Finding a million more Conservative votes: 'It's about figuring out a way to speak to women'
Ben Woodfinden, the 31-year-old former director of communications for Pierre Poilievre, understands the challenges faced by younger Canadians. Ten years of a Liberal-led, no-growth government, Ben laments, 'means they live in a country that doesn't work for them anymore.' They want change.
And there's a flip side, he cynically suggests: Some Canadians are content with the status quo, because it benefits them. They bought houses decades ago that are worth 20 times what they paid for them. It's in their interest, he argues, to encourage unsustainable levels of immigrants to support existing social programs and to constrain investment in the infrastructure needed to re-energize the Canadian economy.
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Toronto Star
9 minutes ago
- Toronto Star
Public opinion has changed on Gaza — so why are so many leaders still stuck?
There's a growing gulf in this country — not just between political parties or between Canadians of different backgrounds, but between the Canadian public and the institutions that claim to represent them. The latest Angus Reid poll confirms what many have long sensed: Canadians want their government to show moral courage on Gaza. Nearly two-thirds (63 per cent) say Canada should move forward with recognizing Palestinian statehood even if it angers Donald Trump. Only 20 per cent think Canada should back down to preserve relations with the U.S.
Global News
39 minutes ago
- Global News
Wine, candy and room service: How Ottawa spent $170,000 on Canadian ISIS women
Federal officials spent at least $170,000 bringing Canadian ISIS women home from Syria, according to internal government documents that show expenses for ice cream, candy and wine. The money was for costs incurred when eight women who had traveled to the Middle East to join the Islamic State returned to Canada with their children in 2022 and 2023. Newly-released documents show Global Affairs Canada paid for business class flights, stays at the Montreal Airport Marriott, room service, chips, chocolate bars and Timbits. One hotel room cost over $1,000 for two nights because of a $95 wine tab. Another ran to $850, with charges for junk food and $25 servings of red, white and sparkling wines. The costs included $2,800 for catering, $24 sandwiches at the hotel's Bijou restaurant bar, and $86 worth of snack food and over-the-counter drugs at a hotel gift shop. Story continues below advertisement The expense reports chronicle room service meals of more than $100, books, clothing, travel bags, 'Canadian pins,' and a 'high value token of appreciation' purchased at Best Buy. A server pocketed a $7 tip for serving two $4 teas, according to the expense reports, which also document purchases of Doritos, and Aero and Caramilk bars. The expenses are for both the women and children, as well as the government staff sent to receive them when they landed in Montreal before carrying on to their home provinces. Canadian women in ISIS The women were living in B.C., Alberta, Ontario and Quebec when they left to live under ISIS, which had seized a swath of Syria and Iraq and launched a campaign of beheadings and attacks in the West. Story continues below advertisement As ISIS fell to Kurdish fighters backed by an international coalition, the Canadian women were captured and held with their children for several years at crowded detention camps in Syria. The federal government agreed to bring them back to Canada after their families launched a challenge in Federal Court in Ottawa demanding their return. Two years to release costs Global News requested the documents on the costs of the repatriations under the Access to Information Act two years ago. The department did not release the materials until Aug. 7, 2025. Get daily National news Get the day's top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day. Sign up for daily National newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy The records do not appear to include the costs of sending Canadian officials to extract the women from Syria, but seem to cover only the bill for receiving them in Montreal. The department wrote in a letter to Global News that it was withholding 50 pages of documents that 'are currently under consultation with a foreign government.' Story continues below advertisement In a statement to Global News on Wednesday, Global Affairs declined to answer questions about its expenses, or disclose the full costs associated with repatriating the Canadians. 'While we cannot comment on specific expenditures related to the operation, Global Affairs Canada assumed certain immediate costs to support the safe return and well-being of the women and children repatriated to Canada,' it said. 'Deeply troubled' A group formed by families of Canadians killed in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks said it was 'deeply troubled' by the 'extravagant homecoming' the women apparently received. 