A man in Denver, Colorado, lost US$17,000 (approx. $23,500 Canadian) after his phone call was transferred to a scammer by an operator in the customer service department of United Airlines.

Multiple news outlets

in the United States are reporting on the incident, which was first brought to light by

Steve Staeger

, a consumer investigative reporter at NBC’s 9News in Denver.

Dan Smoker had reportedly been planning an 18-day trip to Europe with his wife, their children and some friends. But the flight from Denver to London was cancelled. So the next day, he called the United Airlines customer service line for help.

Smoker said his own call log showed he was on the phone for more than three hours, but a United Airlines representative told him he’d only been talking to them for 12 minutes.

Somewhere between those two extremes he was transferred to another “customer service agent” who called himself David. David said he could get Smoker and his party on a Lufthansa flight to Europe. He said Smoker would have to pay US$17,000 on his credit card but that it would be reimbursed later.

Smoker never got those tickets. He never got his money back either. This was when

Staeger stepped in

.

He assumed at first that Smoker had fallen victim to a secondary scam in which Googling a customer service number brings up a fake number that, when called, connects you to a scammer. But in fact, that’s what had happened to the United customer service rep on the first call.

On Friday, United confirmed to 9News: “The customer was transferred to an external number and the agent was not using our internal tools to validate the number.”

Smoker said David told him the cost of a new flight — US$17,000 — would have to be charged to his credit card but that United Airlines would refund the money. He said David put him on hold for a long time, then came back and said he couldn’t book the flight, but repeated that the charge would be refunded.

In an odd twist, Smoker said David eventually did also manage to rebook his party on another United flight, which went off without a hitch. But when he got his credit card statement, there was a charge for the real flight from United Airlines, and a US$17,000 charge to a generic company called “AIRLINEFARE.”

Of course, since the original flight was cancelled, there should not have been a charge to rebook. This might have raised a red flight, but the customer thought he was still talking to the airline.

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OTTAWA — With ministers due to present their proposals for a 15 per cent spending review, deciding where to cut carries inescapable “political consequences,” according to the staff of Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin.

A rare glimpse into the internal deliberations was offered to National Post — when one of her staff accidentally added a reporter to a group chat.

“Who let her in??!” one of the staffers wrote, to which another reacted with “ha ha.”

The conversation took place last Thursday, exactly one week before the Aug. 28 deadline, when ministers were due to present their plans for achieving a 15 per cent spending reduction, starting with a 7.5 per cent cut next fiscal year. An additional 2.5 per cent reduction has been set for the following year, with an additional five per cent cut in 2028-29.

During the April federal election campaign, Prime Minister Mark Carney promised to launch a “comprehensive review” of government spending, promising he would lead a more fiscally-disciplined government.

The reductions have been earmarked to help fund commitments Carney has made to boost defence spending to the tune of around $9 billion for Canada to meet its NATO defence spending target of 2 per cent of GDP, as well as finance other tax cuts.

Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne is set to table the Carney government’s first budget in October.

As he and Carney prepare to receive proposals for spending cuts, political staff, as well as those across departments and agencies, have been weighing where the cuts could come from and what impacts such decisions would have on operations.

Such was the case last Thursday, when staff in Dabrusin’s office deliberated on options, including what to do regarding the Canada Water Agency, which has the mandate to help manage the protection of Canada’s freshwater lakes and river systems.

The agency itself is headquartered in Winnipeg and has its own president, Mark Fisher, but falls under the responsibility of the federal environment minister.

In the group text, part of which the reporter was added to before being removed, Dabrusin’s senior policy advisor wrote to three others, including the minister’s chief of staff, relaying information from a conversation she had with a “Mark” that, “Yes, this cut could lead to less algal bloom restoration work across the country (notably not the Great Lakes — that will be retained)”

The staffer added that no other departments do that kind of work. “Others only do science and monitoring.”

Dabrusin’s chief of staff then directs the staffer to update Dabrusin via text.

