Canadian News

Ron De Harte said that Canadians make up a significant component of their travel industry, with roughly 300,000 Canadians coming to Palm Springs every year.

A boil water advisory was issued for much of the Town of Oliver on Friday due to a mechanical issue at the Rockcliffe Well,.

There are calls for an investigation into the use of restaurant gift cards by the City of Richmond.

At the Old Friends Canada Horse Rescue in Lake Country, B.C., horses that have been hurt by humans can find healing.

Fiona Wilson is a 26-year veteran of the VPD, where she started with roles including patrolling the Downtown Eastside and as an investigator in the Sex Crimes Unit.

Photos of valid passports, staff payroll information and credit card statements were among the nearly 1 million files uploaded onto the dark web after a recent ransomware attack by a hacker group on a Winnipeg school division.

Eighty-five per cent of Canadians say they’re proud to be Canadian — up five percentage points from nearly one year ago, according to a new poll .

The Leger poll conducted for the Association for Canadian Studies found that Atlantic Canadians and those in Manitoba and Saskatchewan are the most proud (91 per cent). They’re followed by those in Alberta (86 per cent), Ontarians (85 per cent) and people in British Columbia (84 per cent). Quebecers feel the least national pride, with 79 per cent saying they’re proud to be Canadian.

The numbers were slightly different just one month ago, when 86 per cent of Canadians said they were proud. In early March, 86 per cent of Quebecers and 77 per cent of Albertans said they were proud to be Canadian. In November 2024, the number was the same for Quebecers but only 70 per cent of British Columbians were proud to be Canadian.

“This has to be understood in terms of what’s happened since the election of Donald Trump and the current campaign,” said Jack Jedwab, president and CEO of the Association for Canadian Studies. “There’s a lot of volatility right now in terms of our relationship with the United States, a lot of head-scratching and people asking themselves, ‘Where do we stand with the country we perceive to be our closest ally, and what does this mean for who we are?'”

In the 2025 federal election, national unity has come up as an issue, with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith warning of an “unprecedented national unity crisis” should several demands not be met by the incoming government.

However, this poll, along with others, seems to show the overwhelming majority of Canadians have a strong attachment to their nation.

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In every region of the country — with the exception of Quebec — the number of people who say they take pride in Canada is higher than the number of people who say they take pride in their province.

“Pride in being Canadian exceeds pride in province for the rest of the country,” said Jedwab.

In Quebec, 79 per cent say they are proud to be Canadian and 80 per cent say they are proud to be Quebecers. Elsewhere, the gap is wider: 91 per cent of Atlantic Canadians say they are proud to be Canadian compared to 85 per cent who say they are proud of their province.

Ninety-one per cent of those in Saskatchewan and Manitoba say they are proud to be Canadian compared to 75 per cent who show pride in their province. In Alberta, 86 per cent of people say they are proud to be Canadian, while 73 per cent say they are proud of their province. Eighty-five per cent of Ontarians say they are proud to be Canadian, while 82 per cent say they are proud of their province. And in British Columbia, 84 per cent say they are proud to be Canadian, and 82 per cent say they are proud of their province.

At nearly 93 per cent, Liberal voters have the most pride in Canada, followed by Conservative voters at 86 per cent and NDP voters at 83 per cent. Only 64 per cent of those who say they are voting for the Bloc Québécois — an avowedly separatist party – say they are proud to be Canadian. (Forty-eight per cent of those polled also said that an independent Quebec would be less able to deal with U.S. trade threats.)

“I suspect a lot of Albertans are also thinking that their capacity on their own to … be effective in defending against this threat is probably something that they’re coming to understand is not going to be most effective,” said Jedwab.

The survey of 1,631 people was conducted online by Leger for the Association for Canadian Studies between April 5 and 6. A margin of error cannot be associated with a non-probability sample in a panel survey for comparison purposes. A probability sample of 1,631 respondents would have a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

• 'They’ve cratered': For NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh this election is do or die
• At a Saskatoon rally, Mark Carney was heckled left and right — quite literally

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Footage from the body-worn camera of an Ontario Provincial Police officer lethally shot by Alain Bellefeuille has been shown at his murder trial. It takes the jury to the heart of the case: did Bellefeuille know he was shooting at police when he repeatedly opened fire?

Duty-free shops across the country, still recovering from pandemic travel restrictions, are reporting massive drops in business in recent months as Canadians increasingly avoid travelling to the U.S.  

More evidence has surfaced of friendly ties between the Chinese government and the Liberal candidate who replaced an incumbent criticized for his own approach to China.

Peter Yuen, the party’s newly minted nominee in a Toronto-area riding, attended a massive military parade and show of martial strength in Beijing a decade ago at the invitation of a Chinese agency dedicated to influencing ethnic Chinese in other countries.

The former Toronto deputy police chief and about 75 other “overseas Chinese” from Canada were put up in a Beijing hotel, principally to watch a parade marking the 70th anniversary of the defeat of Japan in the Second World War, stories from Chinese-language media indicate.

Another Canadian invited to the event, who asked not to be named because of the issue’s sensitivity, confirmed in an interview that Yuen was among the attendees who stayed at the DoubleTree Hilton and sat on bleachers in Tiananmen Square to watch the parade pass by.

The Canadians’ accommodation and food were covered by the Chinese, said the person, who paid for his own airfare to Beijing and said others may have, too.

Canadian delegates also attended other events during the trip, including the awarding of medals to elderly veterans of the war, according to the news stories.

Such trips are a classic tactic of Beijing to woo ethnic Chinese leaders and other key foreigners, said Cheuk Kwan of the Toronto Association for Democracy in China.

