National Post

SASKATOON — Liberal Leader Mark Carney has grown accustomed to one or two hecklers at every rally , but in Saskatoon on Wednesday evening, they were interrupting him left and right — quite literally.

Carney was busy telling the 800 or so Liberal supporters present at a modern art museum about the story of a famous portrait of former British prime minister Winston Churchill when he was interrupted by two young men yelling about Canada becoming the United States’ “51st state.”

The two individuals, teenagers barely of voting age, each wore a suit, a tie and shiny black shoes.

Their heckles were rapidly drowned out by the boos of the crowd and the two young men were escorted by security outside the venue.

“We value diversity in this country, unlike the United States of America,” said Carney.

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He then went back to his story about Churchill. “Where was I?”

Moments later, Carney would be interrupted again, this time, by pro-Palestinian protesters calling the situation in Gaza a “genocide.”

“I heard you, I heard you,” he told them. “You made your point.”

While Carney struggled to remember where he left off, the crowd chanted his name.

The pro-Palestinian protesters, many of them shouting at once, started up again with inaudible heckles.

“I’ve come a long way, these people have waited a long time, and I would like to speak,” said Carney.

A woman attempted to reassure him: “You’re doing great, sweetie!”

Carney continued on with the key points of his speech, speaking about how Canada should fight back against U.S. tariffs and become an energy superpower, with the occasional heckles. Eventually, they faded.

“I actually had a pretty good life about four months ago,” he said, sparking laughs from the crowd.

His speech would end up being much shorter than usual. He thanked the crowd for coming.

Outside the venue, a brief argument broke out between the two young men in suits and a frustrated Liberal supporter.

“You’re the one running back to your abuser after 10 years,” shouted one of the young men.

The Liberal supporter shot back: “How old are you? F–k, you know nothing about life. Absolutely nothing.”

Two of the protesters who were challenging Carney about the situation in Gaza said they were joined by many others from the Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East to challenge the new Liberal leader to do more to help its residents.

“It’s important for elected leaders to know that that’s important to us,” said Milo Coutu, who leans typically more NDP.

“A lot of people who are running haven’t put out firm stances on Palestine, and I think that’s pretty concerning.”

Carney said earlier on Wednesday he was “aware of the situation in Gaza” which he said was “horrible” but fell short of calling it a “genocide.”

Tre Gibson, a self-proclaimed communist who was also protesting at the rally, said he might end up voting for Carney anyways.

“I don’t like Mark Carney very much. I think that he’s better than the Conservatives, for sure,” he said.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Carney has spent most of the past week in Western Canada, in the hopes of picking up seats. He spent most of Wednesday in Calgary before making a brief stop in Saskatoon, and was headed to Toronto late in the evening.

The Liberals are hoping to pick up the Saskatoon West riding, currently held by a Conservative incumbent. In the last two elections, New Democrats finished a few points behind in second place. The collapse of the NDP is opening up an opportunity for Carney’s team.

But NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is not going down without a fight.

On the tarmac at Saskatoon’s airport, the Liberal and NDP planes stood side by side as a sign of the battle to come.

National Post
calevesque@postmedia.com

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TOP STORY

After Liberal Leader Mark Carney announced that Canada’s future lay in “prefabricated and modular housing,” online critics noted that his former company just happens to be a major player in the modular housing industry.

This week, Carney provided more details of his plan to start a new government agency, Build Canada Homes, tasked with constructing 500,000 homes every year. As Carney told reporters on Tuesday, most of those homes would be prefabricated.

“Prefabricated and modular housing will catalyze a productivity boom,” he said.

Until he quit just four months ago to run for the Liberal leadership, Carney was chair of Brookfield Asset Management, one of the world’s largest investment firms. In 2021, the firm spent $5 billion to acquire Modulaire Group, a major manufacturer of modular buildings. While the company currently operates in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, Modulaire’s website notes that they are specialists in the realm of “rapid urbanization.”

And this has been happening a lot. Brookfield’s investments are so vast and its interests so wide-ranging that with many Liberal announcements, the company could potentially be indirect beneficiaries.

After zeroing Canada’s consumer carbon tax last month, Carney unveiled a climate plan which promised to “improve subsidies for heat pumps to make home heating more affordable.”

In 2023, Brookfield spent US$5 billion to acquire HomeServe, a British home repair multinational that has leaned hard into heat pump refurbishments.

Carney’s links to HomeServe have gotten him into trouble as recently as October, when Britain’s The Telegraph reported that Carney had been actively lobbying the British government to increase heat pump subsidies on Brookfield’s behalf.

“Mark (Carney) is working on our behalf in government and he did have a meeting on this with (Chancellor of the Exchequer) Rachel Reeves,” HomeServe founder Richard Harpin told The Telegraph.

Carney’s newly released Canadian climate plan also promised to “increase financial incentives for energy efficient homes.”

Brookfield Residential, the $6 billion property development arm of Brookfield Asset Management, is already a major builder of energy efficient homes in both Ontario and Alberta. They just opened Seton, a planned community outside of Calgary that advertises itself as a model of sustainable building. “When you live in a home in Seton, you can rest easy knowing you’ve made a sustainable choice,” reads promotional literature.

In 2022, Brookfield partnered with Trane Technologies “to offer decarbonization-as-a-service for commercial, industrial, and public sector customers.”

Last week, Carney said he would maintain the Trudeau government’s 2019 Impact Assessment Act, the so-called “No New Pipelines Act” due to its much higher regulatory burden on new resource projects.

This is despite rising support for a fast-tracked east-west pipeline that would reduce Canadian dependence on U.S. oil infrastructure. A recent Bloomberg-commissioned poll found that a record 77 per cent of Canadians supported such a project.

While Carney has said it would make sense for Quebec to use Canadian oil instead of American, he said he would only support such a project “where we have the support of First Nations (and) we have the support of all the provinces, obviously including Quebec.”

At the same time, Brookfield is closing in on a $9 billion deal to acquire the 8,850 kilometre Colonial Pipeline in the United States. Running from oil-rich Texas all the way to New York State, the Colonial Pipeline is basically an American equivalent to any future Alberta-to-Quebec pipeline.

The potential conflicts of interest presented by Carney’s Brookfield ties have been an issue ever since Carney first took a job in September as an economic advisor to then prime minister Justin Trudeau.

As Conservative opponents noted at the time, Carney was employed through the Liberal Party rather than the Prime Minister’s Office, which dispensed with the usual ethics disclosures that would accompany such a position.

Upon becoming prime minister, Carney put his assets into a blind trust and said he was working with the ethics commissioner to put “screens around certain issues” in which his business interests might intersect with his policy decisions.

Carney is required to disclose his assets within 120 days of becoming prime minister, a deadline he won’t hit until after the election. Although he is not volunteering them before then, Brookfield’s own disclosures show that Carney holds options in the company that were worth US$6.8 million as of December.

On Wednesday, Conservative candidate Michael Barrett — previously the party’s ethics critic — renewed his frequent accusation that Carney is backing policies poised to directly enrich his Brookfield interests.

“Mark Carney’s $1B heat pump plan could deliver BIG profits for him & his friends at Brookfield. But he still refuses to disclose his assets & financial interests,” Barrett wrote in a post to X.

Carney is one of the wealthiest figures to ever become Canadian prime minister, and he has compared his situation to that of Paul Martin, who prior to entering politics was the CEO of the shipping juggernaut Canada Steamship Lines.

In 2003, just prior to becoming prime minister, Martin sold the company to his sons, bowing to criticism that merely putting his shares in a blind trust would not be sufficient to avoid conflicts of interest.

“I want Canadians to know that my only business … would be the public’s business,” Martin said at the time.

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• John Ivison: Carney’s rosy energy promises meet the Liberals’ dismal record

LET’S POLL

Polymarket — an online prediction market where you can bet on electoral outcomes — is now heavily favouring a Liberal victory in the election.

The question “Next Prime Minister of Canada after the election?” has attracted more than $40 million in bets, and is now at 78 per cent likelihood for Liberal Leader Mark Carney, and 23 per cent for Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.

The question “Which Party wins most seats in Canadian election?” has attracted more than $10 million in bets, and its ratios are similar: 79.1 per cent for the Liberals, 21 per cent for the Conservative Party.

GAFFETERIA

The Trudeau government was extremely conciliatory to the anti-Israel crowd in the months following the October 7 massacres in Southern Israel, to the point where they were once directly thanked by the leadership of Hamas. Nevertheless, they never endorsed the claim that Israel’s actions in Gaza constituted a “genocide.”

So it’s notable that when a heckler at a Mark Carney event accused him of ignoring the “genocide happening in Palestine,” Carney replied “I’m aware, that’s why we have an arms embargo” — an apparent reference to Canada’s suspension of military exports to Israel.

When asked about this later, Carney said he didn’t hear the word “genocide,” and just thought the heckler was shouting about “the situation” in Gaza.

Get all of these insights and more into your inbox by signing up for the First Reading newsletter here.

Under Jagmeet Singh , Canada’s New Democratic Party has successes its leftist supporters can be proud of.

A national dental care program, pharmacare and anti-replacement-worker legislation are all in line with the party’s social democratic vision of governance.

But they came about in a curious way, as the NDP’s policy reward in a tit-for-tat arrangement that kept the governing Liberal party in power well past the end of its popular support.

The supply and confidence deal that gave Liberals control of the parliamentary agenda, supported by NDP votes, did not benefit Singh’s party as much as it could have, political experts say. It dragged on beyond its purpose. It needed a time limit, an earlier exit clause. For the NDP, it looked like all give and no take.

Singh made this deal in 2022 but never fully capitalized on what he had, and now it might be too late, because he has become a “bit player” in this current campaign, said Tamara Small, professor of political science at the University of Guelph, whose research focuses on the use of digital technologies in politics.

“He’s in a tough position,” Small said. “This race is coming down to two parties and there’s really no space for him.”

“Everything I thought about Canadian politics in December is wrong,” Small said. Late last year, when the obvious ballot questions seemed to be the cost of living crisis and a referendum on Justin Trudeau, the NDP potentially had the space to make the argument to progressives that they were the answer to a Conservative surge.

“At that point, (Singh) was in control of the NDP’s destiny. Had Parliament come back, he would have had some control. Now he’s out of control,” Small said. Singh was Trudeau’s third-term kingmaker, but he never got to perform the inevitable regicide.

Historically, NDP success is correlated with Conservative success. The Liberals have to tank and their voters flee to either side. Instead, now it looks like the NDP is tanking, boosting the Liberals against the Conservatives.

Singh and his NDP “are locked in this struggle for the working class vote with the Conservatives,” said Jim Farney, professor of political studies at the University of Regina, director of its graduate school for public policy, and a specialist in the politics of Canadian social conservatism. “The mystery of Singh to me as an outsider is that while he has not moved the numbers in a favourable direction his whole time as leader, he does seem to be very popular inside the party.”

Mark Carney, the new prime minister and Liberal leader, took any wind out of Singh’s sails by expanding the federal dental care program just before calling this election , and now the only question that seems to matter is American tariffs and national sovereignty.

“When people think NDP they don’t think foreign relations. They think of health care, dental care,” Small said.

In 15 years, she said, Singh is likely to get retrospective credit from his side for dental care and pharmacare, the kitchen table issues that move his natural voters. But hindsight doesn’t win elections. And Liberals have proven themselves adept both at dodging blame for their own bad ideas and at taking credit for other parties’ good ideas.

“The NDP doing terrible in this election is unlikely to be the fault of Jagmeet Singh,” Small said.

