OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal government is pushing back against

U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest threat to impose 100 per cent tariffs

on Canada if it makes a trade deal with China, insisting there is no deal in the works.

After Trump delivered the ultimatum on Saturday, Minister for Canada-U.S. Trade,

Dominic LeBlanc, posted a response on X.

“As the Prime Minister said this week, Canada and the United States have built a remarkable partnership in our economy and security — and we will remain focused on ensuring the future of that relationship will benefit workers and businesses on both sides of our border,” LeBlanc wrote.

“There is no pursuit of a free trade deal with China. What was achieved (in a recent agreement) was resolution on several important tariff issues,” he added. LeBlanc was referring to the prime minister’s recent trip to China that

saw an agreement for temporary relief from Chinese tariffs

on Canadian canola, lobster, crabs and peas in exchange for allowing a limited amount of Chinese-made electric vehicles into Canada at low tariff rates.

“Canada’s new government is building a stronger Canadian economy, with a plan that is building our strength at home and strengthening our trading partnerships throughout the world,” LeBlanc wrote.

Trump

posted a tirade online Saturday

against “Governor Carney,” claiming that “China will eat Canada alive, completely devour it, including the destruction of their businesses, social fabric, and general way of life.”

“If Canada makes a deal with China, it will immediately be hit with a 100% Tariff against all Canadian goods and products coming into the U.S.A.,” he wrote.

Trump had previously used “governor” as a title to

taunt former prime minister Justin Trudeau in 2024

, as the president pressed his belief Canada should become the 51st state of the U.S.A., but he had until now taken a less sardonic approach with Carney.

Later on Saturday afternoon, Trump had seemingly toned down his attacks on Carney,

with a post instead expressing concern

that China would invade Canada.

“The last thing the World needs is to have China take over Canada. It’s NOT going to happen, or even come close to happening!”

Saturday’s threats were a sharp reversal from Trump’s original reaction to Carney’s “strategic partnership” with China. Last Thursday, the president had said after Canada announced the deal: “

Well, that’s OK, that’s what you should be doing. I mean, it’s a good thing for him to sign a trade deal. If you can get a deal with China, you should do that, right?”

But the U.S. president’s threat to slap Canada with new tariffs is the culmination of tensions this week between both countries following a largely noticed speech by Carney in Davos.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum on Tuesday,

Carney declared that the old rules-based international order was dead

and exhorted middle powers, such as Canada, to band together against bullies and “hegemons” which he did not call out by name.

Trump took issue with the comments, saying in a speech of his own in Wednesday that Canada should be more “grateful” to its neighbour and that “Canada lives” because of the U.S.

“Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements,” he said.

Carney offered a polite rebuttal to Trump in a subsequent speech ahead of his cabinet retreat in Quebec City: “Canada doesn’t live because of the United States. Canada thrives because we are Canadian.”

Hours after that, Trump rescinded Carney’s invitation to join his “Board of Peace” that he had ostensibly convened to aid in the reconstruction of Gaza after the Israel-Hamas war, although it has taken on a more sweeping mandate.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce said Trump’s idea to impose 100 per cent tariffs would undermine the free trade agreement between Canada, Mexico and the U.S. that is set to come for review later this year.

“A structured and stable relationship with China or any other country, like our new engagements with Indonesia or the UAE, are not to replace our deeply rooted relationship with the United States that continues to be overwhelmingly good for workers, consumers and North American competitiveness,” said Matthew Holmes, the Chamber’s Executive Vice President and Chief of Public Policy.

“We hope the two governments can come to a better understanding quickly that can alleviate further concerns for businesses who face the immediate consequences of torqued up uncertainty,” Holmes added.

For the last few days, Carney has been steering clear from directly addressing Trump’s threats.

The prime minister was supposed to answer questions from the media Friday afternoon, after his two-day cabinet retreat in Quebec City, but

the press conference did not start on time and was then abruptly cancelled by his team

due to “scheduling” reasons.

On Saturday,

Carney published a video on X

reiterating the importance of buying Canadian products and building infrastructure and homes with Canadian material.

National Post

calevesque@postmedia.com

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.

