WASHINGTON, D.C. —
For anyone trying to better understand U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign policy vision and its consequences for Canada, look no further than the recently released national security strategy (NSS) that
offers the White House’s vision of America’s global influence and its defence and economic power priorities.

Unlike the previous two strategies — under both Joe Biden and Trump 1.0 — the new strategy no longer focuses heavily on major power competition, instead extolling an “America First” foreign policy centred mainly on America’s economic power and national interests.

The document refers to Canada only once — in its call for allies to adopt trade policies that help “rebalance China’s economy toward household consumption.”

So is Canada’s near‑absence in the strategy a warning that it will be taken for granted by a superpower increasingly focused on burden-sharing, or could it be a blessing in disguise — a sign that Ottawa is no longer squarely in Trump’s firing line? 

“If I were a Canadian,” said Jennifer Kavanagh, a senior fellow and director of military analysis at Defense Priorities and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies, “I would feel pretty good about this National Security Strategy.” 

Homeland protection

The strategy says the U.S. will “reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region.” 

Kavanagh sees this as a positive for Ottawa because anything that protects the U.S. homeland protects Canada by default.​

“Keeping the United States military focused on securing the western hemisphere from foreign influence is obviously also beneficial for Canada, and there’s no indication or hostility expressed towards Canada specifically or anything even really asked of it,” she said.

“Anything the U.S. does to protect the homeland protects Canada as well.”

Justin Logan, director of defense and foreign policy studies at the Washington-based Cato Institute, says the implications for Canada from any NSS are bound to be limited, but he doesn’t see reason for concern.

The strategy focuses on keeping foreign powers out of the Western hemisphere, he explained. 

“If the threats to Canada are coming from outside the Western hemisphere, this is fine to good for Canada,” Logan said. “Unless,” he added, apparently joking, “we think the United States is going to invade Canada.”

The Trump strategy also specifies Europe’s internal politics, migration, and civilizational issues, tying demands to these for higher defense spending and policy changes, but again, no demands are made of Canada. 

According to Kavanagh, this means there’s no indication of Trump putting the idea of a 51st state into the NSS — or of any intent to interfere in Canadian politics. 

Friends with benefits

Many conservatives see opportunities for Canada in Trump’s latest national security strategy.

Trump’s determination to defend the homeland with a Golden Dome system — which is mentioned in the document — would, by default, have to include Canada, according to Wilson Beaver, senior policy advisor for defence budgeting and NATO policy in The Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for National Security in Washington. 

“You can’t have just United States defence without continental defense for North America,” he said. “So, I think there’s going to be a ton of avenues for cooperation between the United States and Canada related to continental missile defence.”

Beaver, along with many other defence experts, suggests that Canada should ramp up investment in its Navy, Air Force, and especially, its Arctic infrastructure to modernize continental defence.

Stephen Nagy, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and professor of politics and international studies at the International Christian University, agrees and says Canada can become an “indispensable partner” by investing in Arctic surveillance and maritime domains over the next two to five years to monitor Russian and Chinese activity. He also stresses the need to strengthen research ties in artificial intelligence, quantum, and munitions production, and to build infrastructure with Indigenous and Inuit communities to avert Chinese influence.

Given that the Arctic is Canada’s backyard, the drive for improving its security should be well-received in Washington. 

“If you look at the allies that are getting the best press here in Washington,” said Beaver, “it’s the ones that are seen as taking responsibility for their own security.”

Daniel Kochis, senior fellow in the Center on Europe and Eurasia at Hudson Institute in Washington, agrees and thinks Canada can use the Arctic as leverage, pointing out the region’s strategic importance while carving out a unique niche in Arctic, cyber, and NATO burden-sharing.

Kochis was also encouraged that the NSS confirms that Europe — and by extension Canada, he said — remains strategically and culturally important to the U.S. 

While Washington is unlikely to ever see Canada as a peer ally, according to Kavanagh, it can show itself as an asset, especially in Arctic security and air and missile defence.

“The goal should be to show that you are … an asset to the United States, not a free rider,” Kavanagh said.

