A recent poll revealed that majority of Canadians believe the country is “broken” ahead of Canada Day.
Plus, a petition wants to prevent Ontario Catholic schools from flying Pride flags indoors.
And former defence minister Harjit Sajjan accused the media of racism over reports he prioritized Afghan Sikh rescues over Canadian citizens.
Tune into The Daily Brief with Lindsay Shepherd and Isaac Lamoureux!
A Liberal member of Parliament has sent a letter to caucus calling for Justin Trudeau to step aside as Liberal leader and prime minister, but Trudeau said on the weekend that he isn’t going anywhere, insisting he is “committed” to seeing things through until the next election.
Also, the federal government isn’t content enough to subject Canadians to their unpopular carbon tax: the Liberals have also spent $1.7 million promoting carbon taxes in other countries. Kris Sims from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation joins to discuss.
Plus, the number of hydromorphone pills seized by police in London has skyrocketed by 3,000% since the expansion of the city’s ‘safe’ supply program in 2020. National Post columnist Adam Zivo joins the show to discuss.
A Trudeau government-appointed committee is calling for radical reforms to the criminal justice system as part of Canada’s Black Justice Strategy.
The external steering group for the Black Justice Strategy issued 114 recommendations from an “anti-racist” lens for the federal government to pursue in combating so-called systemic racism against black Canadians.
Having the government appoint a committee to explore paying black Canadians reparations for slavery and segregation, creating courts specifically for black offenders, and rolling back drug possession laws, are just some of the recommendations included in the report.
The strategy’s stated pillars include addressing so-called “social determinants of justice,” reducing over-policing, focusing on court reform and legislative changes, as well as correctional reentry and integration to reduce recidivism rates.
The strategy calls on the government to reduce the rate of incarceration for black people by 30% relative to the population by 2034. The report also recommends that the government cut incarceration rates of black and Indigenous Canadians by 50% by releasing individuals currently held in custody and arresting fewer black people.
The steering committee recommended that the government establish a committee of black academics and community leaders to study options for reparations to black Canadians for slavery, segregation, and racially biased laws.
The report also recommends that black Canadians be given preferential treatment to a variety of government programs. This includes creating black-specific job programs, prioritizing black Canadians for apprenticeship and entrepreneur programs, and prioritizing black people in Canada’s national housing strategy.
The Ministry of Justice did not respond to a request for comment from True North about whether it would be accepting any of the report’s recommendations.
Special attention is given to reforming criminal law around drug possession offenses. The steering committee recommended that the government get rid of drug possession penalties for up to a 30-day supply of the given drug, grant automatic record suspension for all possession related offences, and expand “safe supply” programs in black communities.
The steering committee placed a great emphasis on expanding anti-racism training for prosecutors, judges, the police and expanding anti-racism curriculum in schools.
The steering committee made a series of seemingly unrelated recommendations, including a proposal to raise the minimum wage to $21 an hour and establish a universal basic income program.
In December 2021, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ordered the creation of a black justice strategy in light of the murder of Minnesota man George Floyd in May 2020.
In February 2023, the Trudeau government created the external steering committee, a group of eight anti-racism academics and activists tasked with providing the government recommendations in the development of their Black Justice Strategy.
The members include Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, Zilla Jones, Fernando Belton, Vanessa Fells, Mandela Kuet, Sandra Muchekeza, Suzanne Taffot, and Moya Teklu.
After two-and-a-half hours of entirely mundane and politically correct corporate floats, Toronto’s Pride parade came to an abrupt halt Sunday when a series of keffiyeh-clad pink- and purple-haired pro-Palestinian dykes occupied Yonge St.
Like the Black Lives Matters protesters which shut down the parade for 25 minutes in 2016, a motley group of about 20 women planted themselves halfway down the route screaming that Pride was associated with genocide and apartheid.
The self-described “Coalition Against Pinkwashing” shouted demands for Pride to disassociate itself from apartheid (presumably Israel which is anything but an apartheid state) while — laughingly — a group of naked men waddled by.
Pride’s organizers, clearly unwilling to have these interlopers removed by police, abruptly put an end to the parade — attended, according to police, by about 300,000 spectators — and issued a statement indicating they did it out of fears for “public safety.”
Organizers said they regretted any “inconvenience” caused to the participants — evidently referring to the dozens of floats left stranded and forced to disband.
It gave me not-so-fond memories of 2016 when BLM — the honoured group at Pride — turned on the organizers and staged a sit-in halfway through the route.
I was marching in the parade that year and broke the story.
Instead of removing them as they should have, the organizers agreed to meet a list of their demands, which included banning the police from marching in the parade. That ban continues to this day and was evident at Sunday’s parade.
Pride’s progressive organizers clearly didn’t learn their lesson: namely, don’t pander to those radical groups who will end up turning on you.
