Americans and other pre-approved visitors travelling to the U.S. through two of Canada’s biggest and busiest airports can benefit from faster border processing times this summer, thanks to new facial recognition technology rolled out by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

In anticipation of this summer’s FIFA Club World Cup in the U.S., in late May,

the agency introduced two new initiatives aimed at “streamlining lawful travel”

— Enhanced Passenger Processing at Montreal-Pierre Trudeau International and Seamless Border Entry at Toronto Pearson International.

“By leveraging advanced technologies and mobile applications, we are transforming inspections at airports into a seamless, touchless process, enabling faster risk identification and efficient processing of legitimate visitors,” stated Diane J. Sabatino, CBP’s acting Executive Assistant Commissioner.

Why is Canada setting up first-ever border preclearance site in the U.S.?

Here’s what you need to know:

How does Enhanced Passenger Processing work?

When U.S. citizens head for the CBP checkpoint, they’ll approach a tablet which automatically takes their photo when they stand in front of it and uses the facial biometric information to match it with an existing passport in the database.

If approved, the traveller can carry on without having to show their passport or interact with CBP officers. Those denied will need to check in with an officer for identity confirmation and risk assessment.

“It’s really a game-changer for us in how we welcome U.S. citizens back home,” Sabatino said at a news conference at Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) International Airport at the time, per

travel website That Points Guy.

Montreal is just one of 11 airports with EPP and the only one in Canada.

EPP is also available at international airports in Orlando, Denver, Charlotte, Seattle, Chicago O’Hare, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Cross Border Xpress in San Diego and Dublin, Ireland.

Since its trial introduction at U.S. airports last fall, CBP said it has seen a 25 per cent reduction in wait times, per

Fox 4 in Dallas-Fort Worth.

At DFW, the Points Guy reported that EPP has reduced wait times for non-citizens by more than 15 minutes as more officers were available to process their arrivals.

How does Seamless Border Entry work?

This new initiative builds upon Global Entry, the existing membership-based trusted traveller program already offered by CBP to expedite the arrival and screening process launched in 2008.

For a US$120 fee, travellers, including approved foreign nationals, benefit from reduced wait times through special queues, aren’t required to fill out paperwork and get a Transportation Security Authority (TSA) PreCheck, an expedited security screening.

Like EPP, Seamless Border Entry technology also photographs and assesses the traveller as they pass through a screening area overseen by CBP officers, but it does so without them even needing to stop walking.

Outside of Toronto’s Pearson, it’s also available at international hubs in Los Angeles, Miami, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Newark, and George Bush Continental Airport in Houston.

• Why is Canada setting up first-ever border preclearance site in the U.S.?
• What lawyers are advising Canadians to do to minimize risk of scrutiny at the U.S. border

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.

OTTAWA — Researchers with the Montreal Economic Institute (MEI) say Canada’s new federal homebuilding agency is likely to overpromise and underdeliver, drawing a cautionary tale from down under.

The free-market think tank argues

in a new study

that New Zealand’s now-defunct homebuilding scheme KiwiBuild, a signature policy of Jacinda Ardern’s Labour government, shows why government bureaucrats shouldn’t try to play real estate developer.

“New Zealand’s experience highlights the limits of government intervention in the real estate market, especially in terms of resource allocation,” write co-authors Gabriel Giguère, Yassine Benabid and Renaud Brossard.

Brossard told the National Post he was struck by the similarities between KiwiBuild and the Liberal government’s Build Canada Homes.

“If you look at government programs that have been done through out the world, this is probably the closest thing to what (Prime Minister) Mark Carney’s pitching,” said Brossard.

KiwiBuild launched in 2018 with the lofty goal of building 100,000 affordable housing units in a decade. It would never come anywhere near meeting this target, completing just 2,389 units by the end of its last full year of activity in 2024.

The program was slammed by both politicians and pundits

as a “complete disaster”

, contributing to Ardern’s fall from global progressive darling to her abrupt resignation in early 2023.

By one estimate, KiwiBuild would

have taken 436 years

to hit the original target of 100,000 homes.

