National Post (Politics) Archives - Page 3 of 373

What was supposed to be a CA$30 Christmas gift shipped from Canada turned into a US$802 surprise for Boston’s Bonnie O’Connell after a customs paperwork error triggered the U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods.

The grandmother received the tariff bill from FedEx several weeks after a Barbie doll mailed from Nova Scotia was delivered to her home.

“I just got a pain in the pit of my stomach,” O’Connell told local

ABC affiliate WCVB in an exclusive interview

. “I didn’t even know what to do or say.”

The doll — dressed in a Professional Women’s Hockey League jersey with a Tim Hortons logo — was meant as a holiday gift for a four-year-old granddaughter who recently started skating and has an affinity for Barbie figurines.

O’Connell spotted the reasonably priced item while perusing Walmart’s Canadian website and asked a cousin in N.S. to pick it up and ship it to her in the U.S.

That’s where the problem began.

Because U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration have imposed a 35 per cent tariff on goods from Canada, all cross-border shipments now require additional customs paperwork. The U.S. later eliminated the de minimis exemption, a rule that allowed shipments under $800 to enter duty-free, though it still grants

a duty-free gift exemption

if the goods being shipped are worth less than US$100, are clearly marked as a gift and are shipped from one personal, non-commercial address to another.

O’Connell told WCVB that a clerk at FedEx advised her cousin they would handle the paperwork.

When the shipping form was prepared, she said her relative was unaware that a decimal point on the item’s declared value — CA$29.97 — had been shifted two places to the right, increasing it to almost CA$3,000.

“How many Barbies do you know that cost close to $3,000,” O’Connell wondered to WCVB.

After converting the inflated value to U.S. currency — about $2,100 — and applying the 35 per cent rate, customs officials assessed a tariff of about $742. With additional FedEx fees, O’Connell’s bill was $802.

If she owed that amount, O’Connell wondered why the carrier delivered the package to begin with.

Frustrated when FedEx told her it could take months to resolve, and after receiving a final demand for payment recently, she contacted WCVB. The news station contacted FedEx, which has since removed the charge from her account.

On its website

, FedEx notes that “inaccurate declared values are one of the most common reasons for duty and tax disputes.”

When shipping internationally, the shipper, the recipient or a third party can be selected as responsible for any duties and taxes owed after the goods are assessed by customs. If one isn’t specified on the shipping label, the bill defaults to the recipient, in this case, O’Connell.

National Post has contacted FedEx for comment and more information on how duties and taxes are processed for items shipped from Canada to the U.S.

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.

Click here for more Canada

It was presented to Canadians as an exceptional option to an already approaching natural death. How did doctor-assisted dying become so popular?

Nearly a decade after the Criminal Code was amended to permit doctors to end, under certain conditions, a consenting person’s life, one in 20 deaths in Canada now involve medical assistance in dying (MAID).

While proponents say the numbers reflect a pent-up demand for an end-of-life option that’s long had broad support among Canadians, critics fear MAID is being sold as a medicine, a “death therapy,” and that some lives are being ended based on overly loose and questionable interpretations of the law.

“I think most people in Canada would at least acknowledge that we’ve gone way beyond an exceptional practice that is a last resort measure,” said Trudo Lemmens, a University of Toronto health law and policy professor.

The curve may be flattening: The year-over-year rate of growth has fallen further and faster than some expected. However, the number of Canadians who died by a doctor-administered lethal injection in 2024 reached its highest level, a total of 16,499 people, to date.

What was once considered antithesis to the Hippocratic oath by the country’s largest doctors’ organization — actively expediting death — has become a relatively common medical act.

But how many assisted deaths are too many?

While a new paper argues Canada should expect the absolute number of MAID deaths to rise as the population grows older, and that there’s no ideal or correct number of assisted deaths, others are calling for an overhaul of the system, arguing reviews of select MAID cases in Ontario point to some serious problematic practices.

“It is troubling that documented problematic applications of MAID have not yet resulted in either criminal or professional regulatory intervention,” Lemmens

wrote in a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Bioethics devoted to MAID

In Ontario, all MAID deaths are retrospectively — after the fact — reviewed by the Office of the Chief Coroner.

In January 2024, a special MAID death review committee was also set up to highlight cases chosen to “generate discussion, thought and considerations” to improve practices.

