A Jewish advocacy group says there have been 32 reported antisemitic incidents in Canada this past week alone and is asking Prime Minister Mark Carney to act urgently.

B’nai Brith Canada cited dozens of incidents across the country, including swastikas being

spraypainted on the walls of a synagogue

and other hateful graffiti in Winnipeg, a Jewish couple being harassed at a mall on their way to see a film in Toronto, and a man at a rally in Montreal referring to Israelis as “pedophile Nazis.”

The group keeps track of such incidents for

its annual audit

, which it began in 1982.

B’nai Brith

wrote a letter

to the prime minister on Thursday, requesting that he establish a Royal Commission of Inquiry into antisemitism and called for him to appoint a new special envoy to combat it.

“That is a warning signal, and it demands more than piecemeal reactions,” B’nai Brith wrote in a post on X on Wednesday, about the number of incidents this past week.

Antisemitism in Canada is now accelerating at an increasing rate, spreading across provinces, platforms, and public spaces. This past week alone, there were at least 32 reported antisemitic incidents across five provinces. That is a warning signal, and it demands more than… pic.twitter.com/A4wjvTXqSU

— B’nai Brith Canada (@bnaibrithcanada) January 14, 2026

The group pointed to the targeted terror attack on Australia’s Jewish community at Bondi Beach on Dec. 14, when 15 people were murdered. “Canada cannot wait for a Bondi of its own before acting,” it said on X.

Last week, the

Australian government said it would establish an inquiry

to investigate antisemitism in the country, look further into the Bondi Beach attack and make recommendations. In Canada an inquiry is needed now, said B’nai Brith, “with the mandate and independence to assess the threat environment, identify systemic drivers, and deliver actionable recommendations for policymakers.”

Although an inquiry’s findings are not binding, the federal government says online, they are “highly influential.”

“The final reports of Commissions are therefore among the most important publications produced in Canada and have highlighted and documented matters of importance to society since pre-Confederation,” it says.

The group also pushed for a successor to Deborah Lyons as Canada’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism. Lyons

retired

in July. The government is still working to nominate a successor, it says online.

A spokesperson for Carney’s office told National Post in an emailed statement that the letter from B’nai Brith had been received. The spokesperson said that the government is “taking action to combat the scourge of antisemitism and protect Jewish Canadians, who have faced a horrifying rise of hate, particularly since Hamas’s October 7th terrorist attack.”

The spokesperson said they appreciated the work that Lyons has done and are “continuing significant engagement with the community about how to best build on this crucial work for the year ahead.”

“As part of this work, we have introduced the Combatting Hate Act to make it illegal to intimidate or obstruct anyone accessing or attending services at religious or cultural buildings, and to protect against hate more broadly,” the statement said.

In Thursday’s letter to Carney, B’nai Brith Canada’s CEO, Simon Wolle, said the Act, also known as Bill C-9, is “urgent federal legislation” that the organization supports — but “Canada remains afflicted by a worsening crisis of antisemitism.”

The spokesperson for Carney’s office also said the government was looking into strengthening the

Canada Community Security Program

, which provides funding for communities at risk of hate-motivated crimes and collaborating “with provincial counterparts to ensure that Crown Prosecutors and police officers have the skills and knowledge to properly address hate crime.”

The government is fighting radicalization through initiatives such as the

Community Resilience Fund

, which funds organizations working to prevent and counter violent extremism, according to Carney’s spokesperson. “We will always protect the inalienable right of Jewish Canadians to live openly in freedom, safety, and dignity,” the statement concluded.

“Antisemitism is accelerating,” B’nai Brith said on X. “Canada cannot afford to keep playing catch-up.”

• Less than 40% of CBC’s reporting on Israel-Hamas conflict was ‘balanced’: study by Jewish group
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A former CBC human resources employee is suing the national broadcaster claiming he was forced to leave a work environment so toxic and discriminatory there was a designated “crying room” so employees could deal with office stress.

