If you’ve lost track of where Canada and the United States stand on tariffs, don’t worry. So has everyone else. In the past 18 months we’ve had tariffs, retaliatory tariffs, paused tariffs, resumed tariffs, exempted tariffs, canceled trade talks, resumed trade talks, court rulings, appeals, and 51st-state taunts. Blink and you probably missed a tariff. If you’re a glutton for punishment, here’s a useful timeline.

And that just scratches the surface. After the Supreme Court struck down the Trump administration’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs, the White House scrambled for new legal authority—first relying on Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, a little-used emergency provision allowing temporary import surcharges for up to 150 days.

The resulting 10 percent tariff took effect on February 24, but because most goods that complied with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) were exempt, the measure fell far more heavily on imports from countries outside North America than on Canadian exports.

Last week, with the temporary surcharges about to expire, the White House announced that it was pivoting to Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, a provision that had never before been used in the modern era. Unlike Section 122, Section 338 is aimed directly at Canada, with 50 percent tariffs on “products ranging from wine to hockey sticks to cement,” as the White House put it in a “fact sheet” that cited “continued discrimination against and unreasonable and unequal treatment of U.S. commerce that has burdened and disadvantaged hardworking Americans.”

According to the White House, that discrimination largely comes from Canada’s supply management system, which protects Canadian dairy farmers with production quotas and high import tariffs, a 2025 retaliatory surtax on U.S. automobiles, and provincial liquor monopolies that removed or restricted the sale of American beer, wine, and spirits during the trade dispute. As if that weren’t enough, Canada also is one of the 60 countries hit last week with separate Section 301 tariffs of 10 percent on imports. The countries were accused of inadequately enforcing laws against the use of forced labor, giving those countries an unfair advantage over the U.S.

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That’s why Max is worried about Bill C-34, the crackdown on social media use proposed by the government last month. Of all the changes that would be imposed on social media platforms if the bill becomes law, perhaps the most sweeping is a prohibition on social media accounts for anyone younger than 16. The platforms would have to implement age verification or estimation procedures “adequate” enough to enforce the age restriction.

The idea seems widely popular among Canadian teenagers. Over 80 percent of those surveyed by market research and polling firm Ipsos said they support a minimum age requirement. Nearly 70 percent said they saw “content that was not appropriate for their age” between 11 and 15. Older teenagers were more apprehensive about what younger teenagers might be exposed to on social media than those younger teenagers were.

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But is it really Canada’s fault?

Republican members of Congress from Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, and New York also demanded answers and action. “Michiganders shouldn’t have to breathe Canada’s negligence,” Representative Lisa McClain of Michigan wrote on X, claiming that “year after year the smoke crosses the border while Canada does nothing.”

On Thursday afternoon, Representative Tom Barrett of Michigan posted a murky photo taken from inside an airplane as he was flying into the state capital of Lansing. “Do you think we should delay the Gordie Howe Bridge opening until Canada takes responsibility and gets control of these fires?” Barrett asked about the bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, that is supposed to open on July 27. The lawmakers seemed eager to hold Canada accountable for making voters feel like they’d been dropped onto the set of Mad Max.

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Last week in San Diego, I noticed a long freight train that looked like it was making its way north toward major rail hubs in Los Angeles. From there, the freight probably headed to destinations across the United States and into Canada.

One railcar carried the slogan “Union Pacific Building America.” Others bore the names Canadian Pacific Kansas City, Canadian Pacific Railway, and CN, all giant companies that knit together supply chains across North America, hauling everything from auto parts and oil to grain and finished goods.

They were painted with graffiti, and those railcars struck me as the perfect symbol of the world’s most integrated trading relationship. For nearly four decades, Canada and the U.S. have steadily built what is, in many ways, a single economy. Goods cross the border so often that manufacturers barely think about where one country ends and the other begins.

Watching the train slowly roll by, I wondered if I were looking at the high-water mark of that economic integration. A flurry of recent headlines suggests that I might have been.

Toyota announced on July 6 that it will spend $3.6 billion to expand its San Antonio, Texas, manufacturing facility, adding a second vehicle assembly line and 2,000 jobs. The Japanese company said it remains committed to Canada, which has three Toyota plants, and to Mexico. But its next big bet is in America.

President Donald Trump hailed the announcement as proof that his tariffs are working. “They’re moving into the United States. . . because if you build your product here, you pay no tariff,” he said. Trump also predicted that Toyota’s growing facility in San Antonio would become the largest car plant in the world.

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On June 19, the Regina City Jamia Masjid mosque did something for the first time: It broadcast the adhan—the Islamic call to prayer—for three minutes on loudspeakers from its downtown mosque.

