Prince Andrew is giving up use of his royal titles.

This decision was made after discussions with King Charles and the wider Royal Family, reports the BBC. He will

remain a prince by birthright

as the son of Queen Elizabeth II, however he will cease to be known as the Duke of York.

Town and Country

magazine reported on a statement Andrew issued this afternoon.

“In discussion with The King, and my immediate and wider family, we have concluded the continued accusations about me distract from the work of His Majesty and the Royal Family. I have decided, as I always have, to put my duty to my family and country first. I stand by my decision five years ago to stand back from public life.

“With His Majesty’s agreement, we feel I must now go a step further. I will therefore no longer use my title or the honours which have been conferred upon me. As I have said previously, I vigorously deny the accusations against me,” the full statement reads.

It was agreed among the family, says

Sky News

, that the ongoing accusations against him are distracting from the work of the King and the Royal Family.

He continues to face fresh questions over his friendship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, reports

NBC

.

The relinquishing of his titles is a further step following from Andrew’s withdrawal from public life five years ago as well as the relinquishment of his military roles and patronages. All of this was related to his legal issues connected to the Epstein scandal.

His former wife, Sarah Ferguson, will no longer use her title as Duchess of York. Their

 daughters
 
will continue to have the title of princess

.

Official removal of the titles would

require an act of parliament

, but for now he has ceased using them publicly.

• Prince Andrew’s ‘irrecoverable’ reputation, need for cash led to ties with accused Chinese spy: documents
• ‘He’s on his own’: King Charles ousts Prince Andrew from Buckingham Palace

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OTTAWA

— Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government says that while it has no intention of revising its climate targets that were set under the Paris Agreement, it has also not committed to meeting them for 2030 and 2035.

It’s created a sense of uncertainty among environmental groups about what is to come from the Carney Liberals, who, for the past decade, have staked their brand on fighting climate change under the leadership of former prime minister Justin Trudeau, some of whose key policies are now being undone.

At the same time, others suggest Canada is undergoing a necessary evolution in terms of its approach to climate policy and that the country has the advantages to lead the way on clean technologies, should it so choose.

A closer look at how Carney, the two-time central banker-turned-one-time climate envoy for the United Nations, plans to balance reducing emissions while attracting private sector cash to help transform Canada into an “energy superpower” may be clearer once he unveils his promised “climate competitiveness strategy.”

Expected to be released as soon as next week, the document is not expected to be overly detailed. Rather, it is expected to highlight several parts of that strategy, including carbon pricing for industries, known by its technical name of the output-based pricing system. Clean power is expected to form another part of that strategy, with investment tax credits being another possible plank.

That still leaves the question of targets.

While Carney’s government has vowed to keep working to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, he and his cabinet ministers have been mum on saying the same for hitting its 2030 target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 45 per cent below 2005 levels, and its newly set target for 2035, of reducing emissions by 45 to 50 per cent below 2005 levels.

“It’s a very awkward position to be in,” said Simon Donner, the co-chair of the government’s net-zero advisory body, as well as climate scientist and professor at the University of British Columbia.

“The government seems to be making the choice to just sort of pretend they’re not there.”

The 2030 and 2035 targets are legally binding goals set by Canada under the Paris Agreement, an international treaty adopted by many countries during a United Nations climate change conference in 2015.

Every five years, countries submit what is called a “nationally determined contribution” that forms their climate plans. The agreement itself specifies that each new target “will represent a progression beyond” a party’s existing target “and reflect its highest possible ambition.”

That means the agreement was not designed to leave room for a country to back away from its goal, Alison McDermott, a senior official at Environment and Climate Change Canada, told the parlimentary environment committee in late September.

Canada formally submitted its 2035 target back in February as the Liberal leadership race to replace Trudeau was in full swing.

“C
anada does not intend to submit new targets under the Paris Agreement,” wrote Keean Nembhard, a spokesman for Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin. 

“We are committed to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 — not just because it’s important for the climate, but because we cannot ignore the reality at home.”

Nembhard added that Canada has no intention of leaving that agreement and that Canadians expect the government to tackle climate change as “one of the defining challenges of our time.”

Caroline Bouillette, executive director of the Climate Action Network, which represents around 150 environmental groups from across the country, said targets serve as a “north star” for policymakers when it comes to decision-making. 

She said what Carney and his environment minister have done is insert uncertainty into the situation and risked “undermining the certainty of that political signal.”

From her perspective, Bouillette said it amounts to a “soft management” of saying, “that we’re not going to meet them.”

The Canadian Climate Institute, a climate think-tank, warned back in September that Canada was not on track to meet its 2030 goal.

