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Prominent American lawyer Alan Dershowitz at the Rage Against Hate conference at Manhattan’s Museum of Jewish Heritage, Oct. 27, 2025.

NEW YORK – Alan Dershowitz, the prominent American lawyer, had a blunt assessment about Canada and the Carney government at a recent pro-Israel gathering in New York.

“We have to understand who our enemies are. And our enemy now is Canada,” he told the Post, at the second annual Rage Against Hate conference, Oct. 27, at Manhattan’s Museum of Jewish Heritage.

Canada earned his scorn because of its “recognition of a nonexistent entity,” referring to Palestine, and “not doing enough to combat antisemitism.”

And he noted Prime Minister

Mark Carney’s Oct. 16 comments

to British podcaster Mishal Husain on her podcast, saying Canada would honour the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and arrest him if he entered Canada.

Should such an arrest occur, Dershowitz vowed, “I will come up to Canada. I will defend Netanyahu, and I will go after everybody who has tried to arrest him.”

Dershowitz also told the Post he is “in favour of Trump putting tariffs on Canada for its statements regarding Israel and Netanyahu, and even sanctions perhaps.”

The Harvard law professor emeritus and civil liberties advocate was a speaker at the conference, produced by the Israel Law Center, which uses legal action worldwide to fight for the rights of victims of terror, and to seek compensation for violations of international law.

Israeli lawyer Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, the centre’s founder and president, said from the dais that her next litigation target is The New York Times.

“The New York Times Is aiding and abetting Hamas,” she said, making it clear her intention is to take them to court for “blood libel and defamation.”

The centre’s targets

include Al Jazeera

 over its alleged ties to Hamas, and a high-profile lawsuit against the Palestinian Authority and PLO in the U.S. which initially resulted in a US$655 million award for terror victims (later overturned). Other notable cases include suing Airbnb over delisting Jewish-owned properties in Israel, and legal action involving Facebook regarding incitement and hate speech.

Other speakers included former Mossad director Yossi Cohen; Australian broadcaster Erin Molan; Arab-Israeli influencer and former IDF commander Yoseph Haddad; and Anne Bayefsky, president of Human Rights Voices.

A recurring theme surfaced at the conference: the need to combat lies, communicate Israel’s story better, and be attuned to what Israel’s enemies seek to do.

“The first and most important thing that we need to do collectively is to listen what they (Islamists) themselves say,” said Jonathan Conricus, formerly international spokesperson of the Israel Defense Forces and a regular fixture in the media.

Islamists, he said, “want to dominate and take control of Western countries, and that they’re not shy in achieving it… They are politically organized and disciplined. They are funded. They have powerful mouthpieces, some of them very eloquent and fluent in King’s English.”

Elected officials, “need to understand that Israel is the Off-Broadway show. The real show, the real Broadway, from a Muslim Islamist perspective, is the West,” said the senior fellow at the Washington-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

 Israeli lawyer Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, founder and president of Israel Law Center, speaks at the Rage Against Hate conference at Manhattan’s Museum of Jewish Heritage, Oct. 27, 2025.

Preventing radicalization is a part of what he calls “the battle of narratives,” which he added “with great regret, Israel isn’t yet really fighting this battle well.”

He suggested that more of Israel’s budget is needed for “narrative and media warfare” in order to “equip freedom fighters, defenders of democracy, good people around the world, with data and information.”

British journalist Melanie Phillips said Israel’s enemies “have been able to hijack the language and weaponize the West’s post-truth, post-moral culture, to push their agenda that Israel and the Jews are on the wrong side of just about everything that is good and right and true.”

The author and columnist in The Times said in her speech that the “big lie that we are all up against” is the notion that “peace and justice in the Middle East” will come with a Palestinian state.

“There is no such thing as Palestine. There is no such thing as the Palestinian people. The indigenous people of the land of so-called Palestine are the Jews; the Jews are the only people who have any entitlement to any of this land, an entitlement based in law, in history and morality,” she said.

Citing a need to “seize back control” of the narrative, it was her belief that those in the West must speak out against the media and governments that are “lying to them.”

Dershowitz, similarly, told the Post that “people have fallen for the Palestinian argument.”

“Instead of just defending Israel, we have to expose the lies of Palestinianism and stop pandering to pro-Palestinian people. Pro-Palestinian is pro-hate.”

He added that “every element within the Palestinian movement has encouraged terrorism. Not a single one has essentially renounced it,” and he wants anti-Zionists to “learn their cause is not a just one.”

“Palestinianism is not about building a country. It’s about destroying Israel. There isn’t a single pro-Palestine demonstration that I have seen that calls for a two-state solution. Not a single one.”

Former Israeli spokesman Eylon Levy said that the “anti-Zionist grip on institutional power hoodwinked the world into believing their libel, and they use that power to commit an industrial act of gaslighting” — which he calls “Gazalighting.”

