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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s your personal favourite at Rogers

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

How do you ensure quality and consistency in that environment?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s next, any more surprises?

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

With a review of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) looming amid President Donald Trump’s trade war, National Post spoke this week with Canadian political and trade policy expert Laura Dawson. Dawson is the former director of the Canada Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., where she focused on bilateral economic issues, including NAFTA/CUSMA. She is now the executive director of the Canada-U.S. Future Borders Coalition and a regular media commentator. Much of Dawson’s work involves advising governments, businesses, and organizations on cross-border trade.

(This interview has been edited and condensed.)

What are the biggest risks and opportunities for Canada in the 2026 CUSMA review?

They’re two sides of the same coin. The biggest risks are that we become so preoccupied by the irritants that we don’t take the opportunity to look at new areas for improvement or cooperation.

Trade negotiations tend to be very irritant-focused. In the Canada-U.S. context, you’re always going to see dairy issues. You’re always going to see automotive rules of origin issues. You’re probably going to see something related to intellectual property in the pharmaceutical sector. These are all very important, but if your livelihood is outside of these sectors, then you are not really represented in these negotiations. 

We have a much larger presence of services trade between the U.S. and Canada — a significantly growing area of digital services, technology, and innovation. I would really love to see people focusing on the future growth of these sectors and not just the same irritants that we have been bashing away at for decades. 

How would you advise the Canadian team to prepare its negotiating strategy in light of the current tensions?

Canadian negotiators are always extremely well-prepared and extremely skillful. I mean, right back to the founding of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), Canadian negotiators always punched above their weight because they did their homework and they understood the mechanics very well. And when you’re going up against a USTR and a Commerce Department that is very legalistic and detail-oriented, you have to be that focused on the technical details — you can’t just phone it in. So in that sense, I am confident that they are preparing well for the technical part of it. 

What I am not as certain about is the extent to which they are prepared to deal with the Trump administration in its current context, and whether they are representing the concerns and aspirations of Canadian businesses. The
last consultation
(Canada) did for this negotiation actually took place last summer, before the election of Donald Trump. Obviously, things have really changed since then. I think it’s very important to do a comprehensive, cross-Canada, multi-sectoral consultation to figure out where they are now.

What key changes will President Trump be seeking? Which areas are most vulnerable to renegotiation?

It’s pretty clear that the sights are on what we’re calling the 232 sectors — the ones already in the crosshairs for Section 232 tariffs and of for steel and aluminum, auto parts, pharmaceuticals, copper, etc. 

Also, the president really enjoys turning his attention to dairy. So that will certainly be high on his radar screen. It’s pretty easy to see what the U.S. suite of asks is going to be because every year the
USTR publishes the National Trade Estimates
. It’s a document put together by the State Department, Commerce, and embassies around the world that identifies the irritants and challenges that the U.S. is having in that country. 

We should expect a more refined list of 25 or 30 subjects coming from USTR as early as this month.

Are there any particular changes that Canada would like to see or should be seeking?

There are so many areas that could be improved within the non-tariff barrier regime, and we’ve tried to go after this with things like the Regulatory Cooperation Council and other things — issues related to Cabotage (legal restrictions on foreign vessels/carriers), repositioning of truck containers, different labelling standards, and technical barriers. Thousands of things could be looked at within the non-regulatory cooperation, non-tariff barriers area. But really, it’s an agreement that has been progressively refined since 1989, if you start with the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. So there’s not a lot of sort of new stuff there. 

My recommendations are more about the areas where we can start to build new levels of commitment and cooperation. We’ve seen a lot of interest in critical minerals. We know that in the area of innovation and digital issues, we can either fight about them — things like the Online Streaming and the Digital Services Acts — or we can find ways to strengthen our respective technology sectors to work together better, and in doing so, help the U.S. to achieve its foreign policy goal of reducing the role of China in the U.S. economy.

What lessons did Canada learn from the last round of negotiations that could help inform its approach this time around?

I think that one of the lessons that Canada learned is that it has to stay at the table.