The lawsuit also alleges CBC management in its northern operations kept a secret “do not hire” list that disproportionately blacklisted marginalized, disabled and Indigenous people.

Karl Johnston worked in human resources with CBC North based in Yellowknife, N.W.T., from 2018 until 2023.

His title was senior specialist in talent acquisition for CBC North. His work included designing and implementing human resource strategies, advising on business operations, mentoring and training staff, directing external communications, and other tasks, according to his statement of claim.

He said in a lawsuit that he was forced to quit in 2023, alleging he was “constructively dismissed” after being “subjected to a toxic work environment condoned by CBC.”

When Johnston arrived to start his job at CBC North five years earlier, he walked past an empty office adjacent to the newsroom and asked if that was his new office. A CBC human resource staff member laughed and told him the office was the “crying room” where employees would go to cry to help cope with workplace stress, he says in his statement of claim.

“This set the tone for a workplace culture that tolerated and perpetuated toxicity, discrimination, and harassment,” Johnston’s lawsuit alleges.

His suit was filed in the Supreme Court of Northwest Territories in October. None of the allegations have been proven in court.

Chuck Thompson, the CBC’s head of public affairs, said the broadcaster disputes the allegations and intends to defend against the suit. He said he could not answer specific questions about the allegations because they concerned an active lawsuit.

Thompson said Johnston voluntarily resigned from CBC on Oct. 27, 2023. That date is ten days before Johnston says he left.

Johnston’s lawyer, Kathryn Marshall, said the lawsuit raises questions not only about her client’s treatment, but about the CBC as an institution.

“I think this case exposes the very concerning toxic work culture within our national broadcaster. The fact that there was a ‘crying room’ I think is shocking. I’ve never seen anything like that before in any workplace.

“It really demonstrates that there’s something very wrong and broken at CBC within their work environment that they need to fix. I think what happened to him was appalling,” Marshall said.

“My client was trying to speak out. He was trying to blow the whistle and people would come to him with their own stories of things that were happening within CBC, and he would try to advocate for them.

“It was for him like talking to a wall.”

Johnston’s salary when he left CBC was $92,000, plus an annual bonus of $5,520, an isolated living allowance of $25,867 and $1,956 in paid leave travel assistance. His lawsuit seeks 12 month’s salary and benefits in lieu of notice of job loss, as well as $300,000 in damages for various alleged breaches of duty and contractual obligations.

In 2021 Johnston had a short-term disability leave for back and pelvic surgeries. While he was recovering from multiple procedures, he claims he was contacted by CBC management saying things were collapsing without him and he felt pressured to return to work earlier than recommended, fearing workplace reprisals.

When he returned he advocated for better disability accommodation policies and support within the broadcaster, but was “met with resistance,” his claim says.

“Managers often pushed back against accommodating employees with disabilities, and Mr. Johnston received no support from human resources,” his claim says. It wasn’t just about him; multiple times “he learned of a manager not hiring or interviewing a candidate after learning they were disabled,” he claims.

Johnston said the poor workplace environment led to complications to his surgical recovery, including severe pain which prevented him from sitting. He went on another disability leave in 2022.

Management pressed him to abandon working from home to return to the office against his doctor’s recommendations, he claims, and he was told not to talk to colleagues about his treatment because he was in a “leadership position.”

He claims that during his work in human resources he “noticed a disproportional number of marginalized candidates added to the ‘do not hire’ list, and he was pressured to add (an Indigenous journalist) to the list.”

Such a list, he claims, was “unethical” and strenuously kept secret. It was kept on personal laptops not CBC computers and it was not to be referenced in internal emails “to avoid access to information requests.” He was also forbidden to discuss it with colleagues, he claims in his lawsuit.

In his claim Johnston said he witnessed discrimination at CBC against others, which he reported up the chain of command.