By the time the fateful supply and confidence deal finally collapsed , in a church basement in Toronto last September, it all looked pretty sloppy, as if the moment had passed Singh by. He didn’t even actually tear up a printed agreement, which the cameras would have loved.

The federal government had just ordered striking railway workers back to work under forced arbitration, which Singh said rewarded railway companies for bad faith bargaining and collusion. If the NDP can’t stand up for unionized blue collar workers against private railroad companies, they might as well not bother with anything else.

It looked like Singh getting dragged before the cameras to admit what everyone could already see. The deal was over. The die was cast. This was a launch party for the campaign Singh wanted to run, and it was over before lunch.

Singh’s finger was on the pulse, as it then was, but only briefly. Polls had him nearly tied with the Liberals. His poster slogan was “Restore Hope.” He said the election he seemed to be triggering would be between the NDP and the Conservatives. He called Justin Trudeau weak and selfish, and Pierre Poilievre a callous sellout to the rich. This is the NDP strike zone, but Singh was swinging late.

“This used to be a country where working hard earned you a good life, where a paycheque from a decent job got you a home that fit your family and a fridge full of groceries,” Singh said. “There is a battle ahead of us, the fight for the Canada of our dreams, the fight against Pierre Poilievre and his callous agenda of Conservative cuts, the fight to restore hope, and the promise that working hard gets you a good life. I’m ready for the fight.”

We're coming to a community near you ????????

I'm beyond excited to be travelling across Canada to connect with working people on issues like health care, housing and affordability and deliver our message of hope.

See our bus on the road? Text my public number at 613-801-8210 pic.twitter.com/pCGHuhMTsq

— Jagmeet Singh (@theJagmeetSingh) March 21, 2025

Today, with the fight in full swing, his campaigning has been an effort to get noticed in a campaign dominated by a new foreign economic threat, which does not play well as a natural NDP campaign focus.

On domestic issues like the cost of living crisis, Singh has proposed measures such as emergency price caps on staple groceries, removing GST on some essential items, and low interest mortgage loans for first time home buyers. He has vowed to block American ownership of Canadian health-care assets as part of a broader opposition to increased privatization of medicine.

And then there are the slightly more loopy ideas, such as cancelling the contract with the United States for F-35 fighter jets and building our own fighter jets in Canada, which had a whiff of not only implausibility, but of attention-seeking desperation.

Jagmeet Singh, 46, lived as a child in Toronto’s suburb of Scarborough, in Grand Falls-Windsor and St. John’s in Newfoundland, and in Windsor, Ont. He studied undergraduate biology at Western University and then law at Osgoode Hall, then worked as a criminal defence lawyer in Toronto before entering politics. He ran federally for the NDP in Ontario and narrowly lost in the 2011 election, then won the provincial riding of Bramalea-Gore-Malton barely five months later. He won leadership of the federal NDP in 2017, and has held the British Columbia riding of Burnaby South since 2019. He is married to Gurkiran Kaur Sidhu, with whom he has two young daughters.

His hard-left politics aside, people tend to like him personally. They often warm to him. He campaigns well and has high likeability polling.

In the 2019 election campaign, Singh’s first, his reaction to Justin Trudeau’s blackface scandal was a striking moment that revealed a depth of character the public had not yet seen. This was a difficult issue to manage for the only leader of an ethnic minority. The risk was real that Trudeau would use him as a foil for a public apology. Singh could have campaigned on it, but instead he set a higher tone with an impassioned defence of sensitivity to young Canadian men and boys who were recognizing the sting of frat boy racism on display by their own prime minister.

In a video shot in a hotel room the same night the news broke, Singh said he himself had known this sting, and as a young person he threw a few punches, but he urged a higher road.

“You might feel like giving up on Canada. You might feel like giving up on yourselves,” Singh said. “I want you to know that you have value, you have worth, and you are loved.”

People also like to see him fight, metaphorically, but also sometimes with the hint of a literal threat.

His confrontation last year on Parliament Hill with a trash-talker who called him a “corrupted bastard” for not bringing down the Liberal government was quite a sight. Singh turned around. “You got something to say?” he demanded of the man who appeared to have said it, who was filming on his phone. There was no more trash talking. Things got cordial real quick. The man denied saying anything: “I didn’t say nothing. It wasn’t me. It was the gentleman behind me I guess.”

No wonder. Singh has an imposing physical presence and practices the martial art of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. A police officer stood by as if he recognized Singh could take care of himself. But he just called the guy a “coward,” turned on his heel, and won the round.

Singh’s likeability has kept him alive politically. He’s charismatic and personable, with a compelling stage presence, said Elizabeth Goodyear-Grant, professor of political studies at Queen’s University and director of the Canadian Opinion Research Archive.

He can present as an idealist among cynics. But one problem with being in political opposition is that opportunities for advancement don’t come along every day. It’s hard to make them, and you cannot waste them like Singh has.

When Singh became NDP leader in 2017, the party was on the slide. They had reached a historic high under Jack Layton in 2011, taking Official Opposition status from the decimated Liberal Party under Michael Ignatieff. Layton’s successor Thomas Mulcair dropped more than half those seats when the Liberals took their majority in 2015.

(Mulcair has re-emerged in this campaign as a media pundit who described his own party as an “afterthought” and said this was an election between two parties, which is arguably true but probably hasn’t helped the communal cause.)

In Singh’s first election as leader in 2019, it went poorly . Almost half the party’s remaining seats were lost. In the next one, 2021, there was a new opportunity to boost the seat count, with Singh’s familiar face making a credible pitch against a tired government. He had the highest favourability rating of all the party leaders. But he knew this was not the right time for the NDP, and he argued against holding the election at all, and even asked Governor General Mary Simon to block it. In the end, the NDP gained a single seat.

“Now they’ve cratered,” said Goodyear-Grant, and they’re struggling to get noticed in the third election in a little more than five years. “There’s no scenario in which the leader stays on.”

One major failure for Singh, she said, is that he never landed with Quebec voters, despite the ideological and policy synergies that previous NDP campaigns have targeted.

Last fall, there was a theory making the rounds in conservative circles that Singh was prolonging the supply and confidence deal simply to become eligible for his parliamentary pension . Goodyear-Grant calls this silly. It trivializes the more charitable explanation that he did not wish to go to the polls with the looming spectre of a Conservative landslide. But things change.

In the pantheon of Canadian social democratic federal politicians, Singh today occupies a plinth somewhere between Alexa McDonough and Ed Broadbent. He’s no Jack Layton, who reached the party’s highest high, but nor is he Audrey McLaughlin, who reached the lowest low. So far, anyway. And even if the NDP is wiped out, Goodyear-Grant said, Singh has “every ability to be financially secure post politics.”

Even Tom Mulcair has a steady paycheque today.

So for Singh, this current election is do or die, but with even his own seat in peril according to polls, it’s looking like he probably won’t.

• 'He's not our guy': Jagmeet Singh says Mark Carney is not 'in it' for regular folks
• Five things we learned from Radio-Canada's French federal leader interviews

OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre returned to one of his signature issues Thursday, promising to incentivize city halls to make it cheaper to build housing if he becomes prime minister.

Poilievre said in a video posted to social media on Thursday morning that cash-hungry municipal governments are driving up homebuilding costs in Canada’s major cities, resulting in fewer housing starts and higher listing prices.

“City hall bureaucrats also take their cut. They’re called development charges, paid before a shovel even hits the ground,” said Poilievre.

“Let’s call these charges what they really are, homebuilding taxes.”

He noted that these municipal fees have increased steadily over the Liberals’ decade in power, notably by more than $100,000 per single-family home in Toronto.

Poilievre said that a Conservative government would pay city halls half the cost of cutting their building taxes, with the goal of getting them down by $50,000 per home.

Combined with the previously announced GST cut on new homes up to $1.3 million, Thursday’s announcement means that home buyers could get up to $115,000 in tax relief under a Conservative government.

Poilievre has also said he’ll eliminate the Liberal Housing Accelerator Fund and other “bureaucratic” federal housing programs if he becomes prime minister.

Meanwhile, the Liberal campaign has promised to waive GST on first-time home buyers, for homes up to $1 million.

Liberal Leader Mark Carney has also promised to launch Canada’s most ambitious homebuilding plan since the Second World War, building 500,000 new homes each year for a decade.

Toronto-based housing advocate Eric Lombardi says that, while the Conservative proposal has its merits, it doesn’t go far enough.

“The real problem is that cities, often Canada’s worst-run governments, still have the power to levy these taxes in the first place,” said Lombardi.

“Without a federal-provincial deal to take that power away, we risk spending billions without meaningfully lowering housing costs.”

Housing starts have been slow to start 2025 after seeing a modest year-to-year increase in 2024.

The pace of homebuilding has been especially slow in major cities .

Housing starts fell 68 per cent in Toronto and 48 per cent in Vancouver in February, versus the same time last year, with both multi-unit and single-detached starts down.

National Post
rmohamed@postmedia.com

Get more deep-dive National Post political coverage and analysis in your inbox with the Political Hack newsletter, where Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson and political analyst Tasha Kheiriddin get at what’s really going on behind the scenes on Parliament Hill every Wednesday and Friday, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up here.

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Telling a client to take a burner phone with them to the U.S. is “the stupidest advice” you could give, says a Toronto-based immigration lawyer.

Canadians travelling to the U.S. are facing increased scrutiny by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers, which has led to fears of detainment or denial of entry based on the contents of travellers’ devices.

However, presenting a burner phone is the equivalent of “turning the lights off” and then telling a border officer, “Okay, now search me,” says Evan Green, one of the two managing partners, with Green and Spiegel.

“It’s an indication that you have something to hide. It’s negligent advice,” he told National Post.

Here’s a look at your rights at the U.S. border

This past weekend, the Canadian government revised its U.S. travel advisory to warn travellers about the extensive powers of U.S. border officers, emphasizing the need for acting prudently.

Searches of devices such as phones and laptops can include accessing text messages and social media activity. CBP officers can search devices without any evidence of wrongdoing, including demanding passwords to unlock phones, laptops, or tablets. Refusing to unlock devices could lead to confiscation, delays, denial of entry, or even detention while awaiting deportation.

David Garson, managing partner with Toronto-based Garson Immigration Law, shares the view that presenting a burner phone will simply arouse suspicion.

The Customs and Border Protection officers “are trained in this kind of thing.” Presenting a phone with no texts and no social media is more likely to make the officer think, “Wait a minute. Isn’t this strange. This person has something to hide,” Garson told National Post.

And it may result in “a domino effect,” leading to you being barred from entering the country, he adds.

Device searches have been rare, says Garson, less than one per cent of potential entrants in 2024. The American Civil Liberties Union confirms this. A recent ACLU statement says U.S. Customs and Border Protection searches of electronic devices at the border are relatively uncommon, even if they have been increasing in frequency.

In 2024, CBP reported that only 0.1 per cent of travellers crossing the border had their devices searched. However, says the ACLU, the number of searches has grown significantly over the years: CBP searched over 41,000 devices in 2023 , compared to just 8,503 in 2015.

What should you do to minimize risk of search at the U.S. border?

The bottom line, says Green, is that “the rules haven’t changed, even if the refs are calling it more strictly.” Anyone crossing into the U.S. still has to answer the questions, he adds.

Green advises travellers, whether they’re going to the United States for business or pleasure to carry all their back-up documents. “Take your flight itinerary, a copy of your hotel reservation, a letter from your employer about the conference you’re attending or the theatre tickets to the Broadway shows you’re going to see.”

Canadian ‘nonimmigrants’ travelling to the U.S. exempt from new fingerprinting requirement

It should be noted that travellers seeking entry don’t have much of a leg to stand on if they insist on their rights. “Not a helluva lot” once you’re on U.S. soil, says Garson. The U.S. doesn’t extend the same rights to non-immigrants that Canada does.