Brossard said that one critical mistake that KiwiBuild administrators made was relying too heavily on prefabricated homes.

“In some of the areas where they were hoping to build homes for (KiwiBuild), they found that shipping in a prefab home was actually more expensive than just building one in situ,” said Brossard.

Carney has

promised billions in subsidies

to prefabricated and modular home builders, as part of his plan

to double the rate

of housing construction and build 500,000 new homes a year within a decade.

Brossard and his co-authors report that KiwiBuild’s prefab homes were often inferior to other housing options available to low and moderate-income families.

Some banks were even

hesitant to approve mortgages

for the prefab homes, given the “flight risk” involved where delinquents could theoretically load the units onto a truck bed and skip town.

Brossard says that the big lesson from KiwiBuild is that civil servants should leave the nuts and bolts of real estate development to the professionals.

“This is what tends to happen with top-down government programs that push one-size-fits-all solutions,” said Brossard.

The study recommends that Carney scrap Build Canada Homes and instead focus on creating a friendlier regulatory environment for private real estate developers.

Brossard also said that policymakers can stimulate homebuilders by harmonizing professional qualifications for workers in the building trades across provinces and territories.

The office of federal Housing Minister Gregor Robertson didn’t respond when asked about KiwiBuild by the National Post.

National Post

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• Developer makes his pitch: Renting our way out of the Canadian housing crisis

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John Hunt, a man whose wife and two daughters were murdered in a crossbow attack, is speaking out for the first time in an interview published by the BBC on Wednesday.

On July 9, 2024, Hunt’s 61-year-old wife Carol, as well as his daughters, 25-year-old Louise and 28-year-old Hannah, were killed. The suspect was Louise’s ex-boyfriend, Kyle Clifford, who was later arrested. He

pleaded guilty

, and in March, was convicted of fatally stabbing Carol before he raped Louise and then killed the sisters at their family home in Bushey, north of London, with a crossbow. He received three life sentences, the

BBC reported

.

Hunt, who is a BBC racing commentator,

sat down with the publication

alongside his third

daughter, Amy.

“When it happened I thought, ‘How on earth am I ever going to be able to care about anything ever again?’” he said. “It’s fine to sit with that thought in the wreckage of what was our personal disaster. But you come to realize that, with a little bit of work, you can find some light again.”

Hunt and Amy said they didn’t want to speak out earlier because the intense, and sometimes inaccurate, media coverage after the murders “added to their pain,” per the BBC. They didn’t want their family to be “defined by their deaths.”

“From the moment I wake up, I say good morning to each of them,” said Hunt. “Sometimes I say out loud to Hannah and Louise, ‘Girls, sorry I can’t be with you, I’m with your mum at the moment.’ As I close my eyes at night, I chat to them as well. They’re very close to me all the time.”

Amy revealed a touching memory with her sisters around two months before the horrific murders. She said they had gone out to dinner together and were so grateful for the lives they got to lead. They discussed how lucky they were to “have had the parents we’ve had and the life we’ve had,” she said.

My wife and daughters left behind a legacy of love, John Hunt tells BBC https://t.co/f85OM3XWL2

— Victoria Derbyshire (@vicderbyshire) June 26, 2025

She told the BCC, at the time, there was no indication that Clifford was capable of such crimes. Although, the BBC reported, the relationship eventually “started to sour” between Clifford and Louise. It ended in late June, when Louise broke up with him.

Clifford went to the Hunt’s family home on the day of the murders, reportedly to return some of Louise’s belongings. He had a brief and cordial interaction with Carol, which was captured on the family’s doorbell camera. He then followed Carol inside and stabbed her to death. When Louise arrived, her raped her and used a crossbow to kill her. Then, Hannah arrived and he killed her with a crossbow.

Before Hannah died, she texted her boyfriend and called police. Hunt said he believes Hannah’s actions saved his life, as he was likely intended to be a victim of Clifford’s as well.

