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Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks during a pre-budget announcement in Nepean, Ont, on Friday, Oct. 10.

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney says his government’s proposed bail reform will be coming next week.

Carney announced in Etobicoke, Ont., that the Liberals will table a bill when the House of Commons returns next week that will seek to make bail harder for those accused of violent auto theft, human trafficking, assault, and extortion involving violence.

He said this would be done by expanding the use of reverse onus bail provisions, which make the accused responsible for demonstrating why they should be released, instead of a Crown prosecutor having to prove why they ought to be detained.

Other changes include allowing consecutive sentences for violent and repeat offenders, as well as reversing course on allowing those convicted of sexual assault to serve a conditional sentence, which was a change ushered in under former prime minister Justin Trudeau.

Carney, in his prepared remarks, said the forthcoming bill would end that practice, saying it was “not justice” to allow someone convicted of sexual assault to serve their sentence in the same community as their victim.

A news release from the Prime Minister’s Office says the upcoming budget will also send the RCMP $1.8 billion over the next four years to help bolster its federal policing mandate and increase the weekly pay RCMP cadets receive to $1,000, up from the current $525 allowance.

More to come …

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Former prime minister Justin Trudeau, right, and pop star Katy Perry have become a much-talked about couple after romantic yacht photos surfaced.

A rumoured summer romance between Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry was confirmed last week via photos of the pair reportedly canoodling atop her yacht in California recently, vaulting them into the stratosphere of the most talked-about celebrity couple conversation.

Here’s what we know about the 53-year-old former Canadian prime minister and the 40-year-old pop star’s fledgling relationship.

Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry first photographed hanging out in Montreal

Before their late July dinner date at posh Le Violon in Montreal that set the rumour mill spinning, the pair had first met and been in contact since an event weeks before, according to unnamed sources close to Trudeau quoted by

the U.S. Sun.

It’s clear there was an arranged meeting before dinner, as Trudeau and Perry were earlier seen enjoying a casual dog walk through Mount Royal Park, both flanked by security details, as reported by

TMZ

.

The outlet said Trudeau walked Perry and her dog, Nugget, back to the Ritz-Carlton hotel before their ballyhooed get-together at the Michelin-starred restaurant where they dined on the chef’s tasting menu.

“Katy and Justin were lovely. Very kind and warm with the staff,” Le Violon told

National Post

in a statement. “Chef Danny Smiles stopped by their table during the night to say hello, and before heading out, they came into the kitchen to thank the whole team. It was a pleasure having them.”

The chef later told

TMZ

there were no public displays of affection or any sense that it was a romantic date.

Trudeau is said to have paid the tab and the two ended the night with drinks on the terrace of Taverne Atlantic.

 Le Violon restaurant on Marquette St. in Montreal Tuesday July 29, 2025. Justin Trudeau dined at the restaurant with katy Perry in July.

Justin Trudeau attends Katy Perry’s concert with his kids

Perry was in Montreal for a July 30 show at the Bell Centre, one of the seven Canadian dates on her 2025 The Lifetimes Tour and one attended by Trudeau and his 16-year-old daughter Ella-Grace, one of three children he shares with ex-wife Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, along with sons Hadrian, 11, and soon-to-be 18-year-old Xavier.

They were spotted in a premium seating area not far from the stage, overlooking the floor crowd in videos posted to social media, some of which show the former PM singing along.

Outside of the Montreal rendezvous, nothing on their respective social media channels at the time indicated they were linked in any way and neither side responded to requests for comment from National Post.

At the same time, entertainment news outlets have been full of thinly sourced material from individuals claiming to know what’s going on, and they have made for voyeuristic if not confirmed-to-be-reliable reading.

Unnamed sources suggested Perry and Trudeau had a “instant connection” but were still getting to know one another and wanted to take it slow.

“They are interested in each other, but it will take a while to see where this goes,” one source explained to

People in August

. “She is travelling around the world, and he is figuring out his life now that he is no longer prime minister of Canada, but there is an attraction. They have a lot in common.”

A source close to Trudeau described the relationship as “casual” to

Entertainment Tonight

, while someone from Perry’s side told

Star Magazine

the 13-time Grammy Award nominee was “giddy” about their budding romance.

“It’s very new, but it’s hard to imagine a more exciting guy to be wooed by, at least in Katy’s eyes. She’s fascinated by politics, and landing arguably the hottest politician in the world is a feather in her cap.

“Their conversations are way more interesting than anything she and Orlando (Bloom) ever talked about. This has all been very exciting for her.”

Justin Trudeau reportedly didn’t like the media attention

A few weeks after their headline-grabbing first date, various outlets reported that things might be fizzling out between the pair.

People

quoted a Canadian political source who said Trudeau didn’t enjoy the onslaught of media attention and would have preferred if things had remained “more low-key.”

