Does anyone think for a second that a man [(Trump)] who brags about attacking his own citizens will let Canada off with a gentleman's trade agreement?

The rhetoric from Washington is escalating. FBI director Kash Patel accused us of flooding the United States with terrorists. Homeland Security director Kristi Noem says our border represents a threat to American safety. Now Attorney General Pam Bondi is accusing Canada of creating a crisis in human trafficking.

These are orchestrated outbursts of falsehood to demonize Canada. This is the part of the fascist playbook. The stakes are frighteningly high so I understand the PM's desire to tread carefully. But there are areas where we can't cede ground. If we do, the fascists will take it. That is how they operate.

What keeps me up at night are the words of Louis Fischer, a journalist who documented the Nazi rise to power. He wrote that Hitler's opponents couldn't comprehend the real nature of the Nazi threat. As reasonable and democratic people, they made the mistake of believing that they could negotiate with Hitler. Or they thought that they were wiser than Nazi street thugs. They reassured themselves that Hitler was "just being Hitler."

And so, they willingly ceded ground, believing it was a strategy to bring the Nazis into the democratic fold or outwit them. In ceding ground, they fell into the abyss.

~

This is what concerns me about the Roberts' invitation. It signals either naivety or desperation. If Roberts was the one who blew off the meeting, it's because he didn't need to take the measure of the new government. The invitation alone gave him all he needed to know.

In writing this, I feel the need to state that I am rooting for Prime Minister Carney. Everyone knows that I am not a Liberal. I never will be. But he won the election by offering himself as a wartime prime minister.

We need him to be that war time prime minister now.

As the Liberals have shifted rightward—not just on immigration but also on military spending, climate policy, and public safety—the federal Conservative leader appears to have gone looking for an issue on which to distinguish himself. He is now signalling that scapegoating immigrants and people seeking asylum will be central to that plan.

Poilievre’s allies in think tanks, lobby firms, and the media think he’s found a winning strategy. In the wake of Poilievre’s defeat in the last election, former Conservative staffer Josie Sabatino described it as a “new era” in which Poilievre can “move beyond the risk-averse messaging of a campaign.” National Post columnist Geoff Russ called it “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to finally turn immigration into an issue our politicians can openly and honestly debate.” Conservative activist Amy Hamm declared that the days of labelling Conservatives as racist for their views on immigration have passed.

Anti-immigrant sentiments will only grow the more immigrants are falsely blamed for problems in housing, health care and unemployment—all of which are better explained by the policies of austerity-loving politicians and the corporate class. None of these dynamics are new in Canada, but they are likely to grow with more oxygen from federal Conservatives.

OTTAWA - Prime Minister Mark Carney would not say Monday whether Canada will meet its climate goals under the Paris agreement by 2030, as his government faces criticism over his emission-reduction plans.

Canada has a legal requirement to achieve net-zero by 2050 after legislating it in 2021. Part of its path to get there is a plan to cut emissions by 40 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 — a commitment set out in the Paris agreement.

But while the government has yet to say whether it will miss its target — or whether it's still trying to achieve it — observers have raised doubts.

A report last year from the federal environment commissioner said Canada was not on track to meet its 2030 target. Jerry DeMarco estimated Canada's emissions had only dropped seven per cent below 2005 levels.

Today, as Professor Alain Deneault of the University of Moncton puts it, “The government has legalized [tax haven] use.” What was once covert has become routine. Decades of policy choices have normalized profit-shifting, leaving corporations free to route income to low-tax jurisdictions and bring it back to Canada at a steep discount, and with no fear of being challenged by the CRA.

This practice is widespread. More than three quarters of companies listed on the S&P/TSX 60 index have at least one subsidiary located in a tax haven. By exploiting the gap between Canada’s tax rates and those of their subsidiaries abroad, these firms avoided an estimated $7 billion in Canadian taxes in 2024 alone

A 2021 poll found that 92 per cent of Canadians support making it harder for corporations to exploit tax havens. This is a political no-brainer. Yet Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney, was formerly chair of Brookfield Asset Management, part of the Brookfield Corporation, a behemoth which maintains at least 44 subsidiaries in tax havens around the world. Despite persistent questioning on the campaign trail, Carney refused to commit to any additional measures to curb their use.

