Economists specializing in agricultural markets are watching the ongoing diplomatic dispute between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government and India closely to see if it spills into a trade war as the South Asian nation is a main trading partner when it comes to pulse crops such as lentils.
As of 2021, India imported over 77% of its dried and shelled lentils from Canada. Agriculturally heavy provinces like Saskatchewan also ship half of their lentil crops to India each year.
According to North Dakota State University crops economist and professor Frayne Olson, the United States could be the big winner as a result of the conflict.
Speaking on a market outlook webinar on Saturday, Olson said the United States is in a prime position to benefit from market spillover for specific crops.
“There’s political tensions going on between India and Canada right now which is now spilling over into the agricultural sector,” said Olson.
“The largest potential agricultural trade impact would be for the Canadian pulse crops. (The United States) is both a competitor and a supplier of pulse crops.”
When it comes to lentil exports, the United States currently only supplies a little over 1% of India’s needs but it could take a larger share of the pie, should the conflict escalate further.
“India buys approximately $1.4 billion Canadian dollars of pulses from Canada and approximately 50% of the Saskatchewan lentil crop goes directly to India so this is a big deal for the Canadians,” said Olson.
“It is something to watch because there could be some spillover pressure or spillover opportunities into US markets.”
Agri-food experts have already warned that Canada would suffer more than India should the dispute escalate and disturb ongoing trade.
Following Prime Minister Trudeau’s accusation that the Indian government was allegedly involved in the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil, lentil sales to India slowed down, according to a report by Reuters based on industry sources.
“Industry officials are concerned that there could be trade restrictions by the governments owing to current tensions between the countries,” senior vice president of the major exporter Olam Agri India Nitin Gupta told the outlet.
Despite this, the Indian government has maintained that it has not instructed importers to change their buying habits yet.
On top of the diplomatic dispute, the Canadian government halted talks of a multi-billion dollar trade deal with India last month just prior to Trudeau’s explosive allegations.
The Israeli government has confirmed that a Toronto woman was taken hostage by Hamas after she went missing, following the Oct. 7 attack.
On Tuesday, the Israeli government contacted Iris Haggai in Singapore to inform her that her parents had been kidnapped by Hamas.
Judih Weinstein, 70, and Gad Haggai, 72, were walking close by Kibbutz Nir Oz in Southern Israel when they were forced to take cover in a field while Hamas launched rockets during the Oct. 7 attack.
In an interview with CTV News Toronto, Haggai said that Israeli paramedics informed her that her mother had called for help, saying that she had been shot and that her husband, Gad, was extremely wounded.
That had been the last information Haggai had received about her parents until their cell phones were later tracked to Gaza.
Haggai said it’s time for the Canadian government to do more to pressure the Israeli government to negotiate.
“At the end of the day, it’s Israeli soil… but there is always something that can be done, especially when there are Canadian citizens involved,” Haggai told CTV from Singapore, where she lives with her husband and three children.
Her mother, Judith, was born in America but emigrated to Toronto with her family when she was three years old. She was living in Southern Israel as a retired school teacher.
Haggai said that she received a phone call from U.S. President Joe Biden, who assured her that his government was doing everything they could to make her mother’s safety a priority.
Almost 200 people have been taken hostage by Hamas since the attack began, according to the Israeli government.
Foreign Minister Melanie Joly confirmed that at least six Canadians have been killed since Oct. 7 and two more citizens remain missing.
Hamas was declared a terrorist organization by the Government of Canada in 2002.
The media and politicians were quick to take Hamas at its word and lay blame against Israel for a Palestinian rocket that crashed into a hospital parking lot in Gaza. Media outlets have quietly rewritten their stories and headlines in the past day, but even this morning Minister François-Philippe Champagne referred to the hospital bombing as an “attack.” True North’s Andrew Lawton weighs in. Plus, anti-Israel protests continue to mount, with increasingly antisemitic rhetoric. Andrew discusses with Ratio’d host Harrison Faulkner.
Plus, the federal government has vowed to outlaw online “hate speech” as part of its “online harms” bill. Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms president John Carpay joins the program to unpack what this means for free speech.
A tense interview in which Pierre Poilievre calmly challenges a reporter’s questions while chomping down on an apple has gone viral across the border.
The Conservative leader was speaking with fruit growers in B.C.’s Okanagan region on the weekend, discussing his plans for housing, inflation, and drug supply.
