WASHINGTON, D.C. — Prime Minister Mark Carney rescinded Canada’s digital services tax (DST), a three per cent levy on digital services revenue from large domestic and foreign businesses, in June after President Donald Trump threatened to halt trade talks if the tax took effect. The repeal was a strategic move to restart stalled negotiations with the United States, which soon resumed after Carney’s announcement but were again disrupted later … by a Ronald Reagan ad. Despite removing the DST to ease tensions, Carney has little to show for it.

Still, the Cato Institute’s Adam Michel, director of tax policy studies at the Washington-based think tank, thinks that Trump did Carney and Canada a favour. He says digital service taxes hurt countries that impose them. With royal assent expected for the repeal in Parliament this month, National Post contacted Michel to learn more about his views on DSTs, Canada’s repeal, and why the push for a new global tax framework under the OECD’s 2021 Pillars One and Two has, thus far, failed.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Q: You’ve argued that digital service taxes are bad policy but preferable to the OECD global approach. Please explain why.

A:

(The OECD’s) Pillar One is really trying to upend the entire consensus around how we allocate corporate taxing rights around the world. The consensus since the 1960s has been taxing businesses based on where they create value. Pillar One takes a piece of the corporate tax base and tries to redistribute it based on where businesses’ consumers are for a subset of large multinational firms. There are a couple of problems with that. One, it creates instability in the entire global corporate tax system by carving up a piece of the tax base and treating it differently. It basically would create a race to carve up the rest of the tax base in ways that favour particular types of jurisdictions over others. Instead of everyone coordinating on one system, it creates this new fragmented system that will ultimately unravel into a world that existed before the 1960s, when everyone came to this consensus about how we’re taxing multinational profits. That was a world where corporate profits faced multiple layers of taxes in multiple jurisdictions, which created all sorts of additional economic costs and made global trade and global business much more costly, hurting the entire global economy and local economies. That’s the economic side of the story.

Pillar One is also an infringement on national sovereignty — tax policy should be the province of national and local governments and not designed by bureaucrats in Paris through a one-size-fits-all scheme. So both of these reasons have led me to think that Pillar One is a particularly bad path forward and it is worse than what it is trying to replace, which are DSTs.

While DSTs are also destabilizing and have economic costs, they are de facto tariffs. The costs ultimately fall on the consumers in the countries imposing them. Like we economists think about tariffs, if a country puts a tariff on products coming into their country, the correct response is not to then put a reciprocal tariff on — for the United States, for example, to put a tariff on things coming in from Canada. There’s an analogy — if Canada wants to fill its harbours with rocks, the appropriate response is not for the United States to also fill its harbours with rocks but instead just to point out that Canada is inflicting economic self-harm through its policy.

Q: How do DSTs specifically distort domestic economies compared to the effects that a new global tax base would have on multinational firms?

A:

DSTs’ ultimate economic burden is largely passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. It distorts economic decision-making by individual companies. They may choose not to do business or to do less business in the inflicting country, and ultimately, as the costs get passed on to consumers, consumers will consume less of the digital service or whatever other product these fees are being passed on to.

DSTs are particularly concerning because most of them are based on revenue, not profit. So they have varying degrees of effective tax rates based on how profitable the company is. That can have additional distortionary effects that treat different companies differently, even if they’re all subject to the same tax. I think the DST has more ambiguous and uncertain economic effects in the short term.

The new global scheme doesn’t have an end form yet, but the highest cost that we know of is compliance — having to implement an entirely new corporate tax regime on every single one of these firms across 140 different countries is a tremendous economic burden. Then, each year, it’ll become more complex as countries vie for larger shares of the global corporate tax base. I think the economic effects of that will reduce global cross-border investment. But the ultimate economic impact of the tax is unknown because of its complexity. It’s hard to say if it’ll be passed on to consumers or investors or decrease innovation. Probably some of all of these things.

Q: Canada had been one of the few countries that chose not to wait on the global solution, and now it has had to walk back its DST, despite years of Liberal pledges. Is this a good thing for Canada, and if so, why? Did Trump’s pressure help save Canada from itself?

A:

Yes, it is a good thing that Canada has walked back its DST, and it was a bad decision to propose the DST in the first place. The other trade conversation involved with the broader tariffs coming from the United States, in the narrow sense of getting them to roll back the DST, I guess it could be seen as a very narrow good for Canada.

But the broader uncertainty of the Trump administration’s trade agenda is just as, if not more, destructive than the DST itself.

