Readout - Prime Minister Carney speaks with President of Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas Français
The leaders discussed the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian disaster in Gaza. Prime Minister Carney reaffirmed Canada's commitment to a two-state solution – an independent, viable, and sovereign Palestinian state living side by side with the State of Israel in peace and security.
Prime Minister Carney shared Canada's intention to recognize the State of Palestine at the 80 th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025. He indicated that this intention is predicated on the Palestinian Authority's commitment to much-needed reforms, including the commitments by Palestinian Authority President Abbas to fundamentally reform its governance, to hold general elections in 2026 in which Hamas can play no part, and to demilitarize the Palestinian state. Prime Minister Carney welcomed President Abbas' commitment to these reforms.
The Prime Minister informed the President that Canada will increase its efforts to promote peace and stability in the region, and work closely with regional allies toward this goal.
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Winnipeg Free Press
42 minutes ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Recognizing a state, and making a point
Opinion Canada will recognize a state that does not exist. A state that may never exist. A state that has yet to meet the internationally accepted attributes of statehood: a permanent population, a defined territory, an effective government, and exercised sovereignty. This is Palestine. Palestine is not yet a reality, but Canada is recognizing another reality. The reality of war, hunger, hardship, and politics. Almost two years after the horrific Hamas massacre of Israelis and others on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel is locked into a grinding war of lethal attrition against Hamas in Gaza. No immediate ceasefire prospects and no clear end game by any of the protagonists except the destruction of the other exists. ABDEL KAREEM HANA / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES A Palestinian boy carrying a plastic jerry can of water walks past buildings destroyed during Israeli air and ground operations in Gaza City on July 25. The most volatile neighbourhood in the world has seen more than 50 wars, insurgencies, coups, and rebellions of one sort or another since the end of the Second World War. The pattern is violently familiar and, therefore, depressingly inuring to most of us. Many expected Gaza to follow this same pattern. Israel's right to exist in peace and the monstrous scale of the Hamas terrorism gave it the legal and moral agency to strike back, hard. Retaliation by Israel would be harsh but somehow acceptable. Few shed any tears when key Hamas leaders were hunted down and eliminated. The tears came afterwards. The relentlessly dangerous and difficult task of eradicating a deeply embedded terrorist network in dense urban areas has meant more civilian casualties and visible suffering than much of the international community could stomach. With no end in sight. This is what prompted Prime Minister Mark Carney's momentous decision to recognize the State of Palestine during the next United Nations General Assembly this fall. 'The deepening suffering of civilians leaves no room for delay in co-ordinated international action to support peace, security, and the dignity of all human life', he said in a formal statement this week. There is something else, though. Canada has concluded that the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu will never accept a two-state solution of a fully sovereign Palestine living side by side with Israel. This has been the bedrock foreign policy principle of Canada — and many other countries — for peace in the Middle East. Unwilling to dismiss this principled approach, the Canadian prime minister has decided to dismiss the Israeli prime minster's approach to the principle. 'Regrettably, this approach is no longer tenable', Carney said. 'Prospects for a two-state solution have been steadily and gravely eroded' he went on, listing four reasons, three of which identify Israeli actions, making clear where most of the blame resides. With zero influence over how Israel is prosecuting the war, Canada is joining other countries to influence what happens after the war. In that sense, Canada is remaining consistent with the United States. Not the U.S. of President Donald Trump but the U.S. of former president Joe Biden. One month into the war, in November 2023, the U.S. set out a 'day after the war' declaration for Gaza and Israel. Meant to prevent a wider conflict from erupting, that declaration stated: 'The United States believes key elements should include no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza. Not now. Not after the war. No use of Gaza as a platform for terrorism or other violent attacks. No reoccupation of Gaza after the conflict ends. No attempt to blockade or besiege Gaza. No reduction in the territory of Gaza.' Weekday Evenings Today's must-read stories and a roundup of the day's headlines, delivered every evening. This may yet come to pass, but it appears very far off right now. Politicians though live in the here and now. They see hunger lines in Gaza and become distressed. They read motions to annex the West Bank from the Israeli Knesset or statements by the Israeli prime minister to never agree to a fully fledged Palestinian state and become disturbed. They see no end in sight and are frustrated. All this is leaving Israel more politically isolated today than it was before Oct. 7. But it is also more militarily powerful, capable, and dominant in the region than ever before. And it has a fast friend in Donald Trump creating a superpower 'alliance of two' giving it more licence to act as it sees fit in Gaza and the region. It is doing so, and countries have taken notice. Short of declaring war, recognizing a governing entity, no matter how tenuous, as a sovereign state is as declaratory you can get in international relations. Canada, like France and Great Britain, is utilizing the entirely precedented and legal discretion it has under international law to unilaterally recognize another state. But doing so now, absent a negotiated peace settlement to create such a state, is not so much a diplomatic gesture of support for Palestinians, but a diplomatic rejection of Israel's actions in Gaza and the West Bank. For Canada, the momentous part is not breaking with international law by declaring its recognition of Palestine as a state but breaking with its own international tradition of allying with the U.S. on key international issues. Indeed, this decision signals a widening chasm with America. Trump wants 'to break us, so that America can own us', said Carney on election night. What he didn't say is that maybe Canada has to break with America first. David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government.
