OTTAWA — Canada’s intelligence watchdog agencies have asked the Liberals to spare them from public service cuts in

Tuesday’s budget

, warning that the organizations they are supposed to keep an eye on are only set to become more powerful.

In an exceptional joint letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney, Canada’s two largest intelligence watchdogs warned in July they would not be able to oversee as effectively the intrusive operations and powers of surveillance of security agencies, including CSIS and the RCMP, if their funding is cut in Tuesday’s budget.

That’s because both review bodies, as well as the office of the intelligence commissioner, were included in the government’s spending review requiring them to propose ways to

cut their spending by 15 per cent from their budgets

within three years.

“We maintain a pivotal equilibrium vis-à-vis the extensive authorities vested in the national security apparatus,” reads the letter signed by both the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) secretariat and the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA).

“Absent maintaining our current funding levels, our ability to keep pace and sustain a proportional level of scrutiny will be seriously hindered,” they added.

National Post obtained a redacted version of the letter via access-to-information legislation.

NSIRA and NSICOP are the two bodies tasked with reviewing intelligence work done by nearly any federal organization such as CSIS, the Communications Service Establishment, the RCMP, the Canadian Armed Forces and National Defence.

Most federal national security organizations have been spared from major cuts the Carney government is considering for the public service.

In fact, the Liberals have promised to significantly increase many of their budgets as part of their plan to boost spending on defence and national security.

Government bill C-2 also proposes

granting police and security agencies new powers to obtain information from service providers without a warrant. It would also create a lawful access regime to make it simpler for authorities to obtain private communications with a warrant.

Craig Forcese, the vice-chair of NSIRA, said that would make cuts to the watchdog agencies more problematic.

“The reality is, with less, we will do less, and this is at a time when we’re seeing a surge in our complaints (and) the prospect of new and novel powers” for intelligence and defence agencies, Forcese said.

He said his organization has not received a response to the letter from the prime minister.

NSIRA’s budget is currently less than $18 million annually, while that of NSICOP’s secretariat is below $4 million. CSIS’s budget is over $700 million while budgets are in the billions or tens of billions of dollars for RCMP, military and defence.

In their letter, NSIRA and NSICOP warned against a return to the “imbalance” seen in the 2000s when intelligence services operated without matching oversight.

“We witnessed security service activities ignite public controversy and provoke the creation of expensive ad hoc judicial commissions of inquiry,” they wrote.

The federal government held numerous public or internal inquiries into national security issues between 2000 and 2009, such as the Mahrer Arar and Air India commissions and at least three major internal inquiries related to intelligence and police work.

The review bodies also wrote in the letter that the cuts would be an assault on their independence and directly impact services to the public.

“The practical reality is that in our micro-organizations the prescribed budget cuts are more likely to be disproportionately linked to reduced delivery on our mandates, such as fewer reviews being conducted,” they wrote.

“For the adjudication of public complaints, less resources will mean jeopardizing access to justice,” they added. “The result will likely be long queues and delays.”

In their six to eight years of existence, both watchdogs have published consequential reviews of Canada’s security and intelligence apparatus.

For example, NSICOP published a bombshell report on foreign interference in Canada last year. And earlier this month

NSIRA reported that CSIS had failed to disclose

the use of new “intrusive” technology to the proper authorities.

NSICOP secretariat executive director Lisa-Marie Inman said a 15 per cent cut to her department would save the government roughly $525,000 but could impact how it operates. NSIRA said that a similar cut in its budget would save roughly $2.7 million, which it said is a marginal amount of federal spending.

“The economic benefit to the Government is far outweighed by the negative impact on NSIRA’s ability to fulfill its mandate and the heightened risks to national security, intelligence and defence activities,” NSIRA wrote in the letter.

The agencies also noted in their letter that similar organizations within the public service have been told they will be exempt from cuts, including the Office of the Auditor General and the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

In a separate statement, a spokesperson for Intelligence Commissioner (IC) Simon Noël confirmed that his office was also included in the comprehensive expenditure review, but hoped to be spared.

