OTTAWA – Canada’s former chief trade negotiator Steve Verheul doesn’t expect formal negotiations on the review of the Canada-United States-Mexico-Agreement (CUSMA) between Canada and the U.S. to happen anytime soon, following the collapse of trade talks between the two countries last week.

“I think that the discussions between Canada and the U.S. on the CUSMA review have now been put into some question,” said Verheul, who now serves as a principal at GT and Company, during a webcast hosted by BMO Capital Markets on Wednesday.

Verheul said the expectation coming out of negotiations for an interim deal on Section 338 and Section 232 tariffs between the two countries, would be a commitment for both parties to enter the formal process of reviewing the North American trade pact.

“I expect at some point we will get back to that kind of discussion, but I don’t think it will happen anytime soon,” he added.

Verheul was the chief negotiator who led Canada’s role in the creation of CUSMA. The trade pact is now subject to annual reviews, after the U.S. decided in July not to renew it for another 16 years.

Mexico and the U.S. just completed the third formal bilateral negotiation round under the joint review of CUSMA last month in Mexico City. On Monday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said she was optimistic that Mexico and the U.S. could reach a deal on Section 232 tariffs.

The collapse of negotiations between Canada the U.S. last Friday has led to a tit-for-tat escalation in the trade conflict between the two countries.

The U.S. has applied 50 per-cent tariffs under the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act on nearly $28 billion worth of Canadian goods. In return, Canada has applied retaliatory tariffs ranging from 15 to 50 per cent on $27.6 billion worth of U.S. imports, effective Sept. 8. Canada has also doubled tariffs on U.S. steel and aluminum.

U.S. President Donald Trump has also threatened to double tariffs to 50 per cent on Canadian autos and trucks and put a levy on auto parts, effective Jan. 1.

After weeks of negotiations for interim agreement, Prime Minister Mark Carney said ultimately several last-minute demands from the U.S. side led to his government having to walk away from the agreement that was offered.

Carney said those demands included Canadian trucks not receiving the same tariff relief treatment as Canadian autos, language in the deal around restricting Canada’s ability to make trade deals with other countries, and “efforts to restrict our protections of our language, our culture, and in effect, our sovereignty.”

On Wednesday, Verheul cited those reasons for the breakdown in talks as well, adding that U.S. negotiators also wanted Canada to match U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum from other countries and would not include aluminum-containing products as part of the reduction in tariffs.

When asked what it would take to get back to the negotiating table, Verheul said he expects Trump’s tariff policy to become progressively more unpopular domestically.

Verheul noted the U.S. business community is virtually unanimous in its support for the extension of the North American trade pact, and the American public is not in favour of tariffs. He also said manufacturing starts and jobs are down in the U.S.

“I think those kinds of pressures will come to bear, and I hope sooner rather than later,” he said.

National Post

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Australia is the country most often named as best able to ride out a global catastrophe. Canada is on the other side of the ledger.

Florian Ulrich Jehn is the lead author of the first review to map which places on Earth would hold up best in a global catastrophe, published Aug. 23 in the journal Global Challenges .

The paper defines a global catastrophic risk as the death of a significant share of humanity, most commonly at least 10 per cent of the world’s population within months to years. It reviews 152 documents rather than modelling anything new.

The authors sorted those threats three ways with the first being sunlight reduction scenarios. That is the review’s term for anything that suddenly blocks out the sun, whether a nuclear war, a large volcanic eruption or an asteroid strike.

Another is infrastructure loss, usually a long blackout caused by a solar storm, a cyberattack or an electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear weapon detonated at high altitude. The third is a pandemic severe enough to cause mass casualties.

“In many nuclear winter scenarios agriculture ceases almost completely in Canada,” Jehn said in an email to National Post.

Canada is strong on biological threats and mediocre on infrastructure collapse, he wrote, and “probably near the worst among wealthy democracies for abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios.”

Australia is the only country directly named as resilient across all three categories in the research the authors reviewed. New Zealand and Japan were the only others with evidence in all three.

On nuclear winter, the review lists Canada among the countries identified as particularly at risk, along with the United States, Russia, China, Central Europe and Eastern Europe. High latitude regions in the Northern Hemisphere would take the most cooling, the paper said.