“They have trashed Israel’s global reputation, made it toxic. They have delivered Hamas a tremendous victory in the form of Israel’s tarnished global standing,” he said in his talk.

Levy told the Post that Israel is on the receiving end of a “vicious information war that is intended to delegitimize and demonize it and ultimately to drive a wedge between it and its allies.”

In order to fight back, Israel must corral trained spokespeople to “communicate with the young generation in social media, but also to make foreign governments understand the information war that is being waged against their citizens.”

That information war is, he said, “a campaign funded directed in large part by many foreign actors whose interests are anti-Western, and seek to subvert their democracies.”

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The Kelowna International Airport has seen about 70 temporary tower closures this year.

At least two Canadian airports, in Kelowna, B.C., and Winnipeg, are so short of air traffic controllers (ATCs) that they have had to occasionally shut down their towers. Air Canada has gone so far as to tell its pilots “not to operate into these airports during short term ATC staffing shortage closures.”

A spokesperson for NAV Canada, the not-for-profit organization that delivers Canada’s civil air navigation services, told National Post: “The recent temporary closures in Winnipeg and Kelowna were precautionary measures taken under our Fatigue Risk Management System to ensure safe operations and protect the well-being of our employees.”

The spokesperson added that closures are generally brief. “For example, the Winnipeg closure last August was the only occurrence in recent years and lasted no longer than 30 minutes.”

National Post has reached out to

Winnipeg’s airport authority

for comment. Phillip Elchitz, Director of Operations at Kelowna International Airport, told the Post: “We’ve seen approximately 70 closures since the beginning of the year.”

He noted that the ATC tower in Kelowna operates 17 hours a day, from 5:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., and “sometimes finds itself in a position where there’s only one controller, and that controller is required to have fatigue breaks of 30 minutes. And when that controller has that fatigue break, the control tower closes for 30 minutes.”

Elchitz said NAV Canada coordinates the closure with the airport. “They let us know day of that they’re going to have a closure. And they try their best to schedule that closure during slower times for air traffic, and that helps us better understand when the tower is going to be closed and the impacts it may have on the operations at the airport.”

He added: “Absolutely, the airport can operate when the tower is not operating. There are

uncontrolled aerodrome procedures

in place that pilots are trained to follow in these sorts of circumstances.”

Elchitz noted that there are some airports in Canada that do not have ATCs and operate as uncontrolled airports all the time. “Hence the importance of the pilots being trained to operate in that environment. The uncontrolled aerodrome procedures do allow aircraft to take off and land during times when the tower is closed.”

He added: “For us as an airport operator (and) for NAV Canada, safety is everything for us. NAV Canada ensures that they put safety first, and they ensure that their staff are properly rested when they need to be, to make sure that it continues to be safe.”

Similarly, NAV Canada’s spokesperson said off the top: “The safety of Canadian airspace is, and will always remain, our top priority.”

However, the Air Canada memo, dated Oct. 14 and seen by National Post, says of Winnipeg and Kelowna: “These airports have control towers that were established due to high traffic volume and airport operation complexity.”

It adds: “Crew should not depart and arrive at these airports until the tower reopens. For arrival, be prepared to hold or divert, as required.”

Air Canada confirmed the existence of the memo but did not provide further details. A spokesperson for Kelowna’s airport said: “Our operations have not recently experienced any significant delays that can be attributed to this that we’re aware of.”

Staffing shortages have been a

long-running issue

at NAV Canada, and one the industry

continues to grapple with

.

Tim Perry, Canadian president of the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), told National Post: “

Air Traffic Controller shortages continue, leading to delays at various airports across Canada. This lack of stability in Canada’s aviation sector must be addressed, which is why ALPA Canada

is actively working with the Canadian Air Traffic Control Association (CATCA) and is in dialogue with NAV Canada to find ways to work together to

improve the situation

moving forward.”

NAV Canada’s spokesperson said the organization “leaves no stone unturned when it comes to recruitment and training.”

“Over the past two years, more than 450 air traffic services professionals — including 240 new air traffic controllers — have joined our ranks, with nearly 500 more students currently in training across the country,” she said. “Through targeted recruitment campaigns, modernized training models, and our partnership with CAE, we are building long-term capacity and preparing the next generation of air traffic controllers.”

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A crowd in as thousands streamed into Montreal from all over Canada to join Quebecers rallying for national unity three days before a referendum on secession in Quebec, Oct. 27, 1995.

Thirty years after Quebec voted on whether or not to leave Canada and form its own country, Canadians increasingly see themselves as one nation, despite talks of separation by some provincial leaders, according to a new poll.