Afterwards, Poilievre did an interview with Don Uqruhart, the editor of Castanet, a local paper in Oliver and Osoyoos, B.C.
“In terms of your strategy currently, you’re obviously taking the populist pathway,” Urqhuart asked.
“What does that mean?”, Poilievre replied, setting the tone for the entire exchange.
Urquhart, who seemed to have difficulty making eye contact with the Conservative leader, followed Pollievre’s question by saying, “certainly you tap very strong ideological language quite frequently,” and similarly, Pollievre responded with, “like what?”
Urquhart could not provide any examples, instead meandering back to his line of questioning.
He then said Pollievre was taking a page out of former U.S. president Donald Trump’s book, but again, failed to say who felt that way exactly or just what page he may be taking.
The response resulted in a slight unraveling, which prompted Uqurhart to drop his lead-in questions and address Poilievre with a more general question.
“Okay, then forget that, why should Canadians trust you with their vote?”
“Common sense. Common sense, for a change,” replied Pollievre, continuing to enjoy his apple.
“We don’t have any common sense in this current government. The guy prints $600 billion dollars and grows our money supply 32% in three years. That’s growing the money eight times faster than the economy. No wonder we have the worst inflation in four decades. I’m going to cap spending, cut waste so that we can balance the budget and bring down inflation and interest rates.”
An article from Urquhart about the interview called Poilievre’s tone “acerbic.”
“When asked why Canadians should trust him with their votes given his demonstrable track record of flip-flopping on key issues and what some consider his use of polarizing ideologically-infused rhetoric suggesting he simply takes pages out of the Donald Trump populist playbook, Poilievre became acerbic,” he wrote.
The exchange caught the attention of many X users, even making its way up to the owner of the platform Elon Musk, who commented, “Never heard of him before but this interview is (fire emoji),” and then later, “Guess he likes them apples.”
The interview also got the attention of the large conservative platform Townhall and SiriusXM host Megyn Kelly.
“The guy tries to ask a question by throwing out several accusations of the very thing he is doing before just asking a question. Couldn’t even look him in the eye because he knew what he was doing was wrong,” wrote on X user.
Another X user wrote, “If I were Canadian, I would vote for this guy.”
A motion to call several CBC employees before the standing committee on public accounts to explain a leaked internal email regarding their coverage of the Hamas-Israel conflict was voted down by the Liberal-NDP coalition on Tuesday.
And members of Alberta’s United Conservative Party are set to wade into pronoun politics at their upcoming convention.
Plus, the Parliamentary Budget Officer projects the Liberal government’s deficit will reach $46.5 billion with stagnant economic growth.
Tune into The Daily Brief with Cosmin Dzsurdzsa and Lindsay Shepherd!
Antisemitism is an ancient ideology, nearly as old as Judaism itself. It’s a combined racial, religious, and ethnic prejudice well-documented in Christian societies, but today much more prevalent in the Muslim world, where it is nearly exclusively focused on the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel based on beliefs well beyond regional territorial disputes.
In 2014, the Anti-Defamation League published a global survey of worldwide antisemitic attitudes, reporting that in the Middle East, 74% of adults agreed with a majority of the survey’s eleven antisemitic propositions, including that “Jews have too much power in international financial markets” and “Jews are responsible for most of the world’s wars,” propositions straight out of Nazi and Hamas propaganda.
This paranoid anti-Jew bigotry was on full display in Israel Oct. 7 when Gaza Strip terrorists conducted unspeakable horrors, blatant war crimes, and crimes against humanity targeted at Israeli civilians.
A deeply rooted antisemitic hatred that dwarfs the Palestinian statehood and land claims the mainstream media is preoccupied with is featured in sacred Muslim texts that invite hostility against Jews. The Koran and the Hadith (a collection of sayings attributed to the Prophet Mohammad) can be interpreted in ways that suggest Muslims and Jews are enemies, that Jews will be killed at the end of times, that Jews falsified scripture, and that Jews tried to kill Mohammed.
The Hamas’ 1998 Charter contains a depiction of Jews echoing millennia of antisemitic tropes used to persecute the Jews, culminating in the Holocaust:
“With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others,” reads Article 22.
The 9,000-word document blames Jews for the French and Communist revolutions, World War I and II, the Rotary Club, and the United Nations, “to enable them to rule the world through them.”