Deer explains Indigenous groups’ growing opposition by drawing a comparison. For many Indigenous people, he says, Canada treats their lands and resources the same way Donald Trump threatened Canada during the U.S. trade war.

“The threat that Donald Trump poses to Canada, calling it the U.S.’ 51st state, threatening to take over its resources, is what we’ve been feeling for a long time from Canada,” he said.

“They can’t trust the treaties they made with the United States, and they worry about their land and resources. That’s how we feel about Canada, because they want to take our land and natural resources.”

“C-5 is problematic because it is saying what is good for the federal government is good for everyone, Indigenous and non-Indigenous,” he says. “But it’s never been like that, when you look at a systemic inequality that exists in our country and analyze it historically.”

(satire)

Environment Canada has issued air quality warnings for regions of both Prairie provinces, saying smoke is also reducing visibility in some areas.

The warning comes as wildfires in the Northwest Territories, including one not far from the hamlet of Fort Providence, forced hundreds to flee their homes.

The fire southwest of Yellowknife has so far scorched 1,020 square kilometres of land.

Economy Minister Christine Fréchette says the government made its decision after the company failed to produce an acceptable plan for Quebecers.

The government has spent $510 million on the project, and has lost a $270-million investment made in Northvolt's Swedish parent company before it filed for bankruptcy in March.

Quebec hopes to recover a $240-million guaranteed loan issued to purchase the land for the plant.

The American company Lyten last month announced it hoped to purchase control of the Northvolt battery project in Quebec and said it was in discussions with the federal and provincial governments.

Alberta recently directed schools to purge library books from shelves that fit its definition of “explicit sexual content” by 1 October. If the policy is applied precisely as outlined, a host of books face being purged, including George Orwell’s 1984 due to passages in the text that discuss sexual intercourse and rape.

Academics and researchers who examine censorship say the policy specifically targets books that affirm LGBTQ+ identities – which they say is the goal of rightwing parents’ groups.

Turk says he and his colleagues are following more than 25 socially conservative groups across Canada that have similar mandates.

Many of these groups emerged as anti-vax groups during the Covid-19 pandemic, and then used social media to widen their scope of causes, including strict parental oversight.

“It’s a major initiative right now that grows out of this notion that ‘our kids are our property’,” he said. “It’s a very backward-looking, reactionary way of understanding how children learn.”

Lobbying by some parents’ groups has also prompted Alberta to institute “opt-in” sex education in fall 2024, instead of “opt-out”, which means parents must now actively sign their children up for those classes.

In June, following advocating from the Alberta Parents’ Union, Alberta also introduced new rules that require all presentations focussing on gender identity and sexuality to be vetted by the provincial government.

A development group with close ties to Premier Doug Ford has launched a legal battle against Metrolinx, claiming the province’s transit agency owes it about half a billion dollars.

The group has taken Metrolinx to the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT), where it hopes to secure a ruling forcing the agency to compensate it for expropriating what are known as “air rights” above rail lines in downtown Toronto, which it signed an agreement to buy but had not yet paid for.

The amount that Craft Kingsmen Rail (East) Corp. is after is “one of the largest claims” that a lawyer who has worked on expropriation cases for two-and-a-half decades says he’s ever seen.

The corporation was formed in September 2018 through a partnership between Craft Development and Kingsmen Group. It’s directed by three representatives from each development company, including Craft senior executive Carmine Nigro.

Nigro is friends with Ford and was seated at the premier’s table at the wedding reception of one of his daughters in 2022. Ford’s cabinet has also appointed Nigro chair of the Ontario Place Corporation, an inaugural board member of Invest Ontario and chair of the LCBO.