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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Canada has always taken hockey seriously, and an Olympic hockey match with the U.S. is no laughing matter. Now the U.S. is treating hockey like it’s war, with Canada as the enemy. Within seconds of the U.S. victory over Canada on Sunday, American X looked like the U.S. had just won World War III. MAGA didn’t differentiate between Trump-supporting Canadians or Boomer liberals, Alberta versus the rest of Canada, or any of the usual internal fault lines. It was all just “Canada,” flattened into a single target.

The White House account resurfaced a 2025 X post from Justin Trudeau featuring a bald eagle pinning a Canadian goose to the ice. Conservative commentator Matt Walsh gave off full 51st-state energy, celebrating that the U.S. had “vanquished” Canada—“the most evil and depraved country on Earth”—which feels like an overreaction for an overtime hockey win, and makes one wonder what he would have said had it gone to a shootout. U.S. congressman Randy Fine chimed in to remind everyone that America is better than Canada in “Every. Single. Way.” Dave Portnoy, founder and owner of Barstool Sports, kept it subtle: “CANADA IS BROKEN. WE OWN THEM ON EVERY LEVEL POSSIBLE. WOMENS AND MENS GOLD IN HOCKEY.” And then there were the “medical assistance in dying” jokes—posts suggesting that the Canadian team might apply after the loss.

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After last week’s mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, speculation swirled about whether the shooter being transgender was the main cause of the horrific attack. But there is no confirmed evidence that Jesse Van Rootselaar, 18, had medically transitioned, had received gender-affirming medical treatment, or was in inpatient care, according to the regional healthcare authority in northern British Columbia.

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Tumbler Ridge is a mining town of roughly 2,400 people in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, so remote that cellphone service cuts out about 30 seconds after leaving town. The secondary school where the shooter fired on students and staff has about 160 students. The mother of a 12-year-old girl who is battling for her life in the hospital was friends on Facebook with the killer’s mother, Jennifer Strang, and they both worked at the same mining company. “I will probably know every one of the victims,” the mayor said.

Shootings are not a recurring feature of national life in Canada, and the language used by law enforcement officials also sounded distinctly different. Early police alerts referred to the suspect as a “gunperson,” and a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officer described the killer as “female” at a press conference, saying that authorities would respect the suspect’s preferred gender identity.

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Canada is still talking about Mark Carney’s trip to Beijing last month, where the prime minister showed how Canada is preparing for a world where its economic future can’t rest on the United States alone. Closer ties with China are part of that strategy, even though that might be uncomfortable at times.

The initial moves include allowing the import of a limited number of Chinese-made electric vehicles and the elimination of tariffs on Canadian canola, which will boost one of our most important export industries. It was no surprise that President Donald Trump called the agreement “a disaster” that will “go down as one of the worst deals, of any kind, in history.” His words also showed that the Trump administration now views Canada’s friendlier trade posture toward China as part of America’s broader economic confrontation with Beijing.

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It was not that long ago when Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau corrected a woman in Edmonton for saying the word mankind instead of peoplekind, and wore Bollywood-style clothes during an official visit to India. Compare those cringe-inducing moments with Mark Carney’s visit to the World Economic Forum last week. Very few speeches in Davos end with a standing ovation. Mark Carney’s did.

The prime minister opened his speech with a story from Václav Havel’s 1978 essay “The Power of the Powerless.” Havel wrote about a greengrocer in communist Czechoslovakia who put a sign in his shop window—Workers of the world, unite!—even though he didn’t believe it. Like everyone, he did it to avoid trouble. And that, Havel argued, was how the system survived: not just through force, but through millions of small, daily acts of going along with something everyone knew wasn’t true.

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Canadian prime minister Mark Carney stepped onto a red carpet outside the Great Hall of the People last Thursday and reviewed a ceremonial honor guard of China’s People’s Liberation Army. Flanked by senior Chinese officials, he walked slowly past rows of soldiers standing at rigid attention as a military band played the Canadian and Chinese national anthems.

It was Carney’s first full day in Beijing, where no Canadian prime minister had paid an official visit since Justin Trudeau in 2017. Even the idea had seemed unimaginable since 2021, when Canada-China relations collapsed after the arrest of Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor, known as the “two Michaels.” In 2018, they were detained in China on vague espionage charges, a move widely seen as retaliation for Canada’s detention of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou at the request of the U.S.

