Opioids and homelessness hit this Ontario city hard. Then, it threw all it had at the crisis. The Globe returns to see what those efforts achieved
In early November, workers in pickup trucks arrived at Milligan’s Pond, a wooded oasis in Barrie, Ont., an hour north of Toronto. Their orders were clear.
After a double murder nearby left two men from a local homeless encampment dead and another charged with the crime, the city had declared a state of emergency and started clearing its biggest encampments. The last one left was at Milligan’s Pond.
The city issued trespass notices to the men and women living there, and then the workers swept up everything: tents, sleeping bags, shopping carts, propane tanks. But if you looked closely, you could still see the remnants of a homemade memorial to those who have died on Barrie’s streets, many of them from drug overdoses. Locals call it The Rock. Its story is the story of the city’s struggle, written on stone.
US forces have seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, President Donald Trump said, marking a sharp escalation in Washington’s pressure campaign against Nicolás Maduro’s government.
“We have just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela – a large tanker, very large, the largest one ever seized actually,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
Releasing a video of the seizure, Attorney General Pam Bondi described the vessel as a “crude oil tanker used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran”.
🚨 BREAKING: Video has been released of US forces SEIZING CONTROL of a massive oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela
Per President Trump, this is the LARGEST tanker ship ever seized.
The DOJ and FBI believe this ship was being used to deliver sanctioned oil from Venezuela to… pic.twitter.com/VlLVIMprmO
The picturesque small town of Erbach, Germany has been left in shock after vandals destroyed a live nativity scene, defacing the local church and even abusing the two donkeys that were part of the display.
In a living nativity scene at Erbach near Frankfurt two donkeys, lily & max were beaten, the scene destroyed & they defecated in the church.
One punched the donkey, destroyed electrical boxes, Christmas light & decorations. They robbed stalls & defaced the toilets. pic.twitter.com/KhCxoI1joM
The president of the National Police Federation (NPF) says Canada has experienced an increase in violent crime in recent years, while also noting rising immigration numbers.
However, he stopped short of directly confirming a link between crime trends and federal immigration policy.
When people talk about the wonders of socialized medicine, they talk as if it were free and as comprehensive as the health care available in the United States.
Neither of these things is true. Although the United States’ health care policies are disastrous in their own ways—particularly with regard to its reliance on third-party payer systems, scammy Pharmacy Benefit Managers, and a highly bureaucratized hybrid public/private system that drives costs through the roof and provides no transparency, the socialized health care systems in most other countries are grossly inferior.
I watched the Piers Morgan v Nick Fuentes interview last night, convinced that Piers had done a fairly solid job. After scanning Twitter (meh, X), I had to go and watch it again.
Aaron Bastani had posted a short review that Morgan had crucified Fuentes, I added a comment generally agreeing with him, then a few hours later there were all these replies making fun of me.
Huh, what happened?
Looking at other posts there was a parallel reality and the dividing line was age.
An excellent essay but Fuentes is not the Big Bad Bogeyman he is made out to be. Not even close.
The elites left & right have purposely built him up beyond all reason because they wrongly believe his twisted little mind’s incontinence gives them the wedge issues needed to reassert narrative control.
The kids Fuentes allegedly represents are not Little Hitlers.
A lost generation confronts us and they are angry at their fate.
Angry at being gaslit by the very grifters who aborted their futures.
The political and business classes robbed them of their birthright – a shot at a decent life free as possible from ignorance and want.
I am old but I will no longer tolerate the anti-white propaganda, the two tiered justice and unending lies spewed by the grifter class.
And so I have gone tribal and will support the Cinnabon girl and her like regardless of whether they are right or wrong based solely on the fact they are one of my kind.
I will do what I can to end the mass immigration from incompatible cultures that is destroying our society, our Canada.
The luxury values of the grifter class are nothing more than a cover for elite theft.
They best mind the children of the lost generation they created and grab a seat on one of the remigration flights.
“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”
Food banks are struggling, but it’s hard to feel charitable when some people treat them like an immigration perk
The struggling food bank has been a recurring motif in the news in recent weeks. Food aid agencies across the country are presenting various regional hunger reports to the public, and the results are consistently depressing: usage is higher than ever, donations are down and “we don’t know how we’re going to keep up.”
On the other hand, food bank abuse seems to be a recurring problem. What’s being done to prevent it from happening? It’s not all that clear.