Of 4,356 MAID deaths in Ontario in 2024, most, 88 per cent, met all legislative requirements, according to the coroner’s office.

But concerns flagged by the

death review committee

, of which Lemmens is a member, include lax interpretations of legislated safeguards, minimal or sloppy assessments of a person’s capacity to choose an assisted death, minimal discussions around alternative means to relieve someone’s suffering, risks of coercion from family members or burned out caregivers and doctors accepting nods and hand squeezes as signs of final consent in the moments before the first injection.

The law no longer requires that a person’s natural death be reasonably foreseeable, nor must people exhaust all available options to relieve suffering. For those whose natural deaths are near, same-day or next-day MAID are possible. In Canada’s wait-list-beleaguered health system, it can be easier to get access to MAID than to needed care, Lemmens and others have argued.

In B.C., a grieving mother whose daughter died by MAID in July 2023 is pushing for a review of a decision by the provincial doctors’ regulator dismissing her complaint that her daughter would not have opted to end her life if doctors had provided appropriate care for her psychiatric condition, which would have made her better able to manage her physical condition. The mother alleges that her daughter died due to inadequate care and “an overall failure of the health care system,” according to a health services review board ruling granting her an extension to apply for a review of the complaint dismissal.

This month, American conservative commentator Glenn Beck offered to pay for Saskatchewan’s Jolene Van Alstine to travel to the U.S. for surgery for a rare parathyroid disease that has left her virtually housebound with extreme pain and nausea. Van Alstine has said that if she can’t get treatment,

she will choose an assisted death

Lemmens finds these tragic cases uncomfortable, arguing they’re too easily politicized. Beck has criticized Canada’s “culture of death.”

“But I think it’s still appropriate to say that it’s quite extraordinary, it’s simply a fact, that MAID has been prioritized and is so easily accessible,” Lemmens said in an interview with National Post.

He worries about further expansion, including hot button issues like MAID for mental disorders (due to come into force in 2027) and advanced requests that would allow people with degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s to make a written request for MAID that could be granted years later, after they lose the capacity to make medical decisions for themselves.

Polls show high support among Canadians for advance requests. However, Lemmens wrote, “Who will decide when the time has come? On what basis will these judgements be made?

“How can we expect physicians or nurse practitioners to end the life of a person who has no clue as to why they are being sedated or getting a needle inserted into their arm?”

Others say critics are painting a distorted view of Canada’s MAID regime. “Don’t let naysayers … who appear to be convinced that the Canadian MAID system is gravely flawed, seriously unsafe and because of ‘provider concentration’ essentially corrupt, throw the baby out with the bathwater,” American philosopher and bioethicist Margaret Battin wrote in

American Journal of Bioethics

in response to an earlier critical analysis by Lemmens and his co-authors. (A small number of providers — 102 — were responsible for about a third of all MAID deaths in 2024.)

Despite its flaws, the system is “generally well safeguarded, and, above all, it is humane and respectful for those who wish to legally choose how their already challenging lives shall end,” Battin said.

There have been 76,475 MAID “provisions” since the practice was legalized in 2016.

Last year, 732 Canadians were euthanized as “Track 2” cases, meaning that while their suffering was “enduring and intolerable”, their natural deaths were not reasonably foreseeable. People could have years, if not decades, of life.

“These are 732 people who would be alive (today),” Lemmens said. “We have to ask, in all these 732 cases of people who suffered intolerably, were there no other options? I have my doubts.”

“Some of the frequent providers will say there’s a high provision because there’s a high demand. ‘It’s the law of the market,’” Lemmens said.

However, Canada (where 5.1 per cent of all deaths were via MAID) has bypassed Belgium (3.6 per cent of all deaths in recent years) where euthanasia has been legal since 2002 and is quickly gaining on The Netherlands (5.8 per cent of total deaths), Lemmens said. At 7.9 per cent of all deaths, Quebec has the most prolific regime in the world.

Disability rights advocates fear people with disabilities who are also grappling with poor housing, poverty and other oppressive conditions are especially vulnerable to MAID.

But if the numbers are too high, “the obvious question is: too high relative to what,” University of Toronto philosopher and professor emeritus Wayne Sumner asked

in another paper

in the Canadian bioethics journal.