“Justin didn’t know so many people would find out about the private dinner,” the source was quoted. “He was also surprised by the international interest and how it went through the roof for days.”

A Perry source, meanwhile, told

The Daily Mail

things had “cooled off.”

She’s busy, he’s busy. They have a lot going on, and the newness has worn off,” the person said, noting that it wasn’t personal.

 Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau are shown in this composite image.

In mid-September, however,

U.S. Weekly

reported multiple unnamed sources confirming Trudeau and Perry were still “quietly” dating, with one claiming that “Justin has made plans to see her when she has downtime in a few weeks when she gets back from her tour in Brazil.”

That leg of the tour concluded on Sept. 19 and Perry began the U.K. leg of her tour on Oct. 4 in Ireland.

Another source quoted by

People

in October said Trudeau “had been pursuing” Perry ever since their Montreal meetup and a source for

The Sun

said the two had continued to communicate.

In September,

Trudeau also marked his debut in Korea

in what is believed to be his first major private speaking engagement since stepping down as the Liberal leader earlier this year. For speaking appearances, Trudeau is represented by the Speaker Booking Agency, which lists his in-person fee range as $100,000 or more. “As a renowned expert and highly sought-after speaker, Justin Trudeau’s expertise is in high demand,”

the agency notes

.

Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry spotted on her yacht in California

Photos of them atop the pop star’s yacht, the Caravelle, were published by the

Mail

on Oct. 11, showing Perry, in a bathing suit, embracing and kissing Trudeau, wearing blue jeans and sunglasses. The tourist in a passing boat who snapped them said they recognized the former Liberal leader from a distinctive tattoo on his left shoulder.

While the exact date the images were captured is unclear,

Vesselfinder.com

puts the 24-metre ship in Santa Barbara for eight days between Sept. 21 and 29 and returning for a single night on Sept. 30.

After the photos were published,

People

quoted “a Canadian source close to the political world” who said Trudeau and Perry are “definitely into each other — and have been.”

“It has had time to develop on a friend and intellectual level as well as supersized attraction,” they said. “The romance has merit.”

Justin Trudeau celebrates Thanksgiving with Sophie Grégoire and family

The yacht photos were published two days before Trudeau

sat down for a Thanksgiving dinner

with his ex-wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, and other family members on Monday.

The couple split in 2023 after 19 years of marriage.

 Sophie Grégoire Trudeau posted a photo on Instagram of her ex-husband, Justin Trudeau, enjoying a Thanksgiving dinner with family on Monday.

That same day, in the wake of the yacht snaps, Gregoire Trudeau posted a video to Instagram reflecting on impermanence.

She noted how people often forget that nothing we love is meant to last, be it “people, the places even the moments that once felt — I don’t know — infinite, right?”

Love is about being present, not about holding onto something because of the safety it grants, something she admitted to doing.

“Let yourself love what’s here, without trying to make it stay,” she wrote in the caption.

Katy Perry alludes to her romance onstage during her London concert

Perry alluded to a new romantic interest at her show in London on Monday night, according to

The Sun

.

“London, England, you’re like this on a Monday night after a whole day at work and a whole day at school? No wonder I fall for Englishmen all the time — but not anymore,” she told the crowd at O2 Arena.

Later, when a fan extended a marriage proposal on stage, Perry said, “You really should have asked me about 48 hours ago.”

According to the

U.K. Daily Mail

, Bloom and daughter Daisy were reportedly at the show. Perry and the Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean actor formally announced their split in early July after nine years together, during which they had a daughter, Daisy, now five years old.

 Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom appear at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in Beverly Hills, Calif., on March 2, 2025. They announced their split in early July.

While Bloom hasn’t publicly comment on the Perry-Trudeau rumours, he seemed to find humour in a fake August story from satire site

The Onion

poking fun at his ex’s date with a former world leader by way of a doctored image of him sitting down for a candlelit dinner with former German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“Angela kept Orlando laughing all night — he couldn’t keep his eyes off her,” noted The Onion’s “insider source who spotted the pair sipping wine, slurping oysters, and splitting a decadent piece of chocolate layer cake at a Michelin-starred restaurant.”

The English actor responded to the Instagram post with three clapping hand emojis.

Justin Trudeau, Katy Perry romance gets a mention on Jimmy Kimmel

Their wave-making yacht photos caught the attention of comedian Jimmy Kimmel, who cracked wise about them in

his Tuesday night opening monologue.

In the bit, the ABC late show host spoofs a stereotypical Canadian accent and likens Trudeau’s shirtless in jeans fashion to the “RKF Jr. collection.”

He also joked that this is how Canada was retaliating against tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

“They’re not just taking our women. They’re taking our astronauts,” he said, referring to Perry’s 11-minute flight to space aboard the Blue Origin flight earlier this year.