On Jan. 19, 2026, the body of B.C. teen Piper James was found on K’gari, an island off the coast of Queensland. It was discovered in the early hours of the morning, surrounded by a pack of dingoes. An autopsy concluded signs of drowning, as well as extensive dingo bites inflicted after death. “Pre-mortem dingo bite marks are not likely to have caused immediate death,”

the coroner told reporters

.

But have dingoes killed other people, and are attacks frequent? Here’s what you need to know about thsee wild dogs that are native to Australia.

What are dingoes?

Dingoes resemble medium-sized dogs, with ginger-coloured fur, erect ears and bushy tails, according to

the Australian Museum

. They are descended from dogs brought by Asian seafarers around 4,000 years ago. They are the country’s largest mammalian carnivore, with teeth longer than those of domestic dogs.

They live in a wide range of habitats on the Australian mainland, preferring woodland and grasslands that extend to the edge of forests.

As predators, they feed mainly on other mammals such as rabbits, kangaroos, wallabies and wombats, but when those native species are scarce they sometimes hunt domestic animals and farm livestock and therefore can’t count farmers among their fans. Hunting at night, they usually move in solitary fashion but will cooperate to hunt in packs when they are after larger game.

Generally, dingoes are considered low risk, but like any wild animal, they can be unpredictable. Experts told

the BBC

that dingoes are wary and cautious around people. Most will avoid contact with humans.

The Queensland government has warned against feeding them, an issue that can arise with well-meaning tourists. The Department of Environment, Tourism and Science says people who ignore warnings and deliberately feed dingoes can be

fined more than $10,000 Australian dollars

(Canada’s dollar is roughly equivalent).

Have there been many attacks?

Between 2002 to 2012, records show 98 dingo attacks, mostly non-fatal bites or lunges, plus earlier notable cases like a 2001 fatal mauling of a nine-year-old boy on K’gari, reports the

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

.

High-risk incidents, linked to post-pandemic tourism, began increasing in 2023.

A July 2023 attack of a woman resulted in her being transported from K’gari to hospital, reported Australian broadcaster

SBS News

. She was

attacked by at least three dingoes while jogging on a beach on the Queensland island.
They chased her into the water before two men in a four-wheel drive rushed to her aid.

A man with the local Aboriginal community said

he wasn’t surprised the dingoes chased her into the water, as that is
“part of their hunting tactics.” 

Overall, says ABC, human-dingo conflicts remain statistically rare despite increased reporting on popular sites.

Dingo safety advice, according to SBS, includes never feeding them, locking up food and food waste, camping in fenced areas, staying in groups and within arm’s reach of children, and not running.

What’s the most well-known case of a dingo attack?

On the night of Aug. 17, 1980, Azaria Chamberlain, a nine-week-old Australian baby girl, was killed by a dingo during a family camping trip to Uluru in the country’s Northern Territory. Her body was never found.

However, her mother, Lindy was tried for her murder and spent more than three years in prison, while her father, Michael, received a suspended sentence. Lindy was released only after the baby’s jacket was found near a dingo’s den. After f

our inquests

into the matter in 2012, they were absolved. A coroner eventually found that Azaria was indeed killed by a dingo.

“A dingo ate my baby!” became a popular cultural meme in the ’80s and ’90s (think

Seinfeld

). Numerous books have also been written about the case, and the story has been adapted into several media including a TV movie, a feature film starring Meryl Streep and Sam Neill, a television miniseries, a theatrical production and an opera.

How are dingoes part of Australian culture?

Dingoes are culturally important to many First Nations people across the country. They are a regular feature of Indigenous culture and form an important part of totems, dreaming, lore/law and customs, says

Defend the Wild

, an organization dedicated to safeguarding Australia’s unique wildlife and their habitats.

In traditional Aboriginal society, dingoes played an important role in the protection of women and children. Women would often travel with dingoes wrapped around their waists, as they provided hunting assistance and were a living blanket and guarded against intruders.

• B.C. teen Piper James bitten by dingoes before she likely drowned in Australia: autopsy
• ‘Infectious laugh, kind spirit’: Father mourns Canadian teen after her body found surrounded by pack of dingoes in Australia

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.