There was a period during the last negotiations where the U.S. and Mexico went off to do a separate side agreement on several things, and Canada found itself running behind. So Canada has to stay at the table and it has to convince the United States that it’s serious about being at these negotiations — and not just, in Canadian terms, ragging the puck. 

They have to figure out how to give the United States a little bit of what it’s asking for, but also make sure that they’re effectively managing offers and concessions.

Don’t give too much. Don’t give too little. 

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s team has been trying to make more inroads with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s team in recent weeks. Is that a good move? Could it upset Trump?

I don’t think it’s necessarily an irritant to Trump unless Canada and Mexico show up and say, ‘You know, we’re going to do an end run around you, and we’re going to do something that is just Canada and Mexico.’

I think it makes a lot of sense for Canada to be engaging with Mexico as a business and economic partner, as a diplomatic partner. The relationship between Canada and Mexico has been a little rocky in the last couple of years. So I think that restoring those diplomatic relations so that they can be helpful to each other at an informal level is a really good idea. 

But the economic interests of Canada and the economic interests of Mexico are quite different, and neither country is going to give up on something that’s very important to them in order to serve that other partner. 

They can be stronger economic and diplomatic partners and better allies. But neither is in a position where they could do an end run around the United States and come out any better for it, because the United States is the market they both want. 

There were tensions between former prime minister Justin Trudeau and Trump. Are you concerned about any personality issues this time?

I think Mark Carney has so far proven himself to be a very effective manager of that relationship. A trade negotiation starts at a high level — the prime minister and the president, they sort of wave the starting flag at the beginning. But the negotiation itself is very detail-oriented and painstaking, and it’s not something that either one of the leaders will be involved in very much.

I think that’s where a second level of diplomacy and engagement needs to take place. In the last round of negotiations, the two ambassadors were actually instrumental in helping to manage concessions and manage the final round that led to a settlement — Ambassador David MacNaughton and Ambassador Kelly Knight Craft. They sat near those negotiations and took phone calls to try to hammer out those last details — so, those other levels of government-to-government engagement and especially those other levels of business-to-government engagement (are crucial). It’s not just the negotiators sitting at the table; it’s representatives from these major sectors that are talking to the negotiators and telling them what they can live with and what they can’t.

There’s concern that some in the U.S. administration may be looking to upend former USTR Robert Lighthizer’s legacy. Do you have any concerns about that?

I have not been persuaded that it is a serious concern, especially not since Jamieson Greer was really mentored by Lighthizer and also is following the same sort of pathway — advancing U.S. economic interests, but using the legal tools available. Whatever we might think of USTR policy, they are using recognizable legal tools and not just sort of making stuff up on the fly. 

How could the rise of protectionism and the trade tensions with China affect the next review?

I think that they are forcing everyone to be much more interest-based in their approach to these negotiations. When we were moving through the rounds of GATT negotiations and WTO negotiations that were leading towards this multilateral free trade regime, we kind of thought it was a set it and forget it type trajectory. You could only go in one direction, and that was reducing barriers and opening your markets for trade. 

President Trump has really turned that on its head and said, “No, that is not an inevitable trajectory. We need to make sure that our interests are served by this big institution.”

The rest of the world is being made to follow suit. So, rather than focus on reducing barriers without question, we are being forced to focus on what our national economic interests are and reinstating some of those elements of industrial policy that we thought had gone by the wayside — tariffs, freight quotas, special protections, government intervention in particular sectors. These are all things we were trying to get rid of in the 1990s. Now they are back up again, with a vengeance. 

Given how Trump feels about net-zero efforts, do you foresee labour or environmental provisions becoming new flashpoints in the CUSMA review? We know that Carney is a fan of ESG principles, so can you speak about how that might go?

Environment and labour have always played a role in our NAFTA communications. I think, though, that it’s a matter of interpreting environmental improvements for whom? And labour improvements for whom? Depending on who you ask, it’s not necessarily the same group. The things that are good for labour in the United States are not necessarily good for labour in Mexico. So I think we’re always gonna see those issues at play. 

However, I don’t see strengthened environmental protection measures playing a significant role in this conversation. I think, in the current trade context, environmental issues are taking a back seat.

