, she would not have been able to afford the service. “That was my main driver,” she said in an interview with Postmedia.

Likewise, Twiver said she was “lucky to be able to tap into” her company’s health insurance benefits, which includes egg freezing.

Without insurance, Twiver said the entire cost would have come to $12,000, for the procedure and medication. If insurance wasn’t available, Twiver said she would have relied on support from her family, but “having access via coverage obviously made the decision much easier.”

In the past decade, Canadian and U.S. companies, mostly in banking and tech, have added fertility benefits to their employees’ insurance coverage.

Some Canadian banks now offer up to $60,000 in fertility treatments to be accessed over a lifetime, according to a report by Fertility Matters Canada. The Bank of Montreal increased the lifetime maximum for fertility drugs to $20,000 and reimburses employees $20,000 each in fertility treatment and surrogacy expenses. RBC and TD offer similar coverage plans with $20,000 for fertility treatments and medication, up to a lifetime maximum of $60,000, while CIBC recently began covering $15,000 for treatment drugs, to a lifetime maximum of $30,000. Scotiabank offers $10,000 in coverage for fertility treatment in addition to medication, and $10,000 for surrogacy expenses, for a maximum lifetime benefit of $30,000.

Big technology companies such as Google, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft are leading the way in offering fertility coverage to their employees. Snap is among the most generous, with workers eligible for up to $65,000 in fertility and adoption coverage through Carrot Fertility, and up to $130,000 toward surrogacy expenses.

On the one hand, these company policies can be a big plus for employees interested in the service who fear emptying their bank accounts. And it can be a stress-reliever for women looking to balance their careers with future parenthood.

“If the cost of the investment is no longer an element to be taken into consideration, even women who are less worried about finding a partner ‘in time’ may become interested in banking, which will lower the average age and thus raise the quality of the banked eggs,” Heidi Mertes, an associate professor in medical ethics at Ghent University, wrote in a 2015 paper.

On the other hand, it can promote a bias around egg freezing as the golden ticket out of the claws of the biological clock and encourage women, sometimes “against their better judgment” to defer parenthood in lieu of a better professional reputation, Mertes wrote.

For those without the option of insurance, or a big enough bank account, costs remain a major barrier.

“My initial reaction was just pure shock,” Sehrish Qureshi, 31, said of her reaction when she researched the costs of egg freezing for herself. “I was highly disappointed, of course. And then anger … I’m not expecting it to be affordable, because it’s a luxury service, but up to $35,000 a year? That’s definitely not what I was expecting.”

She said the cost of the service put her off wanting to explore the idea. “I just never looked at it again.”

High costs are partly why it’s more common to see individuals in their mid- to late 30s look to egg freezing rather than those in their 20s, Baratz said.

“If someone was going to have to make significant financial decisions on whether to do egg freezing or not, then I would discourage them. But if it’s feasible, it’s a great option,” he said.

For Bhopa,

the road to freezing her eggs

was an arduous and expensive one, but she has no regrets. “I can’t control time, but I can control what I do with my time,” she said in a YouTube video.

“I only want children when I know I have the time for it. I just don’t think the career goals I have over the next couple of years are feasible in regard to my biological clock … knocking on my door.”

Click here for more Canada