Former Commanding Officers Respond

On July 16th, 2026 Nora published Ah-tehn-shion!: How to read a military parade as a cultural text. This is a follow up to that piece which you should read first.

The essay was a response to the abysmal performance of the Canadian Army during a Canada Day Parade in Toronto. The troops’ failure to properly and professionally perform their ceremonial drill was immediately weaponized by rightwing elements seeking to blame the shambles on “wokeness” and “DEI”.

I sent the link to at least half a dozen friends and associates, all of whom having substantial command and leadership experience–Lieutenant Colonels and Colonels. Some are retired, others still active members. All my correspondents had commanded troops at the regimental or brigade level. (Whereas my highest command position was at the platoon/troop level).

They didn’t agree with everything in the essay, but they unanimously agreed that the soldiers mentioned were woefully undertrained and unfit for a public demonstration of very basic military skills.

They were also unanimous that it is possible to train any fit individual to do drill competently without regards to their gender, ethnicity, place of birth, religion, or sexuality. Diversity, as such, has nothing to do with the military’s ability to produce competent soldiers.

The basic argument that a) the troops looked like shit, but that b) it is possible to train any fit individual to competently perform those tasks as part of a cohesive group was confirmed unanimously by the veterans I spoke to. The only conclusion one can draw from the episode is that we witnessed a public display of a failure of leadership. So naturally, I wanted to find out who was responsible for that leadership failure.

Meet the Brigade Commander

Colonel Frank Lamie was the top candidate on his basic officer training course back in 2002. He therefore had the honour of leading his fellow candidates on parade in front of the commandant and the staff of the Infantry School at Canadian Forces Base Gagetown. Some family and friends of the graduating class were also in attendance.

The graduating class of officer cadets and second lieutenants drilled well despite the heat of the day. The group also consisted of a smattering of women and ethnic minorities. Presumably some of the candidates were also part of the LGBTQ+ community.

The point of mentioning that is to say that from the first moments of his military career, Colonel Lamie has seen people from all genders, sexual orientations, ethnic, and religious backgrounds function as a cohesive team and perform basic military drills together to an acceptable standard.

Today Frank is the commander of 32 Canadian Brigade Group, the formation in charge of the regiment that provided the troops for the Canada Day Debacle.

The reason I know so much about his graduating class is that I was on that parade as one of the successfully graduated candidates. I reached out to my classmate by email.

In the email, I reminded him of our service together 24 years ago and confirmed that we both knew it was possible to train part-time reserve soldiers to an acceptable standard. In the spirit of “never passing a fault” (Frank’s former regiment’s motto), I urged him to “sort his troops out” because their failure was being weaponized by rightwing bigots to attack women and minorities. I pointed out what every officer knows: that the poor performance was a leadership failure and that as the brigade commander, the buck stops with him.

I will not republish our entire correspondence, but Frank’s response was important enough that his conclusion needs to be on the public record.

The colonel, without prevarication accepted responsibility for the debacle, saying that “Our Brigade’s and Regiments’ successes are theirs, but shortcomings are mine - they rest with leadership.”

He also indicated that as soon as he saw what had happened, he ordered remedial drill and training across the brigade.

So we have it straight from the horse’s mouth. Colonel Lamie disagrees with the bigots, including several Members of Parliament from the Conservative Party, who are arguing that “woke” killed the army.

If the soldiers are not performing their tasks to an acceptable standard it is always down to a failure of leadership, not the gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or place of birth of individual soldiers. I was glad to hear that my old buddy Frank disagrees with Pierre Poilievre et al about diversity killing the military because it’s an incredibly dangerous falsehood–One which is setting the conditions needed for a Made in Canada “stabbed in the back” myth to emerge.

I also wrote to the Minister of National Defence, David McGuinty, the Chief of Defence Staff, General Jennie Carignan, and the military’s top non-commissioned officer, Chief Warrant Officer Bob McCann. To this august distribution list, I repeated the problem I had observed. I encouraged them to support Colonel Lamie in taking public accountability for the very public failure of his troops and I specifically framed this as a way of discrediting the bigots who are using the military’s leadership failures to further the rightwing assault on the marginalized.

A Crisis In the Midranks?

While it’s one thing for a brigade commander to accept responsibility privately to an old comrade at arms like me, it is another thing to expect anything to change. I’ve seen too much of this institution to believe it is capable of self-reform.

This is because one of the things I heard over and over from my military contacts was that there is “a crisis around the training and retention of junior officers and mid-level Senior NCOs.” I heard from multiple active duty senior officers reporting midrank leaders who feel that they can’t (or won’t more accurately) properly train and discipline their rank and file soldiers for fear of receiving harassment complaints.

If that’s true, then it speaks to a higher level leadership failure than any brigade commander can be expected to fix. Not even Frank Lamie, one of the clear, rising stars of the Canadian primary reserve army, can fix this problem on his own.

Unfortunately, there is no technocratic fix for systemic harassment in a rigidly authoritarian and hierarchical institution. The structure breeds the problem, which at best can be managed, but never eliminated.

But if the current crop of military leaders are unwilling to train or incapable of training their troops within an environment that at least formally discourages harassment, then they should resign or be removed from the service. Unfortunately, careerism and cowardice are powerful behavioural motivators, so the beat goes on.

Incidentally, there was unsurprisingly no reply from top brass or Minister McGuinty’s office.

We should expect the military to continue being a locus of intensifying “culture wars” between the rival factions of the Canadian elite and therefore it is a space that concerned and democratically minded citizens must watch closely.

The highlighted ranks have the most responsibility for the training and discipline of the rank and file as they lead the sections, platoons, and companies that make the basic building blocks of army formations. It sure seems as if trouble is brewing within this level of the armed forces if there is a leadership crisis at this level.

Ceremonial drill communicates so much without saying more than a few words of command.

Ahh-tehn-SHION! Stand-at-EASE!

Kwame Eff served in the Canadian Armed Forces for eight years, reaching the rank of captain. Kwame served for a time as Base Adjutant for Area Support Unit - Toronto and was therefore the officer responsible for the dress, deportment, and discipline of the junior officers assigned to the command. He also participated in numerous public parades with his home regiment, The Queen’s York Rangers (First American Regiment), Royal Canadian Armoured Corps. He completed one tour of duty as part of the United Nations Mission in Sudan, a peacekeeping operation. Today Kwame is vehemently anti-war and anti-militarism and is the publisher of t.a.l.e.zine on Substack, a publication about the Canadian publishing industry.

Sometimes I describe the life of a writer as a series of indignity after indignity. Failures and refusals, polite declines, not-exactly-the-right-fits, that was great but can you give us more, sorry your grant wasn’t accepted but rest assured, we don’t think you’re a garbage eater. And so on.

But then, sometimes, you get a really nice email. Like this one:

I recently came across Corporate Control, and what stayed with me was the way you connect today’s affordability and public-service problems to a much longer structural history rather than treating them as isolated political failures.

I was particularly interested in that because of the connection with your earlier work in Spin Doctors. You have spent considerable time examining not only the structures themselves, but also how those structures are represented and discussed publicly.

It made me wonder: given your experience with independent journalism and political media, how difficult is it to keep that larger structural argument intact when mainstream coverage inevitably tries to reduce something like corporate influence to a more familiar “cost-of-living” story?

I ask because that seems like an interesting tension in your work—there is a substantial historical argument underneath the immediate political commentary, but the media environment often rewards the shorter, more familiar explanation

She’s right. I have spent considerable time examining not only the structures themselves, but also how those structures are represented and discussed publicly. Really nice insight.

Or this, from a Writers’ Festival:

Your critical examination of the corporate web spun around Canada’s economy, society, and politics is incredibly timely. As Canadians continue to grapple with the housing crisis, affordability, and the widening wealth divide, your insightful analysis of corporate dominance and political limitations is the perfect catalyst for the vibrant, pressing conversations our audience craves.

We are currently locking in our featured authors for October and have a limited number of programming slots open. Given your extensive background in political commentary and your unique perspective on the forces shaping Canadian democracy, we would love to secure a place for your book in our line-up.

Of course, what followed was an invitation to present my book to the festival’s large audience. Really exciting stuff.

Or this, from a top American literary agent:

My name is Marilyn Kretzer, and I am a Senior Acquisition Editor at Blackstone Publishing. I recently spent time with your work, particularly Corporate Control: Canada in Decline Book Two, and I was impressed by the clarity, urgency, and investigative depth you bring to examining the relationship between corporate power and democratic constraint in Canada. Your ability to connect economic realities to lived social consequences creates a compelling and necessary narrative for contemporary readers.

I would be very interested to learn more about your current and forthcoming projects, as well as whether you are represented by a literary agent. If you do have representation, I would be pleased to continue any discussion through your agent. If not, I would be happy to outline how the process typically works, should there be interest in taking the conversation further.

Subject to reviewing additional material, there may be scope for a broader discussion regarding potential fit within Blackstone Publishing’s adult nonfiction and culturally focused publishing program.

If this is of interest, I would be delighted to hear from you.

Keep being awesome.

Or this:

There’s a rare kind of book that doesn’t just inform it lingers, resonates, and sparks thought long after the last page. Corporate Control: Canada in Decline Book Two is exactly that kind of book. Your meticulous exploration of corporate dominance in Canada the way it shapes politics, society, and everyday life is not just important; it’s essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the forces quietly steering our country. Every page reflects careful research, sharp insight, and a clarity that challenges readers to see beyond the surface.

My books have not had the publicity they deserve, these email writers are correct. Yes, I’d love to be at a writer’s festival, as I have only been at one in the past five years despite my five books in six years. Maybe I would like a new agent (testing my agent here to see if he reads my Substack). In the bleak, never-ending world of indignity, these emails are such wonderful messages to receive. Yes, I have done careful research, sharp insight and a clarity that challenges my readers. People have noticed my work and they’re impressed.

There is a problem, though. Of course. These messages, and dozens more like them, are all fake. They’re all AI-driven scams. Not one of them is real. They’re all preying on us, the victims of an unglorious, undignified industry, hoping to find someone who will bite. Who will actually believe that the Calgary Writers’ Festival wants to invite us, or that Marilyn Kretzer really does want to represent us or that Goodreads does want to feature our books.

What’s worse, if you respond to them, they respond back. There’s a person on the other side who is being paid to try to exploit me and take my money.

Sometimes these emails are easy to spot (they usually arrive in the middle of the night). Sometimes it takes a bit of Googling to find out that they’re a scam. But the worst is the psychological harm. For a minute, I’m told that someone out there really does like my work, only for me to then have to research to figure out, for sure, that this is just a scam. No one actually wants to offer me an opportunity.

It isn’t enough for AI to take our writing. It also is now used to psychologically torture the thousands of others of writer just like me for whom their career is indignity upon indignity.

In the real world, the world of real praise and real invitations for real opportunities, the messages get lost. When I was first approached by SiriusXM to air episodes of Sandy and Nora, I thought it was spam and it took me weeks to reply. The same thing happened with other, international corporations who reached out to me about things that never ended up working out.

And so I have to continue to read these messages, both in the pathetic hope that they might be real and in the faint possibility that they are real.

Enjoy! And as usual, headlines are below the video.

Newfoundland and Labrador

Police say 19 victims identified in AI child sexual abuse image investigation

British Columbia

B.C. declares province-wide state of emergency as wildfires force thousands out of homes

Ontario

Tenant advocates push back on Carney’s plan for thousands of Toronto rentals

Ontario PC Party’s spending on Jamaican resorts was to surveil Bonnie Crombie: sources

SIU recommends against charging Ottawa police union president

Saskatchewan

Severe storms send insurance losses soaring in Saskatchewan

Quebec

Montreal police dismantle controversial surveillance camera

Former RCMP officer files racial profiling complaints against Quebec police

Alberta

12 international students at Calgary protest referred to CBSA office after status check

National

Feds announce $100M program to cover 50% of shipping steel in Canada by rail and water

Unifor to begin talks with General Motors after deal with Ford

H&R REIT reaches $3.4-billion asset sale deal with GO Residential REIT and other buyers

Luxembourg ammo manufacturer hires lobbyist who assaulted protester

Canada’s measles cases are half of U.S. total, despite smaller population: WHO

International

Israel rejects Trump’s 15-point plan for Gaza, stoking tensions with US

Shanghai cancels at least 1,300 flights as Typhoon Dolphin hits China’s eastern coast

Huge oil slick hitting Oman’s shoreline as agencies warn of disaster

Rescuers evacuate more than 200 from a ferry fire that left at least 1 dead near Bali

Magnitude 7.4 quake rocks western Colombia, killing at least 111 people

AP Exclusive: ICE plans to give officers gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks

Chile moves hundreds of inmates to a new prison as President Kast ramps up security push

At least 15 dead, dozens missing after overloaded ferry capsizes in Zimbabwe

Mali separatists release 82 soldiers, including some held since a major attack in April

Back in January, I was offered the chance to write about fascism in Canada for Canada’s History Magazine. Originally, the assignment was to look at the history of fascism and what it can tell us about today, but in the process of writing the piece, it became clear that that was way too broad a focus. Short of having at least ten thousand words (I had three), I didn’t try to draw any conclusions for today from what I had gleaned from researching the 1930s. But that question: what does fascism today look like, has preoccupied me.

There were four major tendencies of fascism in the 1930s: Anglo-Canadian, French-Canadian, German and Italian. You can read all about them in my feature. While the French and English fascist movements were the most significant and found common cause, uniting across language in a way that few other movements have managed to achieve (even to this day), the German and Italian fascist movements were rooted in cultural expression and connection to homeland. Nazi Germany had direct lines to Canada through German consulates, and they organized newer Germans to support Hitler and Nazism in Canada (while being uninterested in organizing the Germans who had been in Canada longer).

Fascism and the Italians

Fascism was the official government tendency in Italy, and Italians in Canada were still very much connected to their homeland. They were overwhelmingly working class, deeply religious immigrants who didn’t quite (or yet) fit into mainstream Canada. Fascist Italy made it a project to organize the diaspora, and Italian Consuls found ways to get their hands all over the community’s institutions.

