A 14-year dispute over tennis that veered into a bizarre feud between a wealthy Canadian businessman and an American billionaire — both reclusive, fierce personalities — has reached some conclusion with a jury in Florida delivering a US$50 million blow to the Canadian.

Toronto businessman Harold Peerenboom, 78, and U.S. billionaire Isaac “Ike” Perlmutter, 82, the former CEO of Marvel Entertainment, have been scrapping in court for a decade, and, within their shared ocean-front community in Florida, for years longer, but it took a jury less than four hours on Friday to reach a verdict in a hotly fought civil suit.

The Palm Beach County jury sided with the Perlmutters, awarding $16,011 in damages to Isaac Perlmutter and $50,016,011 to his wife, Laura Perlmutter.

By the time of the verdict it was no longer about tennis.

It had twisted and morphed, grown and festered into harsh claims and counterclaims over prolific hate-mail campaigns and “an international conspiracy” to take, analyze and share the Florida couple’s DNA, court heard.

“It was a petty dispute” at the start, Joshua Dubin, lawyer for the Perlmutters, said in an interview. “I think that Mr. Peerenboom picked a fight with the wrong people. And he took it too far.”

For his part, Peerenboom’s lawyer, Jordan Cohen, suggested the verdict might be appealed.

Both characters at the forefront of this drama are unusual and dramatic in their own way. Both have vast self-made wealth and are described as strong-willed. Their dispute has been called cartoonish, an easy go-to, especially when Perlmutter oversaw Marvel, the comic book giant — X-Men, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Captain America, Wolverine, and so on — properties that became box office gold through blockbuster movies.

Perlmutter is known as reclusive. Hollywood Reporter said it hired an illustrator in 2016 to sketch what he “might look like” because he seemed “pathologically private” to the point of secretly attending the 2008 movie premiere of Iron Man in disguise.

Perlmutter sold Marvel to Disney in 2009 for $4 billion. He left the company, and sold his substantial Disney shares, in 2023.

Perlmutter’s public shyness seems to have relaxed. He is friends with U.S. President Donald Trump and recently was photographed sitting next to him at Trump’s Halloween dinner party at Mar-a-Lago. He was also photographed next to Elon Musk at Trump’s January inauguration, and later in the Oval Office.

Peerenboom is a self-made millionaire who was born and raised in what is now Thunder Bay, Ont. He went by the anglicized name Harold Perry in his early years, after moving to Toronto to make his fortune. He was brash and driven and started a Canadian version of a headhunting firm, Mandrake, that became a successful executive search firm and gave him contacts in top-tier offices across the country.

Peerenboom had early splashes in the press and a colourful presence in politics in Toronto, where he was nicknamed “Scary Harry Perry.” He became known for fighting points of principle and pet peeves to extraordinary lengths.

Peerenboom turned publicity shy in recent years. For a feature on him in 2017, CBC was forced to use an old headshot photo scraped from his firm’s website.

In 2010, Peerenboom and the Perlmutters became neighbours when the Canadian bought a lavish townhome at Sloan’s Curve, a ritzy condominium complex on a narrow spit in Palm Beach with water views on both sides. It is down the road from Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club with residences.

The clash of the titans started with a dispute over the gated community’s tennis instructor.

The two disagreed on retaining the pro, who had been there for years. The disagreement became a legal battle, with the tennis pro suing Peerenboom and others, with Perlmutter funding her case.

That’s when poison-pen letters started arriving at homes around Sloan’s Curve, anonymously mailed and making false and

scurrilous

allegations about Peerenboom. They kept coming. Some 2,000 letters over more than three years. Some allegations were outrageous — including sex assault and murders.

Even Perlmutters’ lawyer said the letters were dreadful.

“It was awful, and it was a horrific thing against Mr. Peerenboom,” Dubin said. “He quickly suspected that the Perlmutters were behind it, simply because he had that tennis dispute with them,” he said.

It was during the legal dispute with the tennis pro, when Peerenboom suspected the Perlmutters were behind the letters, that the DNA incident occurred, court heard.

