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Rescue workers clear the rubble of a residential building which was heavily damaged by a Russian strike on Ternopil, Ukraine, Friday, Nov. 21, 2025.

A draft deal that might end Russia’s war on Ukraine won some tentative Canadian support on Friday.

“We have to talk to each other, and we’re supportive of productive dialogue that might lead to a negotiated outcome that might end the war,” Defence Minister David McGuinty told reporters at the Halifax International Security Forum.

There are a thousand Russians, and hundreds of Ukrainians dying every day in the conflict, McGuinty said.

“Canada is always looking to support progress,” he said.

If U.S. efforts lead “to a negotiated outcome that ends the war, we’re supportive,” McGuinty said, noting he’s not privy to the negotiations.

“But we remain hopeful, eternally hopeful, that we can bring this to an end. First a ceasefire and then an end to the war.”

Meanwhile, Europe is “preparing to defend against potential incursions or malfeasance from Russia,” McGuinty said.

He noted that as Canada boosts its military budget to 3.5 per cent of gross domestic product, “there’s a level of preparedness, of sophistication, of arming, which will be much more powerful than it has been in years gone by.”

The White House proposal to end the war reportedly includes the surrender of Ukrainian territory and places limits on the country’s military. Drafted without the involvement of Ukraine or Europe, it would prohibit Ukraine from joining NATO, cap the size of the nation’s military and bar the presence of NATO troops in the war-ravaged country.

“They are starting points for negotiation,” General Jennie Carignan, chief of Canada’s defence staff, said Friday in an interview.

“Who knows how that’s going to turn out?”

One thing is certain, Carignan said. “There will be a need for rebuilding the Ukrainian forces and their institutions and their capacity to defend themselves. That’s absolutely clear.”

She’s hoping the draft deal “is going to provide for some stability and mostly for the conflict to pause to allow for reconstruction and, frankly, the Ukranians absolutely need that,” Carignan said.

But it “has to be an acceptable deal, for sure,” she said.

“Of course we are following closely how the situation evolves.”

The Canadian Forces is “developing various military options for the government to consider and the situation has been constantly changing and evolving in Ukraine,” she said.

“We are working with the coalition of the willing, with my counterparts as well, to come up with various solutions — who would do what in what type of context,” Carignan said.

Whether Canada provides soldiers to keep the peace in Ukraine “is all dependent on what kind of ceasefire” might be achieved, she said.

“There’s a spectrum in stopping a conflict,” Carignan said, ranging from a “shaky ceasefire” on one end to a “full peace treaty, which is very stable,” on the other.

No matter the scenario in this case, Ukraine is going to need training for its military and help with “building their democratic institutions,” she said, “which means, as well, a strong defence. This would be the common thread regardless of what kind of ceasefire or peace scenario that can be anticipated for Ukraine.”

Canada’s military is looking at options around what kind of force they could dedicate to Ukraine, she said.

“Currently I already have significant contribution to Ukraine. We can go up to 600 members,” Carignan said, noting she can’t discuss their whereabouts for operational security reasons.

“What we want to do is have scalable options that dial up or down depending on the demand.”

 Defence Minister David McGuinty and Gen. Jennie Carignan, Chief of the Defence Staff.

Canada has been helping Ukraine’s military since 2014, Carignan said. “We’ve got a long history of collaboration already. So, I already have a significant commitment. And then there’s ways to rearrange current forces serving in Europe via the NATO stream. Although one thing is very clear — we’re not going to modify our posture in Latvia. This is a firm commitment.”

Latvia is currently home to this country’s largest overseas military deployment. About 2,400 Canadian Armed Forces personnel are participating in Operation Reassurance, which is focused on contributing to NATO’s deterrence and defence effort in Central and Eastern Europe. That includes leading a 14-nation multinational battle group in Latvia, contributing naval assets to NATO’s maritime groups, and providing air support and training.

On top of that, Carignan pointed to Operation Unifier, which has trained over 47,000 members of the Security Forces of Ukraine since 2015, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. That was modified in 2022 due to Russia’s full-scale invasion; it has since trained about 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers in various locations across Europe.

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Air Canada is reviewing a complaint about a flight attendant wearing a Palestinian -coloured pin during a recent flight between Toronto and Atlanta.

Air Canada is reviewing a complaint from a Toronto Jewish man about a flight attendant wearing a political pin on her uniform.

The pin was shaped like Israel but illustrated with Palestinian colours and had an image of the Al-Aqsa Mosque (in Jerusalem’s Old City) in the centre.

“We are reviewing this matter. We will address it directly with the employee involved, as appropriate,” Air Canada’s manager of corporate communications, Peter Fitzpatrick, told National Post in an email.

The passenger,

author

and businessman Israel Ellis,

told National Post in an email this week that there

“is no place for political statements of any kind on a public airline, especially that which identifies clearly with a polarized issue used as a guise for antisemitism.”

This kind of incident “normalize(s) calls for the erasure of the Jewish people,” he said. “A pin depicting Palestine in the stead of Israel is a clear call for genocide.”

National Post shared Ellis’s concerns with Air Canada, requesting comment.

“We have a policy for uniform staff that covers which pins and symbols are permissible,” said Fitzpatrick. “There is a finite list of pins that are accepted, none of them political, as I think you mean it. Instead think of something like a poppy.”

Ellis says the incident unfolded during an Air Canada flight to Atlanta last week, with a headscarf-wearing flight attendant who wore the pin underneath her airline pin.

“I felt her disdain as she shouted at me with a grimace, seeing me and my wife’s Star of David necklaces,” he says.

He shared phone-photos of the flight attendant’s pin with National Post.

After the incident, Ellis wrote to Air Canada to complain but has not yet received a response. Meanwhile, he posted his experience on

Instagram

, receiving almost 3,000 responses and 1,400 comments.

Ellis says he felt “harassed, threatened, and unsafe in a situation … that should be providing comfort and security regardless of my identity,” adding that “seeing this supported by Air Canada is unnerving and I suppose another consequence of a country that has betrayed its Jewish constituents.”

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A police car in seen in Port Moody, B.C.

Warning: This story contains disturbing details

A 35-year-old Hong Kong man has been

sentenced to seven years

in prison after a home invasion in which a gang of attackers traumatized a B.C. family with beatings, waterboarding and sexual assault while stealing some $2.2 million from their crypto accounts.