Toronto Sun
an hour ago
- Toronto Sun
Letters to the Editor, Aug. 2, 2025
Saturday letters Photo by Illustration / Toronto Sun CANADIAN STEEL This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account Prime Minister Mark Carney announced stiff tariffs on foreign steel coming to Canada. This is to bolster the use of Canadian-made steel for manufacturing and infrastructure projects. He didn't mention anything about cancelling the ferry boat contracts to China and having them built here with Canadian steel and Canadian steel workers and other skilled trades. Lorne Strachan Concord (There are many things Carney is failing to do) LIGHTS OUT It is time to remind out fearless leaders that 'elbows up' does not mean skating around centre ice with your elbows up pretending to be tough. It does mean going after the puck in the corner with your opponent, smacking him in the chops with your elbow, and leaving with the puck and him dazed and confused. Turn off the electricity for one weekend and show the world how Canadians deal with a bully. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Robin Vinden Etobicoke (Truly that will accomplish little) REMOVE OUR OWN BARRIERS (Canada needs to put on their big boy pants and remove provincial tariffs and trade barriers immediately before complaining about foreign tariffs. We need to fast track all necessary permits and regulations to get our natural resources out of the ground and on their way to new buyers as fast as we can or we are coming in last in this race. Common sense not politics will save us, speed not dragging everything out with endless studies and talk will save us, responsible spending not shovelling hard-earned taxpayers' money out the back door will save us. (We haven't even got a budget yet.) If we want to keep this country together, prosperous and free, we can't throw around patriotic hockey quips like 'elbows up' to get votes. We need to do what needs to be done with the least amount of politics involved as possible and that means now. Wayne Martin Kitchener (There are so many barriers we put up as a country between provinces it's little wonder we cannot make a deal nationally) Toronto Blue Jays Canada World Canada MLB
National Observer
8 hours ago
- National Observer
A Canadian researcher was 'indispensible' to helping Trump dismantle climate action
A Canadian economist and conservative columnist who recently called Prime Minister Mark Carney a "climate zealot" played a critical role in the Trump administration's push to eradicate US climate rules. Ross McKitrick, an associate professor at the University of Guelph and a senior fellow at libertarian thinktank the Fraser Institute, was one of five co-authors recruited by US Energy Secretary Christ Wright to author a 150-page US Department of Energy (DOE) report that undermined the US government's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. He was "indispensible" to the project, wrote co-author and climate denier Roy Spencer in his blog. The report argues "CO2-induced warming appears to be less economically damaging than commonly believed," and "mitigation policies could prove more detrimental than beneficial." The report was published last week as part of the Trump administration's proposal to repeal the Environmental Protection Agency's Endangerment Finding — the legal mechanism underpinning most US climate legislation. Eliminating the finding, a longstanding goal of climate deniers, lets the government undermine standards that limit emissions, including from oil and gas operations, power plants and landfills. There is a widespread scientific consensus that human activity, mostly burning fossil fuels, is the main driver of climate change. That finding was backed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the European Climate Risk Assessment, and the US's Fifth National Climate Risk Assessment, published during the Biden era. Bill McKibben, the prominent climate scientist, journalist, climate advocate and co-founder of told Canada's National Observer McKitrick's involvement is a rare example of climate denial flowing from Canada to the US. "I suppose it's proof that once in a while the damage goes the other way across the border," he said. If the Trump administration successfully eradicates all US climate measures, the country is projected to emit an extra seven billion tons of greenhouse gases between now and 2030 — like adding an additional 10 Canadas to the world's emissions. A Canadian economist and conservative columnist who recently called Prime Minister Mark Carney a "climate zealot" played