However, Garson suggests there are small things you can do. For example, he suggests that you don’t give the border patrol officer the code needed to access your phone. “Open it yourself.”

His best advice to Canadians is to “self-assess.” Cut the risk of being barred from the U.S. could mean asking yourself about how you have been active on social media or in attending anti-U.S. rallies. If you are barred from entry, a future desire to enter the U.S. will require a waiver to do so, he cautions.

Will anti-Trump social media posts prevent you from getting into the U.S.?

But what about those anti-Trump social media posts? Will they prevent you from getting into the country? “No,” Green insists. “Half the country didn’t vote for him.”

Though Green had one person call his firm about being refused entrance. That person had antisemitic content on his device, he says.

On that point, Garson is also cautious. “They are starting to look at evidence of antisemitism more seriously.”

Entering the U.S. by air provides more flexibility for Canadians who aren’t comfortable with questions from U.S. border authorities. While still on Canadian soil, you can decide not to go south. You don’t have that luxury if you are entering by land and are on U.S. soil when you’re being questioned. Then you can be detained while awaiting deportation.

While on Canadian soil “the only reason for the border officers to hold you is if they think you have committed a crime. In that case, they will contact local police,” says Green.

Garson agrees that pre-flight areas in Canadian airports offer more flexibility.

Still, he says, travellers should keep in mind that one million people a week apply to enter the U.S. “If you’re going to do what you say you’re doing, you’ll be all right. If you’re evasive, it signals you have something to hide.”

Ultimately, says Green: “Just be polite. Answer the questions. Have the documents needed to support your answers.”

• Canadians travelling to the U.S. may be affected by new registration requirements
• What are some reasons Canadians may be denied entry at the U.S. border?

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.

There may be hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Canadians in Seattle watching the Toronto Blue Jays pay their annual visit to the Mariners in May; at the start line of the iconic Boston Marathon on April 21; in Buffalo for Sabres NHL hockey and Bills NFL football games; and Detroit for the Red Wings, Lions and Tigers.

Proximity and an open border has long spurred these and many other southern sportscursions. But the chilling of the economic and political climate in North America suggests there won’t be as many Canadians in any of those places this year.

There is no definitive accounting, of course, but Jeff Heatley, a 45-year-old material handler from Surrey, B.C., tells a pretty common tale these days. His six-person group cancelled plans to spend a weekend in Seattle to see his beloved Blue Jays. It was not a decision taken lightly.

“Even when the Jays were awful, I still looked forward to going down with friends to see my favourite team lose more often than not,” he explained in an email. “When I met my now wife, she started coming down with me; sometimes for a single game, now for a fun weekend getaway. Occasionally, we take our nine-year-old daughter (Beth) as well, but the majority of the time it’s a chance for us and some friends to have a child-free weekend in a beautiful stadium, in a fun city.

“This year, we and two other couples booked a hotel in downtown Seattle, organized babysitters and arranged to all drive down from Surrey to Seattle for the weekend. We were all very excited.

“Then, the president of the United States stepped in. We mulled it over for a couple of weeks earlier this year, thinking maybe the rhetoric would die down and he would move onto actually doing his job, and our two countries could resume being friendly. It wasn’t to be, however, and we unanimously decided to cancel. It sucks. We just couldn’t do it.”

They will do something else, somewhere else, like so many Canadians, sports fans or otherwise, have decided.

Donald Trump’s inflationary tariffs and inflammatory statements — calling former prime minister Justin Trudeau the governor of America’s 51st state — crossed a line, and in protest many Canadians won’t be crossing that border. So, it’s elbows up, air travel down. Bye, America. Buy Canadian.

And as much as the auto industry will soon feel the margin squeeze of tariffs, a quiet Canadian boycott is already eroding U.S. tourism numbers and revenue.

“While we do not have specific data on Canadians cancelling trips to the U.S. for sports-related tourism, Flight Centre Canada has reported a 40 per cent drop in leisure bookings to the U.S. in February 2025 compared to the same month last year,” spokesperson Amra Durakovic said in an email. “Additionally, 20 per cent of pre-existing U.S. trips over the past three months were cancelled, with many travellers opting for alternative destinations such as Mexico, Portugal and the Caribbean.

“Sports travel is considered a niche category, with only 10 per cent of Canadians identifying it as a top motivator in 2024,” Durakovic said, which means it ranks well behind beach vacations.

“However, it shows promise among younger travellers, as over one-third of Gen Z and millennials express an interest in sports-focused trips. Similarly, 48 per cent of Canadians planning travel in 2025 are likely to prioritize major events, including concerts and sporting matches, under the right circumstances.”

These are not even close to the right circumstances, and the sorry state of affairs could mean long-term pain for the big business of sports. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman told Reuters that the trade tensions were concerning and could have an impact on the league’s business. His comments followed the announcement on April 2 of the 12-year, $11-billion deal between the NHL and Rogers Communications to secure media rights for the games across all platforms in Canada.

In early February, the U.S. Travel Association issued a dire warning . “New tariffs on Canada could impact Canadian visitation to and spending in the United States. Canada is the top source of international visitors to the United States, with 20.4 million visits in 2024, generating $20.5 billion in spending and supporting 140,000 American jobs. A 10-per-cent reduction in Canadian travel could mean two million fewer visits, $2.1 billion in lost spending and 14,000 job losses.”

New York City bus tour operator Matt Levy told CTV News the decline in Canadian reservations has already been “catastrophic” for his business. They are also feeling the pinch in Old Orchard Beach, Maine, where Canadians provide 30 to 40 per cent of the area’s tourism revenues annually. Hotel bookings in U.S. border cities are down, according to data analytics firm CoStar Group. For a four-week period through the end of January and most of February, demand for rooms decreased by eight per cent year-over-year in Niagara Falls, N.Y., and 12 per cent in Bellingham, Wash., about 80 kilometres south of Vancouver.

***

Paula Roberts-Banks has finished the Boston Marathon 12 times since 2008, when she started making the trek an annual event. She was there in 2013 when two terrorists detonated a pair of bombs near the finish line, killing three people and injuring 500 others. Roberts-Banks was unharmed, but the event has never seemed quite the same, even as the artist, writer and photographer from Rosseau, Ont. continued to make the pilgrimage. She registered again last September and was granted a spot in the field of 30,000, but won’t be pounding the pavement this time. She will miss the running friends she sees only in Boston, but said she has “soured” on America and its politics.

“Once November rolled around, once Trump was elected, I just realized that 50 per cent of the people in the States voted this guy in. I really didn’t want to go and spend a week down in the States with that segment of the population,” she said.

Roberts-Banks felt strongly enough to write a first-person account of her decision for Canadian Running magazine. She said responses to her story from people on both sides of the border have been mostly supportive, and other Canadian runners said they had made similar decisions. But that doesn’t make it easy.

“It’s just with Boston, I’m not trying to make it particularly special or anything like that, but there is that sense of loss and of guilt because you have to try so hard to get there. And then you’re basically just throwing that away and basically taking somebody else’s spot as well.

“But a number of Canadians chimed in and said that they were either not doing Boston or not doing other races. One person said they changed from Twin Cities Marathon to doing the Toronto Marathon. So, it was largely a lot of people saying they were revising their plans and that they weren’t going to go to the States.”

A spokesperson for the Boston Athletic Association, which hosts the race, said their organization did not have a running count of competitors who had withdrawn. That’s because there is no formal process; you just don’t show up on race day.

“If you don’t show up for Boston, you’re really the only person who knows that,” said Roberts-Banks. “It’s a massive race. And your friends will miss you or whatever but, I mean, people get injured, people get ill, people don’t make it to the starting line. And you know, you’re not there. That’s all.”

But that’s not all. It’s not nearly that easy. It is a decision that hurts her heart.

“Oh, very much so. I reconcile it with the fact that I’ve missed it before. I’ve been through that before, and I know what it’s like to miss it, so I’m kind of mentally ready for it. This year will be different because I could physically go. The other times I didn’t go was because either I was injured or something was going on in my family that just prevented me from going. But this time it’s a conscious decision. So that will be different. I feel like I’ll be ready, but I’ll also be very upset the day of.”

***

When National Football League training camps open in July, Chris Plouffe will also feel a sense of loss. It was an aspiration to become a season-ticket holder and Plouffe loves the community that he and wife, Jenna, and their Canadian friends have built with the fans from Buffalo, Albany, Rochester and Atlanta who sit near them in Highmark Stadium, home of the Bills.

It’s estimated that 15 per cent of the Buffalo stadium is filled with Canadian fans, the result of efforts by BIlls’ team owners to target Toronto and the southern Ontario market to help build the fan base. That becomes even more important with a new stadium currently under construction, scheduled to open in July 2026.

Plouffe has held a one-third share of four tickets for three years, but there won’t be a fourth. At least, not this season. “I really enjoyed sharing that camaraderie with these random people, because I do feel that a Bills game does have a very community-based vibe,” said Plouffe, a 39-year-old from Etobicoke, Ont. “You’re huddled around people very close to you. So, it’s very much always been in my nature to just high-five people around me. And now that it’s the same people, it’s been like, OK, I got to know them a little bit more and talk to them. I wouldn’t say necessarily make friends, but just the idea of the camaraderie of seeing the same people and you talk about the same things.”

Plouffe cannot abide Trump’s blatant disrespect for Canada, and decided to take a personal stand. He will re-direct the $2,000 he would have spent on those tickets, perhaps to trips inside Canada or membership in a curling club.

“It was a tough decision. I had thought about it a lot. It was, ‘do we keep them and sell them?’ But then it kind of came down to how many other Canadians are going to do this? We’re seeing a lot of that ‘buy Canadian’ movement. And for myself, if I’m going to be treated this way, being Canadian, I will want my money to (be spent) in Canada and not go to the States. So, as of right now, I’m not looking into buying them again in the future. Mind you, this could all change. It could all change if the respect is back by next year. I don’t know for sure. It’s how I’ll feel.”

It was and will be a personal decision, and Plouffe isn’t judging anyone who decides to keep going to the United States this year, regardless of their reason or circumstances.

“We don’t have kids. I know with kids, families, people are talking about cancelling vacations to Disneyland and things. I totally understand if someone doesn’t want to do that because it’ll disappoint their kids. I think that’s totally fair. And same thing, maybe if they want to go see a sporting event with their kid who loves the Bills, they can do a Bills game. I don’t think it’s right to chastise everybody for how to act.

“Having said that, do I feel like I’m doing my part? It’s a small part that I can do. I have money that I can spend and I’m lucky enough to be full-time employed and have this expendable income. So, I will do my part to spend that and keep that income in Canada as much as possible. I think it’s really good to support people that are trying to do things more Canadian, but again, not to be hostile towards them if they don’t. I hate the idea that ‘you’re a hypocrite unless you drop everything.’ You don’t need to be perfect. You just need to do little things that can build up and hopefully it just shows that, as a whole, Canada is strong.” He said he empathizes with people in Buffalo whose living depends in part on Canadian tourism.

“Those people are going to be hurt by this too. I really hate that because again, I’ve been treated nothing but nicely and kindly. And I love doing the Bills games, buying the food down there, hanging out with other people. This is probably going to hurt the Bills a bit too, and that sucks because, again, I love everything about the Buffalo Bills and being part of that community,” Plouffe said.