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


A new study from the Lancet Journal of Health Longevity suggests even older adults can slow cognitive decline if they quit smoking, adding to the reasons to stop.

A new study published this week in the

Lancet Journal of Health Longevity

is reinforcing the negative effects of smoking on cognitive health and offering new evidence to support quitting among seniors.

The research was conducted by scientists at Britain’s University College London, and funded by the (U.K.) National Institute on Aging, National Institute for Health and Care Research. It drew on data from studies conducted in 12 countries, including 18 years (2002–20) of cognitive data.

It involved participants who quit smoking and who were matched with an equal number of continuing smokers according to key demographic, socioeconomic, and cognitive criteria. In all there were 9,436 participants: 4,718 smokers who quit and an equal number of continuing smokers, aged 40–89 years, with 51.8 per cent women and 48.2 per cent men.

The primary conclusion was that in the six years after quitting smoking, which could occur in mid or later life, smokers who quit had memory and cognitive fluency scores that declined more slowly than smokers who did not quit.

The findings of previous small-scale smoking cessation trials have suggested cognitive benefits in the six to 24 months following smoking cessation.

In this study, the researchers did not see improvement in cognitive performance, but instead a reduction in the rate of decline. Their results show later-life quitting is associated with a delay in cognitive decline of up to three years of ageing. And the benefit “accumulates further over time,” they wrote.

The researchers suggest the difference between seeing cognitive benefits in the earlier studies and seeing slower decline in the present one is probably attributable to the younger age distribution in previous studies (with a mean age of 45 years), as well as the fact that memory and fluency generally decline from age 60–65 years onwards.

“The fact that we observed more rapid cognitive decline … when cognitive trajectories were centred (on) age 65, regardless of smoking cessation, is consistent with memory and fluency ageing trajectories.”

“However,” they wrote, “the present findings show adults aged at least 65 years who quit smoking aged 44 years or younger had better cognitive scores than current smokers.”

One of the driving factors of the study is the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias as the

eighth leading cause of death

in the world, with

an estimated 56.9 million people living with dementia globally.

As a result, the researchers wanted to

target modifiable risk factors for cognitive decline from midlife onwards.

Among the risk factors, say the researchers, smoking has emerged as a potential cause of accelerated cognitive decline.

“In middle-aged and older smokers with initially similar cognitive trajectories, smokers who quit subsequently had more favourable trajectories than continuing smokers,” they wrote. This was true “regardless of age at cessation.”

One key to conducting the research is that older adults are less likely than younger people to try to quit smoking. The team reasoned that proving improvement in long-term cognitive trajectories might provide additional motivation for older smokers to quit.

“With less than 10% of serious attempts to quit smoking succeeding after 1 year, identifying novel and compelling reasons to attempt to quit remains an important focus for public health initiatives,” they wrote.

“These findings suggest the potential reversibility of smoking-related cognitive harms and could motivate older adults to try to quit smoking, offering new evidence to support the public health message that it is never too late to quit.”

The present findings reiterate the negative effects of smoking on cognitive health, the researchers conclude, and “offer new evidence to support smoking cessation at any age.”

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A Sudanese protester waves the national flag during a rally to mark three years since the start of mass demonstrations that led to the ouster of strongman Omar al-Bashir, in the capital Khartoum on December 19, 2021.

A former Sudanese politician deemed inadmissible to Canada for being a member of a party that engaged in “acts of subversion against a democratic government, institution or process” has won a reprieve.

Abdelsakhi Abbas Adesakhi Ali came to Canada and claimed refugee protection after an April 2019 coup d’état in which then-president Omar al-Bashir was overthrown by the Sudanese Armed Forces.

But his refugee claim was suspended so a hearing could be held before this country’s Immigration Division, which determined he was inadmissible to Canada.

Ali took his case to Federal Court looking for a judicial review of the decision deeming him inadmissible. The judge determined that Canadian immigration officials failed to consider whether he might be subject to persecution if forced to return to Sudan.

The court heard Ali was a member of Sudan’s National Congress Party (NCP) when it was in power and held important political positions as a member of the legislative council of Khartoum from 2010 until 2015, then became a member of the country’s national parliament.

“He alleges, however, that in December 2016 he was interviewed on the radio and expressed his criticism of the direction the government was taking,” Justice Sébastien Grammond wrote in a recent decision out of Montreal.

“This cost him his position within the party, even though he kept his seat in parliament until 2019, when a coup d’état toppled General al-Bashir’s government.”

When Canada’s Immigration Division (ID) found Ali inadmissible, it noted he admitted to being a member of the NCP, said the decision, dated Oct. 10.