Bouillette and others said that while the net-zero accountability law the Liberals passed in 2021 does not oblige the government to meet its targets, it does compel them to provide progress reports.

The next update on its 2030 emissions reduction plan is due in December.

Keith Brooks, a program director at Environmental Defence, an environmental advocacy organization, said interim targets remain important to show the country is on track to meet its 2050 goal.

“We have a goal around 2050, and that’s great, but we have to have milestones along the way.”

While Carney said his forthcoming climate strategy intends to prioritize

“results over objectives,” Brooks said both are needed. 

For Michael Bernstein, CEO and president of Clean Prosperity, a climate policy organization focused on transitioning to a lower-carbon economy, hitting the 2030 target was always going to be a stretch.

“While the government’s new approach may face pushback from some environmental groups, he sees it as a “logical evolution.” 

How much attention the public gives to the issue of climate change will ebb and flow, he said, suggesting that at the current moment, with the Canada-U.S. trade war and economic concerns top of mind, it has receded.

“What probably is the way to talk about this that is like durable throughout different economic cycles is kind of connecting climate policy and decarbonization to other key national objectives, like growing the economy, ensuring accessible and affordable energy.”

National Post

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Mark Carney says that Benjamin Netanyahu would be arrested if he travelled to Canada.

The prime minister made the remark in an interview with British journalist Mishal Husain on

her podcast

released Friday. In the 37-minute episode, Carney touched on a wide range of topics. He talked about why he ran for office, what he learned from U.S. President Donald Trump and what his next steps were after recognizing Palestinian statehood.

The end goal “is a free and viable Palestinian state living side by side, peace and security, with the state of Israel,” said Carney.

The actions of the Netanyahu government, he said, “were explicitly designed to end any possibility of a state of Palestine in violation of the UN charter and going against Canadian government policy of whatever political stripe since 1947.”

Since 1947, the policy of the Canadian government has been to support a two-state solution,

said Carney

in September, when he officially recognized Palestinian statehood.

Jewish groups condemned

the choice and said it would reward and embolden Hamas terrorists. But, according to Carney, the recognition doesn’t compromise Canada’s support “for the State of Israel, its people, and their security,” — which can only “be guaranteed through the achievement of a comprehensive two-state solution.”

In the podcast, Carney said that although the U.S. disagreed with the recognition, the “common objective is the same.”

“You’re going to have to keep up the pressure on the Israeli government,” in order to achieve a Palestinian state “living side by side with a secure Israel,” Husain said to Carney. “Justin Trudeau said that Canada would honour the International Criminal Court arrest warrants i.e. Benjamin Netanyahu would be arrested if he came to Canada.”

She then asked: “Does that stand under your leadership?”

“Yes,” Carney replied.

“You’d be prepared to do that?” asked Husain.

“Yes,” said the prime minister.

“We’ve let terrorist organizations turn our country into an ATM, but the leader of the only Jewish state in the world isn’t welcome here. Make it make sense,” said Casey Babb, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney, said @netanyahu would be arrested if he set foot in Canada. We’ve let terrorist organizations turn our country into an ATM, but the leader of the only Jewish state in the world isn’t welcome here.

Make it make sense. pic.twitter.com/aoUxRDqzJE

— Casey Babb (@DrCaseyBabb) October 17, 2025

“What? Hamas thanked Carney when he derailed a peace proposal on the eve of a trade deal deadline with the USA. Now Hamas is publicly executing competing Palestinian factions. But (Mark Carney) tells Bloomberg he would arrest PM Netanyahu? Astonishing!” said Conservative MP Roman Baber in a post on X.

What?

Hamas thanked Carney when he derailed a peace proposal on the eve of a trade deal deadline with the USA. Now Hamas is publicly executing competing Palestinian factions.

But @MarkJCarney tells Bloomberg he would arrest PM Netanyahu? Astonishing! pic.twitter.com/cKqs7DeRfl

— Roman Baber (@Roman_Baber) October 16, 2025

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an

arrest warrant

for Netanyahu in November 2024. It alleged that the Israeli prime minister was “responsible for the war crimes of starvation as a method of warfare and of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population” in Gaza, starting on Oct. 8, 2023.

A day earlier, on Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists murdered 1,200 people in Israel and took 251 hostages, sparking a war in the Middle East. Israel has denied

claims of genocide

and starvation. A

BBC report

found that Hamas “systematically commandeered humanitarian aid entering the Strip,” giving it to people loyal to terrorists,

The Times of Israel said

.