Patrick Kaler, president and CEO of Visit Buffalo Niagara, told Canadian media that cross-border travel dropped 14 per cent in February, and the area depends on Canadians for about 35 to 40 per cent of its total tourism. And it’s not just the Sabres and the BIlls counting on Canadians to help fill their seats. The Buffalo Bisons, a Triple -A baseball team affiliated with the Toronto Blue Jays, calls Ontario fans “part of their herd,” and offers Canadian-at-par deals at their home park Sahlen Field, the highest-capacity Triple-A ballpark in the United States. In 2020-21, the Jays played 49 MLB games at Sahlen Field, and helped pay for renovations prior to the 2021 season.

***

There is a much larger community of people in St. George, Utah, who stage and participate in the world’s largest annual multi-sport event for people aged 50 and up. The Huntsman World Senior Games runs over a two-week period each October, encompasses 40 sports and attracts 12,000 competitors, mostly from around the United States. However, weekend warriors from Canada comprise the next largest contingent, about 10 to 15 per cent of participants each year, according to CEO Kyle Case.

He said teams’ registration opened Jan. 1 and appears to be on a normal, healthy pace.

“Obviously, looking at the political climate, January 1st was before the inauguration so there wasn’t much reason to have concern at all. Since then, we’ve put registration for (individual) athletes on March 1st and to be honest, right now registrations are really looking fine. I will say that we have received a handful of notices from some of our friends from Canada who have indicated some of their concern or frustrations. It’s a little bit early in the game, but at least at this point, I wouldn’t say that we’ve seen a significant trend,” Case continued.

“The mission of our organization is to foster worldwide peace, health and friendship, and so from that standpoint for us, independent of political climates or speeches or rhetoric or whatever it is, our mission remains the same. We have an open arms invitation for anyone everywhere.”

In the Games’ 35-plus-year run, that policy has included athletes from Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq. “We’ve hosted athletes from all around the world even in the midst of political disagreements. We feel strongly that the best way forward is to just set aside the politics and come and be a part of something pretty amazing and get to know people from all around the world and recognize that independent of politics, we’re all people, we all love sports, we love to hang out, we love to have a great time and take care of ourselves. We’re going to keep our eye on the political discussion for sure, but right now, this early in the game, I would say that we haven’t seen a significant registration trend but of course we’re aware of what’s happening and excited to welcome our friends from around the world, including and especially from Canada.”

Phil Presakarchuk of Edmonton has been to St. George many times for the slow-pitch tournament. This year, he’s taking two teams in two age categories and will stay for two weeks, enjoying the sunshine, competition and camaraderie. The vacation will cost him about CAD $2,000, and he has no problem spending that kind of money in the U.S. this year, regardless of politics or economics.

“For me, it’s my annual trip. I really enjoy going down there. Outside of playing ball, it’s a very good social event for me, so I fully plan on going.”

There are 400 slow-pitch teams registered and another 120 on the waiting list, so there will be no shortage of goodwill and good games. They play mostly at a well-appointed, seven-field complex, and Presakarchuk and his teammates stay at an affordable hotel in Mesquite, Nev., which is a 40-minute drive from St. George.

“It’s at least a one-star hotel,” he laughed. “But you know what? We have a hot tub about 10 steps away. We’ve got a pool 10 steps away. And they’ve got food there that is, in my mind, exceptional.”

Presakarchuk imports medical equipment from the United States, and he talks to American counterparts on a regular basis.

“I’m not sure who is advising Trump, but they’re hurting themselves. I think some of the swing states that actually voted for Trump are saying, ‘boy, what did we do?’ because everything is more expensive for them now.

“These tariffs are causing a lot of grief on both sides — well, mainly our side of the border — but they’re not happy with it, like we are. They see their fuel prices going up, their grocery prices, everything. So, I think it boils down to one individual and a few of his close gophers, you might say. But the people in general are almost apologetic. They don’t want to see it happen, either.”

***

Shaun Ayotte of Edmonton is a big sports fan who has been to about a dozen NFL games in Seattle. He was going to take advantage of a friend’s connections to Eagles’ ownership this year to take a long-delayed trip to Philadelphia. A buddy’s sister-in-law is a special assistant to Jeffrey Lurie, the owner of the Eagles.

“We had a crew of us who were going to do it, and we planned to do it in November, and with everything that has happened in the U.S., we kind of pulled back,” said Ayotte. “Our buddy lives in Atlanta, and he’s kind of a pro-Trump guy. We just don’t feel right doing it, and it’s a shame, because I don’t know if we’ll ever do it now, and it would have been a great opportunity. There would have been a few perks involved with the connection that we had, but none of us feel like doing it.

Ayotte said there is also an economic consideration for him, given the sad state of currency exchange rates for Canadians.

“Where the dollar is right now, and then you add in everything that’s going on, you know what, I’m going to find something else to do. Let’s go to Mexico and sit on the beach. Or, as summer comes up, maybe let’s stay home and have a trip or two around Alberta and B.C., or something like that.

“I don’t know how good the Blue Jays are going to be this year, maybe let’s go to Toronto and catch a game there, where you stay in Canada, and you don’t have to worry about the exchange. I think this summer is going to be quite a bit different for a lot of people.”

***

Some of those people will be mourning the loss of their usual holiday plans, and some won’t. Bud Vallee, a self-professed baseball fanatic, falls into the latter group. The 67-year-old retiree from Burlington, Ont. said he won’t be setting foot in Trump’s America, and it won’t bother him in the slightest.

“I’ve got a sister in Detroit. She was over around Christmas, and I said I hope everything goes well for you down there because I’m not going to come see you for four years.”

He skipped spring training in Florida, where he often went to watch the Jays, Rays and Phillies. He won’t be making weekend trips to watch ball games in Detroit, Boston, Cleveland, Pittsburgh or Chicago, as he has done in the past. His decision was 100-per-cent political, and he won’t be changing his mind.

“I’m in a (fantasy) baseball league, and there’s only three Canadians and 17 Americans, and there’s probably six or seven Trump supporters. For the most part, politics stays out of our league, but I always get messages from a lot of the other team owners saying, ‘hey, sorry about this. I don’t support this at all.’

“It’s just the attack on our sovereignty. You know, the 51st state (B.S.), that’s just Trump yapping off about something just to try to stir up the chaos. But I think he does have a plan to try to economically squeeze and starve Canada into submission. I don’t think he ever thought there would be a 51st state possibility, but he also thought he could bring us to our knees and pretty much make us slave suppliers to his industry.”

Vallee has already decided how to better spend his time and money. “Well, for instance, this was February, we went to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, and checked into the Temple Gardens, which is a hot thermal spa. And we had it coordinated so we could walk up the street and see a Moose Jaw Warriors hockey game. We’d never been to a Western Hockey League or Ontario Hockey League game before. So, that was an experience.”

He owns season tickets for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, and said he’ll attend some Jays games in Toronto. He’ll do his thing the way he wants to, and doesn’t really care what everybody else in Canada is going to do.

“I have no trouble making my own views said, why I won’t go. But as far as anybody else’s freedoms, that’s entirely up to them.”

dbarnes@postmedia.com

OTTAWA — With over a million views, the most popular Liberal ad on Facebook and Instagram doesn’t quite fit the conventional profile of viral internet content.

The video is only six seconds long and it features Liberal Leader Mark Carney in a blue sweater, telling the viewer that “we will build a Canada that you can afford.”

It’s not exciting but, for the Liberals, who are outspending Conservatives on the platform, that’s the point .

“They are putting out the most short-form, ‘I’m an inoffensive central banker man,’ ad you could possibly run,” said Cole Hogan, who has worked on digital campaigns for multiple provincial conservative parties and leadership races.

“The boomer vote is definitely on Facebook. gen-X- to-boomer is kind of the sweet spot for Facebook. There’s still a millennial contingent there too, which is why the Conservatives have spent so consistently there. But I can see Carney’s Liberals continuing to spend a lot on Facebook,” said Hogan.

The battle lines of the election campaign, which culminates with voting on April 28, can be easily seen in how the parties are spending advertising money on Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram. Hogan has been tracking the spending data and found that both the Liberals and the Conservatives have been pouring money into digital advertising since the writ dropped.

Between March 30 and April 5 alone, the Liberals spent $697,000 on Meta ads, while the Conservatives spent $565,000. The NDP spent only $8,000 during that time period, according to Hogan’s data pulled from the platform .

With polls showing that older voters have been leaning towards the Liberals since Carney became leader, the digital ad spending has also followed this pattern.

The ads on Facebook and Instagram can also be targeted geographically, which gives some clues about where the parties are looking to shore up votes. For example, the ad featuring Carney in his blue sweater was seen by people all over the country, but predominantly in Ontario and British Columbia. Forty-four per cent of people who saw the ad were in Ontario and 20 per cent were in B.C. and Meta estimates that the party has paid somewhere between $125,000 and $150,000 to boost that single ad.

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Hogan said the strategic dilemma facing the Conservatives is well illustrated by the tone and content of the party’s digital advertising. With Carney only officially becoming Liberal leader a month ago, the Conservatives need to run ads that negatively define him in the mind of voters, while also reassuring those same voters that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is a safe choice to lead the country while it faces trade turmoil with the United States.

“You have to be able to say, all right, we are equipped to address Donald Trump through our policies but also, Carney sucks. And it’s hard to do both those things at once,” said Hogan.

The most popular Conservative ad is a 15-second clip where Poilievre rejects the idea that Canada will ever become the 51st state of the U.S.

“Let me be clear, we will never be the 51st state. We will bear any burden and pay any price to protect the sovereignty of our country,” Poilievre says, in a clip from the party’s “Canada First” rally in February .

Another popular clip is almost entirely directed at Quebec, where Poilievre admits that his style can be blunt and grating, but that it makes him a good choice to stand up to Trump .

Polling suggests that older Canadians are far more likely to be concerned about Trump than younger Canadians and, since Facebook skews older, Hogan said it’s not surprising to see the parties’ addressing the U.S. trade war

“A lot of the emotional side of the reaction to the Trump stuff for the boomers is the annexation threats and the tariffs… It just kind of offends their sensibilities,” said Hogan.

National Post
stthomson@postmedia.com

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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.

I’m reading my six-year-old son Lewis Carroll’s classic Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, with all its delightful nonsense talk about shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings.

But, in the words of the Red Queen, life through the looking glass is “as sensible as a dictionary” when ranked against what is happening in the real world.

President Donald Trump’s trade war has sparked a stock market sell-off and a rise in Treasury yields. As The Economist  pointed out : “This should not be happening” (yields normally fall when share prices rise, as investors flee to the safety of American government debt). We are in the bizarre position of seeing Greek 30-year bonds rated as a safer investment than their U.S. equivalents.

There is also an air of the surreal around the Canadian general election, with the Lazarus-like resurrection of the Liberals.

The Conservatives just can’t catch a break, to the point where a  new Ipsos poll  claims the Liberals even have an advantage when it comes to support for their energy policies. Ipsos asked which party and leader would do the best job managing Canada’s energy and resource industries, in terms of creating jobs and growing the economy.

If there is any area of policy that should be an Achilles heel for Liberal Leader Mark Carney it is this. Yet he outpolled Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre on the question of who would be better “to balance both economic opportunities and environmental concerns” in developing energy resources.

Carney was in Calgary in his home province on Wednesday trying to salve wounds that have festered over a decade during which Albertans viewed Liberal policies as a sustained assault on their interests. In one of his rare visits to the province in fall 2018, Justin Trudeau’s hotel was besieged by angry Calgarians and he was booed at an event for his role in killing pipelines and instituting a tanker ban off the West Coast.

Carney tried to make nice, thanking Alberta’s energy workers “on behalf of a grateful nation. You are an integral part of Team Canada and you make Canada strong.”