Tsz Wing Boaz Chan was sentenced by a B.C. provincial court judge on Nov. 14,

according to court filings

, which also found that he came to Canada specifically to participate in the attack. The family’s identities are protected by a publication ban.

Court papers reveal that on the evening of April 27, 2024, the family answered a knock at the front door of their house, revealing two men dressed in Canada Post uniforms and wearing face masks. They said they had a package that required a signature.

When the family’s daughter, a student, went to get her father, the men entered the house and were followed by two more, all wearing gloves and masks. They spoke in Mandarin, Cantonese and English and referred to each other only by numbers, one to four.

The intruders restrained the family members, pushing their heads down and binding their wrists with zip ties. They then took the family’s cellphones and laptops and demanded passwords, threatening to cut or kill them if they were not provided. One had a firearm or imitation firearm.

The home invasion lasted 13 hours.

At one point the invaders forced the daughter to strip naked, and to pose and speak for a video they said would be released if the family went to police. Among other things, she was told to look at the camera while saying: “I want you to f— me.”

The father was kept blindfolded throughout the attack except when his face was used to unlock his cellphone. He and his wife were both waterboarded by their attackers, a form of torture in which water is poured over a wet cloth covering the mouth, creating the sensation of drowning. The father was also stripped naked and beaten repeatedly.

Threatened with having his genitals cut off, the father gave the men access to his and his wife’s cryptocurrency accounts. Over the course of the evening, they made multiple withdrawals from both accounts totalling US$1.6 million (roughly $2.2 million Canadian), effectively draining the accounts.

The ordeal finally ended when the daughter, believing the attackers had left, escaped and called police from a friend’s house. The police arrived at about 8:30 a.m. and found the father naked from the waist down, his hands zip tied behind his back, while his wife was found bound, gagged and wrapped in a blanket.

A search of the home uncovered zip ties, surveillance cameras, knives, collapsible batons, duct tape, bear spray, bleach and other items. Police also found three cameras outside facing the home, and a power source for them hidden in the bushes.

Victim statements filed by the father and daughter describe “the profound impact these events have had on each of them and their family,” court records show.

The daughter is “tormented by images and dreams of the incident (and) has lost a sense of safety and views strangers with suspicion … and carries a weapon with her for protection.”

She also limits the time spent at home because of the memories of the attack. “What was once a place of comfort has become a place of distress for her.”

The father believed he was going to die that night. “But more significant was the fact that he had to hear his wife and daughter being assaulted and degraded while next to him. Despite his daughter’s assurance to him that she was not ‘fully raped,’ he believes that she was.”

He has also been tormented by flashbacks, anxiety, shame and guilt since the incident, records show. “His sense of security has been shattered” and “the taking of nude videos of his daughter will be a lifelong scar for all of them.”

Records show that Chan entered Canada on April 5 last year and left the country on May 1, bound for Hong Kong. On July 25, police learned he was returning to Vancouver, where he was arrested. He has been in custody since.

Records show that in early 2024, an acquaintance had approached him “and proposed an opportunity for him to earn some money in Canada” and offered the equivalent of six months of his family’s mortgage payments. Chan told the court he was “blinded” by the sum and agreed to participate. He did not have a prior criminal record.

Chan pleaded guilty to break and enter, unlawful confinement and sexual assault. He said he was not directly involved in the transfer of cryptocurrency and did not directly receive any of it.

He did receive HK$280,000, worth about $50,000 Canadian, an amount Judge R. McQuillan ordered him to pay as restitution to the family. The judge also noted that the jail sentence “must send a message that coming to Canada to commit such a heinous offence will not be tolerated and must be deterred.”

Police say the other three attackers remain at large, and the investigation is ongoing.

“Major Crime Detectives worked tirelessly to bring this matter before the courts,” said Const. Sam Zacharias of the Port Moody Police Department. “Mr. Chan did not operate alone and the matter remains active as investigators still work to identify other suspects.”

Police in B.C. have

previously noted

an increase in home invasions of this type. “The suspects appear to know the victims are heavily invested in cryptocurrency, know where they live, and are robbing them in their own homes,” said Staff Sgt. Jill Long of Delta Police in a 2023 briefing.

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U.S. Vice President JD Vance participates in a fireside chat with Breitbart Washington Bureau Chief Matt Boyle at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium on November 20, 2025 in Washington, DC.

JD Vance has weighed in on Canadian politics, calling out the country for its “immigration insanity.”

The comments by the U.S. Vice President came in response to

a post on X about Canada’s declining living standards

. The original post featured a graph created by IceCap Asset Management that showed the change in GDP per person for the U.K., the U.S. and Canada.

“While I’m sure the causes are complicated, no nation has leaned more into ‘diversity is our strength, we don’t need a melting pot we have a salad bowl’ immigration insanity than Canada,” 

Vance said on X

.

“It has the highest foreign-born share of the population in the entire G7 and its living standards have stagnated,” he continued.

In Canada, “

almost one in four people in Canada (23 per cent) are immigrants

— the largest percentage in Canada in 150 years and the highest among G7 countries,” according to the 2021 census.

“In the same way that immigration has created the Canada we all enjoy today, immigration is central to our future,” the federal government says on a webpage about immigration.

The Trump administration has taken a different approach, as laid out by the American president’s policy

Protecting the American People Against Invasion

. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers have been ramping up efforts in an “unprecedented” way, a former acting ICE director

John Sandweg told POLITICO Magazine

.

Just last week, the

Department of Homeland Security said

hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens have been deported and “over 2 million more have self-deported” due to “aggressive enforcement, streamlined deportation protocols, and the restoration of real border security.” The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has also “restored

robust screening

and vetting capabilities” in order to obtain a visa.

In a follow-up X post, Vance continued: “And with all due respect to my Canadian friends, whose politics focus obsessively on the United States: your stagnating living standards have nothing to do with Donald Trump or whatever bogeyman the CBC tells you to blame.”

“The fault lies with your leadership, elected by you,” he said.

The two neighbouring countries have been at odds since U.S. President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on Canadian imports and referred to Canada as the 51st state. Trade talks were briefly stalled after

the Ontario government ran an anti-tariff advertisement

. The heated rhetoric has cooled in recent months; however, the

relationship between Trump and Prime Minister Mark Carney

has remained rocky.