“I can confirm that the IC has expressed concerns relating to the impact of implementing the full savings target,” said Office of the Intelligence Commissioner executive director Justin Dubois.

The intelligence commissioner holds the rare responsibility of overseeing spy agencies’ powers. His role is to approve or reject the use of some of intelligence organizations’ most intrusive or law-breaking powers.

A spokesperson for Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne acknowledged receipt of questions from National Post but did not provide a response by deadline.

National Post

cnardi@postmedia.com

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During a pre-budget speech last month,

Prime Minister Mark Carney told the audience of mostly university students

that his government would restore their future.

“It’s our country; it’s your future,” he told the crowd. “We are going to give it back to you.”

While an increasingly volatile world makes it entirely unclear exactly what that future will look like, the

Carney government’s first budget

— to be unveiled Tuesday  — will go some distance in revealing at least part of the plan.

As Canada faces what Carney has described as a more hostile and divided world, it’s time, the prime minister said, for “bold action,” “a new course,” and a “dramatically” different economic path.

A fuller picture of Carney’s map to navigate that path is still unknown. But Canadians can look for important clues in Tuesday’s budget, described by some as “generational” in its significance and expected to address the following problems:

Luring investment

What’s the problem?

Big investors put their money in places where they think they can make big profits, as quickly as possible.

Canada has been lagging in corporate investment for decades, for a number of reasons: declining competitiveness and productivity, slow project approval processes, high input costs, and, in recent months, questions about access to the U.S. market.

Those are major problems that are difficult to solve and perhaps even more difficult to frame in a voter-friendly way. But there’s little doubt that Carney is all in on trying to solve what is perhaps his foremost policy puzzle.

“The core of our budget strategy will be to catalyze unprecedented investments in Canada over the next five years,” the prime minister said in his pre-budget speech.

That catalyzing, however, is easier said than done. It will mean that Canada will need to offer investors the conditions for a healthy return on investment, whether it’s for a new mine, a manufacturing facility, or an existing business. That was always a challenge in a relatively high-cost country, but the climb has become decidedly more uphill after U.S. President Donald Trump started adding hefty tariffs to the equation.

The underlying challenges are not new.

As has often been said in political circles, competitiveness and productivity are killer words if you’re trying to sell the public on an idea or policy. They put people to sleep, or worse, leave the incorrect impression that employees are going to be asked to do more for less.

The problem is that those two goals are widely considered by economists to be among the most important gauges in trying to develop a stronger economy and a richer country. If a country such as Canada is more competitive, exporters will sell more, create more jobs, pay more taxes and have more room to raise wages. Prices for their goods and services will also be cheaper for Canadians to buy. Productivity means suppliers have found a way to make more for less, which makes them more competitive and profitable.

The Canadian economy clearly needs help. Statistics Canada reported Friday total annualized growth of 0.4 per cent in the third quarter.

The Budget:

As National Post reported last week,

the budget will include a broad new strategy to boost Canadian businesses’ performance

, including measures to allow companies to write off their new machinery and capital costs more aggressively. Those changes to the capital cost allowance (CCA) rules will affect the purchases of buildings, machinery, vehicles and other equipment, and are largely a response to Canada’s trade frictions with the United States and China, and similar changes that were made earlier this year in U.S. legislation.

There are other ways to make businesses immediately more competitive without adding bureaucracy or other costs. Ottawa could suspend scheduled changes to the Accelerated Investment Incentive (AII), another business accounting metric, or simply cut corporate income or payroll taxes.

The government has already taken steps toward trying to improve Canada’s economic performance. One step was the opening of a

new “major projects office” to speed up the approval processes

for mines, pipelines and other proposed investments deemed to be in the national interest. The government has already announced approvals for

a first tranche of five projects

, although each to some extent was already underway, and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see another batch of approvals in the budget. Another was a broad review of red tape.

Interprovincial trade barriers are another thorny obstacle for growth.

Getting rid of those costly barriers would boost the Canadian economy on a number of fronts, including reducing inflation and boosting competitiveness.