Jehn put it in terms of where the country starts. Canada is so far north that it begins from a lower base temperature, he wrote, and the temperature effects get stronger the further from the equator a place sits.

Canada does better on the second category. Geomagnetic storms do not hit everywhere equally, and the zones with the highest likelihood of damage take in Canada, Ireland, the United States, the United Kingdom, northern Germany, the Baltics, New Zealand, Tasmania, Russia and Scandinavia.

Canada is one of three countries the review named as having hardened its grid against those storms, along with the United States and Sweden. Past storms drove that investment, Jehn wrote. “I think other countries can likely learn from Canada how it worked on adapting to the threat of geomagnetic storms.”

He attached limits to the grid work. An electromagnetic pulse or a large cyberattack could still take out the grid, he wrote, and Canada trades enough that it would struggle if trade stopped. He is not familiar enough with Canadian industry to make a solid assessment, he wrote.

The third category is where Canada is named as capable. It is among the countries with the highest scores on the Global Health Security Index, a measure of a country’s ability to prevent, detect and respond to disease outbreaks.

“Canada only has one border to cover, it has a good health system and is a rich and stable democracy,” Jehn wrote.

The individual placements make the picture look worse than it is, he wrote. Most countries that came up in the research carry vulnerabilities across several of the risks, and “with the exception of being so far North, Canada is not a negative outlier in comparison with many other countries.”

Very few countries are less vulnerable, Jehn wrote, and the authors did not look at every country systematically. The review does not rank countries, and the paper said a ranking is not possible.

The authors flagged a limit in their own work. Australia and New Zealand come up often in resilience research, but much of it comes from a small group focused on those two countries, and other countries “might also have a relatively high resilience, but nobody has gotten around to studying them yet,” the paper said.

More research into Canada specifically would most likely pay off on infrastructure, Jehn wrote, which is also the least studied part of the field.

“A country cannot suddenly become an island or relocate to the Southern Hemisphere,” the paper said. Most of what determines resilience is how a society is built and how well it prepared, and the two factors the authors found both changeable by policy and free of trade-offs were governance quality and decentralization.

Democratic backsliding, rising inequality and concentrated supply chains are all moving the other way, the paper said. Prevention is always better than resilience, but some catastrophes cannot be prevented and, when they happen, “the difference between societies that have invested in the factors identified here and those that have not will be measured in lives.”

Research goes where researchers expect to find something new, Jehn wrote. “No amount of research will make Canada be a good place in a nuclear winter.”

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Following the collapse of trade talks between Canada and the U.S. last week, the federal government has released a long list of U.S.-made products that will be subject to counter-tariffs of between 15 and 50 per cent, effective Sept. 8.

The counter-tariffs are expected to cover $27.6 billion worth of imports from the U.S. and come after Trump’s latest 50 per cent levies on Canadian goods came into effect on Saturday.

Here are the largest categories of products affected by the new tariffs, and the companies expected to be hit hardest.

Iron, steel and aluminum products

The federal government will impose 50 per cent tariffs on iron, steel and aluminum products such as wires, bars and rods, as well as parts for bridges, scaffolding and railway or tramway track construction. The 50 per cent levy will also apply to nails, needles, screws, bolts and nuts made with iron, steel or aluminum.

Meanwhile, 25 per cent tariffs will apply to radiators, sinks and baths, and large kitchen appliances made with iron or steel, such as stoves, refrigerators, freezers, washing machines and dryers.

Canadians could feel this impact when purchasing appliances made by companies such as Whirlpool (which also owns KitchenAid and other appliance brands), which already announced a 10 per cent price hike in April — its largest in a decade — and a separate 4 per cent price increase in July owing to industry decline.

Whirlpool, which makes about 80 per cent of what it sells in the U.S., said that its performance had been disrupted by the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Trump’s emergency tariffs in February.

Machinery and agricultural equipment

Air conditioning machines will be subject to 25 per cent tariffs, while 50 per cent tariffs will apply to forklift trucks and other lifting, handling, loading or unloading machinery, as well as lawnmowers and harvesting machinery — including their parts.