a critical role in the Trump administration's push to eradicate US climate rules. McKitrick has been downplaying the impacts of climate change and bolstering the fossil fuel industry for decades. As far back as 2000, he joined a briefing by the so-called "Cooler Heads Coalition," a group with close ties to the oil industry, to criticize the IPCC's Third Assessment Report. "The inclusion of Ross McKitrick, whose work is widely debunked and who isn't even American, tells you just how hard it is to find researchers who will question the overwhelming scientific consensus on carbon dioxide emissions and climate change," said Simon Donner, a climate scientist at the University of British Columbia and a lead author on the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. As the conversation continued around climate change, McKitrick continued to publicly criticize climate science and renewable energy throughout the 2000s and 2010s through his work writing reports for the Fraser Institute and other thinktanks, in news media and as a public speaker. In 2020 he published an op-ed for Troy Media that claims we must ' fight climate extremists before they upend society" and slammed Canada's then-proposed plastic pollution rules for imposing " costs and inconvenience … while doing nothing to fix the [pollution] problem." He remains a prominent voice against climate action, contributing climate-skeptical columns to the Financial Post, the National Post and the oil and gas outlet Energy Now. He also continues to write for conservative thinktanks, including a 2025 report for the Fraser Institute that concludes achieving Canada's net zero goals isn't worth the economic and social cost. A spokesperson for the US DOE said in an emailed statement that McKitrick and his co-authors, the prominent climate contrarians John Christy, Judith Curry, Steve Koonin and Roy Spencer, "represent diverse viewpoints and political backgrounds." Wright, the US energy secretary, wrote in the report's preface that "media coverage often distorts the science" on climate, pushing "many people [to] walk away with a view of climate change that is exaggerated or incomplete. To provide clarity and balance, I asked a diverse team of independent experts to critically review the current state of climate science. "I've reviewed the report carefully, and I believe it faithfully represents the state of climate science today. Still, many readers may be surprised by its conclusions — which differ in important ways from the mainstream narrative," Wright, a former oil and gas executive, continued. In February, Wright described the global effort against climate change as "sinister" and a "tool used to grow government power [and], top-down control, and shrink human freedom' while speaking at Jordan Peterson's Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference. A few weeks later, he attacked Biden-era climate measures as a "quasi-religious' agenda 'that imposed endless sacrifices on our citizens.' Climate experts have slammed the new DOE report. Ben Sanderson, senior researcher on climate mitigation at the Centre for International Climate Research (CICERO) in Oslo, dismantled the paper in a thread on Bluesky. The "tiny" list of authors and lack of external peer-review undermines the report's credibility, he wrote. (Reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change usually contain contributions from hundreds of authors.) McKitrick and his co-authors presented "minority contrarian viewpoints" by "isolating specific talking points and presenting them as a comprehensive assessment. "Each chapter follows the same pattern. Establish a contrarian position, cherry-pick evidence to support that position, then claim that this position is under-represented in climate literature and the IPCC in particular. Include a bunch of references, most of which don't support the central argument," he wrote. In a Tuesday post on X, McKitrick claimed that he and his co-authors weren't involved in designing the government's push to repeal the Endangerment Finding and "only knew what was in the news." However, the post links to blog posts by his co-authors Curry and Spencer where they address the key policy head-on: Spencer wrote that the group"suspected the Endangerment Finding would be the topic of greatest interest" to the Trump administration when they were commissioned to write the report. Curry wrote that "the looming US policy issue is the EPA Endangerment Finding" and that she hopes the report will break "Breaking the link between energy policy and human-caused climate change".