43% of food bank users in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) are not Canadian citizens, according to the most recent data from the Daily Bread Food Bank’s Who’s Hungry Report 2024. This report, based on surveys of over 1,300 clients across 79 food banks in Toronto (a core part of the GTA) and intake data from the city’s Link2Feed system, covers the period from April 2023 to March 2024. It shows that among all surveyed clients, 57% are Canadian citizens, permanent residents, or First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples, while the remaining 43% include temporary residents (22%, such as international students and work visa holders), refugee claimants (12%), those under the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel program (6%), and undocumented individuals (1%).
This figure reflects a slight increase in non-citizens compared to 2023 (when 49% were non-citizens). Among new clients—those visiting for the first time, who make up 57% of total visits—the share is higher at 73%, with 80% of them being newcomers to Canada (less than 5 years in the country). Overall visits reached a record 3.49 million, up 38% from the previous year, highlighting rising food insecurity amid economic pressures like housing costs and inflation.
For context, this aligns with national trends from Food Banks Canada’s HungerCount 2024, where 34% of clients nationwide are recent newcomers (in Canada 10 years or less), but GTA data shows a higher concentration of non-citizens due to the region’s diverse immigrant population.
Like locusts.
🚨HOLY CRAP! – NEW UNEARTHED VIDEO FROM 2022
shows an Indian Youtuber secretly filming in a Sydney Nova Scotia food bank
the ENTIRE place is filled with YOUNG South Asians waiting for food to show up and then raiding it
Dear Lord. More threats of violence from the left, this time against one of the most effective communicators on behalf of ICE, deportations, and the rule of law.
The weaponization of trade to “strengthen American power and pre-eminence” is entrenched in the new U.S. National Security Strategy recently released by the White House.
In the prologue, U.S. President Donald Trump writes that the U.S. “will continue to develop every dimension of our national strength, and we will make America safer, richer, freer, greater and more powerful than ever before.”
The Trump doctrine raises new concerns that Canada’s sovereignty will come under even greater economic and political pressure.
The US “Weaponizes Trade” to strengthen American power in Canada trade is managed to strengthen the Laurentian elite and Carney’s Brookfield payout.
There are scandals that explode with theatrical outrage, and there are scandals that settle over a nation like a quiet, damning verdict. Minnesota’s autism-therapy fraud belongs firmly in the latter category. On November 22, 2025, The Washington Post noted — with the weary delicacy that now accompanies every public-sector failure — that welfare fraud in Minnesota had become “far too common,” highlighting federal charges against eight men, six of them Somali, accused of exploiting the state’s Housing Stabilization Services program under Medicaid and helping force the program’s shutdown.
If bear hugs were army divisions and brave words cash euros, Volodymyr Zelensky would have ended his tour of European capitals this week the best-armed and best-funded leader in the world.
‘We stand with Ukraine,’ vowed Sir Keir Starmer after hosting a summit for Zelensky and top European allies at Downing Street on Monday. ‘We support you in the conflict and support you in the negotiations to make sure that this is a just and lasting settlement.’ Germany’s chancellor Friedrich Merz declared that ‘nobody should doubt our support for Ukraine’ and added that ‘the destiny of this country is the destiny of Europe.’ France’s president Emmanuel Macron promised that Europe has ‘a lot of cards in our hands.’ Zelensky went from London to Rome yesterday, where his staunch supporter Giorgia Meloni offered more hugs, while Pope Leo gave his blessing.
OTTAWA – U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra is downplaying concerns that America’s new national security strategy could lead to his government supporting politically aligned parties in Canada.
While Hoekstra says he doesn’t see the U.S. getting involved in domestic politics, he accuses Ontario of doing just that by running an ad on American TV networks quoting the late Ronald Reagan attacking tariffs.
In a wide-ranging year-end interview with The Canadian Press, Trump’s representative in Canada says the language in the national security document could be interpreted “broadly.”
Although Lebanon is in the news today largely due to the actions of the terror group Hezbollah and the economic hardships in the country, Lebanon in the mid-20th century was one of the wealthiest, most prosperous and stable countries in the Middle East. It was also, until a few decades ago, the only majority-Christian country in the Middle East. Thanks to its being a center of commerce and a thriving mixture of Muslims, Christians and Jews, Lebanon was known as the “Switzerland of the Middle East” and its capital, Beirut, as the “Paris of the Middle East.”
Lebanon, historically, was a Christian-majority land. The religion was introduced to the area in the first century by St. Peter and St. Paul, and the faith spread early throughout the region.
Waiting for the medical care Canadians need has become the national pastime. But unlike America’s pastime — baseball — hanging around for the care you need is not a good way to spend a sunny, summer afternoon even if your have hotdogs and beer.