“Police officers of 30 years’ experience had their breath taken away by how brave she was, how she was able to think so clearly in that moment, to know what she needed to do,” John says.

The father-daughter pair also wanted to set the narrative straight when it came to Clifford and Louise’s relationship.

Unlike how it was portrayed in the media,  it was not an abusive relationship, nor was Clifford “jilted.” The family had “misgivings” about Clifford, they said, but it was a normal and “unremarkable” relationship.

“He never once hit her. He was in the house an awful lot in that 18 months, and never heard raised voices once. There were no obvious alarms that were ever, ever rung,” said Hunt, in

a clip of the interview

.

Although, said Amy, there was “absolutely evidence that he had turned out not to be a nice person.”

“He’s often been referred to as ‘crossbow killer’ and ‘crossbow maniac’ — but that takes away from the very real issue we know to be true. He was just a person, just a man… who went to the gym, had a family, had a relationship, watched TV,” said Amy. “I know it sounds crass, but we often say we wish we’d had some hint that he was capable of this.”

Meanwhile, Hunt said he is reminded of Hannah’s bravery, and how it saved his life, every day.

“I get to live. Hannah gave me that, and I’ve got to treat it as a gift from her,” he said.

Amy and Hunt said the legacy of love left behind by Carol, Louise and Hannah gives them the strength to get through the grief and trauma. In the interview clip, Hunt read a TikTok shared by Louise on social media out loud. It was about loving someone completely.

“I’m proud of myself for realizing that love is always worth giving, even when it may not be received,” one of the lines from the TikTok said.

Although it wasn’t written by Louise, Hunt said it “could well have been.”

“I’m so proud of her, living like that and loving like that,” said Hunt.

• British man pleads guilty to the murder of a mother and her daughters in crossbow attack
• Man, 26, charged with murder over crossbow attack that killed wife, daughters of BBC commentator

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.

Jim Balsillie, the Canadian businessman and philanthropist, has donated $5 million to Wilfrid Laurier University for the establishment of a digital governance initiative to build economic resilience and digital sovereignty.

“The nature and the structure of the global economy and global security has shifted foundationally in the last 30 years in a degree and rapidity that’s unprecedented in mankind,” said Balsillie in an interview. “And if you want to be a sovereign and secure and prosperous nation, you need the capacity for navigating that on a front-footed basis. So, this investment is all about that.”

In a news release, the university in Waterloo, Ont., said Canada needs to “shape policy and increase productivity amid growing threats to sovereignty and security.” It said the Balsillie donation will go toward setting up a legal advisory centre that tackles international trade and technology governance, and establishing professional training programs and a proposed graduate degree that focuses on “law, digital sovereignty and global technology governance.”

“This is about building capacity to manage the expertise into these realms that are digital, whether it’s AI, data, blockchain currencies, intellectual property, trade agreements, all of these things are the realms that this is contended, and Canada has had an eroding prosperity, it’s had an eroding sovereignty because the terrain of protecting and advancing those is the digital realm,” said Balsillie, the former co-CEO of Research in Motion, the company that developed the Blackberry.

He said the digital initiative is a “natural addition” to the school, which is also home to the Balsillie School of International Affairs, a joint project of Laurier, the University of Waterloo and the Centre for International Governance and Innovation.

Deborah MacLatchy, the president and vice-chancellor of Wilfrid Laurier, said the funding will “stand up” the work students and faculty are doing on the topic of the digital future. While figures aren’t yet known, the university hopes to add faculty and more students because of the new research and educational initiative.

“We’re hearing a lot from companies, from government, about their capacity needs, meaning that they just don’t feel that they have all the internal expertise or the up-and-coming expertise of students and grad students who have experience in this area,” said MacLatchy. “And this gift will really allow us to really take a take a run at this in a way that will be unique across the country.”

The hope is that other Canadian universities will eventually follow Laurier’s lead, doing more research and education in the area.

The issue of digital sovereignty, said Ann Fitz-Gerald, director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs, is “about taking control of a state or any organization’s digital destiny and autonomy.” This includes not just corporate data security or intellectual property or cross-border data transfer but also issues of national security, Fitz-Gerald said.