In a 1997 Master’s thesis on the RCMP’s response to fascism, Michelle McBride explains, “Throughout the 1930s the Italian Consuls attempted to make Fascism synonymous with nationalism, and to make Italy, the Fascist Party and the bureaucracy one and the same. In attempting to centralize ethnicity, the consuls wanted to become the centre of cultural and ethnic life in Italo-Canadian communities.” At the time, Italians were extremely regional, identifying more with the area they came from rather than the country as a whole, and so trying to create a homogeneous Italian identity was critical for the Consuls to be able to exert centralized pressure on the community, which was just over 100,000 people.

In the early days, Italian community leaders emerged from business, community groups, churches and mutual aid societies. The Consuls rapidly took over these networks and exerted pressure on the communities to conform to fascism. Through groups like DopoLavoro, Italian Youth Abroad, the Italian United Moral Front, the Order of the Sons of Italy and the Italian War Veterans Association, the Consuls pushed fascist propaganda to Canadian Italians. DopoLavoro was a sporting association that promoted bocce, basketball and baseball, playing cards and coordinated its own library. The Consuls even approved leadership for local wings of the Italian fascist movement (Fascios) and then passed the names onto Italian officials to approve or reject.

In Montreal alone, there were 12 Fascio branches, including six women’s leagues and their honour guard, the Centuria D’Onore, paraded around Montreal several times per month.

Italian Fascists exploited the situation of Canadian Italians to gain more supporters through the Consuls. Official documents like records or certificates would be lost or denied if someone refused to be a fascist, and their families were harassed. Consular officials and their agents snitched on Italians who were disloyal to Italy and the fascist project.

In 1937, the RCMP identified that Italy’s Organization for Vigilance and Repression of Anti Fascism (OVRA) was a threat inside Canada. They worried that they were similar to Russian secret police. Their goal, said a report, “extended to every country, to control the political opinions of all people who bear Italian names.” The OVRA compiled information on many Italians in Canada. They knew who was working in critical industries and where sabotage could be the most effective. McBride writes, “The OVRA used methods such as oral propaganda, discrimination, intimidation and violence to make the Italian community more loyal to Mussolini.”

Not too surprisingly, the push to support Italian fascism came strongest from the Catholic Church.

They also understood the need to indoctrinate a younger generation. The Consuls organized the largely unorganized network of Italian language schools into a network that promoted Italian, culture and fascism and dictatorship. As many as 10,000 children attended these schools. Another 500 were chosen to attend fascist summer camps in Italy.

But only a small number of Italians ever joined fascist organizations, notes McBride. Italian socialists, anarchists and communists resisted the fascist influence over the Italian community, though they were far outnumbered by the Italians who participated in fascist groups.

The Italian consuls deftly exploited the Italian community’s vulnerabilities, like its need for mutual aid, cultural protection and access to relatives back home. As I was writing my feature, I had the big question in my mind: what is the version of this today? Perhaps there are similarities to the Hindutva movement; Hindu nationalists who are loyal to the right wing Indian tendency that has supporters within India’s government.

But there is another fascist movement that has leveraged a community’s vulnerabilities, captured its institutions, created new organizations, collects information on its critics, uses intimidation and harassment to silence people and targets family members to make its critics feel personal pressure: Israel.

Yesterday the Italians, today the Jews?

Zionism’s blood-and-soil, racial holy war mantras to lay claim over the land that Israel occupies is textbook fascism, with Islamophobia swapped in the place that Antisemitism held for Italian fascists. While Liberal Zionists argue that they are not represented by the extremes of the Zionist project, Israel’s government and their war crimes are being driven by the extremes. Terrorist and government minister Itamar Ben-Gvir represents this extreme, as an adherent to Kahanism, which, “envisions a state governed by an ultra-conservative interpretation of Jewish law (halacha), emphasizing segregation and the prohibition of sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews. It also advocates the expulsion of Palestinians and non-Jews from Israel and the occupied territories if they do not submit to secondary status. The state of Israel, in this context, is seen as a means to restore God and the Jewish people through acts of revenge.^”

This is the sharp point of the Zionism stick today, and defending Zionism and Israel have become the top priority of the leadership of cultural, political, educational, philanthropic and religious Jewish institutions in Canada to ensure that, above all else, Jewish Canadians will support the Zionist project.

From Zionist summer camps to the full-throated support for Israel from mainstream groups like the country’s many Jewish Appeals despite their campaigns of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank, the similarities to the Italian fascist strategies are remarkable.

Israel’s embassy and ambassador regularly promotes a positive image of Israel, despite the fact that the country has killed at least 75,000 Gazans and thousands more in almost three years. When Alberta NDP leader Nahed Nenshi apologized for being photographed with Ambassador Iddo Moed, “Jewish groups”— not Israelis — were upset that Nenshi regretted the photo-op. This is even though the Israeli government itself saw the photo as a moment to push its propaganda: “Support for Israel is support for freedom, for the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, and for human rights. Ambassador Moed was honoured to share the Canada-Israel allyship, solidarity for the Jewish community, and commitment to stand up against antisemitism with Former Federal NDP Leader Tom Mulcair, Alberta Minister of Advanced Education Myles McDougall, and Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi” No shit Nenshi wanted to distance himself from the claim that this photos demonstrated, “support for Israel is support for freedom.”

Italians in the 1930s where cajoled into supporting fascism through their social, educational and political groups. While many Italians who were members of these groups were not fascists, the expression of their national pride and connection to Italy was forced through fascist organizations. Similarly, the long-standing Jewish cultural organization B’nai Brith seems to believe that Israel’s interests and Jews in Canada’s interests are in complete alignment, even though Israel has been engaged in war crimes for almost three years. Right on their homepage, beside the heading, “Our Mission and Values” is a photo of men waving Israeli flags. There are more Israeli flags on their home page than any other flag.

It’s similar for other Jewish institutions. Take this AI slop shared online.

What does education on antisemitism have to do with telling a queer person that they will be beaten by, I’m not sure who (anarchists? Arabs? Arab anarchists?) for their support for Palestine? This charitable foundation is using public money to perpetuate racist stereotypes about Palestinians while claiming to …. fight antisemitism? Surely they can’t be so stupid as to not see the self-inflicting damage they’re doing here …

For the United Jewish Appeal, their first priority on their homepage is listed as: Israel. Beside the headline, “Times Like These is Why the UJA Exists” it says, “helping Israelis recover from October 7th” as the first priority. Only after come the rest: “fighting antisemitism, strengthening community security, and investing in Jewish identity and pride among our youth.” Their highest profile event each year is the annual Walk With Israel as that country literally murder a child per day in Gaza, continue to restrict humanitarian aid, aid and abet violent settlers to murder Palestinians in the West Bank and bulldoze over Southern Lebanon.

The United Jewish Appeal started as a philanthropic society for the Jewish community. Helping people out of poverty, operating a Jewish orphanage, fighting for public health improvements — just like the Italian social organizations, Jewish community leaders created similar structures out to help Canadian Jews.

But today, these two important Jewish institutions have been wholly captured by Zionism and promoting its virtues. Even in an information video about what the UJA does, the voice over says, “Our community is facing really difficult times” while a video shows a banner at a Palestinian solidarity rally.

If the UJA and B’nai Brith are the carrots, then CIJA is the stick, beating Jews over the head, reminding them that if they don’t support Israel, they’re bad Jews. On CIJA’s homepage, they mobilize people to rally against people who hanged the terrorist Ben-Gvir in effigy, linking Canadian Jews with the sadism of Ben-Gvir’s extremist political movement. CIJA’s primary function is to take community concerns like antisemitism and Jewish safety, and link them directly to Israel. You want to be safe in Montreal? Support Israel’s decision to murder its neighbours who, believe us, want to murder us all.

And, like the pressure exerted on family members and friends to fall in line, the personal harassment is similar too. In my own experience, friends of mine were confronted at a Hanukkah party in 2023 for being friends with my partner and I because of his work with Independent Jewish Voices and my outspoken advocacy. These people had just moved to Quebec City and found out about us online. My friends barely knew this couple, but they warned them to stay away from us. A few months later, the leadership of the only synagogue in Quebec City voted to not allow us to participate in events any more, despite having done so since 2014, because of our activism.

Or another time, when someone took me aside at an event I was speaking at earlier this year, and asked me if I was antisemitic. She said she had been warned by members of her synagogue that I hate Jews and for her to be careful around me. News to me.

The social and cultural pressure has a tremendous impact. Families no longer speaking to each other because of people’s positions on Israel. Jews being marginalized and iced out of their communities for opposing Israel’s genocide. In my case, my partner’s family will go from having survived the Holocaust to having all connections with Jewish institutions cut entirely in just two generations, thanks to overzealous Zionists who believe that protecting Israel is more important than fostering a vibrant community with a plurality of perspectives.

Importantly, like the Italians, some of the loudest critics of Canadian Zionism are also Jews — including anarchists, socialists, anti-fascists and a communist here and there — who know very well what side of history is the right side to be on.

Of course, there are also important differences. Unlike Italians (and Jews) in the 1930s, the Jewish community (like the Italians) has access to power today. They have the ear of government and of the richest echelons of society. Christian Zionists, many Italians included, are a significant power block in Canada in a way that Catholics, sympathetic to Mussolini, weren’t. (The one exception perhaps was Montreal mayor Camillien Houde, though even he was interned during World War Two for his fascist sympathies.)

Pressure from Israel and Zionists within the country to convince Canadians that criticism of Israel is the same as hateful rhetoric against Jews seems to be working. More and more people are being arrested for hate crimes that involved criticism of Israel alone. The federal government released a comically flawed, typo-laden report that remixed Antisemitism to include negative feelings that someone feels when confronted with Israel’s crimes. And the Israeli government posted it on their official social media account, calling on Canada to deal with Antisemitism on campus.

How does this all end?

For Italians in Canada, Mussolini and fascism fell out of favour starting after Italy’s attack on Ethiopia. They bombed Red Cross stations and hospitals, used arms that violated the Geneva Conventions, and targeted civilians. In total, Italian troops killed hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians. While Italy won their war in Ethiopia, the economy began to tank and World War Two set in motion the end of Mussolini’s fascism there. It was also the start of Italian opinion in Canada shifting away from fascism.

Italian fascists finally became a target of the RCMP by about 1937. Canadian authorities admired Mussolini up until the point where fascism became a clear threat to Canada, and then suddenly, their support for him dried up. When Mussolini declared war on June 10, 1940, Italy instantly became an enemy of Canada. The RCMP raided the Consuls that same day. Italians were expected to register with the government and report regularly. The government identified 31,000 Italians as “enemy aliens.” Hundreds of Italians were interned during World War Two because of fascist sympathies (real or supposed).

But perhaps the biggest moment that ended organized Italian fascism in Canada was the collapse of fascist Italy itself. When that happened in 1943, the coordination, organization and institutional support vanished as well. Combined with the pressure placed on the fascists by the RCMP, there was no longer anything keeping the movement together.

Zionism isn’t strong because of the natural desire of people to support it. It’s made strong through coordinated, organized and supported networks maintained within Canada and from Israel directly. It’s hegemonic. It’s a multi-million dollar gift from the Government of Israel to a Canadian public hospital for some reason. It’s the millions of dollars that Canadians send to Israeli universities that benefit from charitable status tax reductions. It’s the state-funded propaganda that has tried to force Canadians to support Israel by saying it’s antisemitic if they don’t. It’s the ritualistic condemnation of Hamas any time a politician suggests that killing Palestinians might be bad. This and more provides the infrastructure, and average people participate knowingly and unknowingly.

Breaking the spell that Zionism has over Canada is going to take a radical shift within Israel itself that may never be possible. Given the current geopolitical moment, it would take a nuclear bomb of a development for Canada to break with Israel and criminalize support for Zionism. While Israeli public opinion still seems to favour the genocide, Netenyahu cannot last forever. It is possible that something will replace him that ends the occupation. While I’m not holding my breath for that to happen any time soon, it is possible, and with that seismic shift, the politics in Canada will shift too.

But this is the challenge of any ethnic community that attaches itself to a foreign political ideology over it’s own local community. It’s incredibly risky as the community’s leadership has no control over what the foreign government does, and it implicates people in things that they normally would never support. It forces people into a binary of for/against, live/die, we kill them/they kill us. Ultimately, the real shame of the Italian experience is that fascism exploited people that needed to have better local supports free of the disgusting ideology. While there are many differences between the two cases, that is one similarity that I think remains very strong.

The Holocaust

I think it’s necessary for me to finish this with the biggest difference between these two examples. There was no Holocaust for Italians (who weren’t Jewish or socialist or queer or otherwise enemies of fascism). Untying Israel, its future, success or failure from the Holocaust is like untying a Gordian knot — it’s virtually impossible. When Jews say that they support Israel, it goes beyond the kinship and cultural ties that I might have with my family’s historic homeland. It’s also a cry for a place where Jews wont ever experience something like the Holocaust again. It’s important to note.

The Holocaust is an ever-looming event over the question of Israel, just as the transatlantic slave trade and the genocide of the Americas continue to loom over the question of North America. It makes sense that a majority of Canadian Jews identify as Zionist if Zionism means a safe homeland for your people. It’s this support that has made it so easy for Jewish institutions to defend the apartheid state, while never publicly criticizing what the current bunch of extremists in power are doing. Do a majority of Jews support the violence in the West Bank, or the demolition of Gaza? One survey showed that a majority of Canadian Jews justify the Gaza offensive as self defence (it is objectively not) but that a slim majority also oppose settler violence in the West Bank. 10% of those surveyed said that what Israel is doing in Gaza is a genocide. These numbers would be different, of course, if support for Israel was not so hegemonic, constantly pushed by institutional leaders.