The

ICC rejected Israel’s request

to withdraw the arrest warrant.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, a Canadian advocacy group,

called on the government

to “unequivocally reject this perversion of justice” after the warrant was issued. It said that it has “given solace” to terrorist groups “in their war of extermination against Israel” and made a “mockery of international law.”

• The Israel-Hamas war is far from over
• Hamas reasserts control on streets of Gaza, turning guns on its rivals

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.

U.S. media, fans and the internet just can’t get enough of one of the most defining moments from the game after the Toronto Blue Jays beat the Seattle Mariners last night.

“

HANG IT IN THE LOUVRE

,” said the Canadian baseball team on X when describing the exchange between firebrand Jays pitcher Max Scherzer and the team manager John Schneider at T-Mobile Park in Washington.

Max Scherzer asked very nicely to stay in the game. pic.twitter.com/cwKKB3WUl6

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) October 17, 2025

During the game, Scherzer, also known by his nickname Mad Max, was visited by his manager in the fifth inning. The manager wanted to take him out but the 41-year-old veteran player was having none of it and insisted he stay in the game. The brief exchange shared widely on social media sees Scherzer walking up to Schneider and yelling at him in what is perceived as his insistence to stay in the game.

A clip of the Jays’ dugout shared on Reddit showed the team’s reaction after Scherzer refused to leave. “The

Blue Jays dugout couldn’t believe

what they just witnessed,” the Reddit group boasting 5 million subscribers posted. The video shows players laughing, clapping and some imitating Scherzer’s denial to leave. Another group on Reddit took a screenshot of Scherzer’s face from the exchange and wrote: “

A Part Of Our Heritage

.” X user Nick called the moment “a

Canadian heritage moment

.”

“

I thought he was going to kill me

,” Schneider joked after the game. “It was great. He locked eyes with me, both colours, as I walked out. It’s not fake. He has this Mad Max persona, but he backed it up tonight.” The payoff came in the way of Scherzer striking out Seattle Mariners’ Randy Arozarena immediately after the viral exchange.

Alongside a video of the highly-charged exchange, ESPN’s sportswriter Jeff Passan said, “Max Scherzer asked very nicely to stay in the game” on X.

American baseball analyst Rob Friedman was more direct in his summary and said “

Mad Max is still insane

.” The insanity refers to Scherzer’s “high-adrenaline” personality on-field, wherein he “goes out there” with his “hair on fire” and tries to get outs, Scherzer said, as reported by

Sportsnet

earlier this month. “And so, that’s a recipe for me,” he said.

The Blue Jays dugout couldn’t believe what they just witnessed as Max Scherzer refuses to come out of the game
by
u/WiscoHighlights in
baseball

Scherzer, on the other hand, laughingly cleared the air after the game and said he was caught off guard and that he just wanted the ball. “I basically told him that in a little bit different language,”

he said on-air

after the game concluded.

With this win, the Jays will play their fifth game against the Mariners on Friday.

• Who is Blue Jays’ Trey Yesavage and what to know about his meteoric rise with Canada’s team
• American broadcaster apologizes for insulting ‘baseball IQ of some Canadians’ on air

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.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — It’s been a tough year for the lumber trade. With U.S. housing starts unusually low, demand and prices for lumber are down — even as trade costs, especially for Canadian producers, keep rising.

Canadian exporters were already smarting from the U.S. Commerce Department’s sixth administrative review of antidumping and countervailing duties on softwood lumber imports, which raised the duty rate to an unprecedented 35.16 per cent in July. Then, this week, President Donald Trump whacked an additional 10 per cent tariff on Canadian lumber imports, citing national security concerns, under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act.

The president’s goal is straightforward: to bolster the domestic lumber industry — a move U.S. producers welcome.

“This is our market. America first, baby. The demand is in this market, not in Canada,” says Andrew Miller, chairman of Oregon-based Stimson Lumber and chair of the U.S. Lumber Coalition.

“I don’t think Canadians get that through their thick head. This is America, not Canada. There’s nothing that obligates us to take dumped subsidized product at the expense of U.S. producers and the employees that operate these sawmills.”

American sawmills and their advocates have applauded both the higher duty rate and the new tariffs on Canadian lumber imports — the latest escalation in the long-running softwood lumber dispute between the two countries. They hope it will lead to fewer Canadian boards sloshing around the states, capturing a larger share of the U.S. market. Free market advocates see it differently: They say tariffs hurt consumers and that the added costs will eventually be passed through in the form of higher prices. They also doubt the U.S. lumber sector can replace Canadian boards in a timely fashion. Canadian lumber producers, meanwhile, are worried about staying afloat in the face of these challenges to trading in their No. 1 export economy.

National security, really?