The downsides

While Canada has the opportunity to prove itself as a regional ally and security partner, the national security strategy also makes it clear that Canada’s long-held security discount is gone. 

“For most of the post-Cold War period, Canada thought that it was not necessary to invest in the military, and they took the partnership with the United States for granted,” said Nagy, noting that Canada has become a liability in terms of Chinese influence operations in Canada and lack of Arctic defence spending.

Now, the U.S. is “telling allies within the NATO context and within NORAD — this is not just Canada — that they have to shoulder a much greater degree of the security burden.”

Avoiding multiple mentions in the strategy shouldn’t necessarily be taken for granted, according to Richard Shimooka, senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. 

“It doesn’t take much to set off the president or one of his advisors. So if Canada were to actually make a significant move on trade with China …, that may well provoke a pretty negative response,” he said. 

Despite there being no easy escape from Trump’s trade tensions and push for increased defence spending, Canada’s near-absence in Washington’s new national security strategy may not be as concerning as it appears. It signals neither neglect nor hostility, but instead an opportunity for Ottawa to redefine its value. 

“Nobody really thinks of Canada as a serious nation in terms of defence and security right now,” said Shimooka.

But he also noted that this could change. 

“If Canada can understand not just what’s happening now but what may happen in five or 10 years, we’ll be in a much better place going forward.”

National Post

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Lilly and Jack Sullivan’s names grace decorations on their paternal grandmother’s Christmas tree, but Belynda Gray is under no illusion the children are still alive.

Lilly, 6, and her four-year-old brother, Jack, were first reported missing from their home in rural northeastern Nova Scotia by their mother, Malehya Brooks-Murray, at 10:01 a.m. on May 2. Brooks-Murray told police she believed the two children had wandered away from their home in Lansdowne Station. Police started looking for the missing kids less than half an hour later, but, so far, one of the largest searches this province has ever seen has been fruitless.

“My place is decorated. I have (four) other grandchildren that come. But it doesn’t feel like Christmas at all,” Gray said in an interview from her home in Middle Musquodoboit, N.S.

When they vanished, Gray hadn’t seen Lilly or Jack in person for 18 months since they moved to Lansdowne Station to live in a ramshackle mobile home with their mother and her then partner, Daniel Martell, their stepfather.

But Gray has fond memories of the two children.

“Lily, when she smiled, her eyes lit up a room,” said her grandmother. “Her whole face glowed when she smiled. She was full of life, inquisitive, curious. She mimicked me like a little robot.”

By contrast, her little brother “very rarely smiled,” Gray said.

“Jack was never a smiley, smiley kid, even as a baby,” said his grandmother.

“He was very curious and always studied things that he would play with, one thing at a time, whereas Lily would dance circles around him. Lily was very outgoing and he was very reserved.”

In October, the RCMP brought in cadaver dogs to search 40 kilometres of territory, but they failed to find any sign of the missing children.

Investigators employed 22 of 23 of the province’s ground search and rescue teams during the hunt for Jack and Lilly, as well as two teams from New Brunswick. All told, they spent 12,253 hours searching for the children.

Mounties continue to work on hundreds of tips generated by the case and searchers have combed through about 8.5 square kilometres of terrain in the probe.

“I’ve got 25 years on (the force) and I absolutely expect to solve this before I retire,” Staff-Sgt. Rob McCamon, the officer in charge of Major Crime and Behavioural Sciences in Nova Scotia, said in an interview.

“This file will get solved long before that.”

He urged anyone with information about the case to contact investigators.

“Deep down, I believe there are people somewhere out there that may have information that will help us,” McCamon said.

Hundreds of RCMP officers from Nova Scotia and elsewhere who have been involved in the case are now heading into the holidays knowing the search that’s gone on for more than seven months has failed to produce answers.

“I think almost everyone on the team and almost everyone that I’ve worked with has kids or at least has relations who have kids,” McCamon said.

“The reality is they’re very vulnerable people in our society that need protection. And this is a very difficult file for all involved because we want the answers just as much as everyone else.”