But many Westerners will remain skeptical, remembering another Trudeau visit to the province — this one in late 2012 — when he said he was there “to confront the ghosts associated with my father,” namely the hated National Energy Program. The younger Trudeau said the resource industry helped define Canada’s success and that “no country in the world would find 170 billion barrels of oil in the ground and leave it there.”

But the reason the Liberals only have two MPs in the province is because many Albertans believe that’s exactly what Trudeau tried to do during his time in office.

Carney has made conciliatory noises but has been less than precise about his plans to develop Canada’s resources since becoming prime minister, and he continued that tendency on Wednesday.

We remain none the wiser on the consultations around an emissions cap that he referred to , or on the new “integrated” industrial carbon credit market that he has talked about obliquely.

What he did say was that his government, if elected, would issue regulatory decisions after two years, instead of five, through a “one project, one review” process.

He said Canada can’t lose sight of its response to climate change or long-term competitiveness in the energy sector. And that it means working closely with the industry to reduce emissions through carbon capture and storage projects.

But he said regulatory substitution is possible, where provinces, territories or Indigenous groups lead project assessments.

Carney said scrapping the Impact Assessment Act — previously Bill C-69 — doesn’t make sense. “Rather than stopping projects in their tracks and throwing out the whole act, (then) starting from scratch and spending the next decade in court,” he said Ottawa would sign co-operation agreements with the provinces and others to rely on their assessments.

The Liberal leader was asked directly whether he is committed to doing everything in his power to build new oil and gas pipelines and new LNG projects.

He did not answer in the affirmative, but said he has put in place a tangible process that identifies projects deemed to be in the national interest; that builds energy corridors; that puts in place a “one project, one review” approval system; and that allows for provinces to sign on to regulatory-substitution agreements, as British Columbia has already done.

“We are going to move forward as a country when we come together: federal, provincial, industry, labour and First Nations. I think we have the ability as a Liberal government to bring together all Canadians and get things done,” he said.

Stirring words but anyone with experience in the energy industry knows not to mistake motion for action.

The tone is positive, but the Liberal government has been promising permitting reform and the implementation of one project, one assessment for at least a year.

As Carney noted, British Columbia has already signed up for substitution agreements because the Impact Assessment Act already allows for this prospect. Even then, the federal government took months to make their own decision  to approve the Tilbury Marine Jetty LNG project on the Fraser River in Delta, B.C.

There is no guarantee that Alberta would even sign such an agreement, given the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that provinces do not need federal recognition to assert their jurisdiction over natural resources.

What Carney does have right is the need for a sense of urgency.

In the midst of what he called “the biggest crisis in our lifetime,” Canada’s regulators appear to be living in a world of cabbages and kings.

Heather Exner-Pirot, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, pointed to the NexGen Energy Rook uranium mine in northwestern Saskatchewan, which has provincial environmental approval, Indigenous consent, capital, and demand in place. It is, in the parlance, “shovel-ready,” but requires the green light from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. CNSC staff have completed their review of the environmental impact statement and have now scheduled public hearings for … November 19 .

Carney talks of doing things at speeds we didn’t think possible. This is the epitome of the political will meeting the administrative won’t.

National Post

• John Ivison: Conservatives need a Project Doubt to outdo Carney’s Project Fear
• John Ivison: Carney isn’t making his visit to Alberta a welcome one

jivison@criffel.ca

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Liberal Leader Mark Carney contends he didn’t intend to endorse the claim by a supporter at a rally in Calgary  on Tuesday night who yelled out that there was genocide happening the Middle East.

It was Carney’s first appearance in the Alberta city since the election was called. He began his rally at the Red and White Club at McMahon Stadium by joking at the raucous applause, “I thought I was in Calgary,” implying that Liberals are not generally so well received in Alberta.

Carney was talking about the CFL’s Calgary Stampeders when, in a moment of silence, a man could be heard shouting: “Mr. Carney! There’s a genocide happening in Palestine!”

Carney quickly responded: “Thank you. Thank you, Diana. I’m aware. Which is why we have an arms embargo.”

Last night in Calgary.

Heckler: “There’s genocide happening in Palestine right now!”
Carney: “I’m aware! That’s why we have an arms embargo!”

Meet the new Liberals. Same as the old ones. While #Hamas still holds hostages (including Canadian). Shameful. pic.twitter.com/RxfTPb79QQ

— Neil G. Oberman (@NeilOberman) April 9, 2025

The reference to Diana was for his wife, Diana Fox Carney, who had spoken briefly to the crowd before inviting her husband to the podium.

Video of the event shows that the man continued to shout indistinctly, but the word “Palestine” could be heard. He was mostly drowned out by the crowd chanting “Carney! Carney!” When that died down, Carney thanked his fellow candidates and the other guests at the event without further referencing the remark.

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On Wednesday, Carney was asked by a reporter about the man’s remark and his response to it, particularly the words “I’m aware.” The reporter asked: “Are you conceding it’s a genocide in Gaza?”

Carney replied: “I didn’t hear that word.” He added: “You hear snippets of what people say. I heard Gaza … and my point was I’m aware of the situation in Gaza.”

He continued by explaining that Canada has restrictions on permits to export arms to Israel, with the exception of the country’s Iron Dome missile defence system.

“I was stating a fact in terms of the arms restrictions,” he said.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs posted a statement to X on Wednesday that accused Carney of fueling antisemitism.

“Canadian Jews are facing violent attacks and threats targeting our synagogues, schools and community centres. This is an affront to our way of life in Canada. It is outrageous to see politicians fuel antisemitism through false narratives of demonization,” CIJA said.

CIJA’s tweet also quoted the judge who was president of the International Court of Justice in 2024 when it considered a genocide claim against Israel for its war against Hamas, in which she clarified that the court had not decided that there was a genocide in Gaza.

Three people walked away with only minor injuries after a train struck a tractor-trailer in Minnesota on Friday, authorities said.

The Brown County Sheriff’s Office said the collision occurred shortly after 2 p.m. Friday in Sleepy Eye, and deputies responded to the scene along with Sleepy Eye Ambulance, the Sleepy Eye Fire Department and the Minnesota State Patrol.

A video shared by the sheriff’s office shows a 1996 International Harvester semi tractor-trailer combination traveling westbound on US Highway 14, parallel to a train track, before attempting to make a right turn into a business. A Canadian Pacific Kansas City Railroad train can be seen approaching just as the semi truck turns to cross over the tracks.

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The train can be seen crashing into the truck’s grain trailer, blowing it apart into pieces.

The driver of the truck, identified as 24-year-old Robert Thomas Jewett, and the occupants of the train, identified as 56-year-old Jeffrey Alan Schafer and 57-year-old Thomas Herman Behsman, were all treated at the scene for minor injuries, the sheriff’s office said.

The sheriff’s office is reminding drivers to slow down, stop, listen and look both ways at railroad crossings, and to “have patience.”

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 poll from Abacus Data found that there appears to be a stark difference in the “emotional drivers” influencing Canadians’ voting intention in the upcoming federal election. The firm also said those factors are spilling over into who voters see as best suited to become the next prime minister.

“The Conservatives resonate with those in a scarcity mindset — voters seeking immediate relief and system disruption — while the Liberals connect with those in a precarity mindset, who are more focused on navigating uncertainty and restoring long-term stability,” Abacus’s Eddie Sheppard and CEO David Coletto wrote.

In a national survey of 2,000 adults between March 20 and 25, respondents were asked about the issue weighing heaviest on their April 28 election day decision.

While the impact of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war with Canada has evolved as a major influence in respondents’ ballot choice (19 per cent), cost-of-living and affordability remain the primary concern (31 per cent).

On the latter, more people (40 per cent) feel Pierre Poilevre and the Conservatives are better positioned than Mark Carney and the Liberals (33 per cent). But when it comes to dealing with team Trump, it’s the Grits and their newly minted and politically untested leader who garners the most confidence, 51 per cent to Poilievre’s 28.

The NDP’s percentages and those of other parties didn’t figure prominently in interpreting the data set.

Abacus says the two mindsets are further entrenched along similar lines on the other top issues.

Respondents favour the Tories to be better positioned to address jobs and the economy, crime and safety, or taxes and government spending — an issue on which they outpaced the Liberals 63 per cent to 18 per cent in terms of election day sway.

Meanwhile, the Liberals seem to be the choice for those who feel health care, housing, climate change, or Canada-U.S. relations are paramount.

Disruptive versus stabilizing leadership

On leadership, the pollster found Canadians split on primary prime ministerial responsibilities once elected and somewhat equally divided on what type of leader Canada needs at this moment.

Just over a third of respondents (34 per cent) cited a more independent, Canada-first approach to economic and trade policy as the next prime minister’s top priority, with slightly more committed Liberal voters giving it priority than CPC supporters, 40 per cent to 36.

Challenging elites and making life more affordable for everyday Canadians, a staple promise in Poilievre’s campaign speeches, drew support from 29 per cent who want it prioritized by the head of government. Unsurprisingly, more of those ready to vote CPC (35 per cent) think it should be the party’s first order of business than do Liberal voters (32 per cent).

Priorities of lesser importance — rebuilding trust in government and ensuring long-term domestic stability, and strengthening Canada’s global influence and managing geopolitical uncertainty — also found respondents separated on job one. Committed Conservative voters gave Poilievre precedence (44 per cent to the Liberals’ 32), while those intending to vote Liberal think Carney (51 per cent to the CPC’s 35) should make it his primary mandate.

“This signals that in the upcoming election, how a leader leads — disruptive versus stabilizing — may matter just as much as what they promise to do,” Abacus noted.

Asked about the approach Canada’s next prime minister should take, 42 per cent of respondents desire a stable and steady strategy with gradual change, 18 per cent want an assertive and bold agenda to change the system, and 34 per cent want a combination of both styles.

For each party, among the committed voters seeking stability, Carney claimed 47 per cent of the support to Poilievre’s 31. Conversely, of those desiring disruption, 48 per cent think the veteran member of parliament is the man for the job, compared to only 27 per cent of Liberal supporters.

Interestingly, about the same percentage of both dedicated Conservative and Liberal voters — 38 and 37 per cent respectively — want a bit of both styles.

Abacus wrote that its results reflect obvious political preferences and opposing worldviews. The challenge for a would-be prime minister, it said, is bridging the gap.

“For Poilievre, the challenge is to show that bold reform can come without further destabilizing the country — especially to voters feeling uncertain,” Abacus wrote.

“For Carney, the opportunity lies in deepening trust among precarious voters while demonstrating that long-term planning doesn’t mean ignoring immediate struggles like affordability.”

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.

New York is warning residents about travelling to Canada amid a measles outbreak.

Last week, the New York State Department of Health issued a travel advisory for those who may be crossing the border, especially anyone travelling to Ontario, due to the contagious disease.

“Measles is only a car ride away!” says the advisory published on April 2. “Around 90 per cent of people who are exposed to a person with measles will become infected if they are not vaccinated. Because measles is so contagious, it easily crosses borders.”

Amid measles outbreak in Ontario, RFK Jr.’s advice has Canadian experts alarmed

The number of measles cases in the U.S. this year has already surpassed the total number of cases there in 2024. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which provides weekly updates, says there have been 607 confirmed measles cases in the United States as of April 4. In 2024, there were 285.

The advisory for New Yorkers said that the measles have been reported in 20 jurisdictions in the U.S. The majority of the cases were from New Mexico and Texas, and most of those were detected in children who had not been vaccinated. The advisory said that in Canada, the majority of cases are in Ontario.

There have been 560 confirmed measles cases in Ontario in 2025, as of April 2, according to a measles update  published by Public Health Ontario. (There are an additional 95 cases that are considered “probable.”)

