WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. President Donald Trump wants a Golden Dome of missile defence over the United States, and if you’re thinking this sounds familiar, you’d be right. Back in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, aka Star Wars, also aimed to develop a space-based and layered defence system to knock out any incoming strikes.
It didn’t work out.
Speaking before a room full of policymakers from midwestern Canada and the United States, former prime minister Stephen Harper said the ongoing trade war with the U.S. is a “wake-up call” for Canada to diversify its trade and export markets.
“I was — I think it’s fair to say — probably the most pro-American prime minister in Canadian history,” Harper said of his tenure from 2006 to 2015.
If the current government asked him a year ago for advice on U.S. President Donald Trump being re-elected and wanting to renegotiate trade, he says he would have thought it was a real opportunity for Canada to deepen its economic and security partnership with the United States.
Prime Minister Mark Carney said negotiations between Canada and the U.S. on a new trade and security deal have reached an “intense phase,” as an Aug. 1 deadline looms.
Carney made the comments in Prince Edward Island on Monday during a separate announcement about the Confederation Bridge.
“The negotiations are at an intense phase,” Carney said. “It’s a complex negotiation you see with the various trade deals that have been agreed by other jurisdictions … there are many aspects to these negotiations.”
Both endure their lowest standing with the public since the last century.
Anyone old enough to have watched the original Star Wars film on the big screen will clearly remember the scene in which Obi-Wan Kenobi advises Luke Skywalker that the Mos Eisley settlement is “a wretched hive of scum and villainy.” According to a new Wall Street Journal poll, this is very much the way most voters view the Democratic Party. Specifically, the survey found that 63 percent of voters hold an unfavorable view of “the Party of Jefferson and Jackson.” Considering the absurd antics to which voters have been subjected by these people, it’s remarkable that their numbers aren’t worse.
OTTAWA / LOS ANGELES — In this discussion with Chris Meyer of Widefountain, we dig deeper into my findings on an explosive narcotics precursor case quietly dropped by Canadian prosecutors—and what it reveals about Canada’s growing vulnerabilities to foreign infiltration.
We unpack the story of a Chinese chemist, known here as Dr. X, who was charged with importing more than 100 kilograms of PMK ethyl glycidate—a key chemical used in the production of MDMA (ecstasy). Court records show Dr. X had direct ties to a bio-pharmaceutical firm affiliated with the University of British Columbia, and was reportedly recruited under Beijing’s “Thousand Talents Plan”—a program U.S. intelligence agencies warn is used to facilitate espionage and the transfer of dual-use technologies.
We are approaching the end game of the current round of negotiations between Canada and the U.S. on a new comprehensive trade deal.
The outcome of the talks is still very much uncertain. While it appeared early on as if progress was being made, President Donald Trump has made no secret of the fact that several major obstacles remain. Favourite targets of his have been our banking rules and regulations and our protectionist digital and cultural sectors (in addition to non-trade irritants like our border policies).
Fifteen per cent seems to be the new magic number being bandied about for a U.S. tariff rate after Japan and the Americans announced a trade deal, with the European Union now signed up too and South Korea apparently headed in the same direction.
… If 15 per cent is the “new normal” as Stretch wondered, what does that mean for Canada?
WASHINGTON — President Trump said Monday he’s looking to reduce the 50-day deadline he gave Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop the war in Ukraine to just “10 to 12 days” from now.
“I’m going to make a new deadline of about 10 to 12 days from today,” Trump told reporters in Scotland after meeting with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Trump said he was “generous” to first give 50 days on July 14 before he would levy secondary sanctions on Moscow, but “we just don’t see any progress being made.”
Canada’s Soviet-style supply management system on dairy, poultry and eggs has been screwing citizens for decades with higher food prices, obliterated family farms and disrupted international trade deals. The dairy cartels are deeply entrenched in Canada and have effectively cowed every federal political party (so to speak,) including the Conservatives. No major federal leader will dare question supply management for fear of upsetting Quebec which benefits from the program. The standoff on this terrible policy robs Canadians of billions.