'Such spending raises serious questions about government priorities, public trust, and the integrity of our system,' said Sheryl Saperia, CEO of Secure Canada. The return of foreign fighters who left to join terrorist groups should prioritize public safety, 'not reward those who betrayed their country and broke the law,' she said. Story continues below advertisement By contrast, she said victims' families have had to pay their own way to attend legal proceedings related to the terror suspects accused of killing their loved ones. 'The stark contrast between how our government treats perpetrators and how it treats their victims should alarm every Canadian and offend every taxpayer.' Over budget The women returned to Canada in three waves starting in October 2022, when Kimberly Polman and Oumaima Chouay came back at a cost of $10,863, according to an entry in the documents. Included in the costs was almost $2,800 for 100 emergency blankets and five first aid kits that were shipped to Syria 'for the operation,' known as CONOP1. A B.C. resident, Polman was allegedly part of an ISIS battalion that trained women to fight. She has been charged with terrorism offences. Story continues below advertisement Chouay, a resident of Montreal, pleaded guilty on July 21 to participating in the activities of ISIS and was sentenced to a symbolic single day in prison. The second repatriation, in April 2023, was the largest, involving the return of four women from Ontario and Alberta, and their 10 kids. Among them was Edmonton's Aimee Vasconez, a Muslim convert who traveled to Syria with her husband Ali Jabbar, who was killed fighting with ISIS. She then married a second ISIS fighter, 'joined an ISIS battalion and has likely been trained in military tactics, weapons and techniques,' the RCMP alleged. Also part of the same operation was Ammara Amjad, of Milton, Ont., who is currently awaiting trail on an ISIS-related terrorism charge. The CONOP2 event was by far the costliest at $132,445, according to an entry in the documents. It also went $25,000 over budget, largely due to what were described as 'higher than expected hotel costs.' CONOP3 Because not all the women showed up for the second repatriation, a third known as CONOP3 had to be organized, at a cost of $27,800, according to the documents. Story continues below advertisement It brought back Helena Carson and Dina Kalouti, sisters-in-law who had left Edmonton with their husbands to join ISIS. The expenses included Werther's candies, a variety pack of Frito-Lay chips, Made Good Red Velvet Soft Baked Mini Cookies, and a Tim Horton's order of 50 Timbits, two dozen doughnuts, 12 coffees and a large Ice Capp. Another expense report noted a US$75 'purchase of 6 turkey & cheese subs and 6 cereal meals' bought from the U.S. military for the women and kids. Carson and Kalouti were arrested upon their return to Canada, and placed on terrorism peace bonds that were scheduled to expire in September. Canadian ISIS men At least four Canadian men are believed to remain in the detention camps in northeast Syria, among them former ISIS sniper Muhammad Ali of Mississauga, Ont. Story continues below advertisement The government has declined to bring them back to Canada, and the Federal Court has ruled that Ottawa is not obliged to repatriate them. ISIS 'still poses a significant threat via its network of provinces, affiliates, related loose online networks, and due to its ability to inspire Canada-based threat actors to commit serious acts of violence,' according to the latest annual report of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
National Observer
an hour ago
- National Observer
Trump's latest attack on carbon research will hamper Canadian scientists
In early August, Debra Wunch, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Toronto, got wind that the Trump administration might destroy the NASA satellite that underpins her career. "It's devastating," said Wunch, who studies how many greenhouse gases Toronto emits and the impact of boreal forests on the carbon cycle. "These satellites have been a fundamental part of my career since 2007 — I've been working with these data for a very long time." The satellite, OCO-2, is part of NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) project and measures where on the Earth's surface carbon dioxide is being emitted or absorbed. The data are detailed enough that researchers can pinpoint carbon dioxide emissions from a specific source, such as a power plant or wildfire, and track changes in the growing season. The data are widely used by scientists, farmers and the fossil fuel industry. Last week, NPR reported that the Trump administration asked employees at NASA to create plans to end at least two satellite missions, including the OCO project, as part of Trump's proposed budget cuts. If those plans go through — Trump's budget needs to be approved by Congress, which isn't guaranteed — the OCO-2 satellite will be destroyed when it burns up re-entering the atmosphere after being abandoned. Although budget cuts are being used to justify the move, the Trump administration has made similar efforts to