Set for release Jan. 27, Lament for a Literature is the new book from Richard Stursberg, in which he laments the decline of Canadian literature, for which he blames multiple factors. In this excerpt, he addresses the impact of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, arguing they took over a badly weakened cultural sector from the Harper Conservatives and threw money at it without addressing the difficult structural issues affecting it, only making things worse. The government, he said, did not understand “that as Canadian media eroded and Canadians embraced the new foreign digital platforms, they walked away from Canada itself. They no longer consumed Canadian news, laughed at Canadian comedies, read Canadian books, watched Canadian documentaries, or heard the opinions of Canadian experts on domestic social, cultural, political, economic, or historical issues. They effectively left the national conversation and moved to another amorphous, filter-bubbling virtual country.”

Instead of attending to the challenges of the creative industries, the new government’s biggest cultural initiative was to fully embrace Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). In a famous remark, Justin Trudeau, when asked why half his cabinet were women, he simply said, “Because it’s 2015.” He went on to inaugurate a “feminist” agenda that penetrated all aspects of the government’s work. Every initiative, including the budget, had to be accompanied by a detailed analysis of what it would mean for women.

At the same time, the major cultural institutions, falling in line with the government’s new orientation, created measures designed to improve the access of “equity-seeking” groups to their programs. The CBC, the Canada Council, and Telefilm all moved to embrace DEI. In most cases, this took the form of requiring applicants, producers, artists, and publishers to provide detailed accounts of how many BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) people were involved in their projects and what roles they occupied. If an insufficient number appeared, the project was turned down.

As DEI advanced, another strange aspect of identity politics emerged: the assumption that people have a right not to be offended. In the case of Wendy Mesley, for example, her distinguished career at the CBC was cancelled because she had made reference to Pierre Vailiere’s seminal text on Quebec nationalism, Les Negres Blancs d’Amerique. Someone was apparently offended by the use of the word “negre.” She was dismissed. As Anne Applebaum noted in The Atlantic: “…it is possible to meet people who have lost everything — jobs, money, friends, colleagues — after violating no laws and sometimes no workplace rules either. Instead, they have broken (or are accused of having broken) social codes having to do with race, sex, personal behaviour, or acceptable humour, which may not have existed five years ago or maybe five minutes ago.”

Fear of violating these codes of conduct inevitably leads to caution, particularly when the consequences can be so terrible. Writers, publishers, and booksellers will all be careful not to offend. They will search out the bland, the non-controversial, and the politically acceptable. Again, Applebaum: “How many manuscripts remain in desk drawers or unwritten altogether, because their authors fear an arbitrary judgement?” The resulting chill limits freedom of expression and artistic daring. It is hard, if not impossible, to imagine publishers in 2025 releasing anything as comparably challenging as Beautiful Losers, Bear, or Oh Canada! Oh Quebec!

The movement to right historical discrimination expanded dramatically. The practice had started with the Mulroney government, which had apologized for the internment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War (1988) and the similar treatment of Italian Canadians (1990). The Harper government apologized for the Chinese Head Tax Act of 1885 (2006), residential schools (2008), and the Komagata Maru incident of 1914 (2008). The Trudeau government accelerated the pace, apologizing again for the treatment of Italian Canadians, the Komagatu Maru, and residential school abuses. It went on to seek forgiveness for the bad treatment of Jews (the MS St. Louis), the Inuit, and the Number 2 Construction Battalion of Black workers.

The legacy of Sir John A. Macdonald, the architect of Confederation and father of the country, was sharply reassessed. He was blamed, often (not always) unfairly, for policies that harmed Indigenous peoples, including residential schools, famine, and cultural suppression. Statues fell and his name was removed from schools and institutions as Canadians erased the narrative of their country’s founding.

The national purification had consequences, some good, some not so good. Most importantly perhaps, it clarified Canada’s relationship to its Indigenous peoples, allowing new voices to be heard. In writing, the emergence of Richard Wagamese, Michelle Good, and Eden Robinson enriched the country’s understanding of itself and its identity. The quality of their novels resulted in significant bestsellers and important prizes, and they also made clear in a way that nothing else could, the terrible sadness and betrayal involved in the government’s policies.

An outpouring of Indigenous nonfiction also resulted in important bestsellers. Tanya Talaga’s Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death and Hard Truths in a Northern City broke new ground in understanding the systemic racism that bedevilled aboriginal children, shipped away from home to go to school. The seven fallen feathers are the seven children who killed themselves in despair over their circumstances. 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act by Bob Joseph documented the discriminatory policies embedded in the almost 150-year-old act that defined and controlled the lives of Indigenous people.