This included: “racial discrimination against racialized and Indigenous employees, including inappropriate questions and conduct during hiring processes”; managers refusing to “interview or hire candidates with disabilities,” including an Inuit candidate dismissed because a manager speculated they were autistic or suffered anxiety; and management refusing to implement his request that employment equity information be hidden from hiring managers in the tracking system.

He said he was also warned by a colleague that he was being secretly monitored by his bosses ahead of a visit to the CBC North’s office by the CBC’s president at the time, Catherine Tait, after Johnston said Tait’s salary should be disclosed to the public and managers should not receive a bonus during job cuts.

Johnston said his employment became untenable when he was told to “stay in his lane” after raising the toxic work environment, sidelined from leadership, and pressured to stop emailing reports of his concerns to avoid information requests.

“This treatment exacerbated his anxiety and led to a decline in his mental health, ultimately leading to his involuntary resignation,” his suit claims.

There is no court date yet set for hearing the claim.

• Email: ahumphreys@postmedia.com | Twitter: AD_Humphreys

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OTTAWA — A new rocket startup to be launched Friday says it plans to soon become the first Canadian company to have the capacity to launch medium-payload satellites in space, filling in a potentially important niche in Canada’s defence.

Canada Rocket Company says the turbulence in global politics is likely to increase Canada’s need for a sovereign rocket company that can take domestically-controlled satellites to space.

The Toronto-based company has already raised $6.2-million from the Business Development Bank of Canada, a Crown corporation, and a range of private investors including Toronto-based Garage Capital. Canada Rocket Company says the capital that it has raised is the largest round of all-Canadian seed funding ever for a space and defence startup.

Hugh Kolias, the company’s co-founder and chief executive officer, said company officials are confident that they’re launching at just the right time, as the federal government increases defence spending and recent global turmoil has made many countries take their sovereignty more seriously. At the same time, rocket and satellite costs are falling, while the technology and the number of willing investors are on the rise.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Kolias told National Post during an interview. “Globally, there’s been an added emphasis on space and defence,”

Rockets can play an important role in a country’s security, he said, because satellites are used to deliver a wide range of services, including telecommunications, global positioning, and financial transactions, that are critical during an international conflict. Rockets are used to take satellites to space or to help refurbish them.

Kolias said Canada Rocket aims to become a big player in the rocket industry, particularly targeting the “the missing middle” portion of the market. Many satellites are what the industry describes as medium payloads, typically weighing up to 6,500 kilograms, but customers are often forced to pay rocket companies higher prices if medium-payload vehicles aren’t available.

The Canadian market alone is expected to be worth about $1-billion between 2033 and 2040, Kolias said.

But the medium-payload market is becoming increasingly busy and already includes U.S. players such as Long Beach, Calif.-based Relativity Space, Seattle, Wash.-based Stoke Space Technologies, and Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly known as SpaceX.

Jeff Foust, an aerospace analyst and publisher, said any company entering the medium payload market will have “an uphill battle” trying to convince customers that its service is cheaper or better than the Falcon 9. The two-stage orbital rocket dominates its market and flew 165 trips to space last year, Foust said.

Canada Rocket says it expects to be able to able to produce the rocket architecture for light-lift vehicles by 2028 when it will have about 150 employees, and then scale up to produce a medium-lift rocket two or three years later.

The startup is expecting to repatriate a number of Canadians who are working abroad in the space, defence and aerospace sectors. Canada Rocket has just five employees to date but expects to have as many as 1,000 within about seven years.

Kolias said the company is finding that ex-pat Canadians in the sector seem keen to return home. “It’s actually been kind of easy to bring people back to Canada.”

Canada’s space industry plays a niche role internationally. Its largest private player is MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA), a world leader in space robotics. The Brampton, Ont.–based company built all three versions of the Canadarm and RADARSAT, an Earth observation satellite.

Other Canadian space companies include Ottawa-based Telesat, Winnipeg-based Magellan Aerospace and Honeywell Aerospace Canada, which has engineering and manufacturing operations in Mississauga, Ont., Ottawa and elsewhere.