A plan was hatched to link the couple to the hate mail by comparing their DNA to DNA found on letters, court heard. According to the statement of claim from the Perlmutters, they were subpoenaed to give evidence in depositions in the tennis case.

Court heard a crime scene technician was flown in to secretly collect the Perlmutters’ DNA when they came to answer questions in 2013, and that the tech treated sheets of paper to facilitate the collection of genetic material when touched. Both the paper and bottles of water were surreptitiously taken and sent to testing labs by Peerenboom’s team, court heard.

The testing excluded the Perlmutters as suspects, court heard. Despite that, court heard, Peerenboom pressed ahead with allegations against them, including publicly to the New York Times and the Globe and Mail in 2016, court heard.

Both businessmen were now suing each other and as the colourful and alarming feud meandered for a decade through Florida courts there was a riot of media coverage, with neighbours, socialites and business associates watching in dismay.

The first blow to Peerenboom came in 2021 when his lawsuits against the Perlmutters were dismissed by a court. Florida headlines declared their feud over. It wasn’t.

Both of the Perlmutters testified at a three-week trial this month into their counterclaims. Afterwards, the jury accepted their claims of civil conspiracy to steal DNA, abuse of process and defamation, and awarded additional damages for loss of enjoyment of life and humiliation. The verdict was against both Peerenboom and a lawyer for an insurance agency linked to the DNA plot.

It didn’t look good for them when, after an hour and a half of deliberating, the jury asked the judge to send in a calculator.

The verdict was welcomed as vindication by Dubin.

“Laura Perlmutter spent her whole life with a sterling reputation. She was known for philanthropy. She was known for giving to her community and those in need,” he said.

“All she had was her name. And I think that the facts were very clear that being accused of a crime you didn’t commit, being accused of being involved in this awful hate-mail campaign is about as devastating as it gets. And I think that the damages were perfectly appropriate.”

Cohen, Peerenboom’s lawyer, suggested the case still might not be over.

“While we continue to have the utmost faith in the jury system, we take issue with their verdict on the defamation claim where they were invited into error and rendered a verdict unsupported by the evidence presented at trial,” Cohen said in a statement to the Post.

“We do not litigate matters in the press and will reserve our post-verdict and appellate arguments for the courts.”

Lawyers said both men still own their property at Sloan’s Curve.

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OTTAWA

— A new report has found that nearly 40 per cent of Canadian teens who say they have been sexually victimized online say it happened on the private messaging platform Snapchat. 

The findings, released by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection on Tuesday, were collected through a survey based on responses from nearly 1,300 teens themselves.

It comes as calls grow from child safety advocates for Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government to present new legislation to better protect children online, including by introducing new regulations for tech platforms.

The report from the child protection centre, a national charity which runs a tip line for child sex abuse and exploitation online, calls on platforms to enhance their safety regimes, particularly when it comes to private messaging, citing that it has been where a majority of the teens surveyed reported experiencing some form of online sexual violence.

“If the guiding principles of an online safety regime are to safeguard children and prevent harm, then it must devote significant attention to the outsized role private communication services and functions play in the facilitation of online sexual victimization of teens in Canada,” it read.

The Liberals’ last attempt to regulate tech platforms failed to pass Parliament before the spring federal election was called.

Known as the Online Harms Act, the former bill proposed establishing a new digital safety regulator and compelling platforms to develop safety plans outlining how they would reduce users’ exposure to harmful content online.

The former bill did not apply to private messages, which the centre, in its latest report, suggests the Carney government ought to consider to address what it called “the gaps” of the previous attempts to legislate for better online safety under former prime minister Justin Trudeau, as well as look to lessons learned in other jurisdictions.

Its survey, which was done in collaboration with the polling firm Leger, began by asking teens aged 13 to 17 whether they had experienced some form of non-consensual and inappropriate sexual behaviour online, from being threatened to have a naked photo of themselves circulated without their consent, including a fake one, to someone making sexualized comments to them.

Among the most common types of harm that teen respondents reported, the report found 79 per cent said they had experienced someone attempting to have them talk about sex, followed by 59 per cent who said they had been sent an unsolicited image or video depicting a sex act or genitals.

