Irwin Cotler & Noah Lew: We support a two-state solution. But not this way
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Fortunately, unlike Macron's approach (pledging unconditional recognition) and Starmer's approach (pledging conditional recognition, yet perversely imposing those conditions on Israel, rather than the Palestinians), Carney made Canada's recognition of the state of Palestine dependent on the Palestinian Authority meeting two key conditions: Democratization, described as fundamental governance reforms and a promise to hold elections in 2026, with Hamas precluded from participating; and the demilitarization of the future Palestinian state.
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At first glance, this announcement appears to be a step in the right direction. We strongly support a two-state solution, involving two democratic countries for two peoples, living alongside one another in peace, security and mutual recognition of each others' legitimacy. Carney's preconditions appear to seek something very similar — requiring the state of Palestine to be democratic and to be demilitarized, which is key to securing peace and security for the two nations.
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Regrettably, it is highly unlikely that Canada's approach will be successful, as it suffers from several key flaws. First and foremost, Canada's framework is backwards. The future state of Palestine should be required to meet certain preconditions — including those put forward by Carney, and then Canada should recognize Palestine as a state — not the other way around.
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Under Carney's framework, Canada will recognize the state of Palestine in September — less than two months from now. It is inconceivable that Canada's conditions could be met in that time frame. Accordingly, either Canada will not go ahead with recognizing Palestine at the UN, or the 'conditions' will prove to be unenforceable, aspirational rhetoric that fail to achieve their intended goals — a democratic, peaceful Palestinian state. This is readily apparent upon a closer inspection of the conditions.
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The 'democratization' condition does not make Canada's recognition of Palestine conditional on that state being democratic — rather, it makes it conditional on the unenforceable promise made by someone who has ruled over an authoritarian, ineffectual and deeply corrupt government for 20 years that it will be transformed overnight into a functional democracy.
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To make matters worse, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly broken his promises to hold elections in the past. One of us (Irwin Cotler) has personally met with Abbas and his former foreign minister, Riyad al-Maliki, many times over the years. They have repeatedly promised that they would abolish the pay-for-slay program, end incitement and move towards demilitarization, de-radicalization and the like. Regrettably, those promises have largely gone unfulfilled.
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Canada's second precondition, demilitarization, is equally unfeasible. The PA only has tenuous control over the West Bank, and has no control whatsoever over Gaza (assuming these will be the recognized territorial boundaries of the state of Palestine). Gaza is currently controlled by a genocidal terrorist organization, Hamas, whose sworn purpose is the annihilation of the State of Israel and the Jewish people, and has promised to repeat the events of October 7 'again and again.'
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Toronto Sun
44 minutes ago
- Toronto Sun
KINSELLA: Mark Carney's words can have real-life impacts for Jews
And sometimes pronouncements from world leaders, such as Canada's Prime Minister, can have deadly consequences Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney (R), flanked by Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand, speaks during a press conference after a Cabinet meeting to discuss both trade negotiations with the US and the situation in the Middle East, at the National Press Theatre in Ottawa on July 30, 2025. Photo by DAVE CHAN / AFP via Getty Images Canada, France and the United Kingdom recognize a 'state' run by terrorists. Canada's Prime Minister accuses Israel of violating international law. The International Criminal Court issues warrants for the arrest of Israel's Prime Minister. 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 Sometimes, such pronouncements made by governments seem completely detached from reality. None of those countries have yet set up an embassy in Gaza City, for example. Nor has Canada commenced a court action against Israel. No country, as far as we know, has attempted to place Benjamin Netanyahu under arrest. But it would be a mistake to shrug about the pronouncements of world leaders, or to dismiss their words as meaningless symbols. For Jews, these dark days, words can have real-life impacts. Sometimes, the consequences can be deadly. CyberWell is an Internet watchdog that closely tracks antisemitism on social media. When the Israel-based non-profit finds hate online, it notifies the social media platforms, and urges them to take it down. And two recent reports by CyberWell show that the words and actions of governments can, and do, result in shocking eruptions in cyber-hate. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. A recent example: the twelve-day war between Israel, the United States and Iran took place in June 2025. That conflict saw Israel launch hundreds of airstrikes against the Islamic republic – and Iran firing thousands of ballistic missiles and suicide drones at Israeli military and civilian targets. Israel was largely seen as the victor. Read More Online, the abbreviated Iran-Israel war had a very different outcome. Online, Iran was the hands-down victor. During and after the conflict, CyberWell found, and 'across platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and X, users once again used digital spaces to post antisemitic rhetoric, incitement to violence, and coded hate speech – at times under the guise of political commentary or religious solidarity.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. It's not a new phenomenon, CyberWell notes, and it's getting worse all the time: 'Each new flashpoint acts as a trigger for dangerous digital discourse that can quickly spill into real-world harm.' For example: during the Iran-Israel war, the words 'Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews' were all over social media, in the Farsi and Arabic languages. The phrase refers to a long-ago battle in Khaybar, which was a Jewish town in what is now Saudi Arabia – and where Muslim forces massacred the Jewish population. The 'Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews' slogan has been used, for centuries, to call for pogroms against Jews. On X, as the war commenced, that hateful phrase grew by more than 3,000% over the previous months. Midway through the conflict, it increased by nearly 7,000% over before. By the end of the war, those words had reached three million individual accounts. The Farsi version of the chant far outpaced the Arabic one, too. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Some of the posters were very specific. After activist Eyal Yakoby simply posted a photo of an Israeli apartment building destroyed by an Iranian missile, '@pratynachiyar' wrote: 'Kill everyone from Israel, Iran, good job buddy…let these Jew f**kers leave Earth permanently.' A June 14, 2025, post by activist Eyal Yakoby on X that included a photo of an Israeli apartment building destroyed by an Iranian missile led to a hateful post against Jews by @pratynachiyar. Photo by Posted on X And, tragically, killings were indeed happening. As the Jew hatred was growing dramatically online – as more and more governments were showing a willingness to isolate and attack the Jewish state – actual murders happened. So, just days before the war started, two young Israeli embassy staffers were assassinated outside the Capital Jewish Museum – and the alleged shooter yelled 'Free Palestine' as he was arrested by police. Days later, an elderly Jewish woman died after being set ablaze in Boulder, Colorado – again, by an alleged killer who reportedly yelled 'Free Palestine' – a phrase that was, and is, ubiquitous online. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. As CyberWell puts it: 'These are not isolated incidents. They are part of a dangerous, recurring cycle that CyberWell has repeatedly warned about: inflammatory content spreads online, fuelling real-world hate and violence. Each act of violence or hate speech online reinforces the next, creating a self-perpetuating loop.' The 'loop,' as CyberWell puts it, has recently gone like this: witless Western governments demonize Israel, which leads to antisemitic propagandists doing likewise online, which then legitimizes – and leads to – actual antisemitic crime and violence. It needs to stop. Police and prosecutors need to get better at fighting antisemitic crime. Social media platforms need to do a better job of moderating what's being posted online. And governments, like Canada's, need to recognize that what they say can sometimes result in real-life harm. Sometimes, in fact, it can result in death. Toronto Blue Jays Columnists Canada Sunshine Girls Toronto & GTA
Globe and Mail
an hour ago
- Globe and Mail
Canada Post is a case study in Canadian dysfunctionality
Les Viner was managing partner at Torys LLP for 22 years and was seconded to Canada Post as interim general counsel from October, 2022, to June, 2023. He is a senior fellow with the C.D. Howe Institute. Canada Post, which predates Confederation, is a vital national institution, playing a particularly important role in serving rural, Northern and Indigenous communities across our vast country. But today, Canada Post is effectively insolvent. Indeed, it would have run out of cash had the government not recently extended a billion-dollar lifeline. This situation is no surprise, and it has been developing for a long time. Canada Post has been impeded from adapting to modern business realities because of long-standing labour inflexibility as well as oscillation by prior governments between political indifference and political interference. However Canada Post and its main union, CUPW, resolve their current impasse, a much bigger problem looms for the Crown corporation and the federal government. Explainer: What you need to know about the Canada Post contract dispute William Kaplan, a highly respected mediator and arbitrator, recently examined this stalemate as a commissioner appointed under the Canada Labour Code. In his report this month he described Canada Post as facing an 'existential crisis.' He recommended drastic changes to its operations. And these changes must be made. Our new government said that it will do things differently, promising to act decisively and urgently in charting a new path for our country. It now has a golden opportunity to meet the moment by accepting all of Mr. Kaplan's recommendations and if there is any pushback from any of the parties, by appointing him to do it for them. As letter-mail business continues to erode, the future of Canada Post lies in parcel delivery, which is intensely competitive. Customers expect and demand seven-day-a-week service at competitive prices without undue risk of disruption. Paradoxically, the stakeholders who would be expected to have the keenest interest in ensuring the corporation's viability are blocking the company's ability to succeed. CUPW refuses to allow Canada Post to hire a dedicated force of flexible weekend workers. Meanwhile, workers, who get overtime pay for weekend work, earn more – roughly $30 per hour to start – than their counterparts at unionized competitors and vastly more than their counterparts at non-unionized competitors. As the Kaplan report outlined, those workers with tenure have job security for life, a defined-benefit pension plan, and postretirement benefits indexed to inflation, a multitude of generous leave entitlements, and are paid for eight hours of work whether or not it takes eight hours to complete a route. All these factors make seven-day-a-week parcel delivery impossible to achieve at competitive prices, which means that parcel delivery competitors are taking over most of the market share. Indifference of and interference by prior governments have exacerbated the situation. For example, even though 30 per cent of the thousands of corporate postal outlets classified as rural are now urban or suburban, Canada Post is directed not to close or consolidate any of them. Further, although door-to-door delivery costs 75 per cent more than delivery to community mailboxes, Justin Trudeau's incoming government imposed a moratorium on community mailbox conversions in 2015. The Kaplan report threads the needle. His recommendations include ending the moratoriums on rural post office closings and community mailbox conversions, changing collective agreements to allow for the flexible use of well-paid part-time employees, requiring employees to work the hours for which they are paid, and introducing dynamic routing to adapt routes to daily volumes. His well-reasoned report lays out the path for a future that sustainably preserves the institution of Canada Post and respects labour and other key stakeholders in a fair and balanced approach. Absent urgent structural change, the future of Canada Post will be doomed by private competition, unsustainable demands of labour combined, and no clear directional oversight by the sole shareholder as represented by prior governments. As the world evolved from paper to digital, from letter mail to parcels, and from a relatively benign competitive landscape to an intensively competitive one, politicization of key issues impeded necessary reform, perpetuating a cycle of waste, inefficiency and financial recklessness. Canada Post now loses a billion dollars of taxpayer money each year, and the prognosis is materially worse, absent major change. The operational straitjacket imposed by the union, together with past governments' failure to address the underlying structural issues, mean that Canada Post has effectively been disabled from running an operation that is even remotely commercially sensible. The math simply doesn't work.
CBC
an hour ago
- CBC
B.C. Housing vacancies raise concern for Fort St. John, B.C. councillor after release of FOI docs
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