Leader of the Conservative Party Pierre Poilievre shared the same graph about Canada’s declining living standards in a post on social media a few days before Vance.

“Mark Carney is importing to Canada the same financial disaster that he caused in the U.K. as Bank Governor there. Wherever he shows up, inflation goes up, paycheques shrink, housing costs balloon, and living standards collapse,” he wrote.

“That’s the cost of Carney.”

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Liberal Party of Canada Leader Mark Carney speaks to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after Carney was announced as the winner of the party leadership at the announcement event in Ottawa, Sunday, March 9, 2025.

OTTAWA — Mark Carney has inherited Justin Trudeau’s nightmare.

In his decade as prime minister, one of the policy decisions that haunted Trudeau was the unavoidable question about whether to allow Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) into the Canadian market.

It was Trudeau’s nightmare, bequeathed to Carney pretty much in tact, because it forced him to choose between two clusters of powerful, competing political forces, both of which he was accustomed to going to bat for.

On one side of the ledger were the formidable forces in favour of allowing the increasingly well-regarded Chinese vehicles allowed into the Canadian market: consumers, the environment, farmers, fishermen and anybody else who exports to China, voters on the West and East Coasts and in farming regions and Canada’s relationship with China.

On the other side, in favour of using hefty tariffs or other measures to keep Chinese EVs out of the Canadian market: big auto, Canadian autoworkers, Southern Ontario voters and Canada’s relationship with the United States.

After much consternation, delayed on more than one occasion, the former prime minister’s government sided just over a year ago with keeping the Chinese vehicles out. Echoing the response from then U.S. President Joe Biden, Ottawa slapped 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese EVs, essentially pricing them out of the market, and 25 per cent tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum.

To almost no one’s surprise, China retaliated with tariffs on some key Canadian exports: canola oil, canola meal, peas, seafood and pork.

Despite the powerful forces on both sides of the political tug-of-war, however, trade officials and government sources agree that Ottawa’s decision to tariff the Chinese EVs wasn’t that complicated. Canada simply couldn’t act against the U.S. and an industry as large and lucrative as the auto sector. There were also serious concerns, as with many things relating to China, about security. Electoral politics were of course also a key part of the equation.

“A year ago, I think it was an easy decision,” said Tyler Meredith, a senior policy advisor in the Trudeau government.

 Between two superpowers

Fast forward more than a year, however, and a rematch between those two armies of political forces is looming.

Carney has since replaced Trudeau, but the threat of Chinese EVs continues to haunt a Liberal prime minister.

The equation is similar to a year earlier, with one significant component change: Donald Trump has returned to power in the United States. From Canada’s perspective, that’s made pretty much everything worse. And more complicated.

Tim Sargent, head of domestic policy at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute think tank and a former deputy minister of international trade, said the quandary is that Canada is unlikely to regain full access to the Chinese market without allowing at least some Chinese EVs into Canada. But doing so, Sargent said, would likely upset the U.S. and threaten those talks at a time when Canada’s top priority is of course to regain full access to the American market.

“I don’t think we can do it right now,” Sargent says of a trade deal with China.

 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau holds a tool along an assembly line at an event announcing plans for a Honda electric vehicle battery plant in Alliston, Ont. on Thursday, April 25, 2024.

 A trade reset

Trump’s return to the White House then is preventing Canada from renewing critical trade relationships with both of the world’s superpowers, who are also the top two markets for Canadian exports. According to 2024 data, 75.9 per cent of Canadian merchandise exports go to the U.S., and about 4.1 per cent bound for China.

The U.S. president’s trade policies have also forced a reset, among many things on the international landscape, on the Canadian auto industry.

His controversial and punishing tariffs on Canadian vehicles — along with key vehicle inputs steel and aluminum — has placed much of the industry in peril without any help from Chinese EVs.

The fallout has already started.

At least two major manufacturers, General Motors and Stellantis, which owns the Jeep, Ram and Chrysler brands, have already said that they plan to move some production to the U.S., from Canada and Mexico. That has left the industry in peril and placing extra value on the remaining production.

But the Trump tariffs and the early production losses weren’t the only things to wallop the Canadian auto industry in recent years.

 Volt-face

In the fall of 2023, federal and provincial governments — almost always Ontario — started a flurry of subsidy agreements that were to trigger massive investments in the EV and EV battery industries. It looked like those deals, while expensive and not without risk, might create a significant beachhead for the future of Canadian auto.

“Canada has positioned itself to be a leader in the EV industry,” said Trudeau last August at a Goodyear plant in Napanee, Ont., as the tiremaker was getting government money to grow its facilities and expand into the tire market for EV vehicles. “And we will continue to be because those are where the jobs are going to be, not just a couple of years from now, but a decade from now, a generation from now.”

EVs, it was widely agreed, looked like the future of auto and Canada was well-positioned to benefit. The hefty subsidies supplemented Canada’s solid auto industry lure of skilled workers, reasonable energy costs, weakened currency, public health care and, perhaps most of all, guaranteed tariff-free access and proximity to the U.S. market.

At least that’s how it looked.

Until it didn’t.

The bet by Canada, Ontario, much of the auto and EV industries, and many other jurisdictions was based on a single critical calculation: that EVs were the future.

While that may still be true, analysts say that it’s also fair to now question how much consumers have bought into that vision.

Even before Trump returned to power and centred his energy policy on the mantra “drill baby drill,” the EV industry’s cost equation was under threat. Emissions standards on gas-powered vehicles were weakened; some EV subsidies were lowered or simply expired; and then, not surprisingly, consumer demand stalled.

The industry had also failed to quell consumer concerns about EVs’ range, availability of charging networks, and higher sticker prices. Sargent said there should also be long-term concerns about whether electricity grids can handle dramatic increases to the size of the EV fleet.

The industry is clearly hemorrhaging. In 2024, zero-emission vehicles, a category that includes battery-electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, accounted for about 15 per cent of all new car sales in Canada. In the second quarter of this year, that same category accounted for just 8.6 per cent of all sales.

But the industry seemed to see the tumble coming.