How can Canada balance the need for North American integration with protecting sensitive domestic industries?

I think it starts with evaluating and recognizing what your sensitive domestic industries are. Many of the designated sensitive sectors in Canada were considered sensitive as a result of reviews that were done in the 1970s and 1980s. Things like cultural policy, as far as broadcast goes, were developed before the Internet. 

All of those so-called sensitive sectors were designated and protected a long time ago. 

So I think it’s really important for Canada to do a domestic assessment and say, ‘OK,
w
hich of these things still needs to be protected and why? Which of our so-called protections are actually just tying our hands to innovation and growth?’

Can we expect the private sector or the provinces and civil society to play any more role in shaping Canada’s agenda than it did with last year’s consultation?

Yes, I think that the business and the provinces are really clamouring for it. We’ve seen a stronger-than-usual role for the provinces coming up because Doug Ford sort of filled a gap in leadership between Trudeau and Carney, and because a lot of the sectors that we’re talking about in these negotiations are actually under provincial control. Natural resource sectors and many financial services sectors are all under provincial control. So, of course, they need to be involved in any trade negotiations affecting those industries. Business has had to become very engaged and very nimble in talking to government to deal with the tariffs, counter-tariffs, remissions, all the things that they’ve needed in order to survive the last six months.

So they’re not going to sit back and wait for the nice man from the government to come and ask them their opinion. They are leaning forward and making their views known. 

The thing that concerns me is that small businesses — businesses that are already working as hard as they can to stay afloat — don’t really have the time to be engaging in advocacy efforts in Ottawa. It needs to be easier for those folks to get their voice heard. 

How concerned are you about the possibility of the U.S. just withdrawing from CUSMA? What could trigger such a move?

Five years ago, I would’ve said, ‘No, it’ll never happen because CUSMA is too foundational to North American commercial policy, and it provides too many advantages to the United States.’ But President Trump has convinced me that he will do almost anything to go after his objectives.

The thing that is keeping CUSMA in place in the United States is consistent pressure from American businesses that are showing how it benefits them — and evidence from think tanks, scholars, banks, and Wall Street that they need to keep this in place. 

Competitiveness depends on inputs from allies and, in particular, from Canada and Mexico. We keep seeing that as these new tariffs are imposed, the CUSMA exemption is in place, and it’s like the shield of protection that’s continued over the last several months. That gives me hope that it’s possible to protect and sustain CUSMA, but only as long as the White House and business community are convinced that it’s in their interests. 

I think Canada could be working a lot harder to ensure that positive messaging about the economic benefits of CUSMA gets to Americans and that it’s hitting at all levels, not just in Washington, but in state capitals, local businesses, et cetera. Canadians need to be much more vocal in getting that message, not just to U.S. federal legislators, but to state-level legislators as well. 

Canada has been used to being pretty quiet and flying under the radar within the U.S., and now that muted voice is acting to its detriment.

How realistic is it for Canada to reduce its trade dependence on the United States by turning to other markets?

I think Canadians have been a bit disingenuously sold a false hope that the U.S. market can be replaced with diversion to other markets. That somehow the European Union can be as viable and as profitable as the United States was, or that they can trade just as easily and effectively with Indonesia and Brazil. Businesses will tell you that the reasons why they don’t trade very much with the European Union is that they make a lot of the same stuff that we do at pretty much the same prices, and it’s expensive to move things across oceans. Similarly, Brazil and Indonesia can be great markets for some, but it’s also a very expensive market to learn about, do business in, and again, long distances.

Canadians who want to continue to engage in international trade as their livelihood have to accept the reality of some kind of negotiated agreement with the United States, even if they don’t agree with the politics of the U.S. administration. 

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Researchers have confirmed it. Your morning cup of joe gives you a morning mood bump.

Caffeine drinkers told

researchers from the University of Warwick and Bielefeld University

in Germany that a cup of coffee or tea boosted their mood during the first 2.5 hours of the day, but it wasn’t sustained toward later in the day.

Their findings were published in

Nature Scientific Report

.

