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Clockwise, from bottom left: MP David Lametti, incoming clerk of the Privy Council Michael Sabia, Marc-André Blanchard (the prime minister’s new chief of staff), Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne, Industry Minister Mélanie Joly and Prime Minister Mark Carney.

OTTAWA — Decades before they were patrolling the corridors of power in downtown Ottawa, Michael Sabia and Peter Harder were marching through the same hallway for violin lessons in St. Catharines, Ont.

Each took lessons from Sister Mary Alexander in the early 1960s as they honed their skills and even trained to play together one year at the local Kiwanis Festival.

Their paths crossed again decades later in the federal government when they both worked for Mulroney-era cabinet ministers.

Today, more than 60 years after those first violin lessons, the two men are pulling on different strings as influential players in Canadian politics.

Harder, a former deputy minister, has become an influential senator on Parliament Hill, while Sabia has established himself as a well-respected top executive in both the public and private sectors. He’s made stops in corner offices at CN, Bell Canada, the Caisse de dépôt et de Placement du Québec (CDPQ) and Hydro-Québec.

On Monday, he will return to work in Ottawa to become the Clerk of the Privy Council, the country’s top civil servant and one of the many key players in this government who comes from or made their names in Quebec.

While

he won’t be wielding a chainsaw

, like an Elon Musk-style “disruptor,” Sabia is known as an agent of change who is “risk tolerant and outcome-focused,” Harder told National Post, “rather than process-focused and mistake avoidance.”

As for the consequences of Sabia taking on the top job in the public service, Harder stops short of saying that he expects cuts to the Canadian bureaucracy. But he said he expects his old violin mate to lead a process of “delayering” the bureaucracy to help it keep up with “the pace and breadth of change that Prime Minister (Mark) Carney is intent on leading.”

In Sabia, Carney found a seasoned executive but also an anglophone, just like him, who enjoyed tremendous success in a province known for its sensitivities: Quebec.

Since the federal election in April when his Liberals surprisingly dominated Quebec, Carney has surrounded himself with high-level politicians from Quebec such as Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne, Industry Minister Mélanie Joly and House Leader Steven Mackinnon.

Other senior officials in the Carney government from Quebec include incoming chief of staff Marc-André Blanchard, an influential Montreal lawyer and former Ambassador to the United Nations; and David Lametti, a former Montreal MP, minister of justice and law professor at McGill University who was chosen by Carney to be his principal secretary.

While some believe Carney has an electoral debt to pay to Quebec, Harder said it’s important to look broadly at the key players in a government as a collective. “Public service is a team sport,” he said.

National Post spoke with more than a dozen sources for this article to gain insight into Carney’s new team, with a focus on the Quebec angle. Sabia did not comment for this story. Several suggested that the influx of senior officials from that province is largely a coincidence, that they got their jobs simply because of experience and talent.

If so, it’s a happy coincidence for Carney, a prime minister who grew up mostly in Edmonton, has spent much of his career in Ottawa, and speaks French as a second language. But some academics and other Ottawa insiders suggest that the prime minister is well aware that his connections to Quebec are fragile.

“Quebec is important,” said a source in the prime minister’s office that spoke on background. “The prime minister is not from Quebec, and it is important that he have this perspective. Quebec has its own culture, its own identity, and its own language.”

The key question centres on the possible effects of this Quebec-heavy contingent in the Carney government, both in terms of policy and politics. Will it help, for example, earn support for pipelines or ports that require Quebec to be on board?

Or could it mean new models or ways of looking at these major projects, such as the use of pension funds as a financial tool?

Either way, the Quebec element in the Carney government is, perhaps surprisingly, a marked change from the previous regime. Former prime minister Justin Trudeau, despite being a bilingual Quebecer, was often criticized because people from his home province held a limited number of the top jobs in his government.

And so far, no matter the ingredients in the recipe or the motivations behind the government plan, it’s clearly working. Carney is widely seen as the most popular politician in Quebec, despite his limited connections to the province.

A recent Léger Poll

placed him and Joly as the two most popular politicians in Quebec.

One of his first moves was to hire the Ontario-born Sabia, one of the best-known and most-respected business leaders in Quebec, to lead the government’s swelling public service.

When Sabia was appointed head of the CDPQ in 2008, former business journalist Pierre Duhamel, who now advises business people at HEC Montréal, didn’t like the hire. Like many other Quebecers at the time, Duhamel was unconvinced by the idea of appointing a “Canadian” executive with a telecom background to lead Quebec’s financial rock.

 New Clerk of the Privy Council Michael Sabia is described as “risk tolerant and outcome-focused.”

A few years later, Duhamel described Sabia’s tenure at such a complex institution as “remarkable.” After a difficult period in the 2000s, Sabia diversified investments, globalized the Caisse, and launched CDPQ Infra, an infrastructure arm that oversees major infrastructure projects such as Montreal’s light rail network, and enabled the pension fund to achieve strong performance.

“But what I admire most are Mr. Sabia’s management skills and political acumen,” he wrote in

L’Actualité

.

The Caisse is a public pension fund that has been enshrined in Quebec’s economy, culture and politics since 1965. Today, it has 11 offices around the world and $473 billion in assets.

The Caisse is also the most recent employer of Carney’s new chief of staff, Blanchard, who was a vice-president and head of CDPQ Global.

Duhamel said during an interview that he suspected that the two men had not been recruited because of their connections to Quebec, but rather to help facilitate new infrastructure projects that Carney would like to help finance through pension funds or private investors.

“I saw that he was looking for people who knew this world, who were able to assess its potential, but also its constraints,” he said.