As 2024’s calendar pages were flipped, those factors combined to make EV companies question consumer demand and their own expansion plans. An increasing number of the massive EV and EV battery investments were either cancelled, delayed or at least in question.

In Canada, Northvolt Batteries, Volkswagen, Umicore Rechargeable Battery Materials Canada, Honda Canada, and Stellantis were among those forced to reassess their production plans.

But the market reset wasn’t just a Canadian problem. EV investments in the U.S., mostly in the bedrock auto industry regions of the midwest and the southeast, were suffering a similar fate.

The losses from those stalled investment plans extend far beyond the auto sector. They’ve also meant foregone losses in jobs, sales for supplier companies, customers for restaurants, accountants and other small businesses, investments in housing and schools, and tax revenue. About a year after the sector’s pullback, it’s unclear how many of the delayed production plans throughout North America will be revived at some point down the road.

“The future is still electric,” said Brian Kingston, chief executive of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association. “What’s changed is the pace.”

 A thaw in relations

While many EV production plans may be on hold, that doesn’t mean the same is true for Carney’s dilemma.

In fact, the pressure to land a deal with China — even if it’s second in line behind the U.S. — may be greater now than it was under Trudeau. The U.S. market is no longer fully open, despite the continental free trade deal that Trump signed in his first term, and the Canadian economy is slowing.

Carney met late last month with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in South Korea, the first time that leaders from the two countries had met in eight years.

While there were no concrete deals from the almost 40-minute meeting, Carney said later that he believed the two countries had reached a “turning point” in trying to advance the relationship. Xi said the relationship “achieved a recovery and positive development.”

With Carney also accepting Xi’s invitation to meet again in China at an undetermined time, there seems to be interest on both sides to iron out the wrinkles in the Canada-China relationship.

But it’s not just about trade friction, says Meredith, the former Trudeau advisor. “There’s a level of distrust on both sides.”

There may be trade friction with both the U.S. and China, but Canada’s auto industry is clear on where its loyalty lies.

Kingston said the Chinese economic model is to use massive subsidies to make low-cost goods, then dump those products on foreign markets, leaving those markets without a domestic industry and dependent on China.

A recent report by TD Economics expressed a similar view, saying that Beijing’s $230-billion in subsidies to its automakers has caused overcapacity that have given Chinese producers an unfair advantage. But the report also suggested that Ottawa’s tariffs mean that Canada has missed the chance to gain expertise from China’s advanced battery technology and diversify domestic EV supply chains.

Michael Kovrig, a Canadian geopolitical advisor and former diplomat who was arrested by Chinese authorities in December, 2018 in what was seen as a politically motivated move,

told National Post that the Chinese economic model

involves providing artificial incentives that lead to intentional overproduction in key sectors such as EVs, and then low-cost exports.

“China’s view of trade is China exports lots,” said Kovrig, who spent 1,019 days imprisoned in China, “and everybody else opens their markets and absorbs it and China imports very little. Basically it wants to turn countries like Canada into suppliers of commodities and energy.

“It’s hard to stay an advanced industrial economy when you don’t have any industry left.”

Kovrig, one of the so-called “two Michaels” who was arrested in Beijing following the detention in Vancouver of Chinese national and Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, said the security concerns about Chinese vehicles should not to be dismissed.

Although stopping short of a full ban, the U.S. ruled last year to prohibit the import or sale of vehicles from, or connected to, China or Russia that include either autonomous driving software or connectivity systems such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or cellular technology.

The restrictions, based on similar concerns as to those about Chinese-made telecom devices, kick in in 2027 for the auto software and three years later for the hardware.

Chinese state media have criticized these moves, calling them protectionist and unfair.

For Kingston, head of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association, Canada shouldn’t even consider veering from the U.S. policy in allowing Chinese EVs into the domestic market, Kingston said. “In the current environment, it can’t even be contemplated.”

 Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, left, meets Chinese President Xi Jinping at the start of a meeting in Gyeongju on Friday, Oct. 31, 2025.

A pivot point (if you want it)

In 2018, the Canada-China relationship turned frosty when Canadian authorities arrested Meng, the Huawei exec, but the election in April and the subsequent switch to Carney from Trudeau offered a chance to reset the relationship.

And the Trump tariffs, along with a sluggish economy and high unemployment in auto-centric southern Ontario, have put extra pressure on Ottawa to enhance trade beyond the U.S.

The problem in this case is that Canada doesn’t have too many cards to play, says Sargent, the former deputy minister of international trade.

While Carney has cautioned to keep expectations low, China has been surprisingly clear in what it wants from the new Liberal prime minister: If Canada wants to put its lobsters and peas on dinner plates in Guangzhou and Chengdu, it had better get used to the idea of Chinese-made EVs being part of the 401 gridlock.

Analysts say a deal with China could see Canada cut its 100 per cent tariffs, perhaps in half, and include an annual quota on Chinese EVs. Possible assembly of some Chinese vehicles in this country could also be part of the negotiations.

Many Canadians would take that deal, or at least one shaped around those two primary elements: agriculture for auto. The suggestion has been received enthusiastically by western premiers, Manitoba’s Wab Kinew, Saskatchewan’s Scott Moe and Alberta’s Danielle Smith, who argue the West is suffering disproportionately from the two-front tariff war. And many Canadian consumers would like the option to buy a lower-priced Chinese EV.

While there are concerns about Chinese automakers doing business elsewhere, a number of them are already manufacturing outside their home country and have taken great strides in doing business with some of the industry’s most recognizable foreign players.

BYD, for example, has built an assembly plant in Rayong, Thailand and announced plans to build plants in Hungary, Brazil, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Mexico. It also builds buses in Brazil, Hungary, the U.S. (Lancaster, Calif.) and in Canada (Newmarket, Ont.).

Geely, another major Chinese automaker, has plants in Egypt and Indonesia. Its holding group also owns Volvo, which manufacturers in Sweden and Belgium.

Great Wall Motor (GWM) has plants in Brazil and Thailand; SAIC Motor, which has a joint venture with the German giant Volkswagen, has assembly plants in Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. There have also been reports that Chery Automobile plans to build a factory in Argentina.

