Bestselling author of eight books, including The War on The West and The Madness of Crowds, Douglas Murray has just released On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization.

In it, he paints a detailed picture of the minutes, and hours, of the devastation wrought in the Gaza envelope during the massacres of October 7, 2023, as well as the hours, days and months afterwards; the heroism of Israelis who defied orders, and fended off Hamas on their own; the weaponry IDF soldiers discovered in civilian Gazan homes; and the exclusive harrowing accounts of the massacre’s survivors. As one of the first outside observers inside Gaza, he recounts the “pitiful sight” and the “utterly avoidable devastation” triggered by the Hamas-led attacks.

Murray takes a microscope to the question of how modern Jew-hatred has reached unprecedented levels since wartime Europe. That includes the global campus demonstrations that sprung up almost immediately, which he describes as “revolutionary cosplay,” their message communicated with “bludgeoning” — subsequently thanked by a Hamas leader as the “great student flood.” He follows the blood-soaked international money trail that has made Hamas leaders billionaires, and details the global web of Jihad supporters — the “death cults” — as an imminent danger not just to Israel, but to civilization.

Dave Gordon interviews Murray, a columnist for the New York Post and The Free Press, who has for decades filed stories from Middle East war zones, frequently appears on major broadcast channels, and recently had a much-discussed, tension-filled appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast.

What compelled you to write the book?

DM:

Three things. One, was I wanted to get down as accurate an overview as possible, of what happened on October 7 in Israel, by collecting first hand testimony, and much more. The second thing was to give a firsthand account of the Israeli response to October 7, the war, and just get as much as possible up close, an account accurately and truthfully, in an era where much is written a lot about it untruthfully.

And thirdly, to look at this question which haunted me throughout the last 18 months and indeed many years before, which was: why so much of the world finds it so hard to decide which side to be on, in a fight between a democracy like Israel, and a death cult like Hamas?

After October 7, Western democracies doubled down on a two-state solution. Why?

DM

: I think that much of Western policy making has just ended up in the realm of magical thinking in recent years. Put aside whether or not they deserve one, but there’s this completely magical belief that the Palestinians have to get another state, and it will right some great historical wrong. This thinking goes, it would cause an outburst of peace and growth, not just in the Middle East, but in the wider world.

I think they mucked up in Gaza so badly, by now it’s clear that another Palestinian state would just be another terrorist proxy state, another Iranian front state, and that it would have done nothing to improve the lives of anyone in the region or the wider world.

The two state solution paradigm has failed completely since 1948, when Arabs rejected having a state, and rejected ever since, and they only ever responded with violence.

Is this a case where Western leaders don’t want to say the conflict is about jihadism, lest they be seen as Islamophobic?

DM

: Yeah, very weak and dangerous world leaders will quite often try to give themselves some kind of collateral in the human rights bank, by saying how important a two state solution is, and how important another state for the Palestinian people is.

My belief, as I explained the book, is that the “death cult” has the ideology that seeks a downfall, not just of Israel, but of all Western democracies. The triumph of jihadism. The people who think they’re buying themselves time by wittering on about a two state solution are, at best, in denial.

In the book, you mentioned that you spent time in Israeli prisons, face-to-face with Hamas terrorists. What that was like?

DM:

It was to meet, and see for myself, the people who carried out the atrocities and invaded Israel in order to slaughter, rape, kidnap and seek death.

What I really wanted to confront was this question of what this unbelievable evil actually is. And one of the things I say in the book is that I think that we’ve stripped ourselves of the language of evil in the West. In popular culture we speak like: There’s no such thing as evil, we haven’t understood it properly yet, people are misunderstood, or people had a bad childhood, or much more.

But when you stare into evil, what they did on October 7, we need to use this term evil because that’s exactly what it is. People not just engaging in evil actions, but rejoicing positively high on them. Now that is an evil we have seen in the West, in sometimes profound glimpses.

Things like 9/11, the Manchester arena bombing in 2017 (that took 23 lives), Pulse nightclub attack in 2016 (that took 49 lives), the Bataclan massacre in Paris (which took 138 lives.) We’ve seen it, but we’ve tried to turn our eyes away from it, and I wanted to focus the reader on the reality of it.

I’m sure you’ve heard people say that Israel’s PR war has fallen considerably short since the war began. Do you agree? And what could it do differently?