“Eek I don’t know how to help the (minister)” the senior policy advisor wrote back.

“There is nowhere else to cut … she could ask for steeper cuts in (Environment and Climate Change Canada) or accept these (Canada Water Agency) cuts and commit to raising her concerns at (Treasury Board)? Their annual budget is so small you can’t escape political consequences with a 15 per cent cut.”

Reached for comment, a spokeswoman for Dabrusin did not explain how a reporter, who discovered the text conversation upon returning from vacation on Monday, ended up added to the group chat, nor confirm specifics around the internal conversation.

Instead, Jenna Ghassabeh pointed to Carney’s promised spending review.

“As part of that mandate, we are comprehensively reviewing government spending to ensure programming is being delivered efficiently and effectively,” Ghassabeh said.

“While this process requires candid discussions on various options, no final funding decisions have been taken at this time.”

Earlier this year, the White House dealt with the fallout from a much higher-stakes leak after The Atlantic magazine’s editor-in-chief was added to a Signal group text by U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security advisor, where he and other top administration officials discussed a strike against the Houthis in Yemen.

In Canada, Mohammad Kamal, a spokesman for the Treasury Board President Shafqat Ali, said that departments and agencies were still working on their savings plans, details of which he said would be kept secret, save for Carney’s cabinet, until decisions were finalized.

A spokesman for the Canada Water Agency did not answer direct questions about conversations between the agency’s president and Dabrusin’s office about proposed cuts.

“Organizations are being asked to bring forward ambitious savings proposals to spend less on the day-to-day running of government by targeting programs and activities that are underperforming, not core to the federal mandate, duplicative, or misaligned with government priorities,” wrote spokesman Joseph Peloquin-Hopfner.

Andrew Van Iterson, a spokesman for the Green Budget Coalition, which represents upwards of 20 different environmental and conservation organizations, said that broadly speaking, he sees value in the government undertaking a spending review.

“At the same time,” he said in an interview, “Environment Canada is one of the smallest, least funded departments.”

He said that comes as Canada and the rest of the world are trying to address climate and biodiversity issues.

“So broadly, we understand the drive to review … spending. But we’re also really nervous about what that could mean, because in the broader government budget, environmental spending is relatively small, and there’s a lot of really critical pieces there.”

National Post

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The Halifax, N.S., gravesite of the British general who burned down the White House 211 years ago this week was a busy place Monday.

Larry and Connie Tremain, of Arizona, had just disembarked from their cruise ship when they visited the city’s Old Burying Ground, at the corner of Spring Garden Road and Barrington Street. The national historic site is the final resting place of British Major General Robert Ross, who led his troops to burn the White House and other public buildings in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 24, 1814, during the War of 1812, in retaliation for the American attack on Fort York, now known as Toronto.

“We’ve been looking for him,” deadpanned Larry Tremain, a retired special agent with the U.S. Treasury Department.

While he hadn’t been sure until Monday where Ross was buried, Tremain knew the particulars of when the Brits torched the residence of then U.S. president James Madison

“I’m certainly familiar with the Madisons fleeing the White House and the British general burned it down and actually ate the Madison’s last meal in the White House,” he said.

“But I did not know the general was from Canada.”

Of course, Canada didn’t exist at the time and Ross was never stationed in Halifax. But he was buried in the Nova Scotia capital after being killed at the Battle of North Point by an American sniper on Sept. 12, 1814, near Baltimore, Maryland. His body was preserved in rum aboard the HMS Royal Oak, to be returned to his native Ireland. But the British warship was diverted to Halifax to prepare for the Battle of New Orleans, and Ross was interred here with full military honours.

With the United States and Canada now embroiled in a trade war, Tremain suspects many of his fellow countrymen do not know the history of the general who once torched the official workplace and home of their presidents.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “My son’s a history teacher, but they don’t teach much history in grade school and high schools anymore. Most Americans now under the age of 20 don’t know the difference between (George) Washington and (Abraham) Lincoln, let alone (the history of the War of 1812).”