Sabia has said recently at a public event, however, that the major pension funds — Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and the CDPQ — are likely not the best candidates to help finance most infrastructure projects because they can be too risky for pension funds and are unlikely to deliver strong returns in the early years.

Instead, early-stage capital mechanisms that aren’t as risk averse need to be developed to get these projects started. Pension funds are more likely to get involved once a project is off the ground and producing returns.

Since pension funds are responsible for investing in ways that generate returns for their beneficiaries, which often means investing outside Canada, Trevor Tombe, a economics professor at the University of Calgary, believes they “should not be seen as a vehicle for economic development.”

Quebec has a dual mandate within its public pension plan, he added, but the Canada Pension Plan is different.

“Whether or not the prime minister wants the CPP to invest more in Canada, he can’t do it unilaterally,” he added. “But I think he should ask himself what the underlying reasons are for why capital is sometimes deployed elsewhere.”

It all depends on the economic context in the country. Conservative Leader

Pierre Poilievre recently told The Hub

that he couldn’t care less about the origins of Carney’s aides, but said he fears the ideology of what he sees as a state-run economy.

“It’s a central planning model that has failed every time it’s been implemented around the world. It significantly enriches a small group of very influential insiders.”

Another possible policy implication from the strong Quebec voices is that the proposed high-speed rail project from Windsor to Quebec City could get stronger support. It could also mean greater advocacy for the province’s energy sector, government procurement that could bolster Montreal-area aerospace companies, and prioritizing the health of the aluminum industry in trade talks with the U.S.

For Sandra Aubé, Joly’s former chief of staff at Foreign Affairs and a former Trudeau advisor, if Carney really wants to make Canada the G7’s strongest economy, he has no choice but to create a more unified economy that includes Quebec.

“We must not delude ourselves that Canada’s biggest challenge in achieving all this is having energy. If we don’t have the necessary electricity, for example, we won’t be able to carry out any transformation whatsoever,” said Aubé, now a vice-president at TACT Conseil.

Another possible effect is that the high-ranking Quebecers may also be asked to play a unique role in advancing the government’s agenda if the government needs to “sell” the notion of some of the government’s proposed big infrastructure projects in that province, according to Lori Turnbull, a political science professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax.

The odds of success regarding, for example, running a pipeline through Quebec are greater if high-profile Quebecers are playing a leading role in promoting the idea, she said.

Beyond the policy, there are also no doubt political implications of the strong Quebec voice in the Carney government, a wide range of sources say.

Firstly, many in Quebec expect that these senior figures, in conjunction with a Quebec caucus of 44 Liberal MPs — more than one quarter of the total Liberal contingent in the House of Commons — will be able to take good care of their home province over the next few years.

Quebec Premier Francois Legault stated the case clearly. “Mark Carney owes one to Quebecers,” he said after the Liberals claimed their best result in a federal election there since 1980.

But the flip side, that Carney expects these Quebecers to also help execute the government’s agenda in their home province, is likely also true.

Beyond who will be best able to deliver for whom, there’s also the intangible sense of understanding a part of a country or region. In an interview, Legault’s intergovernmental affairs minister Simon Jolin-Barrette said in Carney’s government “there really is a positive change in attitude” and an “openness toward Quebec” that wasn’t always the case with the Trudeau government.

Both in Quebec City and Ottawa, there is, at least for now, a feeling that having people from Quebec around the prime minister who know the province, its particularities and positions on language, culture, state secularism and immigration will facilitate a relationship that has often been rocky.

The province wants Ottawa to understand its sense of autonomy, but also the need for investments in the province that “Quebec has its share,” said Jolin-Barrette. “We sense a greater openness. There is an openness in Ottawa. There is a better understanding of Quebec’s issues now, with Mr. Carney.”

Turnbull said Carney is clearly trying to show that Quebec is not at a disadvantage because he’s from elsewhere.

“There’s some politics behind those parts of it,” she said.

The Joly and Champagne appointments may have in part been rewards for supporting Carney during the Liberal leadership race, Turnbull said, when either could have been legitimate candidates themselves.

The strong Quebec contingent may also play a role in national unity, at least in that province. The separatist movement is gaining ground in Quebec (and Alberta), with the Parti Québécois leading in every poll, with a provincial election in 2026­.

But making a major electoral contribution to a government doesn’t always guarantee anything. After the 1980 Liberal victory, when Quebecers supported the government with 74 seats out of 75, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau reached an agreement with all provinces, except Quebec, on a new constitution. More than four decades later, Quebec still hasn’t signed, and the perceived betrayal is still very real for many in that province.

Maybe, just maybe, like Sabia over a decade ago at the Caisse de dépôt, Carney is trying to be the anglophone that Quebec needs.

National Post

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The federal government's electric vehicle sales mandate aims to see all new vehicles sold be zero-emission by 2035.

OTTAWA

— The president of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association says the top ask of Prime Minister Mark Carney, who recently met with auto industry leaders, is to repeal the federal electric vehicle sales mandate, adding pressure to the Liberals to revisit the climate policy. 

Brian Kingston met with Carney on Wednesday, alongside the CEOs of Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, which the industry association represents, where they discussed their push to see the policy repealed, saying they have “made the case pretty clearly,” but will ultimately have to wait for what the Liberals decide.

“I think there’s an understanding, and we’re optimistic that there will be a change on the horizon.”

Carney met with the automakers as he tries to negotiate a deal with U.S. President Donald Trump that would see tariffs removed on Canadian products, including on the auto sector, where parts that comply with a free trade agreement between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico are exempt.