DM

: I tend entirely to disagree. I think Israeli communications has explanation of the actions, of the ideas, much better in this conflict than any previous conflict involving Israel that I’ve covered.

Twenty years ago, getting information out of the Israelis was getting blood out of stone. In this conflict, access to media and information is pretty much real time, and a lot better.

That’s different from whether or not the world wants to accurately report what is happening.

This morning, I opened the BBC website, as I do most mornings, among other media. And you know, despite all the other things going on in the world, there’s story number two about Israel, which is a story which has really no immediate news relevance, and almost always there will be misreporting, deliberate and malicious reporting of Israel’s actions, and deliberately skewed or under-reporting, of the actions of Hamas and their governments of Gaza.

You can criticize Israeli communication strategies as much as you want. But it’s extremely hard to communicate things accurately when most of the world’s media will gleefully report Hamas claims as if they are true and interrogate and misrepresent any actions of the IDF as if they are lying.

This is obviously a big challenge for Israel. The war for public opinion is extremely important. But it’s not as important as the immediate aims of the war, which are the release of the Israeli hostages and the destruction of Hamas.

Maybe if somebody compiled a list of the top 20 thinkers like yourself and a list of the top 20 resources to go to for information about Israel, and hand delivered it to our friends at certain media, and said, “it’s clear that you don’t have this information on hand, now you do. Now there’s no excuses.”

DM:

I’m very fond of the quote of Jonathan Swift, the great Irish-born satirist who said “it is not possible to reason somebody out of the position they were not reasoned into.” And for many people, the Israeli-Hamas war is not something that they feel about because of reason.

I think that’s the same with what I warn about, in On Democracies and Death Cults. I warn about the magical thinking, as well as the bigoted thinking in the West that originates not from reason, but out of anti-reason and out of senses of bigotry and prejudice, ignorance and much more.

That doesn’t mean I’m fatalistic. I think that there’s a lot of good that can be done by actually reasoning people out of positions that they were reasoned into, or would be reasoned into. And I think that’s a very important thing to do. I don’t give up on that. But I think a lot of people in Canadian society and elsewhere in the West, are simply swimming in lumps of bigotry that they may not understand.

I am very keen to bring across, people should notice the order in which the enemies of Israel have their targets. It really isn’t the case that they simply hate Israel. They always hate Israel first, and everyone else in the West next. I can’t think of a society in history that would have tolerated that before now.

That idea of Western society being at risk — do people know what that really means? Would it be more accurate to say they want to kill off liberal values, like a “liberalicide”?

DM:

Yeah, yeah.

People should notice that. For instance, when I’ve been in Canada in the last couple of years, I noticed that the anti-Israel protesters will fly the Palestinian flag, the flag of Hamas or Hezbollah, and various other death cults. They will never fly the Canadian flag.

By comparison when, for instance, last year I spoke at an event for Christians, Jews, Hindus, progressive Muslims and others, which was supportive of Israel, we finished the evening by singing Hatikva and O Canada.

I challenge anyone who thinks that they know what they’re playing with in the “anti” circles, check whether or not any of the Palestinian or Hamas supporters and the anti-Israeli bigots in Canada ever sing O Canada.

They believe that the destruction of a country of 9 million people is possible. But they also want the destruction of the rest of our societies in the West.

Whether or not we continue to fail to identify that, will have huge repercussions, not just on Israel, but Canada, America, and the rest of the West as well.

You’ve embedded yourself in the IDF extensively. How would you answer a critic who’d say you were only getting the Israeli side of the war?

DM:

Well, I’m not only seeing that. I mean, there’s a lot in the book about the Palestinian perspective, and Hamas perspective, and I’ve spent a lot of time with their leadership. But when it comes to embedding, you tend to, in a conflict zone, have to choose a side you embed with.

Some journalists from outside the region have had permission from Hamas to go into Gaza, but it’s extremely limiting, and with my own views of Hamas, they would not welcome me warmly.

When somebody does occasionally raise this question, I’m always struck by the fact that when I’m in Ukraine reporting, as I have done in the last few years, I’ve embedded with Ukrainian armed forces. What I find interesting is that nobody says to me, “why didn’t you hop over the line and embed with the Russian army as well?”

There’s a sort of inbuilt presumption that, unlike reporting from Ukraine, if you report from Israel and Gaza, you are uniquely prone to not reporting the other side. I think that’s flat out wrong. And by the way, in the book, there’s plenty of criticism of the failures of Israeli military and intelligence in the run up to, and obviously on the day of, October the seventh. The book by no means avoids criticism of Israeli failures.