The viability of the U.S. wood industry is being undermined by high volumes of wood imports, according to the 232 investigation, “posing direct risks to critical infrastructure and defense readiness.” This is the rationale that led to the 10 per cent tariff this week.

But Colin Grabow, associate director at the Cato Institute’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies, doesn’t buy it. “Just from the surface level, this strikes me more as run-of-the-mill protectionism, rather than something narrowly tailored to advance U.S. national security interests.”

Kurt Niquidet, president of the British Columbia Lumber Trade Council, agrees. “Suggesting that we’re a national security threat to the United States just doesn’t hold any water,” he said.

Even Miller, the pro-tariff head of Stimson Lumber, said using national security as a reason was merely a “sideshow.”

The duties, meanwhile, are higher now as a result of Washington’s view of Canadian trading behaviour, said Zoltan van Heyningen, executive director of the U.S. Lumber Coalition.

The reasoning: Canadians don’t pay market rates for stumpage because forests are publicly owned, with the stumpage rates set by the provincial governments. U.S. producers, in contrast, have to pay a higher market rate. On top of that, van Heyningen said Canadian dumping — selling below the home sales market price — in 2023 was “severe,” which is what the new duty rate is in response to.

Canada vs. U.S. lumber

The duties have only had a few months to make an impact, and the tariffs will compound costs in the months to come, but British Columbia’s sawmill closures this year are already up 10 per cent, according to ResourceWise.

John Brink, CEO of B.C.-based Brink Forest Products, discussed the pain he and his colleagues are feeling in the region. In business since 1975, Brink, which sells value-added wood products, normally employs 400 people. But over the past year, he’s had to downsize to a quarter of that, and he expects the headcount to be closer to 60 by year’s end.

The depressed level of trade, he said, is just not sustainable. “Today, we’re down to about 20 per cent of where we were (a year ago),” he said, referring to his U.S. exports.

Primary softwood lumber exports to the U.S. have been down this year, but not by as much as you might think. The first half of the year saw an eight per cent decline, according to Lesprom Analytics, but data for the months since the duty hike is unclear.

For Miller, the decline hasn’t been anywhere near enough. “Canada has hardly slowed down their exports to the U.S., even though they’re losing large amounts of money,” he said.

Statistics Canada suggested that lumber exports were down a whopping 25.4 per cent in August, but American trade data is not yet available, owing to the U.S. government shutdown. A clearer picture of the impact of the 35.16 per cent duties will come toward the end of the year.

If the U.S. lumber industry is to benefit, however, supply needs to drop, and prices need to rise. Miller pointed out that American sawmills are nowhere near capacity because the market remains flooded, making it difficult for him and his colleagues to break even.

Success, he said, will depend on “the degree to which the tariffs and the duties create an economic barrier high enough that Canadian mills ship less to this country.”

If there’s less Canadian lumber in the market, prices will rise, allowing U.S. sawmills to grab more of the market share.

“We’re gonna need prices to come up probably 10 or 15 per cent before my company (Stimson Lumber) and peers I work with would probably say we’re going to go back to our full 100 per cent production,” he said.

Lumber tariffs will help the U.S. industry face less competition, said Jason Miller, a supply chain management professor at Michigan State University, but he questions the knock-on effects. That’s propping up a domestic industry that employs only around 90,000 people, he noted, whereas higher prices will also impact downstream industries, such as housing construction and remodelling. New single-family housing construction employs 384,000 people in the U.S.

“You’re raising the price of an input where we don’t have that many people employed and producing that input,” he said. “But we have a tremendous number of people employed in industries that consume that input.”

Insulating a domestic industry from foreign competition may not help the targeted sector anyway, said Grabow. “It reduces your incentive to invest and innovate and make a better widget than the next guy,” he said, noting that U.S. producers may just rake in the profits without adding jobs or mills.

But Andrew Miller and van Heyningen fear that Canadian sawmills will continue sending their lumber above the market saturation level thanks to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s pledge to support the Canadian industry with a $1.25 billion aid package, including up to $700 million in loan guarantees.

“I think those are just outright economic subsidies to keep an industry alive,” said Jason Miller. “To keep producing their excess output and dumping it in our market.”

Supply and demand

The U.S. lumber industry needs higher prices to thrive, and that’s what tariffs are all about, according to the experts.

“Tariffs drive up costs — that’s kind of the point — to try to dissuade Americans from buying the imported product because their price goes up,” explained Grabow, noting that he expects upward pressure on wood product prices as a result of the duties and tariffs.

The National Association of Home Builders said earlier this year that, based on data from a NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index in April, home builders expected tariff actions to raise the cost of a single-family home build by $10,900.