“It’s nice to say we’re all a multinational federation, but our populace truly refuses to see us that way,” said Jack Jedwab, president and CEO of the Association for Canadian Studies, which commissioned the poll. “Academia that continues to insist Canada is some sort of multinational federation is operating in some sort of parallel place, completely out of tune with the public.”

In 1995, Quebecers voted in a hotly contested referendum on whether to leave Canada. The “remain” side won with a little more than 50 per cent of the vote. Just over 50,000 votes kept Quebec in Canada.

Provinces like Quebec, or even Alberta, have flirted with the idea of separating from Canada as a whole, or gaining a distinct nationhood status within Canada itself. Quebec’s provincial government ran an unsuccessful independence referendum in 1995, losing by just over 50,000 votes. Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, the leader of the Parti Québécois, has promised to hold yet another referendum, if his party forms government in the 2026 provincial election. In Alberta, there are duelling petitions seeking to put a secession question before the populace.

But the data suggest that there is little appetite for separation from Canada. The polling, done by Leger, shows only 28 per cent of Quebecers and 24 per cent of Albertans support the idea of full separation from Canada.

Indeed, Canadians largely see Canada as a single nation, not a collection of nations, including Quebec, English Canada and Indigenous nations. Fifty-two per cent of Canadians see Canada as having only one nation, while 17 per cent believe there is an English nation, a Quebecois nation and an Indigenous nation in Canada. Notably, when the Association for Canadian Studies asked the question three years ago, just 38 per cent of Canadians said there is only one nation in Canada, and eight per cent said there were three nations.

“If you go back historically, we used to have this idea of Canada as sort of bi-national and, increasingly these days, people take that and try to incorporate Indigeneity in the idea of what a nation implies,” said Jedwab.

The view that there is only one Canada is held most strongly in British Columbia, at 63 per cent, followed by Manitoba and Saskatchewan, at 61 per cent, followed by Ontario, at 57 per cent. Among the provinces that believe there are three nations, Quebecers, at 28 per cent, and Albertans, at 21 per cent, are most likely to believe that’s the case. Just four per cent of Atlantic Canadians, 15 per cent of Ontarians, 10 per cent of those in Manitoba and Saskatchewan and 12 per cent of those in B.C. believe there are three nations within Canada.

Additionally, 15 per cent of Canadians  believe there are 50 or more nations within Canada — English, French and multiple Indigenous and Métis nations. The view, at 23 per cent, is held most strongly in Quebec, followed by 17 per cent in British Columbia and 15 per cent in the Atlantic provinces. Just seven per cent of those in the Prairies and 13 per cent of those in Ontario believe there are 50 or more nations within Canada.

However, modest numbers of Canadians believe their region can be considered a distinct nation within Canada. Fifty-three per cent of Quebecers believe that, but the numbers fall off dramatically in the rest of the country. Thirty-three per cent of Albertans believe their region can be considered a distinct nation, as do 28 per cent of Atlantic Canadians, 27 per cent of British Columbians, 25 per cent of Ontarians and 22 per cent of those in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Around one-quarter of Canadians believe their region should have special status within Confederation.

This trend also extends to Indigenous Peoples, at a time when many Indigenous leaders have renewed calls for their respective communities to be recognized as distinct nations. Fifty-five per cent of Indigenous poll respondents said Canada should be considered one nation, while 25 per cent said there are 50 or more nations within Canada — English, French and multiple Indigenous nations.

“It’s important to articulate the message of a country that aims to be inclusive, ensuring that its provinces’ needs are addressed fairly without creating too much inequity between them. I think right now you are seeing a fair bit of confusion about what the vision for the country is,” Jedwab said.

The online poll of 1,627 Canadians was conducted between Aug. 29 and 31, 2025. While no margin of error can be associated with a non-probability sample, a same-size probability sample would have a margin of error of plus or minus 2.52 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

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


The Centennial Flame on Parliament Hill.

OTTAWA — A Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) report on federal service delivery to small businesses found that Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) received the highest level of dissatisfaction from small business owners.

Forty per cent of respondents rated the quality of service as “poor,” and 49 per cent rated timeliness as “poor,” despite the IRCC workforce increasing by 170 per cent since 2013.

By contrast, only 10 per cent of small businesses felt they received “good” service. The immigration department was among the five federal services reviewed by the CFIB.

“The delaying of being able to process foreign work permits really impacts the ability of some of our members to keep their doors open,” said Michelle Auger, CFIB director of trade and author of the report.

“Businesses often rely on temporary worker programs and permits when they’re unable to find the specific skill sets they need,” she said.

Michael Wood is a small business consultant and professor at Algonquin College. He said that, for small businesses, securing foreign workers amid IRCC service delays is “nearly impossible.”

“These government services are swelling in terms of employment, but I’ve been seeing plenty of businesses that are having a hard time getting real, quality answers from people who are there to answer questions on the immigration side of things,” said Wood.

Small businesses interact with the IRCC when supporting employees with immigration-related needs.