It also reported that of the nearly 1,300 teens who said they had experienced at least one form of sexual victimization online, 39 per cent named Snapchat as the platform where it happened, followed by 20 per cent who said Facebook and another 20 per cent who said Instagram, both owned by Meta.

Snapchat, a wildly popular private messaging platform, particularly among teens, allows users to send photos and other private messages to one another, which are set to automatically delete after a certain time.

In recent years, law enforcement in different countries, including the RCMP, have issued warnings about the frequency with which they encounter sextortion cases involving teens who have been manipulated into sending nude photos of themselves by perpetrators, who then threaten to release them publicly unless their demands are met.

The platform, which has committed to cracking down on those who use it for harm or extortion, reported that from July to December 2024, it made nearly three million enforcements related to sexual content and took action against another 960,000 instances of child exploitation.

The centre’s report also found that 17 per cent of teen respondents said they had experienced someone creating a naked image of them without their consent, a phenomenon that has increased since the expansion of generative AI leading to increasing concern about the distribution of images known as “deepfakes.”

Carney campaigned on the promise to criminalize the non-consensual sharing of these images as well as increase the penalties for the

non-consensual distribution of intimate images. 

The measures, which have yet to be tabled, have landed on the desk of Justice Minister Sean Fraser to include in an upcoming bill dedicated to tackling online crimes against minors, which he has committed to bringing forward.

Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation Minister Evan Solomon, who is developing his own privacy bill, also told National Post in an interview last month that he has been considering different measures to deal with issues surrounding “deepfakes,” including a possible “right to deletion.” 

“One option is that you would say that you have the right to demand that that deep fake is deleted from social media,” Solomon said, adding that options could include looking to the federal privacy commissioner or seeing fines levied.

— National Post

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A Somali woman barred from Canada for five years for giving false names and birth dates for herself and her two children while applying for refugee status here, dodging the fact that she had entered into a polygamous marriage with a Canadian-Somali man, has won another chance at staying in this country.

Fadumo Yusuf Mohamed Abdille came to Canada in 2012 and was granted refugee status, but that was vacated in 2023 due to misrepresentation on her refugee claim, according to a recent Federal Court decision out of Toronto.

In 2002, Abdille, who is also a citizen of the Netherlands, met her future husband in Holland, through a mutual uncle.

Abdille’s “future husband was already married in Canada, and the applicant was aware of that fact,” said the decision.

“However, as they are both of the Muslim faith, (Abdille) understood that men are permitted to have multiple wives. Accordingly, they celebrated their Islamic marriage on October 26, 2002.”

Abdille’s husband travelled frequently to the Netherlands and they had two children in the decade between 2002 and 2012, the court heard.

“Seeking to reunite with her husband and the father of her children in Canada, (Abdille) came to Canada from the Netherlands with their children unannounced on July 31, 2012,” said the decision, dated Nov. 19.

She “obtained refugee status for herself and their two children under false names, false birth dates, as citizens of Somalia, and seeking protection from persecution in Somalia,” it said.

“Despite being married under Islam since 2002, (Abdille) could not be sponsored in Canada by her husband, because polygamous marriages are not legally recognized under Canadian law. Moreover, given that her husband was married and had a child with his first wife, (Abdille) lived separately from her husband in Canada.”

She and her husband had their third child in March 2014.

“In 2018, the husband’s first wife passed away following an illness. Sensitive to the circumstances and their impact on (Abdille’s) husband’s child from his first marriage, (she) and her husband continued to live separately, while progressively integrating each other’s lives,” said the decision.

They moved in together in early 2022 and celebrated a civil marriage that fall.

That same year, Canada’s immigration minister asked for a reassessment of Abdille’s refugee status.

“In a decision dated March 9, 2023, (her) refugee status was vacated because she misrepresented material facts in her original claim,” said the decision.

Abdille “admitted to having provided false information on her refugee claim for the sole reason of reuniting with her husband, and for her children to be close to their father.”

Abdille applied for permanent residency in Canada in May 2023 under her husband’s sponsorship.

“Similarly, the children are currently in the process of obtaining citizenship as their father is a Canadian citizen,” said the decision.

But an immigration officer rejected Abdille’s two applications for permanent residency, one made based on her husband’s sponsorship and another made on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, in September 2024.