Andrew Miller sees higher home prices as a red herring. He claims that the cost of framing out a new home is too small to have a significant impact on buyers. Besides, he expects manufacturers and distributors to absorb the costs, as we’ve seen much in other sectors this year. “When it comes to new housing in this country, the impact is zero to date,” he said, referring to steel and aluminum tariff impacts.

Canadian lumber’s market share in the U.S. was once as high as 30 per cent but is now around 25 per cent. Still, that means the U.S. still needed to import a hefty amount of Canadian lumber — 12 billion board feet — last year to meet demand.

If Canadian supplies drop, can the U.S. market make up the shortfall? “They can’t just completely replace Canadian lumber,” said Kurt Niquidet, president of the BC Lumber Trade Council. “They need to import lumber from Canada.”

But Andrew Miller hopes Trump’s policy allows the U.S. industry to test that theory and find its “natural level of output that can be supported by the forests in the south and the northwest, whatever that number is.”

In five or six years, he said, with U.S. mills operating at regular capacity, and maybe with incremental investments, “maybe we are a hundred percent self-sufficient.”

Van Heyningen doesn’t buy the Canadian shortage argument either.

“They usually say, ‘this is how much you need us to supply,’ and I’m like ‘No, this is how much you’ve managed to grab.”

If today’s combined duty and tariff rate of 45 per cent fails to change the behaviour of Canada’s lumber exporters, Miller adds, “then we will be advocating for 55 per cent as an industry.”

“We will find the breaking point where the Canadian government doesn’t want to keep funding these huge losses and begins to restructure.”

National Post

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OTTAWA — The Department of National Defence and Canadian Forces are suing an intelligence watchdog to prevent it from releasing without further redactions a review that found that some of their human intelligence source handling activities may break the law.
 

In a lawsuit filed in late August, both federal bodies requested a Federal Court judge quash the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency’s (NSIRA) decision to release a redacted version of a 2023 review under access to information laws.
 

They argue that NSIRA acted “unreasonably” when it did not implement all their requested redactions to what they say is information injurious to national defence or protected by solicitor-client privilege.
 

The 2023 report at issue cast a critical look on the Department of National Defence’s (DND) and Canadian Armed Forces’ (CAF) program overseeing the handling of human sources of intelligence.
 

The case is likely to be a legal test of what government information is considered so sensitive that it cannot be disclosed by an intelligence review agency to protect national defence. It is also a test of how much discretion NSIRA has to refuse redactions requested by organizations it reviews before publishing a report publicly.
 

Civil rights and transparency advocates frequently complain that the government overclassifies documents or uses blanket national security exemptions to avoid disclosing information.
 

NSIRA has not yet filed its response to the lawsuit. “NSIRA remains committed to the principles of transparency, accountability, and the rule of law in all aspects of its mandate,” an NSIRA spokesperson said via email Thursday evening.
 

A brief summary of the investigation
published in NSIRA’s 2023 annual report noted troubling findings about the program, including problems with CAF’s duty of care for its sources, and shortcomings in the information about
human source-handling operations provided to Armed Forces commanders and the minister of National Defence.
 

But a redacted version of the classified report provided to government in December 2023 has not yet been released. National Post requested a copy of the report via an access to information request (ATIP) in September 2024.
 

In their lawsuit, DND and CAF say that NSIRA was slated to release a redacted version of the report via ATIP last month, after over 18 months of back-and-forth between both federal bodies and NSIRA over what sensitive information should be blacked out before release.
 

But days before the redacted document was released, DND and CAF sued NSIRA in Federal Court to block its publication.
 

In the lawsuit, the federal bodies claim that NSIRA rejected a “significant number” of their requested redactions to the report before publication. They also claim that they were never able to reach a final agreement with NSIRA on the “appropriate redactions.”
 

They argue that NSIRA made a legal mistake when it refused the requested redactions, which CAF and DND say cover information that can’t be released because it either would be injurious to national defence or is covered by solicitor-client privilege.
 

They also accuse NSIRA of acting without jurisdiction if it publishes the report online without the requested additional redactions.
 

DND and CAF are asking a Federal Court judge to quash NSIRA’s decision to publish the existing redacted report, and to direct the review agency to allow both federal bodies to make more arguments about redactions.
 

They also request an injunction barring publication of the report until the Federal Court renders its decision.
 

“
The risks to national defence, and to the (government), in the event of disclosure or publication are significant and must be properly weighed by this Court. The weighing of risk by NSIRA in the decision at issue amounts to an unreasonable and/or improper exercise of its discretion,” reads the lawsuit.
 