dismantle other programs dedicated to monitoring climate change. Soon after taking office, he forced US government researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to stop all collaboration with "foreign nationals" — a move critics decried as a "body blow to climate research." The administration has also stopped tracking the cost of climate-related disasters, and is pushing the country's Environmental Protection Agency to eliminate the legal basis for some of the US's key climate rules — with "indispensible" help from climate denying Canadian economist Ross McKitrick — among dozens of other moves to roll back climate efforts. Russ Vought, the director of the Trump White House Office of Management and Budget — the office responsible for drafting the White House's budget proposal — was a co-author of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. In that document, he wrote that"the Biden Administration's climate fanaticism will need a whole-of-government unwinding." The Trump administration wants to eliminate a NASA satellite mission that pinpoints carbon dioxide emissions from a specific source, such as a power plant or wildfire, and track changes in the growing season. The OCO project also operates a second device on the International Space Station, OCO-3. Last month, NASA announced it is accepting proposals from companies and universities that want to cover the machine's operating costs. The devices are still functional, and an official review by NASA in 2023 recommended continuing the mission for at least three more years. It concluded the satellite is of "high utility" because it helps agencies track industrial emissions, the planet's carbon cycle and to monitor compliance with international climate commitments. Operating both devices costs about $15 million a year — roughly two per cent of the $750 million it cost NASA to build them, David Crisp, the NASA scientist who designed the instruments and managed the missions until 2022, told NPR. Wunch is one of thousands of researchers, including several Canadians, who have worked on the OCO or rely on data collected by the devices to better understand the climate crisis and whether our efforts to fight it are working. OCO-2 was the first satellite dedicated to making CO2 measurements with enough accuracy and precision to answer scientific questions about the carbon cycle, said Ray Nassar, a scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada who was the first person to use OCO-2 data to calculate emissions specific to coal-fired power plants in 2017. "OCO-2 was extremely important in giving us the first observations of that kind that could do that," he said. "They're the leading satellites making this type of measurement, and there's already been a significant investment to get them up in space. To just turn them off at this point, we would lose a valuable source of data" The satellite circles the Earth from south to north, monitoring CO2 in the atmosphere in narrow bands roughly one kilometer wide. This gives researchers enough precision to identify where the gas is being emitted or absorbed, a level of detail unmatched by any other satellites currently in orbit. "Because it's measuring carbon dioxide all around the world, we're able to get more of an idea of regionally, where carbon is being absorbed and where it's being emitted," said Brendan Bryne, a Canadian researcher who worked on the OCO project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab between 2018 and 2024. Japan has three CO2-measuring satellites in orbit, but they scan a bigger area than the OCO ones. The European Space Agency is planning to send three satellites that can collect similar data on CO2 emissions into space late next year. OCO-2 and OCO-3 can also measure a specific type of photon that plants release during photosynthesis, which researchers can use to track changes in the growing season, as well as when boreal forests start re-absorbing carbon after a wildfire. Losing the satellites will prevent her and other researchers from conducting most of this type of research, said Wunch. "Without commenting on a specific policy decision by any country, turning off satellites that are delivering valuable data is generally a bad thing to do," said Nassar. Simon Donner, a climate scientist at the University of British Columbia, wrote in an email that Trump's proposal is "a foolish decision for financial reasons alone. The vast majority of the cost of satellites is in their construction and launch. Once they are in space, it is relatively cheap to keep them operating, and you get downstream economic benefits from the use of the data." Canada's National Observer reached out to NASA asking about the proposed cuts, but didn't receive a response. Environment and Climate Change Canada couldn't provide a response by deadline to a question about whether Canada could take over the project's operational costs, if the US were willing to transfer the mission. Wunch was clear about the toll that could come if NASA is forced to abandon the OCO mission: "I'm just very sad," she said.