For top Chinese officials, the EV industry is clearly one they’d like to dominate, after seeing what successful auto industries did for economic development in Japan, and then South Korea. That ambition has played a large role in China’s efforts to control as many of the world’s critical minerals as possible. Chinese industry now specializes in cheaper lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, rather than the more expensive nickel, manganese and cobalt-based batteries (NMC) that are more common in North America. That’s helped China produce EVs more cheaply than comparable internal combustion engine vehicles, in contrast to the 26 per cent EV price premium in the U.S. market.

While Carney may be caught between a rock and a hard place in the two trade wars with superpowers, he may have a pivot point.

When it decided to impose the tariffs on Chinese EVs a year ago, the decision included an automatic review after one year. As he shuffles back and forth between Washington and Beijing in search of market access in the land of superpowers, Carney will no doubt try to use that review and anything else he can muster as leverage, perhaps against both China and the U.S., or even play one against the other.

His hand may not be strong, but folding isn’t an option.

Like Carney, Trudeau had to make a decision on Chinese EVs. And that need to choose between two sets of powerful interests may have been his policy hell, one of the most gruelling files to cross his desk in almost a decade in office.

For Carney, however, the equation, while similar in most of its elements, is more complicated and treacherous because the U.S. tariffs mean that Canada is now embroiled in trade wars with both superpowers.

Settling up with the U.S., due to the risk of a deal with China upsetting the unpredictable U.S. president, must come first. That means the tariff-loving Trump is effectively blocking Canada from resolving either dispute.

And that, even if it was only partially inherited from his predecessor, is surely Carney’s nightmare.

National Post

Link to Michael Kovrig interview

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Striking Canada Post workers stand near a mailbox set up by strikers to accept Santa letters in Sudbury, Ont., Dec. 13, 2024. As of November 2025, Canada Post workers are still without a contract and holding rotating strikes, while the Crown corporation is losing millions of dollars a day.

With the Christmas mailing season upon us, Canadians are once again reckoning with the bleak future of traditional mail, and familiar troubles of Canada’s most troubled Crown corporation. After Canada Post’s annual meeting this week revealed it is running an operating loss of something like $5 million a day, the National Post explains where things stand in national mail delivery, and where they might be going.

What is happening now?

Rotating strikes continue to disrupt mail service. This week on Thursday, for example, mail was not being processed at five sites in Ontario: Georgetown, Orangeville, Oshawa, Scarborough, and a delivery centre in Etobicoke.

Meanwhile, federal mediators are facilitating negotiations between Canada Post management and its largest union, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW). There is no collective agreement between Canada Post and CUPW. The last one expired two years ago, and last year there was a month-long strike during the holiday rush.

So there is a national sense of déjà vu. But now this is happening amid the accelerating collapse of the Crown corporation’s business, and the increasingly panicked political effort to reform it. These reforms are supervised by MP Joël Lightbound, the federal minister of government transformation, public works and procurement. In September, he announced the reforms will include more community mailboxes, closures of rural post offices, and reductions in letter delivery standards to allow more ground transport instead of air. He gave Canada Post 45 days to make a plan.

But that is easier said than done. Fearing layoffs, and claiming community mailboxes are inaccessible to many people and magnets for vandalism and theft, CUPW launched a strike, stopping mail across the country. In mid-October, the union switched to the rotating strikes that maintain service in most places.

On Nov. 9, Canada Post privately submitted a modernization plan to Ottawa, and said it remains confident it can reach a deal with its workers. Layoffs of managerial staff were announced in October. Those are in addition to executive layoffs announced earlier this year, along with a $1-billion loan from the federal government.

Is there any hope for a return to normal?

The budget numbers are really bad. At the annual public meeting on Tuesday, Canada Post chief financial officer Rindala El-Hage said the company is “effectively insolvent,” and has racked up a billion dollars in operational losses this year. An operational loss is money spent to maintain core services without corresponding revenue from those services.

The market share situation is also terrible. Canada Post once dominated the parcel delivery market, but has lost almost all that advantage to private competitors. The ad mail market is small but remains favourable, and letter delivery is in steep decline with no signs of ever coming back.

Canada Post CEO Doug Ettinger said at the annual meeting that the corporation intends to reduce staffing levels through attrition, with 16,000 employees expected to retire or leave in the next five years. Canada Post currently employs about 62,000 people.

What could happen?

For international comparison of drastic solutions, Canadians often look to the Royal Mail in Britain, where the publicly traded national postal service was spun out from a state-owned one. There is a similar model in the Netherlands. But those are smallish countries and their populations are more dense. Canada is geographically vast, like the United States, where the U.S. Postal Service has been in similar financial troubles and is now pursuing both administrative and legislative reform. So for now, the Canadian goal is to repair rather than replace.

What does this uncertainty do to retail businesses?

The uncertainty causes havoc with delivery plans. A wider strike would be disastrous. Bigger chains are often able to adapt, but smaller companies are often unable to pay the higher prices for private couriers like UPS or Purolator. The uncertainty also comes at the highest volume shopping season of the year, with Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Boxing Day sales all within a month.

What about letters to Santa?

Even with labour unrest, it’s usually best to keep faith in the big man.

Canada Post advises

that you should send your Santa letter no later than Dec. 8 to “Santa Claus, North Pole, H0H 0H0, Canada.” They do not guarantee delivery dates for the reply, but “Santa does respond to all letters he receives,” Canada Post says. They also offer online templates for the letters, for younger and older children.

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“The Enablers”: (Top, left to right) The Bookkeeper Rolan Sokolovski; The Wife Miryam Andrea Castillo Moreno; The Lawyer Deepak Paradkar; The Girlfriend Daniela Alejandra Acuna Macias; The General Edgar Aaron Vazquez Alvarado. Bottom, left to right) The Soldier Gianluca Tiepolo; The Businessmen Cristian Diana and John Fallon; The Madame Carmen Yelinet Valoyes Florez; and The Boss Ryan Wedding, according to U.S. allegations. 

A network of seemingly legitimate professionals in Canada and abroad are accused of keeping a billion-dollar drug cartel afloat under the violent leadership of former Canadian Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding.

While Wedding is named as the improbable mastermind behind a vast cocaine empire — compared by the FBI to history’s most notorious drug lords Pablo Escobar and El Chapo Guzman — nine other people were also alleged by the U.S. government to form a “network of enablers” who stop him choking on a mountain of hard-to-use dirty money.