“MAID is not like, say, immigration, where the government can set an annual intake target and then work toward hitting it,” Sumner wrote. Instead, the annual number of deaths will be determined by demand — the number of people requesting and qualifying for it — and the number of practitioners willing to provide it, he said.

“The current legal regime for delivering MAID is enormously popular among Canadians,” Sumner wrote, noting how one sample of 228 Canadians aged 60 and older polled found 47 per cent would “probably” or “definitely” choose MAID if facing a long and painful death from a disease like cancer. “That is a lot of potential demand,” Sumner wrote.

MAID is more scrutinized and regulated than other forms of end-of-life practices, like withdrawal of life support, added Sumner, who believes the opposition is more ideological than pragmatically driven.

“If we regard an increasing number of joint replacements or abortions as a success, with supply having risen to meet demand, why should we think that an increasing number of MAID provisions is a failure, or somehow a problem,” Sumner wrote.

“If more awareness, more providers and more support are good things for these other services, why are they a bad thing for MAID?”

“Of course, I think MAID Is very different from a lot of other medical procedures, just by virtue of its very nature,” Sumner said in an interview. MAID, he wrote, “both causes death and is intended to do so. That makes it special enough to require a statutory exemption from the general legal prohibition of consensual homicide and assisting a suicide.”

Sumner said the numbers to date reflect a built up demand “that takes a while to work its way through the system.”

“I don’t know if the rate of increase is going to decline to zero” he said. As more people hit the 75-years-plus mark (the median age of death by MAID is 78), the absolute numbers will rise, though he doubts the number will reach the 10-per-cent-of-all-deaths mark some have predicted.

When cases do hit the media of people choosing MAID because of a lack of medical or social services, “I’ve never quite understood why people who point to these cases think that the fix needs to be with MAID,” Sumner said. “I think the fix needs to be with the medical system.” He said he struggles to square the argument that disabled people are unable to make an autonomous choice for MAID with the fact the fight to legalize assisted dying in Canada has been led by people with disabilities like Sue Rodriguez.

Sumner supports Lemmens’ calls for more reporting and more transparency. However, “people who wanted (MAID) a legal option are happy that it’s a legal option. They don’t seem to be swayed too much” by the negative publicity, he said.

According to the Canadian Association of MAID Assessors and Providers, the “rare, edge-case scenarios” that have hit the media “do not reflect the reality for the vast majority of Canadians who seek MAID, nor the clinicians who provide it with professionalism and compassion.”

The group was responding to a September feature article in The Atlantic on MAID provocatively headlined:

“Canada is Killing Itself.”

“One day, administering a lethal injection to a patient was against the law; the next, it was as legitimate as a tonsillectomy, but often with less of a wait,” the opening reads.

On a Reddit thread, most of those commenting on the article spoke in strong support of having the choice, sharing stories of relatives who have died by MAID: an uncle with late stage bowel cancer whose pain was excruciating; a grandmother with late stage esophageal cancer. “I do not want to be a barely breathing shrunken version of myself in bed, you best believe I will avail myself of MAID if I am eligible, and I am thankful that others are able to for themselves,” one nurse wrote.

“I personally know two people who had MAID, and I think I’m not unusual,” Sumner said. “The families that were involved in those two cases were very happy with the way things went.

“That’s what partly keeps the public support strong. They can see it happening.”

Lemmens, who is pushing for a “rethink” of the regime, including, at a minimum, more rigorous screening and procedures to determine a person’s decision-making capacity, believes the emphasis on making sure people have access to MAID has trumped protecting people from a premature death if they’re opting for MAID in a moment of despair, “because they think they no no other option.”

In Ontario, if a review of medical charts shows “concerning actions” by a medical professional, the Office of the Chief Coroner can inform the appropriate regulatory college, the Ministry of the Solicitor General said in an email to National Post.

Since 2016, the OCC has referred 13 MAID practitioners to their respective regulatory colleges.

“The OCC is not informed of the outcome of any investigation undertaken by the regulatory colleges, however findings may be publicly shared by the college,” the ministry said.

“The OCC will coordinate closely with law enforcement if a referral is necessary, however to ensure the integrity of any investigation, information cannot be shared regarding the notification or investigation.”

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 newsletters here.

Click here for more Canada

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney’s decision to appoint close friend and investment banker Mark Wiseman as Canada’s ambassador to the U.S. is leaving a sour taste in the mouths of Quebecers because of his affiliation with the Century Initiative, which has lobbied for mass immigration by 2100, and his criticism of supply management.