The country is a NATO ally and G7 member. While the U.S.-U.K. relationship is often touted as Washington’s most “special,” the Canadian relationship is arguably the most critical to the future of the U.S. economy and soft power. The projection of U.S. hard power abroad depends in part on positive global public perception of Washington’s leadership. This stems from the United States being a beacon of freedom and arsenal of democracy in World War I, World War II, crises across the Taiwan Strait, the Korean war, and others. If after all of that, we now treat Canada with a lack of foresight for short-term trade interests, we lose at least some of our moral high ground, which negatively affects our soft power, and as well our long-term national interests.
ICE raid at major pot operation clouds picture for legal cannabis in California
Camarillo — Ever since federal immigration agents raided one of the largest licensed cannabis operators in the state this month, the phones of cannabis industry insiders have been blazing with messages of fear, sadness and confusion.
“It sent shock waves through the community,” said Hirsh Jain, the founder of Ananda Strategy, which advises cannabis businesses. “Everyone is on text threads.”
Glass House Brands, whose cannabis operations have helped make Santa Barbara and Ventura counties the new cannabis capitals of California, has long been among the most prominent companies in the state’s wild frontier of legal cannabis. Some call it the “Walmart of Weed” for its streamlined, low-cost production methods, its gargantuan market share and its phalanx of wealthy investors and powerful lobbyists.
President Trump said he reached a trade deal with the European Union late on Sunday, avoiding a trade war with the US’s largest trading partner and marking his biggest deal so far in his attempt to remake the global trading system through higher tariffs for U.S. trading partners.
BREAKING: President Trump lands EU trade deal:
– EU to purchase $750 billion in US and invest $600 billion in US
– EU to purchase a “vast amount” of military equipment
– EU opens up markets to US goods
– 15% reciprocal tariffsMassive!! pic.twitter.com/cheSWDIMSJ
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) July 27, 2025
h/t DS
TORONTO — In 2024, the grand prize at the Canadian Whisky Awards went to Paradigm Spirits. Its entrant, made with Canadian corn, aged for 19 years in American oak barrels and blended with a splash of Spanish sherry, beat some 200 competitors to be crowned Whisky of the Year. A judge called it “remarkable.”
It was a break for Paradigm, which had opened in an old Kellogg’s factory in London, Ontario, just a few years earlier. The women-owned-and-operated distillery was soon inundated with messages from Canadians across the country eager to buy the award-winning spirit, co-founder Irma Joeveer said.
But there was a problem: Canada’s internal trade barriers. With few exceptions, alcohol producers in one Canadian province are prohibited from selling directly to consumers in another. Vintners in British Columbia, for instance, can often more easily sell their merlots to oenophiles in other countries than within their own.
One thing about Trump – you can never call him all bad.
China is now importing record amounts of Canadian oil after slashing U.S. oil purchases by roughly 90 per cent.
As a result, imports of Canadian crude have surged, reaching a record 7.3 million barrels in March. This massive boon comes as Canadian negotiators are racing against the clock to make a trade deal with the White House.
The expanded Trans Mountain Pipeline has enabled China and other East Asian importers to access Canada’s vast crude reserves, which are relatively cheap and suitable for China’s advanced refineries that process dense, high-sulfur crude.
They gathered in a conference room for the weekly management meeting, even though there was hardly anyone left to manage. Chad Hartmann, the president of Glenn Valley Foods in Omaha, pushed a few empty chairs to the side of the room and then passed around a sheet totaling the latest production numbers. “Take a deep breath and brace yourselves,” he said.
For more than a decade, Glenn Valley’s production reports had told a story of steady ascendance — new hires, new manufacturing lines, new sales records for one of the fastest-growing meatpacking companies in the Midwest. But, in a matter of weeks, production had plummeted by almost 70 percent. Most of the work force was gone. Half of the maintenance crew was in the process of being deported, the director of human resources had stopped coming to work, and more than 50 employees were being held at a detention facility in rural Nebraska.
Hartmann, 52, folded the printed sheet into tiny squares and waited out the silence.
The Liberal Government recently introduced a path to citizenship for “construction laborers” working illegally in Canada.
What they really did was reward the criminal construction firms that broke the law by knowingly exploiting the illegals at the expense of Canadians.
The Star like the NYTimes pretends these firms are some kind hero: Canada to grant legal status for thousands of undocumented construction workers