Is there Zionism without fascism? Just like there hasn’t ever been White America without fascism, I doubt that there can be. But given the current reality on the ground, a theoretical debate about a non-violent Zionism that doesn’t seek to expand its borders and subjugate others isn’t all that useful right now. Zionism is as the Zionists do (or as they support) and the rest of us have to position around that action accordingly. The most fervent Zionists characterise any engagement with antizionist Jews as being tokenistic, opportunistic and even antisemitic (that comes from the American Jewish Committee). Ultimately, the grip that the fascists have on the community means that there cannot be any space ceded to critics, regardless of whether or not they ultimately want Israel to succeed without all the violence.

Canadians have every right to hold terrible opinions, for whatever reason, and that’s no different here. People can be fascists if they want. However, Zionist leaders have sold fascism to so many people through fear, trauma, lies, racism and so on, and it is critical to identify this process. But it’s the same as it ever was. Fascism is a rich man’s game, and its sold to the masses through impossible promises of utopia for some at the expense of the unimportant others.

There is one other thing that Italians and Jews share: the hubris that comes with honestly believing that we are God’s chosen people. And when a strongman leader comes along promising to meet our ever primal need, possibly ordained by God himself, it isn’t surprising when a majority accept and support it. Luckily, we do have history to remind us that fascism can never win.

When I got my manuscript back for my second book (Take Back the Fight), the edits were so deep and concerns so major, that I didn’t think we’d be able to publish it. My editor, who is amazing, guided me through the process and the book emerged improved, months later. Of all the books I’ve written, Take Back the Fight seems to have been the slowest burn, popping up in comments and articles. It’s the book I hear about most from strangers.

That was six years ago. Since then, things have gotten better. I’ve learned how to write books. As I wait for edits back for the next book, I’ve received the finalized cover for Book Number Six — (or, Book Three in the Canada in Decline Series).

Here it is, for your viewing pleasure —

Soon to be added to …

Watch out for pre-sale information soon. I have a scheme that will fundraise to allow me to keep writing these books (the advance is not very much) but that will also bundle the books for fans who want to read them, bought from their favourite independent bookstore (or from mine, if you have no preference!)

And, in case you’re wondering, there will be FIVE BOOKS TOTAL in this series! Yes!! The final two will be released one year after the previous one :)

Stay tuned …

There’s this thing that happens when you learn a new language and you realize that your friendships can be divided out by the original language that the friendship was forged in. After I learned French, I didn’t start speaking French with my Francophone friends who I had known before I spoke French. Relationships have a language and, while learning a new language allowed me to make double the friends, it wasn’t as if all of a sudden, our friendship language would change.

But sometimes, you and your friend do speak that new-to-you language and realize that things are virtually the same, though more authentic.

That’s what I felt while watching Les Misérables today.

This French production is based on Cameron McIntosh’s blockbuster English musical. And the French made it even better.

The play was not the bombastic production of Broadway (which I saw in Montreal two years ago). But it wasn’t pared down either. Knowing every song by heart, except sung in a language that was more natural and more authentic than the cheesy French references in the English version, was a real treat. The sets were extremely well done, the singing was great and it just felt so much more natural. I’m not sure how it would have come across for someone who speaks no French at all, but probably, it would still be outstanding.

If you’re in Quebec City in the next two weeks, do yourself a favour and check it out.

Here are the headlines for this week’s Daily News podcast episodes.

British Columbia

B.C.’s labour board orders Amazon, union to reach deal via binding arbitration

1 dead after mid-air plane crash in B.C.’s Fraser Valley

Quebec

Construction holiday less deadly than 2025 on Quebec roads, but water tragedies mount

Bakery in Montreal vandalized with anti-tech message after switching to self-serve model

Ontario

First Nations chiefs call for public inquiry as Ontario defends wildfire response

Data centre proposal in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. met with opposition

Niagara municipalities hit by floods declare emergencies

Alberta

Student given strap at northern Alberta Mennonite school leads to assault charge

Nova Scotia

N.S. seniors home residents say they were without water for 15 hours

Yukon

Yukon News moves to Fridays-only publishing, cuts Wednesday print edition

National

Carney government restores health coverage it had cut for refugees

Canadian Police-Involved Deaths in July 2026

Ottawa moves to list West Coast pipeline as project of ‘national interest’

WestJet, union reach tentative deal to end strike by flight attendants

Former Green MP Mike Morrice announces he’s running to be party’s next leader

International

More than a decade after 43 students vanished in Mexico, ex-governor arrested, accused of cover-up

Brazil police formally accuse 16 people over Voepass plane crash that killed 62 in 2024

Nigeria announces rescue of 308 kidnapped citizens

Russian barrage in Ukraine’s capital region kills 17 as air defenses fall short

Ebola kills 1,700 in eastern Congo as the fastest-growing outbreak surges

French and British teams rescue 157 migrants after a boat engine fire in the Channel

Massive Attack says members held after pro-Palestine display in Singapore

Michigan reports the first 2 US deaths related to a diarrhea-causing parasite

At least 13 killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza after Hamas agree disarmament deal

U.S. buys Japanese yen as it drops to a 40-year low

Community workers in Ontario have been on strike for 11 weeks. The 4000 OPSEU members coordinate community services, work with disabled adults and children, people fleeing intimate partner violence, people struggling with addiction — indeed, the striking workers are on the front lines of the current war on the poor and marginalized in Ontario. And it’s no wonder that Ford has held out for so long to give them a good deal.

Finally, there has been some movement. In the past 48 hours, tentative agreements have been reached in Peterborough and Hamilton, OPSEU Locals 262 and 358, but picket lines remain in the rest of the province.

These workers work with the most acute targets of the affordability crisis, the housing crisis and austerity. Because of this, striking workers have been easy for Ford’s government to ignore. They’ve therefore had to be creative to get attention. In London, striking workers set up a picket line outside of the house of the director of Community Services London urging her to become more vocal in negotiations to support the workers and service users. Striking workers crashed Ford Fest, which embarrassed premier Doug Ford. Ford’s communications team even appeared to doctor an image, changing the colour of striking workers’ purple shirts to blue to make them look like supporters. OPSEU members have kayaked up to Ford’s cottage with protest signs.

But it was in Thunder Bay where the contempt that the Ford government has for these workers and their service users was on full display. Back in June, workers got word that there was a private event that the premier was attending. They set up a picket line at the event on June 16 to bring their concerns directly to Ford. The police were on hand to make sure that they were kept back.

The picket line managed to snare local Conservative MP, Kevin Holland (for less than five minutes). Workers held him up while they tried to talk to him. Holland had no patience for this assault on his time. He appeared to lift his foot off the break, inched forward into the crowd, and using his truck as a weapon he hit striking worker Dan Dubray and continued on his way. “He was going to push right through us,” said Dubray.

Dubray is a group home worker, helping residents with daily tasks: from preparing meals to banking, medical appointments and offering friendship. He told me that Holland didn’t make any effort to see if things were OK or if anyone was injured by his truck. “He’s ignoring the union altogether. If he would have just come out to say I’m so sorry, I wasn’t trying to run you over I wasn’t trying to hit anyone’ things wouldn’t be as bad as they are.”

The workers in Thunder Bay had been consistently ignored by Holland and this incident rubbed salt into their wounds.

“He’s not acknowledging us whatsoever, to the fact that someone could get hit by him in a vehicle and he chooses not to [engage].”

Holland’s office didn’t respond to my media enquiry, though at the time of what looks to me like assault, he issued this statement: “I listened to their concerns and suggested that they contact my office. However, they refused to let me leave the parking lot. … After being prevented from leaving, the police assisted in facilitating a safe exit from the area.” The statement contradicts both Dubray’s account and a video of the incident, which was published by TB News Watch.

I wanted to hear from Thunder Bay Police, given that Holland referenced them having cleared a safe path for him to leave (which is not visible in the video), but they also didn’t return my media request.

Holland slowly advancing his vehicle into a crowd of picketers is not an isolated incident. Earlier that same day, Dubray told me that another worker in Thunder Bay was clipped by a vehicle in Ford’s entourage as they drove to their event. “Clearly they don’t care about them or us,” said Dubray.

Violence on picket lines is nothing new. Back in 2006, John Stammers died from injuries he sustained on an OPSEU picket line at Centennial College when a car drove through the picket line he was holding. Cops didn’t charge the individual even though they had surveillance footage, as they said that they didn’t, “believe the driver of the car committed a criminal offence.”

More recently, aggressive and dangerous manoeuvres at picket lines are far too common. Like this, at Durham College last year, this at UWO two years ago, this at a casino in Ajax in 2022, this at Seneca college in 2011, or these subcontractors who ran at a LiUNA picket line earlier this year in Kingston. At least in this case, where a worker ploughed through a picket line outside of the OLG Slots at the Rideau Carleton Raceway in 2016, the individual was charged. And here, in 2013, in Boucherville, a driver was also charged for having caused injuries to a striking Kronos worker.

What sets Dubray’s bump aside from these cases is that the driver was a sitting MPP.

Dubray’s story went viral in Thunder Bay and he received a wave of hatred towards him, including messages that said Holland should have been him harder. That’s far too often the reaction from some, that a vehicle always has the right of way and that anyone in front of one deserves to be hit.

But let’s remember what is at play here: workers who only want to be paid enough to afford to live, and for wages that are lower, in real terms, than they were in 2018, to inch up. They are right to want to talk to their MPP. And here is Holland, a career politician whose livelihood was made off of a family business, too impatient, too cowardly to stop his car and hear from his constituents, and so entitled that he simply drove through the crowd with no apparent care for what the consequences might have been.

Dubray was only bumped by the truck, but it’s the symbols here that count: in the hierarchy of life in Thunder Bay, Holland is on top and Dubray and his fellow workers are near the bottom. Below them, of course, are the people who rely on Holland’s government to fund their services.

In an emailed statement, OPSEU President JP Hornick laid out the stakes:

“Doug Ford and Conservative MPPs have shown nothing but disdain for striking workers in communities across Ontario. After giving themselves a 21-week legislative break, MPPs have been avoiding any accountability for underfunding community services and have refused to meet with striking workers. The increase in aggression – including the incident on June 16^th, or more recently, MP Kinga Sharma threatening workers at her office with mischief – reflects their current strategy to try and bully the problem away.

Community service workers are fighting for the most vulnerable in our province and justice for stolen wages under Bill 124. We aren’t going anywhere.”

Indeed, as much as Ford wants these workers to go away, at 11 weeks and finally seeing some victories for striking members, their endurance will pay off. OPSEU’s strike has been a part of a tidal shift in popularity away from Ford. While pollsters and liberal journalists focus on aesthetic things like Ford’s plane scandal and his MPPs’ spending scandals, the quiet engine of discontent driven by the workers is having an impact as well. There isn’t much difference between an entitled MPP driving his truck through a picket line and an entitled MPP charging taxpayers thousands so that he doesn’t need to take the subway a few stops at night to go home.

As CCPA researchers Ricardo Tranjan and Katherine Scott wrote back when the summer was still a distant idea in June, “Austerity is a political choice. Workers are banding together to make their case. They’ve had enough. They deserve our support.” Not only is this still true, they also deserve to be honoured for placing their bodies and their livelihoods on the line to refuse Ford’s continued desecration of the province.

A few weeks ago, I was on the Rad Book Club to talk about all things radical. It was a fun chat that you will likely enjoy.

And, if you were wondering how things went after this last post, well, I left for a few days to the woods and discovered when I got back that Videotron still hadn’t turned on my service! They gave me $15 to apologise. You can read about that here —

Anyway! Here are the headlines from a truncated Daily News podcast (thanks to that aforementioned few days in the woods!)

Alberta

Alberta allowing self-referrals for privately paid MRI, CT and other imaging tests

Quebec

Five police officers suspended after 2018 Montreal police chase

Ontario

Chemical spill at Cambridge data centre

Officer who retired after assault, harassment and gun charges on path to resolve criminal case

Ottawa to scrap base contribution requirements for U.S. streamers

National

Canadian intern at NATO military headquarters in Belgium faces spying charges

Carney calls 3 byelections in B.C., Ontario and Quebec

Elbows up? Most Canadians support retaliation against U.S. tariffs: poll

International

Malaysian foreign minister calls for review of UNHCR’s presence

FIFA plan for Kushner-backed $20 billion operation to run World Cup meets fury from Europe’s UEFA

Al Jazeera lays off its Gaza journalists

Why a new war in Yemen could be different for the Houthis

Europe wildfires: ‘Difficult hours lie ahead’ in battle to contain fires, says Pedro Sánchez as more than 300,000 flee homes in France and Spain – as it happened

Every month, I need to have an injection. The subcutaneous vessel contains something that keeps me in menopause. My cancer is fed by hormones, and so this cuts the tumour’s lifesource. The injection hurts, the menopause sucks and the logistics of finding a place to do it on the same day of each month is a pain in my ass (stomach).

This morning, I went for my appointment (scheduled at the start of July). When I’m home, I get the injection at my local pharmacy (owned by Métro, who made $1 billion in profits in 2025). When I arrived at the desk, I was told that my appointment was cancelled — the nurse had quit.

They told me that they called me several times to tell me this: on July 26, on July 27 and again, on July 28. They couldn’t reach me and here I was, shit out of luck. That’s what you get when your healthcare is coordinated by the private system. If a nurse quits, you don’t get to just see another nurse — there’s no one else. Try clicsanté was the advice. As if I hadn’t thought of the most obvious option.

We used to have a local vaccine clinic in our neighbourhood that was public. That’s gone, replaced by corporations who pay profits to shareholders from the two minutes it takes to give me this implant.

Now, I have to walk for 20 minutes down and back up the cliff to my closest public clinic, if I can get an appointment. As they’ve removed vaccine services from our neighbourhoods, central locations are far busier, and private pharmacies have gobbled up patients like me, charging us a modest fee of $20-$30 to have the injections. That’s nothing, compared to the $200 my medicine costs (post insurance claim).

Thanks to my geriatric neighbourhood, we are overflowing with pharmacies. But it’s not that straightforward: one refuses to do any injection for medication that isn’t filled by them. One has a confusing operation I’ve never been able to successfully navigate. When my pharmacy hired a nurse, it was like hitting the lottery. I didn’t have to walk far and I could order medicine and shot together.