“The officer rejected (Abdille’s) applications on the basis that her marriage with her spouse was not genuine, because the officer found that the evidence was insufficient to establish that they lived together. Moreover, (Abdille) did not demonstrate sufficient (humanitarian and compassionate) grounds to allow her to overcome her inadmissibility as a result of her misrepresentation on her refugee claim,” said the decision.

The officer found Abdille’s “misrepresentation in her original refugee claim was a serious violation of Canadian immigration law. The officer noted that many of (Abdille’s) documents contained inconsistent information relating to her and her husband’s living arrangements; notably many documents continued to be sent to her previous address, such that the officer concluded that the marriage was not genuine.”

While the officer noted that the best interest of Abdille’s children was considered, “the hardship that may be caused by her removal did not outweigh the serious nature of her misrepresentation.”

Abdille argued successfully that the officer’s decision was unreasonable.

Abdille pointed out that the officer who decided her case “was silent” on evidence establishing “the genuineness of her relationship with her husband, including the children’s DNA Testing Report,” and her husband’s letters supporting her sponsorship demonstrating that she lived with him.

The officer found Abdille had a lack of documentary “evidence proving that their lives were intertwined physically or financially in a manner typically associated with married couples,” said the decision. “Precisely, the officer found that many documents continued to indicate that (Abdille) remained at her old address and that the banking information submitted did not demonstrate sufficient financial family transactions; therefore, the evidence showed that (Abdille) and her husband led separate lives.”

Lawyers for the immigration minister argued the officer “reasonably assessed the evidence as a whole in determining that (Abdille) had failed to demonstrate that she met the criteria of the spouse or common-law partner in Canada Class, and reasonably determined that (Abdille) had not demonstrated sufficient (humanitarian and compassionate) grounds to warrant an exemption from the statutory five-year bar on immigration to Canada due to her misrepresentation,” said the decision.

“Notably, (Abdille’s) proven fraud on the immigration system had an impact on the credibility of the documents she submitted which included inconsistent documentary evidence of a genuine marital relationship; and her cynical manipulation of the refugee determination system for the purpose of family reunification does not warrant exempting her from the five-year inadmissibility she faces as a result of her own conduct.”

Justice Guy Régimbald agreed with Abdille.

The immigration officer didn’t consider DNA evidence that proved Abdille’s husband fathered her three children when evaluating “the genuineness of their marriage,” said the judge, noting that “undermines the reasonableness” of the officer’s decision.

“Concerning the lack of evidence demonstrating that (Abdille’s) life with her husband was physically and financially interconnected, the absence of a joint bank account or the lack of both names on certain utility bills does not necessarily negate the bona fide nature of their marriage,” Régimbald said.

When Abdille provided explanations for inconsistencies, the “officer failed to weigh this evidence, despite the explanations provided, and instead put great emphasis on (Abdille’s) previous misrepresentation,” said the judge.

“Most importantly, the officer failed to explain why the evidence was not sufficient to allow (Abdille) to discharge her burden.”

The officer should have given Abdille and her husband the opportunity to address inconsistencies in her story, Régimbald said.

“While an interview is not always necessary and depends on the facts of each particular case, I find that in this case, the failure does constitute a breach of (Abdille’s) right to procedural fairness and to be able to answer the case to be met with a full and fair chance to respond,” said the judge.

“In light of these findings, the decision is not justified, transparent or intelligible … and must be sent back for redetermination.”

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OTTAWA — The federal justice minister says an upcoming bill will propose changes to restore mandatory minimum sentences for the possession and access of child pornography recently struck down by Canada’s top court.
 

In an interview, Justice Minister Sean Fraser said he supported mandatory minimum penalties for “heinous” crimes, namely those against children.
 

But he said many such laws were drafted broadly and unintentionally capture situations where they may be too harsh, leaving them vulnerable to constitutional challenges.
 

“There is a gap that exists today that I believe the government of Canada and Parliament needs to fill by adopting a legislative solution that would ensure that those serious cases of abuse are met with serious penalties, but does provide some opportunity for those circumstances which were not likely contemplated at the time the mandatory minimums were drafted,” he told National Post Friday.
 

To that end, he said he would table a bill by the end of the year that proposes legislation to restore or ensure the constitutionality of many such penalties that have repeatedly been struck down by courts. That includes those for the possession and access of child sex abuse and exploitation material.
 

“The Supreme Court of Canada has given us a set of very narrow circumstances that they have signalled would result in grossly disproportionate penalties. We are going to be advancing legislation that addresses that narrow gap that they’ve left,” he said.
 

The changes will be part of a bill the minister promised in October that will better protect victims of sexual and intimate partner violence.

Fraser’s comments follow an uproar about a Supreme Court decision striking down mandatory minimum penalties for possession and access to child pornography on Oct. 31.
 

The case involved a challenge to the sentencing rules brought forward by two men in Quebec who pleaded guilty to having hundreds of images of children as young as three being severely abused.
 

But a five-person majority of the SCC’s nine judges struck down the minimum sentence of one year for cases that go to trial based on a different, hypothetical scenario: that of an 18-year-old offender owning nude pictures sent unsolicited by a 17-year-old victim.
 

In a “plausible” case like that, the mandatory minimum sentence would amount to cruel and unusual punishment, thus making it unconstitutional.
 

The decision was met with outrage from conservative politicians across the country, including Premiers Doug Ford and Danielle Smith, as well as Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre (who said the court’s decision was “dead wrong”).
 

All three called on the federal government to restore the minimum penalties by invoking the notwithstanding clause.
 

In an interview, Fraser said it was “very clear that the government needs to take action” following the decision.
 

But the government has argued that invoking the notwithstanding clause is only a band-aid solution because it needs to be re-upped every five years by Parliament.
 

Fraser said the legislative changes he will table in the coming weeks will not only address possession of child sex abuse material but a number of other mandatory minimum penalties the Supreme Court has struck down since 2015.
 

“There are additional provisions that have been struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada that I’m concerned with and that I think the same solution could potentially apply to,” Fraser said.
 

Before October’s ruling, the most recent cases came in a duo of 2023 decisions called Hills and Bertrand Marchand in which the top court found that mandatory minimum sentences for discharging a non-restricted firearm into a house and child luring were unconstitutional because there were hypothetical scenarios in which the four-year and one-year (respectively) minimum terms were excessive.
 

The minister also said he wants to amend other existing mandatory minimum penalties he says are “constitutionally vulnerable” to ensure they are Charter compliant.
 

In the recent decision, the Supreme Court suggested a number of solutions to ensure minimum sentences aren’t imposed in cases where they would amount to cruel and unusual punishment.
 

Parliament could limit minimum sentences to specific conduct, for example, or it could “build a safety valve” allowing judges to exempt “exempt outliers for whom the mandatory minimum will constitute cruel and unusual punishment,” reads the decision.
 

Fraser would not say how his bill would propose to fix legislation, nor which mandatory minimum sentences beyond those for possession and access of child pornography he wanted to amend.
 

“It’s not that hard to ensure that you provide some limited amount of discretion for those sets of circumstances that the court indicated would result in grossly disproportionate penalties,” Fraser said.
 

National Post

cnardi@postmedia.com

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The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) announced on Monday that it is formally ending its emergency aid mission to the coastal enclave.

John Acree, the foundation’s executive director, said that creating the U.S.-led Civil-Military Coordination Center under the Trump administration’s 20-point Israel-Hamas ceasefire plan reduced the need for the foundation to continue operating.

“GHF’s goal was to meet an urgent need, prove that a new approach could succeed where others had failed and ultimately hand off that success to the broader international community,” Acree stated. “GHF believes that moment has now arrived.”

The foundation was created in February 2025 and claims that it has distributed 187 million meals to Gazans at a time when nearly 90 per cent of aid from more established organizations, like the United Nations, was diverted by Hamas or looted. According to the foundation, “not a single GHF aid truck was looted” during its four-and-a-half months of aid delivery operations.

Throughout its existence, GHF faced criticism and questions about its independence and efficacy, including the extent to which it enjoyed the support of the U.S. and Israeli governments, Hamas’s killing of GHF’s local staff and reports of mass shootings at or near GHF sites.