The update explained that the most recent outbreak was the result of a “travel-related case in New Brunswick” in October 2024. The outbreak in the eastern province was declared over in January, but the disease had spread to Ontario and Manitoba. Most of the cases detected in those two provinces were linked to the initial outbreak.

There have also been cases reported in Quebec , Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan, according to the federal government’s weekly monitoring report . (The total number of confirmed cases across Canada has not been updated. It was listed as 615 cases as of March 22.)

“The sharp increase in the number of outbreak cases and the geographic spread in recent weeks is due to continued exposures and transmission among individuals who have not been immunized,” according to the health agency.

There is currently a “global measles notice”  for all Canadians, issued by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). It urges Canadian travellers to “practise health precautions” and to get vaccinated to prevent getting a measles infection.

“To be immune, you must be fully vaccinated, or have had a lab-confirmed measles infection before,” the notice says. “In addition to the risks to your own health and that of your family, if you become infected with measles while travelling you may spread it to those who are not vaccinated upon your return to Canada.”

Other countries around the world with an increased number of measles cases include Yemen, Pakistan, India, Thailand, Ethiopia, Romania, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, and Vietnam, the New York health department said.

The measles spreads through respiratory particles in the air when an “infected person breathes, talks, coughs or sneezes in a space shared with others who are not protected,” PHAC says.

The measles can remain in the air for up to two hours. It can spread from person-to-person or by touching contaminated surfaces. Initial symptoms include fever, cough, runny nose and red, watery eyes. A rash develops after three days to a week, first on the face and then spreads to the body. It usually takes two to three weeks to recover, but there can be severe complications, including death.

• What are some reasons Canadians may be denied entry at the U.S. border?
• As measles cases surge in Ontario, public health officials urge Canadians to 'get vaccinated'

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Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre unveiled what may be his toughest anti-crime proposal yet on Wednesday, promising to lock up three-time offenders for at least 10 years if he becomes prime minister.

Poilievre said in a Thursday morning press conference in northern Ontario that his ‘Three Strikes, You’re Out’ law will spur the “biggest crackdown on crime in Canadian history.”

“We will lock up rampant offenders and make sure they never hurt anyone again,” said Poilievre.

Under the proposed three-strikes law, anyone convicted of three serious offences would be sentenced to a minimum of 10 years’ incarceration, with no chance at bail, probation, parole or house arrest.

• Liberals believe they have 'real shot' at picking up seats on Vancouver Island
• A Liberal and a Conservative knocked on the same door and some polite trash talk ensued

They will also be designated as dangerous offenders , meaning they cannot be released until they’ve shown they’re no longer a threat to society.

Liberal party Leader Mark Carney, speaking in Calgary on Wednesday, said that while he believes repeat offenders should face fitting consequences, he didn’t think it was apt to use a crude baseball analogy to guide sentencing.

“I don’t jump to a baseball rule of three strikes and you’re out for a period of time,” said Carney.

Carney added he’ll have more to say about the Liberals’ platform on crime in the coming days.

Poilievre said a three-strikes law would have prevented the 2022 Saskatchewan mass stabbings , noting that perpetrator Myles Sanderson was on statutory release at the time, despite 59 prior convictions .

“This is insane … and the consequence is that 11 innocent people lost their lives.” said Poilievre.

A background document provided by the Conservative party said the law would cover primary designated offences listed under section 752 of the Criminal Code .

Poilievre has already said that, if he becomes prime minister, he’ll bring in life sentences for aggravated human, gun and fentanyl trafficking.

He’s also said he’ll repeal two Liberal bills, C-5 and C-75, which relate to bail rules.

So-called three-strikes laws which set forth mandatory sentences for repeat offenders, are on the books in 28 states across the U.S., including the country’s most populous state, California.

These laws have been a magnet for controversy, with critics pointing to their sizable hit on state budgets, unclear effects on recidivism and link to growing prison populations.

The Los Angeles Times reported in 2022 that California’s three-strikes law, which prescribes 25-year terms, costs the state’s taxpayers at least $3.3 billion each year.

The law also preceded a near 40 per cent increase in incarceration rates, before it was scaled back in the 2010s.

Asked if he expected constitutional roadblocks, Poilievre said Wednesday he wasn’t worried about the law being struck down by the courts.

Stéphane Sérafin, a constitutional law professor at the University of Ottawa, told National Post Poilievre could try a few different tactics to avoid having such laws struck down.

“One thing he could do is give courts discretion to apply an alternative sentence if the 10 years isn’t appropriate,” said Sérafin.

“The devil is in the details as far as the question of court challenges goes.”

National Post
rmohamed@postmedia.com

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OTTAWA — If Preston Manning believes a Liberal government would lead to a rise of separatism in Western Canada, Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet thinks both the Liberals and the Conservatives will revive separatist fervour in Quebec.

He held a press conference outside the Supreme Court of Canada Tuesday, where about two dozen separatists gathered to welcome him and the Bloc campaign. Blanchet was asked what kind of impact former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s involvement could have on this election .

“He should come in Quebec, he would help us!” said Blanchet, with a smile.

As his party struggles to narrow the gap with the Liberals in Quebec, Blanchet wouldn’t say no to some help from the prime minister, even though he was the Canadian leader who recognized Quebec as a nation in federal legislation.

Yet, Harper was so unpopular in Quebec that, before becoming Liberal Leader, Justin Trudeau once said that if he believed Canada was “really Stephen Harper’s Canada,” that he “would think about wanting to make Quebec a country.”

However, with support for independence in the basement at 29 per cent , down from 37 per cent in November, the Bloc believes that the “Trump effect” and the spectacular rise of Canadian patriotism, even in Quebec, will fade .

“I think that any government that is Canadian, when it is revealed and unmasked, fuels the idea of Quebec independence,” Blanchet said.

The separatist leader is “convinced” that once Canada has renegotiated its trade agreement with the United States, Quebecers will then be able to have a conversation among themselves about separatism “in a very free and open manner.”

“The decision on Quebec’s sovereignty will not belong to any federal leader, whoever they may be. Then, we will be able to respond to anyone, whoever they may be,” added Blanchet.

The Parti Québécois, the provincial party which is leading the polls in Quebec, is promising a referendum on independence during its first term. Quebec voters will elect a new provincial government in 2026.

Recently, péquiste leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon stated he would not schedule a referendum if Canada were amid in a trade war with the United States.

Yet, Quebec independence doesn’t seem to be gaining much traction in this federal election, as Quebecers are particularly concerned about Canada-U.S. relations, which gives the Liberals overwhelming support in the province.

The Liberals’ rise in the polls has prompted former Reform Party leader and conservative movement icon Preston Manning to point out that another Liberal victory could spark a sense of alienation in Western Canada.

“Voters, particularly in central and Atlantic Canada, need to recognize that a vote for the Carney Liberals is a vote for Western secession — a vote for the breakup of Canada as we know it,” he wrote in an op-ed for The Globe and Mail.

When asked whether he agreed with Manning’s statement, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre replied said no .

“We need to unite the country,” he said. “We need to bring all Canadians together in a spirit of common ground.”

National Post
atrepanier@postmedia.com

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The illness that killed actor Gene Hackman’s wife, pianist Betsy Arakawa, in February in New Mexico has now left three more dead in California.

The bodies of Arakawa and Hackman were discovered by authorities at their home, local news outlet Sante Fe New Mexican reported . After autopsies were performed, it was revealed that Hackman, 95, died from complications related to heart disease. However, 65-year-old Arakawa died from hantavirus pulmonary disorder, according to Chief Medical Examiner Heather Jarrell.

Meanwhile, health officials from Mono County in California confirmed the death of a third person linked to hantavirus last week.

Here’s what to know.

What is hantavirus?

Hantavirus is part of a group of viruses that can cause severe illness and death in humans, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) .

People can become infected with a hantavirus by inhaling particles from an infected rodent’s urine, droppings or saliva. This can occur when someone is sweeping or vacuuming in an area with rodent waste. People can become infected if they touch something that has come into contact with the urine, droppings or saliva of an infected rodent, or if they eat food that has been contaminated.

Although it is rare, people can become infected if they are bitten by a rodent with the virus.

There is also a type of hantavirus, called the Andes hantavirus, that spreads through person-to-person contact. But all of the other types of hantaviruses do not spread that way, per the agency.

According to the agency, the most common rodents that spread different kinds of hantaviruses are the deer mouse, the cotton rat, the rice rat, the white-footed mouse and the red-backed vole.

In Canada, the agency said that the deer mouse, white-footed mouse and red-backed vole are widespread in parts of the country.

What are the symptoms of hantavirus?

Hantaviruses can cause two syndromes, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says online .

In North and South America, hantaviruses can cause hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS), which is most commonly spread by the deer mouse. Hantaviruses that are found mainly in Europe and Asia can cause haemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS), per the CDC. Another type of hantavirus, the Seoul virus, causes HFRS and can be found around the world.

For those infected with HPS, symptoms occur one to six weeks after exposure, according to PHAC. Symptoms can include fatigue, dizziness, fever and chills, muscle aches and headaches, nausea and vomiting, stomach pain, coughing, as well as shortness of breath and severe difficulty breathing.

For those infected with HFRS, symptoms can occur one to two weeks after exposure. They can include intense headaches, back and stomach pain, fever, chills, nausea, blurred vision, as well as flushed face, inflamed or red eyes, rash, low blood pressure. “Serious cases may result in internal bleeding,” says PHAC.

There is no specific treatment for hantavirus. Those infected receive care for their symptoms.

According to the Canadian health agency, around 40 per cent of those with HPS will die. “Depending on the virus, about 1 per cent to 12 per cent of those diagnosed with haemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome will not recover,” says PHAC.

How common is hantavirus in Canada and around the world?

HFRS cases due to a hantavirus infection have not been detected in Canada or the United States, but there are around 150,000 and 200,000 cases worldwide each year, according to the Canadian federal government .

Globally, there are about 200 cases of HPS each year, which occur mainly in North and South America, per the National Collaborating Centre for Infectious Diseases . As of Jan. 1, 2020, there have been 143 cases of HPS confirmed in Canada through laboratory testing, the centre said. Each year, there’s an average of four to five new HPS cases in the country.

Per the CDC , there have been 864 cases of hantavirus detected in the U.S. as of the end of 2022. The U.S. has been monitoring hantavirus since 1993.

Although hantavirus is considered rare, the recent deaths in California — three in a short period of time — is worrying to health officials.

In an April 3 news release , the Mono County public health officer Dr. Tom Boo said he believed that numbers of deer mice in the Mammoth Lakes area were high this year. He said he was “concerned” and none of the deceased people had engaged in activities, like cleaning out poorly ventilated areas with rodent waste, that are typically associated with hantavirus exposure.

The cases in California are being investigated by local and state public health officials.

• Kill shots and mass arrests: Diving into the wild world of COVID conspiracy
• David Clement: Canada should follow Trump's lead and withdraw from the WHO

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First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter that throughout the 2025 election will be a daily digest of campaign goings-on, all curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.

TOP STORY

As Liberals denounce the massive rallies following the Conservative campaign as being too Trump-like, Tory Leader Pierre Poilievre is yet to break attendance records set by the Liberals themselves more than 50 years ago.

On Monday night, an estimated 15,000 people turned up in the Edmonton area for a Canada First rally featuring Poilievre and former prime minister Stephen Harper.

The gathering crashed local cell phone networks, and was both the largest of the 2025 campaign and the largest in the 22-year history of the modern Conservative Party.