Except when the nurse quits. They’re not mandated to have a backup nurse or to find me a solution.

The trouble though really started six years ago, when my phone company Vidéotron (Owned by Québecor, net profits of $1.4 billion in 2025) divided my phone and internet bills so I had to pay them separately. They didn’t tell me this, and so by midway through 2020, when I was thinking about a million things that weren’t related to my cell phone billing, they cut my cell phone service. I had been paying my bills to one of the two accounts — surplus in my Internet account and deficit in my cell phone account.

They split the accounts so that it was harder for users to see gradual fee increases. And, it was easier to miss payments and charge people interest. Since 2020, it’s happened several more times. My bank’s interface shows that I pay two separate accounts, but sometimes it’s actually still both to Internet. I even set up automatic billing in what I thought was the troublesome account to stop this from happening again.

Rather than calling me to say that one of my accounts had all my money and one of my accounts was in the red, Vidéotron cut my cell phone service. I don’t know when, because I haven’t called anyone since Sunday. My cell phone, for all intents and purposes (photos, Internet, instant messaging, texting) worked fine. When Sandy called me yesterday to record this week’s episode, she told me she couldn’t reach me (weird!) That’s when I discovered that Vidéotron cut me off again.

I looked at my bank account: two payments, both made in July, to different accounts.

When I called, the agent said he could see that there was too much money in one account and not enough money in the other. No, he couldn’t switch them — I had to pay the outstanding balance again and just ride out a credit in my other account. I had been asking for years if they could combine them again finally. Sure, was the surprise reply (after years of no). Just call back next week — it can’t happen while your account is in deficit (yes, don’t think too hard about how my problems vanish if the accounts were combined because all the money I “owed” was also “owed” to me by Vidéotron in the form of a credit).

So — no cell phone, no phone call warning, no call from the pharmacy and I arrive this morning and no injection.

I ran to two other pharmacies and the second one could take me in 45 minutes. Relief. $20 and I’m good for another four weeks.

In May, all the mainstream pharmacies that I called in Regina told me they couldn’t give me an injection. Shoppers Drug Mart (Loblaw’s 2025 profits were $2.6 billion), which was the closest pharmacy to where I was staying, told me they didn’t do injections for business travellers like me. Maybe I should try the street clinic, they suggested. I did, and not only was the nurse the most talented injectress I’ve ever had, they charged me nothing (The pharmacy owner isn’t in this business to make money she said.)

My June injection happened when I was home for vacation. No pharmacies did the kind of injection I needed, so I booked with a walk-in clinic months in advance. At the desk, I was told I had to pay $100 in motherfucking cash. She didn’t know why this wasn’t mentioned when I booked the appointment. What choice did I have? I had the money, thanks to the corner store down the way having the cash on hand. The cashier only charged me $102. I could either pay, or not have the injection at all.

Private medicine is convenient and easy right up until the point where it’s not. It works until the non-unionized nurse quits and they have no requirement to replace her. It works until you have a job that doesn’t let you take all the time you need to figure this stuff out. It works until you can’t run from pharmacy to pharmacy to find another option the day you need the injection. It works until you can’t afford the expense.

It works, until you cross from one province into another province and your monthly vaccine becomes availability and cost Roulette.

It works until it doesn’t.

Sometimes the public system doesn’t work either, except there is a major difference: the private system offers healthcare services as an ancillary service to its main reason to exist: to make profits. No public clinic would turn someone away because a nurse had quit. They are a clinic in the business of serving people, first and foremost. The Shoppers Drug Marts, Pharmaprixes, Brunets and Jean Coutus of the world are, first and foremost, in the service of sending our money to their shareholders. If they provide a service along the way, great.

It feels necessary to mention that all of this is because I decided that I should not allow cancer to grow tumours so large that I would die a slow and painful death. While I may still die that way, I’d like to prolong it from happening. But the barriers, the fees, the running-around — it stops lots of people from filling their prescriptions, following their doctors’ orders, seeking care. It stops lots of people from the luxury of prolonging a good life. All the while, it pays money out to shareholders.

And worse, it conspires with other forms of control and discipline to grind us into the ground. I never asked for my cell phone to be an extension of myself — that all things are to be done through it. I guess, at least this time no one called the police to file a missing persons report about me, like when I left my phone at the Vancouver airport while flying to Whitehorse and my hotel couldn’t reach me for a few days last September.

Canada’s beloved public healthcare system has been in a state of garage sale for decades now. If you look at the work of CCPA Senior Health Policy Researcher Andrew Longhurst, you can see the impact that this garage sale has had on our provincial systems. We can joke about Canada being a couple of [insert companies here] in a trench coat all we’d like, but christ, no one is coming to save us from this system. It has to be shut down.

Today one year ago, a cancerous tumour was removed from my breast. In the span of an hour, I went from someone who has cancer to someone who had cancer.

You might think that this year has been a bad one, or that it’s been lived in the shadow of breast cancer. It’s certainly present in the number of pills I now have to take, in the bi-weekly and then monthly blood tests, October’s radiation sessions, in the changes to my body that being dropped into menopause has created. But really, breast cancer has barely been on my mind.

Maybe that’s thanks to the fact that I chose a punishing profession. Living from writing rejection to dejection to rejection to small success and back to dejection has perfectly set me up for this illness. Try, monitor, fail. Wait. Fail again. Have someone tell you that it isn’t fair, that you’re doing amazing, just keep going, don’t read too much about it online.

Breast cancer or struggling to write in Canada: même combat.

There have been changes, of course. I have to think about what I drink and what I eat. I feel more guilty if I’m drinking alcohol because of the medication I’m on (even though I don’t think I need to feel guilty). My weight has migrated from one spot in my body to another. I’ve had another cancer scare due to the menopausal changes that also could be an indication of cancer (all clear though). I have aches and pains and my shoulder hurts now. I sigh when I get off the couch and I feel like my body is 55 years old.

I’m still playing soccer, though I feel slower (“you’re playing the same as you always do” said one teammate). I feel pain more acutely — I was hit in the wrist with a ball a few weeks ago and I thought it had snapped in half (it didn’t even bruise). When I wake up, I can’t form a fist in my right hand without pain shooting through every pain channel and internal electric body thing that’s in there. I just got my first Orthovisc injection into my toe of what I imagine will be close to 100 before I die. I hope.

I have also been plagued by brain fog. Sometimes I have a hard time thinking straight, which is less than ideal when your fake career depends on being able to think. I had to ask the editor of my next book to watch out for things that I wrote that make literally no sense. I thought writing a book about COVID while I was locked down was hard. This has proven to be much harder.

But, as with most things, the physical challenges are not as hard as the psychological ones. Feeling like I’m 55 is not a physical manifestation of the changes, it’s a mental one. What do I know about being 55? Literally nothing. So I’m also reminding myself that even though there isn’t much information out there about what to expect living a menopausal life when menopause is supposed to be a faint image long-out in the horizon, I can figure it out myself.

All this whining aside, this past year has been great.

I celebrated this one-year milestone by buying a gym membership. I need to lift more. Despite having always been active, the one thing that will give me the most strength and longevity is at the other end of three office building doors tucked away at the back of Quebec’s National Assembly. Maybe next time you see me, my arm will be as thick as your neck.

Thirteen percent of women will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some point in their lives. It’s an incredibly survivable cancer, but it also still kills. My tumour’s oncotype was high enough to tell the world that it will likely be back, but not so high that I think about it all that much. Since my diagnosis, three friends my age have also been diagnosed with breast cancer. I guess I’m here to say that it’s not the end of the world. It will give you an excuse to become introspective, moody, wiser and maybe even more interesting.

Here’s where I was one year ago —

The Festival d’été de Québec (the FEQ) wrapped on Sunday night. I live in the heart of the downtown and the FEQ for me is much more about watching the crowds than the shows. 100,000 people (give or take) go in and out of the downtown every night. A steady stream of partiers walk by my front door between 4 and 7:30 PM and then walk past the other way between 9:30 and 1 AM. I see twenty cars or so towed every day.

The total capacity of the festival is 125,000 spread across five stages. By March, the 105,000 available day passes (priced at $180 each) sold out in just a few hours.

That is a lot of people for a city of 549,459 (or 850,000 if you include the surrounding area). Consider that Ottawa, with its one million residents, likely surpassed 30,000 attendees for a few of biggest Jazzfest shows. At the Plaines of Abraham stage, the crowd is regularly larger than 80,000 (its capacity is 100,000).

To move that many people that many nights in a row takes an enormous effort by the city. For eleven days of the year, Quebec City is forced to abandon its car fanaticism and embraces alternative modes of transportation.

There are only four roads that lead into the city’s downtown: Sainte-Foy, René-Lévesque, Grande-Allée and Honoré-Mercier. That last road is actually half a highway that dead-ends at the Plaines of Abraham. To accommodate so many people, roads have to be closed. Roads are closed for the entire festival from Rene-Lévesque and Honoré-Mercier (in front of the National Assembly) over to the Grande-Allée, and on the Grande Allée up to the Concorde Hotel.

Perhaps counter-intuitively for car activists, last year, the city closed one lane of the Grande-Allée and created a temporary east-west bike corridor (there was a transit strike on during the FEQ last year). This year, they maintained this temporary artery and made other changes too, due mostly to pre-construction work for the future Tramway. Car traffic was reduced to one-way on the Grande Allée for the entire downtown (direction away from the festival) to make space for buses that ran in both directions.

On René-Lévesque, which has previously been the (pre-tramway construction) east-west bus route, parking was banned and one lane towards the downtown was used entirely by buses waiting for their turn to shuttle concertgoers home. This was the primary west-bound way out of the city for car traffic.

The data show that the city’s planning was a big success. The city registered 74,500 trips made by bike, with a 9% increase of traffic on the Grande-Allée bike lanes (this doesn’t include people like me and my friends who didn’t bike over any of the city’s bike counters). Car traffic didn’t decrease with the half-closed Grande-Allée, and there weren’t any significant traffic problems, aside from what you’d expect with so many people trying to get to the FEQ.

As for public transportation, the city organized four special shuttles for the suburbs, and increased service on its regular lines. 277,500 people took public transit to the FEQ. The city’s bus service, the RTC, also manages a network of e-bikes, which have also seen a strong growth since their launch a few years ago. The city registered 178,000 trips taken on àVélo to get to the FEQ (there are only 2,300 bikes in the entire network).

To accommodate all the cyclists, there were two enormous bike parking stations, including a helmet lock-up for anyone who took àVélo.

Of course, there are still too many cars. The city made 1,480 interventions to improve the flow of traffic (including by having cops stand around staring at their phones at every intersection). The volume made some drivers impatient. I saw many an illegal manoeuvre, many a 5-pt turn (people in this city are incapable of making a 3-pt turn), and one fender-bender. My family returned to Quebec City right in the middle of the traffic of opening night. My cabbie refused to take René-Lévesque because he heard it was a nightmare (it’s never actually a nightmare) and he tried to drive us up to Sainte-Foy via the Côte Sherbrooke. This (predictably) ended with him doing several idiotic manoeuvres on side streets (which also doubled our driving time).

What I love most about the FEQ is that it shows residents a vision of mobility that doesn’t rely so heavily on cars.

I think these lessons learned in Paris are critical for mobility activists to understand, and our annual dance with alternatives gives us a good time to check in on how well we’re doing.

1. Reducing Car Use Improves Quality of Life for Most Residents

   Without question, fewer cars improves pretty much everything about our neighbourhood. The FEQ would be impossible if the roads all stayed open to vehicule traffic. The challenge is that most of the people who drive downtown don’t actually live downtown. We’re an attraction; the suburbs are where people live, they argue. Instilling respect for people who live downtown is a cultural shift that activists need to think through as we advocate for car-free cores.
   

2. Pushing Cars Out Does Not Harm the Urban Economy

   The FEQ is an enormous economic opportunity and so in this case, there’s little question that the crowds bring with them money ready to spend. And with $9 Coors Light within the FEQ grounds, there’s an even greater reason to buy your beer at the Depanneur.

3. Car-Free Cities Must Provide Attractive Alternatives

   This is fundamental. Without àVélo, fewer people will bike. More people using àVélo will trigger groups to use a mix of personal and city bikes. But without bike lanes, few people will take a bike if it will get them killed. Safe, protected lanes are a must, and the city has done a lot of work to give cyclists this infrastructure. Public transit shuttles that pick people up in central locations in the suburbs are key, and they must have enough capacity to move everyone quickly. This year, the RTC had music blaring at its stops downtown, with personnel directing everyone towards the right shuttle. Shoutout to the annual 420 Festival route.
   

4. Cities Need to Get Deliveries Under Control

   Businesses need to be able to access their goods. Deliveries have to be timed in such a way to avoid crowds and access closed streets if necessary. Plus, delivery trucks need to be smaller.
   

5. Cities Must Also Regulate Cyclists
   The proliferation of àVélo users has reminded me that Quebec Cityers bike as well as they drive (poorly). There has to be education given on how to safely drive past people, how not to blow through a pedestrian intersection (always slow down and look around you!) and other cycling basics. One of the things that all drivers in this city lack is maintaining eye lead. No one seems to look past the end of the hood of their car, and cyclists suffer from the same affliction.
   

Cities are fighting a tough opponent. In Quebec, the average weight of personal vehicles has grown by 140 kilograms in the past ten years. People are driving larger, heavier vehicles (yes, that’s one reason why you see more potholes, folks). Finding parking for these highly stupid machines is more and more difficult. As car companies push these enormous vehicles on the population, our collective battle over our collective space will become even harder.

There is no reasonable justification for why people need enormous vehicles. Literally, not one. Quebecers especially, who are shorter on average than Canadians, do not need the extra head and leg room. If our cities don’t get a handle on the alternatives, we will be held hostage by the F150s or F250s or Rams of the world, and the success of future FEQs will be challenged by the proliferation of these road monsters.

But that will be for next year to figure out. For now, the city basks in the glow of a successful 11-day party.