He says the same of U.S. President Donald Trump, who made headlines multiple times this year with loose talk of turning Canada into the 51st state.

“He has no understanding, and we are bumbling through,” Tremain said.

Tremain apologized for Trump’s repeated threats to use economic force to annex Canada, and believes the president is hurting the relationship between the two countries.

Trump’s supporters are only interested in one thing, Tremain said. “It’s America first. It’s unbridled nationalism.”

While the couple had just stepped ashore in Canada on their sea voyage that started in Boston, Tremain said he would “be amazed” if Canadians weren’t friendly for the remainder of their cruise, which includes a stop in Saint John, N.B. “I would be stunned; they’re good people.”

During his career, Tremain had to travel through a lot of checkpoints in the Middle East. “I always told the driver, ‘Tell them we’re Canadian,’” he said. “Because nobody is mad at Canada.”

That a general buried here burned down the White House often surprises Americans, said Jo-Ann Heikkila, who was using an iPhone app Monday to tour the Old Burying Ground.

“I’ve got friends in the U.S. and when you raise that, they look at us like we have three heads,” Heikkila said. “They think we’re too nice.”

Both Heikkila and her friend, Jo-Anne Wilcox, were visiting Halifax from Toronto. Wilcox was quick to chime in on recent friction with our neighbours to the south.

“They need to learn about our country,” Wilcox said. “They know nothing about Canada.”

Americans should visit sites like the general’s grave to gain some perspective on recent events, Wilcox said. “Maybe they would respect us more because I don’t think the Americans respect Canada at all.”

Joe Blixt, a former Winnipeg high school history teacher now studying law at Dalhousie University in Halifax, knew the White House had been torched during the War of 1812.

“But I didn’t know the general was buried here,” Blixt said during a visit to the cemetery. “That’s really cool.”

During his time in Manitoba classrooms, there was an emphasis on how Ross and his troops burned the White House down. “The one thing we have over America, military victory wise, is that.”

Most Americans, he said, likely don’t know about the general’s exploits 211 years ago this week.

“I feel like American exceptionalism makes them blind to all that stuff,” Blixt said. “It’s a history of victory for the Americans. I think they like to wash that away a little bit.”

He doubts schooling Americans on the role Ross played in burning down the White House would change much.

“They like to win,” Blixt said. “They don’t like a losing history.”

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More than 10,000 Air Canada flight attendants will begin voting this week on a new contract between their union, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, and their employer, Air Canada.

Flight attendants went on strike on Aug. 16 after failing to reach an agreement with Air Canada on a new contract. The airline grounded hundreds of planes, stranding thousands of travellers. It started operating again on Aug. 19 after the union announced a tentative deal with the airline, although it said at the time that it would be a week to 10 days before full service returned.

Here’s what to know.

André Pratte: How Air Canada lost the flight attendants’ strike

What does the new agreement offer?

Terms of

the new contract

include a 12 per cent salary increase this year for most junior flight attendants, and an eight per cent raise for more senior members. In addition, all members will see a three per cent raise as of April 1, 2026, followed by 2.5 per cent in 2027 and 2.75 per cent in 2028.

What about the issue of unpaid work?

Flight attendants and the union had made much of the fact that workers were only paid for the time the plane was in the air, despite having duties before takeoff and after landing that included safety checks and passenger assistance.

The new contract says flight attendants would receive 50 per cent their hourly wage rate for 60 minutes of ground time on narrow-body aircraft and 70 minutes on wide-body planes. That would rise to 60 per cent next April, 65 per cent in 2027, and 70 per cent in 2028.

A narrow-body aircraft is one with a single aisle, which usually means four to six seats in each row, while a wide-body aircraft has multiple aisles and more seats across.

How does this pay compare with other airlines?

Lack of pay for ground time has long been an industry standard, but that is changing. In 2022, Delta Air Lines began paying its flight attendants at half their hourly rate for 40 to 50 minutes of boarding, depending on the type of aircraft and where it’s headed,

according to NPR

.