This includes assisting staff with work permits and permanent residency applications. Many also turn to the IRCC for guidance on evolving immigration policies that affect their ability to attract and retain international hires.

However, the IRCC routinely falls short of providing meaningful support to these businesses, said Auger.

The report noted that 73 per cent of small businesses consulted expressed concern about the growing size of the federal government, citing persistent challenges in accessing timely, reliable and effective services.

“The IRCC is the department that falls last when it comes to customer service and timeliness of response,” Auger said.

Gary Gervais, who runs Heartland International English School in Manitoba, said slow IRCC processing times have resulted in a 50 per cent decrease in his business, which relies on foreign student numbers, this year.

“It’s pretty much industry-wide for language programs in Canada,” said Gervais, who added that it sends a message: “Don’t bother coming to Canada.”

Several businesses that the CFIB consulted as part of their report said IRCC decisions to deny or revoke work permits created “major disruptions” in their operations.

Many also said they had to escalate issues through their MPs due to the difficulty in reaching federal immigration officials directly, another IRCC responsibility.

Wood said an “easy fix” to this issue comes down to “looking at it from a business perspective.”

“I’m a business guy, so I know about issues X, Y and Z. But when challenge Q comes in, and I’ve never had to deal with it, I know I need people who can relay accurate information about this subject,” he added.

“It comes down to staffing the IRCC with an experienced team that can quickly and reliably help these businesses.”

The report comes when privately-sponsored refugees waited, on average, 30 months for the IRCC to process their application, according to a study by the Auditor General of Canada.

Yet for Gervais’ international students, who require visitor visas as they largely enter from Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia, such timelines are largely unreliable.

According to the IRCC’s online processing time checker, people who applied from Colombia under the visitor visa stream face a wait time of “42 days.”

“The reality is we’re seeing students applying and it’s taking 12 weeks,” said Gervais. “It’s completely unreliable.”

However, the IRCC detailed efforts last month to “streamline operations and reduce red tape” for industry stakeholders, including small businesses.

It states the federal service has “been disadvantaged by not having a nimble mechanism” to adapt to the volume of backlogged applicants that accumulated over the course of the pandemic.

Wood said that while a logjam of foreign workers is a problem for small businesses, a partial solution may be looking at domestic workers.

“I know one Canadian-born student who’s sent out a hundred resumes and hasn’t got one phone call back. This guy is beyond intelligent, fully engaged, a hard worker, and yet he enters the job market and has no success,” said Wood.

“The IRCC issue is definitely a challenge for securing workers coming from other countries, but small businesses should also look domestically.”

Jasmin Guenette, CFIB vice president of national affairs, said small business owners are not measuring the government’s success by how many people they’re hiring.

Rather, “it’s about how quickly they’re picking up the phone, how consistently they’re resolving issues…,” Guenette said in the report.

“Too many departments are not delivering the results expected for the price we pay […] small businesses deserve better, and they expect the public service to do better.”

The survey was taken between May 6 and June 2, based on responses from 2,190 CFIB members who are owners of Canadian independent businesses, from all sectors and regions of the country. Online polls are not considered representative samples and thus don’t carry a margin of error. However, the poll document provides an estimated margin, for comparison purposes, of plus or minus 2.09 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

National Post

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Director of Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) Daniel Rogers arrives to a meeting of the National Security Council on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Friday, June 13, 2025.

OTTAWA — A stark June memo from the director of Canada’s spy agency highlighting culture and morale issues at the service was applauded by employees relieved that management was no longer sugar-coating longstanding workplace issues.

The emails from Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) employees to Director Daniel Rogers reveal some workers were frustrated with years of senior management failing to acknowledge lacklustre employee survey results and serious systemic issues.

National Post obtained a dozen pages of CSIS emails via access to information request. All employee names in the emails except Rogers’ are redacted.

“I cannot recall, in my almost 18 years of service, ever hearing anything of the sort from management, where there is a recognition of an obvious systemic issue within the organization,” one employee wrote to Daniels in June.

“It feels as though the organization is sick and the doctors haven’t been admitting it,” they continued, adding that the memo brought them to tears.

The emails were sent to Rogers in response to an

agency-wide memo he sent in June

highlighting many of the poor results for CSIS in the sweeping biennial survey that covers workplace morale and satisfaction, trust in leadership and overall effectiveness.

“I’ll be candid about what I’ve seen: the results are disappointing and unacceptable,” Rogers wrote to staff in a blunt memo in which he committed to improving workplace culture and leadership.

“Low morale across our workforce and lack of trust in leadership not only affect our ability to achieve mission success, but weaken trust in our Service by Canadians and our Government at a time when we are needed most,” he added while noting CSIS is not acting at its “full potential”.

Culture change at CSIS — long and often promised but slowly (if ever) delivered — will be management’s “overriding priority” over the next year, the director promised.