But will this nomination realistically hurt Carney’s relationship with the province that gave him 44 MPs in the last election — almost granting him his coveted majority?

Michel Breau, who spent a decade working for Liberal ministers Mélanie Joly and Pablo Rodriguez, does not think the decision, in itself, could hurt Carney in Quebec. But it could pile on to a series of decisions or comments that seem insensitive to the province.

“You add this on top of the Alberta MOU and Steven Guilbeault’s departure from cabinet, on top of Marc Miller’s comments on the state of French in Quebec, and you start to have a little bit of a drip, drip, drip, in terms of stuff that seeps a little bit, I think, into the woodwork of, does Mark Carney really get Quebec?” he said.

Guilbeault had warned in different interviews that the federal government may be stoking Quebec separatism by walking back its climate commitments with the Alberta MOU, while Miller, a day after becoming culture minister, said that

he was pretty “fed up” with the debate on the French language

in Quebec which he said is “generally identity-based.”

As a result, Quebec Premier François Legault called Miller a “disgrace to all Quebecers.”

Legault’s government has been conspicuously quiet about Wiseman’s nomination, leaving the Parti Québécois and its federal cousin, the Bloc Québécois, free rein to lambaste the incoming ambassador for positions he has taken that seem insensitive to the province.

“Mark Carney is proving once more that he is adhering to the good old federal tradition of not caring about Quebec,” said Parti Québécois MNA Pascal Paradis. “As long as Quebec will not be independent, we will not have our own voice in the concert of nations and we will be forced to submit to Ottawa’s choices that are against our own interests.”

In 2023, Wiseman retweeted a Globe and Mail column calling for the Century Initiative’s aim of increasing Canada’s population to 100 million by 2100 to become federal policy “even if it makes Quebec howl.” Even though those were not his words, but those of columnist Andrew Coyne, Wiseman has deleted his publication on X.

Wiseman has also penned opinion pieces calling for Canada to increase its productivity, and, in one of them, took aim at the “sacred cow of supply management.” That position is also a concern in Quebec, which has many dairy farms and could be vulnerable to any further breaches to supply management should they happen in future trade talks.

“To name an ambassador who is openly indifferent, even hostile, to the values and the interests of Quebec is in itself an aberration. We understand that the Americans are targeting Quebec’s sectors such as supply management, culture, language, forestry and aluminum, and we will now have a negotiator that is not at all interested in Quebec on a permanent basis in Washington,” said Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet.

Breau, who is now associate vice president at the public affairs firm Wellington Dupont, said he suspects that Wiseman will likely keep his head down, stay out of the media cycle and build relationships with the Trump administration as soon as he starts in February.

“And I would think, especially given the backlash that it’s had in certain parts of Quebec, that there’s going to be some encouragement to do so,” he said.

In year-end interviews, Carney has said that he is the one, ultimately, who will decide how Canada-U.S. trade negotiations go — not Wiseman. He also said that his government supports supply management and that it will not be on the chopping block.

“I decide,” he said

in an interview with Radio-Canada last week

. “The next ambassador will be a member of the negotiating team. But the leader of the team will be me.”

But his decision to name Wiseman, despite criticism in Quebec, may be a warning sign.

“I think this just becomes yet another feather on the scale that might start to tip it,” said Breau. “This is not just a one-off incident that someone’s walking back. This is an irritant that could potentially be out there if things do go wrong, if something else gets misstated.”

“So, it is a bit of a risky potential opportunity for a flare-up.”

National Post

calevesque@postmedia.com

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 newsletters here.

Click here for more Alberta

Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page.

Canada’s agriculture industry employs tens of thousands of temporary foreign workers to help pick the produce that winds up on your plate.

While many see this as a lifeline, a way to earn money to send to families back home, there are concerns the system is set up to exploit, and in some cases, abuse them.

Robert Cribb, founder and director of the

Investigative Journalism Bureau

, joins host Dave Breakenridge to discuss the conditions under which these migrants work, and how the system designed to help bring them here for employment may actually be setting them up for harm.

Further reading:

‘This is the new slavery’: Migrant farm workers underpaid, abused and injured

Subscribe to 10/3 on your favourite podcast app

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 newsletters here.