“There’s a big policy shift towards the intangibles from the tangibles, and we need to make sure policymakers worldwide, not just in Canada, have the knowledge and skill sets to operate in this space,” Fitz-Gerald said.

So much of what happens in a modern society, from immigration to business to justice, happens in the digital world and is driven by data. And so Balsillie’s donation, Fitz-Gerald said, will help position Canada and Wilfrid Laurier and the Waterloo region at the forefront of that economic, social and political revolution. Indeed, as data can be siphoned off by corporate giants to aid foreign economic development, Canada could wind up being a loser unless it builds expertise in digital sovereignty.

“The best way that I have come to be able to explain it is that we have had, for time immemorial, a policy orientation and governance structures that are fit for a tangibles world. We now live in an intangibles world,” said Fitz-Gerald. “We want to be able to manage its development and have a real … say in its safe and responsible development, and the safety and responsibility relates to the preservation of our sovereignty and national security and prosperity.”

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A B.C. civil tribunal has ruled that a woman can’t sue her ex-boyfriend for distributing intimate images to her employer because it was in the “public’s interest” for him to do so, since many of the photos and videos were captured while she was at work.

One of which, the Civil Resolution Tribunal’s Megan Stewart noted in

a decision published Wednesday

, was taken at the undisclosed employer’s “front counter.”

With Stewart also ordering a publication ban under the B.C. Intimate Images Protection Act (IIPA), the applicant and respondent are identified as MR and SS, respectively. The woman’s employer is also withheld.

According to the decision, while involved with SS, MR sent “photos and videos of herself exposing different private parts of her body, and engaging in sexual acts” at her place of work during work hours.

After the relationship ended, he forwarded the content to her bosses to notify them of her “workplace misconduct.”

MR, who was seeking up $5,000 in damages under the IIPA, argued that SS’s true motive was to damage her reputation and embarrass her.

Stewart dismissed the claim, ruling the content shared with MR’s employer didn’t fully meet the criteria of “intimate” under the law.

While the photos and video were intimate in that they “showed the applicant engaged in a sexual act, nearly nude, or exposing her genitals or breasts,” that they were captured “in parts of the office that were accessible to the public or other employees” essentially nullified their intimacy, Stewart determined.

Her “reasonable expectation” that SS wouldn’t expose the images online or send them to her family didn’t extend to her place of work.

“In particular, I found a person who takes otherwise intimate recordings of themselves at work does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in those images to the extent they are shared with their employer for the purpose of investigating alleged misconduct, whatever the sharer’s motives,” Stewart wrote.

But MR’s claim would have been dismissed even had she proven the images were intimate, Stewart ruled.

The IIPA sets out that someone can’t be found liable for sharing such images if it “was in the public interest and did not extend beyond what was in the public interest.”

Stewart decided it was, and cited her unpublished intimate image protection order decision, noting that “the locations where the images were taken were not always secure and private, including one photo that was undisputedly taken while the applicant was at the ‘front counter.’

“I find even on a strict interpretation of what is in ‘the public interest,’ these specific circumstances are captured.”

• Nova Scotia man who posted intimate photo of his ex on sex site must pay $49,000
• Canadians have very limited options if fake explicit photos end up on social media

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.

A network outage at Toronto Pearson International Airport that wouldn’t allow passengers to check in on Thursday morning has since been resolved.

Due to maintenance work being done on the airport’s network systems on Wednesday night, it “lost the ability to check in passengers and process baggage,” spokesperson Sean Davidson told National Post over the phone on Thursday.

“As soon as the outage was resolved, which was about an hour and 15 minutes, we were able to process passengers through the airport again,” said Davidson.

The airport alerted travellers to the network outage in

a post on X

before 6 a.m. on Thursday morning. However, around an hour later, the airport posted again to say the issue had been resolved. Airport staff were “managing the flow of travellers” as some “longer-than-usual lines” were expected.