National Post

• Canadian startup targets defence, AI and earth observation with 10 newly launched satellites
• After delays due to flames and boats, Canada to announce new window for first rocket launch

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OTTAWA — Federal Court of Appeal Chief Justice de Montigny is expected to deliver a decision Friday on the federal government’s use of the Emergencies Act during the 2022

Freedom Convoy

protests.

The appeal decision follows a

ruling by the Federal Court

in 2024 that the invocation of the act in response to the protests was unreasonable, unjustified, and violated Charter rights. Following the decision, then deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland vowed her government would appeal the ruling.

Former prime minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Act on Feb. 12, 2022, to end the protests against vaccine mandates that had gridlocked Ottawa’s downtown streets for almost a month. The act gave Ottawa the power to compel tow truck companies to co-operate with local police to clear blockades, mark parts of the downtown core as no-go zones and freeze the bank accounts of some protestors.

The Federal Court’s ruling stemmed from legal challenges brought on by Canadian civil liberties organizations, including the Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA), who argued the federal government went beyond its powers.

While the Federal Court opposed the use of the act, the Public Order Emergency Commission, a public inquiry into the government’s use of emergency powers,

ruled the act’s use was justified

in 2023.

“The case is one of the most significant for civil liberties in modern Canadian history,” the CCF said in a statement in anticipation of Friday’s decision.

“The outcome of this case will shape how far future governments can go in curtailing peaceful protest and using extraordinary emergency powers, including restrictions on banking, against Canadians.”

The decision is expected at 11 a.m. ET.

More to come.

National Post

• Trudeau government justified in using unprecedented powers of Emergencies Act: ruling
• Court rules Liberals’ use of Emergencies Act was unjustified, unreasonable

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BEIJING — As Prime Minister Mark Carney meets President Xi Jinping Friday in Beijing, few industries will be watching as intently as Canada’s canola producers and electric vehicle manufacturers.

For Canada’s canola industry, the hope is that Carney will secure relief from crippling Chinese tariffs ranging from 76 to 100 per cent that have effectively cut farmers off from their second largest export market. Same for Canadian pork and seafood workers, who are dealing with 25 per cent tariffs.

For Canada’s electric vehicle sector, the fear for many is that the prime minister lowers 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles that barred the cheap, heavily-state-subsidized autos from flooding the Canadian market.

Both issues are deeply interrelated as China imposed the canola tariffs in response to Canada’s EV tariffs, which were put in place years ago to follow the U.S. government’s lead in its battle for EV manufacturing supremacy in North America.

The high-profile meeting in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People at 11 a.m. Beijing time — the first one since 2017 and subsequent major chilling of diplomatic relationships — will be the culmination of a drastic about-face in Canadian foreign policy over the last year.

At this time last year, Canada viewed the world’s second largest economy as an “increasingly disruptive” force that was to be approached with great caution. In April, Carney described China as the greatest threat to Canada’s national security.

On Thursday in Beijing, Carney ushered in a “new era” in the Sino-Canadian relationship, describing China as a strategic partner and saying Canada is “heartened” by Xi Jinping’s leadership.

For many, the mark of success for this trip will be seeing if Carney manages to draw concessions from the Asian economic behemoth, namely on canola tariffs.

But any deal is fraught with landmines when its with China, a country infamous for its use of diplomatic and trade coercion.

One need not look farther than last August when China unveiled the 75.8 per cent tariffs on Canadian canola seed. The timing, just weeks before harvest season, was designed to deal maximum damage to the Canadian industry.

And there were the events that led to the big freeze in diplomatic relations in the first place: Canada’s arrest of Huawei top executive Wang Menzhou on behalf of the U.S., which led China to arbitrarily detain Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig for nearly three years in response.