Click here for more Canada

A segment on CBS’s 60 Minutes about the Trump administration’s deportation of Venezuelans was made available to viewers in Canada on Monday after being pulled in the U.S. a day before.

The roughly 13-minute feature focuses on El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) prison, where 252 Venezuelan men were deported in April, and shines a light on the conditions and treatment to which they were allegedly subjected while detained for four months.

“When you get there, you already know you’re in hell,” former prisoner Louise Munoz Pinto told 60 Minutes reporter Sharyn Alfonsi in the interview, viewed by National Post after it was shared widely online following its inadvertent and brief availability on Global TV’s app and website.

“You don’t need anyone else to tell you.”

CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, citing the need for additional reporting, had postponed its airing on Saturday, the day before it was scheduled to be broadcast, according to

Bloomberg.

“My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be,” she said in a statement. “Holding stories that aren’t ready for whatever reason — that they lack sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices — happens every day in every newsroom.”

In a leaked internal memo obtained by

Axios

, Weiss detailed a need for voices from Donald Trump’s administration to make the story more balanced.

“If we run the piece as is, we’d be doing our viewers a disservice,” she wrote.

But Alfonsi, in a letter sent to colleagues on Sunday and obtained by the

New York Times

, said the “story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices.”

She defended the reporting team’s efforts to get GOP officials on the record and said their silence was “a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story.”

Alfonsi also alleged Weiss’s decision is “not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”

Trump and 60 Minutes have a well-documented history, highlighted most recently by a $16-million settlement to his lawsuit against CBS. The president alleged the show deceptively edited the responses of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in a way that harmed his election prospects in the 2024 election.

After the settlement, the Federal Communications Commission approved the acquisition of CBS’s parent company, Paramount, by Skydance Media, a company owned by the family of Larry and David Ellison, avowed Trump supporters. The Ellisons then acquired Weiss’s media startup, the Free Press, and made her the head of CBS News.

Trump maintains he doesn’t have a cozy relationship with the network.

“For those people that think I am close with the new owners of CBS, please understand that 60 Minutes has treated me far worse since the so-called ‘takeover,’ than they have ever treated me before,” he wrote on

Truth Social

last week. “If they are friends, I‘d hate to see my enemies!”

National Post has contacted CBS News and Global parent company Corus Entertainment for comment on the segment and its publication in Canada.

‘Welcome to hell’

The piece itself explores life inside the maximum security prison in Tecoluca through the eyes of two deportees who say they were labelled as terrorists and gang members allegedly without due process.

Louise Munoz Pinto, a Venezuelan college student, told Alfonsi he had no criminal record and was seeking asylum in the U.S. when he was detained for six months before being deported along with the others. He thought they were being sent back to Venezuela but landed in El Salvador.

“When we got there, the CECOT director was talking to us. The first thing he told us was that we would never see the light of day or night again.”

“He said, ‘Welcome to hell. I’ll make sure you never leave.’”

Prisoners’ heads were shaved, their hands and feet allegedly bound, they were forced to their knees and some were beaten with fists and batons.

“There was blood everywhere, screams, people crying, people who couldn’t take it and were urinating and vomiting on themselves,” recounted Pinto, who said four guards allegedly beat him until he bled and broke one of his teeth by slamming his face against the wall.

Venezuelan national William Lazada Sanchez told Alfonsi they were made to stay kneeling for 24 hours, with failure resulting in a prisoner being placed in an isolation cell referred to as “the island.”

“The island is a little room where there’s no light, no ventilation, nothing. It’s a cell for punishment where you can’t see your hand in front of your face,” Sanchez said.

The Trump administration has defended its deportations, alleging the men were all dangerous criminals.

But Alfonsi cited a report from Human Rights Watch on CECOT that found that nearly half had no criminal history and only eight had been convicted of a violent or potentially violent offence. ICE records reviewed by 60 Minutes confirmed that just three per cent had been sentenced.

“They sent them to a place where they were likely to be tortured to send migrants across Latin America the message that they should not come to the United States,” deputy director Juan Papier told Alfonsi.

El Salvador’s government also didn’t respond to her interview requests.

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.

Click here for more Canada

Vandhana Mohanraj and her partner Faisal Fakhani had just finished their regular grocery run when the couple decided to stop for coffee.