A budget announcement on this front is unlikely, however, given the lack of recent progress.

Ottawa took a first step earlier this year in eliminating the federal part of these barriers, but the ball is mostly in the provinces’ court and progress has slowed as provinces generally seem unable to give up on their typically protectionist instincts.

Competitiveness would also get a push of course from simply opening up key markets to greater competition. Sectors such as airlines, telecommunications services, poultry and dairy, banking and even a wide range of professional services are subject to various forms of protectionism.

Economists say reducing or eliminating those barriers would make the Canadian economy more prosperous and more attractive for investors. Industry Minister Melanie Joly has said the government is “bullish” on competition. The budget may well include a plan to do something about showing that intent to be more than just words.

Trade diversification

What’s the problem?

Trump has hit Canada with punishing tariffs on sectors not covered by the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement, such as steel, aluminum, autos and softwood lumber.

That has prompted Canadian politicians and businesses to look for non-American customers. Carney used his University of Ottawa speech to set a new goal for Canada to double non-U.S. exports over the next decade.

Economists and trade analysts, however, warn that diversifying trade to other markets is a lot easier said than done. Companies and governments on both sides of the Canada-United States border have spent more than a century integrating their supply chains to their mutual advantages.  Tariffs may make things more costly and less prosperous for both sides, economists say, but the vast majority of Canadian exports will continue to flow south.

There are many reasons why existing trade patterns and supply chains are what they are and a compelling reason is required for a buyer to change suppliers, especially if it involves a new supplier on the other side of the world.

The Budget:

Canada has already invested billions in trade diversification in recent years, particularly in infrastructure and services to support exporters and in helping Canadian businesses make their strategies easier to execute. Carney has also spent much of his first six months travelling abroad, at least in part, trying to drum up more markets for Canadian exports.

It’s debatable how effective those efforts over the years have been. CIBC said earlier this year that the percentage of Canadian exports headed to the U.S. is 76 per cent, the same as a decade ago.

With the trade wars hitting the economy hard, it wouldn’t surprise many if the trade diversification files got more attention on budget day.

Skills

What’s the problem?

The economy needs more engineers, scientists, and trades people, while communities need more medical personnel and some other professionals. Depending on how many housing and major projects are approved over the coming years, the need for tradespeople — particularly when there are sometimes difficulties with some professions even working across provincial borders — could get dire.

The Budget:

Among the safest budget bets is that Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne will announce spending for more apprenticeships and skills-training programs as part of a broader talent strategy aimed at adding to Canada’s roster of scientists and innovators. The government has also signalled that the budget will allocate money for increased foreign credential recognition.

Affordability

What’s the problem?

Inflation, fuelled at least in part by massive government spending during the pandemic, has hit Canadians’ pocketbooks hard in recent years and it hasn’t stopped. Food inflation, already up nearly 20 per cent since 2021, climbed four per cent in September year over

year. C

anadians have seen a double-digit percentage increase in rental rates and housing prices in recent years.

The Budget

In September, the government announced its $13-billion Build Canada Homes program designed to increase the supply of housing. On the demand side, Ottawa has already cut the GST on the purchase of new houses under $1 million by first-time homebuyers.

Grocery prices are a tougher target, and the government has already cut personal income taxes earlier this year, reducing the lowest bracket from 15 per cent to 14 per cent.

Both issues are contributing heavily to many Canadians simply not having enough to make it through the month. With a wide array of policy levers to affect Canadians’ wallets, it’s likely the budget will include multiple measures to address what is for many Canadians — not to mention the Opposition Conservatives — their number one issue.

Defence and security

What’s the problem? 

Canada has largely relied on its allies and geographic proximity to the U.S. for its defence strategy for decades. But Trump’s tariffs and frequent vows to focus on “America first” may have triggered a change in attitude.

Carney has vowed to hit the NATO target this year of spending two per cent of GDP on defence. He even went a big step further, saying that Canada will allocate at least five per cent of GDP on defence within a decade, although that will include spending on dual-purpose infrastructure that meets both military and civilian purposes.