The call to prayer was entirely legal and complied with the Saskatchewan city’s noise bylaw. But it turned into a test of religious freedom—and a heated debate over what kind of country Canada really wants to be.

On one side are local residents and other people who welcome the broadcast as a legitimate expression of religious freedom in an increasingly diverse Canada. Freedom of religion is so important that it is one of the four “fundamental freedoms” in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canada’s constitutional bill of rights created in 1982.

On the other side are those who argue that religious worship belongs inside places of worship, not over public loudspeakers. Some critics also see the adhan as more than just a call to prayer. They say it has symbolized the public presence, and even dominance, of Islam.

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During my four years of reporting about Canada’s government-run assisted-suicide regime, I have spoken with patients, physicians, ethicists, and families wrestling with impossible choices. Again and again, I found myself confronting the same question: Can doctors ever know with confidence that someone suffering from mental illness is truly beyond hope?

Parliament’s Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying delivered a surprising answer to that question last week. After years of study and delays, the committee recommended that the government change its criminal law to “indefinitely exclude persons whose sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness from eligibility” for MAID.

Canada was preparing to become one of the few countries in the world to explicitly allow MAID for mental illness. That was supposed to happen as soon as 2027. Canada already does not require that a person be terminally ill. MAID patients must show only that they have a condition that is “intolerable” and cannot “be relieved under conditions that they consider acceptable.”

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Welcome back to This Week in Canada, where discussion about Zionism and indigenous self-determination became a debate about Canada’s future, the “new world order” arrives in a different part of the world, and Justin Trudeau goes on boyfriend duty at the World Cup. Let’s get to it!

It sounded like an extremely wonky academic event. The discussion was titled “Antizionist Colonization of Indigenous Movements—and Our Response.” Its speakers’ goal was to challenge a narrative that has increasingly taken hold in Canada since October 7, 2023: Israel is a colonial project, so indigenous groups should identify with the Palestinian cause.

This intellectual framework dominates much of academia and activism. Settler colonialism, identity politics, the division of society into the oppressors and the oppressed, and related ideas are used to cast Israel as a colonial enterprise and Jews as privileged settlers. While many Jews in Canada have become deeply skeptical of this view, it is just as deeply rooted throughout Canada.

Last week’s event at the University of Ottawa was organized by members of the city’s Jewish community and featured Harry LaForme, Canada’s first indigenous appeals court judge, and New Zealand historian Sheree Trotter, who is Māori. “People are forced into categories of colonizer and colonized, and the actual histories are often much more complicated than that,” Trotter told me. “It’s become a lens through which everything is interpreted.”

LaForme approached the subject through the vantage point of indigenous experience. He laid out what he described as the defining characteristics of colonization: language suppression, religious imposition, population displacement, settler colonization, economic exploitation, legal hierarchies favoring the colonizer, and cultural erasure. “We have experienced all that,” the retired judge told the audience. “In fact, Israel has experienced that. The Jews of Israel have experienced that.”

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And please join me Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. ET to Ask Me Anything about my coverage of medical assistance in dying (MAID). You can find more details below about how to join the conversation.

Five years ago, Canadians were told that they were living through a national reckoning with bigotry and hate. The federal government adopted a sweeping anti-racism strategy. Universities hired diversity officers. Companies created diversity, equity, and inclusion departments. Politicians spoke about systemic discrimination with an urgency often reserved for wars and natural disasters.

Yet antisemitism continues to surge, even though the infrastructure built to fight it is broader and deeper than any time in Canada’s history. Since October 7, 2023, Jewish schools have been shot at, synagogues attacked, and businesses vandalized. Jews have been harassed, assaulted, and spat upon. Protesters have marched through Jewish neighborhoods, and posters of kidnapped Israelis and a missing Jewish teenager were torn down.

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Had you fallen into a coma during Canada’s election campaign in 2025 and awakened last Thursday at the Economic Club of New York, it would be easy to conclude that Canada and the United States had settled their differences: tariffs and other trade tensions, warnings about Canada’s dependence on the U.S., and even that bombast about tuning us into merely the 51st state.

There was Canadian prime minister Mark Carney delivering what amounted to a love letter to the U.S. economy to one of America’s most influential business audiences at a venue that has hosted presidents, central bankers, CEOs, and heads of state for over a century. “The United States approaches its 250th birthday as the most dynamic, resilient, and inventive country the world has ever seen,” Carney told the audience.

This was not the sort of thing Canadian politicians have been saying lately, especially Carney. (Remember Davos?) He even offered up the idea of a North American version of MAGA. “Canada strong will help make America great again.” Call it MNAGA for Make North America Great Again.