At the storefront for the fledgling

Caffeo shop

in downtown Toronto, Mohanraj punched in her choice – a vanilla latte – and tapped her card on the payment pad. Then the café’s “barista” went to work.

Behind the plate-glass window, an all-arms robot filled the metal filter basket with fresh grounds, inserted it into an espresso machine, then topped the resulting coffee with steamed milk.

Mohanraj sipped her first android-prepared brew and smiled. Fakhani took a swig and agreed with Mohanraj’s assessment – surprisingly good.

“We have a (human) barista who is always burning our lattes,” he said. “This is not burnt.”

Flesh-and-blood employees, a once-obligatory element in the service industry, were nowhere to be seen. Caffeo is just one small example of an intriguing trend: retail-level enterprises that harness technology to operate without customer-facing staff.

Across Canada, there are convenience stores with no clerks, hotels where guests check in, check out and order fresh towels on their smart phones, and gyms and virtual golf driving ranges that run on a completely self-serve basis.

And the idea, a sort of bricks-and-mortar parallel to the artificial intelligence revolution, is certain to keep expanding, analysts and entrepreneurs say.

“Everyone’s looking at ways to cut costs or to navigate the skills shortage,” says Wendy Cukier, a Toronto Metropolitan University professor and expert on disruptive technologies. “In the absence of available labour, more and more companies are looking at ways to automate functions.”

Some of the technology has been around for years. Pharmacies, supermarkets, cinemas and others have long allowed customers to pay for their products at self-serve kiosks. Lately, a few businesses have

backed away

from the terminals because of theft concerns and customer objections, but they remain ubiquitous.

Eliminating the cashier, drinks-maker or front-desk clerk entirely may be the inevitable next step.

It could be especially appealing to service-sector employers who have grown reliant on temporary foreign workers or international students to fill jobs that others balk at or avoid because of the low wages, said Cukier.

As for Canadian consumers, many seem well-primed for service by machine in places where human contact would once have been a given, say the operators of staffless outlets.

“There is definitely a subset of people that don’t want to talk to some frontline service staff,” said Tason Lee, CEO of the

Tracer Golf

golf-simulator company. “They don’t want to feel that pressure. They’re kind of in that online world where they can buy something off a website and expect it to be here and that’s it.”

These businesses still need some humans, naturally, to carry out management and certain physical tasks. For now, at least. Lisa Hutcheson of JCWG Retail Consultants said she recently saw a demonstration of robots that can actually stock store shelves.

“Will it completely eliminate the need for people? I don’t think so,” said Hutcheson. “(But) there’s a place for it. We’ll continue to see various different models of it. I think it’s here to stay.”

Aisle24,

with over 30 cashierless convenience stores in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia, is a Canadian pioneer, its first outlet opening in 2016. For CEO and founder John Douang, the automated retail model seemed like a natural, even necessary, evolution from the type of corner store his parents ran as he grew up. They worked 16-hour days, often just manning the cash register, employed Douang and his siblings part-time and had to shut down and lose revenue just to go on vacation, he recalls.

“A lot of the time, from my own experience, the cashier just sits there, waiting for customers to come in,” said Douang, a software engineer. “Our goal wasn’t ‘Hey, let’s slash all the jobs.’ It was ‘Let’s make it more efficient so we can repurpose that labour sitting there.’ ”

Aisle24 customers download the company app, which allows them access to the locked stores. Then they shop and check out at self-serve scanners. As part of the sign-up process, “members” upload a selfie photograph. If they leave without paying, the raft of cameras in the store, coupled with facial-recognition software, allows the system to alert clients if they made an honest mistake — or take other action if theft is suspected.

He sees the concept as a physical, yet technology-driven, answer to the massive popularity of online shopping.

“E-commerce has been taking a big chunk of retail for a long time,” he said. “The newer generation of Gen Zs and Gen Alphas are very much accustomed to the digital aspect of life, and businesses really need to think about that. They need to adapt.”

At Ontario’s Trent University, the idea has been taken a step further. The campus’s

Bata Bean

café and market uses Amazon’s JustWalkOut software, which detects the goods customers leave with and automatically charges their accounts.

The same technology is being used at Toronto’s Scotiabank arena, home of the Raptors and Maple Leafs, allowing customers to tap their card, take the drink or snack they want and leave without waiting for a human to cash them out. Blue Jays fans can do much the same at the nearby Rogers Centre, which is equipped with a similar system supplied by a firm called Zippin.