The Liberals have accused Poilievre’s rallies of being Trumpian in nature. On April 5, the official Liberal Party X account uploaded video of Poilievre talking about crowd sizes, and contrasting it with similar statements by U.S. President Donald Trump. “Poilievre is obsessed with crowd sizes. Who does that remind you of?” the post says.

But long before Poilievre was drawing large crowds, a Liberal leader was doing the same.

If Poilievre wants to break the all-time national attendance record for an indoor partisan political rally, he still has a few thousand attendees to go until he can breach a benchmark set by then prime minister Pierre Trudeau in 1979.

It was an election that Trudeau would ultimately lose to then Progressive Conservative leader Joe Clark. But on May 22, Trudeau capped off the campaign with an overflow rally of 18,000 at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens, then one of the largest indoor venues in the country.

• Liberal candidate compares Poilievre rallies to ‘protests’ akin to Freedom Convoy
• With Trudeau gone, it's like 'night and day' in a former Toronto Liberal fortress that turned Tory blue

Crowd sizes are notoriously difficult to estimate — particularly in an era before drones or digital photography — but the numbers for the 1979 rally are reliable given that Maple Leaf Gardens had a known seating capacity (16,000 for hockey, 18,000 for concerts).

And that wasn’t all that unusual for Trudeau, whose 15 years as prime minister featured several unusually large partisan gatherings.

In Trudeau’s first election, in 1968, a crowd of between 25,000 and 40,000 gathered to see him in Montreal’s Place Ville Marie in an event that made headlines as “another huge Trudeau crowd.”

The 1968 campaign would also see convened a crowd estimated at 45,000 in Toronto’s Civic Square, which was reported as “the largest political rally ever in this country.”

Canadian political culture has not traditionally featured all that many mass rallies, in part because it’s often too cold to host them outside and there are limited options for indoor events. To this day, Canada is home to only a handful of indoor venues with seating capacities of more than 20,000.

In 1957, then Progressive Conservative leader John Diefenbaker led what has been described by historians as a “perfect” campaign. The election — which ended in a record-breaking landslide for the Progressive Conservatives — was defined by overwhelming crushes of people intercepting Diefenbaker in hotel lobbies or at train stations.

But given the limited venue options in 1950s Canada, the Diefenbaker campaign was never able to host a single gathering of more than a few thousand.

The “crescendo” of the 1957 campaign, according to reporters at the time, was when 6,000 people crammed into Vancouver’s Georgia Auditorium. “I didn’t think Canadians could get so het up about politics,” said one attendee quoted in the Vancouver Sun.

Poilievre’s rallies, notably, have often been convened in industrial venues configured to hold standing crowds. That was the case on Monday, where the rally was held at an empty warehouse near the Edmonton International Airport.

The day prior, Poilievre had appeared at a warehouse in Penticton, B.C., before a crowd estimated at 3,000 by the Penticton Herald — a number equivalent to roughly one tenth of the city’s population.

When it comes to generalized political rallies, meanwhile, the record easily belongs to the 1995 “unity rally” convened in Montreal to convince Quebecers to vote “No” in that year’s secession referendum. The oft-repeated estimate is that 100,000 people attended, including thousands who bused in from neighbouring provinces.

And the Canadian record for the largest one-day ticketed gathering of any kind still belongs to 2003, when the SARSstock rock concert attracted as many as 500,000 attendees to Toronto’s Downsview Park.

 

LAST RIDE OF THE GIGANTO BALLOTS

In Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s home riding of Carleton, this election will once again feature absurdly long ballots, similar to the ones used in a June by-election in Toronto-St. Paul’s. It’s the work of the Longest Ballot Committee, an activist group that discovered there’s no real material barrier to running dozens of independent candidates in a single riding. This whole thing might also be the work of communists. The Longest Ballot Committee has multiple featured pages  on the Communist Party of Canada’s official website.

CONSERVATIVE ENDORSES CONSERVATIVE

Former prime minister Stephen Harper officially endorsed the Conservatives on Monday night. While it’s not all that unusual for a Conservative to endorse Conservatives, Harper has sat out the last two federal elections.

Harper’s full endorsement speech  is here , but the line everyone seems to be mentioning is when Harper said that both Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and Liberal Leader Mark Carney used to work for him (Poilievre was a Conservative backbencher, Carney was appointed governor of the Bank of Canada by Harper). Said the ex prime minister, “in that regard, my choice, without hesitation, without equivocation, without a shadow of a doubt is Pierre Poilievre.”

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Wayne Gretzky has broken his silence to state publicly that he is “proud…to be Canadian.”

During a recent appearance on Corus Entertainment’s Ben Mulroney Show , Gretzky emphasized his pride in his Canadian roots and expressed that he will not be swayed by criticism or controversy surrounding his political associations.

Despite facing backlash for his ties to U.S. President Donald Trump and his perceived reluctance to speak up for Canadian issues, Gretzky maintained he is proud of his Canadian heritage.

He also insisted during the interview that he has “no political power with the prime minister or the president.” And told Mulroney that hockey players aren’t political by nature.

“We always, believe it or not, really never talk politics in the locker room…we watch basketball, we watch baseball, we talk about the Blue Jays, we talk about the New York Yankees. (For) hockey players, that’s never on the docket. It’s just something that we stay in our lane. The prime minister and the president don’t tell us how to play hockey. We don’t tell them how to do politics, right?”

Gretzky’s relationship with Canada has evolved significantly over the decades, marked by moments of national adoration, controversy, and complex perceptions. In the early stages of his career, Gretzky was celebrated as a symbol of Canadian pride. His record-breaking performances with the Edmonton Oilers, including leading the team to four Stanley Cup victories, cemented his status as a national hero.

However, his all-time scoring record was recently broken by 39-year-old Russian and Washington Capitals captain, Alex Ovechkin. He scored his 895th goal last Friday, one better than Gretzky’s 894.

Not long ago, Canadians might have mourned the demise of Gretzky’s record. Now it seems most are ambivalent .

Even if Canadians are uneasy about Ovechkin’s vocal support for Russian President Vladimir Putin, it might be argued that the investment some Canadians had in Gretzky ended when he went to Mar-a-Lago to laud Donald Trump after his second presidential victory — if not when became he went south of the 49th parallel to play with the Los Angeles Kings.

• Gretzky to Ovechkin: 'You get to 900 and I might buy you a car'
• Wayne Gretzky and King Charles III — the new axis of treachery

Gretzky’s trade from the Edmonton Oilers to the Kings in August 1988 was a shock for many Canadians who viewed “The Great One” as ours, not to be shared with America. Some viewed his departure as a betrayal, despite his openly emotional insistence at the time that the trade was not his decision.

Later on, Gretzky did serve in leadership roles for Team Canada, notably during the 2002 Winter Olympics. His passionate defence of Canadian hockey earned him some admiration, but others were critical of his reluctance to take on more prominent roles within Hockey Canada.

Over time, Gretzky’s connections to the United States seemed to deepen through business ventures and family life (his wife Janet is American, his five kids and seven grandchildren are also American citizens).

His close relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump has sparked criticism among some Canadians, especially during the ongoing political tension between the two countries. Gretzky and his wife attended Trump’s inauguration and he was photographed at Trump’s election victory party, wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat .

Trump has publicly referred to Gretzky as a friend and even joked about him running for political office.

Gretzky’s reluctance to publicly criticize Trump’s controversial rhetoric about Canada, including suggestions that Canada could become the “51st state” or threatening tariffs impacting Canadian industries has fuelled criticism.

Others argue Gretzky should not be judged for his personal friendships or political associations.

Meanwhile, his absence from his hometown of Brantford, Ontario, has disappointed locals who once idolized him. Social media reactions have accused Gretzky of “turning his back on Canada,” and his statue outside Edmonton’s Rogers Place was vandalized in protest.

Gretzky was awarded Canada’s highest civilian honour, Companion of the Order of Canada, in 2009. But he has yet to pick up the award.

Wayne Gretzky is a fantastic guy! They call him, “The Great One,” and he is. He could run for any political office in Canada, and win. Wayne is my friend, and he wants to make me happy, and is therefore somewhat “low key” about Canada remaining a separate Country, rather than…

— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) February 26, 2025

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.

VICTORIA, B.C. — In the mostly white-haired crowd at The Victoria Edelweiss Club, waiting to hear from Liberal Leader Mark Carney on Sunday evening, Rhonda Ljunggren stood out.

“I should be in bed at this point because I’m an old person. Here I am with flags in my hair,” she chuckled, pointing to the Canadian flag paraphernalia she was sporting for the occasion — two small flags shoved in a ponytail and a wind spinner in her hand.

Ljunggren said she was planning to vote for the incumbent NDP candidate, Laurel Collins. But as soon as U.S. President Donald Trump started threatening Canada with tariffs and annexation, she said she “cried her eyes out.”

“I just went nuts, literally,” she said. “I thought: I don’t want to spend my retirement worrying that my country is going to be invaded or something like that.”

So, she got a red sign on her lawn. She will be voting Liberal on April 28.

• Inside a huge Poilievre rally, the heat is intensifying — not just from the mass of people
• Inside Mark Carney's weirdly dreary campaign, where the dullness is the point

Jeremy Sturgess, another resident of Victoria, said he voted for the NDP’s Laurel Collins in 2021 but will be voting strategically for the Liberals for similar reasons as Ljunggren.

“I feel sorry for her,” he said, speaking about Collins. “It’s just not the right time.”

Sturgess said the upcoming election is “too important” for the country.

Their stories are not unique. Liberal candidates and organizers who spoke to the National Post during Carney’s visit in British Columbia said they are seeing shifting support on Vancouver Island — to the point they think they could elect a Liberal MP again.

The last time that happened on the island was during the 2008 election.

“It has changed a lot,” said Sulo Saravanabawan, the Liberal party’s regional chair for Vancouver Island. “People are coming into the campaign offices asking, ‘Can we help? Can we volunteer? Can we door-knock?’ We have never seen this, from 2015 until now.”

“You never know, right? Things could change. But it looks really good,” she said.

At the moment, New Democrats hold five of the six ridings on the island. Then, there’s Saanich —Gulf Islands, held by Green party co-leader Elizabeth May.

With the collapse of the NDP, 338Canada, a polling aggregator website, is forecasting a fierce battle between the Liberals and the Conservatives for those seats.

The riding of Victoria is leaning Liberal, according to the website’s projections, which explains why Carney was at the German social club with local candidate Will Greaves.

Greaves, an associate professor at the University of Victoria, claimed his chances of being elected are “very strong” and said all signs point to a growing “momentum” for the party.

“We’ve had an unprecedented number of volunteers, we’ve got a huge amount of donations… we can’t keep signs on the shelf because everybody wants their lawn signs, so we really are feeling incredibly good about our campaign right now,” he said.

Other ridings could see close races. May’s riding is shaping to be a toss-up between the Liberals, the Conservatives and the Greens; while Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke looks to be a three-way race between Liberals, the Conservatives and the NDP, per 338Canada.

The Conservative message has been resonating on the island, especially in the northern ridings where their provincial cousins were able to make some gains last October.

As things stand, the federal ridings of North Island—Powell River, Courtenay—Alberni and Nanaimo— Ladysmith, are poised to become Conservative according to 338Canada.

Outside a cider house in May’s riding of Saanich—Gulf Islands, Carney was attempting to appeal to voters on two fronts: more help for seniors and protecting Canada’s nature.

But the overarching theme of those promises, he admitted, all comes down to Trump.

“The reality is that the key issue in this election is who can stand up to the threats from America to our sovereignty, to our nature, to our livelihoods, to our future? Who do you want at that negotiating table?” said Carney about targeting NDP and Green ridings.