It’s unacceptable for two kids to go missing and the RCMP not to find answers, he said. “We’re not going to stop until we do.”

The RCMP are confident they will solve the case.

“I worry sick that they may not,” Gray said.

Gray used to see a lot of the children, even after their mother split from her son Cody Sullivan, their biological father, more than three years back.

“The whole family was into their lives when her and my son were together; there were many visits,” she said.

“Once they split up, Malehya would bring the kids here just about every two weeks.”

Those visits continued for about a year after the breakup.

“And on one of the last visits, she stated that she had met somebody,” Gray said. “When she met Daniel she told us that he was uncomfortable with her coming here. So right away we said, ‘Well, why don’t you bring him along?’”

Brooks-Murray promised she’d mention it to him, Gray said.

“But the next time she came, she stated that it is just not working out for her coming here.”

For a time, Gray visited Lilly and Jack in the Truro area, where they were staying with their mother’s family.

“That worked out good for a while,” Gray said.

But in the fall Jack turned three, Gray said when she took him gifts and Halloween treats for both kids, something felt off. “Malehya seemed to be in a rush to hurry our visit.”

After about a year in Truro, Lilly, Jack, their mom and her new partner moved to Lansdowne Station.

“It was Daniel’s mother that gave them her big trailer and she moved into an RV,” Gray said.

“When Malehya told me she was moving to Pictou (County), she told me that his mother had a farm … and right away, I was picturing fields, like farmland. And I told her that sounded awesome. The kids would have a big yard to play in. That was wonderful.”

They “maintained light contact through Facebook,” Gray said.

Before Lilly’s birthday this past March, Gray spoke with Brooks-Murray about sending money to buy a gift for the girl. “I said, ‘I just want you to know that don’t think that we don’t love them because we think about them all the time.’ She said, ‘Look, I was thinking we’re probably going to come by for a visit.’ And I was ecstatic. I told her, ‘We can’t wait.’”

That visit never took place.

When Gray heard Malehya was pregnant with Martell’s child, she chalked up the lack of a visit to that.

“I congratulated her,” Gray said. “And I figured, okay, so this must be why it’s been a little distant right now, because, I mean, she’s pregnant. And I made up excuses about why she was too busy.”

At first, in the photos of Jack and Lilly their mom posted on social media, “they looked well cared for,” Gray said.

“They were happy and I just told myself it was okay if I didn’t see them because they’re living a good life.”

After the baby was born, the photos their mom posted of Jack and Lilly started to dwindle, Gray said.

She started worrying about seeing “a big difference in the kids. And I just kept telling myself, she’s got a new baby, and I know having a new little one, it can be a little bit rough.”

Then Gray’s son lost his job and stopped paying Brooks-Murray child support.

“I had no idea they were having other money troubles at the same time,” Gray said.

Gray learned of Lilly and Jack’s disappearance this past May 2 from a family member.

She was shocked the next day to see the yard around the mobile home where they were living was littered with old cars and junked appliances.

“I am on the poor side, but you can still fix up what you have,” Gray said. “It was very rundown. And there was a lot of trash around.”

Gray first met Martell in the days after Jack and Lilly went missing.

“He seemed to be fairly concerned,” Gray said.

“Malehya told me on Saturday (the day after Jack and Lilly vanished) that he’s been in the woods since the kids went missing, that he’s been scouring the woods ever since,” Gray said.

The mobile home where they were living sits along a gravel road surrounded by dense woods.

“The woods is a giant maze that if you’re not crawling under something, you have to climb over it,” she said.

“There was no way whatsoever that those kids … would want to do that, the woods were that bad.”

The little girl did not like bugs, said her grandmother. “Lilly had that princess thing about her even as a baby. So, I could not see her wanting to go there at all.”

Jack was curious, and did like bugs, Gray said. “But from all indications, from all the people on the property, he did not like the woods because he couldn’t walk and he kept tripping up and falling. So that tells me these kids would not go into the woods.”

Gray has her theories about what happened to Lilly and Jack. Now she’s looking for evidence about what was going on in their lives before the children vanished.