Delta is the only major U.S. airline whose flight attendants are not unionized, and the broadcaster suggested the move might have been an effort by the airline to discourage unionizing. After Delta’s decision, American Airlines and its union also agreed to a similar plan.

Meanwhile, flight attendants at WestJet will see their current contract expire at the end of this year, and ground pay could be part of their bargaining considerations.

Could there still be a strike then?

It’s unlikely. The flight attendants are voting on just the pay portion of the new agreement. Other changes, including modifications to health and pension benefits and vacation time, are considered final. So if attendants vote against the pay hikes, the other terms would still form part of the new collective agreement, with the wages portion proceeding to third-party arbitration.

The government of Canada ruled the brief strike by flight attendants this month illegal after they refused a back-to-work order before then reaching an agreement with Air Canada. Any new strike would also be deemed illegal, but they did ignore that the last time.

How long does the new agreement last?

The tentative agreement expires on March 31, 2029.

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• CUPE sues government to block ‘unconstitutional’ power used to end flight attendant strike

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Residents in Gold Canyon, Arizona, enjoy stunning views of desert landscapes and panoramic vistas — especially the majestic Superstition Mountains — which is why it’s a highly sought-after area for vacation homes.

In the past, it has been a prime target for Canadians seeking warm retirement or seasonal homes, but not anymore.

“All my Canadian clients I had, I sold their homes earlier this year, and they have no interest in buying anything at all,” said Redfin real estate agent Heather Mahmood-Corley. “They all left.”

The Phoenix-area realtor explained that her colleagues have seen the same drop in Canadian business. Their fleeing clients had owned second homes — spending up to six months each year in the Copper State — for years, many of them long before COVID. But this year, Mahmood-Corley’s clients told her they wanted out.

This is part of a larger trend. Strained U.S.-Canada relations have led to falling Canadian interest in buying American properties, a trend that is intersecting with a cooling U.S. housing market.

Redfin, a real estate brokerage company that offers a popular search tool for home buyers, has seen a huge drop in Canadian traffic this year. The number of Canadian
Redfin.com
searchers for U.S. properties has dropped roughly 22 per cent year-over-year. The decline started in February, just as U.S. President Donald Trump announced 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian exports, and the biggest drop, 34.2 per cent (YoY), came in April, coinciding with the so-called “Liberation Day.” Declines have continued through July, though it eased slightly last month to a 19.4 per cent decline.

The falling interest coincides with a slowdown in domestic U.S. home sales as well, but Chen Zhao, Redfin’s head of economics research, says the drop has been far more pronounced for Canadian buyers. While overall searches “are down a little bit,” Chen says, “they’re not down anything close to what we’re seeing from Canadian buyers.”

Canadians have long represented a strong proportion of foreign purchases in the U.S. Recent data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR), which spanned from April 2024 to March 2025 — notably pre-tariffs — showed that Canadians last year made up 14 per cent of foreign buyers, spending about $6.2 billion. That’s up from 13 per cent and $5.9 billion, respectively, for the year before.

Their most popular destinations? Florida has long been No. 1, followed by Arizona, California, and Hawaii. 

Foreign-buyer purchases for April 2024 to March 2025, according to NAR, saw a 44 per cent increase from the year before, the first year-over-year increase recorded since 2017. 

Matt Christopherson, NAR’s director of business and consumer research, says there have been more buying opportunities in the U.S. for foreign investors because domesti
c homebuyers have been drastically slowed down in recent years by soaring interest rates, with many “waiting on the sidelines for better affordability conditions.”

Canadians buying in the U.S., however, are unhampered by the interest rates, he says, because they most likely don’t need mortgages. “Fifty-seven per cent of Canadian buyers paid all cash this past year,”
Christopherson said. 

Canada’s U.S. purchases were beaten last year only by Chinese buyers, who represented 15 per cent of international transactions, for a whopping US$13.7 billion worth of sales. “China’s housing market has had a much slower recovery coming out of the pandemic. So their investors are looking elsewhere for exposure to other markets,” Christopherson noted.