I did spend most nights at the FEQ. I saw some really great acts (Billy Bragg, Melody Gardot, Les Louanges, Kanazoé Orkestra, Alphonse Bisaillon, Basia Bulat). I, of course, walked. But that’s the benefit of living so close to Canada’s largest annual music festival. And even better — my hostas survived. Usually by the end of the FEQ, there is a body-sized hole in my plants where someone drunkenly fell into.

A few weeks ago, I had the best conversation with Matthew Remski. If you have a bit of time, you should listen to it if you have a bit of time.

And it that isn’t enough, you can catch the Daily News digest here. Below are the headlines that were featured on the Daily News podcast this past week.

British Columbia

A Tiny BC Farming Town’s Fight Against Billionaire Speculators

Striking B.C. nurses take picket lines to Vancouver Island

‘Heartbreaking’: B.C. pulp mill to shut down, putting around 300 employees out of work


Nova Scotia

Protesters surround Tim Houston’s car, windshield smashed after speech

Quebec

A Quebec gun company wants to talk export policies after its rifles were used by Russian army

Quebec Agency Warns Arms Exports To U.S. Could Violate Treaty

Ontario

Gun evidence tossed after police car seen on video slamming into scooter riders in Canadian Tire takedown

Torontonians describe chaos after fatal shooting at St. Clair festival

Ottawa tight-lipped on joining legal case against Trump sanction of Canadian ICC judge

Ontario says naming ministers whose vehicles sped would reveal ‘travel habits’

National

Liberals continue court fight against First Nations drinking water rights, despite new bill

Corus undertakes new round of layoffs

StubHub, CEO hit with ‘deceptive practices’ class action over mass scalping

Rogers cutting telco customer service jobs amid complaints of long wait times

Canada attends Trump summit targeting left-wing extremism

Canada to buy nearly $2-billion in armoured vehicles from new ‘strategic partner,’ U.S. defence contractor

International

A boat carrying migrants capsizes off Libya’s coast, with at least 50 dead or missing

Iran war updates: US launches new attacks after Trump’s threats

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With the planned increase in spending to Canada’s military, I’m pleased to share with you this reflection on the state of the Armed Forced, per a Canada Day military parade.

1 July, 2026 - The Battle of Queen’s Park

In celebration of Canada Day, the Canadian State organized and executed a military parade at the Queen’s Park. The troops performing the parade were drawn from a Toronto based primary reserve regiment.

Unfortunately the troops on parade disgraced themselves, and the entire military with an absolutely shambolic demonstration of ill-discipline, slackness, individualism, and poorly fitted uniforms.

Primary reservists are professional, part-time soldiers expected to be able to perform basic military tasks to the established standard. The inability of the soldiers on this parade to perform basic drill speaks to a crisis at least in the Canadian Army Reserve, but potentially in the entire military. It matters because military parades aren’t just done for fun and games. They represent a form of communication between the state and its citizens.

Sloppy, out of control ceremonial drill speaks to an organization in disarray. It also raises the question of what other basic skills these troops lack. Can they fight? Do they even know which is the dangerous end of their rifles? We have to ask because those skills are taught only after a soldier learns to drill properly.

Every soldier who completes their basic training course should be able to competently participate in a simple demonstration of military drill because according to the Canadian Armed Forces, drill is “the basis of all teamwork.”

Throughout the parade the troops were stuck in an absolutely gory battle with the Canadian Armed Forces Manual of Drill and Ceremonial. They butchered and slaughtered the simplest of movements, looking like a colossal bag of hammers in front of a small and surely demoralized crowd of Canadians forced to politely watch on as their army clusterfucked its way across the square.

The soldiers put on a display of the worst drill one can see outside of a gaggle of raw recruits first learning how to move together as a unit. The online response to footage of the bloodbath posted by Toronto lawyer and perennial crowd chaser Caryma S’ad was as brutal as the troops’ drill.

Some wags asked if it was a Monty Python sketch. Veterans were especially critical, pointing out endless botched manoeuvres. The soldiers, who clearly didn’t rehearse together prior to the day, looked absolutely horrible on parade.

The Canadian Manual of Drill and Ceremony calls for the standard salute to consist of something like the image on the left. Online commentators pointed to the “limp wristed” salutes of certain members of army. This was used to bolster claims that “wokeness” or “DEI” has ruined the army as opposed to it being ruined by its own shitty leadership not paying attention to detail or doing their duty to properly train the slackness and idleness out of their soldiers.

Unfortunately, a lot of patriotic Canadian bigots used the opportunity to blame “DEI” and “woke” because the regiment that provided the bulk of the troops for the parade is one of the more racially and gender diverse regiments in the army. However, these ignoramuses have apparently not seen drill other than that which their own state has shown them.

It doesn’t matter to me whether the Canadian state makes it or not. But seeing state incompetence used to manufacture even more racism, sexism, and homophobia requires an intervention of this sort because ethnicity, gender, and sexuality have nothing to do with one’s ability to learn and perform ceremonial drills.

Here is a video of Chinese people, women included, drilling with precision. Here is another video showing the People’s Republic of China hosting a diverse, international group of militaries who were all capable of producing organized bodies of competently drilled and disciplined troops. In the second video we can note several unique styles on display and consider what messages are contained in the choreographed movements and uniforms of different states.

But even the drunkest Canadian simpleton on Canada Day should be able to grasp that ethnicity and gender or “DEI” have nothing to do with a military’s ability to produce competent, organized, well disciplined bodies of troops. “Woke killed the army” is not a defensible position.

At the end of the day, we must simply conclude that the soldiers selected for the Queen’s Park detail were undertrained, ill-disciplined, badly organized, and very poorly led.

But who cares, right? It was just a little ceremony for the nation’s holiday.

Well, it came at a time when everyone’s elbows are supposed to be up because of something to do with a new world order. We’re supposed to be taking this moment in geopolitics very seriously according to our civilian leaders who are ultimately the ones responsible for what the military does.

These did not look like serious soldiers representing a serious, competent, or capable state. The troops looked like a soup sandwich out there, which is to say they looked messy and useless.

What Is Drill and Why Does It Matter?

The drill movements we saw “qualified” Canadian soldiers attempt and fail spectacularly are based on 18th-19th century European tactical movements. Picture a 19th century European army, say during the Napoleonic Wars or the Crimean War.

You will have noticed how the troops stood shoulder to shoulder in long lines and blasted away at each other. This was because musket fire and early rifle fire was notoriously inaccurate on an individual shooter to target basis. But if you lined a bunch of musketeers up shoulder to shoulder in 2-4 ranks, and made them shoot in coordinated volleys, you could achieve what we call “effective fire”. By concentrating one’s forces in this way, commanders could direct “effective fire” towards the enemy.

The downside of this tactic is that the enemy was doing the same thing. Most sensible people would turn around and run away if they saw a bunch of enemies firing bullets at them or charging at them on horseback. It took an incredible amount of training and extreme disciplinary measures to make men stand up and receive the enemy’s fire when every natural instinct is urging the body to turn and run away.

Thus the drills we see in 21st century parades are based on the historical need for tactical superiority. Think of Britain’s “The Thin Red Line” repelling a charging horde of Russian heavy cavalry during the Crimean War. Without drill and training, those Scotsmen would have been turned into Russian kebabs.

The 93rd Sutherland Highlanders commanded by Sir Colin Campbell (foreground with the broadsword) produced an unlikely tactical victory during the Crimean War against Russian heavy cavalry who had the advantage of charging downhill. The be-kilted soldiers of the 93rd should not have been able to withstand such a charge, but won the battle thanks to Sir Colin’s strict discipline and training regimen. Campbell was an extremely effective battlefield commander due to the way he led his troops both in garrison and in the field.

In 21st century militaries, 19th century tactical drill forms the basis of ceremonial military drill and is the first set of skills taught to new recruits. This is because the emphasis on tightly controlled and timed movements is a handy way to teach new troops how to move and think as a single, cohesive body rather than as “slack and idle individuals” as Canadian boot camp NCOs used to call their recruits.

Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) doctrine teaches that “the aim of drill and ceremonial is to contribute to the operational effectiveness of the CAF by a) ensuring that the CAF efficiently march and manoeuvre together as one in duty and routine; and b) promoting discipline, alertness, precision, pride, steadiness and the cohesion necessary for success.”

Essentially drill and ceremonial are a way to indoctrinate and integrate individuals into the collective. Anyone who has completed an effective basic training course can probably remember the moment when their individual ego dissipated and was at least partially replaced by a collectivized ego. The kind that makes one willing to march into the flaming mouth of hell because of the belief that “the squadron never dies”.

Drill is indoctrination.

What is the Purpose of a Public Military Parade?

Now that parade square drill is no longer associated with practical tactical skills, and now that we understand that it is about the effective indoctrination of individuals into the collective, we must next attempt to understand why states spend resources and time not only teaching drill, but then displaying it publicly.

Just as drill is used to indoctrinate individual soldiers, it is used to indoctrinate the general public. It is a form of communication from the state to the people. It is not a neutral celebration of neutral institutions when the armed wing of the state demonstrates its martial acumen publicly. It is meant to project strength, stability, and organizational capacity. It is meant to instil pride in and awe of the coercive power of the state and its well organized and disciplined institutions, while making this power seem naturally occurring and inevitable.

This is why the styles of drill vary so dramatically depending on the nature of the state. It used to be said in Canadian military circles that the way an army drills says a lot about the state producing the parade. It was noted that authoritarian and/or extremely nationalistic states produce extremely aggressive, forceful drill.

Think of fascist goosestepping armies such as in Nazi Germany. The high, fast kicks result in boots smashing down with authority. The sharp, aggressive movements serve as a visual reminder of the state’s readiness to use force quickly and decisively. There is nothing subtle about the way fascists conduct their martial drill.

It reminds the audience of Orwell’s image of a boot stamping on a human face forever. This form of drill communicates that “we are well organized, disciplined, cohesive, and we will swiftly crush you if you step out of line.”

In contrast, the drill of liberal democracies tends to be far more subdued. The Dutch, French, British, Canadian, American, Spanish, Danish (we can go on) armies all use a quieter form of ceremonial drill. The quick marches of these militaries look almost like normal walking. A slightly starched collar, rather than a rock hard one.

Instead of communicating swift and instant state violence, this form of parading communicates consent and a reluctance to use the coercive tools of state. It says “we are well organized, disciplined, cohesive, and we will only crush you as a last resort, not a first.”

What was the Message Delivered On Canada Day in Toronto?

When a group of soldiers, armed agents of the state, perform in public it is a message from the state to the public. So what message did the troops send on Canada Day, of all days?

The message sent by the terrible drill is that “we are badly led, poorly organized, incapable of cohesive action, inattentive to detail, ill-disciplined, and incompetent.”

The disgraceful display was not a result of “DEI” as so many racist, misogynistic, chronically online, Old-Stock Canadian losers are claiming. As the video evidence demonstrated, ethnicity and gender have nothing to do with a competent organization’s ability to teach and demonstrate ceremonial drill.

It’s not “wokeness” that’s killing the army. It is a dysfunctional neoliberal state doing so. One that just publicly announced its incompetence and negligence for the entire country and indeed the world to witness.

The Chinese and Russian embassies may well have taken note of the clumsy clodhopping of the Canadian army and they are surely aware, at least in a general sense, of the rightwing identitarian misidentification of the root cause.

Racism and sexism are perpetual strategic vulnerabilities of the Canadian state project and these forms of oppression can and will be instrumentalized and exploited by enemies of state, of which I include those who seek its gradual withering away.

Happy Canada Day indeed.

Kwame Eff served in the Canadian Armed Forces for eight years, reaching the rank of captain. Kwame served for a time as Base Adjutant for Area Support Unit - Toronto and was therefore the officer responsible for the dress, deportment, and discipline of the junior officers assigned to the command. He also participated in numerous public parades with his home regiment, The Queen’s York Rangers (First American Regiment), Royal Canadian Armoured Corps. He completed one tour of duty as part of the United Nations Mission in Sudan, a peacekeeping operation. Today Kwame is vehemently anti-war and anti-militarism and is the publisher of t.a.l.e.zine on Substack, a publication about the Canadian publishing industry.

Read Part 1 here

Read Part 2 here

One of the things that is mostly invisible to average people is just how networked Canada’s elites are. They attend each others’ parties. They donate to each others’ causes. As I was going through the signatories of this letter, it was impossible to not notice that there were a few patterns that kept appearing among the signatories. Here are some of the connections that I noticed…

The Change Makers Gala fundraising for the Brian Mulroney Chair in Government at Tel Aviv University.

Held two years and a half into the genocide on April 26, 2026, the gala was a who’s who of Canada’s elite. Tel Aviv University Canada is governed by a national board, regional boards and the gala has its own committee. Stephen Harper is its honourary chair. Ben and Mark Mulroney were among the honourees (obviously) and Victoria Mancinelli, the daughter of LiUNA’s Canadian president is on the gala committee — all were signatories to the antisemitism full-page ad. Adam Daifallah, staff at the Horatio Alger Society, a group that I write about below, is also on the gala committee.

Pierre Poilievre, Doug Ford and Brad²Ford were both in attendance. The event, reported by the Toronto Star, intended to celebrate, among other things, “the enduring relationship between Canada and Israel.” No mentions of genocide here — it was just good vibes.

In a video, Mancinelli says, “Israel really stands as a beacon of resilience, hope and strength for us all.” Jean Charest was in the video. And, many companies that appeared in the full-page ad sponsored the event: CIBC, Beedie, LiUNA, BMO, Teneo, George Weston Ltd and PwC.

There’s another connection here too — the “Gala Sponsor,” the group at the top of the list of sponsors under its own heading, is the Foundation Gray, an American foundation funded by Mindy and Jon Gray. They gave Tel Aviv University $125 million in that school’s largest ever donation in June 2025. The i24 Tel Aviv video shows the Grays’ liberal Zionism — “to be rebuilders in a broken world” and to ensure that Arab Israelis and Jewish Israelis can come together at the medical school. President Isaac Hertzog welcomed the couple’s donation, saying, “in the face of evil, we are choosing life and treating all lives as sacred” (impossible to not immediately hear the words of Palestinian poet Rafeef Ziadah). Anyway. The Grays are incredibly wealthy thanks in part to the fact that Jon is the chairperson of Blackstone — the world’s largest alternative asset manager, and the chair of Hilton Hotels. But here’s the connection — Brian Mulroney was on Blackstone’s board up until his death. The Grays appear in the gala video honouring Mulroney.