The ID reviewed evidence concerning the conduct of the government formed by the NCP.

“It found that the NCP, led by General al‑Bashir, harassed and arrested political opponents, notably with the help of the state security services, and was involved in various types of electoral fraud,” said the judge.

“Therefore, the ID found that the NCP was an organization that engaged in ‘an act of subversion against a democratic government, institution or process.’”

But Grammond said the ID failed to consider the principle of non-refoulement, the practice of not forcing refugees to return to countries where they are liable to be subject to persecution.

“I allow Mr. Ali’s application,” said the judge.

“The ID failed to consider whether Mr. Ali’s inadmissibility was consistent with the constraints imposed by international law, specifically, the principle of non-refoulement.”

The judge set aside the decision declaring Ali inadmissible to Canada, and sent the former politician’s case back to the ID for “redetermination” by a different decision maker.

Sudan has been locked in a civil war since April 2024.

“The internal conflict has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced over 11 million people,” according to Amnesty International. “People in Sudan are facing rampant violations of human rights and humanitarian law resulting in mass civilian casualties, gender-based violence, and a humanitarian catastrophe as parties to the conflict block aid to millions of civilians trying to survive without food or water.”

Ali’s case relied on a 2023 Supreme Court of Canada decision that “stated that the ID must necessarily consider the constraints stemming from international law, including the principle of non-refoulement, before making a finding of inadmissibility.”

That decision from the country’s top court “signalled a major change with respect to the role of the (Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees) and the principle of non-refoulement,” Grammond said.

The Supreme Court “underscored the presumption that statutes must be interpreted in a manner consistent with international law. It noted that this presumption assumed added force with respect to (Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act which) requires it to be construed and applied in a manner that ‘complies with international human rights instruments to which Canada is signatory,’ including the Convention. Most importantly, it required immigration decision makers to consider the Convention and the principle of non-refoulement when they interpret and apply the Act, even if the parties do not explicitly raise the issue.”

Grammond allowed Ali’s “application because the ID did not consider the issue that the Supreme Court required it to address. In this case, the only relevant exception to the principle of non‑refoulement is the danger posed by the person concerned to the security of the host country.”

The judge noted that, in Ali’s case, “the ID did not assess the danger” he personally poses to the security of Canada.

The judge conceded “it is difficult to define in advance what can pose a danger” to the country’s security, noting that’s a “forward-facing exercise.”

Grammond’s decision also pointed out that “it is also entirely conceivable that mere membership in an organization may in some cases be sufficient to conclude that a person is a danger to the security of Canada.”

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U.S. President Donald Trump greets Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney during a summit on Gaza in Sharm el-Sheikh on October 13, 2025.

OTTAWA — A new national poll finds that most Canadians see securing a new trade deal with the U.S. as crucial for domestic jobs and economic growth.

The poll, conducted by Ipsos on behalf of the Montreal Economic Institute (MEI), shows that cross-border relations is a top-of-mind concern for Canadians, as the national economy falters

under the weight of tariffs

.

“Canadians correctly recognize that our economy and that of the United States are closely linked, and they want this trade relationship to continue,” said Daniel Dufort, the president and CEO at the MEI. “Despite calls to strengthen the domestic market, Canadians understand that maintaining our access to a market of 340 million people ensures significantly greater prosperity.”

Sixty-eight per cent of respondents said that failing to reach a trade agreement with the U.S. carried “a significant risk of negative impact on employment in Canada.” A near-identical 67 per cent said a strong cross-border trade deal is “vital for Canada’s economic growth.”

More than six in 10 respondents in all regions of Canada said that a Canada-U.S. trade deal was critical for jobs and the economy, with those in Ontario and Atlantic Canada most vehemently in favour.

An additional two-thirds said they considered economic relations with the U.S. to be “highly important” for Canada’s economy.

Six in 10 said that signing a new trade agreement with the U.S. should be a top priority for federal officials.

Sean Simpson, a senior vice president at Ipsos, said the findings speak to the increasing pressure on Prime Minister Mark Carney to seal the deal with U.S. President Donald Trump.

“I think (Carney) realizes that he’s not going to be able to govern for very long if we continue to have slumping job numbers and more quarters of negative growth,” said Simpson.

Carney was criticized by the Opposition last week after returning from a visit to Washington, D.C.

without a trade deal in hand

. Trump has recently inked deals with the U.K. and EU.

Simpson added that the poll results also show that Canadians are adopting more modest expectations for the deepening of trade ties with markets outside of the U.S.

“I think what Canadians are starting to realize is some of that stuff is tinkering in the margins. Like, is it better to diversify to Europe and other markets? Absolutely. Should we be reducing interprovincial trade barriers? Absolutely. All of these have a have an impact on the economy, none of which even come close to the impact of American trade,” said Simpson.