While trade and tariffs were one focus of the meeting, Kingston says the other was the government’s electric vehicle sales mandate, which aims to see all new vehicles sold be zero-emission by 2035, with the first target of 20 per cent set for 2026.

“A 25 per cent tariff on Canadian production is a huge challenge for the future of this industry. But at the end of the day, we do not control the outcome of those negotiations,” he said, adding they have “full confidence” in the government’s efforts to see tariffs lifted.

“But we do not control what the president ultimately does,” he says. “What we do control is our own policy framework, and why, at a time when the industry is under pressure, would we keep in place a domestic policy that is hugely damaging to this industry? So that’s why it’s the focus.”

A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister’s Office said it had nothing more to add about the meeting besides the readout it released following Wednesday’s meeting, when asked whether the government was open to repealing or changing the mandate.

That earlier statement did not directly mention the electric vehicle mandate itself, saying the ongoing negotiations with the U.S., was discussed as were the efforts to support the sector, as well as “

opportunities to make Canada’s auto sector more sustainable and competitive in the face of shifting trade relationships, market conditions, and supply chains.”

A request for comment from Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin’s office has yet to be returned.

While automakers have long opposed the federal electric vehicle mandate, industry leaders have been expressing new concern in light of the ongoing trade war with the U.S., and the fact that Trump has backed off its previous electrification plans.

Companies also point to falling electric vehicle sales. Under the mandate, manufacturers must earn credits through either selling zero-emission vehicles, purchasing them from other electric-vehicle makers, or spending on building out charging infrastructure.

Proponents of the mandate lay blame for plummeting sales on the fact that the federal government cancelled the rebate for purchasing these vehicles back in January and has yet to release details on when it will introduce a new $5,000 incentive, which the Liberals promised during the spring election campaign.

Kingston says the years-long request from manufacturers for the federal government to scrap the mandate has taken on fresh urgency, given that the 2026 target is just around the corner and the fact that sales of these vehicles have fallen significantly since the policy was first introduced.

“There is no pathway to hitting that target,” he says.

“The urgency of the issue has now made it to the forefront, because this is no longer theoretical.”

The Liberals introduced the zero-emission vehicle sales mandate back in 2023 as part of their efforts to reduce Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions, taking aim at the transportation sector, which is one of the largest emitters.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has called for the mandate to the scrapped.

In an interview last week,

the head of a national association representing the electric transportation industry called on the government to make “short-term adjustments” to its interim sales targets, at the risk of the policy becoming a “political football” much like the now-cancelled consumer carbon tax.

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 politics newsletter, First Reading, here.


This handout photo released by the European Southern Observatory on Nov. 20, 2017, shows an artist's impression of the first interstellar asteroid, Oumuamua.

Our solar system is playing host to a rare visitor. A comet from interstellar space is hurtling toward the sun at about 68 kilometres per second, or about 245,000 kilometres an hour. And like many a socially savvy out-of-town visitor, it will be

visible on a livestream

, beginning at 6 p.m. ET, July 3.

The object originally went by the name

A11pl3Z when it was discovered by ATLAS, the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System in Rio Hurtado, Chile, on July 1. It has since been renamed 3I/ATLAS by the Minor Planet Center, with the “I” standing for interstellar, and the 3 for it being just the third such object ever discovered.

The first confirmed object from outside the solar system was discovered in 2017 and named Oumuamua, Hawaiian for “first distant messenger.” Its elongated shape and signs of a slight acceleration had some hypothesizing it was a manufactured object, although few believe it. Then in 2019 comet 2I/Borisov was discovered by Gennadiy Borisov, a Crimean telescope maker and amateur astronomer.

Astronomers can tell interstellar objects from more mundane solar-bound rocks because their speed is too fast for the sun to capture them in an orbit, and their path is straighter than regular comets.

According to NASA

, the new object entered the solar system from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, and is currently some 670 million kilometres from Earth. Although it’s estimated to be some 10 kilometres across, it poses no threat to the planet, as it will come no closer to us than 240 million kilometres, which is farther away than the sun.

The space agency says 3I/ATLAS will pass inside the orbit of Mars at its closest approach to the sun around Oct. 30, before leaving our solar system forever next year. It will be visible to large ground-based telescopes until September, when it get lost in the glare of the sun for several months before reappearing in early December.

With that timeline in mind, the Virtual Telescope Project has set up a livestream tonight on

YouTube

and

WebTV

, allowing viewers to watch images from telescopes in Manciano, Italy, weather permitting.


Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith during the First Ministers' Meeting at TCU Place.

OTTAWA — The environment ministers of two of Canada’s biggest provinces are calling on the Liberal government to scrap a host of Trudeau-era environmental and climate policies, saying the policies are holding the country back from meeting its economic potential.

Alberta Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz and Ontario Environment Minister Todd McCarthy said in a letter to federal counterpart Julie Dabrusin that the new, Mark Carney-led Liberal government will need to ditch Justin Trudeau’s net-zero agenda if it hopes to meet its promise to make Canada an energy superpower.

“We are hopeful that (the Carney government) will move away from policies and legislation that undermine competitiveness, delay project development, and disproportionately harm certain (regions) without any quantifiable benefit to the natural environment,” read the letter.

“Canada is poised to become an economic superpower, but achieving that potential depends on strong, constitutionally grounded provincial authority over resource development and environmental management.”

Schulz shared

a copy of the letter

on social media on Wednesday, just as a two-day meeting between federal, provincial and territorial environment ministers kicked off in Yellowknife.

