More than 10,000 Air Canada flight attendants will begin voting this week on a new contract between their union, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, and their employer, Air Canada.

Flight attendants went on strike on Aug. 16 after failing to reach an agreement with Air Canada on a new contract. The airline grounded hundreds of planes, stranding thousands of travellers. It started operating again on Aug. 19 after the union announced a tentative deal with the airline, although it said at the time that it would be a week to 10 days before full service returned.

Here’s what to know.

André Pratte: How Air Canada lost the flight attendants’ strike

What does the new agreement offer?

Terms of

the new contract

include a 12 per cent salary increase this year for most junior flight attendants, and an eight per cent raise for more senior members. In addition, all members will see a three per cent raise as of April 1, 2026, followed by 2.5 per cent in 2027 and 2.75 per cent in 2028.

What about the issue of unpaid work?

Flight attendants and the union had made much of the fact that workers were only paid for the time the plane was in the air, despite having duties before takeoff and after landing that included safety checks and passenger assistance.

The new contract says flight attendants would receive 50 per cent their hourly wage rate for 60 minutes of ground time on narrow-body aircraft and 70 minutes on wide-body planes. That would rise to 60 per cent next April, 65 per cent in 2027, and 70 per cent in 2028.

A narrow-body aircraft is one with a single aisle, which usually means four to six seats in each row, while a wide-body aircraft has multiple aisles and more seats across.

How does this pay compare with other airlines?

Lack of pay for ground time has long been an industry standard, but that is changing. In 2022, Delta Air Lines began paying its flight attendants at half their hourly rate for 40 to 50 minutes of boarding, depending on the type of aircraft and where it’s headed,

according to NPR

.

Delta is the only major U.S. airline whose flight attendants are not unionized, and the broadcaster suggested the move might have been an effort by the airline to discourage unionizing. After Delta’s decision, American Airlines and its union also agreed to a similar plan.

Meanwhile, flight attendants at WestJet will see their current contract expire at the end of this year, and ground pay could be part of their bargaining considerations.

Could there still be a strike then?

It’s unlikely. The flight attendants are voting on just the pay portion of the new agreement. Other changes, including modifications to health and pension benefits and vacation time, are considered final. So if attendants vote against the pay hikes, the other terms would still form part of the new collective agreement, with the wages portion proceeding to third-party arbitration.

The government of Canada ruled the brief strike by flight attendants this month illegal after they refused a back-to-work order before then reaching an agreement with Air Canada. Any new strike would also be deemed illegal, but they did ignore that the last time.

How long does the new agreement last?

The tentative agreement expires on March 31, 2029.

• From ‘a faucet to a drip’: Fewer Canadians are visiting Las Vegas this summer amid Trump trade war
• CUPE sues government to block ‘unconstitutional’ power used to end flight attendant strike

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Residents in Gold Canyon, Arizona, enjoy stunning views of desert landscapes and panoramic vistas — especially the majestic Superstition Mountains — which is why it’s a highly sought-after area for vacation homes.

In the past, it has been a prime target for Canadians seeking warm retirement or seasonal homes, but not anymore.

“All my Canadian clients I had, I sold their homes earlier this year, and they have no interest in buying anything at all,” said Redfin real estate agent Heather Mahmood-Corley. “They all left.”

The Phoenix-area realtor explained that her colleagues have seen the same drop in Canadian business. Their fleeing clients had owned second homes — spending up to six months each year in the Copper State — for years, many of them long before COVID. But this year, Mahmood-Corley’s clients told her they wanted out.

This is part of a larger trend. Strained U.S.-Canada relations have led to falling Canadian interest in buying American properties, a trend that is intersecting with a cooling U.S. housing market.

Redfin, a real estate brokerage company that offers a popular search tool for home buyers, has seen a huge drop in Canadian traffic this year. The number of Canadian
Redfin.com
searchers for U.S. properties has dropped roughly 22 per cent year-over-year. The decline started in February, just as U.S. President Donald Trump announced 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian exports, and the biggest drop, 34.2 per cent (YoY), came in April, coinciding with the so-called “Liberation Day.” Declines have continued through July, though it eased slightly last month to a 19.4 per cent decline.

The falling interest coincides with a slowdown in domestic U.S. home sales as well, but Chen Zhao, Redfin’s head of economics research, says the drop has been far more pronounced for Canadian buyers. While overall searches “are down a little bit,” Chen says, “they’re not down anything close to what we’re seeing from Canadian buyers.”