He pointed to the evolving conversation around the Keystone XL pipeline, which would generate substantial national revenue while deepening trade ties with the U.S., as one example of this shift in tone.

The U.S. accounts

for roughly two-thirds

of Canada’s total international trade, with

a quarter of national GDP

tied up in cross-border commerce.

Simpsons said that two factors working in Carney’s favour are that he’s still relatively new to the job, and he continues to

hold a personal edge

over Opposition Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.

“For the time being and likely through into the early part of next year, (Carney) still has the benefit of the doubt of Canadians,” said Simpson.

A formal review of Canada’s trilateral trade deal with the U.S. and Mexico is set for next summer.

The Ipsos poll was conducted online between Sept. 29 and Oct. 1, using a sample of 1,000 Canadians aged 18 and older. Online polls are not considered representative samples and thus don’t carry a margin of error. However, the poll document provides an estimated margin, for comparison purposes, of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

National Post

rmohamed@postmedia.com

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


A customer looks for produce at a grocery store in Ottawa, on Wednesday, April 2, 2025.

OTTAWA — NDP leadership candidate Avi Lewis is promising to lower grocery bills across the country by bringing in a national “public option” to compete with corporate supermarket chains, but economists say this could be a hard row to hoe for a meagre yield.

“I think it would be profoundly expensive, and very difficult to make succeed, for a relatively marginal benefit for Canadians,” said Mike von Massow, a professor of food, agriculture and resource economics at the University of Guelph.

“If you wanted to provide food support for low-income or underserved Canadians, (there are) much more cost-effective ways of doing that,” said von Massow.

Lewis said

in a recent interview

that the federal government has the capacity to buy food directly from distributors and then sell it to Canadians at cost via non-profit grocery stores.

“People cannot get by when they’re paying 300 bucks for a cart of groceries … when the market fails any industry, the government has to step in and actually provide an alternative that is not in the market mindset, where everything has to make a big profit,” said Lewis.

Lewis called his plan for public grocery stores a “fantastically popular policy that I think (the NDP) can win with.”

Five large chains, three domestic and two foreign,

control roughly three-quarters

of the Canadian market for groceries.

The idea of a public option for food and groceries has recently caught fire

in democratic socialist circles

south of the border.

New York City mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani notably helped catapult himself to a surprise win in

June’s Democratic Party primary

by promising to open a

city-owned, low-cost grocery store

in each of the city’s five boroughs.

Mamdani has said

he’ll redirect US$60 million

in existing municipal spending to set up the city-wide network of public grocers.

Jordan Leichnitz, a former senior advisor to ex-NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, says it’s not a coincidence that Lewis is talking about public grocery stores on the heels of Mamdani’s breakthrough primary win.

“Mamdani has run a campaign focused squarely on affordability issues, and he’s been able to mobilize younger voters with clear proposals on how to make their day-to-day lives more affordable,” said Leichnitz.

But food policy analyst Vass Bednar says that there are important differences in the respective proposals that Lewis and Mamdani are putting forward.

“Lewis is talking about scaling up a national public option that can directly compete with the big chains, whereas the local experiments in the U.S., from what I’ve seen, have been focused on solving market failure in underserved areas

— your quote-unquote ‘food deserts’,” said Bednar.

“The origin of these (local) proposals is not, yea, we’re going to beat Loblaws at a really low-margin, high-volume game,” she added.

Von Massow said that, even if government-owned grocery stores integrated seamlessly into the market, they’d still offer a relatively small savings for the average customer, given

already thin profit margins

for grocers.

“So even if you bought just as well as Loblaws or Sobeys do, you would only be able to reduce the cost at checkout by somewhere around five per cent. And that’s not insignificant, but that’s assuming that they do it as efficiently as the big guys, and there’s no evidence that they can,” said von Massow.

Profit margins average between 3 and 4 percent among Canada’s major grocery chains,

according to the Retail Council of Canada

.

Von Massow noted that the federal government already has programs in place to help the food insecure, such as the national school lunch program and Nutrition North.

Sylvain Charlebois, a professor of agri-foods distribution and policy at Dalhousie University, says he’s worried about how Lewis’s proposal will impact the already thinned out agri-food labour force.

“Essentially, what Mr. Lewis is trying to do is make sure that food is sold at cost. But it’s incredibly dangerous to do that, because you basically undermine the value of the work that’s being done across the supply chain, from farm gate, to store, to restaurant,” said Charlebois.

“You’re basically saying to Canadians, well, if you’re in the food business, you’re not allowed to make money … and that’s an incredibly dangerous message when we’re already struggling to recruit young Canadians to work in different areas of food distribution,” he added.

Charlebois noted that the food industry has become increasingly dependent

on temporary foreign workers

(TFWs) in recent years, and more government involvement in food distribution would only further this trend.