Back in April, Pride — no doubt pressured by the more radical amongst them — issued a statement calling for a ceasefire in the Hamas-Israel conflict and decrying the treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza.
Evidently that wasn’t enough.
It was rather rich to see various factions of those who call themselves progressive turn on each other.
None of those dykes who staged their sit-in — some bare-breasted — would last a minute in Gaza. But reality seems to elude these protester wannabes.
Truly, however, before the hijacking by the dykes, I had already concluded that the parade had indeed lost its way.
In all the years I’ve marched and reported on the event, I don’t think I ever remember so many corporate entities trying to get in on the opportunity and desperate to prove how woke they are.
They kept on coming and coming Sunday with the same messages, the same giveaways and the same pack of employees conscripted to march and look proud — building and beauty companies, all the big banks, food chains, law firms and any other business that perceived they could make money from DINKS (double income, no kids).
Even the drag queens looked wilted.
In between, I saw groups lecturing us about gender fluidity, alleged book bans and sex education.
There were health outfits and hospitals — with marchers who didn’t look the least bit healthy — promoting their gender-affirming care. There was a pro-Israel group of about 100 marching accompanied by at least two dozen beefy security guards — a sad statement about the times.
And right off the top I saw Toronto mayor Olivia Chow standing atop a truck clad in a low-cut purple dress and Pride-coloured boa waving to the crowds as if she were Queen.
Very few people cheered from my vantage point at Yonge and Bloor. She, and the collection of radical left councillors she posed with at some point, were nowhere to be found when the shutdown occurred about two hours later.
She has not made any comment whatsoever on the hijacking, or for that matter another Pride event — the early morning attack on another Jewish synagogue in Toronto called Pride of Israel.
It is what the Jewish community and our allies have come to expect from this weak, incompetent mayor.
As for Pride, if I were running the show I wouldn’t be the slightest bit proud of the parade I saw Sunday or the circus that occurred midway along the route. The parade was as dreary as the weather.
In less than 10 years, the true meaning of Pride has been destroyed by progressives who think they know better than anyone else.
Young Canadians are struggling to find work, with statistics showing fewer youths were employed in May than they were at the height of the Great Recession.
Unemployment among Canadian youth spiked significantly this year, bringing the rate of increase just under that of the 2008-2009 recession and leaving the employment rate worse than at any point during that time.
The authors of a Frasier Institute study want government policymakers and economists to be alert about the potentially disastrous effects of the growing number of young Canadians who are “not attached to the labour market.”
The number of young Canadians who are willing and able to work but can not find employment is on the rise.
Researchers found that the employment rate of youth aged 15-24 in May was 55.6%, the lowest annual figure for any year during the 2008–09 financial crisis.
During the crash, the employment rate for that age group dropped by 4.5% from a high of 60.5 to a low of 56%.
The study found that between January 2023 and 2024, the employment rate for Canadian youth dropped by 3.8%, a “slightly smaller” decline than that seen during the 2008-09 recession.
“The decline in employment has been far greater for young Canadians,” the study said.
It said that the youth employment rate for May 2024 was “lower than the annual rate in any recent year,” aside from the COVID-19 lockdowns and recession when many industries that typically employ Canadian youth workers were shut down for months.
For Canadians aged 15–19, the employment rate has decreased from 45.5% to 40.4% over the last 17 months, while in the 20–24 year-old range, it had fallen from 71.5% to 68.5%
From January 2023 to May 2024, the youth unemployment rate increased from 9.7% to 12.6%, dropping by 2.9%. In comparison, during the 2008-2009 recession, youth unemployment increased by 4.1%.
Using information from StatsCanada, the report found that the average number of hours that today’s Canadian youth are working has decreased by 16.3% compared with those in the same age range in 1989.
The average young Canadian worked 30.7 hours per week in 2023, compared to 25.7 hours in 2023. This indicates that the typical level of attachment of Canadian youth to the workforce has fallen.
“If governments want to avoid the possible lasting harms from the recent spike in Canada’s youth unemployment rate, they should help improve the labour market environment for young Canadians,” Ben Eisen, a senior fellow at the Frasier Institute and co-author of the study said about the study.
“These trends are concerning and should be the subject of additional monitoring and research going forward.”
The study stated that leaving a willing and able-to-work young population without jobs could have lasting negative consequences for the Canadian economy.
“When young people obtain experience in the workforce, it can have lifelong positive effects. Conversely, when young people have little work experience, it can negatively affect their employment prospects and wages in adulthood,” the report said.
The authors called on economists and governments to pay “careful attention” to the potential “scarring” effects that the “substantial” spike in youth unemployment over the past 17 months might have on the Canadian economy.