Trump was going to prosecute this trade war regardless of the DST, but to the extent that imposing a DST provoked additional trade uncertainty and possible higher tariff levies is layering a bad on top of a bad. Maybe the solution of the DST getting rolled back is better than the alternative of having tariffs and the DST, but it would’ve been better if none of this had happened in the first place.

Q: Given Canada’s experience with implementing and then repealing a digital services tax when faced with U.S. pressure, what lessons should Canadian policymakers take away about balancing sovereignty in tax policy with maintaining good trade relations?

A:

I think Canada and every other country should focus on designing strong pro-growth tax policies locally that don’t attempt to reach into other countries’ tax bases. This is the problem with DSTs — they’re an extra-territorial tax grab that is trying to bring a tax base into the country that doesn’t and shouldn’t exist there. This is also the problem with the OECD’s Pillar Two and Pillar One remake of the global tax system. It’s being pushed by the European Union and previously the Biden administration to create these new extraterritorial tax structures that are inherently destabilizing.

So my message to the U.S. administration, to Canada, and everywhere else around the world, is to focus on what we know works: that’s ensuring that the corporate tax system is as efficient as possible, that you have full business expensing, which I believe I saw some business leaders calling for to be implemented in Canada after the Republicans tax bill passed here, and keeping tax rates as low as possible. The several-decade march towards lower corporate tax rates has been one of the largest impetuses for increased global investment and reducing barriers to trade in the tax base.

I would focus on creating a local pro-growth environment rather than trying to find tax revenue in other countries.

Q: Is there irony in the fact that President Trump is imposing tariffs while telling Canada not to impose a DST, in terms of cost to consumers?

A:

Yes, definitely. The Trump administration’s trade agenda is schizophrenic and not well thought out. It’s most certainly hypocritical for the United States to be imposing tariffs on everyone and anyone, and then be concerned about this DST form of a tariff as well. It would be better if everyone decided to get rid of these tariff-like mechanisms and tariffs themselves. That would be the best path forward.

Q: You wrote in a recent article that “Now that Pillar One has permanently stalled, DSTs will return absent a new agreement.” Where are we most likely to see new DSTs emerge, and is the US likely to apply pressure against them, as it did with Canada?

A:

Yes. I think the current U.S. administration will certainly impose, or threaten to impose, sanctions or tariffs on countries that go forward with their DSTs. You saw this in France. They proposed to increase theirs to 6 per cent or even 15 per cent in one of the proposals, and the Trump administration made some noise about that. We should expect to see some of the proposed DSTs across Europe in places like Norway and Germany, Hungary, and Latvia. Some of those countries may choose to move forward with these levies, and they will also face rebuke from the United States.

Those US pressures seemed to be successful in the Canadian example, but I don’t think they will always be successful. There’s a lot of other trade-related noise. The Trump administration uses tariffs for everything under the sun. Sometimes it’s hard to distill the signal from the noise in these particular scenarios.

Q: What are the political dynamics in Europe and other countries driving the DST proposals despite the economic downsides you mentioned?

A:

They seem to be motivated by a populist animus against successful U.S. companies. The DSTs are almost universally designed to primarily target America’s most successful digital companies. And the thresholds and way they’re put together are often excluding other sorts of domestic firms. The politics of it is that it’s easy to say ‘Hey, let’s tax big, bad American companies and get some free money’ until the economic reality of these fees being passed on to consumers fully materializes.

Q: What are the implications for US digital firms if the DSTs do proliferate globally without a multilateral framework?

A:

It does bring costs for these firms. I’m not sure if the costs are dramatically larger than what they would have to endure under a Pillar One, 140-country, individual implementation of an entirely new tax base that will be evolving and changing every couple of years for the next several decades.

So the counterfactual is not as clear as I think a lot of people would like to believe. There are certainly costs, and they should be pointed out. Those costs are bad, but I don’t think that means that the Pillar One solution is any better. Also, Pillar One didn’t fully end the proliferation of DSTs. Pillar One basically said (a country) could choose between Pillar One or a DST, but you couldn’t have both. So I don’t think that Pillar One would’ve fully eliminated DSTs, even if it did go forward in the way it was being proposed. So I think the Pillar One universe is both — you get the compliance cost of Pillar One, and you still get some DSTs around the world. That’s the worst of all worlds.

Q: Why do you think the OECD’s global approach has failed thus far?

A: It was an incredibly difficult thing to pursue, even if everyone was on the same page. Creating a new tax base out of whole cloth through a multilateral, global instrument — that is just really, really difficult. There was lots of disagreement over how to define that new tax base, who the winners and losers were like — if you’re redistributing the tax base, you have to take it from some country and give it to another — and as those realities became clear, and with the addition of all the new compliance burden ultimately meant that it was just too heavy of a lift — too much cost for too little benefit … And as it became clear that the Trump administration was not going to be supportive. That was the final nail in the coffin. With the U.S. no longer on board, there is even less of an appetite to upend the entire existing system.

Q: What might a better international tax approach look like?

A:

The original OECD mission to eliminate double taxation of multinational profits and coordinate those systems through bilateral tax treaties works. It worked for many decades and still works. I think that the role for a body like the OECD is to continue to work on its existing framework for bilateral treaties that help eliminate multiple claims to the same profit, and the international coordination should stop there.

The boogeyman of profit shifting or companies choosing jurisdictions based on the attractiveness of their tax regime is ultimately a good thing. We want companies to do business in the places that it makes most sense for them to do business — and to force them to do business in high-tax, burdensome regulatory environments makes everyone worse off. That there’s a jurisdictional competition for business, global business investment that arises from a system of countries competing on their tax systems and regulatory environments for global business is one that makes everyone wealthier and freer, and that, I think, is an undeniable good.

Q: Prime Minister Carney made Canada’s DST go away rather quickly for Trump, but it didn’t seem to help him much with trade talks. What advice would you give the prime minister?

A:

I do not envy his position. I wish I understood what the ultimate goals are for the administration here in the US when it comes to trade. I don’t think that anyone really has a good grasp of what their end goal is or how to navigate it.

I don’t have any sophisticated advice for him other than to make Canada the most attractive place to do business in the world. Lower your corporate tax rate. Cut your tariff rates, implement full business expensing to attract domestic investment, and hold on for the unfortunately costly and bumpy ride.

National Post

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Spotify Wrapped, the music streaming platform’s annual summation of user listening habits presents data on most listened-to songs and artists. The feature of this year’s report that has become the talk of the town is the inclusion of the listener’s so-called “listening age.”

After discovering their assigned ages, many users have taken to social media, expressing a mix of reactions.

Here in Canada, two prominent politicians, Prime Minister Mark Carney and Conservative Deputy Leader Melissa Lantsman had some fun with their Spotify ages.

In an

Instagram post

, Carney proclaimed “44,” with a grin, when a reporter asked him: “What’s your age?”

His actual age is 60.

Lantsman posted her Spotify age of 23, writing in an X post: “Late-stage Millennial by birth, Gen Z cusp by playlist.” She is 41.

Late-stage Millennial by birth, Gen Z cusp by playlist.

And yes, I love my @Spotify year-end stats. pic.twitter.com/QOajUgiaLd

— Melissa Lantsman (@MelissaLantsman) December 4, 2025

Where does the idea for calculating listening age come from?

Some users are similarly wearing their ages like a badge of honour, while others who skewed much younger, blamed their children’s taste, reports

the New York Times.

Tabulating “listening age” for users follows in the Spotify tradition of issuing annual data, aimed at getting users to share the results on social media and engage in conversation about it. In 2023, notes the Times, Spotify placed listeners in cities around the world based on their musical taste.

The annual tradition, now 10 years old,

reviews listeners listening habits

, reports NPR, including statements about their top artists, albums and genres.

What is a “reminiscence bump”?

In a

Spotify webpage explaining its process

, the company says “listening age” is based on the notion of “reminiscence bump,” which it describes as the tendency for people to feel most connected to music from their youth.

Research shows, says

NPR

, that adults’ brains especially hold onto memories from their teenage years, especially when it comes to music. Spotify says it combs through a listener’s songs to identify the “five-year span of music that you engaged with more than other listeners your age.” It hypothesizes that this five-year window matches a listener’s “reminiscence bump,” assuming they were between 16 and 21 when those songs came out.

“For example,” states the Spotify webpage, “if you listen to way more music from the late 1970s than others your age, we playfully hypothesize that your ‘listening’ age is 63 today, the age of someone who would have been in their formative years in the late 1970s.”

Who hit the top of the Spotify charts this year?

Meanwhile, Spotify released data on

the top artists of 2025

. Bad Bunny was 2025’s most-streamed artist globally, chalking up more than 19.8 billion streams. He is followed by Taylor Swift, Canadians The Weeknd and Drake, as well as Billie Eilish, in that order. For the past two years, Swift commanded the top spot globally. Bad Bunny held the coveted title for three years in a row beginning in 2020, and now, he’s back on top.

The

top five streamed artists in Canada

in 2025 were Drake, Taylor Swift, Morgen Wallen, The Weeknd and Kendrick Lamar.

Spotify collects listening data from Jan. 1 through around mid-November. That gives the company time to deliver its recap to users by early December. But it also means your favourite holiday songs aren’t on the list, or any other year-end hits.

According to Spotify, users must listen to at least 30 tracks for more than 30 seconds each to get top songs. For artists, users need to listen to at least five unique artists for more than 30 seconds. And for top album, users need to have listened to at least 70 per cent of the tracks on one album.

Like every year, there are a few new features. Those include the introduction of “Top Albums,” a fan leaderboard to show users where they stack up in an artist’s streams. There is also something called “Wrapped Party,” an interactive feature that allows users to compare their Wrapped with other Spotify users.

• Apple, Amazon and Spotify challenging CRTC’s Canadian content rules in court this week
• Quebec to set French-language content quotas on streaming platforms

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OTTAWA — A new report from an expert panel struck to help guide the Liberals’ efforts to ban firearms shows the government appears to have ignored parts of its advice when it comes to certain makes of the SKS semi-automatic rifle.

That make of firearm has proven to be among the most controversial for the Liberals when it comes to the government’s list of more than 2,500 makes and models of guns it has banned since 2020.

The Liberals have hesitated for more than a year about whether they would prohibit the purchase or sale of the SKS, illustrating how thorny the issue is for the party viewed by gun lobby groups as “anti-gun.”

In October, Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree repeatedly told the Commons Security committee that he was awaiting advice from an “expert panel” before deciding if the government would ban the purchase or sale of SKS semi-automatic rifles.

“The determination about the SKS is with an expert committee, an expert panel — that is, with law enforcement — and it is up to law enforcement to make their recommendation. At this point, there is no recommendation about this,” he told MPs on Oct. 9.

It turns out that the panel issued its recommendations nearly one year earlier: prohibit, or at least restrict, “more recent” models with detachable magazines of the now popular hunting weapon. The panel cited one specific make: the Kodiak Defence Scorpio SKS-15.

But the panel said it was “reluctant” to recommend a writ large banning of the Soviet-era firearm. It recommended further study of a potential prohibition on Indigenous communities, for whom it is a popular hunting weapon.

“Simonov SKS 1945 in its original form did not use a detachable magazine. More recent designs with detachable magazines should be either restricted or prohibited,” the panel wrote.

The report was sent to the Liberals on Jan. 31, 2025. A redacted copy was quietly posted online by Public Safety Canada on Thursday.

It was released on the same day that Anandasangaree reiterated that the Liberals would be launching a review of the firearms classification system, which the expert panel had recommended and that the government had committed to do back in March.

The minister also pledged to create a new, expanded advisory group to consult directly with Indigenous-rights holders on the future of the SKS.

His announcements came two days before the 36th anniversary of the Ecole Polytechnique shooting in Montreal, where a gunman killed 14 women and injured others. Prime Minister Mark Carney is expected to attend a vigil on Saturday.

According to the report, the panel, which met several times beginning in December 2024, was provided with a “gap list” of firearms that officials said shared characteristics of those which the Liberals banned through cabinet orders in May 2020 and last December.

Less than two months after receiving the Jan. 31 report, the Liberals announced a new batch of firearms being added to the list of prohibited weapons that did not include any SKS models.

At the time, the Liberals said they would launch a review of Canada’s overly complex firearms classification system that would include looking at the SKS specifically.

Anandasangaree said in his most recent announcement that the review would be launched “shortly.”

Heidi Rathjen, a graduate of Ecole Polytechnique and coordinator of gun-control group PolySeSouvient, says while she welcomes the fact that the government is acting on the panel’s call to review the firearm classification system, it does not appear to be following suit when it comes to its findings around the SKS.

“It’s really regrettable that the government decided to do more consultation instead of just implementing this recommendation, which we consider to be a fair compromise,” she told National Post in an interview.

Nathalie Provost, Carney’s secretary of state for nature and a former prominent gun-control advocate for PolySeSouvient, said earlier this fall that the government must find a way to ensure it was banned.

Provost did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.

PolySeSouvient maintains that the Carney government could take immediate action when it comes to banning new sales of more modern styles of the SKS, while providing exemptions to Indigenous hunters who primarily use them for hunting, and grandfathering in older models.

With the Liberals committing to launch the “buyback” program for individual gun owners with banned weapons before the end of the year, Rathjen believes that, should more modern SKS models remain available for gun owners to purchase by using “taxpayer money,” it would undermine the purpose of the program.

“I think that would mean that the money would be wasted and the public safety objectives of the buyback will not be met.”

The Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights, which bills itself as “Canada’s gun lobby,” lambasted the panel’s report, saying it calls for the banning of weapons used for hunting.

Its CEO and executive director also referred to the panel, whose names and positions were not publicized in the report, as a “secret committee,” saying their organization continues to be shut out from consultations, despite repeated requests to meet with different government officials, in favour of the Liberals meeting with “only those that agree with their agenda.”

“In this latest announcement, the government continues to grossly mislead Canadians about the types of firearms that are being banned and the reasons for their prohibition,” Rod Giltaca wrote in an email to National Post.

Simon Lafortune, a spokesman for Anandasangaree, reiterated in a statement that the SKS will, in fact, be studied by a new, expanded advisory committee that will be established in the near future as part of the larger review of the firearms classification system.

Lafortune also emphasized that the report underscored the need for further review when it came to prohibiting SKS models.

The statement did not address why Anandasangaree has said that the SKS was already under review when the first panel had already completed its work months earlier, and why the expanded panel has not yet been formed

“The outcomes of that (January) report were not informed by dedicated Indigenous consultations on the SKS, which is why our Government will shortly undertake those consultations, including with First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities, to fully understand the best way forward on this firearm,” Lafortune wrote.

National Post

• Challenge of federal firearms ban dismissed by Federal Court of Appeal
• Liberals add nearly 200 more firearms to prohibited weapon list

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Air Canada has prevailed in the Federal Court against a recent Canadian Transportation Agency decision that the judge said lacked “common sense.”
 

The case involves two passengers travelling on an Air Canada flight from Toronto to Vancouver on May 25, 2022, planning to return three days later. However, a bag didn’t arrive in Vancouver when they did. Instead, Air Canada delivered it to their hotel the following morning, on May 26.
(The name of the case indicates that the respondent-passenger involved was Alaa Badia Tannous, but no other details about “the passengers” are provided.)

The passengers initiated a delayed bag complaint with Air Canada, submitting a $3,561.26 claim. The airline responded with a refund of $250.
T
he passengers pushed back, submitting a complaint to the CTA, with receipts totalling $3,435.99.

However, some of their receipts were for purchases made after the delayed bag was delivered to them, such as luggage worth $1,310.40, bought on May 28. The court decision does not provide any details about why the passengers purchased the additional luggage two days after Air Canada delivered their delayed bag. 

The compensation limit for a delayed bag is determined under the Montreal Convention, an international treaty governing airline liability and passenger compensation. When was the complaint filed, compensation for a delayed bag was limited to 1,288 “Special Drawing Rights,” (a currency unit set by the International Monetary Fund, then calculated in the national currency involved), which in this case amounted to $2,329.72, as determined by the CTA officer who reviewed the complaint.

Since Air Canada had already paid $250, the officer deemed the amount left for Air Canada to pay would be $2,079.72. In his November 2024 decision, he ordered it be paid by Dec. 15 of that year.

In his decision, released by the Federal Court last week, Justice Michael Manson focused on the CTA officer awarding compensation for the purchases made after the bag was delivered.
 

“The Officer’s reasons do not address, nor show any common sense on why post-delivery purchases were causally linked to the delay, including the inclusion of the May 28, 2022 luggage purchase of $1,310.40,” Manson wrote. 
 

He noted that the receipts for items the passengers bought before the bag was delivered amounted to $1,691.98, a “compensable total … below the … cap.”

This “makes the (CTA officer’s) decision unreasonable,” he added. 

Gábor Lukács, president and founder of Air Passenger Rights, an independent nonprofit organization that advocates for the rights of the travelling public, agrees with the court’s assessment.

“Purchases made after the bag was delivered are, indeed, as a matter of common sense not something the airline should be paying for. That is a no-brainer, and I agree with the judge that the (CTA officer’s) decision was unreasonable,” Lukács
 said in an email to National Post.

Manson also noted that Air Canada argued the CTA officer should have looked at the value of the “essential,” rather than “luxury,” items.” However, he did not provide
any detail about what would differentiate essential from luxury. The decision also doesn’t set out what items were purchased before and after the bag was delivered. 

Instead, he simply stated “it is now incumbent on a different (officer) to provide a more reasoned, logical decision in respect of the entire claim.”
 

Lukács said Air Canada’s arguments about essential versus luxury don’t “hold (any) water,” based on past case law.
Ultimately, he said, what matters is reimbursement for expenses incurred before a delayed bag is delivered into a passenger’s hands.

According to Lukács,
the limit for damages owed for a delayed bag
has increased to approximately $3,000.

The case has been referred back to the CTA for reconsideration by a different officer.

• Air Canada investigating complaint about flight attendant wearing Israel-shaped Palestine pin
• Air Canada cuts about 400 management jobs, says decision not related to flight attendants strike

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A Toronto model says her Uber driver kicked her out of the vehicle into the dark night because she was Jewish.

“What happened isn’t just an unpleasant moment. It’s a reminder of why speaking up matters,” Miriam Mattova, 33, told National Post. “And discrimination must be met with accountability, not silence.”

Mattova is a Jewish Slovakian-Canadian model and former Miss Slovakia. She said the incident occurred just after midnight on Nov. 30. Her friend ordered her an Uber so she could get home. After she got into the car, she FaceTimed another friend and was “speaking casually” about a recent trip to Israel a few weeks prior.

The female Uber driver slammed on the brakes, said Mattova, and told her to get out of the car at a busy intersection.

When Mattova questioned the driver, the driver told her she didn’t feel “comfortable” with Mattova in the car. “So I asked why, and the driver told me that they do not drive Jewish people,” Mattova said.

Mattova got out of the vehicle and ordered another Uber to get home. She reported the incident to the ride-sharing company, as did her friend who ordered the ride. A representative from Uber called her in response to her complaint on Dec. 4. Over email later the same day, a representative apologized for her experience and said they would be “following up with this driver to try to ensure an incident like this does not occur again.” The fare would be refunded, they said.

“A serious incident involving hate should trigger immediate action within 24 hours. Anything less allows prejudice to just go unchecked. Basically, it took them four days to get back to me,” Mattova said. “I want to be clear that what happened is about far more than an uncomfortable ride home or a refunded fair. The incident I experienced was a direct act of antisemitism, and the reason I’m speaking about it is because moments like this must be confronted openly.”

In a statement to National Post, an Uber spokesperson said: “Discrimination is unacceptable, and we’re deeply sorry for the experience this rider had. Everyone deserves to feel safe, welcome, and respected when using Uber. We’ve contacted the rider directly and taken appropriate action on the driver.”

Uber did not clarify to National Post what action was taken.

“What concerns me most is that Uber refuses to confirm whether the driver is still operating on the platform,” Mattova said, adding that Uber cited the privacy rights of the driver.

“Any responsible company, in my opinion, would immediately remove a driver who refuses to take someone because they are Jewish,” she said.

Mattova has been using her platform as a model and public figure to speak out against antisemitism since the October 7 attacks, when 1,200 people were murdered by Hamas terrorists in Israel and 251 taken hostage. Despite backlash on social media and receiving hateful messages about her support for Israel, she said she remains strong in her convictions because she’s heard stories of how insidious antisemitism can be.

Her Slovakian grandmother, now 90, is a Holocaust survivor who was held in a concentration camp in what is now the Czech Republic.

“She used to tell me these horrible stories of what happened, even a year or two before the war actually started,” she said. “These moments remind me of exactly what she was telling me, and this is why I’m speaking up. If we let these things slide, will the same thing repeat itself? That’s my biggest question: Where are we heading?” she said.

Most recently, her advocacy work included a visit to Israel along with nonprofit group Israel Friends, dedicated to providing life-saving aid across Israel, including trauma care. She spoke to Israeli soldiers “fighting for our freedom and for our safety and the safety of the Jewish nation in Israel,” she said. She also travelled to the kibbutz where Hamas terrorists kidnapped Ofir Engel and spoke with him about his experience.

“The scourge of antisemitism has to be confronted by courageous individuals such as Miriam who are prepared to vigorously fight back,” said her lawyer Howard Levitt. Levitt is also a contributor to National Post and Financial Post.

“I am demanding of Uber that it terminate its relationship with this driver and ensures that all of its drivers commit and adhere to principles of non-discrimination,” he said.

“Unfortunately, as we permit demonstrations to take over our streets, often focused on Jewish neighbourhoods, replete with criminal hate speech, terrorizing the Jewish community, antisemitism is increasingly normalized allowing residents, such as this driver, to believe that such conduct will be tolerated,” Levitt said.

When the

Palestinian flag was raised at Toronto City Hall in November

, Mattova attended and held the Israeli flag.

“I think in Canada, the only flag that should be raised is the Canadian flag,” she said. The decision to raise the Palestinian flag was condemned by Canadian Jewish groups.

Mattova, who has a Slovakian mother and Canadian father, said she has gone back and forth between Europe and Canada over the years, but decided to move back to Canada full-time in April 2023 — six months before October 7. Since then, she’s been promoting the message that “Israel has the right to defend itself.”

“Moments like (the Uber incident) remind me of my grandmother’s pre-war stories,” she said. “Stories of people staying quiet, dismissing small acts of hate until they become something far more dangerous.”

In October 2023, a rideshare driver in California was

charged with a federal hate crime for an antisemitic attack

on a passenger, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a news release. The driver allegedly assaulted the passenger “because he thought the rider was Jewish or Israeli.” The man was later acquitted by a federal jury, the Jewish News of Northern California

reported

.

In August, an Uber driver in Vienna was suspended by the company after Jewish passengers said they were assaulted, verbally harassed and kicked out of the vehicle,

the Times of Israel reported

. Uber said it launched an investigation into the incident.

• Two ejected, two others arrested at anti-Israel protest at Toronto debate on ‘two state solution’
• Caroline Bassoon-Zaltman: The hate I escaped in Iraq is rising again in Canada

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The federal Liberals are holding 43 per cent of support amongst decided Canadian voters, maintaining a lead over the Conservatives, who dropped two points last month to 36 per cent, according to a new Postmedia-Leger poll.

Support for the Liberals has not changed since a Nov. 3 poll. The Bloc Québécois, meanwhile, gained two points amongst decided voters to sit at nine per cent support, and the NDP was up one point with eight per cent support, according to the survey conducted Nov. 28 to 30.

“There is no clear advantage for any party when you look at these numbers to suggest that going into an election would be a really good idea,” Andrew Enns, Leger’s executive vice-president for Central Canada, said Thursday.

“I don’t see anything positive for any of the two frontrunners to suggest that they’ve got a really clear path to victory.”

Almost half of Canadians (49 per cent) indicated they are satisfied with Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal government, while 40 per cent are dissatisfied.

Approval of Carney’s performance remained unchanged at 51 per cent (down from 55 per cent in July); disapproval stands at 38 per cent.

According to Enns, the numbers suggest a recent Conservative resignation and a floor crossing, the passing of the 2025 budget, and a second round of major project announcements had little impact on the way Canadians see the government and federal political parties.

Voters “are still waiting for the new government to start to move forward on some of its promises and not really kicking the tires of any of the opposition parties right now, in any meaningful way,” Enns said.

“They’re sort of parked.”

Satisfaction with federal opposition leaders remains low, with Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre at 31 per cent, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May at 26 per cent, the Bloc’s Yves-François Blanchet at 19 per cent, and Don Davies, interim leader of the NDP, at 17 per cent.

Carney leads as the preferred prime minister amongst 40 per cent of those polled, followed by Poilievre at 28 per cent.

Thirty-one per cent of women polled didn’t know which leader they would support, nearly double the rate of men (16 per cent).

“If you look under the hood a little bit, there is a significant number of voters who are pretty ambivalent about all of these individuals,” Enns said.

“From a political perspective, that always presents a bit of an opportunity to go out and try to convince them – make your case — so we’ll see how that goes in the New Year.”

Seventy-eight per cent of Conservative supporters said Poilievre should stay on as the party’s leader, while the majority of those who support the other parties believe he should step down.

“That sort of gives you a temperature check on how Conservative supporters feel about Poilievre,” Enns said.

“It’s not a slam dunk ringing endorsement. But it doesn’t necessarily indicate that there’s a real groundswell of dissatisfaction either.”

The online survey polled 1,579 people across Canada and the results were weighted according to age, gender, mother tongue, region, education and presence of children in the household. A margin of error cannot be applied. For comparison purposes, a probability sample of this size would yield a margin of error of plus or minus 2.47 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

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Two thirds of Canadians support sending our troops to countries such as Poland if Russia invades, according to a new Postmedia-Leger poll.

“You’d like to think that this is really kind of a super hypothetical pie-in-the-sky kind of question. But unfortunately, crazy things are happening all around the world,” Andrew Enns, Leger’s executive vice-president for Central Canada, said Thursday.

Support is lower among women, at 56 per cent, and higher among men, at 76 per cent of those polled. Only 16 per cent of Canadians would oppose the deployment.

“You see a real gender divide on this question; it’s quite stark,” Enns said.

“Women, historically, have always been on the more peace side versus war side. The maternal instincts kick in, and I think that probably plays a big role.”

Support for the deployment drops to 58 per cent among those between the ages of 35 and 54, a group that’s more likely to have children. Support is slightly higher (61 per cent) among Canadians of fighting age, between 18 and 34.

Of those polled, 57 per cent hold positive impressions of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), a view that was more prevalent among male respondents (62 per cent).

Fewer female respondents (53 per cent) held a positive view of the CAF.

“Women might just not see the military as a place for them,” Enns said.

“I know it’s certainly changed over the last number of decades, but traditionally there is still a view that it is male dominated,” he said, noting a history of sexual harassment complaints against male officers as a likely factor in the equation.

Thirty-seven per cent of those polled feel the Armed Forces place too much emphasis on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, while 26 per cent are unsure.

Conservative voters (62 per cent), men (45 per cent) and those who hold a negative opinion of the CAF (58 per cent) are the most likely to believe too much emphasis is placed on DEI, according to the survey.

Just over half (51 per cent) are confident in the government’s ability to reach new recruitment targets of adding 6,500 people to the regular force and 75,000 reservists.

“That one did surprise me,” Enns said.

“If you have a positive impression about the Forces, you are really confident (63 per cent) they’re going to meet these targets. So, there is a little bit of, maybe it’s rose-coloured glasses” on the public’s part.

Sixty-eight per cent of Liberal voters believe Canada will hit recruiting targets, as do 41 per cent of Conservatives.

Fifty-five per cent of Canadians see the idea of encouraging civil servants to serve as part-time reservists as a good idea, according to the poll. That’s especially true among men (61 per cent) and those with positive views of the CAF (66 per cent).

“I found this surprising as well,” Enns said. “I’ll be honest … my first reaction was, ‘Are you crazy?’ The civil servants I know — I don’t think they’d make it an hour.”

Military brass walked back the proposed scheme recently.

“I think they felt the public reaction was going to be fairly poor,” Enns said. “And, lo and behold, it’s actually not that bad.”

Only 27 per cent of Canadians support increasing the GST to pay for a stronger military. One quarter thought Canada should raise the age when people are eligible for old age security benefits from 65 to 68 to beef up the military, and 21 per cent opted for increasing income taxes by five per cent to accomplish the same.

“There’s not a lot of appetite to raise much new revenue,” Enns said.

“There’s general support for re-arming the military … but paying for it, well, that’s a little bit different.”

Twenty per cent of those polled said Canada should proceed with purchasing F-35 stealth strike fighters for the Royal Canadian Air Force — a move that’s now under review. Thirty per cent would prefer Canada switch to a non-American aircraft and 18 per cent would opt for a mixed fleet.

Conservative voters (32 per cent) are the strongest supporters for sticking with F-35s.

“This is the public opinion result you get when you’ve endlessly debated something for over a decade,” Enns said. “People are just all over the map.”

If Canada goes all-in on the F35s, “there will probably be a bit of blowback, but there’s so much diversity in response patterns, I think it would be short-lived and pretty muted,” he said.

The number of Canadians who think we should buy non-American equipment has “probably inflated” this year, he said, with President Donald Trump’s oft repeated harangues about turning Canada into the 51st state.

Half of Canadians polled believe the federal government should prioritize buying military equipment that can be produced or manufactured in Canada by Canadian workers, while 29 per cent prefer focusing on the best and most cost-effective equipment, regardless of where it is made.

“We have, for decades, married the idea of re-arming the military with … economic development,” Enns said.

“Now the government is trying to pivot away from that, just saying we’ve got to re-arm our military as fast as we can.”

The online survey of 1,579 people was conducted between Nov. 28 and 30 and the results were weighted according to age, gender, mother tongue, region, education and presence of children in the household. A margin of error cannot be applied. For comparison purposes, a probability sample of this size would yield a margin of error of plus or minus 2.47 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

• More Canadians trust the military than the federal government: poll
• Half of Canadians would volunteer to fight if war breaks out, and fewer young people, poll finds

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