The Wall Street Journal notes that John Deere, which is the world’s largest manufacturer of agricultural equipment, along with other manufacturers that produce farming equipment throughout the Midwest, will be most impacted by these tariffs.

Hand tools

A 25 per cent tariff will apply to some hand tools from Sept. 8, including pipe cutters, livestock branding irons and vices and clamps — both for toolmakers and for the surgical, dental and veterinary fields.

Knives including table cutlery, as well as spoons, forks, ladles and tongs will also be subject to this levy, which will likely impact companies such as Cutco, which is the largest manufacturer of kitchen cutlery in North America and makes its knives at a factory in New York.

Paper products

Paper for writing or printing, alongside envelopes, tablecloths and serviettes, will be subject to a 50 per cent tariff, as well as products like account books, note books, order books, receipt books and letter pads. Paper plates and cups will also be affected.

Elsewhere, a 25 per cent tariff will apply to toilet paper, paperboard and facial tissue. This means Canadians might see toilet paper prices soar, as the likes of Procter & Gamble (which owns Charmin and Bounty) are affected by new tariffs.

P&G said last year that it would hike prices, with CEO Jon Moeller citing “tariffs, inflation, interest rates, political and social divisiveness” as factors deflating consumer spending on its products, according to CNN .

Fish and seafood

Live fish, as well as fresh, chilled and frozen fish and fish parts imported from the U.S. will have 25 per cent tariffs applied, as well as fish that has been smoked, dried, salted or in brine.

This tariff also applies to crustaceans including lobster, crab and shrimp, as well as molluscs including oysters, scallops and mussels.

Maine Senator Angus King has said the trade war could “devastate” the state’s lobster industry , because almost half of Maine’s fall lobster catch goes to Canada for processing.

Home furnishings

Tariffs of 50 per cent will be applied to tableware, kitchenware, seats and other furniture made of wood or metal. Chandeliers and plastic floor, wall or ceiling coverings will also be subject to 50 per cent tariffs, while carpets and other textile floor coverings will have a 25 per cent tariff applied, along with mountings and fittings for furniture, doors, staircases, windows and blinds.

Vehicles and parts

Parts of railway or tramway locomotives, motor cars and motor vehicles (for transporting both people and goods), along with trailers will be subject to 25 per cent tariffs.

According to the Wall Street Journal , Harley-Davidson is particularly exposed to the impacts of Canada’s retaliatory tariffs, having sold 6,400 motorcycles in Canada last year — about 5 per cent of its worldwide total.

Meanwhile, General Motors, which owns Chevrolet and Cadillac among others, has already felt the impact of tariffs, with core profit falling 32 per cent in the second quarter of 2025, following the 25 per cent tariffs that arrived that spring, according to the Globe and Mail .

Food products

Some milk and cream products as well as whey, natural honey, molasses and malt extract products in the form of mixes or doughs for baking will have 50 per cent tariffs applied.

Elsewhere, a variety of cheese and curd products including cheddar, camembert, brie, gouda, mozzarella and more will be subject to 25 per cent tariffs.

Beauty products

Lip and eye makeup and skincare as well as perfume, sunscreen, suntan, manicure and pedicure preparations and haircare products imported from the U.S. will all be subject to 50 per cent tariffs.

This is another area where consumer goods company P&G will take a hit, as the owner of skincare brand Olay and haircare brands Pantene, Herbal Essence and Head & Shoulders.

Other products

Elsewhere, a variety of clothing items from dresses, trousers and T-shirts to pullovers, coats and protective suits will have a 50 per cent tariff applied from September.

And smartphones, telephone sets projectors, and video game consoles are among the electronics subject to 50 per cent tariffs.

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A company that sells the ability to identify a stranger from a photograph left more than nine million files unsecured online, a researcher found.

ClarityCheck sells reverse image searches. A user uploads a photo and the site returns names, social profiles and where else the image appears online. Canadian visitors are quoted $1.69 for a seven-day trial and $38.99 every 28 days after that.

The company also sells lookups on phone numbers, email addresses, vehicle identification numbers, names and businesses. Its homepage says it can “identify unknown callers, verify online contacts, check photos, and decode vehicles using publicly available data from trusted sources.”