That includes tying executives’ bonuses to the implementation of updated corporate commitments that emphasize a healthy, effective and ambitious workplace. Rogers also committed to reviewing how CSIS chooses, evaluates and trains its managers.

The 2024 poll was the latest of a series PSES results that place CSIS near the bottom of the public service.

After Daniels’ memo was posted internally, multiple individuals told the director that they had received exclusively positive reactions from staff.

“In the past when the PSES message had a positive twist, the feedback from employees was that (the executive committee) was tone-deaf,” one person wrote. “Employees seem to like the honesty of this current PSES message. Not trying to sugar coat it or my favourite comment ‘no sunshine pumping there!’.”

“This seems to be the first time that our Executives even acknowledges the bad things as opposed to only focusing on the good,” wrote another employee.

One emailer took a swipe at previous CSIS management, telling Rogers he had “inherited a mess” when he took over the agency in Oct. 2024.

“Messages like that help set the tone that it’s time to clean up our act,” they wrote of the memo.

Others seized the opportunity to tell Rogers about the issues that plague their work at the spy agency.

One individual wrote that their biggest issue was a lack of decision making among managers while suggesting their directorate had too many projects tagged at the top priority level.

“To me it seems that senior management is unable/unwilling to make decisions and just marks everything as priority 1, and then goes with the flow,” they wrote. “Our attention is being too thinly spread out so it seems nothing is progressing, at least from my point of view.”

The employee with nearly 18 years of service told Rogers that “management-level denial” of systemic workplace issues has led to the departure of an “unprecedented number” of seasoned employees over the last eight years.

The 2024 survey suggested only half (51 per cent) of CSIS respondents believe senior managers “lead by example in ethical behaviour” and 57 per cent said that the agency does well at promoting values and ethics in the workplace.

Far fewer respondents (40 per cent) said they have confidence in top management, whereas barely 29 per cent believed senior management makes “effective and timely decisions.”

In a statement, CSIS spokesperson Magali Hébert said the agency has made multiple changes in response to either direct employee feedback or the PSES results.

“Recent examples include a renewed executive talent management framework, revised appointment authorities for executive staffing decisions, and renewal of senior official champions roles in the areas of values and ethics, employee recognition and health, and executive leadership engagement,” Hébert noted.

National Post

cnardi@postmedia.com

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Minister of Finance and National Revenue Francois-Philippe Champagne speaks during a press conference in Ottawa, on Monday, Oct. 20, 2025.

OTTAWA — Next week’s federal budget will include a broad plan to reduce the size of the federal public service that will include layoffs, government sources say, part of Ottawa’s effort to deal with a massive deficit and a host of other priority spending areas.

Federal sources told National Post that the cuts to reduce the federal workforce would go beyond the attrition plan that had been announced earlier this year, as the Carney government has since attempted to wrestle its costs under control. One source said the “right-sizing” plan will emphasize attrition, early retirement packages and moving employees to departments and agencies with the most needs, before layoffs.

Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne seemed to confirm the plan Wednesday at a public event when he said that Ottawa would implement “workforce adjustments” in a “fair and smart way.”

Speaking at a funding announcement to advance equality at the National Gallery of Canada, Champagne implied strongly that the government’s moves would go beyond simply not replacing employees who leave through voluntary retirement and other forms of attrition.

“Yes, we need to bring back the civil service to a sustainable level,” he told the gathering. “We’ll be very transparent with people but we’re going to be very compassionate in how we do it as well.”

Champagne said the size of the civil service has increased in recent years at a pace that isn’t sustainable and that it needs to be “aligned” with needs. “We need to get back to something more sustainable.”

Beyond eliminating jobs, Champagne also said the government could find efficiencies through greater use of technology.

When asked for confirmation that Champagne’s comments should be interpreted as cuts beyond attrition, John Fragos, the minister’s press secretary, pointed to the government’s efforts to cut unnecessary spending so that it can invest in priority areas. “This approach speaks to the steps that we are undertaking to modernize, streamline and recalibrate government spending,” Fragos said in a statement. “This is part and parcel of how we’re going to spend less so we can invest more. That means finding more efficiencies, rightsizing and better integrating tech into our processes.”

A representative from the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), the largest union of federal public sector workers, couldn’t be reached for comment late Wednesday.

Earlier this year, Carney said the government would put a ceiling on the size of the federal public service, instead of widespread cuts, and implied that the reductions would be accomplished through attrition. Champagne’s comments ON Wednesday strongly suggested that the government has since decided that those reductions won’t be enough to achieve the necessary savings.

Between 2024 and 2025, the size of the federal public service decreased by about 9,807 employees, down to 357,965 from 367,772. But between 2018 and 2023, the public service increased by between 4.1 and 6.4 per cent, despite the increased use of digital technologies designed to boost efficiency. Employee figures vary depending on whether crown corporations and other affiliated organizations are included.