Realtors in Florida and Arizona, Canadians’ top two destinations, have seen severe downturns this year amid tariff-related trade tensions and Trump’s fiery 51st state rhetoric.

“What drove a lot of [Canadians] out was politics,” said Mahmood-Corley. “‘I am embarrassed to own a property here in the United States,’” one client told her, while others said they didn’t want to spend their money in the U.S.

“We don’t have Canadian buyers right now,” says broker Kevin Bartlett, owner of Knowledge Base Real Estate in Estero, Florida, just south of Cape Coral and Fort Myers. Where 50 per cent of Bartlett’s clients used to be from Canada, now “everyone wants to get out of America.”

But it’s not just the trade war that’s driving down foreign business. “It’s tariffs, it’s the dollar, it’s the cost of living,” Bartlett said, referring to how recent hurricane seasons have driven up insurance and HOA costs. 

The downturn also comes amid a weakening of the Canadian dollar. A loonie at 70–72 cents U.S. adds 30 per cent to a purchase. 

Overall, Canadian purchases of U.S. properties — whether the figures soar or plummet — won’t have a huge impact. While Canadians made up 14 per cent of last year’s foreign buyers, foreign purchases overall are just two per cent of U.S. home sales. But in a cooling U.S. housing market, it certainly doesn’t help realtors in the areas most affected. Bartlett, for example, says his sales are down 50 per cent this year. 

Steven Glick, director of mortgage sales for HomeAbroad, says he’s still seeing interest from Canadian buyers, but he acknowledges that something has changed
. “
I think there’s been some hesitation from our current client base, kind of waiting things out and being a little more hesitant to pull the trigger,” he said.

Overall, the slowdown in the U.S. market hasn’t impacted prices too much — the national median price is still up 1.7 per cent from this time last year — but in markets like southern Florida, prices are falling. “You’re starting to see a decrease where a lot of people are able to buy for 20 to 30 per cent under asking price, because there’s just so much more inventory now,” Glick added.

The pivot from a sellers’ to a buyers’ market has been more sudden in the Sunbelt. According to
Realtor.com
, there has been a 2.2 per cent year-over-year decline in Florida home prices as of May this year. Redfin data, meanwhile, shows a .72 per cent year-over-year decline in median prices in Arizona. 

We won’t know the full extent of the drop in Canadian purchases until next year, when NAR releases its next report covering April 2025 to March 2026. But what we do know is that searches have plummeted since February, and Canadian purchases in places like Arizona nd Florida, normal hotspots for cross-border investments, are falling despite a drop in prices.

The overall impact of fleeing Canadians, especially in these popular areas, is being felt in other ways, too. “When [Canadians] come, they have second cars here, they go out, they spend a lot on restaurants and tourism,” said Mahmood-Corley. “And you just didn’t see the activity from that this year like you had in the past.”

Bartlett said he’s seen a huge impact in southern Florida. “We need to understand that (Canadians’) money was 100 per cent very valuable in our economy down here. They created probably a third of our tourism.”

Potential homebuyers in the U.S. have an eye on the Federal Reserve, and realtors are hoping to see a fall in interest rates in the months ahead, which would boost refinancing, sales, and, in turn, housing prices.

But Chen expects the Canadian buying trajectory to remain unchanged for the foreseeable future. “I think it’s likely to remain lower or muted, relative to what we’ve seen in the past,” she said, noting that a lot depends on the tariffs and increased trade volatility.

“Until those tensions subside,” Glick said, “I think you’re going to still see a continuing decrease in interested buyers.” But he also said the anger over trade tensions is likely to eventually subside as people become more numb to the politics. 

By early 2026, Glick said a combination of dropped interest rates and the buyers’ market should be “big
contributing factors to seeing an increase in the market.”

National Post

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

Concertgoers heading to the recently opened Rogers Stadium in Toronto’s Downsview Park might be surprised to find more than just standard arena food. Instead of your regular nachos and beer, the venue offers Wagyu beef burgers and sushi platters.