In Quebec City, Manoir des Remparts is among establishments that have transformed the traditional hotel routine, offering a “

staffless operation

” that has guests check in and out and contact company employees via their smartphones. Human housekeeping staff, of course, are still needed.

It’s an approach that was also employed until recently by a much larger concern, the Sonder hotel chain. That firm, founded in Montreal and once valued at more than $1 billion, suddenly went out of business in November, shuttering scores of hotels and apartments worldwide for financial reasons. Its demise seemed unconnected, however, to its use of automation.

The fitness club has, in some instances, also done away with in-person service people. Train by FW, a brand of B.C.’s Fitness World, is a 24-hour “micro-gym” that runs on a “staffless model,” its

website

indicates, but can be used by independent trainers and their clients. Xscape Fitness and Recovery in Belleville, Ont., also operates “staffless,” with access around the clock through a smartphone app, though personal trainers are available.

Tracer Golf is part of a growing industry of virtual golf practice facilities, where electronic devices measure the speed, angle and other aspects of a player’s swing to deduce the flight and distance of the balls they hit. An animated video of the result is projected on a screen.

Some competitors have combined the equipment with bars, restaurants and other amenities. Tracer stripped down the model instead to make it more affordable. Golfers book their practice bay online and use a smartphone to unlock the front door to facilities that have no on-site staff. The equipment in their bay automatically comes to life at the time they reserved and shuts down when the session is over. Tracer’s eight employees, who service nine locations spread throughout the Toronto area, and handle customer inquiries by intercom or phone, mostly work remotely.

CEO Lee says he expects the fully self-serve concept will expand, at least for certain services that can be readily automated.

Lee concedes the trend could mean less paid work.

“I have kids so it’s something I think about — what kind of jobs are they going to have?” he says. “If you keep going down that thought path, it can be scary.”

Cukier places the staffless service-industry trend in the broader context of artificial intelligence, which includes “physical AI” like intelligent robots. Though she was once a skeptic about its impact, she now sees the technology potentially replacing almost any type of worker.

“It doesn’t matter where I go,” said the author of Innovation Nation: Canadian Leadership from Java to Jurassic Park, “I feel that people are asleep in terms of how fast change is coming.”

It’s change that’s even coming to the retail coffee business. Caffeo’s gear is made by

Jaka Robotics

, a Chinese company that also supplies the likes of Toyota. Using it to assemble an espresso-based beverage, said Fakhani, was “less charming” than visiting an independent coffee shop, a couple of doors away. But the experience compares favourably to chain cafés like Tim Horton’s and Starbucks, he said.

Bottom line, next time he and Mohanraj are lugging their groceries home they’ll probably stop for a robot latte.

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.

Click here for more Alberta

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

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 newsletters here.

Click here for more Canada

Most Canadians will be inclined to wish others a Merry Christmas this season, but some of them will do so with the stress of the season hidden behind the festive greeting, a new survey has found.

Polling of 1,002 adults in Canada conducted by Research Co. found that

67 per cent of Canadians prefer Merry Christmas

when giving and receiving the seasonal salutation.

That’s up five points from the firm’s

same polling in 2024.

For 2025, almost as many are not sure or don’t care (16 per cent) as there are those who prefer the less denominational Happy Holidays (18 per cent), which saw a six-point drop from last year.

Across Canada, the traditional greeting is preferred by the majority of respondents. Regionally, Atlantic Canadians (77 per cent) and Albertans (72 per cent) voiced the strongest support, while the lowest (59 per cent) came in Quebec, where a quarter of respondents said they preferred the modern greeting.

More of those who voted for the Conservative Party of Canada in this year’s election (77 per cent) preferred Merry Christmas than did Liberal (63 per cent) or NDP (51 per cent) supporters.

The pollster also asked people about stress and fun this holiday season, and while more than half (52 per cent) expected more of the former, almost a third (30 per cent) anticipated it to be more stressful. The rest were unsure.

“More than a third of Generation X members in Canada (34 per cent) foresee a stressful holiday season,” Mario Canseco, president of Research Co., said in a news release.

“Fewer millennials (31 per cent), Generation Z (29 per cent) and baby boomers (27 per cent) share this feeling.”