Since 2016, the Canadian charity has sent $64 million to Israel.

If you’re wondering if it’s weird that Canada allows tax-payers’ dollars to be funnelled out of Canada to a university in Tel Aviv, it isn’t that weird — there are dozens and dozens of schools that CRA considers to be “qualified donees” — that is, universities where charities are allowed to send their money. Most Israeli schools were registered in 2012, the first year that schools were added to the list.

It’s notable that Israel’s universities are complicit in the genocide. Technion and the Weizmann Institute gave birth to the Israeli arms company Raphael. And yes, the Weizmann Institute also has a Canadian charity. Since 2016, $140 million has been sent to the Weizman institute through Canadian charitable donations, and $65 million has been given to Technion. At the end of May, a gala was held for the Weizman Institute that raised $8 million. You can read more about the money that Canadians are sending to Israeli institutions here, from Just Peace Advocates. You can catch the Ben Gurion University Gala in the Fall, featuring Michael Douglas.

The Horatio Alger Society - Canada

Named for an author of several rags-to-riches paperbacks, the Horatio Alger society raises money for scholarships to demonstrate that even the poorest of young people under capitalism can go to university (literally! From their American website: “To mentor scholarship recipients and educate all youth about the limitless possibilities that are available through the American free enterprise system, while underscoring the importance of helping others.”)

Brian Mulroney was a vice-president of the organization up until his death.

They host a gala each year to raise money for their endowment fund, which currently sits at $31 million. Last year’s gala raised $8 million and was hosted by Steve Paikin.

The organization is lead by a board of six people, two of whom signed the letter (Prem Watsa and Adam Waterous) and one whose hospital he named after himself signed the letter (Jay Hennick). They also give out special awards to CEOs. Stéphane Cretier (Gardaworld), Bob Dhillon (Mainstreat Equity) and Darryl White (BMO) all won Horatio Alger awards in 2025 (of 6 awards). They also have something called the Jim Pattison Award (who also signed the letter) which has existed since 2022 and that Pattison himself has won 50% of the time.

They list several organizations that give young people scholarships as “strategic partners” though do not actually give those organizations the money for scholarships — they state that they ask these organizations to share information with students about the Horatio Alger awards.

Obviously, the extremely wealthy want to promote the glories of free enterprise in a society where higher education is more and more difficult to access, as they suck out public funding for higher education through their corporate profits, and then hand-pick the poor students that meet their ideological standards to actually go on to university, college or the trades.

Huron College Board of Governors - Western University

Huron College is the only educational institute on the list of signatories. Signed by its president and vice-chancellor Barry Craig, several names from their board of governors appears in the ad as well. The college’s president is Prem Watsa from Fairfax Holdings and fellow governors Brian J. Porter (Scotiabank) and Benjie Thomas (KPMG) signed the letter. Plus, there are representatives from the Rogers family, Fairfax (yes, there are two Fairfax reps on this board) and the law firm Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP, all of which had other reps sign the letter.

If you’re wondering, no, there are no representatives of any service groups in London, progressive not-for-profits or anything of the like on the board. The neoliberal transformation of higher education has been lead by this kind of over-representation of the corporate world on university boards of education.

Right-wing think tanks

Both the Fraser Institute and the MacDonald-Laurier Institute benefit handsomely from the fact that corporates pay out enormous profits to men who then invest in right-wing, free-market capitalist booster charities. The Beedie foundation, for example, gave the Fraser Institute half a million dollars in 2024, and Ryan Beedie, Gwyn Morgan, Mark Mulroney (CIBC) and John Love (Kingsett REIT) are on the board.

As for the McDonald-Laurier Institute, they receive funding from the O’Born family (Janice and Earle of The Printing House both signed the letter). Bob Dhillon and David Mulroney are on the organization’s advisory committee. The Institute has recently launched a project called The Promised Land where they conflate Jews with the state of Israel, hoping to, “address critical gaps in Canadian understanding of Israel and the Middle East, combat growing antisemitism, and counter extremism to uphold democratic values and foster informed dialogue.” They blame “recklessness in our immigration system” for why there is an increase in antisemitism.

See any other connections? Feel free to get in touch with me!

To read the preamble to this list, read Part 1

Read Part 3 here.

Israel has slaughtered more than 75,000 people. They have murdered the highest number of journalists, aid workers and healthcare workers. They have levelled Gaza to the ground and is doing the same to Lebanon as I write these words. Anyone associated with this pariah state needs to be held to account for their support of this genocide.

This is the list of companies from where people signed this open letter.

Agnico Eagle Mines paid $1.4B to shareholders in 2025, and boosted their shareholder payout by 12.5%. The surge in gold prices nearly doubled the company’s profits. They announced in May their intention to invest $14B to open two mines in Northern Ontario. They own the (non-union) Macassa mine (my cousin was injured there) in Kirkland Lake, where they’re also trying to make Company Housing Great Again by asking the Province to let them build 186 units for their workers. Just 11 of those units would be single family homes. They made that announcement just days after one of their workers was killed underground.

AGT Foods (distributor of my favourite chickpeas) is owned by the investment company Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited. AGT Foods made $300M in profits in 2025 off of selling food, like chickpeas. Canada grows so many pulses that we could give them away to all Canadians for free to fight food insecurity, but then AGT Foods wouldn’t make hundreds of millions in profits. Fairfax promises a 15% investment return per stock “over the long term.”

Automotive Properties REIT made $44M in profits in 2025. This real estate income trust owns car lots across Canada and the United States.

BMO Financial Group (signed by former Cabinet minister Scott Brison, chief clerk of the privy council Kevin Lynch and former premier of Newfoundland and Labrador Brian Tobin) is one of Canada’s Big Five banks, In 2025, they made $8.7B, a 19% increase in their profits over 2024, and made the third highest profits in Canada. Darryl White, BMO’s CEO is also a signatory on the list. In 2021, they loaned Israeli weapons company Elbit Systems $90 million.

Barclays Canada is a Canadian division of the British bank. In 2025, they made £9.1B, and returned 11% to their shareholders.

Beedie is a real estate development company. They have 365 tenants across 200 properties. The Globe and Mail notes that in 2024, they sold an Amazon centre to the founder of Zara for almost $400M. They have property in BC, Alberta, Ontario and Las Vegas (the Globe feature is a nauseating love-in for the company’s current leader). Ryan Beedie says, “I believe firmly that for society to accept a capitalistic system that has some inequality, those who have had success not only should give back but be seen as giving back.” Beedie is the president of the charity ONE Global (Canada), which, “works to educate people in Canada on issues related to ending extreme poverty and preventable disease, particularly in Africa.” In 2024, he gave $500,000 to the Fraser Institute and $175,000 to the Vancouver Police Foundation (which then sends $2M back to the Vancouver police department).

Burgundy Asset Management - This asset management firm recently became part of BMO in an acquisition worth $625M. They manage $27B in assets of mostly “high net worth individuals” and institutions.

Canadian Tire made $659 million in profits in 2025. The company has been on Canada’s BDS list for many years for selling items made in the occupied territories. In 2013, a guy named Mark Vandermaas organized something called “Israel Truth Week” where activists bought things at Canadian tire to demonstrate their support for Israel. Vandermaas was arrested several times at the resistance camp at Caledonia, once for planting a Canadian flag where Six Nations activists had an occupation. In 2021, he became a “vaccine” refugee” and fled Canada to Ecuador where he could have true freedom.

CIBC, one of Canada’s Big Five banks, reported $8.5 billion in 2025, up $1.3 billion in profits compared to 2024. Mark Mulroney signed on behalf of CIBC. He’s Brian Mulroney’s son. The Mulroneys are major Zionists. Ben Mulroney also signed the letter as a “podcaster” (lol … dude) and the family hosted a gala for Tel Aviv University in April 2026 that raised $2.5 million for the Brian Mulroney Chair in Government. CIBC made the fifth highest profits in Canada in 2025.

Colliers International is an enormous Canadian real estate company that made $4.8 billion in 2025. The CEO, global chairman and controlling shareholder of Colliers is Jay Hennick. The Hennick family foundation is credited for donating $40M to $49M to Mount Sinai hospital.

Corient Investments Canada describes itself as an agency for, “ultra-high-net-worth individuals and multi-generational families. The Globe and Mail explains that Corient expanding its wealthy family services in Canada makes sense: “Canada has roughly 176,800 families with each having a net worth exceeding $7.5-million. That’s a meaningful and growing pool of ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) families whose financial lives increasingly extend across multiple jurisdictions, private investments, trusts and operating businesses.” They only recently entered the Canadian market. Globally, the company manages $650 billion in assets.

Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP is a law firm. They just acted as a syndicate to raise the capital necessary for the First Nations privy to the Williams Treaty to invest almost $700M in nuclear energy in Ontario. The lenders included Manulife, Sunlife and iA Financial Group.

Deegan Public Strategies is a PR agency founded by Paul Deegan. Deegan was previously a senior executive for Canadian National Railway and BMO. He is also a director for the Michener Awards Foundation (Canada’s most prestigious journalism awards) and Journalists for Human Rights. Deegan, along with co-signatory to this letter Kevin Lynch, wrote an op-ed calling on Canada’s CEOs to come together to fight antisemitism, and to work with other countries to develop a new Marshall Plan for Palestine.

Dexterra Group manages large infrastructure across North America. The company made $122.8 million in net profits in 2025. On June 30, SEIU Local 2 accused Dexterra of hiring non-union workers and of violating employment standards at the Toronto Transit Commission. Dexterra is also owned by Fairfax. Bill McFarland signed on behalf of Dexterra and AGT Food and Ingredients. He is Fairfax’s Lead Director.

Doman Building Materials, based in Vancouver, made a profit of $256 million in 2025. They offer building, in particular lumber, materials notably for housing. Of course housing can’t be built without profit, Doman wouldn’t be able to pay out its shareholders!

Element Fleet Management is a company that manages transportation logistics for a variety of sectors. They made USD$1.2B in 2025 in profits. At the end of June, Element Fleet announced a partnership with the Canada Pension Board and Blackstone investment firm. In 2024, they acquired Israel’s Autofleet for $110 million.

E-L Financial Corporation Limited is an investment and insurance holding company. They operate Empire Life insurance. In 2025, they paid shareholders $1.234B in net profits.

EllisDon Corporation is Canada’s third largest construction company in Canada. In 2020, the company became 100% employee-owned, and therefore doesn’t publicly report its profits. They are the company that has worked on the Ontario Place project — demolishing it to build a new spa at the site. In 2025, they partnered with Palantir to incorporate Palantir’s AI into their operational systems. In 2025, they received $8M from the federal government for construction projects.

EnCana Corporation was an oil company and it’s founding CEO. Gwyn Morgan, signed the letter. Cenovus Energy was a spin-off company from EnCana. It collapsed by 2020. Morgan has also been a director of SNC-Lavalin. Morgan, a Conservative, notoriously said this: “who but the hopelessly politically correct can deny the malign influence of violent gangs from Jamaica, Sri Lanka and East Asia on street life in Toronto, Vancouver and other Canadian urban centres?”

EY Canada (Or, Ernst & Young) is a consulting company that helps businesses save money and make money. In 2025, the company made USD$53B in revenues globally. They attribute their success to their aggressive adoption of AI. They have operations in Israel

And speaking of Fairfax, they are also on the list of signatories. They made the eighth highest profits in Canada in 2025.

Finning International Inc. is the world’s largest dealership of Caterpillar equipment. In 2025, Finning made $2.4 billion in gross profits. Caterpillar is one of the highest profile companies that has enabled Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. They were in the top ten of best performing stock dividends from 2025.

FirstService Corporation manages $4.2 billion in assets. In 2025, the company made $191 million in profits. Founded by Jay Hennick, who was mentioned already on this list, the company was signed onto this list by its CEO, Scott Patterson. The company operates many sub companies that manage properties, do renovations and post-disaster clean up.

Franco-Nevada Corporation is another gold mining company. Most of their assets are in North and South America. In 2025, they set a new profit record, pulling $1.8 billion, which was 64% higher than the year previous. In 2016, they acquired a gold mine in Peru for $500M, an acquisition that was overseen by the law firm McCarthy Tétrault (a firm that also signed this letter).

GardaWorld made $1.2B in net revenue in 2025. This does not take into account the money that the company stood to make in 2026 when it was considered to provide security services for Trump’s Florida concentration camp. The letter was signed by Dubai-based Stephan Crétier, who is also the CEO of Crisis24, an international crisis response group with operations in Israel.

George Weston Co. made $7.5 billion in 2025. The money is made through screwing Canadians for food costs, pharmacy costs and one of Canada’s largest REIT. Loblaws has financially supported the UJA Walk for Israel.

Hennick Humber Hospital is just a hospital — the Wilson Avenue Hospital. Barbara and Jay Hennick gave the hospital $50M to name the hospital after themselves. Jay Hennick made his money in real estate with Colliers International and FirstService. Through FirstService, Jay owned College Pro, a company that once exploited me so badly that I made less than $2000 for painting houses full time one summer. While the Hennicks themselves didn’t sign the list, they donate to a lot of Israeli charities, including Beit Helochem Canada (supporting disabled Israeli veterans), Canadian Shaare Zedek Hospital Foundation (a hospital in Jerusalem), the Canadian Hadassah-WIZO (helping education and social services in Israel) and the United Jewish Appeals of Canada, of Greater Toronto and of Vancouver (who organize the annual Walk With Israel). This is the only hospital CEO on the list.

Huron University - This college housed at Western University is the only school on the list. The college advertises an exchange with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Jona Capital is a private investment firm owned by the Love family. John Love founded KingSett Capital. Christie Love Thomas, the daughter of John Love, signed on behalf of Jona Capital. John Love wrote a call to action against antisemitism in the National Post in April, 2026.