In light of October 7 should there be accountability for the Israeli officials who signed off on the 2005 Gaza disengagement?

DM:

Well, I always think people should be held to account for failures, but they almost never are. It’s unlikely that George W. Bush and members of his government are going to be made to take responsibility for forcing elections on Gaza in the wake of disengagement, when so many people, including in Israel, warned that this would lead to only one thing, which is electing Hamas. One of the reasons there hasn’t been an election in the Palestinian areas of Judea and Samaria in 19 years is precisely because no one wants Hamas elected.

This engagement question is incredibly sore and difficult, because it was obviously the decision of Ariel Sharon. And he was strongly encouraged by the Americans and others in the West, including the sort of know-nothings who go on about the “two state solution” again.

Gazans could have made a lot of it. But as usual, they couldn’t resist deciding that the annihilation of their neighbours was more important than the creation of a state themselves. They prioritized the destruction of Israel over the creation of a viable entity in Gaza.

With rising Jew-hatred, what might be the tipping point for Jewish North Americans?

DM:

It’s extremely hard to say, because everybody has their own early warning system in their heads, in their hearts. All I would say is that many Jews in the West have felt the first time in their lives, the re-eruption of hatred of Jews.

And by the way, nowhere more so than in Canada. To my mind, Canada has disgraced itself in the last 18 months by showing that that anti-Jewish hatred is permissible and is tolerable in a way which hatred of no other group would be.

I would submit that if there were a large number of protests across Canada calling for lynching of black people or Indigenous people or gay people or anything else, that all of the strength of government and civil society would condemn the people doing that. Swiftly, too.

This is the great shame of Canada, that synagogue after synagogue and Jewish school after Jewish school across Canada should have been attacked, fire bombed, shot at. Canada’s politicians, if they care about Canada’s view in the world, should address this. But of course, seems that they’re doing the classic thing of feeding the crocodile.

So what would Prime Minister Carney have to say and do, in your view, to show that he’s truly on Israel’s side?

DM

: First of all, he wouldn’t do the pathetic signalling of talking about a two state solution and revealing, once again, that he knows nothing about the region.

The fact that he did that so early was very telling. He simply wants to feed the crocodile in the hope it’ll eat him last. What he reveals is he knows nothing of what has happened in the region, in particular, in the aftermath of October 7.

What he should do is to make it clear that in a fight between a democracy and a death cult, Canada will be on the side of the democracy. And if thousands of Canadians had been massacred in one day in their homes, and hundreds more taken hostage and held in a terrorist entity next door to Canada, I would like to think that the world sympathies would be with our friends in Canada, and not with the terrorist group who did that to them. But it seems that many Canadian politicians and others would in that situation, expect people to side with the terrorists. I think anyone who does that is showing not only they’re an ignoramus, but they have no moral compass at all.

Why should people pick up the book?

DM:

 October 7 was one of the most appalling atrocities of our lifetime, and it’s a warning for people in the West, not just to stare into the face of evil and to understand evil, but to understand the reality of what we could all find someday.

It’s also about what is happening in our own societies in the West, the threat to it, and the opportunity we still currently live in to avoid those threats.

In the end, the book is optimistic. I say, towards the end of the book, I saw a society that after the seventh of October, rose back, and showed that life is a thing worth fighting for, and that in the face of the death cults like Hamas, those of us who value life can win.

This interview was edited for brevity

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The Royal Canadian Navy returned to Halifax Friday from a deployment to Antarctica with tales of spotting exotic wildlife and samples that could lead to a greater understanding of climate change.

HMCS Margaret Brooke’s four-month voyage took the Arctic and offshore patrol ship to South America and beyond, logging close to 25,000 nautical miles, or 46,300 kilometres.

“It’s been just such an amazing experience to visit an area of the world where less than one per cent of the world’s population has visited,” said Cmdr. Teri Share, the skipper of Margaret Brooke.

The Arctic and offshore patrol vessel was the navy’s first ship to be north of the Arctic Circle and south of the Antarctic Circle all within the same year.

“Not only were we able to do all this amazing work with science in the south, within Antartica, but the relationships that we built with Latin American countries on the way south and north was just phenomenal,” Share said. “It’s in an area where the RCN hasn’t been able to really operate in the last couple of decades. So, it’s been amazing to be able to help build those relationships again.”