From a lawyer to a sex-trade madame, bookkeeper to special forces soldier, a wife, a girlfriend, crypto currency traders and businessmen, all face sanctions from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, as well as Wedding himself who remains a most-wanted fugitive with a US$15 million bounty for his arrest

An old aphorism on warfare says an army marches on its stomach but in organized crime, the mob runs on its money. If gangsters can’t spend, bank or invest their criminal proceeds there is little point risking gangland rivals, arrest and prison. Moving vast amounts of criminal money, however, isn’t easy.

A successful underworld requires a robust upperworld to keep going. That’s why seemingly legitimate business people and bookkeepers are can be more valued by a mob boss than hitmen and smugglers — they can be rarer and harder to train.

Here are the men and women accused by U.S. Treasury officials of helping prop up a drug empire and what they allegedly did to help. None of the allegations have been proven in court and many have not even been charged or indicted.

THE GENERAL

Edgar Aaron Vazquez Alvarado, 41, is believed to be a former Mexican law enforcement officer who maintains ties with other senior law enforcement officials. That often means corruption and bribery. He is nicknamed “The General,” perhaps because he maintains a level of control and authority.

Vazquez is responsible for providing protection for Wedding within Mexico, U.S. Treasury officials allege. One part of that is using police contacts to locate people in Mexico that Wedding targets. (Wedding is accused in multiple murders.)

The General, born in Mexico City, also owns several businesses in the country, including a private security firm and two companies dealing in wholesale fuel. He is not named in either of the U.S. indictments targeting Wedding and criminal associates.

THE BOOKKEEPER

Rolan Sokolovski, 37, of Maple, north of Toronto, is accused of overseeing bookkeeping for the Wedding organization and of being one of two chief money launderers that “manage his complex financial operations,” the U.S. Treasury Department claims. The indictment alleges he was “concealing their drug trafficking proceeds,” including receiving more than US$20 million worth of cryptocurrency in eight months.

He is a jeweller and poker player by trade and runs a jewelry business in downtown Toronto under the name Diamond Tsar, officials said. It advertises itself as a wholesale diamond dealer and engagement ring specialist.

Sokolovski is named in the U.S. indictment unsealed this week alleging he acquired luxury items for Wedding and Wedding’s alleged second-in-command, Andrew Clark. After the January murder in Colombia of a witness who was cooperating with the FBI against Wedding, Sokolovski allegedly made a bejeweled necklace as a reward for the alleged Canadian hitman.

The indictment says he is known by nicknames “The Jew” and “Sushi” and is facing charges in the United States for drug conspiracy and money laundering.

THE WIFE

Miryam Andrea Castillo Moreno, 34, is named by authorities as Wedding’s wife. She was born in Nuevo Leon, Mexico, which is a centre for Mexican cartel activity. Some media reports have said she has familial or other ties to a cartel which helped insulate Wedding and allowed him to increase his influence within the violent and crowded narco field, especially as an outsider.

U.S. authorities allege she helped launder drug proceeds for her husband and “has helped him conduct acts of violence.” There are no specifics activities outlined by authorities and she is not named in either indictment.

THE GIRLFRIEND

Perhaps U.S. officials are being intentionally provocative, but Wedding’s wife’s photograph on the Treasury’s sanctions announcement is placed right beside one of his “Colombian girlfriend.” Daniela Alejandra Acuna Macias, 23, was born in Barranquilla, Colombia. That’s home to a large port facing the Caribbean Sea that has long been a major hub for cocaine trafficking.

She has, authorities claim, collected hundreds of thousands of dollars from Wedding “to live a lifestyle funded by violent narcotics trafficking. She has assisted Wedding in obtaining information on his rivals,” Treasury officials allege. She isn’t named in either indictment.

THE MADAME

Carmen Yelinet Valoyes Florez is described by U.S. authorities as “a Colombian national who runs a high-end prostitution ring in Mexico.” Officials say she was the one who introduced the 44-year-old Wedding to his 23-year-old Colombian girlfriend. She lived in Mexico and turns 48 on Friday.

Valoyes is involved in more than matters of the heart, authorities allege. She assisted Wedding with the murder of a federal witness in January. She is named in the indictment unsealed this week as a “member and associate of the Wedding Criminal Enterprise.” Her network of sex workers was allegedly used to gather intelligence on the witness who was killed. It was through her network, according to the indictment, that the witness was discovered in Medellín, Colombia, and shot in the head.

THE SOLDIER

Gianluca Tiepolo, 50, is a former member of Italy’s special forces. He was born in Aviano, Italy, home to an Italian air base used by the U.S. Air Force and NATO.

He allegedly had two roles in the Wedding organization. One, befitting his military background, was tactical — he operated a military-style tactical training academy with camps that allegedly trained many of Wedding’s hitmen.

 A 2002 Mercedes CLK-GTR, valued by authorities at $13 million, seized by U.S. authorities from the Ryan Wedding organization.

U.S. authorities allege The Soldier also worked with The Bookkeeper to procure and manage Wedding’s physical assets, including high-end vehicles, and “held millions of dollars in Wedding’s property under his own name to conceal these assets from authorities,” Treasury officials claim. It appears the FBI’s seizure of a rare sports car, a 2002 Mercedes CLK-GTR — valued by officials at US$13 million and said to belong to the Wedding organization — is linked to Tiepolo.

He owns two companies that trade in luxury motorcycles and cars, one in Italy and one in Britain.

THE BUSINESSMEN

Two other businessmen were also hit with economic sanctions by the U.S. Treasury this week for alleged involvement with Wedding’s empire.

Cristian Diana, 50, is an Italian citizen who was president of two of The Soldier’s companies, including the military training company Windrose Tactical, which business records show registered in Diana’s name.

John Anthony Fallon, 63, a British citizen, is named as the director of a UK-based car and motorcycle dealership. Britain’s business registry shows Fallon as a minority shareholder of the firm, with The Soldier as majority owner. Two other companies Fallon has a stake in are also sanctioned.

THE LAWYER

Deepak Paradkar is a prominent lawyer based in Brampton, Ont. He was arrested Tuesday at his home at the request of U.S. officials. He is accused of abusing his position as a lawyer to help the Wedding organization, including direct interactions with Wedding and Clark.