The Budget:

Carney already announced a $9-billion investment in the military in June, including the largest pay increase in more than 25 years for Canadian Armed Forces personnel. That was just a few months after the Defence Department announced that it would spend an estimated $3 billion on over-the-horizon radar purchase from Australia. (That estimate has since reportedly jumped to $6 billion.) Ottawa also announced earlier this year that it was moving the Canadian Coast Guard and its $2.8-billion budget under the Department of Defence.

Depending on how these expenditures are accounted for, Ottawa is already within striking distance of its NATO target of two per cent.

If the budget includes an announcement about the purchase of some military equipment, that would put Canada over the top and allow the Carney government to claim a win of sorts. Either way, the budget will account for big chunks of increased defence spending.

The government may also want to make a move or two to show Trump that it’s still interested in border security. Money laundering, online scams and other Internet crimes are also a growing problem that may well get some budget attention.

Government spending

What’s the problem?

Federal spending under the Liberal government has been a runaway train, growing over the past decade by more than seven per cent a year.

“We spent faster than our economy was growing,” Carney acknowledged recently. “So, our government is changing that.”

Growth in the civil service has been part of the equation, growing by more than 100,000 since 2015, with the largest growth in executive staff.

E-government analysts, meanwhile, say governments should be able to do more with fewer people if they’re investing in and using digital technology properly.

The Budget:

Carney has been clear his plan is to cut spending where possible, including on the number of civil servants, and reallocate that money to higher-priority areas.

Don Drummond, a former high-ranking executive with the Department of Finance and former chief economist at TD Bank, said he’ll be looking in the budget for the extent of the reallocation of government spending, and of course the size of the deficit.

Earlier this year, Champagne told ministers they should cut program spending by 7.5 per cent, or about $15 billion collectively, over the next year, growing that figure to 10 per cent in 2027-28 and a 15 per cent reduction a year later.

Carney had said earlier that the government would rely on attrition to reduce the public service payroll. But,

as National Post reported last week

, the budget will include a broader plan that includes early retirement packages, moving employees within the government, and layoffs.

The budget will likely also show how much the Carney government has been able to find in cuts so far and may also offer a plan to dig deeper to try to find further savings.

A big move, especially symbolically, would be if Carney announced that he was actually shutting down a government department or agency, or at least folding, say, two departments into one more streamlined unit. One government source told the Post that there has been no talk of anything like that planned.

Deficits

What’s the problem?

With its runaway spending and lagging economic growth, the federal government has been racking up mountains of red ink in recent years, and further outlays on defence, affordability and housing won’t come cheap, even if some are framed as long-term investments.

The Budget

That means Canadians can expect another year with a high deficit. The C.D. Howe Institute, a leading think tank, forecast earlier this year that the Carney government would post a deficit of more than $92 billion if it followed through on all of its campaign promises. That would mark the second-highest deficit in Canadian history, topped only by the Liberals’ $327.7 billion shortfall from the pandemic year of 2020–21.

The government has been trying to inoculate itself in advance from this part of the budget coverage. Carney has been saying it’s a time for “bold” action, while Champagne has emphasized that international organizations have pointed to Canada as one of the few countries with the fiscal room to spend more.

The budget is also expected to feature for the first time a separation between day-to-day operational spending and capital investments, which could be anything deemed to be designed to boost long-term growth. The government says this change will make it easier for Canadians to distinguish between the “spending” and the “investments.” Critics say it’s just a trick, so the government will be able to say that it’s met its goal of balancing the operational budget within three years, instead of dealing with the actual budget deficit.

National Post

stuck@postmedia.com

• As Trump’s tariffs bite, homegrown competition barriers are still pushing prices up
• Federal government’s plan to reduce public service will include layoffs

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OTTAWA — Canadians might not be heading to a Christmas election after all, as the NDP is keeping all its options open — including abstention — on the budget vote.

But at least one New Democrat is breaking ranks and saying she will not be abstaining.