Pete Hoekstra, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, liked that line, writing on X that “a lot of Americans can get behind that kind of positive message.”

Why would Carney talk like this? The former central banker was speaking directly to people who decide where capital flows—and making the case that Canada is a good place to invest. He met executives from BlackRock, Blackstone, Morgan Stanley, Netflix, and others. He explained that Canada needs to diversify its economic relationships and reduce its vulnerabilities—and that American investors should invest more money in Canada.

Carney pointed out that Canada buys more American goods than China, Japan, and Germany combined. Seventy percent of Canadian exports are inputs for American products, and Canada supplies 99 percent of U.S. natural gas imports, 85 percent of its electricity imports, and 60 percent of its crude oil imports.

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Welcome back to This Week in Canada, where regulation requires American companies to help save our culture, homeless people have rights too (lots of them!), and numbers can look good and bad at the same time. Let’s jump in!

Netflix helped turn Vancouver into Hollywood North. Amazon, Disney, and Apple poured money into Canadian productions, employed armies of Canadian crews and creative types, and helped Canadian artists reach audiences far beyond Canada’s tiny domestic market.

The Canadian government seems to have looked at all this and thought: How do we tax and regulate it?

Online streaming services, ranging from the four American companies I just mentioned to Swedish audio streaming giant Spotify, will have to hand over 15 percent of their Canadian revenue under a decision announced last week by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). The money will help subsidize parts of the media system considered culturally important by the government, especially French-language programming, indigenous content, and local news.

A 5 percent “base contribution,” to use the CRTC’s term, has been around since 2024. (Most normal people would call it a tax.) It was imposed as a result of 2023’s Online Streaming Act, which then–Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government sold as a patriotic effort to make streaming giants “pay their fair share.”

Of course, no one can really define what “Canadian culture” even means—least of all Trudeau himself, who infamously described Canada in 2015 as a “postnational state” with “no core identity.” And as I reported in 2023, the Online Streaming Act was never simply about bringing online broadcasters under similar rules as Canada’s traditional broadcasters. It was about dragging Canada’s old, protected broadcasting model into the internet age—and expanding the CRTC’s authority.

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In March, the Liberal government introduced Bill C-22 in the House of Commons as a supposedly restrained sequel to the original “lawful access” legislation that I warned about in this newsletter last June. The backlash has only grown from civil liberties groups, technology companies, cybersecurity experts, and pretty much anyone else uncomfortable with the idea of the state building the infrastructure for digital surveillance. It comes across less like a narrow policing tool and more like something assembled by bureaucrats who binge-watch spy thrillers.

Government officials claim that the critics are hyperventilating about modern tools that could help law enforcement and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service fight everything from money laundering to child sexual exploitation to terrorist attacks. Last week, Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree accused U.S.-based tech firms of “misinterpreting some of the safeguards” built into Bill C-22, including encryption protections.

But when Signal threatens to stop offering its messaging app in Canada, virtual private network (VPN) company Windscribe says it might move its headquarters to another country, and Apple and Meta warn that the personal data of users might be put at risk, perhaps the problem is worse than the companies’ reading comprehension of a bill that includes over 19,000 words.

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This was supposed to be the year that Alberta’s separatist movement graduates from a political fever dream to something resembling a credible mainstream project. There have been meetings with Trump administration officials and rhetorical support from MAGA believers eager to cheer on Canadians who say their oil-rich province should join forces with the United States. A secession vote might even happen in October.

But the push suddenly faces a credibility crisis because of a voter-data scandal. The trouble began when Jen Gerson, co-founder of independent Canadian media outlet The Line, reported that the Centurion Project, an ambitious pro-secession political machine, appeared to have access to sensitive voter data through a volunteer app connected to Alberta’s sovereignty movement. The database included the names and addresses of nearly three million Albertans, according to The Globe and Mail.

David Parker, who runs the Centurion Project, has said that the group did nothing wrong and that its volunteers used the database only to find people they already know—and did not have access to phone numbers or emails. He likened the data collection to the basic information found in phone books. That might be a comforting defense if your childhood memory of the White Pages includes voter identification numbers, private contact data, and sophisticated political profiling tools.

The Centurion App was pitched by its backers as a potentially revolutionary political organizing platform that was designed to modernize grassroots campaigning through sophisticated voter targeting, real-time volunteer coordination, and large-scale supporter identification. Emmott Kelsey, a prominent separatist, claimed that the app is “so groundbreaking that it was presented to the White House,” adding that it would “revolutionize how campaigns are run, and we’re the guinea pigs.”

After a source told Gerson that Alberta voter information was easily accessible through the app, she found her own personal data there, and then alerted Elections Alberta, the province’s election administrator. It declined to investigate, citing insufficient legal grounds under stricter rules introduced by Alberta premier Danielle Smith’s government last year that raised the evidentiary threshold for launching probes.

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Things had been unusually quiet on the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) trade front. But quiet sometimes means that someone is about to flip over the table. And that is exactly what U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick did last week.

At a conference in Washington, D.C., he mocked Canada’s negotiating posture on the upcoming review of USMCA, the trade pact governing most of North American trade. A key July deadline looms over whether Canada can preserve the deal’s current exemptions—or face a more protectionist framework.

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Glenn Cormier runs a pub on Bowen Island, a community of about 4,000 people less than an hour from downtown Vancouver. His problem isn’t having enough business. It’s finding someone to cook the food on the Bowen Island Pub’s menu. The island is reachable only by boat and ferry, and the local labor pool is thin. The workers who are nearby don’t seem interested.

“We have seen a decline in the interest of young people to go into the culinary arts,” Cormier told me. Casual dining, in particular, “is really not appealing to young Canadians.” He is able to find servers, but “if you don’t have the cook, you’re out of luck.”

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Behind the headlines blaring about strained Canada–U.S. relations and President Trump musing about the “51st state,” something quieter is happening. Some Americans are reviewing their family trees, zeroing in on their Canadian roots, and applying for citizenship.

The surge in interest follows a change to Canada’s citizenship law, known as Bill C-3, which became law in December 2025. The change expands who can claim citizenship by descent. As a result, millions of Americans are now eligible.

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In Texas recently, Islamic schools have become a political battleground—shut out of a $1 billion voucher program over security concerns, then allowed back into the program by a federal judge.

Canada, by contrast, isn’t debating Islamic schools. It’s building them.

Islam is the country’s fastest-growing religion and its second largest, with 1.8 million adherents—nearly 5 percent of the population and more than double the number from two decades ago. The Muslim community is also younger: The median age is about 30, compared to 41 nationally, and more than a quarter are under 15. Nearly 30 percent of the country’s Muslims are Canadian-born.

This demographic shift is starting to reshape education in Canada.

Islamic schools, once marginal, are expanding quickly. In Alberta, the Edmonton Islamic Academy, founded in 1987, now has about 1,400 students and a waiting list of more than 1,500. An $80 million expansion is set to open this September. It’s the largest Islamic private school in North America.

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In recent weeks, Canada has seen a spate of gunfire directed at synagogues, and the government has issued a warning that a terror attack against the Jewish community was a “realistic possibility” within the next six months. Unsurprisingly, Canada’s Jews are questioning whether they could still be safe.

Canada’s teachers are on the case, and they have a message for their nation’s Jews: Sanction Israel. At its annual general meeting, the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation (BCTF), one of the country’s largest teachers’ unions, passed a motion on March 16 endorsing the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. Some attendees wore buttons declaring “BDS Saves Lives” and “BDS Saves Kids.”

BDS resolutions are not new in Canada—they’ve long circulated in student unions and parts of the labor movement—but it’s the first province-wide endorsement by a K–12 teachers’ union. And it reflects a broader shift in schools across the country, which have become increasingly hostile to Jews.

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The decision ordering Neufeld to pay was not made in a traditional courtroom. It happened in a human rights tribunal, an administrative body that sounds like a court but operates under different, much looser rules that allow accusers to remain anonymous. Its rulings can be reviewed by real courts but are rarely overturned, since the original ruling needs only to have been reasonable in a judge’s opinion.

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Fast and efficient. That is an apt description for Canada’s government-run assisted-suicide program, as I reported in The Free Press last week. Some deaths even occurred on the same day that the person sought approval for “medical assistance in dying” (MAID), according to a 2024 report.

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Canadian prime minister Mark Carney created some confusion when he used the phrase new world order in January to describe the shifting global landscape marked by President Donald Trump’s disruption of traditional alliances and trade norms. But after the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Saturday, Carney’s allegiance was crystal clear.

“Canada supports the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security,” the prime minister said in a statement. Carney also reaffirmed “Israel’s right to defend itself and to ensure the security of its people.”

Gone for now, at least, is all the talk about Canada’s recent pivot toward China, the rancor about Donald Trump’s painful tariffs on key sectors of the Canadian economy—such as steel, aluminum, and the auto industry—and the lingering bitterness from the U.S. president’s musings of making Canada merely the “51st state.”

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