Canada, prepare for a decade of thrift and lower living standards

We are poorer than we think. Canadians running their retirement numbers are shining light in the dark corners of household finances in this country. The sums leave many “anxious, fearful and sad about their finances,” according to a Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan survey recently reported in these pages.

Fifty-two per cent of us worry a lot about our personal finances. Fifty per cent feel frustrated, 47 per cent feel emotionally drained and 43 per cent feel depressed. There is not one survey indicator to suggest Canadians have made financial progress in 2025 compared with 2024.

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Trump’s taking Maga fire over ‘forever wars’, but the real battle awaits

“I’m the one that decides,” declared President Trump last week when asked by a reporter who gets to say what “America First” really means. Faced with a backlash from parts of his base over the prospect of the US supporting Israel in military action in Iran, the president said his word is final — “after all, I’m the one that developed America First” — adding that “the term wasn’t used until I came along”.

In fact, the phrase dates back to the First World War when Woodrow Wilson used the slogan to appeal to voters who wanted America to stay out of the conflict. (They didn’t get their wish.) The America First Committee was founded in 1940 to protest against US involvement in the Second World War, but gained notoriety after high-profile members such as the aviator Charles Lindbergh and the automotive tycoon Henry Ford led to a perception that it had antisemitic and pro-fascist sympathies.

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Federal officials managing conflict concerns tied to Carney’s private sector ties

Federal bureaucrats are working behind the scenes to manage potential conflicts of interest involving Prime Minister Mark Carney’s former private business ties, senior officials confirmed this week, amid renewed scrutiny of his financial connections and past roles with major corporations.

Christiane Fox, deputy clerk of the Privy Council Office, told MPs that public servants are coordinating with the Prime Minister’s Office to address any declared conflicts.

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Canada Says Network Devices Compromised in China-Linked Hack

Canada’s cybersecurity agency said Chinese-backed hackers were likely behind recent malicious activity targeting domestic telecommunications infrastructure, warning that three network devices registered to a Canadian company were compromised in the attacks.

The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation urged Canadian organizations to take steps to harden their networks against the threat posed by Salt Typhoon, a group linked to the Chinese government, in a bulletin issued late on Friday.

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NATO countries agree to increase defence spending to 5%

NATO countries agreed a statement on Sunday for their upcoming summit that sets a goal of 5 per cent of GDP for annual defence and security-related spending by 2035, overcoming objections from Spain, diplomats said.

The statement has the green light from all 32 NATO members, diplomats said, but will only become official when it is approved by leaders including U.S. President Donald Trump at their summit in The Hague on Wednesday.

… Under a plan by NATO boss Mark Rutte, countries would reach 5 per cent of GDP by boosting their core defence spending goal from 2 per cent to 3.5 per cent and spending a further 1.5 per cent on related items like adapting roads and bridges for military vehicles and cyber security.


It would appear Canada has agreed to the increase in principle but there’s no word and it won’t be official till Wednesday.

I wonder if Carney will pull a Spain.

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Michelle Obama Does Not Sound Well

Perhaps a frothy bubble bath, a spot of tea, and a cushy robe would help poor Michelle Obama work through her past traumas, like being married to former president Barack Obama and having to pay for food while living at the White House.

Instead, she has been working out her imagined hardships in public interviews and podcasts, like a public therapy session nobody asked for.

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Palestine Action ban is a warning shot for domestic extremists

In the early hours of Friday, activists from the protest group Palestine Action infiltrated RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire. Using electric scooters, they navigated the vast airbase under the noses of unsuspecting security personnel. Brize Norton is a critical part of Britain’s defence infrastructure: a military Heathrow, used for trooping flights, freight and refuelling. The activists, who uploaded video footage of their raid to social media, subsequently vandalised two Voyager air-to-air refuelling tankers, damaging them with crowbars and spraying paint into the engine’s turbofans using adapted fire extinguishers. They claimed, nebulously, that their intention was to disrupt British military support for Israel.