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It was easy to treat all that “51st state” talk by Donald Trump as him just trolling Canada. Mark Carney would calmly respond that Canada “is not for sale,” and everyone would move on.

But Canadians are starting to think about something they haven’t seriously considered for a long time: Could the United States actually try to take us over? You can read my reporting on Canadians who would like Canada to become the 51st state and those who say they’re ready to take up arms if the Yanks ever came north.

When you add a growing separatist movement in resource-rich Alberta, it feels less and less like Canada will be an independent country with the same borders that it has today.

The United States president has repeatedly mused publicly about Canada becoming the newest U.S. state, even saying he would be willing to use “economic force” to push Canada into a political union. He usually moved on to musing about something else.

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The capture of Nicolás Maduro raises an important question in Canada: What does it mean for Canadian oil exports to the United States?

Canada is the world’s fourth-largest oil producer and the largest foreign supplier of crude to the U.S., exporting roughly four million barrels a day south of the border. Much of that oil is heavy crude, and many of America’s most important refineries—especially in the Midwest and along the Gulf Coast—were built to run on it. Venezuela and, to a lesser extent, Mexico, once supplied that market, but both have collapsed as reliable sources, leaving Canada as the backbone of the U.S. heavy-oil system.

Richard Masson, an energy expert at the University of Calgary and former CEO of the Alberta Petroleum Marketing Commission, told me that Venezuela’s turmoil will not unleash a flood of competing oil anytime soon. The immediate effect is likely to be a tighter heavy-oil supply and more price volatility—not a surge of new barrels.

Masson said the idea that Venezuela’s oil infrastructure can be quickly rebuilt “like Texas” is “a long range from reality.” Even in optimistic scenarios, Venezuela might add only a few hundred thousand barrels of output a day—not the million-barrel surge that some people imagine. Venezuela now produces 1.1 million barrels of crude a day, down from 3.5 million a day in the 1970s.

Venezuela’s oil sector has been hollowed out by decades of nationalization, U.S. sanctions, and political collapse. Its pipelines are corroded, its upgraders are broken, and much of the industry’s skilled workforce has fled. Today, Canada is the only producer still able to deliver large, steady volumes of heavy crude into the American refining system.

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What began as investigations of attempted abductions ended with the announcement last week of a long list of charges including terrorism against three men who allegedly were motivated by hatred toward women and Jewish Canadians. The news was even more alarming because it came just five days after the terrorist attack at a Hanukkah celebration on Australia’s Bondi Beach.

Back in May, three men tried to kidnap a woman in Toronto, pointing a gun at her and demanding that she get into their car before she screamed and they drove away, according to police. In June, three masked men chased two women who were walking in Mississauga, fleeing when someone intervened.

Police made three arrests in August, including Waleed Khan, 26, of Toronto. By last week, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) had traced Khan’s connections to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), alleging that the earlier incidents were part of a conspiracy to commit murder for the benefit of the terrorist group. A search of his home turned up a loaded AR-style rifle capable of automatic fire, a handgun fitted with high-capacity magazines, and more than 110 rounds of ammunition.

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Just two days after my article in The Free Press, “This Land Is Not Your Land,” warned that Canada has plunged into uncertainty about property rights because of a ruling by the Supreme Court of British Columbia, a separate court ruling on the other side of the country seemed to underline the point.

In British Columbia, a judge said in August that the Cowichan Tribes had established aboriginal title over a vast “black zone,” ruling that constitutionally protected aboriginal title is superior to fee simple property rights. Thursday’s ruling by the New Brunswick Court of Appeal confirmed the depth of the uncertainty and showed where Canada’s courts might ultimately draw the line between current property owners and indigenous groups who lived on the same land long ago.

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Videos on social media showed vehicles speeding across a tarmac and passenger planes leaving Tehran’s main airport—signs that Netanyahu’s intelligence was likely correct.

If anyone did make a run for it, though, where did they go?

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Bal Batth has lived in a modest, two-story house here since 1974, when he was 8 years old. His parents bought seven acres after immigrating from Punjab, India, by way of England. By day, his father was a paramedic. On days off, his parents farmed blueberries and vegetables. “My kids were born here. There’s a whole history here,” Batth, 59, told me while sitting in a living room with walls covered in family photos.

He always hoped to pass the property down to his children, as his mother and father did for him. In October, though, Batth received an alarming letter in the mail from the Richmond mayor’s office. The letter announced that a ruling by the Supreme Court of British Columbia could “negatively affect the title to your property.”

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