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Drugs hidden in a rotisserie chicken led to the arrest of a man in Kingston, Ont., after he allegedly threatened hotel staff on April 15.

An Ontario judge has more than doubled the “unhinged” recommended sentence for a man whose string of crimes includes trying to disarm a police officer.

Lawyers for both the Crown and Martin Moore recommended in the Ontario Court of Justice that he get 120 days in jail for breaking into a home in Barrie last July, and attempting to take a taser from the police officer who responded. Moore, 34, was being sentenced at the same time for fraud for using someone else’s bank card to buy gift cards on Dec. 29, 2024, and punching a police officer on Jan. 6 who responded to a call of a man standing in the middle of an intersection impeding traffic.

“With respect, I find that the joint submission is so ‘unhinged from the circumstances of the offence and the offender that its acceptance would lead reasonable and informed persons, aware of all the relevant circumstances, including the importance of promoting certainty in resolution discussions, to believe that the proper functioning of the justice system had broken down,'” Justice Angela L. McLeod wrote in a recent decision.

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“The sentencing submissions were brief and a joint position was proffered,” said the judge. “No case law was submitted in support of the joint position. The primary submission was that the court should accept the joint position, without question.”

Instead, McLeod sentenced Moore to 300 days in jail, though with the credit for time served before sentencing, he’ll only serve 162 of them.

The sentencing saga began after Moore plead guilty to attempting to disarm a peace officer, break and enter, fraud under $5,000, and assaulting a cop.

“It is an accepted and entirely desirable practice for Crown and defence counsel to agree to a joint submission on sentence in exchange for a plea of guilty,” said the judge.

“Agreements of this nature are commonplace and vitally important to the well-being of our criminal justice system, as well as our justice system at large. Generally, such agreements are unexceptional and they are readily approved by trial judges without any difficulty. Occasionally, however, a joint submission may appear to be unduly lenient, or perhaps unduly harsh, and trial judges are not obliged to go along with them.”

On April 14, 2024, Martin entered into a formal agreement in front of a judge known as a recognizance to resolve a charge of assault with a weapon, said the decision. “The statutory terms including a requirement that he keep the peace and be of good behaviour were in place for 12 months.”

Four months later, on July 14, 2024, “a good citizen called his neighbour who was at work in Toronto to advise him that someone had broken into his home next door,” McLeod said in her decision, dated April 7.

“The homeowner rushed from Toronto to Barrie and found Mr. Martin sitting on his back porch eating breakfast. Mr. Moore had broken into the residence. The lock of the garage had been broken.”

The homeowner called police.

“Police arrived and spoke with Mr. Moore who falsely identified himself as Joseph Smith,” said the judge. “After some time, he admitted that he was in fact Martin Moore. Police learned that Martin Moore was wanted on a warrant for an allegation of an assault with a weapon and was on the … recognizance for an offence of assault with a weapon.”

Police told Moore he was under arrest.

“A struggle ensued and Mr. Moore attempted to disarm the officer. The officer was fearful that he would grab his taser and it would be used against him,” McLeod said. “Mr. Moore was eventually taken to the ground.”

Moore’s efforts to disarm the cop “put himself, the officer, the homeowner and the neighbourhood at risk for harm,” said the judge.

Moore was released from custody, then on Dec. 29, 2024, “a community citizen was notified by his bank of suspected fraudulent transactions from the night before,” said the judge. “His bank cards were then locked. Various cards were used at a convenience store and used at least twice to purchase gift cards.”

Moore was arrested for the fraud, then released again.

Then on Jan. 6, “concerned citizens called to report that a man was standing in the middle of an intersection and impeding traffic. Police arrived on scene and the man told police that his name was Jack. Police identified the man as Mr. Moore and noted that he was wanted on a warrant for aggravated assault,” McLeod said.

“Police attempted to arrest him, but he attempted to run. He then punched the officer in the side of the head with a closed fist. A physical struggle ensued, in the middle of the intersection. Two citizens became involved to assist the officer until back up arrived.”