“I know Daniel’s family is all pushing that the children were taken,” she said. “That is what his side of the family has been preaching. I do not believe it.”

Mounties also say they don’t have any direct evidence of the children being abducted.

Gray knows there are wild animals in the area, including coyotes and bears. But she doubts they attacked her grandchildren. “You would find remains,” Gray said, noting searchers also told her they keep an eye on the sky looking for carrion-eating birds that would circle a fresh kill in the woods.

On the morning Lilly and Jack were reported missing, Martell has said he was laying in bed with Malehya and their new baby when Lilly came into their bedroom.

“She had a pink shirt on. We could hear Jackie in the kitchen,” he said. “A few minutes later we didn’t hear them so I went out to check. The sliding door was closed. Their boots were gone.”

He surmised publicly that the children slipped outside through a sliding door.

Martell said when they noticed the two children were missing, he immediately jumped in a white sport utility vehicle and searched neighbouring roads, looking in culverts. By the time he returned home, the RCMP were there, having been called by the children’s mother.

On the weekend after they vanished, Brooks-Murray told CTV that Jack and Lilly were not typically the type of children who would go outside on their own. “I just want to remain hopeful, but there’s always in a mother’s mind, you’re always thinking the worst,” Brooks-Murray said at the time.

Soon after the children disappeared, Brooks-Murray reportedly left Martell and the county with their baby to stay with family.

Martell has said that he provided the RCMP with his cellphone and that he worked with investigators.

Mounties conducted at least four polygraphs during their investigation. Martell’s test early on in the probe “indicated he was truthful,” as did the test for Brooks-Murray, according to documents police used to obtain search warrants in the case.

The children’s mother told police at one point that their biological father might have picked them up and taken them to New Brunswick. But investigators met with Sullivan on May 22.

“He said he did not know what happened to Jack and Lilly,” police noted. “He was home on May 2, 2025, and never goes anywhere. He has not been anywhere other than his house recently and has had no contact with Malehya since the children went missing.”

Cody Sullivan, underwent a polygraph on June 12, and he passed the examination, with his answers found to be “truthful,” according to police.

Lilly and Jack’s disappearance has “been a hard go” for the biological dad, who never fought for their custody, Gray said.

Her son is living with her and their place is decorated for Christmas. Four other grandchildren — all bearing some degree of resemblance to Jack and Lilly — will show up during the holidays to unwrap their presents.

“It forces you to stay in the here and now,” Gray said of their joyful presence.

But Gray hasn’t bought any gifts for Jack and Lilly. “Because what do I do with them afterwards?”

She’s hired a lawyer “trying to get legal guardianship” of her missing grandchildren.

Because she’s not a parent but just a grandparent, Child Protective Services wouldn’t divulge to her any previous concerns they’d had about Jack and Lilly’s care.

“So I’m seeking legal guardianship, mainly for information.”

Gray is now waiting to hear back from the courts.

“We’re waiting to see if (their mother) is going to dispute it,” she said.

Gray now wishes she’d stepped in earlier to help care for Lilly and Jack. “If I had time back,” she said, her voice trailing off.

“We would have gladly had (their mom) drop them off so she could have a break.”

Gray has steeled herself to the possibility the children may never be found. “The only thing I tell myself is I know that they know we love them.”

• Cadaver dogs to search for Jack and Lilly for the first time since N.S. siblings went missing
• Missing Nova Scotia siblings, Lilly and Jack, were seen with family the day before they disappeared

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Coffee prices in Canada have skyrocketed.

A recent report

from RBC shows coffee prices went up by almost 28 per cent between 2024 and last month. Food inflation overall was just 4.2 per cent year-over-year.

“Dry weather in Brazil and Vietnam curbed coffee production and exports to the world,” the RBC report says.

Statistics Canada reported that “by type, the increase was sharper for roasted or ground coffee (35.2 per cent), but less so for instant and other coffee (19.7 per cent).”

The average household expenditure on coffee has risen from $64 to $169 since 2010, StatCan reported.

