As anthem singers are wont to do at major sporting events, Rufus Wainwright put his own spin on the lyrics to O Canada before Game 5 of the World Series Wednesday night in Los Angeles.

The 52-year-old Canadian-American musician and composer’s first tweak came in the second line when, instead of singing “True patriot love in all of us command”, he changed the last four words to “that only us command.”

If that sounds familiar, it’s because Canadian singer-songwriter

Chantal Kreviazuk did the same

when she performed Canada’s anthem at a 4 Nations Face-Off game in Boston in February. That performance was booed lustily by the largely U.S. crowd after the Star Spangled Banner received similar treatment ahead of tournament games played in Canada.

A publicist for Kreviazuk told

The Canadian Press

the change was in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments toward Canada, which at the time were focused on annexing the sovereign nation to have it become the 51st state. Her Instagram story that night featured a selfie with the words “that only us command” written on her left hand.

As Wainwright continued the bilingual version of the anthem Wednesday night at Dodgers Stadium — where the visiting Toronto Blue Jays defeated host L.A. 6-1 to take a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven series — he also tweaked the French lyrics.

Where the

official lyrics

are “Car ton bras sait porter l’épée (For your arm knows how to wield the sword),” it sounded as if Wainwright, who was raised in Montreal, omitted the “sait,” making it, “For your arm wield the sword.”

In the next line, instead of “Ton histoire est une épopée/Des plus brillants exploits (Your history is an epic/of brilliant deeds)”, it sounds as if the three-time Grammy nominee changed the last three lines to “tes glorieux exploits (of your glorious deeds).”

Three-time Grammy-nominated artist Rufus Wainwright performs O Canada ahead of Game 5 🇨🇦

📺: Watch all the #WorldSeries action LIVE on Sportsnet pic.twitter.com/njg1isgkGX

— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) October 30, 2025

National Post has contacted Wainwright’s management and publicist for comment.

Negative viewer reaction to his performance and rendition was swift online and continued into Thursday morning.

“Stop changing the damn lyrics to O Canada,” Lisa MacCormack Raitt, former Stephen Harper Era MP and deputy leader to his successor, Andrew Scheer,

stated on X.

Elia Markos, a radio host for CJAD800 in Montreal, said the good news was that Wainwright elected to do the bilingual version.

“The bad news: The guy doesn’t know the lyrics,”

he posted to X.

“This is objectively one of the worst renditions I’ve ever heard,”

offered Julian McKenzie

, a writer for The Athletic who was at least “excited” at the prospect of TSN’s Jay Onrait doing “a SportsCentre Top 10 worst anthem renditions.”

Toronto-based Social Media Manager, Editor, and writer Dan Levy wondered why Major League Baseball and the Dodgers organization can’t find more capable singers. Just two nights earlier,

Canadian singer JP Saxe changed the lyrics

of the national anthem from “our home and native land,” to “our home on native land.”

“Literally could have picked a random Blue Jays fan out of the crowd to do a better job,”

Levy posted to X

. “This was another horrendous performance at the #WorldSeries.”

Up in Ottawa, Senators season ticket holder

Scott Scarrow

suggested the Jays “find someone to mess up the US Anthem” in Game 6 on Friday night at the Rogers Centre.

The Jays have yet to announce who will sing the anthem on Friday — though National Post has sent an inquiry to find out — but one Canadian legend has offered up his services.

“Dear @bluejays,” beloved children’s troubadour Raffi Cavoukian wrote on X. “I’ll be in Toronto on Friday and I’m ready and able to sing our anthem if needed.”

dear @BlueJays, I’ll be in Toronto on Friday, and I’m ready and able to sing our 🇨🇦 anthem if needed. ⚾️ #WorldSeries

— Raffi Cavoukian 🇨🇦 (@Raffi_RC) October 30, 2025

• Canadian-American performer ‘mortified’ after Trump rally plays his cover of ‘Hallelujah’
• ‘Our home on native land’: Canadian singer changes lyrics of the national anthem at World Series game

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Canada’s financial intelligence agency is reporting that it easily set a new mark last year in the number of cases that it sent to police for possible criminal investigation, just one metric in the broader picture of a country facing escalating problems with money laundering and terrorist financing.