The letter calls for a repeal of the federal Impact Assessment Act, as well as a full repeal of the legislation authorizing

the consumer carbon tax

. Carney

set the tax to zero

shortly after becoming prime minister in March.

The

recently passed Bill C-5

allows projects deemed by Ottawa to be in the national interest to bypass some parts of the federal impact assessment process.

Alberta has repeatedly called for this process to be either massively streamlined or eliminated altogether.

The letter also calls for Ottawa to cede more power to the provinces in the areas of clean electricity, carbon reduction and ecological protection.

“Provinces have proven to be the best stewards of such decisions, as leaders of electrification, industrial innovation, public transit and other low-carbon initiatives,” write

Schulz and McCarthy.

The two environment ministers also called for the reversal of the incoming federal emissions cap and clean electricity regulations.

The letter also calls on

Dabrusin to scale back federal endangered species legislation and refrain from re-introducing Bill C-61, or the First Nations Clean Water Act.

Heather Exner-Pirot, director of energy, natural resources and environment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, says that Bill C-61, while well intentioned, is a clear example of federal overreach.

“In addition to First Nations lands, the bill seeks to regulate adjacent lands and source waters. These are things that clearly fall under provincial jurisdiction.” says Exner-Pirot.

Exner-Pirot also says the bill uses overly vague language in several sections.

Bill C-61 was drafted in response

to a court settlement

between Ottawa and multiple First Nations over drinking water advisories.

National Post

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Former kickboxing champion and alleged sex trafficker Andrew Tate has described himself as an unapologetic misogynist.

Boys as young as 11 and 12 are “idolizing and parroting” the misogynistic rhetoric of Andrew Tate and other masculinist influencers at school, posing a risk to women teachers and the girls who witness it, Canadian researchers are reporting.

Tate, a British-American influencer who has amassed more than 10 million followers on social media platforms, and his brother, Tristan Tate, are facing a string of sexual violence and human trafficking charges in the United Kingdom, the U.S. and Romania. Both brothers have denied all allegations against them.

A former kickboxing champion, Tate has described himself as an unapologetic misogynist, women as “inherently lazy” and has suggested women “bear responsibility” for sexual assaults. Since his rise to social media prominence, the alleged sex trafficker’s male supremacism and violent declarations against women have made him a “both reviled and revered” public figure, according to researchers at Dalhousie University and the University of Toronto. Despite a “near-total” ban from posting on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube, “Tate’s images, video clips and messages remain easily accessible and almost omnipresent in the feeds of teenage boys and young men,” the researchers wrote in a study published in the journal 

Gender and Education.

Tate was his most popular when the 2022-23 school year launched. His name was the most searched name on Google in July 2022. The researchers set out to explore what impact the influencer’s “brand of new-wave misogyny” was having on teachers and classrooms.

Rather than survey teachers who might be reluctant to speak frankly, they scraped data from a free and open online community of teachers from the social media site Reddit.com. The researchers pulled more than 250,000 posts and comments from a subreddit community from June 1, 2022, to Jan. 31, 2023, then filtered the dataset down to the 2,364 posts where Andrew Tate was mentioned in the post title or text.

It’s impossible to know how many in the Reddit teachers’ subgroup are Canadian teachers, but the researchers said most posts and comments skewed heavily towards North American classrooms. In addition, two ongoing studies using Canadian datasets are revealing similar sentiments.

“This rhetoric is very much having an impact on teachers and schools,” said co-author Luc Cousineau, co-director of research at the Canadian Institute for Far-Right Studies and faculty at Dalhousie University in Halifax.

Studies out of Australia and the United Kingdom have reached similar conclusions.

“It’s easy to think ‘that’s a young person’s internet culture,’ and not worry too much about it,” Cousineau said.

“Young men are saying, ‘I don’t have to listen to you or respect you’ to their women-identified teachers, solely because they’re women. It’s an old story made new again by this re-invigoration of really overt and strong misogyny.”

Middle and high school teachers, as well as some elementary school ones, reported that boys were “actively parroting male supremacist rhetoric at school,” devaluing women teachers and making classrooms less safe, the study found.

“There were a group of them, all friends, who to the (vice principal’s) face told him that they would only respect/pay attention in classes taught by men and would not behave in classes taught by women,” one teacher posted.

“If they already have trouble respecting someone simply because that person happens to have a vagina, then they aren’t going to listen to that person with a vagina explain how disrespecting people with a vagina is harmful,” another commented.

“Seemingly, ninety per cent of my work is trying to talk white teenage boys off the alt-right ledge,” according to another comment researchers paraphrased using an AI tool because the user didn’t respond to requests to use verbatim quotes.

Another knew of a 7th grade teacher who said the boys in his class “have taken to calling all women and girls ‘holes’ and anybody who is friendly or polite to girls a ‘simp.’”

While some teachers remarked that female students pushed back and called out male classmates for spouting Tate-inspired anti-woman hate, teachers also worried that the rise in misogynistic rhetoric will lead to “tangible safety threats like gender-based violence in schools,” the researchers wrote.

“I had a student write a paper in graphic detail bout (sic) how SA (sexual assault) victims ‘deserved’ it and ‘all women were asking for it’ and a lot of other extremely alarming sentiments,” one user commented. “The paper topic was nowhere close to anything like this, but he wrote it anyway.”

“I’ve never heard such vitriol from young boys since this Andrew Tate guy came on the scene,” another said.

Some teachers suggested that boys were imitating Tate for attention. “That kind of young boy likes to be ironically edgy because they’re testing boundaries…. Since their intention is to insult and appall the more you resist this kind of behaviour, the more it rewards them,” one wrote.

Teachers sometimes said that when they told their administrators a boy had made lewd or sexual comments towards them or other girls it was brushed off as “boys will be boys.”

“Sometimes it’s a little more overt than that,” Cousineau said. “There are some illusions to folks saying, ‘I think my administrator actually agrees with them.’”

“We really wanted to demonstrate this is happening in real time, and it’s having some significant impacts,” he said. “There are real and tangible dangers to continuing to do nothing. Not recognizing this as a real issue allows it to proliferate and continue.”

This isn’t just the immature actions of some boys. “While it is tempting to be reductionist about a problem like this, we have zero social tolerance for overt racism, especially in the classroom. Why should we tolerate identity-focused hate based on gender,” Cousineau said.

Violent misogyny is never fine. “It only takes one violent misogynist to carry out a Toronto Van Attack or another Ecole Polytechnique.”

In 2018, Alex Minassian drove a rented van into pedestrians on a busy sidewalk on Toronto’s Yonge Street, killing 10. Minassian once told a psychiatrist after the attack that he realized his victims were random pedestrians and was “wishing for more females.”

In December 1989, 14 women in a mechanical engineering classroom were killed by gunman Marc Lépine at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique.

How to monitor what kids are exposed to gets into thorny territory, he said. “Do parents know what their kids consume online? Are lots of parents having in-depth, connected conversations with their kids about what they’re consuming and what the implications of that are? Generally, no.”

“These are really hard things to do. But if we don’t know what kids are exposing themselves to, and we’re not engaging with them, that stuff might not come out at home,” Cousineau said. “It might come out at school.”

“We have evidence in this country, and many other places around the world, of the most extreme form of these kinds of violent misogyny, and nihilistic violent misogyny, where young men go out and kill people because of these ideas,” said Cousineau.

Those acts of violence don’t come out of nowhere, Cousineau said. People grow into them. “All of the data we have about radicalized violence show us they develop over time,” he said.

“We need to be addressing it young and at source.”

Emelia Sandau, a master’s student at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, co-authored the study.

National Post

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A newly installed flag pole stands on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, June 18, 2025.

Now that Canada’s trade war with America has surged back into public consciousness like a blast from the recent past, a new poll suggests Canadian frustration with and mistrust of the U.S. remains high, despite a slight easing.

In March, for example, polling showed a dramatic realignment of Canadian attitudes toward its southern neighbour. Europe and Britain were suddenly the countries Canadians felt best about, and Canadians were starting to feel about America the way they felt about Russia.

But lately, with U.S. President Donald Trump’s attention mostly elsewhere, there are signs of a slight bump back from this low point, despite troubling news developments like the death of a Canadian citizen in U.S. immigration custody.

More than half of Canadians now say they “no longer feel welcome in the United States,” for example, and this sentiment is strongest among women and older people.

During the recent Canadian election campaign with its looming threat of crippling tariffs and annexation, there was a “worrisome intersection” in the Canadian mind of the American government and the American people, according to Jack Jedwab, president of the Montreal-based Association for Canadian Studies (ACS).

But in this latest poll, he sees a “healthy development” of Canadian anger and frustration being focused primarily on the American government, and less so the American people.

Back in April, barely one Canadian in five (21 per cent) said they trust Americans in a similar poll. But in the latest poll, that figure has rebounded to 34 per cent, which is historically normal, about the same as it was near the end of Trump’s first term, but still considerably lower than the 59 per cent it reached in October 2023, Jedwab said.

Asked if they trust the United States, the country as opposed to the American people, those numbers drop substantially. A majority of 53 per cent said the country could not be trusted, and only 21 per cent said it could. That distrust is greater among Canadians older than 65. It is also stronger among residents of British Columbia, and lowest among Albertans and Atlantic Canadians.

The poll was taken by Leger for the ACS between June 20 and 22, so it does not reflect Canadian reaction to Donald Trump’s latest cancellation of trade talks last weekend, which prompted Prime Minister Mark Carney to rescind a digital industries tax, which targeted American tech firms, in order to restart negotiations.

But the poll shows a silver lining in an otherwise gloomy picture of this longstanding national friendship, military alliance, and economic partnership.

“We just don’t trust the motivation behind the re-opening of trade,” Jedwab said. “We’re persuaded we’re the kindler, gentler nation, and we’re being bullied by their president.”

Overall, a majority of Canadians feel unwelcome in the United States, the poll suggests. They regard the borders as secure, but 45 per cent of Canadians say the United States is not a trusted security and defence partner, compared to just 32 per cent who say it is.

The poll also shows Canadians overwhelmingly feel Canada’s trade rules for the U.S. are fair, but the U.S. trade rules for Canada are unfair. Fully 75 per cent say American rules governing trade are unfair to Canada, whereas only 12 per cent feel Canada’s rules are unfair.

“I think that trust is the key predictor of Canadians feeling unwelcome in the United States and it also hampers our ability to fix perceived problems between our two countries,” Jedwab said. “The lack of trust a key indicator in trade negotiations and we will need to build or re-build trust if we re going to succeed. That won’t be simple because in effect the U.S. President is not perceived to be a trusted ally by Canadians.”

Despite all that, the poll also shows a majority of Canadians believe they have more in common with Americans than with any other people in the world.

This poll was conducted through an online panel survey, so a margin of error cannot be calculated. But a randomized poll of similar size, with 1,579 respondents, would be considered accurate to within 2.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

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RCMP Sikorsky UH-60  Black Hawk helicopter, which is used for patrols along the Canada--U.S. border in southern B.C.