The summary of the review published in the 2023 annual review shows that NSIRA made eight recommendations to DND and CAF about their human source handling program
.
 

The recommendations were to address issues such as CAF commanders not always being given “accurate, consistent, and objective information” when they evaluated the risk of engaging with particular sources.
 

The review also found that the organization’s rules allowed source handling activities that may be illegal.
“
These risks arise particularly in relation to sources associated with terrorist groups,” reads the summary of the report.
 

There were also gaps in DND and CAF’s duty of care provision to sources, the report found, and the organizations should implement more measures to ensure the welfare and protection of their human sources.
 

NSIRA also concluded that the Minister of National Defence was not being given enough information on human source-handling operations to be fully accountable to Parliament.
 

National Post

cnardi@postmedia.com

• CSIS failed to disclose use of new ‘intrusive’ technology to minister and court: watchdog
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A Quebec man who was paid to illegally smuggle a pregnant woman from Canada into the United States, in a winter plot that ended with her drowning in a freezing river near the border, has pleaded guilty in New York.

The case reveals a harrowing tale of cross-border people smuggling.

Jhader Augusto Uribe-Tobar, 37, is a citizen of Colombia who was living in Quebec while advertising his people smuggling services on social media.

Miguel Mojarro-Magana, who was in the United States, saw a TikTok video advertising crossings into the United States from Canada, with instructions to contact a phone number with an area code for the suburbs around Montreal.

On Dec. 7, 2023, he texted about having his wife smuggled to join him in the U.S.

“It costs $2500 America, it is worked through Montreal and they are left in the City of Plattsburgh, NY,” was the reply, according to court records translated into English from Spanish.

“How much do they walk bro,” Mojarro-Magana asked, presumably concerned about his visibly pregnant wife, Ana Karen Vasquez-Flores. He was told it was two and a half hours to three hours, “depends how you walk.”

“And is it safe?” Mojarro-Magana asked.

“Well, look, truth is, the only certain thing in life is death, but we are effective,” was the reply.

They moved their chat to WhatsApp, an encrypted messaging app.

There was a heavy, wet snowfall in the forecast as temperatures hovered near freezing in northern New York on Dec. 11, 2023, the day of his wife’s crossing.

Mojarro-Magana, the husband, and Uribe-Tobar, the smuggler, messaged back and forth about payment and plans.

As Mojarro-Magana was arranging a money transfer, his wife was picked up for the start of her journey. She took a quick photo of the vehicle that came for her and sent it to her husband. It was a red GMC Terrain SUV with Quebec licence plates.

The smuggler waited with Vasquez-Flores at an Esso gas station in St. Bernard-de-Lacolle, Que., about seven kilometres north of the U.S. border, refusing to leave until his money arrived, according to court documents.

By 2:38 p.m., three minutes after the husband sent a photograph of a JP Morgan Chase deposit receipt for US$2,500 that had been deposited into a chequing account as told to by Uribe-Tobar, the GMC pulled out of the gas station heading south towards the Canada-U.S. border.

Vasquez-Flores made it into the United States about two kilometres west of the Champlain border crossing station. The smuggler was monitoring her progress through her sharing her phone location.

About one kilometre into New York, she was directed to the bank of the Great Chazy River near the intersection of Perry Mills Road and Missile Base Road in Champlain, N.Y. As she walked, she was texting both her husband and the smuggler. The smuggler and the husband were also texting. She was told the river was “wadable” even in this weather.

“She is crossing friend,” Uribe-Tobar texted her husband, “silence.”

“I’m very nervous,” the husband replied.

The smuggler continued to direct Vasquez-Flores as she crossed: “Get off further ahead”, “at your right hand side”, “there is a wall that slows down the river.” His last message to her, sent at 6:17 p.m., was not delivered. Authorities suspect this is when she was swept away by the frigid water.

Nearly 50 minutes later the smuggler sent an alarming message to the husband: “Bro, hello, I think she got wet or turned off her cell phone.”

For most of the night a desperate Mojarro-Magana watched and waited for his wife while texting Uribe-Tobar.

“Are your people waiting for her there?” the husband asked.

“They are activated friend,” came the reply.

“And you can’t search” he asked.

The smuggler said he had already let his people know. “I told them what happened and that she is pregnant.”

The plan had been for Mojarro-Magana to meet his wife — after she crossed — at the McDonald’s in Champlain, N.Y. After no luck searching, he went there and waited. When he received a notification that her phone battery was about to die he told U.S. Border Patrol Agents about his search for his pregnant wife.

Law enforcement officials found footprints in the snow leading into the river. On Dec. 14, 2023, Vasquez-Flores’s body was found in the river in the village of Champlain. The cause of death was asphyxia due to drowning.