The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) reported Thursday in its 2024-25 annual report that it generated 2,700 disclosures that supported police investigations, easily the organization’s most ever.

The record-setting year reflects huge jumps in fraud, cyber ransomware, online child sexual exploitation and a range of other online crimes that are often directly related to other financial crimes, such as money laundering and terrorist financing. These darker sides of the online world are rising in Canada and elsewhere along with the virtual currency industry.

According to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, Canadians were scammed out of $643-million in online fraud in 2024, almost three times the figure from just four years earlier. Only between five and 10 per cent of these types of scams are reported to authorities, the federal government has said. The RCMP would not comment.

The document from FINTRAC, which aims to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing activities while protecting personal information, also reported:

• More than 1,300 assessments, a category that includes compliance examinations, an increase of more than 40 per cent from the previous year

• 23 notices of violation, the most ever, that led to fines of more than $25 million

• 32 cases of non-compliance disclosed to police, more than double from a year earlier and by far the most ever

FINTRAC’s report comes just a week after the agency announced that it had imposed its largest penalty ever on a Vancouver crypto currency company, more than nine times as much as the second largest ever. The fine against Xeltox Enterprises Ltd., which operates as Cryptomus, was for $176,960,190 for a range of administrative violations, including failing to report transactions of more than $10,000 in virtual currency on 1,518 occasions in July, 2024.

Ottawa is trying to crack down on the growth of online crimes. Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne announced earlier this week that the federal government’s budget next week will include plans for a new Financial Crimes Agency. The new body will aim to improve Canada’s ability to tackle online scams, money laundering and other types of fraud.

The bolstered effort to fight fraud and other crimes is expected to get a boost from legislative changes to the Bank Act, scheduled to be unveiled this spring. The new legislation will require banks and other financial institutions to play a larger and more proactive role in detecting and fighting various types of fraud.

Julie Matthews, an Edmonton-based, anti-scam advocate, said there’s little doubt that scams are on the rise and that the perpetrators seem to be able to increasingly focus on those most vulnerable to a specific type of scam. Romance scams, for example, are often the most devastating because they can involve both a financial loss and shame, she said.

“It’s disgusting.”

Matthews said education and awareness are still the best tools to fight scams.

National Post

• B.C. crypto company lands record $176-million fine from FINTRAC
• High-rolling slot machine gambler at centre of $1M fight between B.C. lottery and FINTRAC

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Brigitte Macron, the wife of French president Emmanuel Macron, was at the centre of a cyberbullying trial in France.

Her daughter from a previous marriage told a Paris courtroom that her mother has been deeply affected by false claims that she is a transgender woman. “She knows perfectly well that her image will be used to back these theories,” Tiphaine Auzière said, noting that her mother had to be “careful about her choices of outfits, of posture,” the

BBC reported

.

She also told the court that she noticed a “deterioration” in her mother’s health since the false claims started.

“She hasn’t been elected, she hasn’t asked anything of anyone, and she comes under attack,” said Auzière, also pointing out that Macron’s grandchildren were teased at school about it.

Now, Macron, 72, is always “on alert that the slightest image of her could be used against her to feed hateful attacks,” Auzière said, according to

The Guardian

. “So she can’t have calm in her daily activities … Systematically, her identity is being questioned, people are constantly talking about this to her.”

Here’s what to know after the two-day trial came to an end on Tuesday.

Where do the fake rumours stem from?

The fake rumours started around the time that Emmanuel Macron was first elected in 2017,

according to France 24

. The false claims were spurred on by criticism the couple have faced after an unusual start to their relationship. The first lady was the president’s teacher, more than 20 years his senior, when they met. They kept in touch and eventually got married in 2007,

People Magazine reported

.

The false rumours were compounded in 2021, after a woman who called herself a medium, Amandine Roy, posted a YouTube video. The video featured an interview with self-described independent journalist Natacha Rey. The two discussed the “state-sponsored lie” that Macron was a woman. Rey claimed she discovered Macron was born male after a three-year investigation.