The researchers tracked the mood of more than two hundred young adults for up to four weeks each, compiling 28,000 mood reports.

Rather than sit in laboratories, where past studies of this type have been undertaken, this study’s subjects received prompts on their phones while going about the day. The prompts arrived seven times a day, asking if they had recently consumed caffeine and how they felt in the moment.

Caffeine can “increase dopamine activity in key brain regions, an effect that (past) studies have linked to improved mood and greater alertness,” says Professor Anu Realo, in the University of Warwick department of psychology.

People with moderate caffeine consumption can also experience mild withdrawal symptoms that disappear with the first cup of coffee or tea in the morning, he said.

The study concluded that caffeine consumption is linked to an immediate increase in positive emotions for two and a half hours within waking up, particularly enthusiasm and happiness.

Smaller effects were observed for contentment and reduction in sadness.

The researchers looked into varying levels of caffeine consumption and differing degrees of depressive symptoms, anxiety, or sleep problems. They found caffeine intake and the impact on either positive or negative emotion was “consistent across all groups.”

The relationship between caffeine and emotion was instead moderated by factors such as tiredness and social context.

The study suggests “morning caffeine consumption may align with habitual use patterns, where the anticipation of caffeine’s effects contributes to its affect-enhancing properties. Psychological factors, such as the expectation of positive effects and the ritualistic aspects of consuming coffee or tea after awakening, could amplify its impact on positive affect.”

Meanwhile, past research has found the initial consumption of caffeine appears to induce improved mood and cognitive performance, while additional intake does not produce further benefits.

“Since many people typically consume their first coffee or tea in the morning (e.g., at breakfast), the effect could therefore be strongest at this time of day,” the study states.

• Want stronger coffee with fewer beans? Pour from high up, study says
• More than 46,000 people observed in a coffee study. Here’s what happened to the ones who took theirs black

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 next time humans fly to the moon, there will be a Canadian among the crew. Astronaut Jeremy Hansen has been chosen to fly on the Artemis II mission, slated for liftoff as early as next April.

But today, NASA announced the possible addition of another Canadian on the flight. Sort of. The space agency ran a contest this year called the

NASA Artemis II ZGI Design Challenge

, and three Canadian teams are among the finalists.

“Artemis II ZGI Design Challenge” is a bit of a mouthful, so it’s also known as a Moon Mascot. Basically, spacecraft often fly with a small stuffed animal or or toy aboard. When the flight reaches the stage of weightlessness, this little passenger starts to float around the capsule, acting as a zero-gravity indicator, or ZGI.

The tradition dates back to the earliest days of spaceflight — cosmonauts, the spacefarers of the Soviet Union

,

were very keen on the idea — and continues to this day. The Artemis I flight of 2022 did not have a human crew, but it did carry a little plush Snoopy, clad in a miniature spacesuit.

Artemis II will be a 10-day mission with a crew of five: NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Hansen — and the ZGI.

The agency received more than 2,600 design submissions from around the globe, and whittled the list down to 25 finalists, each of whom will receive either a cash prize of US$1,225 or an Artemis prize package, depending on their age. Entries were accepted from several grade-school categories plus one for adults.

Among the finalists were three with a distinctly Canadian flavour.

From the K-to-5 classroom category, students at Royal School in Winnipeg delivered a design for Luna the Space Polar Bear. The bear wears a spacesuit and an astronaut helmet, and the design as inspired by how polar bears adapt to extreme cold environments, similarly to how spacesuits protect astronauts from the extreme environment of space.

Students from Oakville Trafalgar High School in Oakville, Ont., created a design for Lepus the Moon Rabbit. This lunar bunny features markings that look like the Moon’s craters, while its oversized ears are decorated with constellations. It holds a small Earth “balloon” that symbolizes how precious Earth is in the vastness of space.

The third Canadian finalist was Caroline Goyer-Desrosiers of St. Eustache, Que. A project management business partner at Airbus, she designed a flying squirrel with a space helmet on its head and a moon logo on its chest.