It didn’t take too much to identify the smuggler.

Two months before the deadly crossing, the RCMP encountered Uribe-Tobar in a red GMC Terrain SUV on a Quebec road about 1.4 kilometres from the United States border. He was driving four Mexican passengers, according to U.S. documents filed in court in New York.

The driver and the passengers were all released by the RCMP, according to the documents. Shortly afterwards, the same four Mexican nationals were apprehended by U.S. authorities after illegally crossing the border in the middle of the night.

That traffic stop, that went nowhere in Canada, later helped connect Uribe-Tobar to the vehicle used in the smuggling plot that ended with the woman’s death. Quebec car insurance records were then used to connect Uribe-Tobar to the phone number used to arrange the failed crossing.

RCMP officers later looked at video surveillance footage form the gas station. An officer confirmed Vasquez-Flores was with Uribe-Tobar in the vehicle. She was wearing the same black shirt with a white Calvin Klein logo she had on when her body was recovered.

The video showed another woman and child was with them, too. They were not being smuggled, though; the child was later identified as Uribe-Tobar’s daughter, and the woman his wife or girlfriend, the RCMP found.

Uribe-Tobar was extradited from Canada to face trial in the U.S. this February. On Tuesday, through a Spanish interpreter, he pleaded guilty to

alien smuggling and alien smuggling resulting in a death

, and conspiracy to commit alien smuggling.

The charges carry a sentence with a minimum of three years imprisonment and a maximum of life.

His sentencing is scheduled for February 2026.

Uribe-Tobar’s lawyer, a public defender, did not respond to requests for comment prior to publishing deadline.

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

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A B.C. man originally given house arrest after admitting to drugging, sexually assaulting and taking nude photos of his blacked out sister-in-law will now spend time in a federal prison.

So ruled an appeals court judge, who overturned a provincial court decision from earlier this year that allowed Fort St. John veterinarian Justin Donald Sewell to serve his 33-month conditional sentence concurrently at home.

In a ruling supported by two of her peers, appeals court justice Lisa Warren said the sentencing judge made an error in principle by failing to take into account the seriousness of the voyeurism charges, which didn’t arise out of the same incident.

“In imposing concurrent sentences, the judge erred in failing to consider the distinct legal interests violated by the voyeurism offences and the fact that one of the voyeurism offences arose from a different incident from that underlying the sexual assault and the other voyeurism offence,” wrote Warren in

a decision

published this week.

In 2007, the victim, then 20 years old, moved in with her older sister and her husband, Sewell, whom she first met in 1997, when she was 10 or 11, and had come to see “as an older brother,” the provincial court learned during proceedings.

That June, with his wife and four children out of town, Sewell, on the pretense of offering his sister-in-law a “safe environment for (her) to get drunk for the first time,” proceeded to spike her drink with drugs.

Once incapacitated, he stripped her bare, pleasured himself and then got naked and pressed his body against hers. He also took about 30 photos of her naked, including one with his genitalia “near her face.”

The drugs and alcohol left the victim unable to recall precisely what Sewell had done, but she did distinctly remember awakening to him taking off her clothing and knowing “something terribly wrong had occurred.”

While the victim, who did not know of the photos, moved away for school that September, the images remained on Sewell’s work computer but were deleted after one of his staff members inadvertently saw them.

The assault remained a secret until 2014, when one of the victim’s other sisters learned of the photos, resulting in a “fracture” of the family as the girls’ parents and Sewell’s wife sided with him at the time.

“There is no question that the respondent’s sexual assault of (the victim) was an extremely grave violation of her bodily autonomy, sexual integrity, and dignity that caused her profound and ongoing emotional and psychological harm,” the decision reads.

Five years later, Sewell’s wife would learn from the woman he was having an affair with, one of his veterinarian colleagues, that he had admitted to the drugging and the photos — but not the sexual assault — in 2014.

With the family torn asunder, the victim received, but never responded to, repeated emails from Sewell offering an opportunity to talk over the next few years, all of which were absent “admissions of guilt or wrongdoing.”

After a July 2019 email “indicated he would support her decision” to come forward, and upon learning of his 2014 admission to his extramarital partner, the victim contacted the RCMP.

Two years into the investigation, the victim agreed to be part of a plan to get Sewell to confess to the sexual assault at a meeting in Vancouver while he was being recorded.

He did so in October 2021, admitting that he also took photos “of her from outside her bedroom window” on another occasion.

Sewell was formally charged with one count of sexual assault and two counts of voyeurism in April 2022. He pleaded guilty to charges in November of that year.