The video was picked up by media and the fake rumour spread further.

In March 2024, right-wing influencer Candace Owens said she would stake her “entire professional reputation on the fact that Brigitte Macron is in fact a man” in

a post on X

.

Maya-Anaïs Yataghène, a French journalist with France 24 who reported on the story at the time, refuted such claims.

“It’s fake news that has all the ingredients of a rather effective conspiracy theory. It involves the Head of State, it implies the presidency is lying to the public to hide a double life and, ultimately, it’s transphobic,” she said.

What is the cyberbullying trial about in France?

There are 10 people facing accusations of online harassment and spreading false claims, including the theory that France’s first lady was assigned male at birth,

Le Monde reported

. They range in age from 41 to 65.

One of the accused, Aurélien Poirson-Atlan, is an advertising executive who used the pseudonym Zoe Sagan on an X account that has since been suspended,

according to CNN

. He

reportedly

promoted the idea that Macron was a transgender woman to his 200,000 followers on the Sagan account. He said his posts were satirical,

per The Guardian

.

Roy, who posted the video about Macron to YouTube in 2021, is accused of spreading the same false rumour. She is known to the court as Delphine J. (She was found guilty of slander last year in a separate trial,

the BBC reported

, along with Rey, the woman featured in the video. Both were acquitted in July. That decision is being appealed by Macron.)

One defendant, identified as 49-year-old IT technician Jérôme A, faced questioning at the trial about social media posts from 2024 that he had written or reposted. He said it was “just a joke” and that he had a “relatively small” following on X,

according to The Guardian

.

“Like a lot of people, I’m asking why I’m here today. Today, you can send people to court for tweets,” he said to the judge.

“Do you need a permit in France to crack a joke?” asked the defendant identified as Jérome C, who worked as a debt advisor. He disagreed with the harassment claim and said he “liked posting on social media from his sofa” at night.

The

verdict for the eight men and two women is expected in January

, according to RFI.

They are facing up to two years in prison.

What about the defamation trial in the U.S.?

Macron and her husband filed a defamation lawsuit in Delaware against Owens in July. Owens has several posts and videos about Macron that promote the false claim that she is living as a transgender woman.

In March, Owens posted a video to YouTube with the title, “So…Is Brigitte Macron a man?” It has garnered more than two million views. She called the lawsuit “an obvious and desperate public relations strategy,”

CNN reported

.

“What people forget is these are human beings … a married couple. They have a social life, they have a private life together, they have the same feelings and the same hurt from these sorts of defamatory statements as anybody would. And it does have a material impact on them,” said the couple’s lawyer Tom Clare.

In September, Clare said that Macron

would be putting forward scientific evidence

in the U.S. case to prove she is a woman.

• Ten people to stand trial over online harassment of French first lady
• Michael Murphy: Macron’s fumbling could mean the death of the Fifth Republic

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

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

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

And he noted Prime Minister

Mark Carney’s Oct. 16 comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

The centre’s targets

include Al Jazeera

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Interview with Norman Spector: ‘The war has been transplanted into Canada’
• Interview with Noa Tishby: Two years after October 7, Israel has lost the PR war

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

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

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

National Post has reached out to

Winnipeg’s airport authority

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

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

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

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

uncontrolled aerodrome procedures

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Staffing shortages have been a

long-running issue

at NAV Canada, and one the industry

continues to grapple with

.

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

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

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

improve the situation

moving forward.”

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

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

• Wind shear whistleblower warns of dangerous landing conditions at Canadian airports
• Airline pulls eight planes out of service over issue with seat covers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

National Post

• What is the temporary foreign workers program? Mark Carney says he won’t be scrapping it
• Poilievre calls on Liberals to shut down temporary foreign worker program

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

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

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

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

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

The emails were sent to Rogers in response to an

agency-wide memo he sent in June

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

National Post

cnardi@postmedia.com

• Why Canada’s spy boss just sent a scathing memo to the agency’s senior management
• CSIS failed to disclose use of new ‘intrusive’ technology to minister and court: watchdog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

National Post

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