The court heard Moore “has been struggling with depression and his life ‘took a downward spiral during Covid,” said the decision. “He turned to drugs and has been using a variety of street drugs ever since. It should be noted that he does not have an official mental health diagnosis.”

His case contains “many, many, many aggravating factors,” said the judge, who also sentenced Moore to a year of probation.

“I have nothing more than the bare submission of defence counsel to substantiate the undiagnosed mental health struggles of Mr. Moore, and as such a longer term of probation is required to assist in his assessment and rehabilitation,” McLeod said.

“There is no current plan of release or rehabilitation and Mr. Moore presents as a risk to the community with his string of violent offences over the last year.”

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Calgary firefighters scrambled to contain a large grass fire that broke out just north of the Calgary Zoo during the busy morning rush hour on Thursday.

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In 2019, Danielle Smith was a Calgary broadcaster with a talent for reflecting Albertans’ anger back at her audience.

At the time, four years into Justin Trudeau’s first term, collapsed oil prices were crippling the provincial economy, pipelines had been cancelled and Albertans were angry about Liberal legislation affecting the energy sector.

“Election day is shaping up to be the most disunifying event in Canada in recent history, but it doesn’t have to be,” Smith wrote in her regular Calgary Herald column, just days before the 2019 federal election. “It could also be the moment where Alberta finally decides to stop acting like a national doormat and take charge of its future.”

More than five years later, Smith is now premier, and Albertans — and other Canadians — are musing openly about just what election 2025 could do to national unity.

“I want Canada to work … I also want Canada to work for Alberta, and it hasn’t for the last 10 years because of terrible policies by the Liberals,” Smith said recently.

Live from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. ET: Video and analysis from the English debate

The man Smith replaced, Jason Kenney, says that in 2019, when he was premier, the reasons for the anger were easy to find — Bill C-69, C-49, the cancellations of the Northern Gateway and Energy East pipeline. Now, Kenney says, it’s more basic: Albertans are simply baffled that the Liberals under Mark Carney could possibly be re-elected.

“There’s a general sense in Alberta that the Liberal party is hostile to our core industries, and a frustration that despite the manifest incompetence of the government on virtually every issue over the past decade — which would be a view held by like three-quarters of Albertans — that it’s a government that might get re-elected,” Kenney said.

As premier, Smith is rattling Confederation with talk of alienation, national unity crises and provincial rights. This, coupled with her diplomatic efforts south of the border and engaging with Trump-friendly audiences, have made her a lightning rod for a certain sort of Canadian — especially at a time when patriotic sentiment is soaring, and very much a ballot issue.

Those Canadians — generally those from outside Alberta and Saskatchewan, although she has her local critics, too — see her diplomacy and her national-unity musings as a kind of treason, even if Smith would argue she’s trying to improve Canada, not destroy it.

“I really hope that we can get Canada on Team Alberta because Team Alberta has always been on Team Canada,” she said recently.

There are three key things that are driving her critics mad, and rippling through the federal campaign.

The first: her visit to Mar-a-Lago to meet Donald Trump in January, her appearance alongside U.S. podcaster Ben Shapiro in Florida in late March, and comments made to a Breitbart podcast saying Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre was more “in sync” with the Trump administration than his opponent. The second: her decision to remain offside with the other Canadian premiers’ united response to U.S. tariff threats. And, third, her insertion of nine demands onto the national electoral agenda, lest there be an “unprecedented national unity crisis.”

“The idea of a national unity crisis is probably more real than a lot of people in Ottawa would like to think, and at the same time, not as real as the biggest pushers of Alberta separation would like to think,” says Brad Tennant, a long-time conservative activist in Alberta, who’s also with Wellington Advocacy.

It’s enough to have caught the attention of The New York Times, which this week described Smith as being on the vanguard of the Canadian right. And, in contrast to the bullish response from the federal Liberals to U.S. intransigence, Smith is taking a different tack.