At sentencing this April, the Crown sought a term of four years and six months, along with placement on Canada’s sex offender registry. Sewell’s defence asked for “a cumulative sentence of two years less a day” in the form of a conditional sentence.

“Ultimately, the judge concluded that the sentences would be concurrent because consecutive sentences ‘would effectively undo the value of the guilty plea by creating an unduly long and harsh sentence’,” Warren wrote.

In its appeal, the Crown argued that the judge overstated the impact of Sewell’s confession and “failed to properly weigh this mitigating factor against the elevated gravity of the respondent’s conduct and his significant moral culpability.”

It also asserted that allowing individuals convicted of voyeurism offences to serve concurrent sentences fails “to recognize the distinct harm caused” and that doing so just to preserve the option of a conditional sentence is an error in principle.

Warren didn’t accept the first two arguments, but she conceded that the judge erred in allowing Sewell to serve out his sentences simultaneously by not considering the relevant factors.

“Specifically, the judge failed to consider the invasions of (the victim’s) privacy interests caused by the voyeurism offences, as distinct from the invasion of her bodily integrity caused by the sexual assault.”

As such, Warren deemed a 33-month sentence (less one day) proportionate and “far from unduly long and harsh.”

Sewell’s sentences are retroactive to his initial sentencing earlier this year.

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Canada is “relatively successful” at attracting highly educated immigrants, but their counterparts in the United States earn more and have access to better opportunities, a new study says.

The neighbouring countries that have been largely at odds since the Trump administration took over are

not only competing when it comes to industries

, like the steel and auto sectors. They are also competing for skilled and educated people, especially those in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.

Researchers noted that now is the time for Canada to push for the “best and the brightest” to come to the country, as the U.S. adopts “a

far less welcoming immigration policy

.”

The

study from the Fraser Institute published on Thursday

is shedding light on how certain Canadian immigrants are not reaping as many benefits as their U.S. counterparts who “perform better in terms of both employment status and earnings.” Those two factors are compared to native-born Canadians and Americans, respectively, as benchmarks.

In Canada,

highly educated immigrants earned 16 per cent less than native Canadians. In the U.S.,

 immigrants had a higher employment rate (1.2 per cent) and higher compensation (8 per cent) than Americans born in the country.

In 2020, visible minority immigrants in Canada with a bachelor’s degree or higher earned a median of $57,200, whereas native Canadians with a bachelor’s degree earned $68,300 on average.

“The differences were even greater when focusing on cohorts with advanced degrees,” said researchers. “Specifically, the median income of visible minority immigrants with a master’s degree was $65,500. For those with an earned doctorate, it was $84,000.” Canadians born in the country with a master’s earned an average of $84,400, while those with a doctorate earned $100,000.

The wage gap was likely due to “difficulties around the recognition of foreign credentials (and perhaps non-Canadian work experience) for newcomers seeking opportunities in the Canadian labour market,” researchers noted.

In the United States, data from 2022 showed that highly educated American immigrants earned US$122,000, while those born in the U.S. in with the same qualifications earned US$113,000. Researchers said that immigrants out-earning their American counterparts could be due to their “superior performance.”

Canada has a higher percentage of immigrants with at least a bachelor’s degree as part of its workforce, compared to the U.S. And Canadian immigrants are “substantially more educated than recent immigrants to the U.S.” compared to each respective native population, researchers said. More immigrant STEM workers in Canada account for a larger share of the workforce than in the U.S.

Yet despite all of those factors, the U.S. “offers greater economic opportunities and rewards than does Canada, which attracts immigrants at the higher end of the global skill distribution,” according to the study.

For Canada to more successfully compete for global talent, there must be “policies to improve immigrant selection and to create a more dynamic and productive Canadian economy,”

said

Steve Globerman. He’s a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute who co-authored the study.

Educated immigrants contribute to the Canadian economy through including innovation and entrepreneurship. One way to attract them, the study concluded, is to fast-track applications for immigrants and relying on input from employers to select people expected to earn above average wages once in Canada.

“We also believe the federal government should not grant visas to international students intending to enroll in private ‘degree

mills’ that generally offer low-quality academic training,” the study said. In 2025, the

federal government said

it plans to issue a total of 437,000 study permits, a 10 per cent decrease from the 2024 cap. (Of that total number, 73,282 spots will be issued to graduate degree students.)

The study highlighted that Canada can benefit from the Trump administration’s “antagonistic policy stance towards immigration, particularly as it relates to American universities.”

Researchers used data from Statistics Canada, the American Immigration Council, the Migration Policy Institute, as well as other academic sources and journals.

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