According to

 
Remitly

, 72 per cent of Canadians drink coffee every day, making Canada the frontrunner in

 
per-capita coffee consumption

outside Europe.

Most of the world’s coffee is grown in the “bean belt,” the area around the equator. In this limited area, Colombia and Brazil are two of the largest coffee producers.

Sylvain Charlebois, senior director of Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab, said the price that farmers ask for their coffee, before retail, also known as the “farmgate price,” has gone up 266 per cent in five years.

Charlebois said he had visited both Brazil and Colombia in recent months and noticed a significant lack of production due to a lack of sun and early frost. Coffee needs a predictable climate and constant weather patterns, both of which have not happened recently. Brazil and Colombia have also faced intense droughts, rising temperatures, and volatile weather conditions. This has led to reduced yields and difficulties while harvesting. The reduced yields have led to tighter global supply chains, causing higher prices.

Charlebois also attributed the rise in coffee prices to a significant increase in demand for coffee in Asia, with many middle-class families making coffee their drink of choice, rather than tea. According to

Coffee Intelligence

, coffee consumption in Asia has gone up almost 15 per cent since 2018. The site also reports that China’s coffee consumption has gone up by nearly 150 per cent in the past decade.

Another factor driving up the price of coffee is the trade war with the U.S.. The United States slapped tariffs on coffee and Canada followed suit. However, Canada dropped its coffee tariffs in September and the U.S. dropped theirs in November.

Charlebois said Canadians shouldn’t expect coffee prices to drop any time soon.

“I think we’re going to be facing some production headwinds for a while,” he said.

• Study reveals what happens to those who opt for black coffee
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OTTAWA

— As Prime Minister Mark Carney ushers in a new era of climate policy for the Liberals, a key decision is hanging over the governing party’s approach to electric vehicles. 

Namely, will the 2035 sales mandate be kept or outright repealed?

The regulation currently requires manufacturers to hit certain sales targets for zero-emission vehicles, with those targets progressively rising until all new vehicle sales are zero emissions by 2035.

Despite campaigning on plans to reintroduce a purchase incentive, Carney’s government has yet to do so.

An internal briefing note, signed by officials within Transport Canada last December as the government prepared to announce a pause on the rebate program, which was released to National Post under federal access-to-information legislation, warned that ending the program was expected to be met with “strong criticism from industry, environmental organizations, consumers and other levels of government.”

Officials stated that around $2.9 billion had been spent on the incentive program since it was launched back in 2019 and that, as of November 2024, it had helped Canadians buy or lease more than 519,000 zero-emission vehicles and grow its market share.

Automakers and environmental advocates alike have blamed the ending of the program, which the federal government announced back in January, because it had run out of its allotted money, for the dramatic drop in sales.

Rick Smith, executive director of the Canadian Climate Institute, another think-tank, said scrapping the mandate altogether would “grind to a halt decarbonization in the transportation sector.”

Next to the oil and gas sector, the transportation sector remains the second-highest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Smith said the regulation, which the institute supports, is only part of the overall policy picture he believes the federal government must fulfil to make it easier for Canadians to make the switch to electric vehicles.

“Our hope is, in the new year, that the federal government make good on its commitments to bringing back purchase subsidies,” Smith said, adding it also needs to boost the building of public charging infrastructure.

With files from The Canadian Press

National Post

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A former university football player who sexually assaulted two women has been sentenced to just two years in prison because he is black and was feeling intense pressure around the time of the attacks, the judge said.

Omogbolahan Jegede, 25, had choked one of the women almost into unconsciousness.

“It should be noted that but, for the contents of the Impact of Race and Culture Assessment (IRCA), the pre-sentence report and all the mitigating factors surrounding Omogbolahan (Teddy) Jegede, this sentence would have been much higher,” Justice Frank Hoskins said in his Nova Scotia Supreme Court decision on Wednesday.

The women were attacked in residences at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S., in 2022 and 2023. One woman testified that Jegede choked her; one woman was forced to perform oral sex. Both women said they were physically dominated by Jegede, who is much larger than they are.