TFWs currently make up nearly

one in four farm workers

and

more than one in ten

food and beverage processing workers across Canada. They also account

for three per cent

of the food service workforce.

Kent Fellows, an economist at the University of Calgary School of Public Policy, says that it’s Canada’s geography, rather than large chains themselves, that’s led to the concentration of ownership in Canada’s retail grocery sector.

“The firms themselves aren’t doing anything to keep new entrants out of the market … I think it is because of the economies of scale, particularly in the large urban centres that tend to be served by the big chains,” said Fellows.

Fellows said that there’s a stronger argument to be made for small-scale public grocers in underserved areas than a national public option.

“I think that argument really needs to be predicated on the notion that we now consider this part of the social safety net,” said Fellows.

Lewis’s campaign said in response to an inquiry from the National Post that they planned to make the federal program as flexible as possible.

“The idea is to innovate and experiment at municipal, provincial and federal levels, exploring this option that has worked in other countries and hasn’t been tried in Canada. Federal purchasing and distribution to municipally-owned retailers will work in some jurisdictions, while some provinces may be happy to work with Ottawa, as they have with public provincial Cannabis retailers,” said the Lewis campaign.

A spokesperson for rival NDP leadership candidate Heather McPherson said that she would soon be putting forward a plan focused on giving Canadians an “immediate change in the price of their groceries.”

McPherson called in a video posted to social media last month for an emergency

price freeze on staples

and a windfall tax on the big grocery chains to fund the removal of the federal sales tax on prepared foods and snacks.

National Post

rmohamed@postmedia.com

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.


The Kelowna International Airport. 

Operations at the Kelowna, B.C., airport (YLW) were disrupted Tuesday evening after its passenger information screens and public address systems were overtaken in a terrorist cyberattack.

The incident began about 5:15 p.m., when

pro-Hamas messaging

could be seen and heard throughout the airport.

A message took over flight information screens announcing the system was “Hacked By Mutariff Siberislam,” also known online as Siber

Islam. There was also a

 message declaring “Israel lost the war, Hamas won the war honorably.”

The hackers also referred to U.S. President Donald Trump as a pig.

Simultaneously, chants and music in Arabic rang out over the public address system, causing confusion among passengers in the main terminal.

B.C. Conservative MLA and critic

for public safety and the solicitor general, Macklin McCall, posted a shot of one of the screens on X, saying: “Terrorist propaganda has no place in B.C.”

Phillip Elchitz, YLW director of operations, told B.C. media outlet

Castanet

that airport staff quickly restored the flight information display system. However, the public address system remained down, forcing airline staff to communicate with megaphones.

B.C. radio station

am1150

reports that YLW’s CEO Sam Sammadar spoke on their morning show Wednesday, saying: “We were obviously concerned about if there potentially was a specific threat against the airport, and the safety of our passengers and the crew.”

Sammadar told the

Vancouver Sun

that the airport has a response protocol to deal with cyberattacks. “Those are plans we rehearsed, we practiced on, we were able to isolate it very, very quickly.”

The hack was isolated to public information messaging, he said, and “didn’t migrate to any other portions of the airport or the aviation system.”

He added that the RCMP determined the hack was not a threat against the airport or aviation, which allowed the airport to continue operating Tuesday night.

Two flights were delayed. One flight was delayed for two hours, the other by four.

An am1150 website

report

said a review of social media accounts associated with Mutariff Siberislam showed a history of hacking billboards, news websites and TV channels, and municipal systems around the world with similar messages in recent months.

Samaddar also said the attack was reported to the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security in Ottawa for an independent investigation.

Airport operations returned to normal on Wednesday morning.

Meanwhile,

CNN

reported that a similar airport hack occurred at the airport in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Harrisburg airport spokesperson Scott Miller said the message appearing there “was political in nature and did not contain any threats against the airport, our tenants, airlines, or passengers. The PA system was shut off, and the incident is under investigation by police.”

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Vancouver's skyline photographed from Stanley Park during low tide. Photo Credit: Chris Collacott ONE-TIME USE ONLY

The owner of a piece of Vancouver real estate that was assessed at over $19 million managed to knock nearly a million dollars off the amount used to calculate property taxes, but the Property Assessment Appeal Board of British Columbia says Fu D. Ren breached its code of conduct and may have used artificial intelligence to make his argument.

The code forbids submissions that are inaccurate, misleading, or manipulated, according to a recent decision from the board.

“The appellant’s submission includes quotations from legal case citations that do not exist,” John Bridal, the panel’s chair, wrote in a recent decision.

“It is possible that these may be ‘hallucinations’ from using generative artificial intelligence to assist with developing the appellant’s submission. If so, this might indicate a lack of care and attention to detail. A worse alternative is that the submission has been purposely falsified with knowledge and intent.”