While these books were clearly of value in making sense of Canada’s identity, the sweeping reconsideration of the country’s past inevitably had consequences for Canadians’ sense of themselves. The revelations surrounding the appalling behaviour toward Indigenous people coupled with the seemingly endless apologies for past bad behaviour toward women, Jews, Black and Brown Canadians, Italians, and Japanese Canadians, along with the denunciation of Sir John A. Macdonald, left Canadians questioning the virtue of their country. People of conscience began to feel shame. Canadians’ traditionally intense pride in their country began to erode. What began as a slide under Harper’s Conservatives became a flood under the Trudeau Liberals. By the end of his administration, attitudes had shifted significantly. Where in 1985, almost 80 per cent of Canadians were very proud of their country, by 2024 it had fallen to 34 per cent.

The pervasive recasting of Canadian history had the concomitant effect of strengthening Canada’s commitment to DEI. The revelations that many groups had been treated badly created an appetite to make amends. Simple fairness required a recognition and celebration of the different peoples who had been smeared and abused in the past. The history of denigrating LGBTQ+ folks had not only to come to an end, their specific identities needed to be explored, understood, and lauded as Canada itself had been during the nationalist 1970s and 1980s. Identity politics replaced the politics of national identity.

The intersection of the structural changes in the publishing industry with the overwhelming dominance of the multinationals, the emphasis on righting historical wrongs, and the Liberal government’s insistence on DEI strengthened trends that were already evident in the kinds of cultural works and books that were being produced.

Deeply researched narrative nonfiction was already in steep decline. The collapse of the big Canadian independent publishers meant that there was little appetite or money left for books on Canadian society, politics, history, or biography. For their part, the multinationals were principally interested in selling their U.K. and U.S. bestsellers in Canada. Dan Wells, the publisher of Biblioasis, a distinguished Canadian publisher of poetry, novels, and Canadian history did a count of the number of researched Canadian nonfiction books produced by Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Harper-Collins collectively. He estimated that: “between these three multinationals they publish between 250 and 300 Canadian books every six months … four or five might be works of Canadian history or researched nonfiction.” He attributed their indifference to traditional Canadian nonfiction to the fact that they’re not Canadian, and that their priorities are either set by or designed to please masters and shareholders in foreign countries. That leaves Canada “in the intellectual position of being more or less a colony in the large extra national entities … We are no longer able to decide which of our stories deserves to be told.”

At the same time, the Canada Council’s zealous pursuit of “decolonization,” and its prioritization of works “of personal reflection where the point of view of the author is evident,” gave further momentum to personal narratives at the expense of history, biography, science, or politics. There was an explosion of memoirs. Many were trauma memoirs, recounting the horrors of growing up gay, Black, female, Indigenous, or some combination of all of them. Others were memoirs by famous people, as we have seen, sports stars, politicians, and media personalities. Charlotte Gray, the distinguished Canadian historian, noted: “The top 2018 Governor General’s award shortlist for nonfiction contained five memoirs; the 2019 shortlist was dominated by personal stories; all five of the 2020 nominations were memoirs. In 2021, there was only one book on the shortlist that was not a memoir.” In 2023, four out of five nonfiction nominees for the Governor General’s Award for nonfiction were memoirs: Gendered Islamophobia; Unbroken: My Fight for Survival, Hope and Justice for Indigenous Women and Girls; Unearthing; and Invisible Boy. The 2024 shortlist is somewhat more balanced with only two memoirs.

The decline of books on Canadian history and its ongoing denigration, accompanied by the celebration of individual life stories, seemed congruent with George Grant’s contention that Canada was slipping away from its historic emphasis on community values and shared experiences to a much more individualistic, more American view of what was important. The things that count are not the large social and political acts of collective effort, for good or ill, with all their warts and triumphs, but how people feel within the confines of their own experiences. Reality manifests itself in the subjectivity of perceptions rather than the hard facts of the broader world in all its tumults and contradictions.