In the weeks leading up to the trip, the Canadian government repeatedly signalled that meetings in Beijing would cover far more than just tariffs, automobiles and the agri-food industry. Officials mentioned energy, manufacturing, and increasing connections between the Chinese and Canadian people.

On Thursday, on Carney’s first day in Beijing, details of the breadth of discussion topics became clearer.

Both governments signed a half-dozen non-binding deals for further collaboration and communication in the areas of oil, gas and nuclear energy, lumber, culture, tourism, food inspection and public safety and policing. They even signed an agreement to start dealing issues related to pet food trade.

At the same time, Carney and some of his ministers met with CEOs of investment funds and Chinese giants in EV battery and electricity grid storage, e-commerce, wind energy and oil and gas.

More to come.

National Post

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RCMP documents connected to the investigation into disappearance of Nova Scotia children Jack and Lilly Sullivan, are now showing that their mother told police her ex common-law partner was sometimes physically violent with her.

RCMP investigators had asked Malehya Brooks-Murray whether her then common-law partner Daniel Martell was physically abusive. She alleged that “he would try to block her, hold her down and once he pushed her. She said he would also take her phone from her when she tried to call her mom, which would sometimes be physical and hurt.”

These new allegations came to light when the RCMP recently released previously redacted portions of court documents as a result of a media application before a Nova Scotia judge. The application sought the release of more information connected to the early stages of the RCMP investigation into the children’s disappearance.

The documents were obtained by National Post on Thursday from the Nova Scotia Courts office.

Martell confirmed to police that the couple fought but denied any physical abuse. He said “they would yell at each other when they were fighting, but there was no physical violence in their relationship.”

He confessed that the couple fought over their finances. “Daniel said they were recently fighting about money,” the documents state.

Martell also told police about the development of his relationship with Jack and Lily’s mother.

According to the documents, he said “they had been together for about three years and it moved pretty quickly.”

He moved into “Malehya’s grandmother’s house with her after about two weeks. They met on Facebook dating.”

Martell told police at the time that “their relationship (was) good, they (had) ups and downs like any couple.”

It should be noted that Martell hasn’t been charged in connection with Brooks-Murray’s allegations. Therefore, they haven’t been tested in court.

The

couple later split

in the wake of the children’s disappearance.

Lilly, 6, and Jack, 4, were

reported missing

by Brooks-Murray and Martell on the morning of May 2, 2025. Brooks-Murray called 911 around 10 a.m. to report they had wandered away while she and Martell were sleeping with their toddler at their home in the rural community of Lansdowne, N.S.

The RCMP conducted a massive search, which turned up few clues. Investigators employed 22 of 23 of the province’s ground search and rescue teams, as well as two teams from New Brunswick. They spent 12,253 hours searching for the children.

Then, in October, they police service brought in

cadaver dogs

to search 40 kilometres of territory, but they failed to find any sign of the missing children.

The Mounties continue to work on

hundreds of tips

generated by the case.

In an October press release,

the RC
MP said

“With support from agencies across Canada, the investigative team is working to validate or eliminate leads and follow the evidence wherever it takes us. At this stage, and as we’ve said all along, we’re considering all possibilities. We’ll keep going until we determine, with certainty, the circumstances of the children’s disappearance and they’re found.”

Police have been concerned sharing information about the investigation could compromise a criminal case, should criminal charges eventually be laid.

• ‘All scenarios are being considered,’ RCMP say, as search continues for missing N.S. siblings
• Step-grandmother of missing N.S. kids pleads with public to stop accusing family of harming Lilly and Jack

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A California start-up company is offering travellers an early reservation at a proposed hotel on the moon. But there’s a hefty deposit of $1,000,000 required. And the tentative opening date isn’t for another six years.

Galactic Resource Utilization Space

was founded by Skyler Chan, a graduate of the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley. The company bio for the 22-year-old says he has built vehicle software at Tesla, constructed a NASA-funded 3D printer that was sent into space, and became an U.S. Air Force trained pilot at the age of 16.