The Liberal minority government will need the support of at least one other party to pass the budget, which is being tabled on Tuesday in the House of Commons. To date, the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois have hinted they would be voting against it.

Interim NDP Leader Don Davies said on Monday that his caucus would not be taking a clear position on the budget before any of its members could carefully read the document.

“We’re going to read the budget, we’ll study it carefully, we’ll consult stakeholders, and we’re going to analyze it through the lens of whether it’s good for working people,” he said.

“All options are on the table. Until we read the budget, we really can’t say,” he added.

However, NDP MP Jenny Kwan has made her position clear: “I will not abstain,” said the MP for Vancouver East.

Her colleague, Leah Gazan, echoed her interim leader’s message that “nothing’s off the table” but said that the New Democrats cannot vote in favour of an “austerity budget.”

Davies said he expects the seven-member NDP caucus to vote the same way. The party is set to hold a first meeting to discuss their position after the budget is tabled on Tuesday and a second one during their weekly caucus gathering on Wednesday morning.

The minority Liberals, holding 169 seats — three short of a majority — must find support or abstentions from at least three opposition MPs to keep their budget, and their government, alive in the upcoming confidence vote. The vote could happen as early as mid-November.

Prime Minister Mark Carney says he’s prepared to fight an election campaign if his Liberal government fails to pass their first fiscal plan.

He said his budget is what Canadians need at a critical time for the country.

“I am 100 per cent confident that this budget is the right budget for this country at this moment,” Carney told reporters at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea on Saturday. “This is not a game,” he added.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre was asked at a news conference Sunday if his party wants an election before Christmas.

“We want an affordable budget that will give Canadians an affordable life before Christmas,” he replied, adding that: “We will not vote to raise grocery prices and increase housing costs, as the Liberals have done over the last decade.”

Poilievre was also asked if his party had ruled out the option of abstaining. He did not directly answer the question.

“The reality is that we’re going to show up and do our jobs to fight for an affordable budget,” said Poilievre. “I can’t tell you any more than that till I see the thing.”

The Bloc Québécois, which has 22 MPs, has previously ruled out abstaining on the budget vote. The party has laid out 18 budget demands, which include increasing Old Age Security payments and boosting health transfers to the provinces.

On Monday, as per tradition, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne was busy shopping for the new shoes he would wear on budget day. However, unlike prior finance ministers, he opted to “build” the shoes at Boulet Boots, a local business in his riding in Quebec.

“It brings us back to the basics. This is a budget of investments, a budget that will favour growth, a budget that will mark a pivot, I think, in the country’s economic history,” said the minister in French, as he was busy cutting the leather for the fabrication of his shoes.

Champagne said there would be “no surprises” in his first budget.

“Canadians have asked us to do, build big, bold things. They expect us to do things differently. So, we’re going to make generational investments that will build our country.”

Champagne said there will be something for every political party — investments in housing, infrastructure, defence, as well as more money to increase productivity.

“This is a budget that talks to everyday Canadians, the workers that you’ve seen here, the members of our Armed Forces, the innovators, the entrepreneurs, the families in Canada.

“That’s the kind of budget we need to meet the moment,” he said.

Once again, the question of the budget and the possibility of an election dominated much of question period on Monday, as the governing Liberals and the opposition parties took turns accusing each other of wanting an unnecessary and costly election.

“It’s ridiculous that, 24 hours away from the budget, Liberals are still not negotiating and are merely threatening a Christmas election,” said Christine Normandin from the Bloc.

Davies said it is up to Carney to craft a budget in a minority Parliament that can earn the support of one other party.

“It’s not my job. I don’t hold the pen. I’m not the government,” he said.

Whatever happens, some Conservative MPs said they were ready to go back to the polls just seven months after the last election.

Kevin Waugh said he was counting his campaign signs over the weekend, just in case, whereas colleague Brad Vis said his were “always ready.”

National Post, with a file from Simon Tuck 

calevesque@postmedia.com

• Young Canadians anxiously await federal budget after Carney warns of ‘sacrifices’
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A B.C. woman who tried to kill her long-time social media enemy in a Vancouver courtroom four years ago will have to stay in prison, the province’s court of appeal has ruled.