Israel has denied claims that it was responsible for firing on Gazans seeking aid at GHF distribution centers.

The U.S. State Department thanked GHF for its efforts on Monday.

“GHF’s model, in which Hamas could no longer loot and profit from stealing aid, played a huge role in getting Hamas to the table and achieving a ceasefire,” wrote Tommy Pigott, the department’s deputy spokesman.

Acree said on Monday that the foundation’s model of aid distribution should be emulated in other parts of the world and in future Gaza aid plans.

“I am hopeful the Civil-Military Coordination Center and the international community writ large will learn from our success, understand the process we implemented and replicate it throughout Gaza in order that the safe delivery of food and other humanitarian aid will continue,” he said.

The group said that it will “maintain readiness to reconstitute if new humanitarian needs are identified and will not dissolve as a registered NGO.”

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OTTAWA — Brookfield chief operating officer Justin Beber appeared at the House of Commons ethics committee on Monday, but unlike the Canadian singer with a nearly identical name, his presence did not create waves of excitement.

For two hours, Beber was repeatedly grilled by opposition MPs about Prime Minister Mark Carney’s potential for conflicts of interest with Brookfield, Carney’s returns of the global investment funds he helped set up at Brookfield, but also Brookfield’s tax practices.

“Mr. Beber, you’ve been, I think, a very patient participant in this late-season fishing expedition,” said Liberal MP Leslie Church about the opposition’s attempts to steer the executive away from his carefully crafted statements to the ethics committee.

Beber started off his remarks by explaining that Carney cut ties with Brookfield on Jan. 16, 2025, the same day on which he announced his candidacy to become Liberal leader.

“Since then, at no point has anyone at Brookfield spoken with the prime minister about Brookfield business,” he said.

However, when asked by Conservative MP Michael Barrett when he had communicated with Carney, Beber admitted he had met him “only once” to discuss the rise of antisemitism in early October. The meeting took place in Carney’s office, he said.

Beber said he worked with Carney over five years at Brookfield and said he was an “exceptionally talented executive and person of great integrity.”

Most of the Conservatives’ line of questioning was about the funds that Carney is entitled to, as former head of transition investing for Brookfield Asset Management.

In this role, Carney co-led efforts to raise capital for two major clean energy funds, Global Transition Fund (“BGTF I”) and the Second Global Transition Fund (“BGTF II”).

He was also in the process of raising money for a new fund, the Catalytic Transition Fund (“CTF”), when he left Brookfield.

As previously reported by the National Post

, Carney acquired Brookfield share options and deferred shared units, but also potentially tens of millions in undisclosed “carried interest” — essentially, bonus payments based on a fund’s performance when it reaches maturity.

Beber said Carney is entitled to carried interest payments for BGTF I — which, Beber explained, is set to reach maturity in either 2032 or 2034 — but not for the two other transition funds Carney helped create at Brookfield Asset Management.

“The reason for that is we were in the process of setting up those funds when Mr. Carney decided to leave Brookfield to pursue the Liberal leadership,” Beber said.

Pressed by Conservative MP Michael Cooper if he was disputing that Carney stands to make millions, if not tens of millions of dollars from those investments, Beber said it was “certainly not a fact.”

Carney put all of his assets, except some money and his personal real estate, into a blind trust when he became Liberal leader. He has also disclosed all his potential conflicts to the ethics commissioner, who crafted an extensive ethics screen for over 100 entities.

But, in the context of the review of the Conflict of Interest Act which the ethics committee is undertaking, the Conservatives are pushing for the law to go even further and require lawmakers such as Carney to sell their assets to prevent any potential conflicts.

Current and former senior bureaucrats have advised against going that far to not discourage competent leaders from the private sector from entering politics.

But Conservatives say that Carney’s situation is unique, as former executive of a company which has financial interests in a wide range of sectors — such as modular housing, clean energy and artificial intelligence — that the government is taking an active interest in.

They pressed Beber to know whether Carney’s latest budget would help Brookfield increase its revenues, with the executive responding that his firm has 2,000 businesses under its wing and will assess and react to government policy in their best interest.