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Pierre Poilievre has dropped out of the spotlight, What happens when he comes back?

Matt Gurney: Let’s open with something of a confession. Or maybe a strategic repositioning of the shield I use to cover my bottom from being called out for bad predictions. In the immediate aftermath of the election, I would have said, with no reservations, that I thought Pierre Poilievre was safe as Conservative leader. I still think that, but now only on balance — I think he is very likely to remain as leader, but small doubts have entered my mind. We can talk about why in a minute, but first, what do you think of the big question — is he safe?

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A US Attorney discovers open immigration reality

During my law enforcement career, I never saw what one might reasonably describe as an obvious act of courage on the part of any attorney, prosecutor, or public defender. Their lives and jobs were insulated from the gritty reality of day-to-day police work. It was a reality they experienced from the comfort of office chairs and argued in climate-controlled, guarded courtrooms. Such was not the case for US Attorney John A Sarcone III of the Northern District of New York on June 17, 2025 in Albany, NY.

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This is Why Modern Police Are So Useless at Fighting Crime

What is the purpose of the state? Increasingly, it appears to be to secure something called ‘equality’. But we long ago moved past the point at which this was achieved through formal equality in the sense of everybody being equal before the law. What we now seem to expect is to experience equality in what I have previously called the ‘sibling’ sense: everybody loved equally by the benign parent, yet at the same time rivalrous with one another, seeking to be the one who is ever-so-slightly more loved than the rest.

The result of this is a grotesquely fake, cloying and sentimental governing style which apes a simpering maternalism while achieving something more like bad therapy. It coaxes, it reassures, it purports to nurture and support, in a manner that is transparently false and patronisingly obvious. And there is I think nowhere in the Western world where this style is more finessed or pronounced than Scotland, land of my fathers, where I spent the last two days speaking at an event.

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Alykhan Velshi: Canada will never build another new pipeline

No pipeline is coming. Not under Prime Minister Mark Carney. Not under any federal leader. But the promise of a pipeline—the vague, lingering maybe—is too useful to kill. That promise allows Ottawa to discipline the West, delay their demands, and extract cooperation without ever offering reciprocity. A built pipeline delivers oil. An unbuilt pipeline delivers obedience.

Western provinces that believe a Carney government might succeed where Trudeau failed misunderstand the nature of the offer. Carney won’t say yes—but, more importantly, he won’t say no. He will keep the dream just alive enough to remain useful: a chip, a valve, a leash.

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Was It Scrap Metal or an Alien Spacecraft? The Army Asked an Elite Defense Lab to Investigate

The Pentagon man gathered top technology executives from the six largest defense contractors in 2022 to ask an unusual question: Have any of your companies ever gained access to alien technology?

“It would just make my job easier if one of you would ’fess up, give me the UFO, or help me find them,” said Sean Kirkpatrick, who had been tapped by the Defense Department to investigate whether Washington had ever had a secret alien program.

The comment was made half jokingly, but for one company, Lockheed Martin, the answer was…complicated.


The WSJ has become the disinfo journal but their glaring omissions leave a massive credibility gap. Citing Sean Kirkpatrick is just the beginning.

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Brussels Gets Serious—About Pets, Not Borders

The European Parliament has decided that all dogs and cats must be registered with a microchip to make them easier to track. Because of course, in a continent where it’s impossible to know how many people enter through its external borders each day—let alone where they come from—it seems only logical that the real issue of security and welfare lies in finding out whether your pet was purchased five or ten years ago, or which other animal it has mated with.

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Statscan denies political motive behind misinformation study … just a right wing conspiracy theory

Statistics Canada is rejecting claims that a recent study on internet misinformation was politically motivated or intended to support the government’s push to regulate online content.

“The report was not requested by any public authority,” said agency spokesperson Annick Irakoze, who explained the findings were based on public questionnaires.

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