Kingsdale Advisors is an agency that gives advice to public companies and their business operations.

KingSett Capital claims to have pioneered Canada’s private equity real estate market. So when you’re wondering who to blame for the current housing crisis, KingSett Capital is one of the guilty players. They don’t disclose their profits but do say that they manage $20B in assets.

Kinross Gold Corporation is a gold mining company that made $2.3 billion in net profits in 2025. In February, the Ontario government announced that it would fast track the Great Bear open pit mine project with a life of 12 years at Red Lake in Northwestern Ontario. The project has been challenged by Grassy Narrows First Nation (Asubpeeschoseewagong Netum Anishinabek) over fears that the project will further poison the waters.

KPMG Canada is a global accounting and management services firm. They specialise in helping governments find the arguments to justify cutbacks, privatization, layoffs and other neoliberal economic reforms. In 2025, they had $39.8 billion in global revenue, a rise of 5.4%

LiUNA - the Labourers’ International Union is a strange organization to be on this list. Until you realise that the father-daughter combo who signed this letter are active conservatives and Zionists. Joseph Mancinelli endorsed Doug Ford (despite his attacks on working people) and he supports charities in Israel. Victoria Mancinelli was honoured by the Jewish National Fund - Hamilton, for her unwavering Zionism. At Joe’s own website, it starts off like this: “A visionary industry icon, thought leader, capacity builder, community activist, social change ambassador, strategic thinking, philanthropist, artist, humanitarian, global citizen are among some of the many words synonymous with the name Joseph S. Mancinelli.” LiUNA sponsors the UJA’s annual Walk for Israel and the Tel Aviv University Canada.

Major Rock Corporation owns Invictus Properties and an equity company. Owned by the Armstrong family, they also own Rocky Mountaineer. The Armstrong Family Foundation donates to the Fraser Institute, several private schools (St. George’s School Foundation and Branksome Hall) and the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver.

Mainstreet Equity Corp. made $183.4M in profits in 2025 and $169.9M in profits from their rental income. They are a corporate landlord with properties across Western Canada, including at university and college campuses.

Matco Investments is an investment firm that manages $780 million in assets.

Maverix Private Equity is a private equity firm founded by John Ruffolo. Former Ontario Minister of Health Eric Hoskins is a partner for the company, responsible for something called “Healthcare Innovation.”

Manulife Financial is one of Canada’s largest insurance companies. They paid out $5.6B to shareholders in 2025 alone. They made the seventh highest profits in Canada in 2025. Canada’s BDS list reports that Manulife has investments in Israeli-occupied illegal settlements.

Marval Capital Ltd. is an Indian-focused investment firm founded by Ben Watsa, the son of Fairfax Financial CEO Prem Watsa. Ben also chairs Fairfax’s Indian Holdings. In 2025, Marval Capital bragged that it made 268% increase on their profits.

Metro, the national grocery chain, made $217M in profits in 2025.

The National Bank of Canada made $4 billion of their year end on October 31, 2025. They made the twelfth highest profits in Canada in 2025. In 2024, Peace Brigades International reported that the National Bank had invested $95 million in General Dynamics, an arms company that produces some of the weapons that Israel has used to pound Gaza.

Northbridge Financial Corporation is a commercial property and casualty insurance group. They own Northbridge and Federated Insurance companies. Like AGT Foods, Northbridge Financial is owned by Fairfax. Fairfax made $4.77 billion in 2025 in profits.

Novacap is an investment firm that manages $16 billion in assets.

OMERS is one of Canada’s largest employee pension plans in Canada. In 2024, OMERS had invested $461 million in Israeli-occupied territories.

Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP is a law firm. They sponsored the UJA Walk for Israel.

Paramount Resources is an oil and gas company. In 2025, they paid shareholders $2.4 billion.

The Jim Pattison Group, named for its founder Jim Pattison (one of Canada’s wealthiest men), is a private company that does not reveal its income. In 2024, BC Business Magazine ranked it as the second biggest company in the province, with $19 billion in revenue that year. Canada’s BDS campaign writes that Pattison is an evangelical Christian who has sent millions to Israel to fund “Israeli Roots Journey.”

Pierre Lassonde is founder of Franco-Nevada. The Canadian Mining Report describes him like this: “build a company that owns pieces of other people’s mines without ever operating one. No heavy equipment, no union labor, no environmental liabilities — just the right to a percentage of the metal produced. The result was one of the greatest wealth-creation stories in Canadian mining history.”

Pomerleau is a private construction company, therefore its income isn’t publicly disclosed. Since 2023, Pomerleau has received at least $450 million in federal government contracts.

Postmedia is probably the only company on this list that posted a net loss in profits in 2025. They were in the hole by $77.3 million. That said, the company owns most Canadian newspapers, including the National Post and helps to shape opinion and how people think about the issues of the day — control and influence that is worth its weight in gold. The National Post runs content from the Jewish News Syndicate which is over-the-top in its support for Israel (and hatred for Israel’s enemies).

Power Corporation of Canada is one of Canada’s grand corporations, having had their hands in controlling Canada for many decades. In 2025, they made $2.5B in profits. PowerCorp is lead by 13 men, all save one who are white. They own IG Wealth Management, Great West life and several other investment firms. They were among Canada’s top ten high performing dividends in 2025 and made the thirteenth highest profits in Canada in 2025.

The Printing House is a private printing company that is owned by the O’Born family. As a private company, they don’t disclose their profits. The family’s foundation gave to the right-wing think tanks the Fraser Institute, the McDonald-Laurier Institute, and a charity called the Israel Museums and Arts, Canada. While Janice O’Born signed the letter on behalf of The Printing House, her husband and TPH founder, Earle, also signed it as a businessman and philanthropist.

PwC Canada (Formerly PriceWaterhouseCoopers) is a business advising, auditing and financial services firm. The company doesn’t report its Canadian profits but globally, PwC made $54 billion. They have operations in Israel.

James Richardson & Sons Limited is a private agriculture, investment and real estate firm. They own Wynward insurance, energy pipelines in Saskatchewan and Alberta (they purchased the SK one from from Enbridge for $1 billion), they purchased the largest oat milling company in the UK in 2017 and they purchased the Fairmont Hotel in Winnipeg and they own Bison Transportation. Maclean’s pegged the family as being the 13th wealthiest in Canada in 2025.

Rocky Mountaineer is a privately held company that made $27.5 million in 2025. They operate private trains in Western Canada. This company being on the list is confusing until you find the next entry, which is signed by Tristan Armstrong’s father, Peter.

Rogers Communications made $7 billion off of Canadians last year. Few companies have profited so hard off of the affordability crisis as Rogers has.

Scotiabank made $7.75 billion in profits in 2025. Scotiabank has been in the ire of anti-genocide activists for investing in Israeli arms company Elbit systems. Earlier this year, Scotiabank finally bowed to activist pressure and divested its shares in Elbit. There are three signatories on this letter. Scott Thomson, who used to be the head of Finning International and was an executive member of BCE and Talisman Energy. At Scotiabank’s annual meeting, he said that Israel’s war on Gaza, “could help boost demand for Canada’s energy exports.” The other signatory, former CEO Brian J. Porter, who is also an executive member of Fairfax Holdings. Rich Waugh also signed the letter.

Stingray made $471.6 million in 2025, up 21.9% from the year before. They own streaming platforms, radio stations and a host of “in-car entertainment.” The company has an office in Tel Aviv.

Teck is a copper and zinc mining company that has holdings in Western Canada and South America. Their profit in 2025 was $4.34 billion.

Telus is one of Canada’s big three telecommunications companies. For the year ending March 2026, the company made $672M in profits. A chunk of Telus’ profits come from their private health operations. Telus invested $25 million in Israeli startups from 2020 to 2023, “including Zebra Medical (now Nanox), Techsee and LionBird VC.” To help with their Israeli investments, they announced the hiring of a new position in Israel.

Teneo is a global firm that advises CEOs. They provide management consulting, financial consulting and strategy and communications help. Their Canada division also helps with lobbying. In February, they hired a strategic advisor based in Israel.

TFI International is a North American logistics company. In 2025, they made $1.32B in profit. Last year, the company fled Canada and established it’s new HQ in the United States

United Way is on the list, signed by Heather McDonald who signed as United Way’s President. The actual president of United Way Centraide seems to be Dan Clement. McDonald is the CEO of the United Way of Greater Toronto. As an organization that helps people who are harmed by the economic policies that enable the other signatories on this list to horde wealth in Canada, I’m not sure what she gained by being in their presence on this list.

Whitecap resources made $984.6 million in profit in 2025. Former Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall is part of the leadership of Whitecap resources. This oil and gas company’s assets are in Western Canada.

Partners Limited is a part of Brookfield. The letter is signed by Timothy Price who is listed as the deputy chair of Partners Limited, but Price is also the chair of Brookfield Funds.

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre is added to this list via the signature of its president and CEO, Dr. Andy J. Smith.

Sun Life Financial made 4.2 billion (up 9% from the year before) in net profits.

Torys LLP is a law firm and former University of Toronto president Robert Pritchard signed citing his role there. Torys just snaked the head of Norton Rose Fullbright’s energy practice to join their firm. From Lexpert: “Froehlich represented PETRONAS as it acquired Progress Energy Resources Corp. for $5.8 billion. He also assisted PETRONAS and its affiliates with securing a 25 percent participating interest in the $40 billion LNG Canada Project in Kitimat, British Columbia from affiliates of Shell Canada Energy, PetroChina Canada Ltd., Diamond LNG Canada Ltd. and Kogas Canada LNG Ltd. According to Torys, this was the first large-scale liquefied natural gas export facility in Canada.”

Tourmaline Oil’s 2025 profits were $213 million. In 2026, they revised their financial forecast by 209% in part, thanks to the price of oil shooting through the roof.

Timbercreek Capital is a real estate investment and mortgage firm that is focused on, “income-producing real estate.” The company made $34 million in net profits in 2025.

Similarly, the University Health Network is on the list, linked to the signature of its president and CEO Dr. Kevin Smith. A quick google search of the hospital network shows many partnerships between the UHN and hospitals and companies in Israel.

Waterous Energy Fund is an oil and gas investment firm. They own Strathcona Resources and Greenfire Resources. The company is trying to become a major player in the oil and gas industry, aiming to produce 300,000 barrels per day by 2035. Strathcona made $744 million in 2025.

Mark Carney responded publicly to the call on Twitter the following day:

If you were looking for a list of Canada’s wealthiest men, most responsible for the myriad crises we face in Canada right now, well, they published it for you in several national newspapers under the banner of pretending to care about antisemitism. The letter is signed by 91 people, most on behalf of companies that make some of Canada’s biggest profits.

Collectively, the companies on this list make much more than $82,356,600,000.00 as this number is only from the 36 groups on this list that report their profits publicly. Nine companies are private and don’t report their profits and four (KPMG, EY, PwC and Barclays) only report their global profits (which are mindblowingly high). Five of the signatories come from families that are among the 13 wealthiest in Canada (Weston, Desmarais, Pattison, Rogers, Richardson.) There are three hospitals and one university on the list too.

There are only five women among the 91 who are there as a result of their own positions. Two others are the daughters of other signatories on the list and one is the wife of another signatory on the list. There are only seven racialized people, all men, including one father-son duo. For some reason, banker Geoffrey Belsher signed the letter twice.

Eighty-two billion dollars IN PROFIT. That is an insane sum of money. That equals just under what Canada spends total on all public education. This money is stolen from workers’ unpaid wages and transferred to a lucky few shareholders so they can purchase gated communities, yachts, summer homes, apartments in Paris and London, etc. Notably, there is one company on the list that is not making profits (though only one), and that’s Postmedia.

And, there are a few politicians who signed the letter too: noted Christian Zionist and racism amplifier Stephen “Barbaric Cultural Practices Hotline” Harper, Brian Tobin for some reason and Scott Brison, plus Kevin Lynch, formerly Canada’s top bureaucrat. There are also five banks, three construction companies, three food companies, seven law firms, ten oil, gas and mining companies and sixteen insurance and investment firms. Beacons in the fight against hatred (lol. Lmao even).

The divide between the rich and the poor has never been larger in Canada’s history. The wealthiest one percent hold as much wealth as the bottom 80% of Canadians. This, while one-quarter of Canadians experience food insecurity and 300,000 people have nowhere to live.

The companies on this list make their profits off of the social conditions that enable Canada’s affordability and housing crises. Stephen Harper chipped away at Canada’s tax base, defunding important social programs while handing huge sums of money to his friends. Trudeau and Carney have made the problem even worse.

Any overtures these (mostly) men make pretending to care about antisemitism are laughable — they need antisemitism, just like they need racism, Islamophobia and other forms of hatred, to help maintain their social status and their money. They also need antisemitism to scare people to boost support for Israel, as a large number of the signatories are directly implicated in funding or profiting off of Israel’s economy.

When social solidarity is destroyed by vulture capitalism, there is an increase in hatred. Of course, this letter stops short of condemning any other kind of hate. Violent antisemitism is usually espoused in the same breath as other kinds of hatreds — think of the soldiers who participated in the Hide n Stalk club, Neo-nazi fight clubs, Second Sons/Remigration shitheads, and so on. These leaders don’t denounce violent misogyny (which murders a woman every few days), or homophobia or transphobia. They don’t denounce Islamophobia or other kinds of racial hatred that harm and have killed people in Canada (where were they on January 30, 2017?). Nor do they identify anti-Black racism or violent colonialism. You can tell that they aren’t actually concerned about antisemitism as they downplay Canada’s violently antisemitic past: “Antisemitism is at a historic level in Canada,” an ironic statement as a list of businesses similar to this published eighty years ago, would have included companies where Jews were prohibited from holding the highest leadership positions.