“What we have isn’t a Brookfield problem. The reason that you’re here is because the prime minister has a financial interest in the performance of this company,” said Barrett.

Bloc Québécois MP Luc Thériault attempted to grill Beber on

allegations of tax avoidance involving Brookfield

, but Beber insisted that his company complies with all tax laws. He even declined to say if tax avoidance exists, saying he can only speak to Brookfield.

The transition funds Carney co-managed

were both registered in Bermuda

, one of the largest tax havens in the world.

Thériault appeared visibly frustrated by Beber’s lack of answers.

“After tax avoidance, we have question avoidance,” he said in French.

Beber also declined to comment on any changes that should be made to the Conflict of Interest Act. “It’s very, very hard for me to opine on matters that involve legislation and government apparatus that I’m not very familiar with,” he said.

Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, said that Baber confirmed on Monday what Canadians already knew, which is that Carney owns Brookfield stock options and carried interest payments that will not come to maturity for many years still.

Conacher said Carney’s situation is “an ongoing, direct and significant financial conflict of interest” because he would eventually profit from any decision he makes or participates in that could help any of Brookfield’s many businesses make more money.

“The only way to ensure integrity in the federal government’s policy-making processes is for him to sell these investments.”

National Post

calevesque@postmedia.com

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An analysis of dozens of studies involving almost 100,000 participants found that exposure to short-form videos (SFVs) like those on TikTok and Instagram is contributing to a host of mental health conditions.

The work, published by the American Psychological Association, said the effects included poorer cognition (attention, inhibitory control, language, memory, etc.) and a decline in many mental health indices.

“These findings were consistent across youth and adult samples and across different SFV platforms,” the researchers wrote

in their study

, titled: “Feeds, feelings, and focus: A systematic review and meta-analysis examining the cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use.”

The researchers noted that while initially geared toward entertainment, SFVs are increasingly being used in education, political campaigns, advertising and consumerism. “Yet their design, characterized by endless scrolling interfaces, has raised concerns about addiction and negative health implications.”

On the topic of cognition skills, the researchers found that “repeated exposure to highly stimulating, fast-paced content may contribute to habituation, in which users become desensitized to slower, more effortful cognitive tasks such as reading, problem solving, or deep learning.”

They added: “This process may gradually reduce cognitive endurance and weaken the brain’s ability to sustain attention on a single task.”

In the area of mental health, they noted that SFV use has been associated with increased symptoms of depression, anxiety, stress and loneliness.

“The highly engaging, algorithm-driven nature of SFV platforms is thought to encourage excessive use by stimulating the brain’s dopaminergic reward system, which may reinforce habitual engagement through instant gratification and unpredictable content rewards,” they wrote.

“This habitual engagement may be associated with heightened stress and anxiety, as some users report difficulties disengaging and regulating their emotions in offline settings,” they continued.

“Additionally, the immersive and infinite-scrolling nature of SFVs has been linked to increased social isolation by replacing real-world interactions with passive digital engagement, exacerbating feelings of loneliness.” This, in turn, has been correlated with lower life satisfaction.

Sleep quality was also seen to be affected, perhaps due to the blue light emitted by electronic devices. This was further linked to changes in mood.

The researchers were surprised by one finding, however. “Unexpectedly, our meta-analysis found no association between SFV engagement and body esteem or self-esteem, which contrasts with prior reviews,” they wrote.

They suggested that some previous studies linking social media use and self-esteem were too simple in their questions, and that while others found a negative impact, they were balanced by separate studies that noted a positive effect on users.

“The inconsistency across studies suggests that the association between SFV use and body/self-esteem may be highly dependent on individual differences and exposure to different types of SFV content,” they wrote, suggesting further research was needed to “disentangle these factors.”

Overall, they wrote, “these findings highlight the importance of understanding the broader health implications of SFV use, given its pervasive role in daily life and potential to impact health, behavior, and well-being.”

They added: “As SFV platforms continue to evolve and expand across educational, commercial, and social contexts, understanding the health correlates of SFV engagement remains an important focus for digital health research, particularly for guiding balanced approaches to media use and informing future public health recommendations.”

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