OTTAWA — The RCMP has renewed the contracts for three Black Hawk helicopters to patrol the Canada-U.S. border, despite

accusations by the industry association that the contracts

are the opposite of the government’s “elbows up” approach and that the choppers don’t meet the government’s own safety regulations.

RCMP spokesman Andrew DiRienzo confirmed that the federal police has decided to rehire the three helicopters for at least the next three months. The contracts for the second-hand helicopters, purchased by private contractors after the U.S. military decided to update much of its own fleet, kicked in on Canada Day.

The new contracts follow a National Post investigation that revealed that four Black Hawks were purchased by Canadian contractors who then signed patrolling contracts with the RCMP for three of them. The other was hired by the Alberta government.

The existing RCMP contracts for three of the choppers, worth an estimated $16 million, expired June 30.

Documents showed that the Canadian helicopter industry had accused Ottawa of breaking its own rules, for example, by allowing the used choppers to carry passengers or even flying over developed areas. The Black Hawks have been used mostly to patrol the border in search of illegal migrants, drug smugglers and other illicit activities.

Trevor Mitchell, chief executive of the Helicopter Association of Canada (HAC), said he was very surprised that the RCMP would sign another contract to lease the American Black Hawks, while Canadian manufacturers offer rival products that can do at least as good a job. “I can’t see how any of this transpires into an elbows-up policy, or a Canada-first policy.”

According to the government’s Canadian Civil Aircraft Register, the four Sikorsky Black Hawk UH 60As were imported into Canada between 2022 and last year. They were granted highly unusual special exemptions by Transport Canada that, according to a series of letters to senior government officials from the Canadian helicopter association, allowed the four choppers to do non-military jobs in Canadian air space.

In a March 20 letter to Transport Minister Chrystia Freeland, the association said even the conditions attached to the exemptions have not been followed. “We urge you to direct your department to ensure the safety restrictions attached to these aircraft are strictly enforced for the balance of the RCMP’s contract and that the Force be urged to select a certified aircraft before the contract expires.”

HAC also says that the twin-engine Black Hawks didn’t come with “type certificates,” which act like recipe books for new owners in that they provide details about the aircraft’s parts and how it should be maintained.

Freeland has not responded to interview requests on this subject for the last three weeks. A spokesperson has not responded to specific questions but instead released a prepared statement that emphasized the importance of safety. The statement also said that the exemptions from Transport Canada allowed the aircraft to operate in Canada in specialized roles “subject to strict conditions,” such as not being allowed to carry fare-paying passengers or cargo.

Despite its reluctance to discuss the matter, the federal government is well aware of the situation involving the Black Hawks and the industry’s concerns.

 An RCMP Black Hawk helicopter patrols the border in Emerson, Manitoba in January.

In the spring of 2024, following interactions with HAC, former Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez directed his officials to pause the issuing of special exemptions for the Black Hawks. But in September of that year, Rodriguez resigned from the federal cabinet to run for leader of the Quebec Liberal party.

He was replaced at Transport for about seven months by Anita Anand, now the Foreign Affairs minister. She was then replaced in the new year by Chrystia Freeland, after Mark Carney became prime minister. Neither Anand nor Freeland has clarified the government’s view of the situation or publicly commented on the special exemptions for the Black Hawks.

Although the Black Hawk contracts pre-date the re-election earlier this year of U.S. President Donald Trump, Canada’s enhanced border patrol is in sync with the White House’s escalation of concern about illegal migrants and illegal drugs entering the U.S. from Canada, Mexico and elsewhere.

But it’s not like there aren’t other – even domestic – options beyond Black Hawks.

Mitchell says Canada has about 200 companies that offer helicopter services and pilots to fly them. Their collective fleets comprise about 1,700 choppers, many of which might be better suited than Black Hawks for patrol duties because they’re smaller and equipped with infra-red cameras that allow them to work in the dark.

The military and the RCMP also have their own fleets. But if the RCMP’s own helicopters weren’t enough, Mitchell said, it would have no problem finding private contractors to help them patrol.

Helicopters are valued for their versatility and mobility. In Canada, they’re mostly used for search and rescue, fighting forest fires, helping combat floods, and commercial applications in remote areas such as mining and electrical lines.

But five-seat helicopters are typically used for patrol because they’re more nimble and cheaper to operate than a larger, 14-seater such as Sikorsky’s Black Hawk.

According to a February 10 letter by HAC to RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme, the choppers have not been approved by Canadian or American authorities for civilian purposes.

The RCMP’s Black Hawk contracts overlap with Carney’s vow to increase Canada’s military spending so that it reaches the NATO target of 2 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). Carney has also vowed to do more to support Canadian business and to rely less on the U.S.

Industry sources say the older Black Hawks were selling in recent months for about $1 million each, as the market became flooded with supply. The market for used helicopters has grown in recent years as the U.S. military has modernized its fleet, including the purchase of a newer model of Black Hawks, called the UH-60M.

That has pushed a number of older, but still functional Black Hawks to the second-hand market. Prices of new and used aircraft vary widely, depending on a range of factors. But a new five-seat helicopter, including those made in Canada, sells for about $6.5 million, while a new 14-seater, similar in size to the Black Hawks, goes for about $12 million.

Bell Textron, a subsidiary of Fort Worth, Tex.-based Textron, makes commercial helicopters at its Mirabel, Que. facilities. Its lineup of models includes the Bell 412, which could be used for border patrol.

Airbus Helicopters Canada, formerly MBB Helicopter Canada, has a 300-employee site at Fort Erie, Ont. That location focuses largely on sales, repair, engineering and composite manufacturing.