“Extensive evidence shows that delayed and weak attachment to the workforce for young Canadians, both in the short- and long-term trends, can create lifelong scarring on labour market outcomes.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s ambitious promise to build nearly four million new homes by 2031 is in jeopardy after the construction sector entered another slump due to fewer residential starts.
The latest GDP report by Statistics Canada shows that despite the Liberal government’s pledge to dramatically increase supply, the construction sector is on the downturn.
In the wake of a modest 0.3% increase in Canada’s real GDP in April, the construction sector reported a 0.4% contraction, marking the largest decline across all industries.
This slump is primarily attributed to a significant 2.3% decrease in residential building construction, which has seen the steepest fall since May 2023.
The downturn reflects a broader trend of reduced activity in new home construction and renovations, with levels now 24% below the peak of April 2021.
Despite signs of recovery in the construction industry in the first few months of 2024, with gradual growth in the first quarter, the recent figures raise concerns about the sustainability of this recovery.
The construction industry’s struggles come at a time when the Canadian government has committed to bolstering the housing supply, a promise that now seems more challenging than ever.
The Canadian Urban Institute recently highlighted the enormity of this task necessitating an infrastructure investment of upwards of $750 billion.
Meanwhile, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation has underscored the urgency of the situation, alternatively stating that an additional 5.8 million new homes were required.
However, the current pace of housing starts won’t be able to meet the most conservative of targets. To achieve the ambitious goal, a significant escalation in construction activity is imperative. The financial implications would be required.
According to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, considering the infrastructure cost for each new home being $107,000, the sector will need $620.6 billion for the projected 5.8 million homes. That number went up to $758 billion when accounting for other figures related to infrastructure.
Did widespread antisemitism influence the outcome to the Toronto—St. Paul’s byelection? A new third-party group, Jewish Ally, campaigned to rally Jews and their supporters behind Conservative candidate Don Stewart, who won narrowly. Founders Andrew Kirsch and Stephen Taylor joined True North’s Andrew Lawton to explain the strategies they used to engage the Jewish community and their allies.
Canadians’ sense of national pride appears to be dwindling with age. The younger you are, the less likely you are to have it, a new poll finds.
The poll from Abacus Data suggests that while two-thirds of respondents felt proud to be Canadian, the sentiment was most common among those aged 60 or older, and lowest among those between 18-29.
Less than half of respondents aged 18 to 29, said they felt proud to be Canadian at 49%, whereas that figure jumped up to 81% among those 60 or older.
Those aged 30-44 were slightly more likely to be proud Canadians, but not by much at 58%.
“The findings highlight significant generational variations in Canadian pride, with a majority expressing pride anchored in Canada’s natural beauty, societal safety, healthcare system, inclusivity, and cultural diversity. Despite facing economic and societal challenges, a resilient sense of well-being and optimism prevails among many Canadians,” reads the poll.
Of those values, 70% of respondents said that Canada’s natural beauty and environment was the leading reason for their sense of pride.
While 61% said that it was the country’s reputation for being a peaceful and safe society and another 61% cited the availability of universal healthcare as the reason.
A little over half of the respondents, 53%, cited Canada’s cultural diversity and multiculturalism as the reason for their pride.
“These findings highlight that Canadians take pride in a variety of aspects that define their nation,” reads the survey. “Reinforcing a deep and multifaceted sense of national pride across the country.”
However, economic struggles (55%) and Canada’s lack of opportunity (53%) were the leading causes for those who do not feel proud to be Canadian.
Behind the struggling economy, those who did not feel proud of their national identity cited Canada’s global reputation or perception, at 42%.
Another cohort of 39% cited negative experiences with Canadian institutions, while 37% cited “perceived inequalities or injustices in Canadian society.”
“These insights highlight the complex interplay of personal experiences and societal challenges that influence Canadians’ feelings towards national pride,” reads the survey.
Slightly less than half of respondents reported having a positive quality of life at 49%, while only 14% said that despite facing these challenges, their quality of life was not poor.
Again, quality of life varied by generation, with 58% of those aged 60 and older giving a positive response, compared to 43% of those aged 45 to 59.
The findings were similar regarding happiness, with more than half of respondents over 60 (51%) saying that they felt overall happiness and personal well-being, with that figure dropping to only 20% with those aged 18 to 29.
The same generational divide persisted when respondents were asked if they felt optimistic about their future, as younger Canadians were the more likely to say the county is headed in the wrong direction.
“Economic struggles, political disagreements, and societal inequalities temper this pride, especially among younger Canadians,” reads the survey.
“These issues underscore the complex realities that shape national sentiment, reflecting a mix of pride in what Canada stands for and concern over areas needing improvement, as well as the current challenges facing the country today.”
The survey was conducted with 1,926 Canadian adults from June 20 to 25, 2024 and has a margin of error of 19 times out of 20.
The LCBO may be closed as of July 5 if the liquor distributors’ unionized employees go ahead with their proposed strike.