The Charter directs the killing of Jews, drawing on the hadith saying: “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: ‘O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.’”
The fact that Mohammed killed and enslaved the Jews in Medina has also been used to incite violence against Jews.
With the arrival of European colonizers and missionaries in the Middle East in the 19th century, Christian antisemitic themes were introduced to the region. One of the most infamous examples is the 1840 Damascus blood libel, in which Capuchin monks accused the local Jewish community of murdering a fellow friar and his Muslim servant to use their blood for Passover rituals.
In the early 20th century, the growing movement of political Islam saw Christians and Jews as waging war against Muslims and for being responsible for the alleged decay and Westernization of Islamic societies. Sayyid Qutb, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and one of the movement’s most influential thinkers, wrote a widely disseminated pamphlet entitled “Our Struggle with the Jews,” where he drew parallels between contemporary developments and Mohammed’s struggle with the Jews.
Qutb also saw the return of Jews to Palestine as an evil that demanded punishment.
“Let Allah bring down upon the Jews people who will mete out to them the worst kind of punishment, as a confirmation of His unequivocal promise: ‘If you return, then We return,’” he wrote.
Qutb’s writings inspired Islamists worldwide, from Jamaat-e-Islami in South Asia to Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini.
The Muslim Brotherhood is a global network today, still disseminating such ideas. One of its foremost spiritual leaders today, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, is a preacher on Al Jazeera and heads the European Council for Fatwa and Research. He believes that Hitler was sent as a divine punishment for the Jews and advocates for another Holocaust.
Much of this antisemitism is rooted in the straight arrow between Nazism and contemporary Muslim antisemitism because the rise of German Nazism in the 1930s commanded an influential following among Arabs.
The Nazis also exploited Arab hostility toward the British and French imperial forces and widely disseminated radio propaganda in close cooperation with Islamist leaders, most notably the Mufti (professional jurist who interprets Muslim law) of Jerusalem, Amin Al-Husseini.
In 1941, al-Husseini fled to Germany and met with Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Joachim Von Ribbentrop and other Nazi leaders and tried to persuade them to extend the Nazis’ anti-Jewish policies to the Arab world.
He was partly successful in doing so. In 1945, Yugoslavia sought to indict the Mufti as a war criminal for his role in recruiting 20,000 Muslim volunteers for the SS who participated in the killing of Jews in Croatia and Hungary. However, He escaped French detention in 1946 and continued his fight against the Jews from Cairo and later Beirut.
His propaganda attack fused traditional Islamic anti-Jewish beliefs with conspiratorial imagery of “world Jewry.” Yet even before he collaborated with the Nazis, Al-Husseini introduced the infamous lie that Jews wanted to tear down the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. This claim has been repeatedly used as evidence that the Jews were waging a war against Islam. It was also one of the spurious motives given for the October 7 attack.
There were close ties between al-Husseini and the Muslim Brotherhood, forerunner of Hamas, resulting in a direct connection between antisemitism and violence from the Nazis to Hamas and from Hamas to the Palestinian masses.
Even today, Hitler remains a popular figure and “Mein Kampf” a bestseller in Turkey and other countries.
“The liberation of Palestine is the duty of the Palestinian people …. Resisting the occupation with all means and methods is a legitimate right guaranteed by divine laws and by international norms and laws. At the heart of these lies armed resistance, which is regarded as the strategic choice for protecting the principles and the rights of the Palestinian people.”
The October 7 invasion was only the latest expression of these articles based on Hamas’s continuing support by a large majority of Palestinians.
Accordingly, focusing mainly on present grievances and a chronic land claim dispute as explaining the October 7 Hamas attack to the exclusion of Islamic chauvinism is perversely short-sighted.
More and more members of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) are choosing to leave their ranks rather than having to move to a military base where the cost of living is out of reach.
In a briefing to senior staff, Brig.-Gen. Virginia Tattersall warned of an ongoing problem facing the CAF; affordable housing for personnel.
In June, Tattersall noted that CAF members who are able to stay in one location “have a significant financial advantage relative to members who move most often.”
“Increasingly, members will release (from the Canadian Forces) rather than relocate to an area they cannot afford or taking a loss on an existing home,” reads the briefing, which was later leaked to the National Post.
The entire country is facing a housing crisis and CAF personnel are no exception.