After a lengthy trial, Surrey’s Qin Shen was found guilty in 2023 of the attempted murder of Jing Lu two years earlier and sentenced to 12 years in prison. On appeal seeking a sentence reduction of six years, her lawyer argued the judge failed to consider how Shen’s existing mental illness fed that hate, making her not criminally responsible.

Justice Gail Dickson dismissed the appeal in

a recently published decision.

Shen and the victim, Jing Lu, had met in 2005 through an online forum to connect Chinese immigrants in Canada. Over the ensuing years, the two “became entangled in an intense online feud in which they repeatedly posted insults and personal attacks on one another.”

So fierce was the hostility that Shen’s marriage fell apart, she gave up work and needed to see a psychiatrist for anxiety and depression.

In 2019, both were found liable in countering defamation suits, but Shen was ordered to pay $500 more in damages, plus an additional $2,000 for being found guilty of contempt of a court order not to post about her adversary.

Both parties appealed and Lu’s counsel put forward another contempt application, prompting Shen to ask for an in-person hearing on May 25, 2021.

During Shen’s trial, the court learned that she “took several preparatory steps” for her planned attack on Lu that day, including “including arming herself with a knife and hammer, drinking alcohol to bolster her courage, bringing a suitcase with her to court to either take to jail or flee after the attack, and dressing all in red to disguise the red blood stains.”

While waiting for the judge to appear and after making sure no one was close by, Shen attacked Lu from behind with the hammer and stabbed her at least ten 10 times with “a very sharp and narrow knife” before a sheriff’s officer was alerted and entered the courtroom to stop her.

According to

Vancouver Is Awesome

, ​Lu was taken to hospital with injuries to her head, a major vein, a lung and her heart.

In statements made to authorities after, a then-53-year-old Shen explained that Lu “had to die to stop her from continuing the feud between them.”

Shen’s lawyers wanted trial judge Kathryn Denhoff to rule her not criminally responsible by reason of mental disorder and her use of alcohol to cope, but a psychiatric witness found that although her mental state and the alcohol were factors, they “were not direct causative elements of the offences.”

Instead, the psychiatrist maintained that it was her enmity of Lu — driven by the belief that she was the victim, even after the attack — that “was the dominant factor driving her behaviour.”

Denhoff agreed and sentenced her to 12 years, leaving her with eight remaining after time served.

On appeal, her lawyers argued the trial judge erred by not fairly assessing Shen’s “moral culpability by failing to consider the extent to which her mental illness” fueled her hate of Lu.

Defence counsel said Shen’s disdain “grew and evolved as it did because she was experiencing the world through the lens of her illness, which he describes as ‘the soil within which the animus grew.”

Citing a case in which a man beat his mother to death and severely beat his wife while under the effects of alcohol, Shen’s lawyer also argued her mental illness contributed to the alcohol consumption that precipitated the attack.

Dickson, however, ruled that while Denhoff could have reasoned that Shen’s anathema for Lu was “linked to her depressive illness to a sufficient degree to reduce moral blameworthiness” for the attack, the judge made no error in acting on the evidence before her in applying the original sentence.

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OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government will be ending a program to plant two billion trees as part of its whole-of-government spending review to find billions of dollars worth of savings.

A senior government official confirmed that the budget to be presented on Tuesday will bring an end to the program, which

was launched under former prime minister Justin Trudeau

.

The official confirmed the government’s existing contracts would be honoured. In August, Natural Resources Canada said the contracts already signed would see nearly 1 billion trees planted.

Ending the two-billion tree program will be one of the measures set to be detailed when the government presents the results of its comprehensive spending review, which

Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne initiated earlier this year.

It asked government departments to find 15 per cent worth of savings over the next three years.

Reining in government spending was something Carney had promised during the April federal election campaign. He seeks to inject billions more into defence spending and provide relief to sectors hardest hit by U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs, as well as spur more private sector investment.