They face some strong competition from others including Rise, a smiling moon wearing an Earth-patterned baseball cap, and inspired by the Earthrise picture taken from Apollo 8 in 1968; Artemis, a plush depiction of the Greek goddess after whom the program is named; and Art and The Giant, which features an astronaut perched on the shoulder of a mythological giant named Orion, which is also the name of the capsule in which the astronauts will fly.

“What better way to fly a mission around the moon than to invite the public inside NASA’s Orion spacecraft with us and ask for help in designing our zero gravity indicator?” said Wiseman, the commander of Artemis II, when the competition was announced. “The indicator will float alongside Victor, Christina, Jeremy and me as we go around the far side of the moon, and remind us of all of you back on Earth.”

NASA has not yet revealed when the winning design will be chosen, but with the launch of Artemis II scheduled for as soon as eight months from now it will need to decide soon which one of the finalists has the right stuff. Or the right stuffing.

• LISTEN: What does a meteorite sound like when it hits your home?
• NASA promises to serve Canadian-made food on historic moon mission

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Fewer Canadians are taking a trip to Las Vegas, which is contributing to an overall decline in the city’s revenue this summer, with recent data showing a drop in visitors to resorts and convention centres.

Flight data from Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas shows a significant decline in Canadian tourism, which even the mayor has noted.

Compared with last June, large national carriers, including Air Canada, WestJet and Flair Airlines, have seen the number of Canadian travellers flying to Sin City

plummet

dramatically by 33, 31 and 62 per cent, respectively. Canadians are the largest group of international visitors to the city, with nearly 1.5 million

reportedly

visiting Vegas last year.

Canadian air travel to Las Vegas has fallen off a cliff in 2025. Canadian visitors contributed about $3.6 billion to the Southern Nevada economy last year, according to UNLV economics professor Stephen Miller. pic.twitter.com/7MmIjzis4w

— Las Vegas Locally 🌴 (@LasVegasLocally) August 16, 2025

The city known for around-the-clock gambling welcomed just under 3.1 million tourists in June, an 11 per cent drop compared to the same month in 2024. There were 13 per cent fewer international travellers, and hotel occupancy fell by about 15 per cent, according to data from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

“International travel is

way down. People are not coming to the United States,” mayor Shelley Berkely told reporters last week. “We have a rather large market with the Canadians. It’s
gone from, you know, a faucet to a drip.”

Berkely said the city has also noticed a decline in high rollers coming from Mexico and that, in general, people have less disposable income.

In a statement to National Post, Berkely wouldn’t answer a question about whether she thinks U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war is to blame for the decline in Canadian visitors.

“Las Vegas loves our Canadian visitors, and we know our city has always been a favourite for our neighbours to the north,” Berkley told the Post in a written statement. “Our tourism-based economy is not immune to economic downturns and uncertainty, but Las Vegas always bounces back bigger and better than ever.”

Stephen Miller, an

economics professor

at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), told National Post that in 2024, Canadian tourists supported “43,000 workers in southern Nevada, which is larger than manufacturing,” an industry responsible for employing slightly over 30,000 people.

Based on his calculations, Canadian tourism to the state “contributed about $3.6 billion to the local economy.” While that economy

equals

just over $200 billion, and Canada’s contribution may seem small, Miller said Canadian tourists are right behind bedrock institutions such as Nellis Air Force Base, a massive military installation in Vegas that the academic said added over $4 billion to the state’s economy.

“Canadian tourists are not insignificant,” Miller, the research director of UNLV’s Center for Business and Economic Research, said. He pointed to recent quarterly announcements made by “the big corporate giants in gaming,” noting that “each of them mentioned the Canadian tourist decline as a potential downside for them.”

Canadian air travel to Las Vegas down 70%. Did you know 1.3 million Canadians a year used to visit Las Vegas? pic.twitter.com/X7I7OBs1ut

— Stephen Taylor (@stephen_taylor) April 2, 2025

Concerns have been growing about slumping Canadian tourism for some time. Back in April, former U.S. Treasury deputy assistant secretary Aaron Klein told CNN that Canadian travel to Vegas was “down 70 per cent for the summer.”

“That’s a real impact there,” he continued. “It’s going to expand our trade deficit. And that’s just by telling and insulting countries, let alone with the tariffs.”