Moreover, the crisis has made some members particularly vulnerable as their jobs often force them to move around Canada, which exposes them “to higher prices and rates more often.”
“Average cost to purchase or rent housing now exceeds incomes of several CAF working rank levels,” reads Tattersall’s briefing.
Defence sources have said that frustration over a lack of support regarding the housing situation is growing within military personnel, who expect more action from CAF senior leadership.
The issue was acknowledged as one of the leading complaints from CAF members last year by Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre.
Currently, there are 12,000 units owned by the CAF, but they also have 28,000 occupants residing in military housing.
The Canadian Forces Housing Agency (CFHA) “effectively manages the largest housing portfolio in the Government of Canada at 27 locations across the country,” said one defence source.
Nearly 4,500 military members are currently on the CFHA wait list for accommodations and an additional 5,000 housing units will be required to be built across Canada to meet the demand.
This has prompted the CFHA to move its resources from maintaining existing housing units to building new ones, with some of the earliest construction projects to begin in Edmonton.
The shift in resources will still come with a price, warned assistant deputy minister for Infrastructure and Environment Rob Chambers, who said the cost will be “in the form of a deterioration of the existing portfolio and less improvements and modernization to existing” housing units for personnel.
An internal National Defence review warned the CFHA about the state of the 12,000 housing units in its portfolio last year, giving almost one in five units a “below average” rating.
Additionally, changes to the military’s housing allowance have presented new problems for soldiers depending on where they are posted, leading to more wanting to be released from the military so they can avoid being posted in unaffordable locations.
The Liberal government is moving ahead with two new regulations to reach net-zero despite a recent Supreme Court ruling that struck down one of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s key environmental laws as unconstitutional.
In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court ruled last Friday that the 2019 Impact Assessment Act, which gives Ottawa the power to review major projects for environmental compliance, encroaches on provincial jurisdiction.
The law was challenged by the Alberta government, which opposes federal interference in its energy industry and is fighting attempts to impose new climate targets like the Clean Electricity Regulations.
However, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said Monday that the court’s decision does not affect the government’s plans to introduce a cap on emissions from the oil and gas sector, and the Clean Electricity Regulations.
Guilbeault said these measures are based on different federal authorities than the Impact Assessment Act, and are within Ottawa’s legal scope.
“The opinion of the court does not call into question other regulatory initiatives under development, and we are confident that they are within the purview of the federal government,” Guilbeault said in a statement to The Globe and Mail.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is not convinced. She has called on the federal government to scrap its other environmental regulations, which she said will harm her province’s economy and face similar legal challenges.
Guilbeault’s statement comes as the government is expected to announce soon how it will amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, which is the likely vehicle for implementing the emissions cap and the electricity regulations.
The latter is designed to phase out natural gas plants without carbon capture technology by 2030.
The Sovereignty Act, a controversial law that gives Alberta more power over its own affairs, could soon be invoked by Smith in response to the federal government’s stance.
In September, Smith said she was preparing a motion to use the act to challenge the federal government’s new clean electricity regulations.
The regulations would require Alberta to have a net-zero electricity grid by 2035, which Smith argues would harm the province’s economy and energy sector.
The Canadian oil and gas sector is witnessing a surge of major deals that indicate a boom in the sector, according to some industry analysts.
Several multi-billion-dollar transactions have been announced since the beginning of 2023, involving some of the biggest players in the country’s energy landscape.
According to the president of Sayer Energy Advisors, Tom Pavic, Canadians should expect more in the coming year.
“I think you’ll still see some more consolidation, for sure. I think there’s still going to be some more transactions,” Pavic told the Canadian Press.
“A number of companies have the capital to pursue these transactions — they’ve been generating quite a bit of cash flow.”
These include Crescent Point Energy Corp.’s acquisition of Spartan Delta Corp.’s Montney assets for $1.7 billion, ConocoPhillips’ takeover of TotalEnergies’ Surmont oilsands project for about $4 billion, and Suncor Energy Inc.’s purchase of Total’s share in the Fort Hills oilsands mine for $1.47 billion.
On Monday, another blockbuster deal was unveiled, as Tourmaline Oil Corp. — one of Canada’s largest natural gas companies — agreed to buy Bonavista Energy Corp. for $1.45 billion.
In addition, Strathcona Resources Ltd. and Pipestone Energy Corp. merged.