Also in these years, a new set of Canadian novelists was emerging, still with little direct interest in Canada and Canadians. In 2016–17, almost all the bestsellers were not set in Canada. Only the great Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis and Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing (winner of the Governor General’s Award and the Giller) were set at least in part in Canada, although most of the characters in Thien’s book are Chinese and those in Alexis’s are dogs. The wonderfully gifted Omar El Akkad produced American War, an enormous international bestseller. It is set in the 2070s in a United States that has once again split into warring factions as a result of environmental collapse.

More broadly, the Canadian fiction bestseller lists showed ever more clearly the trends that had been emerging over the previous two decades.

The most popular books were very rarely set in Canada or involved Canadian characters. The Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield’s thriller takes place in space; Lawrence Hill’s The Illegal is set in a fictional country called Freedom State; the wildly successful Shari Lapena mysteries — A Stranger in the House, Someone We Know, The Best Kind of People — are all located in New York or Connecticut; and Margaret Atwood’s Booker Prize-winning The Testaments, a follow up to The Handmaid’s Tale, continues her exploration of the fictional republic of Gilead. Only three bestsellers during that ten-year time period were set in Canada: Michael Redhill’s Bellevue Square, set in the Kensington Market in Toronto; The Break, by Katherine Vermette, about a Métis-Anishnaabe family in Manitoba; and Louise Penny’s Glass Houses, featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec.

The issue of settings is not restricted to novels. It pervades a lot of the culture. The most celebrated comedy ever created in Canada demonstrated similar unwillingness to have visibly Canadian characters. The producers were quite explicit about not wanting it to appear Canadian, despite the fact that setting it in Canada would have strengthened the show’s main premise: a wealthy, entitled family in Los Angeles goes bankrupt and has to move to a tiny town that they own called Schitt’s Creek, a complete fall from grace and a humiliation. The show was made by Canadians and financed by the CBC. It was picked up by Netflix and garnered a record number of Primetime Emmy nominations for a comedy series. It also received three nominations for GLAAD Media Awards for its portrayal of LGBTQ+ people, winning twice for Best Comedy. Nobody, whether Canadian or American, would know that it was a Canadian show from its content.

The cultural environment in Canada became so constrained that the writer Stephen Marche commented, “There has never been a worse time to try and tell a Canadian story. To come into existence, a Canadian story must either be transferred to an American setting or submit to the national virtue machinery. Either way, the connection to the political entity called Canada perishes in the process. The disappearance of Canada, the end of the Canadian story, would be a strange kind of death. No one is coming to conquer us. No ideology is exploding under our feet. The death of so-called Canada would be a death by willed irrelevance, a narrative suicide.”

During the same period, the rise of previously marginalized voices coincided with a decline in those of White men. As DEI advanced in publishing, it became increasingly difficult for White male authors — unless already famous — to find editors willing to read their work. Joyce Carol Oates remarked that even brilliant young White men “are just not of interest” to publishers.

Some blamed a misreading of DEI as “Diversity, Equity, and Exclusion,” or the Canada Council’s zealous “decolonization” agenda; others noted that with only about 25 per cent of editorial staff male, female editors naturally preferred female perspectives; and some disputed that White male authors were disadvantaged at all, or, if true, that it mattered. Whatever the cause, male writers appear to have fallen out of fashion. The 2025 Sobey Arts Award shortlisted twenty-six women and twelve Indigenous artists among thirty nominees — none of the four men were White. Recent Giller and Governor General’s prizes show similar trends: roughly two-thirds of winners were women, and only one White man among them. These results likely reflect publishing priorities rather than overt bias, yet they signal a profound cultural shift.

————

Fundamental to any program to resurrect Canada’s book business is the necessity to reform its major cultural institutions. Over the last decade or more, they have become deeply politicized, pursuing a specific and polarizing social and economic agenda. They have turned it into a wedge that excludes certain people from consideration, certain forms of address from polite society, and certain manners of speaking as incompatible with good behaviour. The penalties for violating these often ambiguous standards can be devastating. These strictures have narrowed the boundaries of discourse and cast a chill on what can be said, written, or shown, radically restricting artists’ freedom of expression.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion were never supposed to evolve in this direction. Properly understood, it is not a negative, punishing exercise in ideological purity, but a formula for discovering and celebrating what had previously been arbitrarily suppressed. Murray Sinclair, the chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, made the point explicitly when he explained that reconciliation was not about tearing down the statues of John A. Macdonald, but raising up statues to Big Bear. It is a program that calls for a deep understanding of both the good and the bad in historical figures and events. It assumes that people are sufficiently sophisticated to hold two thoughts in their heads at the same time. Some of the things Macdonald did were good; some were bad. There is no need to choose sides, only to see clearly what happened. That is precisely why it was called the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