The network outage impacting some airport functions earlier this morning has been resolved. Operations are improving but expect some longer-than-usual lines through the morning.

Airport staff are managing the flow of travellers. https://t.co/UKvmTa5LXV

— Toronto Pearson (@TorontoPearson) June 26, 2025

An alert that was featured on Pearson’s website early on Thursday morning that warned travellers of possible longer lines has since been removed.

“The lines at the terminal have returned to normal, but as always, we recommend that passengers check their flight status before coming to the airport,” Davidson told National Post.

“There’s no need to come longer than the two hours before domestic flights and three hours before international flights.”

Just before 9:30 a.m., the airport said in a post on X that “wait times and operations have returned to normal in both terminals after this morning’s network outage.”

Wait times and operations have returned to normal in both terminals after this morning’s network outage. https://t.co/duN38V85nd

— Toronto Pearson (@TorontoPearson) June 26, 2025

Before the issue was resolved,

one person told CityNews

that the airport was a “zoo” and that his flight to the United States, scheduled for 6 a.m., had been delayed until noon.

In mid-June, the

airport posted

about the summer months being a busy travel season, in particular “summer Fridays.”

The airport said it expected to welcome around 158,300 people on June 13, with just over 1,000 planes moving through the country’s largest travel hub. It added that 407 of those flights were departing to or arriving from cities across Canada.

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OTTAWA — As Canada is pledging to move away from the United States in the defence sector, critics are warning the federal government it might want to take a closer look at a Crown corporation’s recent decision to award a contract to a U.S.-based joint venture for the management of the country’s nuclear laboratories for possibly the next 20 years.

On June 12, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) announced that Nuclear Laboratory Partners of Canada Inc. — a partnership with three primary joint venture partners and one key subcontractor — had been selected to manage Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL). Those include mainly Chalk River Laboratories, the birthplace of the CANDU reactor.

The management contract is valued at $1.2 billion per year on average, for six years, but could be extended up to a total of 20 years based on performance indicators.

Even though AECL’s bidding process began in 2023 — long before U.S. President Donald Trump was elected to a second term and started threatening Canada’s sovereignty — sources familiar with the matter are questioning why AECL chose to work with firms mainly based in the U.S. to manage Canada’s sensitive technologies in the nuclear sector.

“Given the current circumstances in Canada-U.S. relations, I think it’s troubling that a contract of this magnitude would be awarded to a U.S.-based consortium,” said one of the sources who spoke to the National Post on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

“Now, Chalk River labs are going to be managed by American firms that are deeply involved in the American military and defence industrial complex on the nuclear side,” they added.

Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, who served as assistant deputy minister for Energy Technology and Programs at Natural Resources Canada, was just as surprised to hear about the contract: “Why on Earth do we not have the skill set to do this in Canada?”

“If this government is really serious about protecting our vulnerabilities and building capacity in Canada and strengthening Canadian companies… why would they farm out the management of our precious technology, especially something as unique as nuclear?” added McCuaig-Johnston, now a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa.

Despite its name, Nuclear Laboratory Partners of Canada Inc. is composed mostly of U.S.-based partners. It will be spearheaded by Virginia-based BWXT — an important supplier to the U.S. Defence Department. The other partners are Amentum — also based in Virginia — and Kinectrics Inc. — a company based in Toronto but

bought by BWXT earlier this year

.

Its key subcontractor, Ohio-based Batelle Memorial Institute, is the world’s largest research and development organization and manages national laboratories, including for the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

American executive Dennis Carr will assume responsibility of CNL as its president and CEO starting in September. Carr, who has more than 40 years of experience in the nuclear sector, was most recently the head of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site and oversaw its national laboratory before he announced his retirement in June.

Earlier this month, Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson said the process to select the new management of Canada’s nuclear facilities was done by AECL, independently from the government. He also said the new entity will manage CNL’s 4,000 employees — every one of whom is based in Canada, he said — and that 95 per cent of the money involved will be spent in Canada.

“Canada welcomes companies from all jurisdictions to come here and work. This is money that will be spent in Canada, overseeing Canadian jobs at Canadian facilities,” he said.