The Liberal candidate in the riding is David Beckham — not the famous British soccer player by the same name, but a renewable energy specialist and a farmer.

In an interview, Beckham made sure to clarify that he is not running “against” May, who has represented the riding since 2011, but rather “running for the Liberal party.”

He said that while there is a “diversity of opinions” in the riding, the general consensus seems to be that “this is a moment in history (where) we need to lock arms, we need to be unified against this threat (from the U.S.), and the best option for that is Mark Carney.”

“I can tell you at the doors the enthusiasm and the optimism are infectious and, in some cases, even overwhelming,” he said.

Former environment minister Catherine McKenna, who came of her own accord to knock on doors and help the local candidates on Vancouver Island, is also surprised.

“There’s so much support. I’ve never seen so much excitement on the island,” she said.

“I think we have a real shot.”

National Post
calevesque@postmedia.com

TORONTO — On the front steps of a Toronto home, two Robs appear at the same door. 

The first is Rob Pierce, the Conservative candidate for Don Valley West, a solidly Liberal riding since the late 1990s, save for when the Tories captured it the last time the party won a majority government more than a decade ago.

Pierce is just beginning his campaign. He was only nominated the day before the election was called, replacing Yvonne Robertson, who had been eyeing a return.

“She ran twice, lost twice, and I think the party decided to try to do something different,” he told National Post.

Rob Oliphant is the second candidate to appear on the crowded doorstep. The veteran Liberal incumbent has held the urban riding since 2008, losing it when the Conservatives formed government in 2011 and returning when Justin Trudeau took power in 2015.

A decade later, Oliphant held off until Trudeau made it clear he was leaving before making it official that he would be running again, waiting out an unpopular leader whose name he left off campaign materials during the last federal vote.

“If he had not resigned in January, it would have been tough to run,” he admits.

Such is how a Liberal and a Conservative came to cross paths while canvassing on the same Toronto street, an interaction that highlighted the challenge of battling incumbency for a party that needs to pick up seats and the pitch a longtime Liberal makes to voters as to why they should give his party a fourth shot.

Finding himself in the middle was a voter named Jason.

“I was sort of surprised,” he said afterwards.

Pierce, the first to arrive at his doorstep, was armed with a stack of campaign leaflets citing the rise in car thefts in the city, while a member of his team waited at the bottom of the steps. A few minutes into Pierce’s conversation with the voter, Oliphant darts up the stairs.

“Good to meet you,” Oliphant says to his Conservative rival. “And good to meet you,” replies Pierce.

Jason, a business owner who has lived in the riding for 15 years, describes the neighbourhood as overall a good one. It has schools and parks for families and is less than 20 minutes from downtown. One local issue that remains an irritant is a long-delayed Metrolinx transit project.

But his concerns that day are around an earlier issue he had raised with Oliphant, which warranted unsatisfactory results.

Concerns about what Oliphant has done for the riding after so long is one of the issues Pierce hears from constituents, he said.

Still, the Conservative is under no illusions about the task before him when asked about his chances.

“It’s a tough riding.”

Several minutes after going back and forth with the voter, Oliphant announces he is moving onto the next door.

“After the election, one of us will help you,” he says before pausing for a brief second. “I suspect it’ll be me.”

“We’re going to make it a fight,” Pierce shoots back.

Although he finds himself at the starting line of an uphill battle, the Conservative walked away with a photo of at least one voter he can count on.

“I’m in my riding, I’d like to see change,” Jason told National Post. “It’s my number one view on this.”

Besides incumbency, Pierce is dealing with the gender divide in Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s support.

“Mr. Poilievre comes up a lot,” he says, “specifically amongst the female voters. They find him aggressive.”

Pierce is hardly the first Conservative candidate to encounter this in a race where successive public opinion polls suggest Poilievre is doing well with men, particularly those aged 18 to 34, but is struggling to connect with older demographics, particularly women.

When the issue does arise, Pierce says his response is to ask, “is that because he speaks bluntly?”

“You can’t actually say what you think anymore, and he does say what he’s thinking,” he said.

For his part, Pierce believes Poilievre should stick to his talking points. Locally, he says crime is an issue voters are raising on the doorstep, particular when it comes to break-ins, car theft and home invasions.

It is also one the Conservatives are hoping drives turnout for them in big cities, as well as the cost-of-living.

As for the matter of U.S. President Donald Trump and his tariffs, Pierce said he hears concerns but questions how defining an issue it is for the election.

“I’m not sure it’s a federal election issue, frankly. I’m not sure that really anyone can deal with Mr. Trump.”

Oliphant would disagree.

Speaking in his campaign office, the incumbent says Trump has changed everything about the election, as has the entrance of Liberal Leader Mark Carney.

“People are afraid.”

Those two factors combined, plus the surge in national pride and worries Canadians have about the economy and their finances at a time when the Liberal leader has the background of being a two-time central banker, has led to a unique moment.

“It is helping us. It’s clear as day. I can feel it.”

Other issues have since faded into the background, including the government’s response to the Israel-Hamas war, which Oliphant, whose riding has both a sizeable Muslim and Jewish population, says has surprised him.

It has not completely disappeared. While canvassing, Oliphant hears a man sharing concerns about the Liberals’ support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, saying he believes the incumbent to be “unfit for office.”

It is a household his team crosses off their voter list as not being Liberal. On the next street over, Oliphant has better luck.

“You’ve been doing a great job,” one man named Michael tells him. “You got my support.”

Several doors down, a woman says tariffs are her top concern and hopes Carney can help.

“It’s looming,” she said.

Oliphant knows that in a campaign, things can change quickly and that mistakes can be made.

However, he has experience in losing and knows what it feels like.

Back in 2011, when he lost to the Conservatives and the Liberals saw their fortress in Toronto along with the outlying suburbs in the vote-rich Greater Toronto Area fall, Oliphant says he heard it at the doors, especially how many people disliked then-Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff.

What hurt his vote the most was the rise of the NDP, he remembers, when the party had a historic showing and went on to form the official Opposition.

Now, polls suggest NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is battling for party status.

“The NDP vote is almost invisible,” Oliphant said. “I think I’ve knocked on three NDP doors.”

Pierce nonetheless remains positive about his campaign. What he says he is hearing from many voters is indecision.

“But, typically,” he says, “the collapse of the NDP historically means, you know, bad news for the Conservatives. Typically.”

National Post

staylor@postmedia.com

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Rebel News is suing a federal Crown corporation and a Toronto-area member of Parliament, arguing that the Crown corporation imposed unwarranted security costs and attempted to put a stop to an event featuring Donald Trump Jr.

At issue was a two-day event, held in May 2024 and hosted by Rebel News and Rumble, the right-wing social media platform. The Rumble Live event featured Trump Jr., journalist Glenn Greenwald and Canadian lawyer and YouTuber David Freiheit.

The Rebel Live event featured speeches by Rebel News journalists and guests of the media organization.

It was held at the Warehouse, an events space Downsview Park in Toronto. Canada Lands Company Limited is the federal Crown corporation that operates Downsview Park.

The statement of claim filed Monday in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice by Rebel News and Rumble says that Rebel News took precautions so that “the event will not be influenced or ‘cancelled’ for political reasons,” which included a clause in the rental agreement that the Warehouse would “uphold free speech principles and contractual obligations, irrespective of the event’s content or the public’s reaction to such content.”

“Rebel News is a platform for some views and ideas that are outside of the mainstream,” the statement of claim says.

The event went ahead without a hitch, but the lawsuit argues that it happened despite a campaign intended to put a stop to it. The claims have not been tested in court.

In late March 2024, the lawsuit alleges that Robert Ng, the director of attractions at the CN Tower and Downsview Park sent an email to two of his co-workers, flagging the event as controversial and warning that it could lead to an “undesirable crowd.” Andrea Thompson, the director of property management for Downsview Park, forwarded the email onwards, saying “I suppose we can’t stop these undesirable events.”

The lawsuit claims that Roxanne Krause, who’s the director of security at the CN Tower, which is also owned by Canada Lands, was “tasked with disrupting and attempting to prevent the Event from going ahead.”

“I love a new challenge,” the lawsuit alleges she wrote in an email, while acknowledging that the Warehouse was a tenant, and Canada Lands had little sway over events it hosted. (The Warehouse is not listed as a defendant in the lawsuit.)

Krause, the lawsuit says, allegedly reached out to the Toronto Police Service to see if there were any potential security risks, including the possibility of counter-demonstrations. The police service responded that it was not aware of any potential concerns, the lawsuit says, but Canada Lands nevertheless considered renting security fences, if it saw any online chatter about the event. (At that point, they had seen little online about it.)

“The Defendants set about a course of action that was designed to prevent the Event from proceeding,” the lawsuit alleges. “The Defendants acted together to avoid what they considered to be the negative political implications of a polarizing group hosting an event in a federally owned park.”

The lawsuit claims that Canada Lands co-ordinated with Ya’ara Saks, the Liberal member of Parliament for York Centre, where Downsview Park is located. (The lawsuit concedes that the plaintiffs — Rebel News, its founder Ezra Levant and Rumble — do not know the details of a “response plan” allegedly developed by Saks, her office and Canada Lands.)

The lawsuit argues that the group then put forward an “unconstitutional plan” comprised of “unwarranted costs,” meant to prevent the event from proceeding. Specifically, the Warehouse was told by Canada Lands that there would be additional security costs, and if they were not paid by Rebel News and Rumble, the event would not be permitted to proceed.

“The Defendants knew that if the Plaintiffs could not pay the Unwarranted Costs, the Event would be cancelled, as this was the ultimatum they imposed on the Plaintiffs,” the lawsuit says.

David Silber, with the Warehouse, contacted Rebel News founder Ezra Levant, and gave him a roughly $37,000 invoice for $1,900 for port-a-potties and around $7,500 for security fencing, plus additional, unspecified costs.

Rebel News, Rumble and Levant paid the invoice “under protest and duress,” the lawsuit says. It argues the additional sums were not set out in the original agreement and “nor was there any basis to insist on these charges. There were no known threats of counter-protests.”

“There was no security threat created by the Event and any security issues associated with the Event were adequately and appropriately addressed by Rebel News and Donald Trump Jr., who had their own security personnel arranged for the Event,” the lawsuit says.

On the first day of the event, May 10, 2024, Saks — who had previously been sued by Rebel News over restricting access to her social media accounts — condemned the event, saying “Rebel News will be bringing its hateful and extremist views to York Centre.”

“While I am a strong supporter of the right to free speech, let me be clear that the vile views espoused by Rebel News are not welcome in York Centre, nor do its residents support them,” Saks said in a post to X.

Regardless, the event went ahead, the lawsuit says, adding that the additional security and infrastructure they had paid for was not needed.

The plaintiffs argue that its Charter rights to free speech were violated by the additional costs imposed and that the individuals sued — Saks plus staff at Canada Lands — were in breach of their roles as public officers.

“In breach of their fiduciary duties, the Defendants allowed their personal distaste for the Plaintiffs political, cultural, and social views to discriminate against the Plaintiffs,” the lawsuit alleges.

It also argues that they unlawfully pressured the Warehouse to breach its contract with Rebel News and Rumble, among other allegations.

The lawsuit seeks $37,177.80 in damages — the exact cost of the security invoice — and $250,000 in punitive and exemplary damages, plus any further damages for the actions of the individuals named.

Canada Lands Company Limited declined to comment on the lawsuit. Saks, in an emailed statement to National Post, said she had yet to see the court documents, but suggested the lawsuit had been “timed to come out in the middle of an election campaign.”

“If I am ever served with the court documents, I will fully defend myself and my actions taken for the benefit of the people of York Centre,” Saks said in the statement.

 

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