Ren argued his submission was presented in “good faith,” Bridal said, “but it is troubling that he did not take the opportunity to respond to these criticisms in a rebuttal submission.”

Whether the submission in question was “accidental from the poor use of artificial intelligence or a purposeful falsification,” didn’t make a difference to Bridal.

“I find in either case (Ren) has breached the board’s code of conduct,” he said, noting the same code “also requires any reliance on artificial intelligence to be disclosed, which was not done here. Finally, the appellant also violated the code’s duty to correct once he became aware of his inaccurate and misleading submission.”

In making his arguments for a lower assessment, Ren quoted three decisions from the board and B.C. Courts “that support a 20 per cent downward adjustment based on market resistance,” said the decision. “However, the assessor points out that none of the cited cases can be found on the (Canadian Legal Information Institute) or board websites.”

Ren calculated his property’s market value “by applying this 20 per cent discount to the salesperson’s suggested $12 million list price, to calculate a $9.6 million market value,” said the decision.

The AI matter came to light when Ren appealed the 2025 assessment of his 18,312-square-foot lot in Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant neighbourhood.

Ren argued the $19,082,000 assessment was “too high,” and he recommended it be reduced to the property’s “estimated $10,000,000 market value.”

The panel heard the building that used to be on the land “had a series of fires in 2023 and 2024. On Aug. 9, 2024, the city enforced a demolition order for the building. The demolition was complete on Nov. 20, 2024, with the underground parkade foundation the only remaining improvements.”

Ren has been billed “for this statutory enforced demolition,” but he hasn’t paid up yet, said the decision.

“The appellant provides five overdue invoices to the City of Vancouver totalling $2,030,287.14. These are not fully detailed, but they outline a combination of demolition costs and security and maintenance costs incurred between August 2024 and March 2025.”

Ren suggested that the $2 million cost “for demolition, clean-up, and maintenance and preservation should be deducted in calculating its market value.”

According to Ren, the market value of “‘disaster-affected land’ is properly valued as the bare land value less clean-up and demolition costs,” said the decision.

Ren “quotes from two B.C. Court decisions in support of this ‘Demolition and Restoration Method,’ where ‘disaster clean-up costs already incurred must be fully deducted from the assessed land value,’” it said.

“The assessor explains that these quoted cases also do not exist.”

Ren “has not presented a reasonable basis to support the subject’s market value,” Bridal said.

“The supporting case citations and references to appraisal standards are incorrect and possibly falsified.”

Bridal notes the board has the authority to award costs.

“If indeed the appellant has knowingly provided false cases and a misleading submission, I find this conduct would represent a breach of the board’s rules,” Bridal said.

“The unraveling of these falsehoods has required investigation and research by both the assessor and the board. I find an order for costs may be warranted, reflecting the additional time of both the board and the assessor in addressing this matter.”

Bridal ordered the property’s assessment drop to $18,144,000.

“Furthermore, regarding the apparent fabrications in the appellant’s submissions to the board, I also invite further submissions regarding the potential for ordering costs against the appellant in favour of the assessor, the board, or both, which I will decide in a subsequent decision,” he said.

Anyone who uses artificial intelligence to generate legal arguments should state it up front, and check to make sure that references to previous cases are accurate, according to Wayne MacKay, a professor emeritus at Dalhousie University’s Schulich School of Law.

“You can use it at your peril in the sense that you’re ultimately responsible for anything it says, both the content and its sourcing, and if you’re wrong about that, then, basically, you’re going to lose all credibility,” MacKay said Wednesday.

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Justin Trudeau arrives ahead of an appearance by King Charles III and Queen Camilla at the Senate Chamber for the State Opening of Parliament during an official visit to Canada on May 27, 2025 in Ottawa, Ontario.

Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry were the punchline of some of Jimmy Kimmel’s jokes in his opening monologue on Tuesday night.

The comedian poked fun at the so-called couple during his show Jimmy Kimmel Live!. The remarks came after the singer and the former prime minister were spotted together on a yacht in California,

Daily Mail reported

. On Monday night, Perry

seemingly confirmed

that she was dating someone while speaking to fans at her concert in the United Kingdom.

“London, England, you’re like this on a Monday night after a whole day at work and a whole day at school? No wonder I fall for Englishmen all the time — but not anymore,” she said,

according to The Sun

.

During the concert, the singer brought a fan on stage. “I hear you’re single,” he said to her, in

a video published by TMZ

. “You heard I was single? That’s interesting!” she said. The fan got down on one knee and proposed to Perry. “You really should have asked me about 48 hours ago,” she said.