Canadians have long represented a strong proportion of foreign purchases in the U.S. Recent data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR), which spanned from April 2024 to March 2025 — notably pre-tariffs — showed that Canadians last year made up 14 per cent of foreign buyers, spending about $6.2 billion. That’s up from 13 per cent and $5.9 billion, respectively, for the year before.

Their most popular destinations? Florida has long been No. 1, followed by Arizona, California, and Hawaii. 

Foreign-buyer purchases for April 2024 to March 2025, according to NAR, saw a 44 per cent increase from the year before, the first year-over-year increase recorded since 2017. 

Matt Christopherson, NAR’s director of business and consumer research, says there have been more buying opportunities in the U.S. for foreign investors because domesti
c homebuyers have been drastically slowed down in recent years by soaring interest rates, with many “waiting on the sidelines for better affordability conditions.”

Canadians buying in the U.S., however, are unhampered by the interest rates, he says, because they most likely don’t need mortgages. “Fifty-seven per cent of Canadian buyers paid all cash this past year,”
Christopherson said. 

Canada’s U.S. purchases were beaten last year only by Chinese buyers, who represented 15 per cent of international transactions, for a whopping US$13.7 billion worth of sales. “China’s housing market has had a much slower recovery coming out of the pandemic. So their investors are looking elsewhere for exposure to other markets,” Christopherson noted.

Realtors in Florida and Arizona, Canadians’ top two destinations, have seen severe downturns this year amid tariff-related trade tensions and Trump’s fiery 51st state rhetoric.

“What drove a lot of [Canadians] out was politics,” said Mahmood-Corley. “‘I am embarrassed to own a property here in the United States,’” one client told her, while others said they didn’t want to spend their money in the U.S.

“We don’t have Canadian buyers right now,” says broker Kevin Bartlett, owner of Knowledge Base Real Estate in Estero, Florida, just south of Cape Coral and Fort Myers. Where 50 per cent of Bartlett’s clients used to be from Canada, now “everyone wants to get out of America.”

But it’s not just the trade war that’s driving down foreign business. “It’s tariffs, it’s the dollar, it’s the cost of living,” Bartlett said, referring to how recent hurricane seasons have driven up insurance and HOA costs. 

The downturn also comes amid a weakening of the Canadian dollar. A loonie at 70–72 cents U.S. adds 30 per cent to a purchase. 

Overall, Canadian purchases of U.S. properties — whether the figures soar or plummet — won’t have a huge impact. While Canadians made up 14 per cent of last year’s foreign buyers, foreign purchases overall are just two per cent of U.S. home sales. But in a cooling U.S. housing market, it certainly doesn’t help realtors in the areas most affected. Bartlett, for example, says his sales are down 50 per cent this year. 

Steven Glick, director of mortgage sales for HomeAbroad, says he’s still seeing interest from Canadian buyers, but he acknowledges that something has changed
. “
I think there’s been some hesitation from our current client base, kind of waiting things out and being a little more hesitant to pull the trigger,” he said.

Overall, the slowdown in the U.S. market hasn’t impacted prices too much — the national median price is still up 1.7 per cent from this time last year — but in markets like southern Florida, prices are falling. “You’re starting to see a decrease where a lot of people are able to buy for 20 to 30 per cent under asking price, because there’s just so much more inventory now,” Glick added.

The pivot from a sellers’ to a buyers’ market has been more sudden in the Sunbelt. According to
Realtor.com
, there has been a 2.2 per cent year-over-year decline in Florida home prices as of May this year. Redfin data, meanwhile, shows a .72 per cent year-over-year decline in median prices in Arizona. 

We won’t know the full extent of the drop in Canadian purchases until next year, when NAR releases its next report covering April 2025 to March 2026. But what we do know is that searches have plummeted since February, and Canadian purchases in places like Arizona nd Florida, normal hotspots for cross-border investments, are falling despite a drop in prices.

The overall impact of fleeing Canadians, especially in these popular areas, is being felt in other ways, too. “When [Canadians] come, they have second cars here, they go out, they spend a lot on restaurants and tourism,” said Mahmood-Corley. “And you just didn’t see the activity from that this year like you had in the past.”

Bartlett said he’s seen a huge impact in southern Florida. “We need to understand that (Canadians’) money was 100 per cent very valuable in our economy down here. They created probably a third of our tourism.”