In recent months, however, the Canadian economy has been cooled by trade disputes with the United States and China, and other factors. The Carney government has decided that attrition won’t be enough to trim costs, thereby allowing spending in other areas.

Carney has said that the government’s priority spending areas involve investments such as infrastructure projects to support exports, defence spending, and tax cuts, each designed to make the Canadian economy stronger and more attractive to investors in the long term.

National Post also reported Wednesday that the upcoming budget will also feature a broad new strategy to boost the performance of Canadian business, including measures that will allow companies to write off their new machinery and other capital costs more aggressively.

The government also announced at the Ottawa event that the budget will include $382.5 million over the next five years for the Women’s Program that supports a variety of equality projects.

National Post

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


Online scams often target seniors, according the to Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. Ottawa is promising a new new Financial Crimes Agency to investigate crimes such online fraud and financial scams and recovering illicit proceeds.

An elderly couple has lost their life savings to online scammers, even after their bank warned about potential fraud.

The couple, from Brantford, Ontario, is out more than $1 million. It was money the unnamed couple in their 70s says they had invested throughout their lives, reports the

Daily Mail

.

“It was money that we inherited. It was money from the sale of our house. It was money we were going to leave our son.”

The scam began with what a simple pop-up on the couple’s computer screen.

‘I couldn’t get rid of it, the woman said. ‘It wouldn’t turn off.’

It appeared to be an alert about their finances. There was a phone number, which the couple called. The man told

CTV News

that he recalled being told his SIN number, ‘had been compromised and was being used for money laundering by a criminal organization that was involved in child pornography, human trafficking and drugs.”

As exchanges between the scammers and couple continued over a five-month period, reports the Daily Mail, the thieves posed as representatives from the Canadian Anti-fraud Centre, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, even Canada’s Treasury Board.

The scammers maintained that the couple’s bank accounts were in danger and instructed them on how to keep their money safe. The seniors were told to remove the money and send it to the scammers, who would return it to them after the investigation concluded. They were also directed to directed to buy gold bars and deposit their cash into a Bitcoin machine.

As the demands continued, the couple eventually checked with their bank. They. were told by their financial advisor that “this sort of sounds like fraud,” the woman recalled. However, the couple pressed on, telling the bank they were purchasing the gold as an investment. Ultimately, their losses totalled $900,000 in gold bars and $110,990 in Bitcoin.

Then the scammers disappeared.

‘We’re devastated,’ the man said. ‘It sounds very foolish that somebody would do something like this, but it was the trust that was built up over five months.”

Even worse, the couple also cashed in their RRSPs, so

when tax time comes they’ll have a tax bill,

which they don’t know how they will pay.

Bank fraud in Canada

has surged in recent years, reaching record levels in financial losses. According to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, Canadians 

lost over $638 million to fraud

in 2024. However, actual losses could be much higher, because only 

5 to 10 per cent of victims report instances of fraud to the authorities

. The effects of embarrassment and shame are thought to be the main reason only 5-10 per cent of incidents of fraud are reported, reports

the RCMP Gazette

.

In his 

Annual Report 2024

, the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments, reports

Hill Notes

, a parliamentary library newsletter, fraud is the leading consumer complaint about financial institutions, representing 38 per cent of complaints related to banking services. He also noted a dramatic increase in the number of consumer complaints about electronic transfer fraud and other types of digital fraud.

Seniors and vulnerable individuals continue to be prime targets,

says the RCMP

.

Ottawa is promising that Budget 2025 will outline a plan to develop a new National Anti-Fraud Strategy.

“Currently, the only legislative requirements are a limit of consumer liability for unauthorized credit card transactions at $50 and the understanding under the 

Canadian Code of Practice for Consumer Debit Card Services

 that consumers are not liable for losses in circumstances beyond their control, such as unauthorized use of the debit card,” says the federal finance department in a statement released on Oct. 10.

The government intends to introduce legislative amendments to the Bank Act that would require banks to:

  • Have policies and procedures in place to detect and prevent consumer-targeted fraud and mitigate its harms.
  • Obtain the express consent of bank account holders before enabling account capabilities which fraudsters can use to steal consumers’ money, including transfer and payment capabilities, and to permit account holders to disable capabilities they do not want.
  • Allow bank account holders to adjust their transaction limits to protect themselves.
  • Collect data on financial fraud and report it to the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada.

Ottawa is also announcing a new Financial Crimes Agency. It will bring together expertise to investigate crimes such online fraud and financial scams and recovering illicit proceeds. The minister of finance will work with the ministers of justice and public safety to bring forward legislation by this coming spring to set up the new agency.