“We had a sighting off the coast of Santa Barbara,” said Kimmel. “I don’t know if you’ve seen this but Katy Perry, the pop music super star, was spotted smooching the former prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau.”

A photo of the pair then appeared on-screen, showing them

embracing on a yacht

.

“There they are making out openly,” said Kimmel, saying “oot” instead of “out,” poking fun at a stereotypical Canadian accent. “Trudeau is shirtless wearing jeans, which is an outfit from the RFK Jr. collection. And man, oh man, what a couple…”

 Former prime minister Justin Trudeau and pop star Katy Perry were first seen together while having dinner at Le Violin in Montreal in July.

Kimmel added: “I’ve been wondering how Canada was going to exact their revenge for the tariffs and this is it.”

“They’re taking our women. They’re not just taking our women. They’re taking our astronauts,” he quipped, making a reference to when

Perry went to space

on the Blue Origin flight in April.

In January, after Trudeau announced his resignation,

Kimmel said

 the former prime minister would “step down to focus full-time on being handsome.” Later that same month,

Perry appeared as a guest

on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and discussed

her world tour

.

Trudeau and Perry were

first spotted together in July

at Montreal restaurant, Le Violon. Trudeau attended Perry’s Montreal concert with his daughter Ella-Grace, 16.

Trudeau was married to Sophie Grégoire Trudeau for 18 years. They

announced their separation in 2023

. As well as Ella-Grace, the couple have two sons, Xavier, 18, and Hadrian, 11. Images of Perry and Trudeau on a yacht were published online on Oct. 11, which was the same weekend as Canadian Thanksgiving. Trudeau spent the holiday with Grégoire Trudeau and family a couple days later, on Oct. 13. He appeared in a photo shared on social media by his ex-wife enjoying a Thanksgiving meal.

Perry was engaged to actor Orlando Bloom. They split up over the summer and share daughter five-year-old Daisy.

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Prime Minister Mark Carney, left, and Ontario Premier Doug Ford hold a press conference after a first ministers' meeting in Saskatoon on June 2.

OTTAWA — Ontario Premier Doug Ford says Canada needs to get tougher with the U.S. as two of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s top trade negotiators returned to Washington to continue trade talks in hopes of securing a deal that would see U.S. tariffs either removed or lessened.

Ford said if Canada can’t secure a trade deal soon with U.S. President Donald Trump, then “let’s start hitting him back.”

Speaking at a health-related announcement in Kenora, Ont., Ford said he would be meeting with Carney on Thursday, while Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc and Michael Sabia, the Clerk of the Privy Council, lead talks with the U.S. in Washington, D.C.

“That guy, President Trump. He’s a real piece of work,” the premier told reporters on Wednesday. “You know something, what my message to the prime minister when I meet him on Thursday, is if you can’t get a deal, let’s start hitting him back.”

He argued that while Canada plays “nice in the sandbox,” Trump continues to levy new tariffs on Canadian products, pointing to the recent 10 per cent increase in U.S. tariffs on softwood lumber.

” I am sick and tired of sitting and rolling over,” Ford said. “We need to fight back.”

Carney’s meeting with Trump at the White House last week ended without any deal announced, but with Canadian officials expressing optimism that progress had been made regarding steel, aluminum, and energy.

The Prime Minister’s Office released a statement after the trip concluded, saying both Carney and Trump had directed their teams to “conclude this work in the coming weeks.”

“As Canada works towards an agreement with the United States, Minister LeBlanc is in Washington D.C. this week for further engagements with senior U.S. officials,” a spokesperson in LeBlanc’s office said in a statement.

Speaking to CNBC’s “Invest in America Forum” on Wednesday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent touched on the ongoing talks.

“The president had a very good meeting with Prime Minister Carney recently. So, I think U.S.-Canada’s back on track,” Bessent said, according to a transcript of his remarks.

Canada remains subject to 50 per cent tariffs on steel and aluminum that Trump levied under Section 232 of the U.S. Trade Expansion Act.

Copper and auto parts that are non-compliant with the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Free Trade Agreement, which is set for its first joint review next year, are also subject to U.S. tariffs.

Carney has defended Canada’s lack of a deal with Trump by pointing to the fact that goods covered by the agreement are exempt from U.S. tariffs, which account for roughly 85 per cent of products.

At the same time, Canada has been seeking specific sector relief, which is where pressure has been mounting.

British Columbia Premier David Eby recently called for the federal government to step up its support for those impacted by higher U.S. tariffs on softwood lumber and other products, such as cabinets.

The recent announcement by Stellantis that it would relocate its production of the Jeep Compass model from a plant in Brampton, Ont., to the U.S. also raised fresh concerns about job losses in the automotive sector.

In a statement Tuesday evening, Carney called the move “a direct consequence of current U.S. tariffs and potential U.S. trade actions.”

More to come …

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