Canada was the largest source of visitors to the U.S. in 2024, with more than 20.2 million, according to U.S. government data.

Travel agents in Canada said there’s been a significant downturn in clients wanting to visit the U.S. overall, and Las Vegas in particular. Wendy Hart, who books trips from Windsor, Ont., said the reason was “politics, for sure.” She speculated it was a point of “national pride” that people were staying away from the U.S. after Trump said he wanted to make Canada the 51st state.

“The tariffs are a big thing too. They seem to be contributing to the rising cost of everything,” Hart said.

While many believe the tourism decline is being driven by the trade war and Trump’s rhetoric about making Canada the 51st state, Miller cautioned against assigning all the blame to the new administration.

“It’s a question of what people say and what they do. People say it’s because of Trump, but that may not be the real reason. I think, over time, we may find out what the real reason is,” he said, suggesting a poor exchange rate and changing tastes could also be driving some of the drop.

Ron Stagg, a recently retired history professor from Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) focusing on Canadian-American relations, views the recent bilateral tensions as part of an evolving chapter in the story between the two nations.

“I’m not doom and gloom the way some people are,” Stagg said. ”Our relations with the United States have evolved over time, and I think this is just another evolution. It’s not going to be as dramatic as some people think, but it will help to get us to diversify our trade.”

Stagg, a

former chair

of the TMU’s history department, said the rift between Canada and America reminded him of an earlier historical period, “at the beginning of the 1930s,” when the United States raised tariffs, a move he said deepened the ongoing economic depression. The relationship began changing with the Second World War and greater cooperation between then president Franklin Roosevelt and prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King.

“You’d have to go back into the nineteenth century, where the U.S. was actually perceived as dangerous to Canada,” he said.

Based on his conversations with everyday Canadians, he believes there is national anger “not with Americans” but “with Donald Trump and his government and (they) don’t want to give them any money.” He believes “once Trump and his cohort are gone, that it’ll (tourism) gradually return.”

Stagg sees the changing movement of Canadian travel, away from the United States and more abroad, as “one good thing Canadians are starting” to do, making citizens “more conscious of the world.”

“The U.S. will not be a friend we can necessarily count on. Still, a friend, but not one it can necessarily count on.”

National Post, with additional reporting from The Associated Press

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OTTAWA — When the latest results of the biennial Public Service Employment Survey arrived on Daniel Rogers’ desk earlier this year, the new head of Canada’s intelligence agency was angry.
 

No matter how he looked at them, the results of the 2024 survey for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) — and particularly attitudes towards senior management — were bleak.
 

The new director noted that trust in senior leadership is low, the amount of red tape is seen as too high and less than half of surveyed employees would recommend working at CSIS.
 

“I’ll be candid about what I’ve seen: the results are disappointing and unacceptable,” Rogers wrote to staff in a June 23 memo obtained by National Post upon request to CSIS.
 

“There is no way to slice this data in a way that would reassure me — our Service is not acting at its full potential,” he added. “Low morale across our workforce and lack of trust in leadership not only affect our ability to achieve mission success, but weaken trust in our Service by Canadians and our Government at a time when we are needed most.”

The

Public Service Employment Survey (PSES) results

combined with Rogers’ unusually candid and blunt comments suggest the spy agency is at an inflection point after years of being rocked by harassment, discrimination and sexual allegations mixed with growing calls for culture change.

The survey suggests
only half (51 per cent) of CSIS respondents believe senior managers “lead by example in ethical behaviour” and 57 per cent said that the agency does well at promoting values and ethics in the workplace.
 

Far fewer respondents (40 per cent) said they confidence in top management, whereas barely 29 per cent believed senior management makes “effective and timely decisions.”

 

The number of CSIS respondents reporting harassment within the past year has jumped from 11 per cent in the 2020 PSES to 17 per cent in 2024.
 

The results also suggest CSIS is hampered by red tape, with just over half of survey respondents saying their work suffers because of both too many approval stages and “overly complicated or unnecessary business processes”.
 