The cancellation of the tree-planting program also comes as Carney is set to unveil a new “climate competitiveness strategy,” which he outlined in

a recent public speech at the University of Ottawa

, saying it would “focus on results over objectives.”

Planting two billion trees over 10 years was a more than $3-billion commitment Trudeau had made as one the nature-based approaches within the larger Liberal climate plan.

The Opposition Conservatives have for years criticized the Liberals’ progress on that commitment. The program was formally launched in 2021 and by late 2024 had reported planting approximately 160 million trees.

National Post

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Several Canadian Jewish organizations are rebuking Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow for proclaiming Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza is a genocide during a fundraiser on Saturday night.

Speaking at the National Council of Canadian Muslims fundraising gala at Pearson Convention Centre, Chow, in a brief clip circulating on social media, says “the genocide in Gaza impact us all.”

“A common bond to shared humanity is tested and I will speak out when children anywhere are feeling the pain and violence and hunger,” she continues to some applause.

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow accused Israel and the Jewish people of genocide pic.twitter.com/OLZDmlav1a

— Israel Now (@neveragainlive1) November 2, 2025

In another edited clip from the event shared by the Canada-Israel Friendship Association

, Chow draws a parallel between affected Palestinian families and her mother’s history, having been a child in China at the time of Japan’s invasion during World War II.

“At just 13 years old, alone after my grandmother died of dysentery, she was responsible for keeping her two brothers alive.”

National Post has contacted the mayor’s office for comment.

Tafsik Organization, a Canadian Jewish civil rights group, was among the first to denounce Chow’s comments, calling them “disgraceful, reckless and dangerously irresponsible” in

a social media post.

“Those three words were a slap in the face to Jews in Toronto, across Canada, and around the world — an unforgivable betrayal and a disgraceful distortion of reality,” executive director Amir Epstein said in an accompanying statement discounting the genocide claim.

“We call for Mayor Olivia Chow to be formally excommunicated and permanently rejected by the Jewish community and all Jewish organizations,” he said, noting that she is no longer welcome at Tafsik events and calling on other Jewish organizations to follow suit.

Tafsik tagged B’nai Brith Canada, the United Jewish Appeal⁣ Federation of Toronto, Friends of the Jewish National Fund of Canada, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center in its post, all of whom were contacted by National Post for comment. The latter declined to comment at this time.

Richard Robertson, B’nai Brith’s director of research and advocacy, called for Chow to retract her words and apologize and said the group is “exploring every option available to us to ensure that she is held accountable.”

“At a time when the Toronto Mayor should be working to de-escalate tensions and repair the fractures that have been plaguing the city since the October 7 terror acts, she used her influence to further incite and divide,” Robertson wrote in a statement to National Post.

“The Mayor, through her decision to callously spread disinformation, has emboldened those who wish to use geopolitical issues to justify the spread of hate domestically. At a time when she should be doing everything in her power to combat antisemitism, she has chosen to instigate those who engage against the Jewish community.”

The Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation (CAEF) criticized Chow for having “the audacity to compare” Israel’s war on a terrorist organization to Japan’s invasion and also denounced the allegation of genocide.

Such a claim “is not only false and defamatory” to Israel and its people, they said in

a statement

, but also “a calculated insult to the almost two hundred thousand Jews in the Greater Toronto Area who support Israel, and it exposes the Jewish community to material risk of violence.

“Given the multiple violent attacks against Toronto’s Jewish businesses and community institutions since the October 7, 2023 massacre, Mayor Chow’s words will do more of the same. This is reprehensible and inexcusable.”

In addition to asking for Chow to be banned from all Jewish events, CAEF called for her immediate resignation.

The Abraham Global Peace Initiative (AGPI), meanwhile, also called for Chow to walk back the genocide claim and offer a public apology.

“These reckless and irresponsible remarks only serve to inflame tensions, distort the truth, and fuel antisemitism,” founder and CEO Avi Benlolo said in

a statement

. “At a time when Jewish communities are facing unprecedented levels of hate, it is unacceptable for the Mayor of Canada’s largest city to repeat a false and incendiary claim that has no basis in fact or law.”