The company moniker is shortened to GRU, which is also the name of the villain in the Despicable Me movies who at one point wanted to steal the moon. Indeed, the company’s white paper outlining its plans concludes: “It’s time to steal the moon.”

GRU launched its booking website this week. It outlines an ambitious plan — first GRU mission to the moon in 2029, habitat established in 2030 or so, and then — boom. A hotel with a view of the Atlantic Ocean. And the Pacific. Also the Indian. The company’s video shows expansive rooms with large windows, while an artist’s conception of the exterior looks like a stone temple from a video game, complete with moody lighting.

GRU says it will use “a proprietary habitation modules system and automated process for transforming lunar soil into durable structures.”

The white paper is a mix of hopeful philosophy and science. It talks about the need for humanity to become intergalactic, with the moon as a vital first step, and also includes charts on transportation costs and power requirements.

But it also lays out “The ‘Top Secret’ GRU Master Plan,” which is back-of-the-napkin simple: “1. Build the first hotel on the Moon. GRU solves off-world surface habitation. 2. Build America’s first Moon base (roads, mass drivers, warehouses, physical infrastructure on the Moon). 3. Repeat on Mars.”

The company is also looking for help, with

an ad seeking

a “founding member of technical staff,” a job it says will pay US$80,000 to US$130,000 a year.

“You will be responsible for structural and mechanical systems that must eventually survive vacuum, regolith, thermal extremes, and human life support constraints,” the ad reads. “This is a systems-heavy, deeply hands-on, high-agency role.”

It adds: “You’re not ‘supporting’ a program. You are the program.”

The million-dollar deposit is presumably refundable if the hotel fails to open, but there’s an additional fee of US$1,000 (non-refundable) to keep reservations restricted to serious and well-heeled travellers. GRU says it expects the average stay to be five nights. Travel time, barring any great advances in rocketry, is about three days each way.

Those with less than seven figures to spend can still buy merch from the GRU shop, which sells hats, tees, mugs and the ever popular space hoodie.

For $1,400 you can even

purchase a “moon brick.”

The company says the bricks are “produced from simulated lunar regolith simulant, stamped with the GRU logo,” adding: “These bricks are made using the same technology we’ll use to build structures on the Moon.”

The concept of hotels in orbit or on the moon is not a new one. One of the earliest was

unveiled more than 60 years ago

at the Conrad Hilton Hotel in downtown Chicago, where dancers performed a number called “out of this world” in a mockup of a hotel called the Lunar Hilton.

A Chicago-area newspaper noted in its issue of Aug. 27, 1958: “This could mean that the Hilton chain is dickering with the idea of opening the first hotel on the Moon.”

That was some ambitious dickering, given that the first human spaceflight was still more than two years away, and the first human lunar landing still more than an decade out. Would-be lunar tourists are still waiting for the grand opening.

• Canadians among finalists in competition to design stuffed toy NASA will take to the moon
• U.S.-Canadian moon mission preps for February launch despite international tensions

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U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra delivered another blunt assessment of the Canada-U.S. relationship during a wide-ranging radio interview this week, saying the U.S “does not need Canada,” even as he praised the nations’ deep economic relationship.

Hoekstra, speaking with host Elias Makos on

Montreal’s CJAD 800

, defended recent rhetoric from President Donald Trump that the U.S. could easily replace Canadian-made products.

“The problem is, we don’t need their product. We don’t need cars made in Canada, we don’t need cars made in Mexico, we want to make them here,”

Trump told reporters

while visiting a Ford factory in Michigan on Tuesday.

“No, we don’t need Canada,” Hoekstra told Markos when pressed on Trump’s latest comment and similar ones he’s made about lumber, steel, energy and more.

He added, however, that businesses on both sides of the border have elected to integrate their supply chains under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and its successor, the Canada-U.S-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), under which they’ve created “a tremendous amount of prosperity and wealth and a tremendous number of high-quality, high-paying jobs.”