Potential homebuyers in the U.S. have an eye on the Federal Reserve, and realtors are hoping to see a fall in interest rates in the months ahead, which would boost refinancing, sales, and, in turn, housing prices.

But Chen expects the Canadian buying trajectory to remain unchanged for the foreseeable future. “I think it’s likely to remain lower or muted, relative to what we’ve seen in the past,” she said, noting that a lot depends on the tariffs and increased trade volatility.

“Until those tensions subside,” Glick said, “I think you’re going to still see a continuing decrease in interested buyers.” But he also said the anger over trade tensions is likely to eventually subside as people become more numb to the politics. 

By early 2026, Glick said a combination of dropped interest rates and the buyers’ market should be “big
contributing factors to seeing an increase in the market.”

National Post

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

Concertgoers heading to the recently opened Rogers Stadium in Toronto’s Downsview Park might be surprised to find more than just standard arena food. Instead of your regular nachos and beer, the venue offers Wagyu beef burgers and sushi platters.

Behind the upgrade is Nick Di Donato, president and CEO of Liberty Entertainment Group, the company behind some of Toronto’s most celebrated restaurants and event spaces. He spoke to National Post about the Liberty Group’s new role in elevating the concert-going experience. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

How did you end up seeking the food concession at Rogers Stadium?

Liberty Entertainment Groups has a very diverse portfolio, from regular restaurants to Michelin restaurants, the only Canadian organization with two Michelin restaurants in its portfolio, from our high-end steak houses and our event spaces like Casa Loma and Liberty Grand.

The stadium identity is now changing in recent years, and one of the things that is very important to stadiums is premium hospitality. And you see that in their suites, and in the restaurants that are located in stadiums and even their food offerings. So we thought that would be a perfect fit for the Liberty Entertainment Group, to help deliver the premium quality hospitality in a stadium atmosphere.

At the Rogers Stadium, we have two lounges of 400 seats each, the Birkenstock lounge and American Express where we have a full menu. We also do the 24 suites, so premium suites in the stadium itself, and also we do some premium concession stands, so a diverse selection of casual food but done at a premium level.

What’s the concept? What are you doing to try to elevate or reinvent stadium food?

The stadium itself is a temporary stadium, so I can imagine most of the seats are on a scaffold and built for a three year period. But we built two full-size restaurants, the American Express restaurant, with a full menu which emulates some of the items that we have at our Blue Bovine Steakhouse, with sushi and casual approachable food for a stadium environment.

We’ve done that with the Birkenstock lounge, more with reflecting the brand itself, of German descent. It’s a full service restaurant in the middle of, basically, a field.

We’ve created our full-service kitchens, full bar component. Our bar menu and cocktail menu are designed by world champion Jacob Martin. Our menus are designed and supported by our Michelin chefs, so there’s a very high-level experience in what people would expect to feel.

Can you give an example or two of specific food items?

We have the beef tartar cristini, an American Express tower, which exemplifies a tasting of all our menus, and obviously in the same atmosphere we have the quality burgers, but our burgers are made with Wagyu beef. And we have a sushi program at the Blue Bovine, which is translated into the stadium atmosphere.

What’s your personal favourite at Rogers

To me it’s from Birkenstock, the Coconut shrimp. It’s jumbo shrimp done in coconut and batter, and very easy to share.

How do you ensure quality and consistency in that environment?

Every item on our menu is quality made, made on site.

We created full service kitchens within the space itself and we’ve done that in cargo containers so, although we are outside in a very difficult challenging space to build quality food, we’ve created the kitchen in containers. We have a hotline in a container side-by-side with a cold line in a refrigeration container.

It’s not pre-prepared food, which is just heated up in a hot box. We are preparing the food as it’s been ordered.

Is this a sign of a growing sophistication of the average palate?

People are expecting a little more, and hats off to the people at Maple Leaf Sports who have introduced some of the higher quality products in their concessions. So you look at where they’ve moved and we look at where the industry is moving, people are looking for higher deliverables in their stadiums.

So this was really why Liberty Entertainment Group moved into that because it is our niche market. Premium quality, we know how to deliver that, and now we’re delivering it in higher volume in larger stadiums.

What’s the throughline in what Liberty Group is trying to do?

Our focus has always been best in class, so whether it’s a casual restaurant, whether it’s a Michelin restaurant, whether it’s a steakhouse, we always aim to be best in class.