“I’m happy to be good cop,” she told the Times.

Smith, as she did in her days as an incendiary columnist and radio host, is channelling and perhaps fuelling Albertans’ anger, and directing it outwards. It’s an altogether different environment than it was in 2019, when a bunch of big-rig truckers set off for Canada’s capital in the first iteration of the convoy to Ottawa.

—

Each year in Ottawa, the biggest names in Canadian conservatism gather for an annual conference hosted by the Strong and Free Network. It’s a place where conservative fellow travellers can meet and network and otherwise further the evolution of Canada’s conservative movement.

Smith told the conference that Albertans are “soured” on a Liberal government, blaming the policies of former prime minister Justin Trudeau for a “beaten down” economy. Whether or not there will be a national unity crisis precipitated by Alberta depends on how the next government — Liberal or Conservative — acts, she said.

“It depends on what the reaction is. If they don’t address those issues, then we’re going to have to see what the reaction of Albertans are,” Smith said.

In that, Smith was referring to the nine demands she made to Carney the day they met in late March. They include scrapping the Liberals’ clean-electricity regulations, reforming the regulatory regime established by Bill C-69, ending the ban on single-use plastics, and others.

If Smith was vague on what the reaction of Albertans would be, others have been less shy about stating it outright.

A group of devoted separatists, including two former Conservative members of Parliament, are organizing a delegation to Washington, D.C., hoping to meet with American officials on the possibility of Alberta becoming the 51st state. They want a secession referendum by December 2025. (Alberta has legislation that allows citizens to bring forward province-wide referenda.)

Preston Manning, the father of the Reform party, wrote in the Globe and Mail in early April that a vote for Mark Carney would be a vote for the end of Canada, as the prairie provinces stampeded towards secession.

The perception outside of Alberta, and even to an extent inside Alberta, is that this is an outright threat: Give us what we want, or we’re out.

Matt Solberg, a partner with New West Public Affairs, who worked on Smith’s transition team in 2023, says he doesn’t see those comments that way.

“This is a bit of a reality check,” Solberg said. “I think she’s saying ‘if we want to make everyone’s life easier, let’s acknowledge these priorities.’”

—

On Saturday mornings, Smith goes back to her roots. She appears on Your Province. Your Premier on the Corus radio network. A couple weeks ago, a caller phoned in, asking if the premier was a “closet” western separatist.

“It’s hard not to notice your contempt for Team Canada,” the caller said.

“I disagree,” Smith said. “I was just down in the U.S. with my Team Canada jersey on.”

At this point, what Smith has promised is a “what’s next” panel. When Kenney became premier, he initiated the Fair Deal Panel, which toured the province and revisited a number of issues that could see Alberta wrest some power from the federal government. While it’s unclear what Smith’s version of the panel would look into, she says it would listen to Albertans and see what they want to discuss.

“We just want to go around the province, see how people are feeling and see if there are any other referendum issues that they want us to put on the table,” said Smith.

The Corus host, Wayne Nelson, noted that Smith has, over the past few months, furthered perceptions of disunity in the Canadian response to U.S. tariffs and the renewed talk of Alberta independence.

“It’s nonsense. The one issue I disagreed with is we cannot have an export tax or export restrictions on oil and gas, that is the one issue that I have disagreed with and I think I am standing up for Albertans in that regard,” Smith said.

In mid-January, Smith declined to sign a joint statement of Canada’s premiers, because it included the potential use of an export tax on oil and gas as a negotiating lever with the United States.

Alberta separatism is, and always has been, a fairly niche sentiment. The Angus Reid Institute found in a recent poll that only 24 per cent of Albertans believe their province is respected by the rest of the country; 30 per cent say they’d like to see Alberta separate. A large figure, certainly, but nowhere near a majority.