Mayor Olivia Chow must apologize for claiming there is a genocide in Gaza ⁦@cityoftoronto⁩ ⁦@oliviachow⁩ ⁦@CdnPressNews⁩ pic.twitter.com/4HpSdIIH4x

— Avi Abraham Benlolo (@AviBenlolo) November 2, 2025

Dimitris Soudas, a former director of communications for former prime minister Stephen Harper, suggested the mayor had more pressing matters in Toronto than “pandering” to a crowd.

“But somehow, Olivia Chow finds time to make international political statements, recognizing a ‘genocide’ in Gaza without once condemning Hamas,”

he wrote on X

, adding “Fix Toronto first, Mayor Chow.”

“I can barely find the words to register my anger and disappointment at yet another ‘progressive’ who has bought into the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas narrative,” Sinai Health palliative care doctor

Dr. Hershl Berman posted to X.

“@MayorOliviaChow ought to know better, and she has demonstrated that she is not fit to serve as Mayor.”

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Cloned meat could be coming to a grocery store near you. Whether you’re receptive to the technology or not, you may be none the wiser from looking at the package. Health Canada has made moves to lift restrictions on meat from cloned cattle and pigs, no longer considering it a “

novel food

,” meaning it could be commercialized without notification or labelling.

Novel foods are “products that are new or changed compared to existing foods,” such as the first Health Canada-approved genetically modified animal (and

now defunct

),

AquAdvantage salmon

, which hit the shelves in the late 2010s — with no special labelling required.

Health Canada assesses the safety of all novel foods before they can be brought to market. Based on the scientific opinions published by international bodies, including the

European Food Safety Authority

and

Japan Food Safety Commission

, the department concluded “that foods derived from healthy cattle and swine clones and their offspring are as safe as foods from traditionally bred animals.”

According to Health Canada’s

policy update

, the department’s Food Directorate decided that there should be no difference between the regulation of cloned and conventional meat products. Foods derived from clones of other animals, such as goat and sheep, however, are still considered novel foods.

As

The Winnipeg Sun

reports, Health Canada’s

2024 consultation

on foods derived from cloned cattle and swine involved feedback from scientists, food policy organizations and agricultural representatives. “Fewer than 1,200 individuals and organizations were directly notified, and the results were not widely publicized.”

According to Sylvain Charlebois, director of the

Agri-Food Analytics Lab

at Dalhousie University, “The problem isn’t the science — it’s the silence.”

Charlebois wrote in the

Agri-Food Analytics Lab newsletter

, “Canadians are not being told that the rules governing a deeply controversial technology are about to change. No press release, no public statement, just a quiet update on a government website most citizens will never read.”

Since the days of

Dolly the sheep

, the first mammal to be cloned using an adult cell, in 1996, the technology has been highly contentious. There are ethical issues, including

animal welfare

, and, similar to

cultured meat

, there’s an ick factor to food from cloned animals.

The United States Food and Drug Administration determined that meat from cloned cows, goats and pigs is safe to eat in January 2008. Three years later, a study published in

Appetite

found that consumers considered farm animal cloning “unnatural” and were concerned that it would pave the way to human cloning.

Charlebois underscores that a lack of transparency could hurt the industry’s image. Without clear labelling, some people could stop buying meat altogether or shop only at places where they can be assured of its origins. “Transparency, I think, is key, and it’s often underappreciated,” Charlebois said on

The Food Professor podcast

.

While controversial among consumers, cloning is attractive to some farmers and ranchers because it enables them to breed beneficial traits into their herds more quickly. The industry may experience increased productivity and quality, as well as reduced production costs, but technological advances don’t always translate to lower prices at checkout.

“If you start labelling, you completely change the rules, because if, all of a sudden, you have, you know, cloned meat at $10 and regular meat at $10, most people will take the regular meat. But if your cloned meat, because it costs less, is $7 or $6, my bet is that a lot of people would consider it,” Charlebois added, concluding, “Let the people decide.”

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