In each case, the results are worse than the public service average.
 

Issues with trust and ethics are of particular concern at CSIS because the spy agency has tremendous and invasive investigative power and can even break the law to advance an investigation with proper ministerial authorization.
 

The agency is also required to act quickly to detect and respond to imminent national security threats. Red tape and overly complex internal processes are likely to complicate that mission.
 

Another concerning PSES finding is that less than half (48 per cent) of CSIS employees would recommend working at the agency.
 

The service has struggled for years to staff up despite a growing mandate and increased responsibilities in combatting foreign interference and national security threats.
 

It also suffered from increased turnover during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to a new Employee Retention and Attraction plan in early 2024. In 2022, a whopping 65 per cent of agency employees said their work suffered because of high staff turnover, though that number dropped to 40 per cent last year.
 

The past few years have not been easy for CSIS, which has faced heavy scrutiny over its handling of foreign interference and intense calls both internally and externally for culture reform.
 

In recent years, the agency was rocked by serious allegations of rape and harassment at its British Columbia office as well as multiple discrimination complaints at human rights tribunals.
 

Culture change at CSIS — long and often promised but slowly (if ever) delivered — needs to happen, starting at the very top of the organization, Rogers wrote.
 

In fact, he says it will be management’s “overriding priority” over the next year.

“You’ll focus most on enabling teams to work effectively, acting with integrity, driving for decisions, building trust and confidence, and developing a sense of positivity and inclusion,” he told CSIS leadership in his memo.

“I’ll be expecting results at all levels.”

He shared a similar message to agency executives during an internal conference in April, according to agency spokesperson Eric Balsam.
 

Going forward, executives’ bonuses will be tied to the implementation of new corporate commitments for “positive changes” and the organization is reviewing how it chooses, evaluates and trains its managers, Balsam wrote in a statement.

Rogers also bluntly told managers to look inside themselves on how to change the workplace for the better.

“If you’re responsible for managing people in the organization, these should read to you as a clear call for personal action to instigate change, including by reflecting on your own impact in our workplace,” he wrote in June.

The agency says some changes are already happening. For example, last month CSIS published its first ever
public report on misconduct and wrongdoing
within the agency.
 

CSIS also launched the first Ombuds office headed by Elianne Hall on July 7 with the mandate of supporting CSIS employees and helping build a “strong culture of trust and respect with CSIS employees at all levels.”
 

The PSES results aren’t all bad for CSIS either.
 

An overwhelming 84 per cent of respondents said they are “proud” of their work, three-quarters (77 per cent) said they like their job and 74 per cent said they get a sense of satisfaction from their work.
 

In his memo to staff, Rogers said he hoped all employees would believe that change is coming this time and help push the organization in the right direction… even if the road isn’t always smooth.
 

“Letting these results reinforce negativity and cynicism is entirely counterproductive and perpetuates a vicious cycle,” he wrote.
 

“You’ll have the very difficult task of trying to adopt a positive outlook, even if your past experiences haven’t been entirely positive… and of doing your best to support those people who will occasionally fail as we try to make progress,” he added to CSIS staff.
 

Huda Mukbil, a former longtime CSIS intelligence officer
author of “Agent Of Change: My Life Fighting Terrorists, Spies and Institutional Racism,” told National Post that the changes promised by Rogers are long overdue.
 

Mukbil, who was part of a group of CSIS employees who sued the service in 2017 alleging racism, sexism and harassment, noted that Rogers had identified “critical gaps” to be fixed in his memo.
 

“He used the words ‘disappointing and unacceptable’ and I couldn’t agree more,” Mukbil wrote in an email, noting that there have been warning signs about CSIS’s culture for years but little change.
 

“He has also made it clear that he is demanding senior executives prioritize trust-building, including through accountability frameworks and performance agreements. This is something our allies have been doing for years.”
 

Beyond the issues cited in Rogers’ letter, she listed a broken complaint system, fear of reprisal “fuelled by a rigid, paramilitary, macho culture”, racial and gendered discrimination and nepotism as other problems to be addressed at CSIS.
 

National Post

cnardi@postmedia.com

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