Cybersecurity researcher Jeremiah Fowler found 9,042,977 image files in unsecured cloud storage belonging to the company, in folders labelled faces and profiles. The images included adults, teenagers and children, he wrote in a report published by ExpressVPN.

The site is offered in more than 20 languages and prices its trial separately for the United States, Britain, the European Union, Australia and Canada. How many of the images were Canadian is unknown.

The people in those folders are not the customers. They are the people being looked up. ClarityCheck’s image search page says the subject of a search will never be notified, and the company will pull a phone number or an email address from its results on request. It has no equivalent for a photograph.

“If you’re trying to find out who a person is, you might not have authorization or permission, so people might not know that their image had been dumped into this database that was public,” Fowler told Wired magazine.

A scammer holding those images could identify someone, build a fake profile and approach their friends and family as that person, his report said. A face cannot be reset the way a password can. ClarityCheck’s about page says its services “must not be used to stalk, harass, dox, or monitor any person.”

Fowler found the storage in early April, he said in an email to National Post. Most of the ClarityCheck addresses he tried bounced, and messages he sent through the company’s customer support did not reach the right people, he wrote. Public access was not restricted until July, after Wired contacted the company.

A ClarityCheck spokesperson told Wired access “required knowledge of a specific, unindexed URL that was not discoverable through ordinary use of the ClarityCheck service or a general web search.” The company said the files included duplicates, resized copies and non-image data rather than nine million unique images.

Fowler wrote that he did not see duplicate, cropped or resized images in the sample he reviewed, though he was not claiming they were absent. The storage URL appeared in code on ClarityCheck’s own website, Wired reported.

Teresa Scassa, the Canada Research Chair in Information Law and Policy at the University of Ottawa, said Canadian law puts a duty on companies to protect the personal information they hold. “I don’t think that that would qualify as meeting that duty or that obligation,” she said.

The company is registered in Delaware. Its reverse image search page tells Canadian visitors it handles personal information under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, Canada’s private sector privacy law. It points them to the opt-out in its terms, which works by sending a one-time code to the number or address being removed.

Scassa said the law reaches the company regardless, and that it keeps separate privacy policies for American, British and European users. “All that’s required for PIPEDA to apply is for there to be that real and substantial connection,” she said.

The only control on an upload is a box the user ticks confirming they own the image or appear in it. Canada’s privacy commissioner examined that model in 2024. It found Pornhub’s owner, Aylo, could not rely on uploaders to confirm consent, even though Aylo checked government identification against a live face scan.

Scassa said the comparison holds, with a caveat. Intimate images are far more sensitive than a photograph, she said, so ClarityCheck’s position is less serious than Aylo’s. “I still don’t think it’s adequate consent. They should have something more than that.”

A Canadian who suspects their face is in there can ask the company what it holds on them, and it has to answer, Scassa said. Finding out would likely mean handing over a fresh photograph to search against. If the company has something, they can ask for it to be deleted, and Bill C-36, tabled in June, would make that right clearer, she said.

Beyond that the privacy commissioner can investigate and issue findings, Scassa said, but they are not binding, and any Federal Court order would have to be enforced through an American court.

Fowler’s report quotes ClarityCheck’s terms setting a 14-day retention period for uploaded images. The terms now say seven days and carry a July 28 update. It appears the company edited them after his disclosure, Fowler wrote.

ClarityCheck’s FAQ says it does not provide facial recognition. Marketing copy on the same page describes face recognition and facial recognition search. A Wired reporter who uploaded their own face was shown the phrases scanning facial landmarks and mapping unique face geometry.

ClarityCheck did not answer questions from National Post by deadline. Five replies came back from customer support on Friday, each signed with a different first name, saying the questions had been routed to the responsible team.

The company said in an email over the weekend that the questions reached its escalations team late on Friday and would need input from its legal, engineering and product teams. It asked until Aug. 28 for written answers. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner did not respond.

Fowler wrote that he saw nothing in the images showing where they came from. He did not report the exposure to a Canadian regulator because the company is registered in the United States.

The one way to find out runs through the company itself. “You won’t know if you’re in the database until you get in the database,” Scassa said.

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