Understanding what your target audience is, where you wanna be with that and making sure you’re the best in terms of deliverables, and we do that even in our nightclub component.

What’s next, any more surprises?

We’re going to extend this across Canada, in terms of the stadium approach, in terms of bringing up the level of expertise in stadiums. We are expanding in Miami, so that’ll be coming up, probably in October. And we’re expanding our portfolio in the lounge and club business. We’re creating a place called powder room in Yorkville, which will be a high-level cocktail lounge, which is really needed in the Yorkville area.

With a review of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) looming amid President Donald Trump’s trade war, National Post spoke this week with Canadian political and trade policy expert Laura Dawson. Dawson is the former director of the Canada Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., where she focused on bilateral economic issues, including NAFTA/CUSMA. She is now the executive director of the Canada-U.S. Future Borders Coalition and a regular media commentator. Much of Dawson’s work involves advising governments, businesses, and organizations on cross-border trade.

(This interview has been edited and condensed.)

What are the biggest risks and opportunities for Canada in the 2026 CUSMA review?

They’re two sides of the same coin. The biggest risks are that we become so preoccupied by the irritants that we don’t take the opportunity to look at new areas for improvement or cooperation.

Trade negotiations tend to be very irritant-focused. In the Canada-U.S. context, you’re always going to see dairy issues. You’re always going to see automotive rules of origin issues. You’re probably going to see something related to intellectual property in the pharmaceutical sector. These are all very important, but if your livelihood is outside of these sectors, then you are not really represented in these negotiations. 

We have a much larger presence of services trade between the U.S. and Canada — a significantly growing area of digital services, technology, and innovation. I would really love to see people focusing on the future growth of these sectors and not just the same irritants that we have been bashing away at for decades. 

How would you advise the Canadian team to prepare its negotiating strategy in light of the current tensions?

Canadian negotiators are always extremely well-prepared and extremely skillful. I mean, right back to the founding of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), Canadian negotiators always punched above their weight because they did their homework and they understood the mechanics very well. And when you’re going up against a USTR and a Commerce Department that is very legalistic and detail-oriented, you have to be that focused on the technical details — you can’t just phone it in. So in that sense, I am confident that they are preparing well for the technical part of it. 

What I am not as certain about is the extent to which they are prepared to deal with the Trump administration in its current context, and whether they are representing the concerns and aspirations of Canadian businesses. The
last consultation
(Canada) did for this negotiation actually took place last summer, before the election of Donald Trump. Obviously, things have really changed since then. I think it’s very important to do a comprehensive, cross-Canada, multi-sectoral consultation to figure out where they are now.

What key changes will President Trump be seeking? Which areas are most vulnerable to renegotiation?

It’s pretty clear that the sights are on what we’re calling the 232 sectors — the ones already in the crosshairs for Section 232 tariffs and of for steel and aluminum, auto parts, pharmaceuticals, copper, etc. 

Also, the president really enjoys turning his attention to dairy. So that will certainly be high on his radar screen. It’s pretty easy to see what the U.S. suite of asks is going to be because every year the
USTR publishes the National Trade Estimates
. It’s a document put together by the State Department, Commerce, and embassies around the world that identifies the irritants and challenges that the U.S. is having in that country. 

We should expect a more refined list of 25 or 30 subjects coming from USTR as early as this month.

Are there any particular changes that Canada would like to see or should be seeking?

There are so many areas that could be improved within the non-tariff barrier regime, and we’ve tried to go after this with things like the Regulatory Cooperation Council and other things — issues related to Cabotage (legal restrictions on foreign vessels/carriers), repositioning of truck containers, different labelling standards, and technical barriers. Thousands of things could be looked at within the non-regulatory cooperation, non-tariff barriers area. But really, it’s an agreement that has been progressively refined since 1989, if you start with the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. So there’s not a lot of sort of new stuff there. 

My recommendations are more about the areas where we can start to build new levels of commitment and cooperation. We’ve seen a lot of interest in critical minerals. We know that in the area of innovation and digital issues, we can either fight about them — things like the Online Streaming and the Digital Services Acts — or we can find ways to strengthen our respective technology sectors to work together better, and in doing so, help the U.S. to achieve its foreign policy goal of reducing the role of China in the U.S. economy.

What lessons did Canada learn from the last round of negotiations that could help inform its approach this time around?