In an email, AECL’s director of communications said, as part of its procurement process, the Crown corporation evaluated qualified bidders based on “their capability, experience and expertise,” as well as their ability to deliver on AECL’s priorities, among other things.

“We did not discriminate against companies that are not based in Canada. However, we did look at the management team’s ability to deliver on the scope of work, and understanding the Canadian context played a role in that evaluation,” said Jeremy Latta.

Latta said while the joint venture partners are indeed U.S.-based, half of their management team will be Canadian. In addition, all members of the executive team, including the incoming CEO, are contractually required to be based in Canada.

For the past decade, CNL was managed by Canadian National Energy Alliance, a consortium made of SNC-Lavalin (now AtkinsRéalis), Jacobs Engineering — which has since merged with Amentum — and Fluor Federal Services — an engineering and construction firm based in Texas. The contract is set to expire in September.

Sources said AtkinsRéalis was interested in pursuing the management of CNL but ultimately dropped out of the bidding. In the end, Nuclear Laboratory Partners of Canada Inc. was the only bidder left. A source described AECL as not being “incredibly transparent” with Natural Resources Canada and former minister Jonathan Wilkinson.

Wilkinson declined an interview request about AECL’s bidding process.

Chris Keefer, president of Canadians for Nuclear Energy, said he does not lay blame on Hodgson for this situation, adding “it’s a process that had been locked in for several years.” But he expressed concern that U.S. partners will be overseeing nuclear sites that could be called upon to defend Canada’s sovereignty, including in the Arctic.

“We need to open potential seaways as climate change comes in, we need to defend against threats from Russia,” he said. “It’d be really smart to have nuclear icebreakers.”

McCuaig-Johnston said then prime minister Brian Mulroney announced in 1987 that Canada was going to have a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines to patrol the Arctic, but that idea was ultimately rejected two years later because the price tag was too high.

Now that Canada is looking to ramp up defence spending in a dramatic way to meet NATO targets —

set at a summit Wednesday at five per cent of a country’s GDP by 2035

— she suggested the federal government will have a big budget to make those kinds of purchases.

McCuaig-Johnston said Canada needs to be “agile to reflect changing circumstances,” and that means taking a hard look at the management of this country’s nuclear sites.

“We have a window until September, when they take over, to say we’re taking one step back, we’re going to look at this again and we’re going to assess what our other options might be, given that this particular technology is of particular value to Canada,” she said.

One source said they cannot remember a time when there would be this much U.S. involvement in a nuclear facility that has access to Canada’s intellectual property, and cited concerns with intellectual property theft and corporate espionage.

“It definitely doesn’t scream ‘elbows up’ to me.”

National Post

calevesque@postmedia.com

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Canada needs 

3.5 million more homes

 in the next five years for our fast-growing population, and one prominent developer sees a solution: purpose-built rental housing.

Fitzrovia CEO Adrian Rocca, who has 20 years of real estate experience and has led over $20 billion in transactions across Canada, U.S. and the European Union, maintains that governments need to take certain steps to incentivize more building.

Fitzrovia has nearly 9,000 purpose-built rental suites — meaning, not condos — completed or in development in Toronto and Montreal, with 3,000 new homes on track for next year. The company says about a third of Toronto’s households have the financial means to rent with them.

Fitzrovia says it is the only Canadian developer that manages and operates the full process in-house, from development, construction to asset and property management, leading to more efficient delivery.

Housing accounts for almost 

one-fifth of Canada’s GDP

, making it a key driver of economic growth. Facilitating investment in domestic housing is a catalyst for broader economic development, says Rocca. Each avoidable fee or delay represents lost opportunities for Canadian workers, subcontractors, and suppliers to benefit from that investment.

Rocca spoke to Dave Gordon for the National Post:

What inspired you to found Fitzrovia, and why choose purpose built rentals?

I saw home ownership rates are actually quite low in Germany. 70 per cent of the households rent, versus own. When I came back, it felt like there is a negative stigma around renting, and I almost felt empowered or passionate around changing that stigma.