Shocking allegations that he helped orchestrate the murder of a witness who was betraying Wedding made him a centrepiece to a press conference with U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday. The specific allegations against Paradkar

have been previously detailed by National Post

.

None of the allegation against the enables have been proven in court. Sanctions by the U.S. Treasury cut the named individuals and companies off from the U.S. economic system, including banking and interactions with American customers.

• Email: ahumphreys@postmedia.com | X:

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Canada is on track to get a new high-speed rail network between Toronto and Quebec City.

OTTAWA — The Carney government is proposing to grant the Crown corporation behind the high-speed railway between Toronto and Quebec City sweeping new powers to accelerate the acquisition or expropriation of land for the project.

A new High-Speed Rail Network Act also proposes to exclude the massive railway project from review by the Canadian Transportation Agency by deeming it de facto approved and barring the agency from rescinding the approval.

The proposed act is tucked away in the hundreds of pages of the Liberals’ bill to implement the 2025 budget tabled Tuesday.

The legislation offers a first glance at how Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government intends to deliver on its commitment to reduce red tape and speed up the building of major projects.

The new act contains sweeping changes to how the railway project — estimated to cost between $60 and $90 billion — will be reviewed all the while boosting the government’s land acquisition and expropriation powers required for construction.

The project promises to develop roughly 1,000 kilometres of fully electric rail dedicated to high-speed commuter trains that will run between Toronto and Quebec City. This summer, the Carney government designated the high-speed railway as a “transformative project”

under its new Major Projects Office

and promised to cut the time before construction from eight to five years.

Alto, the Crown corporation behind the project, says the trains will hit speeds of up to 300 km/h and will cut travel between certain cities by half compared to existing Via Rail service.

Normally, major transportation infrastructure projects would be subject to two key reviews agencies: the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada (IAAC) and the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA).

But with the bill proposing that the high-speed rail be automatically deemed approved by the CTA, the project would only be subjected to an environmental assessment by the Impact Assessment Agency.

Legislating approval of a project speeds up the process significantly but has been historically received with much hostility by opposition Parliamentarians.

Lavagnon Ika, a professor of project management at the University of Ottawa, said that the legislation brings the government into “uncharted territory.”

“These are sweeping and unprecedented powers being given to the cabinet to kind of… pre-approve any mega project without much scrutiny from independent regulators,” said Lavagnon Ika, who is also the director of the Major Projects Observatory.

Under the proposed bill, the IAAC process would also be modified for the railway project if the legislation passes untouched. Instead of the IAAC reviewing and conducting consultations on the project as a whole, the bill proposes to cut it into segments of up to 50 kilometres which would each be reviewed and approved individually.

The bill also appears to suggest the review will be led by the IAAC itself instead of an independent review panel. The latter can be set up when a minister believes it to be “in the public interest,” though the time for a final decision doubles to 600 days on average,

according to the agency’s website

.

In a statement, Transport Minister Steven McKinnon’s spokesperson Marie-Justine Torres, said the goal of the proposed law is to “reduce duplication, streamline government processes and ensure that each segment of the project is subject to the Impact Assessment Process while fully respecting Indigenous rights.”

Her statement did not explain why the government decided to break up the project’s environmental assessment into segments or why it was bypassing review by the CTA.

If the bill passes as such, Alto will also be able to purchase or expropriate land necessary for the project faster. The bill proposes to allow Alto to request the minister of public services expropriate land without first trying to negotiate the purchase with the owner.

It also proposes to remove the duty for the minister to hold public hearings if someone objects to a notice of expropriation.

Instead, the minister must decide within 30 days of the notice of expropriation if the government is maintaining or abandoning the claim. The minister must only state reasons for the decision if the objector requests them in writing.

The bill also proposes to streamline Alto’s ability to issue notices of right of first refusal of the sale of land that will be part of the rail network. It does the same for notices of prohibition of work, which prevent a landowner from making any changes to it other than to “maintain its normal functional state”.

“The expropriation measures have been put there so that basically government… stays in control,” Ika said. “’You may not like it, but we proceeded’ is basically what they mean.”

Ika, who has spent his career studying large-scale projects and their failings, said there is no doubt that Canada’s approval process for major projects is so cumbersome and time-consuming that it leads to long delays and inflated costs.

But that doesn’t mean the government can forego consultations and reviews completely, particularly with Indigenous communities, he cautioned. The Carney government is in a “delicate dance” to get the balance right.

“My advice to them is: wait a minute,” he said of the government. “If you use too much of your authority, then you control the project and that’s a win for you. But at the same time, it might backlash in terms of democratic accountability and that’s going to be a loss for you.”

National Post

cnardi@postmedia.com

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Federal Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025.

OTTAWA — The federal government’s plans to resume a compensation program for retailers for inventories of formerly legal guns that were subsequently banned by the Liberals have been delayed from this fall until an unspecified date.

The change comes as Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government intends to move ahead with the launch of a national

“buyback” program by the end of the year for individual gun owners

whose formerly legal firearms ended up being banned.

In September, when Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree announced the “buyback” program was being piloted for individuals in Cape Breton, N.S., his department confirmed that the second phase of the program for businesses with banned stock would resume in the “coming weeks,” after it was closed this past spring.

Public Safety Canada’s

webpage dedicated to providing information on both programs

also states that the resumption of the program for businesses was slated to begin “later this fall.”

However, it now appears the government is backing off from that timeline.

“We will be reopening the second round of the business phase of the Assault-Style Firearms Compensation Program. The exact date will be shared soon,” wrote Simon Lafortune, a spokesman for Anandasangaree.

Wes Winkel, president of the Canadian Sporting Arms and Ammunition Association, which the government has contracted since 2023 and assisted with pricing, confirmed to National Post there has been an “indefinite delay” on the part of the federal government.

Neither Anandasangaree’s office nor the public safety department has clarified the reason behind the delay.

“We will continue to work closely with industry stakeholders and law enforcement partners to ensure that the second phase of the business portion of the buyback program runs efficiently and securely,” Lafortune said. “Further updates will be provided as implementation work progresses, and the government thanks Canadian businesses for their continued cooperation and patience as this important initiative moves forward.”

