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National Post
05-08-2025
- Business
- National Post
17th Annual Top 25 Canadian Immigrant Awards, Presented by Western Union
Article content Celebrating the story of Canada by sharing the journeys of immigrants including notable food entrepreneurs, a TikTok star, an artistic director, community leaders, innovative scientists and more Article content TORONTO — With nation-building and Canadian pride on people's minds across the country, we can't forget that the story of Canada includes the individual stories of immigrants who have helped build this nation. For the 17th year, Canadian Immigrant, with the support of presenting sponsor Western Union, is recognizing and celebrating these nation builders with the Top 25 Canadian Immigrant Awards of 2025. Article content The Top 25 Canadian Immigrant Awards, also supported by COSTI and Edward Jones, is the first and only national awards program celebrating immigrant success stories from coast to coast, serving as role models for other newcomers choosing Canada as their new home. Article content This year's Top 25 will join an inspirational list of past recipients who are community, culture, scientific and business leaders. This year's list includes a founder of one of Canada's most celebrated breakfast cereal companies, the founder of a popular Mediterranean fast casual chain, a TikTok influencer, a dancer and artistic director, a billionaire investor, scientific and STEM innovators, as well as community champions working tirelessly to uplift others. Article content 'We are so proud to announce the recipients in the 17th annual Top 25 Canadian Immigrant Awards, in partnership with Western Union,' said Sanjay Agnihotri, Publisher of Canadian Immigrant. 'Sharing their stories is sharing the story of Canada — a nation built by brave individuals who leave everything they know behind to start fresh in a new land — and make it better as a result of their hard work and determination. We, at Canadian Immigrant magazine, are honoured to be a platform to celebrate their efforts and impact. Congratulations to all of this year's recipients.' Article content 'Throughout our 175-year long history, one thing has never changed: connecting people with their families and loved ones wherever they may be, */and enabling them to build better lives. This mission is particularly resonant here in Canada, where the diversity of our communities is one of our key strengths,' said Carl Pierce, Head of Canada for Western Union. 'We are proud then to sponsor these prestigious awards, pay tribute to the contributions made by those that call our country their new home and support them as they seek to fulfil their aspirations.' Article content Among the Top 25, we have again selected one winner as our Youth Award recipient, and one as our Entrepreneur Award winner. Ukrainian-born Andrian Makhnachov, 22, a social media start documenting his life as a newcomer, is the Youth Award recipient. Sam Osmow, founder of Osmow's restaurant chain, is this year's Entrepreneur Award recipient, presented by COSTI. Article content This year, Edward Jones has come on board to sponsor a new award to celebrate a professional from among the Top 25 who exemplifies leadership and impact. The Leadership Award goes to Simone Le Gendre. Article content The Top 25 Canadian Immigrants of 2025 were chosen after an extensive nomination, judging, shortlisting and public online voting process. Hundreds of nominations were received from which 75 finalists were shortlisted by a diverse judging panel of past winners. More than 50,000 online votes were cast at The 25 recipients were chosen based on a combination of votes and judges' merit scores. Article content Recipients are now being featured online at and in the August edition of Canadian Immigrant magazine. Article content About Canadian Immigrant Article content Canadian Immigrant is a national multimedia platform to help immigrants succeed in Canada, with content, resources and events on careers, education and settlement. The brand is the producer of the cross-country Canadian Immigrant Fairs, IEP career path Web Conference Series, and the Frist Generation podcast on the Torstar Podcast Network. Canadian Immigrant is a division of Metroland Media Group, a dynamic media company with leading community and daily news sites, as well as innovative websites including and Learn more at Article content . Article content About Western Union Article content Western Union is a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments. Western Union's platform provides seamless cross-border flows and its leading global financial network bridges more than 200 countries and territories and over 130 currencies. We connect businesses, financial institutions, governments, and consumers through one of the world's widest reaching networks, accessing billions of bank accounts, millions of digital wallets and cards, and approximately 600,000 retail locations. Western Union connects the world to bring boundless possibilities within reach. Article content About COSTI Article content Meeting the needs of a diverse society since 1952, COSTI is a community-based diverse social impact agency providing employment, educational, settlement and social services to all immigrant communities, new Canadians, and individuals in need of assistance. COSTI strives to be a leader in community service by using a client-focused, proactive, and innovative approach in planning, developing, and delivering services. Our programs ensure that regardless of language or cultural barriers, people communities are able to access information, use their existing skills and learn new ones that accelerate their ability to engage broadly and deeply in all aspects of Canadian society. Operating from 18 locations in Toronto, York Region and the Region of Peel, COSTI provides services in more than 60 languages. We help over 39,000 individuals receive assistance. Article content About Edward Jones Article content Article content Article content Article content Article content Contacts Article content Canadian Immigrant Article content Article content Laura Jackman, 647-212-0549 Article content
Irish Times
17-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
Donald Trump sounds more like a Chinese leader as he rejects the liberal world order