When major funders like the Canada Council set out to “decolonize” Canadian literature, they are pursuing a political agenda as surely as the censors of the Soviet Union insisting that all writing conform to the dictates of “socialist realism.” When tenured bureaucrats can harass people for wrongthink, and when it’s possible to lose essential public support for straying beyond the boundaries of correct and morally appropriate thinking, creators and cultural workers will be cautious, often second-guessing themselves. Great work flourishes in environments where people can take risks, knowing that the worst consequence will be failure, not penury and banishment.

The DEI project in Canada’s cultural agencies, government, publishing houses, and media needs to be recalibrated. It needs to focus on its original aims of combatting racism, sexism, and intolerance. It needs to seek truth, not for the purpose of punishment, but for learning. When mistakes are made, when the wrong word or hurtful language is thoughtlessly used, it needs to be treated as a teachable moment, not as a call to puritanical vengeance. It needs to start from an assumption that the overwhelming majority of Canadians are people of good will. Do they sometimes make cruel mistakes? Of course. The important thing is to learn together and bank the fires of self-righteous rage.

— A former executive vice-president of the CBC, Richard Stursberg has written widely on Canadian media and cultural policy. His previous books include The Tower of Babble, named by the Globe & Mail as one of the best books of the year, and The Tangled Garden, which was short-listed for the Donner Prize for the best book on public policy written by a Canadian.

OTTAWA

— The member of Parliament representing Canada’s northernmost territory says ever since U.S. President Donald Trump began escalating his desire to control Greenland, constituents have been reaching out, concerned. 

Lori Idlout, speaking from Rankin Inlet, located on the western coast of Hudson’s Bay, where the federal NDP held its caucus retreat this week, recalls a phone call from one man seeking reassurances living in

Grise Fiord, a community of around 144 on Nunavut’s Ellesmere Island. 

“He reminded me, for example, that the flight between Grise Fiord and another community in Greenland is only an hour and a half,” the Nunavut MP told National Post.

Not just that, the parliamentarian says, she was reminded of the relationships that exist between Inuit families in Nunavut and those in Greenland. Like Nunavut, which has a population of around 33,000, Inuit in Greenland make up the majority of its estimated population of 56,000.

“Inuit in (Nunavut) need to be reassured that they will be protected and that they will have some role in that engagement,” she said.

Trump outlined his desire to have U.S. control over the Greenland in an address this week at the World Economic Forum, while ruling out the possibility of using of force. That came after European countries such as Norway, Germany and Sweden deployed some personnel to the Arctic territory, which is part of Denmark, following days of escalated rhetoric coming from the U.S. president.

A meeting between Trump and

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at Davos later led the U.S. president to announce “a framework for a future deal” that appeared to be more about bolstering NATO and American security capacity on Greenland and less about outright seizing the territory, a significant climbdown for Trump. 

Idlout, who has represented Nunavut since 2021, estimates she has heard from between 20 to 30 constituents since Trump began to set his sights on the territory. She says it has been difficult to know how seriously to take the president.

“He changes his mind so frequently, he’s incoherent a lot of the times.”

Trump’s actions underscore the need for more diversification, Idlout said. More than that, she points to how the successive federal governments have “been failing the Arctic for far too long.”

Idlout has not been the only leader to express concern.

Natan Obed, president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, which advocates for the Inuit in Canada, recently told The Canadian Press that the federal government ought to step up, saying that the Inuit had largely been left out of discussions about bolstering Canada’s sovereignty. 

Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand and Governor General Mary Simon are set to visit Greenland to open Canada’s consulate in its capital of Nuuk in the coming weeks.

Carney, in his own speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, voiced his commitment to Arctic sovereignty by emphasizing that Canada supports Greenland and Denmark in over the territory.

Applause for the prime minister’s speech has been heard both domestically and internationally, with political leaders in Australia and Mexico voicing praise. Idlout said Carney’s government must “now match the big words” the prime minister expressed.