Meanwhile, Canadian can learn more about how to protect themselves by visiting the

CAFC website

. If you are a victim of fraud, report it to your local police and to the CAFC online or by phone at 1-888-495-8501. Even if you’re not a victim, but suspect fraud has been committed, report it anyway, urges the RCMP. The information could help in ongoing investigations, inform the public about new scams, and help prevent others from becoming victims.

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The Canada Border Services Agency turned away an American with alleged ties to white supremacy.

An American man, named as a member of a whites-only group and twice turned away from Canada, complained border agents were aggressive and mean to him after finding “Nazi memorabilia” in his truck as well as animal skins painted with symbols authorities believed were rooted in European paganism.

Cormag Jaime Alainn took Canada’s Minister of Public Safety Gary Anandasangaree to Federal Court asking for a judicial review of the way the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) handled his complaint about officers who refused him entry at the New Brunswick border when he attempted to enter Canada from the United States last year with his pregnant Canadian wife.

“The complaint alleges that (CBSA officers) verbally abused and physically assaulted him, mistreated his wife and his pets and damaged his property,” Justice Whyte Nowak wrote in a recent decision.

The court heard that when Alainn tried to drive into New Brunswick, the U.S. citizen “declared that he was staying in Canada for two months and his pregnant wife (a Canadian citizen) advised that she had been outside Canada for the past five months. The couple were referred to secondary inspection.”

There Alainn “advised that he was newly married and intended to return to Maine to stay with friends after the birth of their first child,” said the Federal Court decision, dated Oct. 27.

Alainn told border guards “that he was unemployed and had no United States residence or significant family ties in the United States,” it said.

When border guards found a slide lock cable for firearms inside the box of the couple’s truck they “became concerned about the possibility” that Alainn might have a gun, which led border guards to conduct pat-down searches on the pair.

Border guards questioned Alainn about the contents of his truck, which included what they “considered to be ‘Nazi memorabilia’ as well as animal skins with spray painted symbols which the (CBSA agents) believed were rooted in European paganism,” said the court.

After Googling Alainn’s name, border guards confronted him “regarding his association with the Asatru Folk Assembly, which (they) believed to be a recognized hate group who advocate for white supremacy. According to a (border agent, Alainn) claimed that the items had no special meaning and he was simply interested in Nordic culture.”

The Asatru Folk Assembly (AFA) says its members must be “traditionally-minded” and of “Ethnic European” stock. “Let us be clear: by Ethnic European Folk, we mean white people,” their website says.

The AFA is registered as a religion in the United States but has also been branded “the largest neo-Völkisch hate organization in the United States” by extremism monitoring group Southern Poverty Law Center. The centre says the AFA has almost two dozen groups in the United States as well as affiliates in Canada.

The AFA espouse Ásatrú, described as a pre-Christian religion of Europe, and evoke the Norse imagery of Vikings. Their “religious imperative” is to ensure “the survival and welfare” of white people, their website says. Many of their public messages use a speaking style popularized in movies and TV as the way Vikings might talk: “Victory never sleeps”; “Hail Ragnvald”; “the gathered Folk spoke to personal victories before Honour was given to the Allfather with resounding energy.”

In a 2021 AFA newsletter, Cormag Àlainn was introduced to the organization’s membership: “Please welcome Christopher Taylor (Now named Cormag Àlainn) of North Dakota as our newest Apprentice Folkbuilder in the Baldrshof District. Chris has been very active in his District thus far.” The post ends: “Hail Chris Taylor! Hail the AFA! Hail Baldr!”

A Facebook page for a man with the same name and similar photographs shows a smiling man in a jacket and tie with two lapel pins; one is the three interlocking horns logo of the AFA and the other appears to be the symbol of Baldrshof, the AFA division that includes North Dakota. A LinkedIn profile gives his most recent employment status as a career break for full-time parenting — based in Nova Scotia — after leaving a job in North Dakota as an industrial machinery operator.

A CBSA officer issued a report denying Alainn entry to Canada “based on a finding that he was unlikely to depart Canada, and his circumstances were not indicative of a temporary stay.” He was allowed to voluntarily turn around and leave Canada.

Two months later, he again tried to come to Canada, to visit his wife. He was again refused entry. He then filed a formal complaint saying that “the reason given by the CBSA for his previous refusal was that he is the leader of a white nationalist group, which (Alainn) states is both untrue and not the reason that he was denied entry,” the court decision says.

In his complaint, Alainn alleged that during his March border stop the officers: “verbally abused him; physically assaulted him in conducting the pat-down search; denied him and his wife food and water for six hours; refused to allow the couple to care for their special needs dog and cat; and damaged his belongings in carrying out their search of his truck.”

During the agency’s investigation of his complaint, CBSA officials viewed video of the border interaction and spoke with Alainn’s lawyer, said the judge, and “when this informal attempt to resolve the complaint did not succeed” the CBSA issued a “final disposition letter” dismissing the complaint.

