Ahead of this week’s Canada-European Union summit in Montreal, Prime Minister Mark Carney said both parties are hammering out a “new, ambitious alliance,” after pledging deeper ties with Europe last month.
“An alliance that builds resilience for what it allows us to do for our citizens, and our citizens to do for themselves,” Carney said in a written statement on Sunday. “An alliance strong enough so that no one can dictate our choices, and an alliance open enough that others can join.”
On Oct. 5, Quebec voters returned the separatist Parti Québécois to power after more than a decade in the wilderness. Its leader, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, has promised a third referendum on sovereignty during his first mandate. On Monday, Albertans voted on whether to take the first step toward a referendum on separation.
European governments have entered a race against time to review contracts with organisations engaged in undisclosed Islamist activities aimed at gradually infiltrating and penetrating institutions across the old continent.
Perhaps one of the most dangerous examples of this phenomenon is the infiltration of Austrian prisons by an organisation representing one of the Muslim Brotherhood’s arms, through a formal contract signed with the Vienna government. The government, in turn, swiftly cancelled the agreement after discovering attempts to recruit jihadists, shifting them from overt extremism towards the Brotherhood’s softer ideology.
The recent riots in France have mainly been described as a revolt of high school students, stemming from deteriorating conditions, overcrowding and understaffing in French high schools (lycées). That presentation is largely inaccurate. Although students were incited by a few agitators to voice grievances, political leaders, primarily from the political left, immediately stepped in to urge them to go further and resort to violence.
Back at the beginning of this century, the U.S. national debt was $5 trillion. The U.S. budget was $1.78 trillion, and we ran a $237 billion budget surplus.
Today, the debt is $40 trillion; the budget is $7.4 trillion, and the budget surplus is long gone, replaced by a $2 trillion deficit.
The Trump administration’s full-court pressure campaign on Europe to release diesel supplies or face a U.S. export ban heading into the winter has split and angered European leaders, entangled oil companies and raised private charges of “blackmail.” It also appears to have worked.
Senior White House officials led a pressure campaign on European governments to open the spigot on their strategic reserves, according to 10 oil industry executives and European government officials who were granted anonymity to describe the negotiations. Their tactics ultimately led to G7 countries announcing they would release 100 million barrels of diesel and crude oil from their strategic reserves over the next four months.
War fever is ramping up again across Europe. This has happened several times in the four and a half years since Russia invaded Ukraine, usually coinciding with important national elections — particularly those in Romania, Moldova, Hungary, Poland, and Germany — when certain domestic political parties have been demonized as “pro-Putin” and “security threats” to the rest of Europe. The war drums also get loud whenever increased military budgets are being debated within the governments of the Scandinavian and Baltic states, Finland, Germany, and Poland, as well as the European Commission. The ebb and flow of political battle cries against the Russian Federation track closely with Europe’s electoral and parliamentary calendars.
National Rally President Jordan Bardella has said this afternoon that “the wave of immigration Europe is experiencing today is only the beginning.”
Speaking at the Reform UK party conference in Birmingham, Bardella claimed that citizens of London and Paris “no longer recognize the country in which they grew up”. He added that if both the National Rally and Reform reach office, they “will stop the boats”.
Canada and Europe are having a moment. The timing could not be better.
With the Canada-U.S. trading relationship moving from aggression to open hostility, Foreign Minister Anita Anand was huddling in Ireland this week with her European counterparts.
While U.S. President Donald Trump drafts angry social media posts, Prime Minister Mark Carney is drafting a speech he’ll deliver this month to the European Parliament
After a drone packed with explosives was found near a Ukrainian cargo plane parked at Leipzig/Halle Airport in Germany this month, security camera footage appeared to show the drone had struck the plane’s wing. That the drone failed to detonate seemed only to be luck.
Since then, details have emerged that German lawmakers say indicate a serious attack was planned at the airport, a major cargo hub that is also used by European and NATO military aircraft.
On February 14, 2026, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a laudatory speech about Europe and its legacy at the Munich Security Conference. He noted, however, that Europe is weakening. “We don’t want our allies to be weak,” he said.
His remarks initially were well received by the European political leaders and journalists in the room; not for long. Several journalists soon mentioned that, while Rubio appeared friendlier toward Europe than US Vice President J.D. Vance’s had been a year earlier, he was still “arrogant” in presuming that Europe needed advice on how to be stronger.
The number of executions in Iran has surged dramatically in 2026, accompanied by widespread human rights violations: torture, sham trials, and the systematic repression of dissent.
Iranian authorities have carried out hundreds of executions so far, and it is only August. There were more than 100 in June, with the total climbing past 420 by late July, according to Iran Human Rights and other monitors. Recently a gallows was erected in Isfahan’s public square. Many of these executions appear to be politically motivated, targeting participants in the January 2026 protests that challenged the regime.
The latest salvo in US President Donald Trump’s freewheeling trade war could have disastrous effects for Canadian business. But the new tariff threats may also open up trade opportunities elsewhere, with China and the EU in a strong position to benefit.
Trump’s planned 50% tariff on a range of imported goods ranges from wine to hockey sticks but does not include other key sectors such as energy, potash and fish.
It is expected to impact about 5%, or $20 billion (€17.5 billion) worth, of goods and “the impact could be devastating for the people in businesses involved,” Julian Karaguesian, an economics lecturer from Canada’s McGill University, told DW.
Europe as we have known it for centuries — a civilization founded on a native majority population, a common culture, industrial prosperity, and a certain idea of liberty and property — appears destined to disappear.
This will happen not in some spectacular cataclysm, but through a slow, inexorable erosion, made inevitable by structural trends now too powerful to be reversed in the time it would take to stop it.
Even if, in the years ahead, several European countries bring to power so-called “right-wing” coalitions that have never yet governed, this can no longer substantially alter Europe’s collective destiny. The problem is no longer merely political; it is demographic, energetic, economic, and institutional. These four processes interlock and reinforce one another in a sinister yet terribly efficient mechanism.
Speaking as a Canadian whose own country has begun to mirror Europe annexation by the US has become a more than reasonable proposition.
EU militaries continue to rely heavily on US weaponry. This was again evident at July’s NATO summit in Turkey’s capital, Ankara, which also included the high-level Defense Industry Forum, at which US companies were able to secure lucrative contracts.
It was also decided that European governments would play a bigger role in producing and maintaining the missiles that are so crucial to the continent’s defense. Lockheed Martin and Rheinmetall signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly produce ATACMS missiles in Germany. This is one step towards increasing stockpiles without upsetting the United States, but in the long term Europe is aiming for greater independence.