She says securing the Arctic includes investing in infrastructure and “investing in the people,” within the territory so those who call it home can help with that mission, tackling long-standing issues such as housing shortages, overcrowding and poverty.

When it comes to the military, which Carney has earmarked tens of billions of dollars more on to help meet its NATO spending commitments and bolster the capacity of the Canadian Armed Forces, Idlout said telecommunications across the territory “is sorely needed.”

She also emphasized the need for any future military efforts to work closely with existing search and rescue teams as well as the Canadian Rangers, responsible for patrolling the country’s northern territories and northern British Columbia.

They are the ones with expertise in the land and marine environment, the MP said.

Idlout recalled one example of a Canadian Ranger who observed some changes in marine wildlife, which he suspected could be be tied to the presence of a submarine.

The MP said she has not spoken to Carney about the issue of Arctic security, but says she has raised the matter with Minister of Northern and Arctic Affairs Rebecca Chartrand, underlining the need for investments and services.

Besides calls about Trump and his rhetoric about Greenland, Idlout said another issue that still comes up is the potential of her crossing the floor to join the minority Liberals.

When that happens, Idlout says, she tells constituents that as an opposition MP she is able to use her voice to push for better housing conditions and supports. Plus, she says, the Liberals hold seats across the other two territories, and in Northern Quebec, which she suggests has made no difference when it comes to improving life in the North.

Idlout says that, should she join the Liberals, she would be joining a government that advances laws like Bill C-5, legislation that ushered in a new process for the building of major infrastructure projects, which Idlout says “disrespected” Indigenous rights.

Carney has promised that Indigenous-rights holders would be consulted.

Asked if that means her answer is no, Idlout suggests her mind is made.

“I’m pretty sure it’s obvious in my response.”

With a file from The Canadian Press

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 politics newsletter, First Reading, here.

U.S. President Donald Trump says a large bruise on his left hand was caused by bumping it on furniture while in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum.

“I clipped it on the table,” he

told CNN

Thursday on Air Force One.

Trump takes aspirin, which makes him prone to bruising.

He was

diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency

in July 2025. His physician, Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella, said he takes 325 milligrams of aspirin a day to treat the condition.

Aspirin thins the blood and prevents clots, according to the

Mayo Clinic

. Blood clots inside an artery can slow or stop blood flow to the heart, which can can cause a heart attack.

“I would say, take aspirin if you like your heart, but don’t take aspirin if you don’t want to have a little bruising,” Trump said on Air Force One. “I take the big aspirin, and when you take the big aspirin, they tell you, you bruise. The doctor said, ‘You don’t have to take that, sir, you’re very healthy.’ I said, ‘I’m not taking any chances.’”

Trump explains mystery bruise on his hand. pic.twitter.com/bSStogJjdy

— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) January 23, 2026

How does taking aspirin cause bruising?

Harvard Health

confirms that bruises can occur while taking aspirin due to a minor blow or injury. “Even slight bumps that you don’t even notice can cause bruises … (Aspirin) can make you bleed a little more easily, including the below-the-skin bleeding seen in bruises.”

Small cuts may take a bit longer than usual to stop bleeding, says Harvard Health. And sometimes people find their gums bleed more easily when they floss or brush after starting low-dose aspirin.

Daily aspirin therapy is prescribed for lowering the risk of heart attack and stroke, according to the

Mayo Clinic

. It may be recommended for primary prevention of heart attack or stroke. It can also act as secondary prevention for people who have had a heart attack or stroke or have heart disease.

What is Trump’s history of bruising?

Trump has had bruising on his right hand for some time, according to CNN. It predated his return to the White House but drew more attention after he began covering it with heavy makeup and bandages as well as shielding it from cameras with his other hand.

Then left-hand bruising was spotted late last year, says CNN, raising questions about his health.

The president told the Wall Street Journal

in a recent interview

that he takes a higher dose of daily aspirin than his doctors recommend, arguing “aspirin is good for thinning out the blood.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, also said on Thursday that the bruising was caused by Trump bumping a table. She has noted his

frequent hand-shaking

and connected it with daily aspirin use and easier bruising.

• Trump blames bruised hand on aspirin, denies falling asleep
• Trump dismisses internet rumours about serious health problems as ‘fake news

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