The Black Hawk, made by Sikorsky Aircraft, is a four-blade, twin-engine, medium-lift chopper in the “military utility” product niche. Stratford, Conn.-based Sikorsky was founded by the Russian-American aviation pioneer Igor Sikorsky in 1923.

Carney, meanwhile, issued a statement earlier this month saying that Canada plans to boost its defence spending by $9.3 billion to $54.3 billion. The money will be used on a range of items, including submarines, ships, armoured vehicles and aircraft, as well as new drones and sensors for monitoring the Arctic and seafloor.

In the government’s latest signal that it intends to create some distance from the U.S. since Trump imposed a wide range of debilitating tariffs on Canadian exports, Carney said Canada wants to reduce how much of its defence budget goes to purchases of American equipment. The prime minister has said that about 75 per cent of Canada’s capital spending on defence heads to the U.S.

National Post

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Nosakhare Ohenhen has lost his bid to recover $32,000 Toronto police seized from his home during the investigation of a deadly hit and run.

A man who claimed $32,000 police found at his home was casino winnings, after he was allegedly spotted in the passenger seat of a car that killed a pedestrian in downtown Toronto in April 2022, has lost his bid to get the cash back.

And the fact that Nosakhare Ohenhen appears to have used artificial intelligence in his legal fight against forfeiture likely didn’t help his case in Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice.

“Mr. Ohenhen submitted a statement of legal argument to the court in support of his arguments. In those documents, he referred to at least two non-existent or fake precedent court cases, one ostensibly from the Court of Appeal for Ontario and another ostensibly from the British Columbia Court of Appeal. In reviewing his materials after argument, I tried to access these cases and was unable to find them,” Justice Lisa Brownstone wrote in a recent decision.

When the judge asked Ohenhen to provide her with the cases, he “responded with a ‘clarification,’ providing different citations to different cases.”

Brownstone asked for an explanation as to where the original citations came from, and whether they were generated by artificial intelligence.

“I have received no response to that query,” said the judge.

“While Mr. Ohenhen is not a lawyer with articulated professional responsibilities to the court, every person who submits authorities to the court has an obligation to ensure that those authorities exist…. Putting fictitious citations before the court misleads the court. It is unacceptable. Whether the cases are put forward by a lawyer or self-represented party, the adverse effect on the administration of justice is the same.”

Brownstone said she didn’t attach “any consequences to this conduct in this case,” but if Ohenhen does it again, he should “expect” some. “Other self-represented litigants should be aware that serious consequences from such conduct may well flow.”

The Attorney General of Ontario applied to the court to keep the cash police seized on April 22, 2022, from Ohenhen’s home, arguing it was proceeds of crime.

The search came about after a hit and run 10 days earlier killed a 30-year-old woman near Spadina Avenue and King Street West.

“After the accident, the car entered the underground parking garage at 295 Dufferin Street Toronto, where Mr. Ohenhen lived. Mr. Ohenhen came out of the car and handed something that appeared to be a set of keys to the driver,” Brownstone said. “The two then sat in another car, which was registered in Mr. Ohenhen’s name.”

According to the Toronto Police Service, Ohenhen “provided the other person, the driver, with access to his car to enable the driver to escape after the hit-and-run.”

Investigators arrested the driver the next day “for failure to stop at the scene of an accident that caused death, dangerous driving causing death, obstruction and public mischief,” Brownstone said.

They also arrested Ohenhen as a result of the hit and run and searched his home “where they found six cellular phones and $32,000 in cash, in $100 bills. There were three bundles that total $30,000 bound with elastics in the safe, and $2,000 in two bundles on a table.”

Ohenhen was charged with failure to stop at the scene after an accident resulting in death, obstructing a peace officer, public mischief, and being an accessory after the fact to commit an indictable offence, said the judge, noting those charges are pending.

According to Ontario’s Attorney General, “Ohenhen has an extensive criminal history involving convictions for possession for the purpose of trafficking, possession of schedule 1 substances, assault, assault with intent to resist arrest, failure to comply with a recognizance, possession of prohibited or restricted firearms, assault causing bodily harm, robbery, and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence.”

The AG argued that, “on a balance of probabilities, the currency at issue here … was likely acquired as a result of, and used in the commission of, the unlawful activity of trafficking and possession for the purpose of trafficking, and possession of the proceeds of crime.”

But “Ohenhen states that the money comes from casino winnings and from his business.”

However, according to the judge, “the records provided do not in any way support Mr. Ohenhen’s statements that the cash was from his business or casino winnings. The records show that his business income, like his casino winnings, was received electronically, not in cash.”

Brownstone found “there is no credible and reasonable answer for the suspicious circumstances in which the money was found.”

The judge was “satisfied that the Attorney General has established on a balance of probabilities that the funds were proceeds of and an instrument of unlawful activity. There has been no ‘credible and reasonable’ answer to the suspicious circumstances outlined above, that is, that the significant amount of funds was in 100-dollar bills, bundled together, in cash in Mr. Ohenhen’s home, not in a bank.”

According to court documents, police arrested Ohenhen on Aug. 21, 2008, in the Parkdale area of Toronto after they stopped his dark green Jaguar. “He was charged with seventeen offences: assault police, resist lawful arrest, eleven charges in relation to illegal possession of a loaded restricted firearm and breach of prior prohibition orders, two counts of possession of cocaine and one of marijuana for the purposes of trafficking, and possession of proceeds of crime.”

Ohenhen was sentenced to nine years in prison. But he successfully appealed that conviction after serving nearly five years in prison, and a judge acquitted him in a new trial.