But there’s a distinct partisan divide here. What separatists do exist, the Albertans who are the most incensed at Ottawa, the most angry about the structure of Confederation, tend to be conservative voters.

In 2023, Environics pollsters found 83 per cent of UCP voters said Alberta wasn’t given enough respect, compared to 37 per cent of NDP supporters. Smith’s chief of staff, Rob Anderson, is the author of the 2021 Free Alberta Strategy.

In a province where conservatives have been far more successful at deposing conservative premiers than opposition parties have, it pays to keep an eye on party sentiment. It was angry conservatives — not angry NDPers — who ushered Kenney out the door.

For Smith, keeping that base happy is crucial to her political survival. And, ironically, as much as she probably wants a Poilievre government in Ottawa, a conservative in Alberta’s going to have much better electoral luck with a Liberal in the prime minister’s office.

“She’s more than a one-note band, but her biggest note is fighting with Liberal Ottawa and if that gets taken away, she has more political challenges than if it doesn’t get taken away,” says Ken Boessenkool, a long-time Alberta political strategist.

—

On the very first day of the federal election, Pierre Poilievre launched his campaign with Parliament Hill as his backdrop.

In what was surely not the start that he would’ve wanted, Poilievre was forced to answer questions about Smith. She had told Breitbart News the Trump administration would find Poilievre more “in sync” with their goals than the Liberal alternative. She also hinted that the tariff talk was pushing Canadians towards the Liberals, undoing what, just weeks before, had looked like a surefire Conservative victory.

Poilievre largely elided the issue: “My response is that the president has said that he thinks it would be easier to deal with a Liberal, and with good reason, the Liberals have weakened our country,” he said.

Erika Barootes, a senator-elect, podcaster and past president of Alberta’s United Conservative Party, said that interview caused some problems at the start of the campaign.

“But I think that they’ve — the premier’s office — have corrected their tactic of how to engage or speak during a federal election, and I think that that’s democratically and diplomatically the right shift that they made,” Barootes said in an interview.

Boessenkool was one of those who, nearly 25 years ago, authored the Firewall Letter to then-premier Klein, arguing that Alberta could increase its power within confederation. But he’s become a staunch Smith critic — particularly around questions of Alberta separation and talk of national unity crises.

“Look, every time she talks this way, it drives every progressive voter to say, ‘What’s my best pathway to defeat my local Conservative MP?’” says Boessenkool.

Of course, not everyone sees it that way. It’s not clear any of this is registering for voters — particularly in areas of the country beyond the Prairies where both the Liberals and Conservatives are vying for seats.

“I don’t really buy the premise that it’s actually something Canadians care about,” says Solberg.

The polling shows Canadians are concerned about issues wholly divorced from Alberta’s anger over a fourth Liberal term. Canadians tell pollsters they care about affordability, housing and Trump.

If election 2019 was “disunifying” — before the COVID-19 pandemic, before Kenney lost his job, before then-Conservative leader Andrew Scheer lost his job, before his successor Erin O’Toole lost his job — election 2025 must be orders of magnitude more important, at least for Smith.

She may not be able to predict how Albertans will react, but the pundit premier will continue to channel that sentiment. And everyone else in Canada will wonder what she means by it.

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OTTAWA — Strawberries became an unexpected topic at Wednesday night’s French debate in Montreal, with three of the four party leaders saying they’ve stopped buying American berries amidst trade tensions.

“I buy Quebec strawberries, and I do my own shopping by the way,” Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet told debate moderator Patrice Roy, when asked to name one U.S.-made product he no longer buys.

Blanchet’s aside was a cheeky shot at Liberal Leader Mark Carney, who acknowledged to Radio-Canada earlier this month that he doesn’t buy his own strawberries anymore, now that he has a staff to do his daily chores as Canada’s prime minister.

Radio-Canada journalist: Are you still gonna buy American strawberries?