Rod Giltaca, CEO and Executive Director of the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights, which promotes itself as “Canada’s gun lobby,” said the reasons the federal government has yet to complete the retail side of the program remain a “mystery.”

“This program has been a disaster for over half a decade,” he said in an interview on Thursday.

The Liberals’ efforts to remove what it has called “assault-style” firearms from businesses and individuals have

proven to be a long and troubled journey.

Former prime minister Justin Trudeau campaigned on doing so during the 2019 federal election, with him announcing an initial ban on some 1,500 makes and models of firearms, including the AR-15, through an order-in-council in May 2020, following a shooting spree in Portapique, N.S.

Since then, hundreds more types of firearms have been added to the prohibited list through announcements made in December 2024 and March of this year. More than 2,500 makes and models of firearms have now been banned in Canada.

The amnesty order to allow firearms owners with banned guns to possess them without criminal liability has also been extended several times beyond the two years Trudeau initially promised in 2019. The federal government’s latest extension brings the amnesty program to October 2026.

The federal government reported that during the first phase of the compensation program for retailers affected by the original 2020 bans, more than 12,000 guns had been collected from businesses by the time it reached its original April 30 closing date, with some $22 million worth of compensation doled out.

Giltaca said the prohibitions on gun retailers have “been very damaging” to many businesses, stuck with the cost of having to store prohibited inventory, with some forced to close.

When it comes to the program for individuals, the federal government has yet to release the results of the pilot program it ran in Cape Breton, which, when it was announced back in September, was stated to be for a “maximum of 200” banned firearms, to test the online portal, collection, and destruction process.

 More than 2,500 makes and models of firearms have now been banned in Canada.

This week, the chair of Cape Breton’s police board told reporters that he had heard there were between

“10 to 22 collected.”

A request for a response from Cape Breton police, which teamed up with Public Safety Canada to pilot the program, has not yet been returned. Cape Breton Police Chief Robert Walsh declined to tell local reporters this week the results of the program, saying it was the federal government’s pilot.

“If the government isn’t extremely humiliated over this whole affair, they definitely should be,” Giltaca said.

This week, Anandasangaree told reporters the government was “analyzing the results of the pilot,” adding that the “technical capabilities have been satisfied,” with the plan to roll out the program nationally only weeks away.

The minister’s spokesman said the pilot, which is now closed, lasted a total of six weeks, with the first three weeks open for firearms owners to declare the fact that they owned a prohibited weapon, with the following three weeks, “for collection, verification, destruction, and payment.”

He added that the results of the pilot would be released before the national launch, and the government remained committed to finishing the program.

“As you know, the pilot’s objective was to ensure that we are fully prepared to launch the Assault-Style Firearms Compensation Program nationally,” Lafortune wrote. “We will have more to share on the pilot’s results in due course and will be launching the national program before the end of 2025.”

National Post

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human rights museum_299965662.png

A newly announced permanent exhibit at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg is being met with heightened concern from Jewish groups.

“The Museum has allowed itself to become the tool, or dupe, of only one side of the story and thereby betrays its duty as a national institution to provide a common and inclusive meeting and educational space on the matter of human rights,” says Winnipeg lawyer, businessman and trustee at the Asper Foundation, David Asper, whose family led the museum’s founding in 2014.

Entitled “Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present,” it is set to open in June 2026 focusing on the experiences of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and the creation of Israel.

According to

the United Nations

, “Nakba” means “catastrophe” in Arabic and “refers to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war … In November 1947, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution partitioning Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab … The Arab world rejected the plan, arguing that it was unfair and violated the UN Charter.”

Criticism has emerged from several Canadian Jewish organizations about the exhibit, arguing it risks presenting a one-sided or “politicized” version of events that could contribute to the delegitimization of Israeli statehood and potentially fuel antisemitism.

“The Canadian Museum for Human Rights has rightly earned an international reputation for its rigorous consultation processes that bring together subject-matter experts, affected communities, and individuals with lived experience to fulfill its mandate to ‘contribute to the collective memory and sense of identity of all Canadians’,” says the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs vice president in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Gustavo Zentner.

When the CIJA learned about the museum’s intention to profile the experiences of refugees from the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, “we immediately engaged with the Museum’s leadership,” he says. “We offered to convene leading experts to help ensure that any exhibit presents a balanced, fact-based, and comprehensive narrative, one that reflects the experiences of all refugees, including the more than 850,000 Jews forcibly displaced from long-established communities across the Middle East and North Africa.”

The Jewish community was not consulted, he adds.

“As currently framed, the proposed direction will deliver an incomplete and unbalanced narrative, one that omits Jewish refugee experiences entirely and will carry reputational consequences for the Museum. To ensure the Museum fulfills its mandate, we have requested information from its leadership about the exhibit’s content, framing, objectives, and development process, before any further steps are taken. We are actively working with our community and with partner institutions across Canada to demand accountability.”

Meanwhile, the

Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada

is moving to

suspend its partnership with the museum

since learning about the exhibit.

The JHCWC says it is “tremendously concerned” the exhibit may exclude the long history of Jewish displacement, events leading up to Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, and the expulsion of Jews from Arab countries in the mid-20th century.

The JHCWC also expressed concern the exhibit could overlook non-Jewish minorities who are Israeli citizen, including Muslim and Christian Arabs, Druze, Circassians and Samaritans – people who hold positions in the judiciary, parliament, health care and the military, and that their equal rights under Israeli law complicate common interpretations of the Nakba.

The centre notes previous exhibitions — including the Holocaust gallery — were organized with extensive consultation.

“I think what you’re seeing with the Jewish Heritage Centre is the manifestation of a fundamental breach of trust by the Canadian Museum for Human Rights,” says David Asper. “The factual, historical context of events surrounding the ‘Nakba’ are not just one story. In my father’s founding vision of the purpose of the Museum he never had a problem with the telling of the whole
story, which includes the displacement and expulsion of over 800,000 Jews who were living in Arab countries and, perhaps most importantly, that a lot of what happened was triggered by the fact that many Arab countries declared war and tried to conquer and eliminate Israel in 1948.”

The JHCWC is withdrawing from the International Holocaust Remembrance Day event on Jan. 27, which it had been coordinating with the CMHR. However, it

remains willing to meet with the CMHR

and hopes the museum will reevaluate its plans.

 

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