In September 2016, Justice Michael Quigley found that Ohenhen had been arbitrarily detained, unreasonably searched, and that his constitutional right to retain and instruct a lawyer without delay “was totally and shockingly ignored by the police.”

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Bonnie Critchley.

OTTAWA — Bonnie Critchley is used to breaking the mould.

A trailblazer in uniform,

Critchley

was just 17 years old when she became the second woman ever to serve as an armoured crewman in her unit. She and reservist dad Steve later made history as the first father–daughter gunnery crew in the Royal Canadian Armoured Corps.

She’s now looking to take out Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre in one of the safest Conservative ridings in Canada, running as an independent in the upcoming Battle River—Crowfoot byelection.

Critchley, who’s been traversing the rural Alberta riding for about a month, says she sees a path to an upset victory over Poilievre.

“Honestly, a good result for us would be a win,”

Critchley told the National Post on Wednesday.

She said that Poilievre is starting off on the wrong foot after yanking popular incumbent MP Damien Kurek out of the seat and

creating a hefty byelection

bill for taxpayers.

“I’ve been talking to a lot of ‘small-c’ conservatives around here who aren’t thrilled that the ‘big-C’ Conservatives are spending an extra two million dollars on a mulligan for a guy who failed in his duty to his constituents and was fired,” said Critchley.

Poilievre lost his Ottawa-area riding to Liberal Bruce Fanjoy by a five-point margin in April’s federal election, after holding the seat for two decades.

Critchley also says that the Calgary-born Poilievre has put off residents by donning western-style cowboy attire in his visits to the riding.

“Whether it’s

the backwards cowboy hat

at the Wainwright Stampede or sitting in a truck in Drumheller, it just isn’t landing,” said Critchley.

A 22-year army reservist who later rode her bike across Europe to raise money for veterans and first responders, Critchley has a CV that would be attractive to any major political party.

She says she’s running an an independent because she’s grown disillusioned with partisan politics.

“One of the things that I think we’re having issues with is team politics. It’s my team versus your team, and it doesn’t matter what my team does or says, my team is better than your team,” said Critchley.

She added that she’s finds it especially concerning when party politics prevents constituents from being properly represented, pointing to the Poilivre-Kurek switcheroo as a prime example of this problem.

Critchley calls herself a centrist and says she objects to “performative policies” on both the left and right.

She was one of many who welcomed the termination of the Liberals’ consumer carbon tax, calling it more symbolic than substantive.

“I’m not going to offer soft, easy answers to complex questions,” said Critchley.

She’s also said that she’ll work to repeal Trudeau-era gun control laws if elected to Parliament.

Critchley, who is a lesbian, says she also objects to right-wing points of view on trans issues.

She said that a

recent Alberta court injunction

stalling the province’s ban on transgender medicine for minors was “good news.”

“The (previous) supports for trans youth were in place to prevent youth suicides,” said Critchley.

Critchley said that she’ll be spending the next few weeks convening town halls to hear from voters in the riding.

She’s pre-emptively putting out an invitation to both Poilievre and Liberal candidate Darcy Spady to join her at one of these town halls.

“I will be welcoming those two for sure,” said Critchley.

Critchley has been less welcoming to some other potential candidates, though. She

released an open letter to the Longest Ballot Committee

— an activist group protesting former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s broken 2015 election promise on electoral reform — asking the group to “not come here and muddy the waters further.”

The group, which

gets headlines by swamping the ballot

with dozens of candidates, also targeted Poilievre’s Ottawa-area riding of Carleton during the federal election in April.

Critchley said the “tomfoolery” would only make it harder for a candidate like her to knock off Poilievre in  the August byelection.

National Post

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Data from Flightrader24.com shows the point where the Boeing aircraft suddenly dropped and reduced speed.

A Japan Airlines flight from Shanghai to Tokyo made an emergency landing this week after plummeting almost 8 kilometres in less than 10 minutes. Once the plane was safely on the ground, passengers were given 15,000 yen (Cdn $142) in compensation, plus a free night’s accommodation, according to reports.

According to

People magazine

, Monday’s flight JL8696 was operated by Spring Japan, a low-cost subsidiary of Japan Airlines, and was scheduled to fly from Shanghai to Tokyo, a two and a half hour journey.

However, about an hour into the flight the plane

descended rapidly

from a cruising altitude of about 11,700 metres down to just 3,000 metres while reducing its speed from 880 kph to 560 kph. It then levelled out at the new altitude and, about 45 minutes later, made an emergency landing in Osaka, Japan.

None of the 191 passengers and crew on board the Boeing 737-800 was injured. Reports said the pilots contacted air traffic controllers when the aircraft triggered an alert about an irregularity in the pressurization system that maintains cabin air pressure.

Reports noted that oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling during the descent, and that passengers feared the plane might crash.

According to the Hong Kong news site

The Standard

, one passenger said she drafted a farewell note to her husband during the descent, while another described the cabin falling eerily silent as the masks dropped and she imagined she might perish. A third recalled being on “the verge of tears” as they scribbled a will and wrote down details of their insurance and bank card PINs.

The aircraft was diverted to Kansai International Airport in Osaka and landed at about 8:50 p.m. local time. It then spent about an hour on the tarmac before passengers were able to deplane.

Spring Japan subsequently posted a

notice on its website

, cancelling the Shanghai-to-Tokyo run and its return flight for the next two days, citing “aircraft scheduling.” It apologized for the inconvenience and offered full refunds within 30 days, or no-charge rebooking in the same time period.

The Associated Press reports that an investigation into the cause of the incident has begun as of Wednesday morning. National Post has reached out to Spring Japan for more information.

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