Mark Carney: Whoah lady, I don’t buy my own groceries, that’s nuts pic.twitter.com/mHtomUkcyw

— Elias Makos (@eliasmakos) April 4, 2025

Not to be left out, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh told the moderator that he now goes out of his way to buy a range of Canadian-grown produce, including both strawberries and apples — a fruit Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre famously chomped on in a viral 2023 video .

“I do my own shopping, and I cook at home,” Singh said, one-upping Blanchet.

“Everybody is eating a lot of strawberries today,” quipped Roy following Singh’s response.

Poilievre called the lighthearted exchange a “delicious conversation” and added that Canadian sourced beef is the top sirloin in his household.

“I buy Canadian beef, it’s the best beef in the world,” said Poilievre, throwing red meat at his Conservative base in Alberta’s cattle country.

“But I never buy American strawberries either,” he added.

For his part, Carney said that he’s stopped buying U.S. beer and wine — though the LCBO’s ban on American booze prevents residents from purchasing those products.

The English debate is scheduled for 7 p.m. ET on Thursday.

National Post

rmohamed@postmedia.com

Get more deep-dive National Post political coverage and analysis in your inbox with the Political Hack newsletter, where Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson and political analyst Tasha Kheiriddin get at what’s really going on behind the scenes on Parliament Hill every Wednesday and Friday, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up here.

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What started as a call for threatening behaviour ended with weapon and drug charges for a 44-year-old from the GTA after Kingston Police discovered fentanyl, cocaine and methamphetamine stuffed inside a whole rotisserie chicken.

OTTAWA — What is going on with the polls this federal election campaign?

Click here to review the Q&A with Leger pollster Andrew Enns.

 

Things are looking tighter between Mark Carney’s Liberals and Pierre Poilievre ’s Conservatives with just over 10 days left before the votes are tallied. That’s still a massive and shocking shift for the Tories, who had held a strong lead for over a year before President Donald Trump began threatening Canada’s economy and Liberals brought in Carney as their new leader, after the resignation of the unpopular Justin Trudeau in January.

How did the Conservatives suddenly fall into second place, despite the fact that their polling support numbers are higher than they’ve been for the last two elections?

In fact, some Conservatives are skeptical that the polls truly reflect the reality on the ground, given that Poilievre has been holding massive rallies , at times with more than 10,000-people strong, and Carney’s campaign has been unsettled by controversies and gaffes. Are the polls really capturing all the Conservatives’ supporters who tend to be younger and have been less politically engaged in the past?

Meanwhile, the NDP ’s support appears to have collapsed compared to previous campaigns and the Bloc Québécois is struggling to keep up with the Liberals for support in Quebec. Where have these supporters gone, and why did they suddenly switch so early in the campaign? Does that also mean they could switch back? What happened to Quebec’s strong nationalist voters?

Well, it depends who you ask. Different pollsters are showing different results, with some polls even showing the Conservatives tied with the Liberals or in the lead. The latest Postmedia-Leger poll also shows that Liberal support is overwhelmingly based on fear of Trump, while Conservative support is heavily based on hope for a better future. Results from various pollsters nevertheless show consistently that Carney is perceived by more voters to be able to handle the tariff war with Trump, while Poilievre is considered stronger on domestic issues including cost of living, immigration, and law and order.

Andrew Enns, executive vice president of Leger, the official pollster for Postmedia and the pollster with a consistent record of accuracy answered reader questions on Thursday. The latest Postmedia-Leger poll came out Wednesday, and Andrew took questions about it, about what’s really happening with the polling this election campaign, and how pollsters are measuring support given the difficulty in reaching certain segments of the population. The conversation was moderated by Stuart Thomson.

This is a historic election and a lot could still change in the next 10 days. Review Enns’ answers in the comment section below.

National Post

Get more deep-dive National Post political coverage and analysis in your inbox with the Political Hack newsletter, where Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson and political analyst Tasha Kheiriddin get at what’s really going on behind the scenes on Parliament Hill every Wednesday and Friday, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up here.

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