I think the quality of rental housing could look vastly different if you put some TLC behind the design, the implementation, the programming, the quality of the materials. We could functionally make that product look uniquely different and bring a sense of pride of rentership, versus home ownership. It doesn’t mean that you’re a failure if you rent.

Why do you believe purpose built rental rather than condos is the solution?

We’re missing large parts of the demographic in the market that are active renters, that have been alienated from sale housing, like young families and downsizers.

We have made a big call as a business to build lots of two and three bedroom units that are generally 20 per cent larger than what’s being delivered in the condo market.

We create a social infrastructure in these buildings that deals with the new immigrants that are moving into the city with social programming. We have our own school … We also have a healthcare partnership with Cleveland Clinic for new immigrants living in our building. So if any of our residents are feeling sick, they come down to the Cleveland Clinic room.

So those are the types of social programs that are really important that the condo markets aren’t doing.

What are the biggest obstacles to meeting building targets?

A lot of it relates to financial incentives. The economic model is under a lot of stress. New starts, depending on the data, are down 50 to 90 per cent. There’s not many projects that are ever going to hit the presale threshold of 70 per cent or 80 per cent that’s required to get construction financing. Interest rates have really hurt that.

Price per square foot dropped by 30 per cent in a year and a half. That’s going to crush your margins. It’s got to be made up by the government stepping in, and waiving development charges and waiving property tax for 20 years.

We’ve had great engagement with all three levels of government, but we need to turn that engagement to proper policy.

When immigration and demand is growing, we’re going to have a catastrophe of a housing crisis in three to four years.

You can’t just turn on the switch, and get new supply coming on the market. Takes four years to put a high rise project into the market, and then get it fully delivered, get it designed, get it approved, pull your permits, and then construct it. If you’re fast, it’s four years. So it’s going to create an extremely tight rental market, which is not good for the end consumer.

What kind of specific policy reforms would have the most immediate impact?

About 30 per cent of our total development cost to build is municipal fees, development charges, government levies. So development charges are used to fund infrastructure. So as you’re building, the city would need the infrastructure to support that housing, which is all fair, very important. The problem is, it’s a very archaic form of funding, because that’s ultimately passed on to the developer, who’s passing it on to the end consumer.

In the U.S., they have what’s called infrastructure bonds that could get issued, or municipal bonds, to fund out that infrastructure. So you’re basically taking 15 per cent cost of financing, which is what the developer needs to earn, because it’s very risky to develop high rise rental, and you’re replacing that with a 4 per cent cost of debt through these infrastructure bonds. It’s a very effective tool. It also brings other forms of capital into the market.

We can’t do it off pure government funding. We need to partner up with the private sector, and get all forms of funding to the table. Not just institutional capital; it’s retail capital, it’s foreign capital.

What impact do American tariffs have on your project?

The tariffs, when we’ve done our analysis, add about three and a half percent of our costs.

Not all developers in Canada, especially around rental housing, are actually owned by Canadians. So we have a firm commitment to support, wherever possible, Canadian suppliers. Could be brick suppliers, brick manufacturers, that could be HVAC solutions, that could be glass, that could be elevator supply, you name it.

In some cases, it’s more expensive, even with the tariffs, or there’s a difference in quality level. So we are actively working with a number of our suppliers, to equalize some of those items, whether it’s quality or price.

With purpose built rentals, how does Canada win?

Canada wins by creating as much new housing as possible, but the right type of quality housing. We want to provide rental housing for the masses, not just for students or young professionals, that are living in a small condo size apartments downtown.

It’s actually, in a lot of cases, a smart financial decision to rent, and keep the flexibility of being able to live wherever you want to live, and not be saddled by a large mortgage.

This interview has been edited for brevity.

This is the latest in a National Post series on How Canada Wins. Read earlier instalments here.

• Canada’s housing starts stuck at 1970s levels, while population growth has tripled, study finds
• Opinion: Why Canada’s housing crunch isn’t going away

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.