In the U.S., Exxon Mobil Corp. made a splash with its US$59.5 billion bid for Pioneer Natural Resources, a move seen as a vote of confidence in the oil and gas sector.
The flurry of activity in Canada comes after two years of robust commodity prices in the sector.
As a result, many firms have reduced their debt levels and are now looking for opportunities to expand their production and reserves through acquisitions.
A recent ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada found that the federal government’s Impact Assessment Act (IAA), also known as the “No More Pipelines” bill was mostly unconstitutional.
The IAA, which was introduced in 2019 by the Trudeau government as Bill C-69, granted authority to federal regulators to assess the possible environmental and social effects of various resource and infrastructure projects, especially those involving pipelines. Critics of the law claimed that it essentially was an outright ban on any new energy development projects in Canada.
Toronto District School Board teacher Natasha Mansouri said Sunday that well-respected educator Richard Bilkzsto’s untimely passing is a “significant loss” to everyone who knew him.
In a touching and eloquent tribute, Mansouri told a group gathered at Mel Lastman Square that Bilkszto had a “compassionate and unshakeable commitment to enhancing the quality of public education” – that he was a rare commodity.
Despite the chill and rainy skies, about 100 friends and former colleagues came out to pay tribute to the 60-year-old principal, who took his life in mid-July.
He was an educator who promoted “strength rather than victimhood,” who “dared to question” and who viewed “obstacles as opportunities,” said Mansouri, one of a half a dozen trustees, teachers and community members who gave touching tributes to him.
“I am troubled by the scarcity of people like Richard who confront bullies whether they’re in the schoolyard or the bullies who stand in front of the class,” she said. “I wish there were more individuals like him, brave and tireless who take a stance and speak up.
“If you’re out there, please speak up, you are not alone.”
It was clear she was speaking about the circumstances that led Bilkszto to take his own life in mid-July.
His lawyer Lisa Bildy and his family have both said it was the bullying by a Black Lives Matter-supporting Diversity, Equity, Inclusive (DEI) trainer in the spring of 2021 and the ongoing harassment by TDSB anti-racism executives that led to his death.
I have requested financial information under FOI legislation on the cost to the TDSB of the DEI trainer – Kike Ojo-Thomson of the KOJO Institute – but have yet to receive it.
In late July, both Education Minister Steven Lecce and TDSB education director Colleen Russell-Rawlins announced reviews of the situation leading up to his unfortunate death. But, after almost three months. we’ve heard nothing from either.
In my view, the TDSB review – being conducted by the King Advisory Group – is the furthest thing from independent and merely an attempt to sweep the harassment by TDSB executives and their preferred contractors under the rug.
The two teachers who spoke announced an award and scholarship in Bilkszto’s name.
The award will recognize an educator who exemplifies the qualities the principal embodied, said TDSB trustee Weidong Pei.
“(He embodied) a dedication to excellence in education and devotion to his students and their well-being,” he said.
The scholarship will be awarded to an undergraduate accepted at a teachers college in Ontario who embraces the same qualities, the teachers said.
Teacher Jon Roberts, who was involved with Bilkszto in a chapter of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), said as a gay man who came of age in the 80s, Bilkszto knew about bigotry and hatred.
But he never insisted the intolerant get with the program or else, said Roberts.
“He was calm and caring…a beacon of positive change,” he said.
Pei said he was a teacher who insisted everyone have equality of opportunity no matter “what they look like.”
After Bilkszto helped Pei win the trustee election in 2022, he told him with a smile he better keep his promise to fight for children.
“Richard, I know you now look from the sky…I hope I made you proud fighting for the children you love,” the Willowdale trustee said, getting emotional.
“We are all better for knowing you and we are poorer for your loss.”
Ragini Sharma of the Toronto Asian Parents Association said Bilkszto was an ally for Asian students – “sensitive and sympathetic” to such students “being sidelined” in the TDSB system.
She said he appreciated that Asian students were considered “privileged” and labelled “white adjacent” by the anti-black racism focus of the board.
“He understood that Asian students do well because their parents value education and work hard to help the children succeed in school,” she said.
“We shared his concern about school boards becoming more divisive in how they handled diversity and equity.”
She added that she knows Bilkszto would have liked the board to do more to bring more belongingness and compassion among students and staff.
“May his soul rest in peace,” she said.
“May his legacy never be forgotten,” added Mansouri.
The tribute ended with a moment of silence in his honour.