During his auto-plant stop, Trump, as he has repeatedly in the past, suggested the deal — which he took credit for instituting in 2016 during his first term in office — wasn’t as important to the U.S. as it is to Canada and Mexico, even calling it “irrelevant.” The agreement requires a mandatory review this year and will be extended for 16 years if all three countries agree to renewal. If they fail to do so, joint reviews will be required annually until CUSMA expires in 2036. Any of the counties is also free to leave as long as they provide six months’ notice to the others.

“Hopefully this fall we will have a new outline of how we do business together and whether those relationships that we have put in place… will foster and grow or whether Canadian companies and American companies will go their separate ways because of the decisions that are made by their governments,” Hoekstra said.

“There are key indications that the president recognizes the value of these relationships, but at the same time… we’ve got to get to a new agreement.”

Makos repeatedly turned to what he described as a growing sense of alienation among Canadians, citing polls showing declining favourability toward the U.S. and boycotts of American products.

A Nanos Research Group poll

in December found that 70 per cent of Canadians support keeping U.S. wine and spirits off the liquor store shelves, a move made by several provinces and territories as trade tensions mounted in early 2025.

Hoekstra pushed back, saying Canada is free to take whatever steps it believes strengthen its negotiating position, but warned such measures “kind of sets a tone for the relationship.”

“We haven’t banned any Canadian products in America,” he said, noting that the president, his administration and individual governors are not following suit with calls to boycott Canadian goods.

Asked about Trump’s own tone regarding Canada, Hoekstra said, “The president is his own messenger.”

He also accused Canadian premiers of engaging in unwarranted personal attacks on Trump, noting nobody on the American side is doing the same to Prime Minister Mark Carney.

“You have folks that just absolutely trash the president who are key government officials,” Hoekstra said without identifying anyone in particular. “I don’t like it, but if that’s what they want to do, that’s what they can do.”

Unprompted by Makos, the ambassador also touched on the subject of pre-clearance, which allows U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers to operate within Canadian airports to inspect and clear travellers before they head to the U.S., allowing them to bypass customs on arrival. He said if air traffic between the two countries continues to drop, as has been widely reported, the U.S. might have to re-examine the program.

“I’d have to report to Washington and say our resources may be better spent somewhere else,” he said. “That’s not a threat. It’s just a pure business analysis.”

As their conversation went on, Hoekstra warned against dumping — the practice of flooding a market with cheap goods. He said if Canada, “as a sovereign country,” wants to do business with China, which is its prerogative, it should expect a U.S. response if Chinese-made products are allowed to enter North America through Canadian channels.

“If you’re allowing EVs and other vehicles to come in from China, I would say don’t necessarily expect that the U.S. border is going to be porous,” he said.

Carney is in China for meetings this week and while

no deal had been struck to remove Canadian tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles

as of Thursday, the two nations had made progress on items such as energy, lumber and public safety.

Meanwhile, Hoekstra dismissed speculation that the U.S., following on Trump’s desire to acquire Greenland to keep it from falling into Russia or China’s hands, might intervene in Canada’s north. He highlighted the new agreement between the U.S., Canada and Finland

to advance the construction of ice breakers to patrol the waterways

indicate that the countries “are in lock step.”

Overall, Hoekstra, acknowledging “a little tension” at the moment, struck a reasonably optimistic tone and said he is “hopeful we end up in a good place.”

He said Canadians are welcome to “make it an emotional issue” and “debate the things that the president has said,” but his focus is on what’s good for American business.

“That’s my objective. I’m assuming that Mark Carney and his team are negotiating for what’s best in Canada and in eight or nine months, we’ll see exactly where that ends up.”

• U.S. does not want to ‘terminate’ Canada-U.S-Mexico Agreement, says ambassador to Canada
• How Pete Hoekstra became ‘the most controversial U.S. ambassador in history’

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