This letter is a proxy to defend Israel, nothing more. If they cared about antisemitism, the signatories would have looked in the mirror to see how their own companies are reshaping Canada to be a more brutal place, where everything operates in the service of profit, using hatred and division to keep the masses preoccupied while they grind us even further into the dirt. What’s worse, they’re hiding behind antisemitism to call on our government to police us harder, restrict our speech further and give cover for them to maintain their business ties with the pariah nation, and for our government to continue arming Israel’s war crimes against Gaza and Lebanon.

We don’t need a great conspiracy theory to explain why Canadian elites are so supportive of Israel. Just as average people are more likely to support oppressed people, the elites identify with their fellow oppressors. While the modes of oppression may be different, the similarities are strong enough to keep class united with class. It isn’t by accident that the United States’ first two free trade agreements were with Canada and Israel. Our countries are inextricably linked, especially at the level with the most power: the moneyed elites who have transformed Canada through their profiteering.

To read about the companies that the signatories work for, click here.

To read Part 3, click here.

There are a lot of new people receiving this email this morning. A lot of you discovered my Substack this week after reading my piece on the Montreal Pornhub attacker. Well, this email a weekly round-up of the headlines featured on the Daily News podcast, and I send it out every weekend when I have the chance.

And about that — I’m outta here for the next two weeks, so don’t expect another Daily News round-up till mid-July.

I also started something new this weekend. Thanks to a listener’s idea (hi Lucy!), I’ve created a digest of all the episodes from the past week so that you don’t need to wade through ads to listen to them in a block. It was released yesterday morning on the Sandy and Nora podcast feed. You can find this episode at this nifty green button.

Listen to the Daily News Digest

But, that’s right. I’m off on holiday. I have to keep working, of course, and am working on a few stories for Substack. But I’ll try to get some rest too.

Here are the headlines that were featured at the Daily News podcast this past week. If you don’t already subscribe to listen to this daily, very short news podcast, you can find it anywhere you get your podcasts.

Daily News RSS feed

Manitoba

Police chief, WRHA to meet over false arrest

Alberta

Company fined $144K for 2024 Slave Lake workplace incident

SCOOP: Edmonton police chief visited illegal West Bank settlements during Israel trip

Northwest Territories

3 dead in plane crash near Fort Simpson, N.W.T., fire officials confirm

Saskatchewan

URSU settles with UR Pride over withheld fees

Quebec

Montreal suspect’s writings advocated for attacks on corporate leaders and politicians

British Columbia

Muslim group and federal culture minister decry alleged attack on imam in Victoria

Ontario

Hamilton police officer who punched a handcuffed woman, breaking her nose, gets conditional discharge

Unionized Blue Water Bridge workers replaced with private contractor

National

Quebec military man pleads guilty to 7 charges after arrests tied to alleged violent extremism

Competition Bureau looking deeper into how Sobeys can control who sells food in your area

Carney government passes law allowing authorization of banned pesticides

CPP Invests $23 Billion More In Companies Tied To Israel: Report

Canada rejected more than half of all World Cup visitor applications

Senior Canadian Forces officer in Ottawa charged with sexual assault

International

Starmer is on the precipice as pressure builds for the UK leader to resign

Palestine: At least 236 journalists and media workers killed in Gaza

Bolivian president declares state of emergency and deploys military to quell anti-government protests

Two children found dead in car in France as heatwave hits Europe

Libyan warlord convicted over abuses at detention center, officials say

Kenya’s health minister orders suspension of construction on a US-backed Ebola facility

Venezuela earthquakes updates: Rescue efforts on as death toll hits 235

Five Eyes cybersecurity agencies warn of new AI models impact on cyber risks

Turkish journalism groups say independent outlets denied accreditation for a NATO summit in Ankara

It took nearly no time for the far right to try and paint Hatfield as a communist/far-left ideologue. Far-right propagandists Rebel News claimed this in a headline: “Manifest Reveals Alleged Montreal Gunman’s Antisemitic, Far-Left and ‘Incel’ Ideology.” Disgraced podcaster Jesse Brown claimed that Hatfield was an antizionist activist. Neither mention what the French media picked up on from the start: this incel was driven by a crusade against elite CEOs, hated pornography and rented a hotel room near Pornhub’s parent company in Montreal, where he apparently tried to shoot people from his room across into the adjacent office.

This point is taking up such little space in English Canadian media right now that when I search news for Pornhub, the only news I get is about age verification in the UK.

Photos from Quebecor show the office building’s windows smashed from the shots. Montreal police said that employees hid under their desks for more than an hour.

What kind of socialism is this?

I’ve been a socialist for my entire adult life and I don’t recognize this apparent socialism as described by the Rebel News. That’s probably because the outlet understands that their anti-social, bigoted, fascist-adjacent propaganda rag is far closer to Hatfield’s ideology than I am. In reading his manifesto, a portrait of Hatfield emerges of someone who fashioned himself as an intellectual, though was confused as hell and in tremendous need of intellectual and theoretical guidance. He was sure that the key to his personal suffering was the women who were not in his life: a woman with whom he can marry and have children.

The first ten pages of Hatfield’s manifesto focus on human biology — the fixed realities of women who cannot have infinite children, and men who can. This builds to his argument, that the rise in something he calls hypergamy. He defines it like this: “a phenomenon in which females simply copulate as they please with a plethora of attractive males, as opposed to monogamy, in which the same females would be bound legalistically and culturally just to one male.” He blames this on the rise of capitalism, as the elites have become degenerate swingers and have tried to fashion society into their image.

Under capitalism, he argues, there are favoured males (tall, handsome, Caucasian) who get all the women. Women, naturally, only want to mate with the favoured males. His manifesto is Incel Logic 101, complete with footnotes and APA style (which is enough to confuse some people into thinking that it’s smart — it is the opposite of smart).

By Page 30, Hatfield finally gets to the point — or perhaps, finally gets to himself — the bottom rung of society, the common male: “With that, we at last come to the icy lowermost sphere of the hypergamous inferno, that which holds the least fortunate of the three main sociobiological classes of the hypergamy state, the common males, who we will occasionally refer to simply as ‘the dispossessed’. Their lonely realm is one of gruelling deprivation, and ever surging woe.” He calls watching other guys find girlfriends, “traumatic” and that common men have two paths: either they develop mental illness and attempt suicide, or they rush towards self-improvement in an effort to lift them out of being common. Both are futile, and the only hope is through revolutionary violence.

To back up his point, Hatfield cites several pages worth of Reddit comments. He describes all the people who try to make money off of lonely men, promising that if they just do this or change that, they will transcend their commonness. This, he identifies, as being a series of swindles. While he doesn’t name anyone, it’s easy to hear him yelling at the Andrew Tates and Jordan Petersons of the world. He is also angry at Conservative voices who have had a hand in creating what he calls the hypergamy state, but then pretend to offer young men the solution to fix it.

At this point, we are at Page 72 of his manifesto, the point where he starts to talk about solutions. Despite having railed against capitalism, it’s here where he finally talks about “leftists” — “The leftists partially or entirely reject the validity of bourgeois economics, i.e. capitalism, but they love the degeneracy that capitalism produces, i.e. obscene levels of mass immigration, rampant hypergamy, the encouragement and promotion of hedonistic bodily mutilation, et cetera.”

His solutions include abstaining from poisonous substances (booze, drugs, pop), trying to ween off video games, stop following sports and stop watching porn. He also goes on a racist rant against rap music.

By Page 82, he argues that the people should rise up against CEOs. He suggests a variety of weapons that one could use against them. He argues that one should not target random CEOs, or small-town business people like real estate agents, even though they participate in market speculation. Nor, he says, should you take random violence out against women. He lists possible targets, including the headquarters of companies that participate in degenerative pursuits, and suggests targeting their conferences and conventions, headquarters, and so on.

Ultimately, he says, you should expect to die for this cause. Do not kill a police officer but do provoke a police officer to kill you, he suggests. Incidentally, it isn’t clear that Hatfield killed anyone — “dozens” of shots were heard, SPVM officer Mohamed Lamine Benredouane was killed, as was bystander Michel Mizrahi. Someone else was severely injured.

Hatfield concludes by appealing to pieces of the Communist Manifesto as a solution to male suffering — abolish private property, nationalize telecommunications and transportation and impose a planned economy. This, he thinks, will massively improve the lives of young men. Then, he argues that women should not be allowed to work.

This manifesto is not a left wing document. It’s a reactionary document that correctly identifies some of society’s problems, completely misdiagnoses other problems and then leaps right past social movement organizing and into violent revolutionary tactics to try and LARP a solution. Anyone who has red Marx and Engles knows that neither man advocated for the subjugation of women and forcing them into private, unpaid home work. In fact, the family unit that Hatfield pines for is the most potent node of support for the maintenance of capitalism. Marginalizing women into unpaid work is a crucial element of capitalism and without it, the system would fall apart.

Understanding 2026 incelism

Hatfield represents the maturing of incel ideology as it’s been remixed over a decade of declining social conditions. At 25 years old, the Albertan came to age in an era where incel violence had already murdered dozens of people, and where the male self-help world had evolved into open fascism. Still, young men were not getting the relief that the famous men of the manosphere promised. Social conditions declined, punctuated by a pandemic that halted the normal social development for many teenagers (COVID would have hit when Hatfield was 18-19 years old).

The promises of manosphere gurus have always been bullshit. Feminists have consistently called out their snake oil for years, seeing clearly the harm that it causes to women and men alike. But we don’t have the same platforms that the misogynists have, and political parties are far happier playing into the rhetoric than promising to actually do anything to fix social conditions. And so, the rhetoric gets more and more extreme while social conditions continue to deteriorate — it’s a deadly combination.

In 2018, I wrote about the same stuff that Hatfield writes about in his manifesto, but in relation to what was known at the time a about Alek Minassian. I quoted on incels at the time:

Arshy Mann has been watching this movement for long enough to connect the dots: “They’re finding each other on online communities and they’re radicalizing each other,” he said on The Current. But, these “involuntary celibates,” men who blame women for a lifetime of being rejected by them (lifetime, of course, is misleading, as many of these men are very young) are part of a broader swamp of anti-feminist online activists, including so-called Pick Up Artists, Men’s Rights Associations and others. These groups are “more and more anti-feminist and more and more extreme,” Mann said.

In that same article, I wrote,

Less stability, fewer opportunities to meet people and more anxiety create the conditions where someone might turn to online subcultures for community and validation. Certainly, online communities help everyone expand their friend network, and this is borne out by other Statistics Canada research. When the community that someone finds is toxic or violent, it can serve to radicalize them.

Life in Canada has never been so unaffordable and profits have never been so large. This creates brutal conditions that impact all Canadians. In the eight years since I wrote these paragraphs, two generations of young men have come to age, realizing that capitalism might actually be the problem. Luckily, the vast majority of them have not decided to try to do revolution on their own.

But what this situation reminds us is this: current social conditions are untenable. They force people to their breaking point. Some people reach to easy scapegoats to explain the decay. Others, especially the ones who benefit from these conditions, peddle alternative arguments. For example, Ben Mulroney, whose personal fortune and career have only been made possible thanks to his father’s name (who incidentally imposed these social conditions on Canada four decades ago), and who hosts Global News’ flagship political show, was quick to try and make this attack adjacent to Israel — anything to distract from the fact that the economy as it is currently organized does generate violence.

And so, there will be a campaign intended to obfuscate reality. We’ll be forced to hear how Hatfield was a communist (code for crazy), or a an antizionist or whatever other distraction people might conjure to have us avoid arriving at the truth — that capitalism is destroying generations of people of all ages. And unless we force our government to stop this insane profits bonanza, there will be others like Hatfield whose incorrect diagnosis convinces them to take extreme acts of violence. In their wake, there will be innocent bystanders who are unfortunate casualties in the war on the working class.

It’s the end of the year. I love that there are four ends of the year every year and this one is the sweetest. Strawberries and rhubarb.

Longest day of the year.

My kids graduate from elementary school on Monday. but it doesn’t feel like a big deal because it’s two years early than if they were in Ontario (or anywhere else in Canada). But they’d be finishing Grade 7 if they were in Ontario anyway, so I guess it’s all relative.

I slept for 11 hours last night which I might normally be worried about but I’m allowing it. The past few weeks have been a rush and the cancer drugs make me tired. But I’ve always been able to sleep for that long so it’s probably not related to anything.

Here are the headlines from the Daily News podcast this last week:

New Brunswick

Fire displaces 21 people from Doaktown, N.B., motel turned long-term housing

Quebec

Calls grow for independent investigation into alleged racism at Montréal-Nord police station

SPVM cracks down on Montréal-Nord unit suspected of co-ordinated racist behaviour

Alberta

Worker dies after crane crashes into Alberta river

British Columbia

Initial probe finds ‘electrical non-compliances’ at B.C. water park where 12 kids shocked

Kristi Noem hired in strategic advisory role for B.C. mining company

Ontario

Questions swirl after Ottawa elementary school cancels drag storytime

‘This is an unimaginable loss’: Five children killed in Mapleton Township crash

Toronto police charge teen in connection with U.S. consulate shooting

National

Ottawa, B.C. to spend $3.2-billion to cut homebuilding fees and convert unsold condos

NDP calls for audit into $1 billion given to private administrators of public services

Nearly 380,000 Canadians respond to headlight survey

Bell Canada parent company slashing nearly 700 jobs as part of ongoing reorganization

‘Hockey Night in Canada’ won’t return to CBC when new Rogers deal with NHL begins

Government abruptly suspends citizenship certificates issued under ‘lost Canadians’ law

International

Gunmen attack Niger airport, killing 11 soldiers and 2 civilians, officials say

Doctors Without Borders investigation finds exploitation by staff in Chad

Protesters block copper exports to China from Rio Tinto mine in Mongolia

Iran World Cup team was ordered out of U.S. right after first match, coach says

Drone strikes kill over 1,000 civilians in Sudan in the first 5 months of 2026, UN rights chief says

Growing risk that thousands buried in Gaza’s rubble may never be identified, says Red Cross

Authorities say at least 9 dead, 25 hurt after a train and bus collide in Zimbabwe

A tentative deal is reached to end the Iran war and Trump orders a stop to the US naval blockade

Six people killed as helicopters collide over Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro