Two people suffered apparent injuries after altercations with anti-Israel demonstrators in Toronto and Montreal on Saturday.

In the former, the Toronto Police Service is seeking the public’s help identifying a male suspect in relation to an assault causing bodily harm investigation

Police said the victim “was engaged in conversation with another demonstrator” and was headed north on Yonge Street near the intersection of Grosvenor Street when “the suspect approached the victim from behind and punched the victim several times in the head without provocation, causing the victim to fall to the ground.”

They suffered facial and leg injuries, according to police.

The suspect is described as five-foot-five with a thin build and black hair. At the time of the alleged attack, police said he wore prescription lenses, a grey jacket, dark grey sweatpants and a black Under Armour backpack.

That description matches an assailant seen in a video shared to social media by independent journalist Mitch Hancock (@mitch6669), which appears to show the assault.

It starts with Hancock panning over the marching protest and then panning forward to see a white, middle-aged man in sunglasses and a black leather jacket saying to a demonstrator, “Do something about it, c— sucker.”

The man behind him, matching the police’s description, immediately sucker-punches him from behind and then drags him to the ground and punches him five more times in quick succession. Demonstrators on both sides quickly gather around and attempt to pry the victim free from the suspect, who keeps trying to land more blows before they’re pulled apart.

As the man claims his knee is broken, the suspect briefly disappears before returning and appearing to throw something at the man, opening a wound above his eyebrow.

“Mitch, get me out of here,” he says from the ground. “Where are the guys?”

Some people can be seen and heard mocking him as he waits for help, including one wearing a sweater with an inverted red triangle, a symbol popularized by Hamas terrorists.

“Kyle” accompanied Hancock “to help ensure her safety after other protesters threatened her for recording the public event,” lawyer and Toronto city council candidate Caryma Sa’d said on X.

Meanwhile, in Montreal, a video shared by prominent account known as Leviathan ( @l3v1at4an ) on Sunday captured what appeared to be the assault of a pro-Israel counter-demonstrator.

The edited clip begins with two older women already on the ground, one of whom kicks towards a younger brown-haired woman standing over her, who responds with a kick of her own. A Montreal police vehicle pulls up to block the scene, an officer quickly hops out to intervene and the camera follows to show one of the women leaning over the other.

As it continues, police are seen detaining and speaking to the younger woman, before cutting to one of the older women appearing to cry while her friend checks on her. By the video’s end, the apparent victim is on her feet and demonstrating again.

In an extremely rare sighting, Montreal police arrest a far left female Palestine protestor after she slammed an elderly woman to the concrete for holding an Israel flag.

It only takes physical elder abuse against Jews to get @spvm to act on hate crimes. pic.twitter.com/1No4NeSuvl

— Leviathan (@l3v1at4an) October 11, 2026

National Post has contacted Montreal police for more information.

Anyone with information regarding the Toronto incident is asked to contact police at 416-808-3500 or anonymously through Crime Stoppers at 416-222-TIPS (8477) or online .

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The Supreme Court of Canada has tried to resolve competing judicial imperatives — addressing Indigenous overincarceration and high rates of violence against Indigenous women — in cases when a male offender and a female victim are both Indigenous.

The complexity and importance of this tension was highlighted by 22 groups being granted intervenor status to offer input in the case, including the attorneys general of three provinces, First Nations and Indigenous organizations, law groups, and numerous human rights, civil liberties and constitutional advocacy organizations.

The fact the nine Supreme Court justices were split five to four in their decision, released Friday, reflects divergent views on how best to protect Indigenous victims while ensuring rehabilitation for Indigenous offenders.

In a bid to reconcile what the court called Canada’s “twin crises,” the majority opinion laid out a framework for judges to follow when confronted by situations like the case of a vicious beating in Nova Scotia.

In 2021, Harry Arthur Cope attacked a woman who was his common-law partner on a sidewalk in Halifax. The victim was repeatedly punched and thrown to the ground. When police found her, her face was swollen and covered in blood. Doctors said she suffered severe injuries to her face and upper torso.

It wasn’t the brutality of the intimate partner violence that pushed the case to Canada’s highest court, it was the demographic complications arising in Canada’s courts when the offender is an Indigenous man and the victim is an Indigenous woman.

The personal narratives of the offender and the victim require balancing of two special judicial imperatives.

“Indigenous people find themselves disproportionately and excessively imprisoned, while Indigenous women and girls suffer from unacceptably high levels of violence and abuse,” the Supreme Court says in its decision.

“Both of these pressing issues have been shaped by the experiences of colonization and addressing them together is central to the ongoing process of reconciliation. Parliament has sought to address both concerns through the criminal sentencing process.”

The tension between the issues arose at Cope’s 2023 sentencing after his guilty plea to aggravated assault. At his original trial, court heard that Cope had severe mental health challenges and stopped taking his medications and began consuming illicit drugs a year before the attack. He had a significant criminal record.

For his sentencing, Provincial Court of Nova Scotia Judge Christine Driscoll ordered an Indigenous Background Report. A First Nations’ sentencing circle said community members did not feel more incarceration would help Cope and recommended in-patient treatment.

Driscoll considered Cope’s background, as Canadian courts must do when sentencing an Indigenous offender, known as Gladue factors. She also weighed special factors from the perspective of the victim — that the assault was violence against a vulnerable Indigenous woman.

Driscoll rejected the proposal for a conditional sentence by the sentencing circle and sentenced Cope to five years’ imprisonment. Nova Scotia’s Court of Appeal then reduced his sentence to three years.

It was the Crown’s appeal of that appeal decision that took Cope’s case to the Supreme Court, where its contentiousness remained over two days of hearings last December, after which the justices reserved their decision.

A slim majority of Supreme Court judges — Andromache Karakatsanis, Nicholas Kasirer, Michelle O’Bonsawin, Mary T. Moreau, and the now-retired Sheilah Martin — upheld the appeal decision of a reduced sentence for Cope. Dissenting justices Chief Justice Richard Wagner, Suzanne Côté, Malcolm Rowe and Mahmud Jamal would have restored the trial judge’s five-year sentence.

In the Supreme Court, majority rules.

The majority presented a workflow for judges to keep paying special attention to Indigenous offenders in the Gladue process while incorporating newer provisions to account for vulnerable victims and Indigenous females that followed recommendations by the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls inquiry.

“In cases where an Indigenous offender commits an offence against his intimate partner who is an Indigenous woman, a sentencing judge must apply the principles related to both Indigenous offenders and victims of crime, and do so harmoniously to arrive at a just and proportionate sentence,” the majority opinion says.

The court found the sentencing judge should have more keenly linked mental-health factors to the offender’s moral blameworthiness and more meaningfully engaged with the sentencing circle’s input.

“The lessons of the sentencing circle are more than just a source of factual information relevant to a fit sentence, but are key to understanding the Indigenous perspective on sentencing…. What is required is that a sentencing judge reasonably engage with the perspectives expressed in the sentencing circle in crafting a fit and appropriate sentence.”

The majority opinion said the sentencing circle process “will be relevant both to understand the availability of alternative sentencing options that may exist in the community, as well as the community perspective on the sentence that will best achieve the relevant sentencing objectives.”

The minority of justices said the original five-year sentence should be restored, writing that the sentencing judge appropriately considered the nature of the crime and the victim’s particular vulnerabilities. She also properly considered the circumstances of the offender, the Gladue factors, and his mental illness.

“The majority’s proposed sentencing framework fails to reflect Parliament’s direction to sentencing judges… to prioritize denunciation and deterrence, and to generally impose harsher sentences for the abuse of vulnerable victims, including Indigenous women and girls,” the minority opinion says.

Philippe Boucher, a PhD student in Legal Studies at Carleton University and criminology lecturer at Université de Montréal, has been studying the Cope case and said the division on the court shows an evolution in opinion.

When the court ruled on the original Gladue process in 1999, the decision was unanimous, he said.

“We can see how the issues at stake were more sensitive and controversial this time. Especially, 10 years after the launch of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, the court understands the importance of protecting victims, but there is disagreement on the best ways to achieve protection.”

After watching the hearings on the case, he said he was not surprised by how tight the split was.

“This shows how complex it is for judges to establish a sentence when both the accused and the victim are Indigenous,” Boucher said.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Washington is gearing up for next year’s review of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement, but signs of negotiating progress have come mainly from the U.S.-Mexico trade teams in recent weeks, while formal talks between the U.S. and Canada remain stalled.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer says he speaks frequently with Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc, but there have been no formal meetings between the U.S. and Canadian sides since talks collapsed in August.

The Mexican and U.S. teams met for a round of formal talks in July and were supposed to meet again in September, but that has been postponed, likely until sometime this month.

Mexico’s Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard recently expressed optimism that new agreements are coming soon. “We are getting closer on many issues, resolving problems, and we are making progress,” he said at last week’s G-20 meeting in Milwaukee, Wisc., after meeting with Greer. “Every day we are closer to reaching new agreements.”

Washington has opened public consultations for next year’s CUSMA review while maintaining bilateral engagement with Mexico — and not with Canada, which raises concerns about Ottawa’s ability to influence the process. Experts say there is no reason for Canada to panic, but they also warn that a Mexican agreement could set terms that Washington later expects Ottawa to accept.

Mexico was seemingly on the back burner while Canada made progress in late summer, said Diego Marroquín Bitar, a fellow with the Americas Program at Washington’s CSIS.

“The Canadians made a lot of progress before negotiations collapsed,” he said. “So they could jump back … to the negotiation table at any moment and be very close to where the Mexicans are actually.”

The arrangement the U.S. and Mexico are working toward centres on tariff relief and policy concessions, rather than a comprehensive rewrite of CUSMA.

Marroquín Bitar referred to it as a “skinny deal,” or a preliminary bilateral deal, that would give Mexico tariff relief in exchange for domestic-policy concessions and closer alignment with U.S. trade policy toward non-market economies.

This could help prepare the ground for the 2027 CUSMA review, he said, but it’s not a final settlement or replacement for the trilateral agreement.

Carlo Dade, director of international policy and the New North America Initiative at the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary, agrees.

“Mexico can sign an agreement on reciprocal trade with the U.S. to set a new tariff regime and to set a new economic security regime,” he said, noting that USTR calls them agreements on reciprocal trade.

Dade also rejects the notion that Canada is being left out, noting that not every communication is shared with the public.

“I wouldn’t read this as necessarily being sidelined,” he said.

As for what Mexico and the U.S. could hash out bilaterally, there are a number of issues, but trade experts believe it will largely focus on immediate issues while laying a path for continued talks on tougher debates.

“I think there’s a lot that bilaterally can be addressed without Canada,” said Inu Manak, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, pointing to energy investments and reform in Mexico, labour reform and enforcement, including collective bargaining rights, Mexico’s external trade policies, and some agricultural disputes over seasonal produce.

Still, the bilateral bargains are closely tied to CUSMA’s future, as Washington is using the prospect of renewal to press for settlements on other trade disputes, according to Christopher Sands, director of the Center for Canadian Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

“The way that the Trump administration has taken this, the review, as you know from last year, is to hold the renewal of the agreement hostage until other trade issues are resolved,” he said.

One possible development that could really impact Canada, trade watchers say, is an agreement on sectoral tariffs. Any settlement by Mexico on the Section 232 tariffs, Marroquín Bitar warned, could become Canada’s benchmark.

“Whatever Mexico accepts in this interim deal will very likely become the floor rather than the ceiling for whatever Canada negotiates when it eventually returns to the table,” he said. “Every Mexican concession becomes the opening term of Canada’s negotiations.”

Manak largely agreed and pointed to the automotive industry.

“So let’s say Mexico can negotiate down … from the 25 per cent … auto or auto parts tariff, a tariff at 15 per cent or lower, for example … that would be something that would create … a baseline even for Canada,” she said.

Alfredo Carrillo Obregon, a trade policy analyst at the Cato Institute in Washington, also expressed concern over this, noting that the U.S. is unlikely to agree to a better deal for Canada later.

“If Mexico agrees to it, I find it difficult to believe that the Trump administration would … be open to being flexible when it comes to Canada specifically,” he said.

Even if Canada’s formal talks remain on hold, Sands says closer Canada–Mexico ties could help Ottawa stay informed about Washington’s demands.

“What we will have now that we didn’t have reliably before is … a Mexico-Canada dialogue where I’m sure they’ll pick up the phone and say, ‘Hey, this is what the Americans are asking us to … sign, and here’s where we’re trying to modify it,’” Sands said.

And while this approach may not stop Washington from using a “divide and conquer” approach, Sands said he thinks the “Mexicans are … trying anyway to be much better partners.”

“They may be forced to do a bilateral on security, or just a U.S.-Mexico agreement on some aspect, but I think they want to keep the band together.”

Changes to CUSMA itself, however, require agreement among all three countries.

“Any changes to the agreement would need the concurrence of all three parties,” said Dade.

Marroquín Bitar said any deal the U.S. and Mexico might strike this autumn would leave broader trilateral issues — including rules of origin — for the next phase.

He referred to this as merely the beginning of a “15-round fight.”

“It’s going to be a very long and painful process, but I think USMCA will survive it,” he added.

“It’s not going to be the same agreement that we have now, but it’s still going to be a framework that’s going to give Mexico and Canada, I think, better market access compared to any other country or any other trading block in the world.”

National Post

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For the third straight year, an Ontario police force is warning about the release of the same high-risk sex offender with several past convictions for sexual assaults against a child and women dating back almost 20 years.

The Durham Regional Police Service (DRPS) has issued a safety alert that 48-year-old Keith Theodore Constantin, “who poses a significant risk to the community, especially children,” will be living at an undisclosed location in the region effective Sunday.

Constantin is “subject to electronic monitoring” 24-hours daily, but DRPS said in a Saturday news release that its offender management unit will also keep tabs on his “whereabouts and activities.”

The Hamilton native was in custody after being arrested last March for breaching the conditions of his release in the Oshawa area after just two days of freedom, according to DRPS .

The police service also warned of his release in May of 2024, as reported by the Toronto Sun .

It’s not immediately clear what Constantin had been imprisoned for at the time. National Post has contacted the Parole Board of Canada for more information about his release.

DRPS warned that Constantin has a history of sexual assault with a weapon, robbery, possession of explosives and uttering threats, among other crimes.

His first serious convictions came in 2000 when he was sentenced for two armed robberies and two sexual assaults — one against a seven-year-old boy he’d lured to a park and another on a 45-year-old blind woman who lived in the same building as him.

It’s not clear how much time he served, but he was free in fall 2007, as he was later convicted of sexually assaulting an epileptic woman in the basement apartment of his parents’ home as she was recovering from a seizure that September, according to a 2014 story in The Hamilton Spectator .

He said “Shut up, or I will kill you,” when she screamed for help, CBC reported.

He never went to trial because the stress induced seizures and fears of suicide in his 27-year-old victim. Instead, he made a plea deal in 2009, was sentenced to eight years and received four years’ credit for time served. It also earned him a spot on the national sex-offender registry for life.

His 2014 release was met with considerable pushback in the Hamilton neighbourhoods where he was set to reside when York Regional Police (YRP) warned of it, National Post reported , leading him to break curfew and ask to be imprisoned again. YRP issued another warning in December 2015 when he was released again after serving 18 months for the curfew breach.

During a 2014 court hearing, Constantin said he’d begun taking a chemical castration drug, The Spectator reported, and that he is no longer a serious risk to the community.

“When I was younger I did mess up a lot, I did screw up, and I think I paid the price for it. But I do understand the seriousness of it, I do understand what I’ve done,” he said, adding that he would have his genitalia “surgically removed” to prove it if he could afford to do so.

“I know in my heart and my mind that I’d never do it again,” he said.

The Parole Board of Canada felt different at the time, according to a decision obtained by The Spectator, which highlighted Constantin’s own “urges of reoffending against children and young women and that (he) has thoughts of killing.”

The documents indicate diagnoses of alcohol and drug addiction, paranoid schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, depression, an “extremely low range of intellectual ability,” and “character features associated with psychopathy.”

He was also a problematic inmate who threw urine and feces at correctional officers, threatened suicide with a razor blade and ignored personal hygiene. His behaviour led him to spend time in maximum security facilities and in segregation, led to the suspension of mental health supports, and got him kicked out of prison programs.

Oshawa Mayor Dan Carter issued a press release thanking the DRPS for “proactively informing the public and for its continued efforts to monitor high-risk offenders.”

Carter said residents are right to be concerned and that he supports provincial and federal work “to strengthen bail and sentencing laws, particularly for repeat and violent offenders and those convicted of serious crimes.

“These reforms are vital to enhancing public safety and ensuring that justice is served fairly and effectively.

DRPS said Constantin is bound by multiple conditions as part of his high-risk release peace bond under the Criminal Code of Canada.

He must report to them weekly and abide by a 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. curfew, less lenient than the 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. curfew applied when added to the RCMP’s high-risk child sex offender database at age 45.

He’s not allowed to “associate or communicate” with kids under 16, nor “engage in any activities that involve contact with anyone under” that age. He’s also forbidden from being near daycares, swimming areas, school grounds, playgrounds or any community centre where children under 16 are present. He can go to public places where children under 16 may be, but only when accompanied by someone 21 or older.

He’s not allowed to possess, purchase or consume any alcohol, drugs, narcotics or controlled substances. Nor can he use “the internet or other digital networks” or possess a device that can go online.

He’s prohibited from associating with criminals or people with a record, can’t own or possess weapons and cannot be in a relationship with a parent of a child under 16.

“Police are asking the public to stay vigilant and remain aware of their surroundings,” DRPS wrote. “Any suspicious or dangerous behaviour should be reported directly to the police.”

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Premier Danielle Smith has taken plenty of flak for putting independence on Alberta’s Oct. 19 ballot. She has no regrets. She is betting the vote will show that support for a binding separation referendum is already losing steam.

“This is what citizens wanted,” she said in a telephone interview. “Four hundred thousand signed a petition saying they wanted a vote to remain; 300,000 signed a petition saying they wanted to vote on an option to leave. And we have legislation that obligates us, if you get the required signatures, to put it to the people. So I want to see what Albertans have to say about it on October 19th.”

The first nine questions on the referendum are the government’s. The 10th, the remain-or-proceed question, is there because of that citizen-initiated process. More than 650,000 Albertans ordered special ballots, more than 10 times the usual provincial election volume. Smith reads that as engagement, not alarm. “People want to tell us what’s on their mind.” Those who requested mail ballots, she adds, “had more time to digest it and have a thoughtful response.”

Current polling puts remain at about 72 per cent and the option to start a binding process to separate at 22 per cent. “I’m glad to see that number has come down,” she says. “After Carney got elected, it was as high as 45 per cent. The fact that it has come down is a demonstration that both myself and the prime minister are working on the things that matter to people.” She would like the leave number to be zero; that would mean people feel like the country’s working.

She points to Stephen Harper’s recent Postmedia column : He wrote that separatist sentiment sat near 25 per cent after the Chrétien years, and by 2015 it was at “a big fat zero,” because Ottawa had dealt with the irritants the West actually cared about. The other spike came in 1982, when Albertans elected Gordon Kesler, a Western Canada Concept MLA; the momentum faded after Brian Mulroney arrived and the National Energy Program was dismantled.

“We have had separatism go down to single digits, or imperceptible. That really should be the target,” Smith says. “If people are feeling confident that their country is working for them, and that they’re a valued part of the country, I think that’s possible again. We’ve got more work to do, but that’s what I’m hoping for.” Many grievances have been addressed in the last 18 months, she said, and she’s identified a few more that require attention.

Quebec’s election makes the timing sharper. Paul St-Pierre Plamondon’s Parti Québécois won a minority on a promise of another independence referendum. Smith has not spoken to the premier-designate and expects the relationship to run formally, through the Council of the Federation and first ministers’ meetings. If she does get the call, one subject is ready: “I am greatly encouraged and enthusiastic to work with him on weaning Quebec off equalization payments. I’m very pleased to hear that he said that, because guess what, it’s a priority for Alberta.”

She is equally interested in another result: Éric Duhaime’s Conservatives took about 21 per cent of the vote and 19 seats, enough to matter in a minority legislature. “A party that got almost as much of the popular vote” as the winner, she says, “has some constructive things we can talk about together, and hopefully be able to focus on the economy.”

On Ottawa, she is more upbeat than her critics expect. Carney, she says, “is genuinely interested in bilateral agreements and finding out what the issues are in each province and working with each premier to address them. That is a refreshing change of pace. I think that’s the way our country was always intended to work.”

She is confident the Pacific Link pipeline, newly designated a project of national interest, will be built. From her perspective, Indigenous consultations are going well. “Part of our joint agreement to do the southern route was because we had fresh environmental reviews and fresh negotiations with First Nations.” She discounts advocacy groups “that are actually funded by American foundations.” The conversations that count, she says, are with “the real First Nations who are going to be getting real dividend cheques to address real priorities… I think that’s going quite well.”

She is also confident Alberta can now build a natural gas power industry that federal rules previously blocked. “The federal government heard our grievances, addressed them in a meaningful way and we’re beginning to see the outcome.”

But no one in Ottawa should relax; other irritants remain. The federal gun law, she warns, “is going to turn our citizens into criminals, unless they give an amnesty for those who currently own those firearms that they bought legally.”

Property rights are another. The Alberta Bill of Rights is the “highest law of the land in our province,” she asserts. “I know B.C. made a different choice about what the highest law of their land would be, but that’s part of the reason why you need these matters of property and civil rights to be determined by the provinces under the Constitution.”

Free speech is a third. Influencers are fielding calls from new federal agencies telling them they are being blocked. “I don’t think Albertans appreciate having a federal government leaning over their shoulder watching podcasts to see if they said something that’s going to hurt someone’s feelings.”

Immigration is next. Carney curtailed numbers, then began talking about raising them again. “He can’t do that without working with the provinces. We need to make sure that we’re getting economic migrants who have jobs in our economy, and the skills that we need. So I suspect there’s going to be some robust conversations after October 19th on that too.”

Smith intends to keep the pressure on long after the vote. Keeping the separation option alive as leverage is not the plan. She wants the referendum to deliver certainty: “I want businesses to have confidence when they invest in Alberta. I want when people move here to have confidence … they’re going to be able to put down roots and live here for decades and be able to have an excellent quality of life. That’s the kind of certainty that I’m looking for on October the 19th.”

A separatist party emerging from the result is a risk she acknowledges, then minimizes. “We’ve always had separatist parties.” More than one was on the ballot in the last provincial election. “There’s always been a place to put that vote, and it’s incumbent upon those of us in government to understand why.”

If the country has drained this sentiment before, she said, it can do it again. “If we’ve been there before, we can do it again.”

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They are rolling a dying man on a stretcher out of the Maple Hotel. He looks to be about 60 years old, unshaven, wild grey curls, filthy white socks. Electrodes are patched to a hairless chest and a monitor seismographs the agonal beatings of a beaten-down heart. The tattoo on the patient’s right forearm reads KILL TO LIVE.

“What have you got here?” I ask one of the EMTs as he sheds his antiviral poncho to reveal a crisp blue uniform beneath. “This is the Downtown Eastside,” he replies. “What do you think we’ve got?”

It is a late September morning at Canada’s most appalling intersection, the corner of High and Low. A quartet of citizens much younger than the man on the stretcher crouch smirking or slouch insensate on the pavement beneath the Maple’s marquee. Crack pipes scattered on the pavement welcome four new ambassadors to Armageddon from our nation’s deep supply of broken kids.

“Hotel” is a euphemism for the eight-storey Maple, as it is for a dozen or more other Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hellholes, many of them a century old, that define the blighted Downtown Eastside (DTES), relics of the epoch when they sequestered stevedores and lumberjacks up from the docks and down from the woods while they took their beer. The building’s windows, viewed from below, are shattered, hanging loose, missing completely, or smeared with vile graffiti. But on one sill, I see flowers.

Steps away from the youths on the pavement, our grizzled patient lies unconscious on the gurney. Now he is levitated into the ambulance that will hurtle the pale shell of yet another once-young, once-virile, once-dreaming soul to triage, lights ablaze and sirens screaming.

Across East Hastings Street, over by the Carnegie Community Centre, the honey locusts are turning gold and crows are arguing in the branches. A flitting wind is chilly off the harbour; the end of yachting season’s drawing nigh. I should have brought a warmer jacket.

Looking north, up the alley that runs west of Main Street and east of the blighted Maple Hotel, I can see Grouse Mountain’s silhouette against a pallid autumn sky.

Between the ancient but still-thrumming Carnegie, with its spiral stairway and its stained-glass effigies of Shakespeare and Milton and Spenser and its generous cafeteria and its take-no-crap security staff, and a seemingly abandoned office building that once was The Molson Bank, there is a narrow alley whose asphalt is smeared and slippery with breakfast cereal, urine and puke. In that little laneway are at least 30 reeling, half-alive drug users and their comrades and their sweethearts and their murderers.

In a doorway, some mother’s daughter, not yet 20, is crawling through a pond of spilled and spoiled buttermilk, feeling for a book of matches.

Another woman fumbles with a kit containing Naloxone, the antidote to some, but not all, of the poisons that are sold and consumed on our libertine streets while we walk around, look away, and step over. (What we do to ourselves with needles requires more needles to assuage.)

“My damn legs, my damn legs!” one man is wailing, and he rolls up threadbare cuffs to expose half a dozen open, dripping, bloody sores the size of playing cards.

Nearly all the other addicts in the alley are silent, clustered in pairs and trios, high as jets, deaf as trees, and mute as clouds. Many are folded forward at the waist like the letter L, staring down at the filthy ground, defying gravity, eyes vacant, lost in space.

I remember Wilfred Owen’s rendering of the British Army, 1917:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

But the addicts on the Western Front of Canada’s half-assed war on deadly drugs are merely displaying what toxicologists call the Opioid Flexional Phenotype — the “fentanyl fold” — not Great War poetry. And that screaming man’s necrotic lesions are a common side-effect of Xylazine, an animal tranquillizer often cut with fentanyl to prolong the high.

(Consider this: more Canadians have lost their lives to overdoses of opioids in the past 10 years than were killed in combat in the First World War, 18,000 in British Columbia alone since 2016.)

Explore further with me, come by another shocked and gawking tourist. Walk a block or two in any direction along the wide avenues and tight back streets of the Downtown Eastside — up toward Cordova and Powell, down toward Pender and Chinatown — and there must be a thousand more derelict users on the sidewalks: initiates and old-timers, locals and come-from-aways, sisters and brothers, Britons and Blacks and Dene, motionless and shuffling, vomiting and shitting, dealing and being dealt life’s losing hand in one of the most blessed and bounteous countries in the world. And countless more up in the fetid SROs, doing whatever they do.

Six more ambulances and fire wagons are idling within half a block of the crucifix of Hastings and Main streets in Vancouver, B.C. They will not idle for long.

“Bring out your dead!” they used to cry in the Middle Ages, but in plague time at Hastings and Main, the dead and the dying are already in the open air.

Still, the CIBC and the TD Bank at Main and Pender are open, they still are having rock concerts at the Rickshaw Theatre, they are whisking omelettes in the Ovaltine Café, there are hushed and studious readers in the library inside the Carnegie Community Centre, and the big Route 16 bus still careers along Hastings toward the city’s prosperous and cultured core. In Chinatown, tonight’s full moon will bring the Mid-Autumn Festival.

This is Vancouver 40 years after Expo 86, 16 years after the Olympic Winter Games, three months after the FIFA World Cup, under the yellow trees.

The cancer is not only here, but here is worse. It is not just this season, but decades of decay and misery. And meanwhile, in fear and revulsion, pity and heartbreak, anger and avoidance, commitment and indifference, the city carries on.

* * *

“Toronto reporter discovers Vancouver has a drug problem,” someone out this way is bound to sneer, but this is not my first go-round on the Downtown Eastside. Back in 1988, I wrote and fronted a CBC documentary that we centred at the Carnegie and at an SRO on Powell Street — the Lucky Lodge. It was a place that, when you opened the front door, smelled like corpses, if you know that smell.

I remember interviewing a guy named Wilson at a vocational-training centre and Wilson telling the camera that “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired of being sick in the gutter.” But our subjects four decades ago were — or we chose to portray them as — harmless drunkards, a bunch of stumbling B.C. Barney Gumbles, no danger to the larger fabric of the city’s life. This was 30 years after fentanyl first was synthesized in a Belgian laboratory, but still decades before it would become the most commonly used artificial opioid in North America, soon to be broadcast by Chinese chemists and Mexican mules to our sidewalks and schoolyards and tenements and tents.

The doc was a hit. And the Lucky Lodge still is in business in 2026, even after a police sweep in 2005 resulted in dozens of arrests for “widespread drug dealing, deplorable conditions and welfare fraud.” However, The Tyee, a local news website, reported in August that long-term residents are under constant pressure — and offered bribes — to melt away so that management might replace them with students at jacked-up rents.

* * *

Around the corner from the Lucky now, a brace of brawny, tawny dogs — Nala and Bo.

Reining them, stroking them, barking at them when they leap to sniff a stranger, is a man who calls himself India. He says that he grew up in Montreal, that his parents came to Canada from Trinidad, that he played basketball and hockey in high school, that he has four children — somewhere — and that he slept on the sidewalk last night, propped against a brick wall, blanketed by the beasts.

“It’s a choice,” he says of his current circumstance. And again: “It’s a choice.”

We look around at a breathtaking panoply of desperation that stretches as far as the eye can see.

“I don’t see myself any different from them,” India says. “I’m still human. They’re still human.”

“Do you think that most of Vancouver cares about this?” I wonder.

“They probably care about cleaning up the streets,” he answers. “Some people care about the people, they want all of them to get better. Some people just want all of this to be gone.”

“That’s not a bad wish,” I suggest, “to want your city to be clean.”

“No, it’s not,” India agrees. And he says that his moribund neighbours “look more scary than they are — they are very nice people.”

“They would give you their last dollar,” he says. If they had a dollar.

“What would help them?” I ask. “What ends this?”

“There could be a lot more jobs, a lot more places to stay for people on the streets. To get a place, some people wait years. I know somebody that waited 11 years. Some people don’t want a place and some people actually do.”

“Would you go for treatment if they came around to take you?” I ask.

“I don’t need treatment,” says the man with the dogs.

* * *

When they vote for their mayor and council on Saturday, Oct. 17, Vancouverites also will be presented with a non-binding plebiscite (from the Latin plebiscitum, “the common people’s choice”) that purports to create a path toward cleansing the clients and clearing the catacomb at the crossroads of Hastings and Main.

The current mayor, who is running for re-election, is a Hong Kong immigrant’s son named Ken Sim, a father of four and the first Chinese to win high office in a city that has welcomed thousands of Chinese families and trillions of their renminbi in recent decades. Sim first gained the mayoralty in 2022 by unseating the incumbent with 51 per cent of the vote.

If you accept the premise that the heart-rending ruin of the Downtown Eastside began in earnest when a thousand SRO rooms were emptied or uprated to clear the grounds for Expo 86, then Sim is the eighth man to own the crisis. (Vancouver has had an Olympic Games, a World’s Fair, a World Cup, an NBA team — briefly — and two Stanley Cup riots, but never a Cup parade or a lady mayor.)

Early in his (first) term, Sim ordered the obliteration of hundreds of tents and hardened structures that were blocking traffic and commerce on East Hastings, and the removal of dozens of stolen propane tanks that were only a Bic away from blowing the addicts’ entire acreage to Kingdom Come. (Hundreds might have died at once instead of one at a time.) This purge was successful — Vancouver’s unhoused now repose under hospital blankets and garbage bags in lieu of canvas and plywood.

The plebiscite is a pointed (and to his opponents, pointless) manoeuvre by Sim to get the public to formally ratify his get-somewhat-tough approach to the Downtown Eastsiders and the other desperadoes who have spread larceny and loathing across Vancouver’s more moneyed ‘hoods.

The referendum here will ask:

Are you in favour of the City of Vancouver strengthening its laws to forbid open-air hard drug (heroin, meth, fentanyl, and crack) use in public spaces?

And: Should the City of Vancouver formally ask the Province of BC to convert portions of the old St. Paul’s Hospital, or another similar site, into a secure medical facility that provides acute voluntary and 100-plus involuntary care beds for individuals posing a serious risk to themselves or others due to severe substance use and mental health disorders?

“It’s a cynical election move,” said one of Sim’s opponents on the October ballot, Coun. Pete Fry of the Greens. (He the son of Hedy Fry, the longest-serving female MP in Canadian history, currently serving her eleventh term in faraway Ottawa.)

“I see this as nothing more than a cheap political distraction,” echoed Vancouver Liberals mayoral candidate Kareem Allam, who used to be Sim’s chief of staff at $150,067 a year.

On a drippy Friday, I meet Mayor Sim at his campaign headquarters. We talk about the referendum and the necrosis at his city’s core and the very real possibility that — given the potency of fentanyl and the even more addictive drugs that are coming onstream as you skim this — Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside may be the harbinger of even more unspeakable and unpreventable tragedies that all of our cities will face.

“What I can tell you,” the mayor says, “is that everything that we’ve done in the past obviously hasn’t worked. And so what we have done with the tools that we have, which is basically policing and reacting after the fact, is we’ve made massive investments in policing, Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services, and a whole bunch of things to stabilize that neighbourhood.”

Sim congratulates himself for the sanitation surge of 2023 and blames the current disorder on the provincial government of Premier David Eby, who — not to be left out — just called a snap election for Oct. 24.

“We’ve been working hard with the province,” Sim says. “We’ve got them to change their ideology, because they weren’t even into involuntary care a couple of years ago. Now the push is to get them to live up to their commitment.”

“That’s IF ‘they’ are still the same ‘they’ a month from now,” I remind him. (One poll I saw while I was in Vancouver showed Eby’s New Democrats trailing the Conservative Party of British Columbia, 43 per cent to 35. But the election still was a month away.)

“Well, you know what, that’s a great point,” the mayor responds.

“Do you think most Vancouverites care what happens to those few hundred or few thousand on East Hastings street?” I ask. “Most people never go down there.”

“I think when they do see it, they do feel it and they do care,” the mayor replies. “But it doesn’t matter where you live, it presents itself in other forms.

“Cars are getting broken into. Bikes are getting stolen. Shops are getting shoplifted. It’s happening throughout our city, and people feel it.

“The street disorder, someone defecating on the sidewalk or someone shooting up hard drugs in a public doorway. These affect people.”

I head back to Ground Zero, where a phalanx of police officers are slow-walking their daily beat along the highway to hell.

“The mayor wants you to ticket these people and take their drugs away,“ I mention to one of the officers. (Sim proposes that the fine for possession be zero dollars and zero cents; the goal is to identify and catalogue users for treatment later on.) “We can’t arrest our way out of this,” the constable responds.

* * *

The online reviews of the Airbnb one block from Hastings and Main that shelters me for the weekend may unnerve someone who might consider coming here to verify that what I am describing is real.

Just got harrased (sic) by couple homeless that were in the outside corner something no one can manage but the place is flawless amazing …

One thing to be aware of is that there are quite a few homeless people in the area. We never had any issues ourselves, but it’s something potential guests may want to keep in mind …

There is homelessness but I don’t consider that to be the fault of a host …

The surrounding neighbourhood did have many unhoused individuals, but they did not bother us …

Just down the street from the condo is the good old New Town Bakery. This is a magnet for travelling gourmands and glad-handing politicians — Ken Sim’s photo is on the wall, alongside those of Prime Minister Mark Carney and various provincial poobahs — and a throwback to the time when you chose a café for flavour and conversation, not just for a plastic bag of grub from a courier on an e-bike.

Susanna Ng, who owns the New Town, came here from Hong Kong in 1972, before Margaret Thatcher colluded with Deng Xiaoping to hand five million free people back to the Pekingese Communists without a single cannonball being fired by the famous Noonday Gun at Causeway Bay. (Not that the Iron Lady had a choice, with Deng controlling the city’s water supply, not to mention his two-million-man army.) It was that smirking betrayal that triggered so many wealthy Hong Kongers to invest in the beautiful city of Wen Ge Hua beyond the sea.

Vancouver gave the fleeing Chinese the freedom to prosper and study and dream. It gave Susanna Ng the liberty to make steamed pork buns and sesame rice balls, seven days a week, 12 hours a day for 40 years. She has watched her little slice of Wen Ge Hua shamble into woe and sadness, one stolen bao and pitiable wastrel at a time.

“Before, our block was very clean,” she tells me one morning over dried-fish congee and tea. “Before, it didn’t bother me that much because they kept on the north side of Pender Street or on Hastings. But now they are spreading.”

“You talk about these people like they’re COVID,” I snap back. “Like they are bacteria.”

“The government should do something like putting them into some rehab centres and help them to have their feet back on the ground again,” she says.

Perhaps, I suggest, they all should be sent, as they would have been in Chairman Mao’s China, up to Fort St. James or 100 Mile House to perform the manual reform-through-labour called lao gai.

“China is a very civilized place now,” Susanna says. “And rich, too.”

“Do most people in Vancouver care about Pender Street and Hastings Street?”

“I don’t think so,” she replies. “They don’t come down here. Particularly my daughter; she won’t come here. Only we in this area suffer it.

“A few years ago, a few of them were very aggressive. They came in here. They grabbed customers’ food, grabbed customers’ phones from the table. I was really upset.”

“What happened to them?”

“What happened to them? Nothing. And I guess some of them passed away.”

“Can this be a great city and a great country if this exists and we tolerate it?” I ask.

“Canada is still a great country,” Ms. Ng answers. “Vancouver is a nice place. I’m proud of this city. But I’m also ashamed of it, because the city is getting worse. We have to do something with the drugs.

“We don’t see this in Hong Kong, in China. Here, no punishment. There’s no punishment.

“Here,” says the doyenne of Pender Street, “too much freedom.”

* * *

Send in the bulldozers. Send in the cops. Send in the doctors.

Once a year, send in the clowns.

The advent of autumn signals more than rain and chill at Hastings and Main. For one man from the capital of Mexico — a megalopolis that is no stranger to tearful woe and sprawling poverty — it heralds the coming of The Day of the Dead, the funniest day of the year.

Gerardo Ávila came to Vancouver to perform at Expo 86 — I saw him bounce around on his pogo stick on the fair’s final day. Like the Carnegie Community Centre and the Ovaltine Café, he’s still here, still clowning.

Every year on Nov. 1, the Día de los muertos, he parades with a marching band along East Hastings Street, and he sets up an ofrenda in a storefront and invites the mourners of Vancouver to display photographs of their beloved and their lost.

“After my wife passed away, I put on a death mask and I danced for hours before the altar,” Ávila tells me. “And one woman got up and danced with me and then others were dancing, even the people all bent over, and they were so happy.

“These people are struggling, right? It’s sad. But there is humanity there. And on this one day, it is so wonderful to see people laughing or having fun. Those people don’t have much to laugh about. But when I dance with the music, and I invite everybody to dance, you have beautiful things happen.

“There are many people there, but not for just one reason. You must not assume. Some people could be just sick. I have found people who tell me, ‘My wife just left me and I’m sleeping here. I have nothing.’ But they are not drunk or not on drugs. And then you get the heavy drugs, too.”

“How does this end?” I wonder. On the Downtown Eastside, it is always the day of the dead and dying.

“People with money can get into a place where they can get off the drug,” the jester answers, “but the poor people, how can they do it? It’s a big, big problem. I don’t know how to fix it. I am not in politics. I am a clown.”

* * *

On a bulletin board in the vestibule of the library in the Carnegie Community Centre , anguished posters give names to a few of the faceless thousand on the streets outside.

HELP FIND DEZIRAE JEANNETE BERCIER

Age: 21 Height: 5’7” Weight: Approximately 80 lbs.

TRAVELED FROM WINNIPEG, MANITOBA TO VANCOUVER AFTER ANOTHER PERSON PURCHASED HER PLANE TICKET

Her family has had no communication with her since approximately July 19, 2026

– – – – – –

MISSING

Toni Leigh Ann O’Keefe

Hair: Brown Eyes: Green Height: 5’4”

Other features: Missing Front Tooth

– – – – – –

MISSING

SEAN ANTHONY KISCH

WE HAVE TRIED TO FIND YOU, BUT EACH DOOR WE OPEN IS CLOSED

YOU ARE WORTHY

PLEASE CALL SOMEONE. PLEASE HAVE THE COURAGE.

YOU ARE SADLY MISSED

Back at the Airbnb, I take a deep breath and dial the number printed on each family’s appeal.

My first two calls are not answered.

Then Sophie Kisch picks up the phone in Lethbridge, Alta.

“All the posters I sent out, I didn’t get any response at all, and I sent a LOT of posters,” she says.

“Everyone I reached out to, I got no help at all.

“The police said, ‘He is an adult’ and they would not tell me anything.

“I’m sure there are many, many other families in the same situation.

“Sean was very, very, very sick.

“We got down there, but he was in a coma.

“He died at St. Paul’s Hospital. Sean died on April twelfth.”

* * *

The woman behind the front desk at the Carnegie is a Dënesųłı̨né from the Cold Lake First Nations of Alberta named Deanna Piché.

“The priest gave us that name,” she says.

Deanna Piché has a smile for everyone; the few who survive the streets of Vancouver often are like that — grateful daily and respectful deeply of those still trapped in the quicksand of addiction and hopelessness.

“When I moved to B.C. 13 years ago,” she says, “I assumed everybody drank. I grew up watching my parents drink, my cousins, my grandparents. I just thought it was normal. I thought everybody drank around their kids. So when I moved out here, I was still in my alcoholism. And there were the drugs, too.”

“What got you off the street?” I ask her.

“I was a mother,” she replies. “I had something to live for.” Today, at 40, she lives for four children whose ages range from 13 to 21.

Deanna and I walk into the alley between the library and the old Molson Bank. The laneway, as always, is a garden of horrors that would take a Bosch or a Bruegel to paint. She says that terrifying new drugs — a zoo-animal sedative called “rhinoceros tranq” and the synthetic opioid cychlorphine — already have arrived at Hastings and Main. We may be only at the beginning of the plague.

“These are my people,” Deanna says. “A lot of them have seen me at my worst. I love them, and I tell them that I love them, and I am real with them, and they say that they love me.”

“What ends this?” I ask her. “Does love end it? Does Jesus end it? Or does it just go on like this for another 40 years?”

“Do you want my God’s honest opinion?” Deanna asks in Death’s alleyway, and I tell her that I do.

“I believe we are in Hell,” she says, “and we all go from here to Heaven.”

Main image: The alleys in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside are a breathtaking panoply of desperation that stretches as far as the eye can see. On Oct. 17, Vancouverites will vote in a non-binding plebiscite about whether to strengthen laws forbidding open-air use of hard drugs. Photo by Rich Lam/National Post

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs is calling on Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government to hold the Palestinian Authority accountable for breaking its commitment to hold elections in 2026.

On Saturday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced the postponement of legislative elections scheduled for next month until Sept. 11, 2027, Reuters is reporting. Abbas blamed Israel and the security concerns in the Palestinian territories for the delay, says the news agency.

This followed a report on Thursday from the Associated Press that Palestinian factions were discussing postponement. A top official with the Hamas-allied Islamic Jihad group told AP that the factions had reached an agreement to delay the vote.

CIJA has released a statement in response, pointing out that the prime minister recognized Palestinian statehood based on commitments made by the Palestinian Authority, including a promise to hold general elections in 2026, as well as undertake reforms.

Following confirmation that the Palestinian Authority (PA) is breaking its commitment of elections in 2026, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) released the following statement calling on the Government of Canada to take concrete measures to hold the PA accountable:… pic.twitter.com/u0UxnaRue3

— CIJA (@CIJAinfo) October 9, 2026

David Cooper, CIJA’s vice president of government relations, said in a statement emailed to National Post that the “recognition of Palestinian statehood was predicated on several commitments, including holding general elections in 2026 in which Hamas would have no role.”

He said the reports that the Palestinian Authority has postponed elections amid cooperation with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, “raises serious questions whether the Palestinians will hold true to their word.”

Cooper noted that CIJA has raised these concerns directly with the government “including the imbalance between rewards to the Palestinians and punitive measures against Israel. We expect the government to hold the Palestinian Authority accountable for failing to meet its commitments.”

In July 2025, Carney announced his government’s commitment to recognize a Palestinian state in a statement, saying: “Canada intends to recognize the State of Palestine at the 80th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025. 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.”

However, CIJA says that if “recognizing Palestinian statehood has not secured even the commitments on which that recognition was predicated, Canadians deserve to know what Canada’s approach is achieving.”

The PA has also failed to enact reforms, notes CIJA, pointing in particular to ending payments to terrorists and the families of those who murdered innocent civilians.

“While Israel faces punitive measures from the Canadian government, the Palestinian Authority has yet to face accountability for failing to deliver on its commitments. This is a dangerous double standard that has implications for both the region and here in Canada where security experts warn that criticism of Israel has been exploited to fuel antisemitism, violence and even acts of terror.”

The Palestinians have not held legislative or presidential elections since 2005-06, states Reuters. After that, Islamist group Hamas seized control of Gaza, ousting Abbas’ loyalists. He has ruled by decree since his presidential mandate expired in 2009.

National Post has reached out to Global Affairs Canada for comment. There was no immediate comment from Israel about Abbas’ announcement, said Reuters.

• Canada promises trade ban on goods from 'illegal' Israeli settlements in new joint statement
• Raymond J. de Souza: The growing problem of settler violence in the West Bank

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

A third Toronto soldier is facing charges in a July kidnapping where police discovered the alleged kidnappers had six different types of Canadian Armed Forces ammunition in their possession.

Jack David Miley of Etobicoke is a 24-year-old master bombardier in the 7th Toronto Regiment, a reserve artillery unit based at Moss Park Armoury in Toronto.

He is one of seven people facing charges for the July 25 kidnapping of a man whose name is banned from publication “to hold him for ransom,” according to court documents. He is also accused of using a handgun during the kidnapping and pointing it at the victim.

“We can confirm that Jack Miley is a current member of the 7th Toronto Regiment,” the Defence Department’s Kened Sadiku said Friday in a written statement.

Miley, whose rank is equivalent to master corporal, has been a reservist since enrolling in the Canadian Army in August 2018, Sadiku said, noting he deployed last year on Operation Reassurance, the ongoing NATO mission in the Mediterranean, Black Sea and Baltics in response to Russian aggression.

After his arrest on Sept. 24, Miley was removed from duty and his access to the Forces’ equipment, facilities and bases was restricted, Sadiku said.

He remains in the CAF pending the outcome of an administrative review, Sadiku said.

Two other soldiers from the same regiment, Sachintha Fernando of North York and James Moreau of Markham, are also facing multiple charges in the kidnapping case. They have also been removed from their military duties and blocked from using their base or army equipment since they were arrested in August.

Fernando, 22, and Moreau, 29, have both been charged with kidnapping for ransom, forcible confinement and the use of a firearm during the commission of an indictable offence, according to a Toronto police spokesperson.

Fernando is also charged with multiple other counts of firearms-related offences, including unauthorized possession of a prohibited device, possession of property obtained by crime and careless storage of ammunition.

Fernando has been charged with storing five types of ammunition in a careless manner on Aug. 11, the day he was arrested. Those include .223 caliber ammunition, .223 caliber blanks, 9 mm bullets, .270 caliber ammunition and 12-gauge shotgun shells. All were property of the Canadian Armed Forces, according to court documents.

Miley was also in possession of one round of the military’s 25mm Bushmaster ammunition when he was arrested last month, according to court documents.

“This matter is being taken very seriously,” Cheryl Forrest, who speaks for National Defence, said Saturday in an email.

“The Office of the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal is aware that Canadian Armed Forces ammunition was reportedly identified during the course of the Toronto Police Service investigation. Military Police are fully engaged and investigating the matter.”

Police charged Fernando with possessing a nine millimetre handgun and a Churchill 12-gauge shotgun without a licence for either, as well as prohibited over-capacity magazines.

Police also seized a Beretta handgun, ammunition for the weapon, and at least one firearm silencer during their investigation.

All three soldiers were military instructors within the Greater Toronto Area, one source said Friday.

Another source who has served with the three soldiers said learning of the charges has hurt morale within the regiment.

“The Canadian Armed Forces is supposed to be a respectable organization, many have fought and died for the same colours we wear today,” said the source.

“The unit needs a major rework; there’s too much incompetence allowing these fraudulent and troublesome individuals to flourish.”

Four other men who are not in the Armed Forces — Saiefeddine Aden, Raheem Bishop-Jackson, Christian Darbandi and Suhaib Alekozai — have also been charged with conspiring to kidnap the victim, who isn’t in the military, Forrest confirmed Saturday.

The commanding officer of the 7th Toronto Regiment sent a note to his subordinates recently telling them not to talk to reporters about the case.

“A reminder that this is an active investigation by TPS (primarily), the MPs, and we have our own related admin investigation,” Lt.-Col. Curtis Roach said in his email obtained by the National Post

“As such, we should not be providing comment or opinion on this incident.”

• Toronto soldiers arrested on kidnapping, weapons theft and organized crime charges
• Canadian soldiers charged in alleged anti-government terror plot

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.

OTTAWA — In July 2025, a senior federal official delivered a stark warning in a court affidavit. Every day that Chinese surveillance camera giant Hikvision continues to operate in Canada is another day China could spy further on Canadians.

“The continued operation of Hikvision Canada leads to an increase of the capabilities of the PRC (People’s Republic of China) to conduct surveillance of Canadians and others in Canada,” swore Robert McCarty, a senior investment officer in the Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) branch responsible for reviewing foreign investments.

The potential espionage uses of the thousands upon thousands pieces of Hikvision surveillance equipment in Canada were numerous and unnerving, he warned.

The PRC could use it to monitor specific people, collect “pattern of life” information or use the company’s artificial-intelligence powered tools for facial recognition, license place monitoring or even record audio and video of people meeting in public or private spaces, McCarty wrote.

At the time McCarty swore his affidavit, Hikvision had operated “illegally” in Canada for nearly one decade. During that time, the Chinese giant catapulted from a relative newcomer to a “leader” in the Canadian security and surveillance gear market.

By 2024, over a dozen federal government departments and agencies offices had Hikvision equipment deployed on their properties. Today, there are over 28,700 of the company’s devices connected to public-facing internet connections in Canada (and likely far more on private connections), according to device search engine Shodan.

Hikvision is the most valuable manufacturer of “Internet of Things” surveillance equipment in the world, but also one of the most controversial. It is partly state-owned by the Chinese government and benefits from PRC subsidies that allow it to sell its equipment cheaper than most competitors.

But over the last decade, the company has been linked to multiple major cybersecurity vulnerabilities , is allegedly used by the Chinese government for mass surveillance of Uyghurs and other minority groups , and has been blacklisted by governments around the world over concerns about espionage and cybersecurity.

And yet, it was only in 2025 that the Liberal government took what appeared to be decisive action against the company that Canada’s security apparatus had viewed as a potential threat to national security for years. In June 2025, Industry Minister Mélanie Joly issued a rare order demanding the company pack its bags and leave Canada.

In the confidential order obtained by National Post, the government laid out five broad reasons for the ban. Those include Chinese laws compelling companies to spy for the government, Hikvision’s proximity to the PRC and its ability to access end user data in some cases.

All issues security analysts, other Western governments and even Canada’s intelligence apparatus had been warning about for years.

The Hikvision case raises serious questions about how the federal bureaucracy guards itself against technology it considers harmful, and if it heeds the advice of its own security agencies.

Hikvision is one of only a handful of companies that the federal government has moved to outright ban from Canada due to national security concern. Details — including confidential and classified information — revealing the process behind-the-scenes are laid out in thousands of pages of Federal Court documents as part of Hikvision’s legal battle to remain in Canada.

In both the court documents and a statement, Hikvision denied all the government’s concerns regarding the safety of its equipment and said it could not use its gear to spy on Canadians on behalf of China.

“The existing court submissions accurately reflect the company’s stance that there is no evidence that our products or operations pose a national security risk in Canada. We continue to expect a fair and transparent environment for all businesses and investors in the country,” Hikvision told National Post.

Until Hikvision’s lawsuit, much of the government’s grave concerns about the Chinese company were locked away from the eyes of the public. Even the government’s 2025 order in council justifying the Hikvision ban is still marked as “privileged information and cannot be published” online .

The information reviewed by National Post invites scrutiny into how the federal government reviews foreign investments in Canada that could be injurious to national security.

That’s because, despite repeated warnings from its security and intelligence apparatus about Hikvision gear, copious public reporting detailing security vulnerabilities in Hikvision cameras and the risk of espionage posed by the Chinese tech giant, ISED only launched a review of the company’s Canadian presence in 2024.

That’s when the department discovered the company had been operating “illegally” in Canada for nearly one decade, according to government court filings.

Hikvision had never notified ISED when it incorporated in 2014 and began operating in Canada in 2015, a mandatory step that allows Ottawa to review the investment for national security concerns. In court, the company said it wasn’t aware of the obligation at the time, which a judge dismissed in September 2025 as “no excuse” while declaring Hikvision to have “unclean hands.”

CSIS and other Canadian security agencies have long warned about the espionage risk of some Chinese tech. But those concerns spiked when the Chinese government adopted a National Intelligence Law in 2017 that requires local companies to “support, cooperate with and collaborate” with the China’s intelligence efforts if required.

Another key government concern was Hikvision’s participation as a “Tier One Technical Support Unit” in China’s cybersecurity vulnerability reporting program run by the government’s Ministry of State Security.

Not only did the company fail to disclose its voluntary participation in the program early in ISED’s review, the government charged, but the PRC is suspected of passing on reported cyber vulnerabilities to its “hacking teams” before disclosing them publicly.

In its lawsuit, Hikvision Canada said it complies with all Canadian privacy laws and regulations and is “not subject to PRC law”. It argued that it “cannot” be compelled by the PRC to provide end user data or any other information, nor had it ever received any such request from the Chinese government.

The company also fiercely opposed the government’s position that it could access users’ data, arguing that it had essentially no way to access such information. Furthermore, it said its participation in China’s cyber reporting program was aligned with industry norms.

Ottawa’s national security concerns about Hikvisions are simply “speculation,” the company charged.

Despite that, in early 2025, Hikvision offered a series of concessions to ISED in order to avoid a ban. Court records show the company proposed six undertakings, including adhering to Canadian privacy laws, appointing Canadian citizens to its board and issuing “transparency reports.”

But the offer did not sway Ottawa. China’s national security laws are a key reason why Canada declared Hikvision persona non grata in the federal government’s confidential 2025 order.

“Despite Hikvision Canada’s representations that it would attenuate the national security risks… it is likely that, even if those undertakings were given, Hikvision would act contrary to Canadian interests under the direction of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) or the government of the PRC (and) would not adhere to any such undertakings,” reads the confidential document.

Sami Khoury, a former top Canadian cybersecurity official, told National Post that China’s National Intelligence Law applies to Chinese companies regardless of the intent of foreign staff. That’s particularly the case for state-owned companies like Hikvision.

“The National Intelligence Law compels companies to sometimes … act against the customers’ interests, regardless of the good faith of the local staff,” said Khoury, who headed the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security and worked over three decades for the federal signals intelligence agency before retiring in July.

“The fact that the country has a law that compels a technology company, or presumably any company, to fork over data, that is something I would think twice about.”

Intelligence and security agencies also quietly shared their concerns about Hikvision technology specifically to the federal government years before ISED began the 2024 review of Hikvision Canada’s presence in Canada.

Notably, in November 2022, Canada’s spy agency sent out a rare and stark advisory to its partners.

Hikvision poses a threat to Canada’s national security because its products can potentially be used as an intelligence collection platform for China in Canada and abroad, reads the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) security alert obtained by National Post.

On top of that, Hikvision directly designs, implements and operates China’s Xinjiang-based surveillance project of the Uyghur minority, CSIS warned.

Hikvision video surveillance gear should be given national security consideration and due diligence, particularly on Government of Canada facilities, CSIS warned in the 2022 document.

In other words: don’t use it.

Yet two years after the 2022 CSIS alert, a dozen government departments and agencies still used Hikvision surveillance equipment on their property in 2024. Thursday, National Post reported that over one year after the government’s ban, at least two federal agencies still used Hikvision gear on their properties.

“We shouldn’t allow Hikvision equipment to be used in Canada, particularly in government offices,” Michael Kovrig, CEO of Kovrig Group and a former diplomat imprisoned by China from 2018 to 2021, told National Post.

“Canadians should be wary of surveillance systems made by PRC companies, because the problems with their products aren’t just technical, they stem from China’s increasingly totalitarian political system.”

CSIS declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation between the government and Hikvision.

It’s not just the government’s concerns about Hikvision that were shrouded in secrecy for years, but also a key watchdog’s.

In 2024, the privacy commissioner quietly launched a privacy and security review of the potential risk posed by Hikvision equipment such as security cameras, network video recorders and companion applications.

The review was launched at the request of then Bloc Québécois MP René Villemure, and a briefing note for the commissioner said he would report his findings.

It was completed and never made public. His office declined to share a copy of the report or summarize any of its findings.

“Once the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada completed the analysis, it was shared with the appropriate government institution. The analysis was not made public given the sensitivity of the information,” office spokesperson Vito Pilieci said.

Why, if Hikvision’s products pose such a grave threat, did it take years after CSIS’s warning for ISED to launch its review of Hikvision’s presence in Canada?

Both ISED and Joly refused to answer those questions and more, citing ongoing litigation.

But even before the spy agency’s alert, Canada’s allies had been warning for years that Hikvision equipment could pose a threat.

In 2019, the U.S. government banned its federal agencies from purchasing or using Hikvision equipment, citing security concerns and the company’s surveillance of Uyghurs in the Chinese province of Xinjiang.

In the following years, parts or all of the Indian, South Korean, European, U.K., New Zealand and Australian governments implemented bans or restrictions on Hikvision equipment for similar reasons.

Then in late 2023, the Quebec government announced it was barring public institutions from purchasing any new Hikvision equipment and implementing stringent firewalls on existing gear.

Now, Hikvision’s lawsuit against the federal government in a last-ditch attempt to quash the 2025 order requiring it to leave Canada may be reaping fruits.

In a September hearing, lawyers for both parties told the court that they were negotiating a settlement and hoped to find a “mutually acceptable outcome” by December. Presumably, the negotiations are about finding a way to allow Hikvision to continue operating in Canada, though both parties declined to comment.

In its submissions, Hikvision noted that being forced to cease its operations in Canada would effectively shut out its products and destroy its Canadian business.

Dennis Molinaro, a researcher on national security and former federal intelligence analyst, said that the government needs to explain any reversal on its ban of Hikvision Canada.

“There is no safe way for them to operate. Otherwise, there wouldn’t have been a (federal) order in the first place,” said Molinaro, the author of Under Assault: Interference and Espionage in China’s Secret War Against Canada.

But in the meantime, a Federal Court judge rejected Hikvision’s attempt to pause the government’s ban pending the end of the lawsuit, citing the “serious public interest harms” linked to the national security risks posed by the company.

The ban also irked the Chinese government at a time when Prime Minister Mark Carney is trying to rebuild diplomatic bridges between both countries.

A statement in the PRC-operated Global Times shortly after the Hikvision ban stated that “China is strongly dissatisfied with and firmly opposed to this” and urged canada to “change its course”.

Federal briefing documents also suggest the Chinese government raised Hikvision with Canadian government officials directly during bilateral meetings in fall 2025 when discussing “challenges” for Chinese businesses.

“The federal government’s 2025 order does not explicitly ban Hikvision products from being sold and installed by a third party,” Joly declared at the time.

“However, I strongly encourage all Canadians to take note of this decision and make their own decisions accordingly.”

Genetec, a leading security software firm based in Montreal, made that decision all the way back in 2016 after one too many incidents involving Hikvision cameras connected to their products, according to vice-president Andrew Elvish.

“These cameras are worse than asbestos. They are super duper dangerous time bombs waiting to explode, and especially now in a very unstable geopolitical climate,” said Elvish.

“You don’t want to know when they’re going to start activating these backdoors they’ve put in place.

Asked if he would ever install Hikvision equipment in his home, Khoury, the former top Canadian cybersecurity official, was succinct.

“I wouldn’t.”

National Post

cnardi@postmedia.com

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Prince Harry has revealed that he “slipped into depression” for about two weeks after relocating to Canada from the U.K. in 2019.

The Prince opened up about his mental health during an episode on the online educational platform, MasterClass. It’s part of a course designed to help people coping with grief.

Harry and his wife, Meghan, welcomed their son Archie in May 2019, spending the end of that year in Canada. They eventually moved to California, with Harry and Meghan giving up their royal duties. However, they announced last month they were returning to the UK with their children Prince Archie, seven, and Princess Lilibet, five, after six years in the U.S., reports the BBC.

Harry described being in Canada, away from the stress of his life in Britain, when he experienced an adrenaline crash. “I actually slipped into depression for about two weeks. I felt like I couldn’t function without the adrenaline,” he revealed.

Harry also said that he felt “emotionally numb” after the death of his mother, Princess Diana, because he felt “disloyal and guilty for the possibility of being happy and joyful without her.”

During the MasterClass session, Harry said he struggled to process his grief in the years after the death of his mother when he was 12. He recounted that after crying at Diana’s funeral, he did not cry for nearly two decades, adding that a therapist suggested he spray Diana’s perfume to “unlock everything.”

The MasterClass also featured Mary-Frances O’Connor, a neuroscientist and University of Arizona professor who told Harry: “Your brain doesn’t register your loved one as gone. It registers them as lost. And it will keep searching until you teach it otherwise. We still expect that they’re going to walk through the door.”

MasterClass approached Harry about appearing in the program last year, reports reports People Magazinec . It was filmed in California over the summer.

The course is titled ‘Redefining Grief: Building Resilience Through Loss,’ It explores the effects of grief on the brain and body through Harry’s experience of losing his mother.

“Grief is physiological as well as emotional, and what we know from research is that there are very common responses to the loss of someone important in our life,” O’Connor says in the episode.

After returning from his second tour in Afghanistan in 2013, Harry said he began to see that his military experiences triggered earlier trauma.

“The things that I saw, the things I experienced, appeared to be a trigger for other traumas that had stored themselves within me,” he says. “I started to realize that I probably had become seriously depleted when just putting a simple dress shirt on — the tightening of the collar — literally felt like I was suffocating, and I would be experiencing panic attacks just in the car on the way to work,” he recalled. “And that’s when I realized, ‘Okay, there’s something bigger, there’s something else that you need to look into here.’”

O’Connor speaks in the session about how prolonged stress can affect the body. She compared the nervous system to parts of a car, and cortisol to its fuel injection system.

Harry also said he eventually came to the realization that his mother “just wanted me to be happy. And that was a huge mental shift for me. It freed me, and it gave me a whole different outlook on life.”

He said his charitable work gives him a meaningful way to carry Diana’s legacy.

It has been released ahead of World Mental Health Day on Oct. 10, and will benefit two bereavement charities, Comfort Zone Camp and Scotty’s Little Soldiers, a charity for which Harry is a global ambassador.

The Daily Mail reported Friday that Harry was paid US$100,000 for participating in the MasterClass.

• Prince Harry is set to resume public outings in Britain, though royal status is unclear
• Harry and Meghan will remain 'private citizens' in U.K., King Charles says

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