Donald Trump's speech in Riyadh last week was noteworthy in a number of ways, including the fact that it ended with YMCA, the 1970s gay anthem he has adopted as a campaign song, blasting out to his Saudi audience. But the most remarkable moment came when he praised the cities and skyscrapers that stand as gleaming monuments to the triumph of commerce throughout the Arabian peninsula. 'And it's crucial for the wider world to note this great transformation has not come from western interventionists or flying people in beautiful planes giving you lectures on how to live and how to govern your own affairs. No, the gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called nation-builders, neocons, or liberal nonprofits like those who spent trillions and trillions of dollars failing to develop Kabul, Baghdad, so many other cities,' he said. 'In the end, the so-called nation-builders wrecked far more nations than they built, and the interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves. They told you how to do it, but they had no idea how to do it themselves. Peace, prosperity and progress ultimately came not from a radical rejection of your heritage, but rather from embracing your national traditions and embracing that same heritage that you love so dearly.' These words, which could have been spoken by a Chinese leader, were Trump's most emphatic rejection to date of liberal interventionism and interference in the internal affairs of other countries. And they should banish any doubt that the United States, the architect and arbiter of the 'rules-based international order', has turned its back on it. READ MORE Critics of that order, including many in the Global South, argue that it was never more than an instrument of American foreign policy and that its rules seldom bound the hegemon itself. But European policymakers are eager to keep it alive, fearing that the only alternative is great power rivalry, spheres of influence and the law of the jungle. Trump's threat to annex Greenland and his relaxed approach to the use of force to change internationally agreed borders reinforces such fears. And many Europeans see Vladimir Putin's Russia as a potentially existential threat unless it can be kept in check. Former British prime minister Gordon Brown is among those who have called for a new multilateralism, led by a 'coalition of the willing'. Reacting to Trump's humiliation of Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the Oval Office in February, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas had another idea. 'Today, it became clear that the free world needs a new leader. It's up to us, Europeans, to take this challenge,' she said. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas. Photograph: Carlos Jasso/Pool/AFP via Getty Without the US, what Kallas calls the free world is a greatly shrunken and less powerful coalition and the rest of the world does not recognise the EU as a moral leader. The contrast between the EU's approach to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and to Israel's actions in Gaza has done nothing to diminish this scepticism. While Trump was trashing liberal interventionism in Riyadh, the EU delegation in Beijing was hosting a conference to mark the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and the EU. In a world that is becoming more multipolar and less multilateral, the EU and China share an interest in defending multilateral co-operation and the United Nations system. But while the EU champions the 'rules-based international order', China advocates what it calls 'true multilateralism'. Beijing says it is committed to keeping the existing multilateral institutions centred on the UN but it wants to make them more representative and democratic. Much of the Global South shares China's ambition to reform institutions that still reflect the balance of power at the end of the second world war, leaving Europe and the US massively over-represented. The EU is open to discussing such reforms, and it welcomes China's regular expressions of loyalty to the UN Charter. The problem lies in their competing interpretations of the charter and the emphasis each places on various elements of it. There is widespread and growing scepticism about the EU's bona fides on human rights At the heart of China's foreign policy are the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence first formulated in an agreement with India in 1954. They are: mutual respect for each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty; mutual nonaggression; mutual noninterference in each other's internal affairs; equality and co-operation for mutual benefit; and peaceful coexistence. It is the third principle, of noninterference in each other's internal affairs, that creates the sharpest tension between China and the EU, particularly in the area of human rights. China's view, shared across much of the world and echoed by Trump in Riyadh last week, is that states should govern themselves more or less as they choose and other countries should mind their own business. The EU, like the rest of the West, has always placed greater emphasis on civil and political rights than economic, social and cultural rights. When the EU published its human rights priorities for 2025, only one of its 48 sections dealt with economic, social and cultural rights. For China, of course, the emphasis is the other way around with the main focus on economic and development rights and little more than lip service paid to civil and political rights. Elsewhere across the Global South the picture is differentiated but there is widespread and growing scepticism about the EU's bona fides on human rights. This is not only on account of the weaselly response to the atrocities in Gaza but because of the EU's own treatment of people fleeing war, famine, oppression, destitution and the impact of climate change. Rather than protecting their human rights, the EU treats them as criminals, incarcerating thousands in detention centres along its borders and across the Mediterranean. The EU's commitment to defending the rights of minorities and political dissidents in countries such as China is commendable and important and should not be abandoned or weakened. But to be a more effective human rights champion, the EU must look more closely at its own record and rebalance its approach to take more account of economic, social and cultural rights. Instead of clinging to the idea of a contest between democracies and autocracies, the EU should focus on strengthening the UN institutions, working with China as well as middle powers such as Brazil and South Africa to restore authority to the multilateral system. Making progress through consensus is a slow and frustrating process, but it may prove to be more effective than confrontation and condescension in raising human rights standards across the world.