OTTAWA — If your boss’s name appears on your phone, don’t assume that’s who is calling you.

In a rare joint statement issued Monday, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC) and the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS), part of Canada’s cyberdefence agency, said that scammers are now using artificial intelligence to impersonate senior government officials by phone or text.

Spoofing government officials’ phone numbers or voices, they contact other public sector leaders or C-suite business leaders with fake urgent requests for money transfers or asking them to open a malicious link.

The goal is to steal money, sensitive information or install malware on organizations’ computer networks, says the CCCS.

The scam is yet another way that fraudsters are harnessing AI to impersonate government officials and organizations to make their schemes more believable.

In one case, a Canadian individual received a fraudulent message purporting to come from a U.S. government official requesting a “large transfer of money under the pretence of an urgent government-related matter,” said spokesperson Cyber Centre spokesperson Janny Bender Asselin.

Asselin declined to say who the recipient was, if they were a government or business executive or if the money was ever transferred to the scammer.

Neither CCCS nor CAFC responded to questions about which government officials or C-suite executives are either being impersonated or targeted by this new malicious cyber scam.

But the advisory is clear: if you receive a message or call from someone purporting to be a high-ranking government official or even your employer’s CEO demanding you do something urgent and unusual, it could be a scam. Even if the voice sounds like them.

The warning says the latest scam appears linked to an ongoing campaign in the U.S. that was flagged by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) last month.

The FBI said that since Apri

l, scammers have been impersonating “senior US officials” and contacting other current or former top federal and state American government workers. They then purport to send a link to move the conversation to another messaging app, but the URL actually infects their device with malware.

“The malicious actors have sent text messages and AI-generated voice messages — techniques known as smishing and vishing, respectively — that claim to come from a senior US official in an effort to establish rapport before gaining access to personal accounts,” the FBI warned.

“If you receive a message claiming to be from a senior US official, do not assume it is authentic.”

For the head of the Canadian Cyber Threat Exchange, Jennifer Quaid, these types of scams have become so prevalent that she now suggests to private sector workers that they shouldn’t always believe that it’s their boss that’s calling when the number appears on their phones.

“Never assume it’s your boss,” she told National Post.

“I would give a CEO, a CFO and my 21-year-old daughter exactly the same advice: stop and think about it. Take a minute to think about what the request is, and then say, ‘I will call you back’ and reach out to that person using another known channel of communication,” she added.

“If your boss is serious about wanting you to transfer $20 million, I don’t think they’re going to object to your saying, ‘I will call you right back’.”

Just in the first three months of 2025, the Anti-Fraud Centre says it has received nearly 13,000 reports of fraud generating over $165 million in losses for 9,092 victims. But as always, that is only the tip of the iceberg as the vast majority of victims don’t report the crime to authorities.

Both the Cyber Centre and Quaid say AI has tremendously boosted criminals’ ability to make their scams more believable. But Quaid also believes that threat actors not being constrained by legal AI guardrails has allowed them to harness AI faster and more effectively than businesses trying to defend themselves.

“They’re not using it with rules. We have rules, and I want to be very clear, rules are a very good thing,” Quaid said of scammers. “But they are operating in a criminal environment without rules, without regard to due process and without regard to privacy, and that’s why they’re able to do more with some of these tools than we are.”

In recent weeks, government agencies have increasingly warned Canadians that scammers are spoofing their phone numbers to appear legitimate. Spoofing allows fraudsters display a fake number on a phone’s caller ID.

Even organizations like the Communications Security Establishment, the country’s cyberdefence agency, have not been spared.

“If you receive a suspicious call from our media number, please know it is not a legitimate call,”

the agency wrote on social media last week

.

“Spoofing lets scammers display a legitimate number, even though they have no connection to the organization. This isn’t always impersonation, but it’s still misleading and can create confusion.”

National Post

cnardi@postmedia.com

• Anti-Fraud Centre warns Canadians about scammers impersonating anti-fraud centre
• These scammers called almost everyone in Canada — and swindled millions

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.