The author of an Impact of Race and Culture Assessment, a report funded under a new initiative from the Trudeau Liberals, wrote that Jegede was feeling intense pressure around the time of the assaults and did not have culturally appropriate support to turn to.

Jegede was convicted in a jury trial this year and sentenced Wednesday. Justice Hoskins added three years of probation, although he said that term could be shortened if Jegede makes significant progress in counselling.

The Crown had requested a sentence of up to 36 months, while defence counsel asked the judge to consider a conditional sentence to be served in the community.

“In my view, this is a case where the need for denunciation is so pressing the incarceration is the only civil way in which to express society’s condemnation of Mr. Jegede’s conduct,” said Justice Hoskins.

The judge noted that Jegede came from a strong, church-going family with strict parents who had stable professional careers. Jegede did well in school and excelled in sports, showing leadership capabilities. He told the court he grew up feeling loved by his supported family.

Later he began a degree in kinetics at St. FX, though those studies were interrupted by his crimes and subsequent charges. Nonetheless, he expressed interest in completing his degree and pursuing a masters, Justice Hoskins said.

He noted that Jegede was born in Lagos, Nigeria. He moved with his family to Canada in 2010. They lived first in Brampton, Ont., and then moved west to Fort McMurray, Alta. His mother said the transition to Canada was a significant adjustment for the family, and said their youngest son “experienced bullying in elementary school due to his accent and racial identity as a black child.”

The IRCA writer looked at this kind of cultural factor, outlining declines in Jegede’s course performance and mental health in his second and third years at St. FX. Jegede told the writer that he struggled with a sense of isolation being a black man in predominantly white university town. “I grew up around black people in Brampton and Fort McMurray. Many of them were immigrants, which allowed us to relate to each other on many levels, especially culture. It was like that until I moved to Antigonish to attend university.”

Reading from the IRCA, Justice Hoskins said: “The absence of adult mentors or role models further exacerbated Mr. Jegede’s vulnerability. His parents had hoped his football coach would provide guidance, but this need went unmet.”

Hoskins said the IRCA “provided valuable insight. It has provided me with an understanding of Mr. Jegede’s background from a social, cultural perspective.”

However, he also circled back to the ” two very serious sexual assault and offences against two different victims at the same school, in similar circumstances, approximately five months apart, which is concerning, because it suggests that Mr. Jegede may be dangerous … In other words, this is not an isolated incident involving one victim, the nature of both offences and their immediate lasting consequences make them very serious offences.”

Hoskins went on to note that the “primary aggravating factor, in this case, is the violence and serious evasive nature of the sexual assaults, particularly the offence involving (one of the victims), where she was forced to provide Mr. Jegede oral sex, while her movements were being forcefully controlled by (him).”

He responded in a vehement tone to defence counsel’s suggestion that a conditional sentence served in the community would be appropriate. “I’m in the view that I cannot exclude a federal period of incarceration as a fit and proper punishment for these offences.” (A federal sentence is at least two years; a shorter term would be in a provincial jail.)

Hoskins arrived at two years by determining 18 months for the more violent and invasive of the two sexual assaults and six months for the other. He tacked on three years probation, rather than more prison time, because he saw Jegede as having potential to turn himself around. He noted Jegede is only 25 and has significant family and community support.

He even expressed support for early parole: “I think Mr. Jegede will be a really good candidate for probably early parole given everything I’ve read. There’s no question about that.”

The use of IRCAs is relatively new. Their use has arisen from an initiative begun under the Justin Trudeau Liberals.

In April 2021, David Lametti, former minister of justice, announced funding of $6.64 million over five years, followed by $1.6 million annually to implement IRCAs across Canada. “IRCAs are pre-sentencing reports that help sentencing judges to better understand the effect of poverty, marginalization, racism, and social exclusion on the offender and their life experience,” the justice department stated in a 2021 press release. “IRCAs explain how the offenders lived experiences of racism and discrimination inform the circumstances of the offender, the offence committed, and the offender’s experience with the justice system.”

• Nova Scotia First Nation bans premier from Indigenous land in wake of cannabis crackdown
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