Regionally, worries of stress were highest in Atlantic Canada (38 per cent) and lowest in Quebec (23 per cent). Conservative supporters (34 per cent), too, were more inclined to foresee stress than Liberal (28 per cent) or NDP (26 per cent) voters.

As it has in previous years, the Vancouver-based firm also quizzed Canadians about classic holiday traditions and foods. People overwhelmingly expressed fondness for Christmas dinner staples such as turkey (82 per cent), cranberry sauce (65 per cent) and fruit cake (58 per cent) for dessert, but enthusiasm for mulled wine (36 per cent) and plum pudding (44 per cent) was more tepid.

The survey also explored when Canadians first learned the truth about Santa Claus, with a majority (52 per cent) saying they found out at age nine or younger. The same percentage felt nine and younger was the appropriate age to tell kids, 36 per cent thought 10 or older was reasonable.

Conducted Dec. 9-7, the poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 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.

Click here for more Alberta

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.”

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.

Click here for more Canada

OTTAWA — An Alberta cabinet minister is calling on the federal government to clamp down on immigration abuses in the commercial trucking sector, warning that inaction is putting lives at risk.

Alberta Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen said the inevitability of trucks crossing provincial lines puts the onus on Ottawa to act on fly-by-night trucking companies that exploit badly trained foreign drivers.

“Fraudulent (trucking companies) doing bad things in other provinces and then moving to Alberta is, unfortunately, something that’s been happening,” Dreeshen told National Post.

Dreeshen had a

busy 2025 tackling fraudulent activities

in Alberta’s trucking sector, shutting down five substandard driver training schools and 13

so-called chameleon carriers,

which are trucking companies that change identities to hide past safety violations.

A web search shows that at least eight of the 13 shuttered chameleon carriers have ownership ties to the South Asian community.

The Edmonton-based Indo Canadian Driver Training School Inc., was on a list of three of the shut-down schools shared with National Post. The other two schools can’t be named as they’re appealing the government’s decision.

Dreeshen said that the federal government has stepped up “on the reporting side” to help the provinces and territories keep tabs on chameleon carriers, but added it needed to do a better job of vetting migrant truck drivers.

The federal government also announced

steps to crack down

on the intentional misclassification of truck drivers as independent contractors, a scam known as Driver Inc., in November’s budget.

Dreeshen stressed the need for better oversight of Indian nationals recruited to drive trucks in Canada.

“There’s more we can all do … to make sure that, if there are people from India who want to move to Canada, and want to get involved in the trucking industry, for them to know the expectations of the training that we have here in Canada,” said Dreeshen.

Roughly

one in five of Canada’s truck drivers

have South Asian backgrounds.

A recent

report published in National Post

argued there’s not enough publicly available data to determine whether South Asian drivers are disproportionately at-fault for deadly incidents on Canada’s highways.

Dreeshen said that Alberta recently started tracking the

safety records of individual drivers

, but added these records don’t yet include nationality. Prior to the change, which started on Dec. 1, accidents would go on the record of the driver’s company.

His comments came just before Friday’s report

from the Alberta Next Panel

, which recommended that the province hold a referendum in 2026 on exercising more control over immigration.

Dreeshen declined to say where trucking would fit in a “made in Alberta” immigration system, but did say the changes would focus on better tailoring immigration to the province’s economic needs.

“I think what it is going to look like, in 2026, is something similar to what Quebec has; where the province can indicate to the federal government, these are the types of immigrants that we want, this is the amount of immigration we think our province can handle,” said Dreeshen.

The House of Commons transportation committee just wrapped up hearings on the

changing landscape of Canadian trucking

. Committee chair, Liberal MP Peter Schiefke, didn’t respond to a request to comment on this story. Emails to the offices of federal Immigration Minister Lena Diab and federal Transport Minister Steve MacKinnon also went unanswered.

National Post

rmohamed@postmedia.com

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.

Source: National Post (Politics)

Click here for more Canada

Click here for more Canada

Click here for more Alberta

Subscribe to 10/3 on your favourite podcast app

Click here for more Canada

Click here for more Canada

Click here for more Alberta

Homeland protection

Friends with benefits

The downsides

Click here for more Canada

Click here for more Alberta

Click here for more Canada

Click here for more Alberta

loonie politics

premium content