In a final disposition letter dated June 14, 2024, Dominic Mallette, the CBSA’s acting regional director general for the Atlantic Region, “concluded that (Alainn’s) complaint was unfounded.”

Nowak sided with Mallette.

Alainn “has not shown that the final disposition letter is unreasonable,” said the judge. “There is no merit to the applicant’s argument.” The letter “is intelligible and justified based on the facts and the law,” Nowak said.

She dismissed Alainn’s case, saying he “has not met his onus of demonstrating that the final disposition letter is unreasonable or that it was arrived at in a manner that was procedurally unfair to him.”

Requests for comment from Alainn, through his email address with the AFA, as well as from his lawyer in Canada, and from the AFA leadership in the United States were not answered prior to publication deadline.

National Post

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On Jan. 31, 2019, RCMP officers arrested Pastukhov in Montreal and Lalji in Toronto, charging both men with conspiracy to import cocaine into Australia.

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The story of a former Vice Canada journalist who led an international drug smuggling ring made headlines a number of years ago, in part due to the notoriety of the person charged.

But we’re now learning more about another key figure in the case, another former Vice staffer who is alleged to have taken part.

National Post reporter Adrian Humphreys joins Dave Breakneridge to discuss how new information in the case came to light, what we know about the alleged “deputy”, and where his court case is at.

Background reading:
He grew up rich and joined the hottest media empire. Then came the cocaine mules

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United States President Donald Trump looks towards Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney as they raise their glasses during a toast at a working dinner in Gyeongju, South Korea on Wednesday,

Donald Trump may not have wanted to meet with Mark Carney “for a while,” but the U.S. President had no choice but to face the Canadian Prime Minister at a state dinner in South Korea on Wednesday.

The two world leaders are in the country this week for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the city of Gyeongju, where South Korean President Lee Jae Myung held a separate special dinner in honour of Trump and other state leaders.

Carney was among the invitees at the event and was seated opposite Trump at a table that also included leaders from Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore, as reported by

Bloomberg.

Upon his arrival, Carney was asked if he had a message for the president and responded by pointing to Lee and saying, “I have a message for this president,” according to The

Canadian Press,

who noted that he and Trump smiled and pointed at one another as they sat down.

 (L-R) Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, US President Donald Trump, South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung, Vietnam’s President Luong Cuong, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, and Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney pose for a family photo upon their arrival for a special dinner hosted in honour of US President Donald Trump and state leaders at the Hilton Gyeongju hotel in Gyeongju on October 29, 2025.

Asked by

Global News

if he spoke to Trump over their meal, Carney said they had “a very good conversation.”

Earlier in the day, as Air Force One was touching down at Gimhae International Airport, Trump said talks with Canada weren’t part of his itinerary.

“For those that are asking, we didn’t come to South Korea to see Canada,”

he wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday morning.

The relationship between the two world leaders turned frosty last Thursday after Ontario’s anti-tariff ad campaign using a 1987 Ronald Reagan radio address went live. Trump “

terminated

” trade talks late last week, called the ad “fake” and accused Canada of cheating.

“Canada is trying to illegally influence the United States Supreme Court in one of the most important rulings in the history of our Country,” he said, referring to a pending decision on the legalities of the tariffs his administration has applied to imported goods.

The next day, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, following a chat with Carney, said the campaign was paused, but not until it aired during the first two games of the World Series this past weekend.

That, too, drew Trump’s ire and led him to call for an additional 10 per cent tariff on Canada

“over and above what they are paying now.”

He has yet to clarify when the increased levy will take effect and to which goods it will apply, nor has the Canadian government been informed, according to Carney.

Speaking to reporters in Malaysia

the following day, Carney said Canada was ready to sit down with the U.S. officials to continue making “considerable progress in the areas of steel, aluminum and energy.” He also suggested a deal was close and that some term sheets had been exchanged.

 Thailand’s Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, US President Donald Trump, South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung, Vietnam’s President Luong Cuong, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, and Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney attend a special dinner hosted in honour of US President Donald Trump and state leaders at the Hilton Gyeongju hotel in Gyeongju on October 29, 2025.

Monday morning, however, Trump said he had no desire to meet with Carney any time soon.

“No, I’m not going to be meeting with them for a while,”

he said.

“I’m very happy with the deal we have right now with Canada. We’re going to let it ride.”

Also on Monday,

Doug Ford defended

the ad and said the prime minister and his chief of staff saw it before it began airing on Oct. 14. The goal wasn’t to “poke the president” in the eye, he said, but to warn Americans of the dangers of tariffs and protectionism on both economies.

“Do you know why President Trump’s so upset right now? Because it was effective. It was working. It woke up the whole country,” Ford told reporters at Queen’s Park in Toronto.

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