The ship, crewed by 83 people, carried both sailors and scientists.

“We traveled to the South Shetland Islands and then along the Antarctic Peninsula collecting a lot of sea floor data and water column data to understand the effect of climate change on retreating glaciers,” said Alex Normandeau, a research scientist from Natural Resources Canada who made the trip with Margaret Brooke.

He was one of 15 federal government and university scientists aboard.

One of their tasks was to learn more about how glaciers are retreating.

“Some of the things we were looking at (are) where glaciers were positioned, for example, 50 or 100 years ago and how fast that retreat happened, and to do that we collect some sediment cores to go back in time,” Normandeau said.

Scientists plan to start analyzing those samples at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography next week.

“When we open those cores and look at the different layers that we see in there, that’s when we’ll have a better story to tell about climate change,” said the marine geologist.

“We hope to learn about the rate of glacier retreat related to climate change over the years and how that has evolved through time. So, has it been increasing over the last 10 years or the last 20 years?”

The crew spotted “massive amounts of wildlife” during the voyage including three or four different types of penguins in Antarctica, said the ship’s captain.

“One actually hopped in one of our small boats and ended up spending a little time in there,” Share said. “They’re everywhere down there; they’re beautiful.”

They also spotted several different types of whales, seals and sea birds.

The Antarctic looks like Canada’s Western Arctic, with mountains and glaciers, Share said. “So, we felt like home almost at some points.”

The trip aboard Margaret Brooke “was the first large-scale expedition for science like this,” Normandeau said.

“This was really showing how we can work with the navy,” he said. “It also shows that we can do that type of work in other environments, like the Arctic, in the future from these vessels.”

Margaret Brooke steamed through half-metre thick ice in Antarctica. “Now this crew can say we have some pretty significant experience doing ice breaking,” Share said.

Her ship also navigated amongst icebergs. “That’s another check in the box for us.”

It didn’t take long for the sailors in uniform to get used to having scientists aboard in civvies, Share said. “Within a couple of days, I think we were a well-oiled machine.”

The deployment took Margaret Brooke first to the Caribbean, then South America, where federal government scientists came aboard in Punta Arenas, Chile, for the voyage south of the Antarctic Circle to the northern tip of Antarctica.

During the scientific portion of the trip, “we had every single small boat on the ship out … collecting samples,” Share said. “We had uncrewed surface vessels. We had scientists ashore. We just did everything and anything to support them, and that’s all things that we can help do in the north as well.”

To reach Antarctica, they had to cross the notoriously rough Drake Passage, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans between Cape Horn and the South Shetland Islands.

The trip south “was very calm seas,” Share said.

The return trip wasn’t so pleasant, with the Margaret Brooke battling six-metre waves as it headed back north.

“We ended up getting a bit of an experience on the way back home,” Share said.

“But … these ships are meant for the North Atlantic, they’re meant for the Arctic, they’re meant for our weather up here. So, it’s nothing that we couldn’t handle … Not too many people got sick.”

The ship performed “amazingly,” she said.

“We really didn’t have any major technical difficulties that impacted our mission at all,” Share said. “So, this definitely has proven that we are incredibly versatile with this platform to operate in a very warm climate in and around the equator for a little bit, and all the way down into polar regions and back up.”

• Royal Canadian Navy sets out on first-ever deployment to Antarctica with band playing Heart of Oak
• Canada’s top sailor says he’s sure we could stop Russia or China from trespassing in Arctic

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The childhood home of Pope Leo XIV in Dolton, a community just outside the city limits of Chicago, was up for sale last week. Asking price: US$199,000. Though heaven knows that amount might go up now that its former occupant is famous.

The

New York Post is reporting

that the current owner of the house — a modest,1,200-square-foot brick split-level at 212 E. 141st Place in Dolton, Ill. — has taken it off the market and plans to relist it at a higher price, or perhaps turn it into a museum or shrine.

“It’s like a winning lottery ticket. What are the chances?” realtor Steve Budzik said of the owner’s decision. (To answer that rhetorical question, given the number of eligible cardinals in the recent conclave: one in 133.)

NBC reports

that Robert Francis Prevost (Leo’s pre-papal name) was born on Sept. 14, 1955, at what was then called Mercy Hospital in Chicago, and that his parents — dad was a Navy vet turned school superintendent, mom a librarian with a master’s degree in education — had purchased the home in 1949.

It can be viewed on the

realty site Redfin

, which describes it as an “immaculately rehabbed single family home.”

The site says the home features three bedrooms, two baths, a recessed-lighting living room, a formal dining room and a jacuzzi tub. The kitchen has a breakfast bar, custom white cabinetry, granite countertops and stainless steel appliances. The finished basement includes a laundry room “and extra space for your imagination.” Images at

realtor.com

show a living room fireplace and a sturdy chimney.

Redfin notes that the last time the house sold was just a year ago, for US$66,000. Prior to the papal election, it had been on the market this time for more than 100 days.

Budzik confessed to the Post that the owner “is excited and just kinda in shock right now,” adding: “It’s been quite interesting the last 24 hours.”

The property is about a kilometre away from Lincoln Elementary and Lincoln Junior High, and a 40-minute drive south of Pope John Paul II Catholic School.

• ‘The common good’: The last Pope Leo was a champion of the working poor
• Full text: Read the first address of Robert Francis Prevost, to be known as Pope Leo XIV

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OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney will unveil his first post-election cabinet on Tuesday, according to the Governor General’s office.

The unveiling is set to take place at 10:30 a.m. ET at Rideau Hall.

Carney said last week that he planned to maintain a small, efficient cabinet.

“I’m very intrigued by the possibility of keeping this lean,” he told reporters.

He also said plans to return to predecessor Justin Trudeau’s gender parity rule that maintains an equal number of men and women in cabinet.

Carney put together a

transitional cabinet of 24 ministers

in March, less than two weeks before calling a snap election that yielded a third straight Liberal minority government.

He cut

more than a dozen positions

from Trudeau’s final cabinet, including posts for labour, gender equality and seniors.

The maiden cabinet consisted of 13 men and 11 women.

Carney’s new team is expected to be slightly larger than the transitional cabinet.

The prime minister has been mum about whether senior figures from his first cabinet, such as Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne, will stay in their roles.

“Did he ask you to ask that question?” Carney joked with a reporter when asked whether Champagne would remain as finance minister.

Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc and Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly traveled with Carney this week on his visit to Washington, D.C., to meet U.S. President Donald Trump.

More to come.

National Post

rmohamed@postmedia.com

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A New York man has been charged with animal cruelty after nearly 100 cats — dozens of which were dead — were found in his home last weekend.

The 75-year-old man was arrested on May 6 after detectives from the Suffolk County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) arrived at his residence in Bohemia, a Long Island community. He faces 18 misdemeanour counts of cruelty to animals and animal neglect, according to Chief of the Suffolk SPCA Roy Gross.

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A post shared by SPCA of Suffolk County, NY (@suffolk_spca)

Authorities received a complaint “of dozens of cats living in poor, squalid conditions as well as many deceased cats in a freezer,” according to

a Facebook post

by the SPCA.

When detectives arrived at the property on May 3, they found the man with the animals that he allegedly neglected while they were in his care. The man and the cats were living amongst “wet urine, smeared feces, grime, and filth covering the floors, walls, and stairs.”

“The overpowering foul odours of feces, rot, grime, and ammonia were so severe” that the SPCA requested a hazmat team and backup from the fire department. After conducting an evaluation of the air and structure, fire mashals found high readings of ammonia gas inside the home. The residence was deemed unfit for human occupancy.

In the freezer, detectives from the SPCA “found multiple wrapped items” that contained more than twenty deceased kittens.

The New York Post reported

that the man lived in the home with his late wife for 30 years, but she died a few weeks ago. A neighbour told the publication that cats were attracted to the residence because the pair would put out food. Gross told the N.Y. Post that if convicted, the man would be added to a registry preventing him from owning a pet for five years.

On Saturday and Sunday, teams worked to trap 61 cats, some of which were pregnant. They were taken to the Islip Town Animal Shelter and received veterinary care.

“Many cats presented with medical conditions including upper respiratory infections, urine scalding, eye disease, dental disease, missing teeth, and ear discharge; three cats were in such severe physical condition they required humane euthanasia,” per the SPCA.

In a post on Facebook on Wednesday, vice president of the Long Island Cat/Kitten Solution John Debacker shared a photo of one of the cats rescued from the home in Bohemia. He said that twelve of the cats would be transferred to rescues on Thursday.

All of the cats will eventually be put up for adoption through the shelter once they are medically stable.

The accused is due to be arraigned in Suffolk County First District Court on May 23 at 9 a.m. ET.

• Alligator kills woman who was canoeing at popular Florida lake
• Woman allegedly drowns dog in airport bathroom after it wasn’t allowed on international flight

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In an interview this week

with the BBC

, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly told the British news service that Canada has been “over reliant on the U.S. for too long,” adding: “We are the most European of all non-European countries. That’s why we want to be closer to Europe.”

It’s not the first time the phrase has cropped up in Canadian political circles, especially in connection with the recent trade war between Canada and the U.S.

Just days after being sworn in as prime minister, Carney made his first trip in that role to Europe, meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and

telling him

: “I want to ensure that France and the whole of Europe works enthusiastically with Canada, the most European of non-European countries, determined like you to maintain the most positive possible relations with the United States.”

He added: “Canada is a reliable, trustworthy and strong partner of France, which shares our values and lives them through action during this age of economic and geopolitical crises.”

Carney had said after his swearing-in the previous Friday that Canada was built on a “bedrock of three peoples: Indigenous, French and British.”

The concept of “most European” is evocative but vague: What does it mean to be the most European of non-European countries?

At its simplest, the similarities are architectural. A recent

Business Insider article

from a writer who visited both Quebec and Europe puts it bluntly: “The streets and buildings of Quebec City felt similar to places I visited in Europe.”

A second article on

travel to Montreal

was headlined: “

I visited the city that’s been nicknamed the ‘Paris of North America.’ It really feels like a charming slice of Europe in Canada.”

And it’s true: As two of North America’s oldest cities — Quebec City was founded in 1608 and Montreal in 1642, more than a century before Toronto and over 200 years before Vancouver — these locations preserve many of the same physical details that make old European cities feel the way they do.

But the comparisons run deeper, and go back much further than the latest government’s pronouncements.

Ten years ago,

the CBC reached out

to academics outside Canada who teach courses about Canada — “Canadianists,” they’re called — to see what their students were being taught about our country.

One Dutch educator said: “Many of my non-Canadianist friends refer to Canada as ‘the European version of America.’ Canada resembles Europe the way it wishes it had stayed: full of natural beauty.”

Ten years before that,

Gwendolyn Owens

, a Baltimore expat living in Montreal, was writing about a Canadian “culture and mentality that melds together Europe and the United States,” referring to our more European-style health care system and describing our multicultural makeup as “a kind of union of many nations, not unlike the new European Union or a small United Nations.”

Timothy Sayle, an associate professor in the department of history at the University of Toronto, says recent comments by Carney and others can be interpreted in two ways.

First is at face value. “There are some basic historical and cultural connections here,” he said. “It wasn’t that long ago that Canadians stopped being British subjects, and the King of England is also the King of Canada. That’s very present in our governance but also in our culture.”

He added that Canada’s bilingual nature, its connections between Quebec and France, and its social and health programs, which run closer to European models than American ones, all push Canada closer to Europe, comparatively speaking.

“But there’s also a political argument that these leaders are making, in that Canadian governments have often worked closely with European partners in international affairs, partially because Canadian and European governments sometimes see the world through the same lens, that the same international frameworks and cooperation is the best way to deal with the world.”

Finally, there may be a sense in which Carney and Joly were also talking directly to Canadians. Sayle noted an address given by

Secretary of State for External Affairs
Louis St. Laurent in 1947

, the year before he became prime minister. He called liberty “

an inheritance from both our French and English backgrounds, and through these parent states it has come to us from the whole rich culture of western Europe.”

Sayle explained: “Sometimes Canadian leaders find it useful to talk about Europe as a way of hinting at national unity goals in Canada. I’m not sure if the leaders have that in mind right now, but it’s an interesting twist on it.”

David Soberman, a professor and the

Canadian National Chair of the Rotman School of Management, said one audience for whom such remarks were not intended is the rest of the world.

“I would say they’re trying to set us up against the United States in this case,” he said. “I don’t think it’s designed as something to say we’re more European than the Australians. I’ve spent time in Australia and New Zealand as well, and they’re pretty European.”

But he agreed the message has a takeaway for Canadians as well.

“To make us feel a little bit less stressed out, if you will,” he said. “We are different from the United States, and we’re good with that, but we also have friends in Europe that can empathize with the sorts of things that are important to us.”

Carney also met with King Charles III during his trip to Europe, and has invited the King to formally open parliament on May 27, the first time Canada’s monarch has done so since Queen Elizabeth II in her jubilee year of 1977.

Joly told the BBC that the King’s visit was another “clear signal” of Canada’s sovereignty.

“That’s pretty important,” Soberman said. “He’s a European monarch, and here he is coming to deliver what’s one of the most important statements that occurs in the Canadian Parliament every year. That’s a pretty strong link.”

• Mark Carney calls Canada ‘the most European of non-European countries’ while in France
• Carney ‘put to bed’ Trump’s talk of the 51st state, former ambassador Frank McKenna says

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OTTAWA — As Canada looks for ways to see U.S. tariffs lifted, the country’s ambassador to Canada suggested the recent trade announcement with the United Kingdom could be a “template.”

“I think this will kind of be a template for how we go around the world,” U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra told National Post.

Hoekstra made his comments as Trump was announcing on Thursday he had reached a deal with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

The announcement, which has not yet been finalized into an agreement and with more

details yet to come

, would see the U.S. slash the rate of tariffs applied to its automobiles and zero them out on steel and aluminum products, in exchange for more U.K. market access for products such as American beef.

Trump teased that he would soon be announcing a deal — the first he has reached since unleashing tariffs on countries around the world — while Prime Minister Mark Carney was seated next to him in the Oval Office during their first official meeting earlier this week.

Canadian political and business leaders have celebrated the visit as a success, saying Carney hit reset on what had become a strained relationship between the president and his predecessor, former prime minister Justin Trudeau.

During the meeting, the president made it clear there was nothing Carney could say that would convince him to lift tariffs on Canada. Carney also agreed, saying “this is a bigger discussion.”

Citing the president’s comments, Hoekstra suggested Trump is interested in a different type of deal.

“Is there an agreement that can be had that increases prosperity, safety and security for both countries— absolutely.”

Besides tariffs and trade, Carney travelled to Washington to talk security.

While details of the U.S.’s deal with the U.K. remain unknown, Hoekstra said it covers the same issues Canada is dealing with and checks the same boxes.

In terms of next steps, the ambassador says the U.S. and Canada need to keep talking, as Carney and Trump showed this week.

“They showed each other a tremendous amount of respect, and most importantly, they listened to each other,” said Hoekstra, who was among officials who attended their meetings.

“The president clearly listened to what the prime minister had to say, and the prime minister clearly listened to what the president had to say. They got a feel for who each one was. They created as much as you can in two hours, the beginning of a relationship that I think can be positive, that will go after tariffs,” he says.

Trump and Carney also discussed the issue of fentanyl, as well as military and security commitments, he added.

“There’s some work to do, but it’s not like the there’s this huge chasm that we have to overcome. I think we can get there relatively quickly, but the president’s very busy right now.”

Canada remains a priority, the ambassador said, and pointed to the fact the meeting took place within a matter of days and not weeks or months after Carney’s election. Senior members of the Trump administration were in attendance, he said, including Vice-President JD Vance, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Secretary of State Marco Rubio as well as Jamieson Greer, his trade representative, and Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff.

“The president had everybody in the room that needed to be there,” Hoekstra said. “I would look at that and say, ‘Wow, it’s clear the president sees Canada as a priority’.”

One issue that Hoekstra said he raised with the president’s team which he sees as being a part of negotiations would be on Canada’s digital services tax, with first payments from digital giants due next month.

While the Liberals introduced the three per cent tax to ensure tech giants pay tax on revenue earned from Canadian users, the ambassador called it a “significant tax” which “is targeted specifically at American companies.”

Former U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration also took issue with the tax. Despite Trump’s stated concerns about the digital services tax, it does not appear the deal struck with the U.K. touches its own version of the policy.

When it comes to the free trade agreement between the U.S., Canada and Mexico, which is due for review next year, Hoekstra says the president is evaluating different “concepts” that include having a three-way deal or two-way deal between Mexico and Canada, saying no decision has yet been made.

“Is it still USMCA? Is it USA-Canada?” the ambassador said. “These are the things that will be talked about in the coming days and weeks.”

Trump and Carney are next set to meet when the president attends the G7 in Kananaskis next month.

— With additional reporting from The Associated Press

National Post

staylor@postmedia.com

• ‘It’s done’: Trump’s 51st state comments are ‘behind us,’ says U.S. ambassador to Canada
• Trump strikes a friendly tone, but says Carney’s visit won’t end tariffs

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