LCBO union members voted 97% in favour of a strike if a deal isn’t reached with the Crown corporation by next Friday.
“We chose this date because we did not want to impact the first long weekend of the summer,” said Colleen MacLeod, chair of Ontario Public Service Employees Union during a news conference this week.
“Let’s make this clear, LCBO employees, LCBO workers, also do not want a dry Ontario for the summer.”
The roughly 9,000 LCBO employees being represented by the OPSEU have been negotiating with LCBO management about the need for more full-time positions and fears around Ontario’s changing alcohol retail laws.
LCBO staff are worried that the decision by Premier Doug Ford to allow the sale of alcohol in convenience stores will hurt their work hours.
“Premier Ford is trying to sell us a bad deal, one that hands over more of the alcohol market to big grocers and convenience chains like Loblaws and Circle K,” said MacLeod.
“The strike vote got our employer’s attention and we’re hoping that they’ll actually bargain with us,” she added. “We’re hoping to get to a deal.”
Both the union and the LCBO say they are committed to concluding negotiations before the proposed strike date of July 5.
Little common ground has been found thus far, however.
“We do not want a strike at the LCBO,” the Crown corporation said in a statement earlier this month.
“We continue to meet the union at the bargaining table this week and have dates set to continue negotiations in July.”
The potential walkout wouldn’t only affect individual consumers, but restaurant and bar owners as well, because they too are only permitted to purchase liquor through the LCBO.
However, the LCBO maintains that it has measures in place to ensure continued service, including to wholesale customers.
“LCBO would continue to receive and fulfill wholesale orders and beverage alcohol will remain available through the approximately 2,300 private retail points of sale across the province,” said the LCBO in a statement on Thursday.
“We’re nervous, we’re concerned,” Tony Elenis, President and CEO of the Ontario Restaurant Hotel and Motel Association told CityNews on Friday.
“We have not seen the rollout of the details of the plans yet,” says Elenis. “We’re anticipating to meet with them [LCBO] in the next few days. At this point, we are just hoping that there is no strike”
Elenis noted that the LCBO is the industry’s only source of liquor and its main source of wine, whereas beer is primarily purchased from the privately owned Beer Store.
Wine can also be acquired directly from local provincial wineries themselves, as well as beer from microbreweries.
For restaurants and bars, the sale of alcohol is a significant cut of the cake, and those revenues are needed now more than ever as the struggle for many restaurants to rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic persists.
If the strike does happen, it “would be another nail in the coffin,” said Elenis.
Elenis said that 60% of their member restaurants are still not turning a profit since the economy has fully reopened.
Restaurants Canada released a report last fall that revealed that a large number of restaurants across the country had been operating at a loss for six months or more.
According to the report, 34% of restaurants had been operating at a loss since March 2023, compared to only 7% in 2019, another 17% of restaurants said they were only breaking even.
Despite being ranked a safe country for travel, Canada has failed to crack the top 15 safest destinations, according to a new ranking.
HelloSafe’s Travel Safety Index found Canada to be the safest country in North America for travel, but gave the country a “safe” ranking rather than the “very safe” ranking held by many other countries.
Topping the list was Iceland, followed by Singapore, Denmark, Austria, and Switzerland – all of which were deemed “very safe.”
Twelve of the 15 safest countries are in Europe, with the remaining three in Asia, namely Singapore, Bhutan, and Qatar. European countries comprise 30 of the 50 safest places in the world. Ukraine and Russia were at the bottom of European rankings due to their ongoing war. France ranked 34th out of 37 European countries due to “the terrorist threat, which is still very present in the country.”
Canada scored 40.03 on the Travel Safety Index, placing it in the “safe” category.
The index rates countries on a scale of 0 (very safe) to 100 (extremely dangerous). The score is calculated based on an assessment of natural disasters, violence in society, involvement in armed conflict (internal or external), health infrastructure, and militarization.
Countries deemed “very safe” are those with a score of 30 or less. Countries deemed “safe” fall between a score of 30 and 45. “Unsafe” countries have scores ranging from 45 to 60. “Dangerous” countries are those with scores of 60 or more.
The most dangerous country to travel to in the world in 2024, according to HelloSafe, is the Philippines, scoring 82.32. Following the Philippines are Colombia, Mexico, India, and Russia.
“The 15 least safe countries in the world include many theatres of conflict, both old and new, which often combine with high natural risks,” reads the report.
For the three most dangerous Latin American countries, high homicide rates, militarization, and internally displaced persons were cited as reasons for their low rankings.
The United States is the 14th most dangerous country to travel to in 2024, according to HelloSafe, with a score of 59.47, only 0.53 points away from falling into the “dangerous” category.
The data cited in creating HelloSafe’s index was pulled from various UN agencies, the World Bank, and various international research bodies.