I think that one of the lessons that Canada learned is that it has to stay at the table.

There was a period during the last negotiations where the U.S. and Mexico went off to do a separate side agreement on several things, and Canada found itself running behind. So Canada has to stay at the table and it has to convince the United States that it’s serious about being at these negotiations — and not just, in Canadian terms, ragging the puck. 

They have to figure out how to give the United States a little bit of what it’s asking for, but also make sure that they’re effectively managing offers and concessions.

Don’t give too much. Don’t give too little. 

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s team has been trying to make more inroads with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s team in recent weeks. Is that a good move? Could it upset Trump?

I don’t think it’s necessarily an irritant to Trump unless Canada and Mexico show up and say, ‘You know, we’re going to do an end run around you, and we’re going to do something that is just Canada and Mexico.’

I think it makes a lot of sense for Canada to be engaging with Mexico as a business and economic partner, as a diplomatic partner. The relationship between Canada and Mexico has been a little rocky in the last couple of years. So I think that restoring those diplomatic relations so that they can be helpful to each other at an informal level is a really good idea. 

But the economic interests of Canada and the economic interests of Mexico are quite different, and neither country is going to give up on something that’s very important to them in order to serve that other partner. 

They can be stronger economic and diplomatic partners and better allies. But neither is in a position where they could do an end run around the United States and come out any better for it, because the United States is the market they both want. 

There were tensions between former prime minister Justin Trudeau and Trump. Are you concerned about any personality issues this time?

I think Mark Carney has so far proven himself to be a very effective manager of that relationship. A trade negotiation starts at a high level — the prime minister and the president, they sort of wave the starting flag at the beginning. But the negotiation itself is very detail-oriented and painstaking, and it’s not something that either one of the leaders will be involved in very much.

I think that’s where a second level of diplomacy and engagement needs to take place. In the last round of negotiations, the two ambassadors were actually instrumental in helping to manage concessions and manage the final round that led to a settlement — Ambassador David MacNaughton and Ambassador Kelly Knight Craft. They sat near those negotiations and took phone calls to try to hammer out those last details — so, those other levels of government-to-government engagement and especially those other levels of business-to-government engagement (are crucial). It’s not just the negotiators sitting at the table; it’s representatives from these major sectors that are talking to the negotiators and telling them what they can live with and what they can’t.

There’s concern that some in the U.S. administration may be looking to upend former USTR Robert Lighthizer’s legacy. Do you have any concerns about that?

I have not been persuaded that it is a serious concern, especially not since Jamieson Greer was really mentored by Lighthizer and also is following the same sort of pathway — advancing U.S. economic interests, but using the legal tools available. Whatever we might think of USTR policy, they are using recognizable legal tools and not just sort of making stuff up on the fly. 

How could the rise of protectionism and the trade tensions with China affect the next review?

I think that they are forcing everyone to be much more interest-based in their approach to these negotiations. When we were moving through the rounds of GATT negotiations and WTO negotiations that were leading towards this multilateral free trade regime, we kind of thought it was a set it and forget it type trajectory. You could only go in one direction, and that was reducing barriers and opening your markets for trade. 

President Trump has really turned that on its head and said, “No, that is not an inevitable trajectory. We need to make sure that our interests are served by this big institution.”

The rest of the world is being made to follow suit. So, rather than focus on reducing barriers without question, we are being forced to focus on what our national economic interests are and reinstating some of those elements of industrial policy that we thought had gone by the wayside — tariffs, freight quotas, special protections, government intervention in particular sectors. These are all things we were trying to get rid of in the 1990s. Now they are back up again, with a vengeance. 

Given how Trump feels about net-zero efforts, do you foresee labour or environmental provisions becoming new flashpoints in the CUSMA review? We know that Carney is a fan of ESG principles, so can you speak about how that might go?

Environment and labour have always played a role in our NAFTA communications. I think, though, that it’s a matter of interpreting environmental improvements for whom? And labour improvements for whom? Depending on who you ask, it’s not necessarily the same group. The things that are good for labour in the United States are not necessarily good for labour in Mexico. So I think we’re always gonna see those issues at play. 

However, I don’t see strengthened environmental protection measures playing a significant role in this conversation. I think, in the current trade context, environmental issues are taking a back seat.

How can Canada balance the need for North American integration with protecting sensitive domestic industries?

I think it starts with evaluating and recognizing what your sensitive domestic industries are. Many of the designated sensitive sectors in Canada were considered sensitive as a result of reviews that were done in the 1970s and 1980s. Things like cultural policy, as far as broadcast goes, were developed before the Internet. 

All of those so-called sensitive sectors were designated and protected a long time ago. 

So I think it’s really important for Canada to do a domestic assessment and say, ‘OK,
w
hich of these things still needs to be protected and why? Which of our so-called protections are actually just tying our hands to innovation and growth?’

Can we expect the private sector or the provinces and civil society to play any more role in shaping Canada’s agenda than it did with last year’s consultation?

Yes, I think that the business and the provinces are really clamouring for it. We’ve seen a stronger-than-usual role for the provinces coming up because Doug Ford sort of filled a gap in leadership between Trudeau and Carney, and because a lot of the sectors that we’re talking about in these negotiations are actually under provincial control. Natural resource sectors and many financial services sectors are all under provincial control. So, of course, they need to be involved in any trade negotiations affecting those industries. Business has had to become very engaged and very nimble in talking to government to deal with the tariffs, counter-tariffs, remissions, all the things that they’ve needed in order to survive the last six months.

So they’re not going to sit back and wait for the nice man from the government to come and ask them their opinion. They are leaning forward and making their views known. 

The thing that concerns me is that small businesses — businesses that are already working as hard as they can to stay afloat — don’t really have the time to be engaging in advocacy efforts in Ottawa. It needs to be easier for those folks to get their voice heard. 

How concerned are you about the possibility of the U.S. just withdrawing from CUSMA? What could trigger such a move?

Five years ago, I would’ve said, ‘No, it’ll never happen because CUSMA is too foundational to North American commercial policy, and it provides too many advantages to the United States.’ But President Trump has convinced me that he will do almost anything to go after his objectives.

The thing that is keeping CUSMA in place in the United States is consistent pressure from American businesses that are showing how it benefits them — and evidence from think tanks, scholars, banks, and Wall Street that they need to keep this in place. 

Competitiveness depends on inputs from allies and, in particular, from Canada and Mexico. We keep seeing that as these new tariffs are imposed, the CUSMA exemption is in place, and it’s like the shield of protection that’s continued over the last several months. That gives me hope that it’s possible to protect and sustain CUSMA, but only as long as the White House and business community are convinced that it’s in their interests. 

I think Canada could be working a lot harder to ensure that positive messaging about the economic benefits of CUSMA gets to Americans and that it’s hitting at all levels, not just in Washington, but in state capitals, local businesses, et cetera. Canadians need to be much more vocal in getting that message, not just to U.S. federal legislators, but to state-level legislators as well. 

Canada has been used to being pretty quiet and flying under the radar within the U.S., and now that muted voice is acting to its detriment.

How realistic is it for Canada to reduce its trade dependence on the United States by turning to other markets?

I think Canadians have been a bit disingenuously sold a false hope that the U.S. market can be replaced with diversion to other markets. That somehow the European Union can be as viable and as profitable as the United States was, or that they can trade just as easily and effectively with Indonesia and Brazil. Businesses will tell you that the reasons why they don’t trade very much with the European Union is that they make a lot of the same stuff that we do at pretty much the same prices, and it’s expensive to move things across oceans. Similarly, Brazil and Indonesia can be great markets for some, but it’s also a very expensive market to learn about, do business in, and again, long distances.

Canadians who want to continue to engage in international trade as their livelihood have to accept the reality of some kind of negotiated agreement with the United States, even if they don’t agree with the politics of the U.S. administration. 

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Researchers have confirmed it. Your morning cup of joe gives you a morning mood bump.

Caffeine drinkers told

researchers from the University of Warwick and Bielefeld University

in Germany that a cup of coffee or tea boosted their mood during the first 2.5 hours of the day, but it wasn’t sustained toward later in the day.

Their findings were published in

Nature Scientific Report

.

The researchers tracked the mood of more than two hundred young adults for up to four weeks each, compiling 28,000 mood reports.

Rather than sit in laboratories, where past studies of this type have been undertaken, this study’s subjects received prompts on their phones while going about the day. The prompts arrived seven times a day, asking if they had recently consumed caffeine and how they felt in the moment.

Caffeine can “increase dopamine activity in key brain regions, an effect that (past) studies have linked to improved mood and greater alertness,” says Professor Anu Realo, in the University of Warwick department of psychology.

People with moderate caffeine consumption can also experience mild withdrawal symptoms that disappear with the first cup of coffee or tea in the morning, he said.

The study concluded that caffeine consumption is linked to an immediate increase in positive emotions for two and a half hours within waking up, particularly enthusiasm and happiness.

Smaller effects were observed for contentment and reduction in sadness.

The researchers looked into varying levels of caffeine consumption and differing degrees of depressive symptoms, anxiety, or sleep problems. They found caffeine intake and the impact on either positive or negative emotion was “consistent across all groups.”

The relationship between caffeine and emotion was instead moderated by factors such as tiredness and social context.

The study suggests “morning caffeine consumption may align with habitual use patterns, where the anticipation of caffeine’s effects contributes to its affect-enhancing properties. Psychological factors, such as the expectation of positive effects and the ritualistic aspects of consuming coffee or tea after awakening, could amplify its impact on positive affect.”

Meanwhile, past research has found the initial consumption of caffeine appears to induce improved mood and cognitive performance, while additional intake does not produce further benefits.

“Since many people typically consume their first coffee or tea in the morning (e.g., at breakfast), the effect could therefore be strongest at this time of day,” the study states.

• Want stronger coffee with fewer beans? Pour from high up, study says
• More than 46,000 people observed in a coffee study. Here’s what happened to the ones who took theirs black

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

The next time humans fly to the moon, there will be a Canadian among the crew. Astronaut Jeremy Hansen has been chosen to fly on the Artemis II mission, slated for liftoff as early as next April.

But today, NASA announced the possible addition of another Canadian on the flight. Sort of. The space agency ran a contest this year called the

NASA Artemis II ZGI Design Challenge

, and three Canadian teams are among the finalists.

“Artemis II ZGI Design Challenge” is a bit of a mouthful, so it’s also known as a Moon Mascot. Basically, spacecraft often fly with a small stuffed animal or or toy aboard. When the flight reaches the stage of weightlessness, this little passenger starts to float around the capsule, acting as a zero-gravity indicator, or ZGI.

The tradition dates back to the earliest days of spaceflight — cosmonauts, the spacefarers of the Soviet Union

,

were very keen on the idea — and continues to this day. The Artemis I flight of 2022 did not have a human crew, but it did carry a little plush Snoopy, clad in a miniature spacesuit.

Artemis II will be a 10-day mission with a crew of five: NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Hansen — and the ZGI.

The agency received more than 2,600 design submissions from around the globe, and whittled the list down to 25 finalists, each of whom will receive either a cash prize of US$1,225 or an Artemis prize package, depending on their age. Entries were accepted from several grade-school categories plus one for adults.

Among the finalists were three with a distinctly Canadian flavour.

From the K-to-5 classroom category, students at Royal School in Winnipeg delivered a design for Luna the Space Polar Bear. The bear wears a spacesuit and an astronaut helmet, and the design as inspired by how polar bears adapt to extreme cold environments, similarly to how spacesuits protect astronauts from the extreme environment of space.

Students from Oakville Trafalgar High School in Oakville, Ont., created a design for Lepus the Moon Rabbit. This lunar bunny features markings that look like the Moon’s craters, while its oversized ears are decorated with constellations. It holds a small Earth “balloon” that symbolizes how precious Earth is in the vastness of space.

The third Canadian finalist was Caroline Goyer-Desrosiers of St. Eustache, Que. A project management business partner at Airbus, she designed a flying squirrel with a space helmet on its head and a moon logo on its chest.

They face some strong competition from others including Rise, a smiling moon wearing an Earth-patterned baseball cap, and inspired by the Earthrise picture taken from Apollo 8 in 1968; Artemis, a plush depiction of the Greek goddess after whom the program is named; and Art and The Giant, which features an astronaut perched on the shoulder of a mythological giant named Orion, which is also the name of the capsule in which the astronauts will fly.

“What better way to fly a mission around the moon than to invite the public inside NASA’s Orion spacecraft with us and ask for help in designing our zero gravity indicator?” said Wiseman, the commander of Artemis II, when the competition was announced. “The indicator will float alongside Victor, Christina, Jeremy and me as we go around the far side of the moon, and remind us of all of you back on Earth.”

NASA has not yet revealed when the winning design will be chosen, but with the launch of Artemis II scheduled for as soon as eight months from now it will need to decide soon which one of the finalists has the right stuff. Or the right stuffing.

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