Behind the upgrade is Nick Di Donato, president and CEO of Liberty Entertainment Group, the company behind some of Toronto’s most celebrated restaurants and event spaces. He spoke to National Post about the Liberty Group’s new role in elevating the concert-going experience. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

How did you end up seeking the food concession at Rogers Stadium?

Liberty Entertainment Groups has a very diverse portfolio, from regular restaurants to Michelin restaurants, the only Canadian organization with two Michelin restaurants in its portfolio, from our high-end steak houses and our event spaces like Casa Loma and Liberty Grand.

The stadium identity is now changing in recent years, and one of the things that is very important to stadiums is premium hospitality. And you see that in their suites, and in the restaurants that are located in stadiums and even their food offerings. So we thought that would be a perfect fit for the Liberty Entertainment Group, to help deliver the premium quality hospitality in a stadium atmosphere.

At the Rogers Stadium, we have two lounges of 400 seats each, the Birkenstock lounge and American Express where we have a full menu. We also do the 24 suites, so premium suites in the stadium itself, and also we do some premium concession stands, so a diverse selection of casual food but done at a premium level.

What’s the concept? What are you doing to try to elevate or reinvent stadium food?

The stadium itself is a temporary stadium, so I can imagine most of the seats are on a scaffold and built for a three year period. But we built two full-size restaurants, the American Express restaurant, with a full menu which emulates some of the items that we have at our Blue Bovine Steakhouse, with sushi and casual approachable food for a stadium environment.

We’ve done that with the Birkenstock lounge, more with reflecting the brand itself, of German descent. It’s a full service restaurant in the middle of, basically, a field.

We’ve created our full-service kitchens, full bar component. Our bar menu and cocktail menu are designed by world champion Jacob Martin. Our menus are designed and supported by our Michelin chefs, so there’s a very high-level experience in what people would expect to feel.

Can you give an example or two of specific food items?

We have the beef tartar cristini, an American Express tower, which exemplifies a tasting of all our menus, and obviously in the same atmosphere we have the quality burgers, but our burgers are made with Wagyu beef. And we have a sushi program at the Blue Bovine, which is translated into the stadium atmosphere.

What’s your personal favourite at Rogers

To me it’s from Birkenstock, the Coconut shrimp. It’s jumbo shrimp done in coconut and batter, and very easy to share.

How do you ensure quality and consistency in that environment?

Every item on our menu is quality made, made on site.

We created full service kitchens within the space itself and we’ve done that in cargo containers so, although we are outside in a very difficult challenging space to build quality food, we’ve created the kitchen in containers. We have a hotline in a container side-by-side with a cold line in a refrigeration container.

It’s not pre-prepared food, which is just heated up in a hot box. We are preparing the food as it’s been ordered.

Is this a sign of a growing sophistication of the average palate?

People are expecting a little more, and hats off to the people at Maple Leaf Sports who have introduced some of the higher quality products in their concessions. So you look at where they’ve moved and we look at where the industry is moving, people are looking for higher deliverables in their stadiums.

So this was really why Liberty Entertainment Group moved into that because it is our niche market. Premium quality, we know how to deliver that, and now we’re delivering it in higher volume in larger stadiums.

What’s the throughline in what Liberty Group is trying to do?

Our focus has always been best in class, so whether it’s a casual restaurant, whether it’s a Michelin restaurant, whether it’s a steakhouse, we always aim to be best in class.

Understanding what your target audience is, where you wanna be with that and making sure you’re the best in terms of deliverables, and we do that even in our nightclub component.

What’s next, any more surprises?

We’re going to extend this across Canada, in terms of the stadium approach, in terms of bringing up the level of expertise in stadiums. We are expanding in Miami, so that’ll be coming up, probably in October. And we’re expanding our portfolio in the lounge and club business. We’re creating a place called powder room in Yorkville, which will be a high-level cocktail lounge, which is really needed in the Yorkville area.