“That tells you all you need to know about Chinese interference in our society,” he said. “Make them feel important, make them feel honoured, then they’ll go home and do your bidding for you. That’s human nature, 101.”

Gloria Fung of the group Canada-Hong Kong Link, another prominent China critic, agreed. Being invited to watch the parade along with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, she said, “was a symbol of status and recognition of Yuen by the CCP, implying the invitee would play an important role in Canada in the years to come.”

Still, there’s no evidence that Yuen has publicly championed China’s interests, and the Beijing trip came at a time of somewhat warmer relations between Ottawa and Beijing, when the Conservative government of the day pursued trade with China vigorously.

Yuen said Friday that such delegations were common among public and private institutions in 2015 to “strengthen people-to-people ties.”

He said his participation in the trip was approved by the Toronto Police Service as part of a broader effort to recognize the role of Canada and its allies in the Second World War.

“I have also in my capacity as a police officer attended public safety conferences around the world, including Taiwan,” he said in a statement made via Liberal headquarters. “I believe in a strong Canada that stands firm in its defence of democracy, human rights and the rule of law.”

Yuen took over as the candidate in the Markham—Unionville riding just last week after the resignation of MP Paul Chiang. Chiang faced intense criticism for suggesting people turn Conservative Joe Tay into the Chinese consulate and receive a bounty of about $180,000 offered by Hong Kong police for his arrest. Chiang later apologized for the remarks, and was defended by Liberal Leader Mark Carney.

Though a Canadian citizen and resident, Tay, a native of Hong Kong, was charged under its widely condemned National Security Law for running a YouTube channel here that was critical of the city’s China-dominated government.

Even before he headed to Beijing, there were signs Yuen had friendly relations with China, often appearing at events put on by the Chinese consulate general in Toronto or local groups linked to Beijing.

The September 2015 trip exposed him to what media at the time called a “lavish” show of force by China, which has invested heavily in its armed forces in recent years. The parade included 12,000 troops, 500 pieces of military hardware including tanks and “ship-killing” missiles and 200 helicopters, fighter jets and other aircraft flying overhead. It was a showcase of “military might on an unprecedented scale,” said a BBC report.

The Chinese-language stories said Canadians were invited by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, now a branch of the United Front Work Department, the Chinese Communist Party branch that, among other things, tries to extend China’s influence among the Chinese diaspora and foreign political and government figures.

A 2022 Federal Court ruling in an immigration case concluded it was reasonable to say that the Overseas Chinese office was involved in espionage.

The North American Times news site quoted another Canadian as saying the parade was unforgettable, letting him see the “Chinese people’s re-emergence and the construction of a strong country, which was very inspiring and gratifying. The military parade also showed the world that China is becoming increasingly powerful, and it is the pride of the Chinese people and overseas Chinese.”

Yuen, who immigrated from Hong Kong as a young boy, rose to become the first Chinese-Canadian deputy chief of the Toronto force — the largest municipal police department in the country, and won various awards within the service.

He also appeared at events hosted by the consulate or by groups linked to it. In 2014, the consul general and other Chinese diplomats attended a ceremony honouring Yuen’s promotion to superintendent, according to the consulate website. In her speech at the event, one deputy consul “thanked Yuan for his support to the Consulate General and the Chinese community over the years.”

He was a guest at a 2014 event marking a change in leadership at the Confederation of Toronto Chinese Canadian Organizations, a group with close ties to Beijing. Yuen even sang My Chinese Heart, which has been called the anthem of the Chinese diaspora, as the CTCCO’s honorary chair, Wei Chengyi, stood nearby.

In 2017, he attended a consulate celebration of the 68th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic.

After retiring from the Toronto Police Service, he served until recently on the board of the NOIC Academy, a school that caters partly to international students from China. Some of those students were bused to a nomination election in 2019 where MP Han Dong was chosen as the Liberals’ nominee for the Don Valley North riding. The nomination meeting was cited by Justice Marie-Josée Hogue in her report on the federal foreign-interference inquiry as a possible example of meddling by the Chinese government.

Yuen’s affiliation with NOIC was first reported by independent journalist Sam Cooper.

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OTTAWA — The Conservatives will not have a candidate to challenge former Liberal minister Jean-Yves Duclos in Quebec Centre and they want Elections Canada to review the decision to exclude the party’s candidate. However, Elections Canada says such a review does not exist under the law.

The Conservatives had nominated Chanie Thériault as their candidate, who is a young entrepreneur from the Magdalen Islands, hundreds of kilometres from downtown Quebec City.

Thériault is the co-owner of a family business and is known locally for having spoken publicly about a tourism pass that would be imposed on visitors during the tourist season. She has also been outspoken about increasing taxes for businesses, among other things.

According to the party, Thériault showed up at a Quebec City Elections Canada office with her documents on Monday, the deadline, with a party official.

She waited 30 minutes and then the returning officer came to see her to shake her hand and congratulate her on being a candidate. That, according to the party, was several hours before the deadline for submitting documents. The deadline was 2 p.m. that day.

However, Election Canada denied her candidacy because the papers she submitted “did not comply with the requirements of the law.”

It appears that her nomination paper was “not complete” and that she couldn’t have been confirmed as a candidate.

If the nomination papers are indeed incomplete, returning officers cannot confirm the candidate, said Elections Canada. But, if this happens before the close of nominations, another candidate could be nominated to run on behalf of a party. If this happens afterwards, it is too late and no replacement can be put forward, according to the law.

On Thursday, Pierre Poilievre’s Quebec lieutenant Pierre Paul-Hus said the party “clearly indicated to Elections Canada that this is an infringement of our candidate’s constitutional rights and that we expected to have a review of the decision.”

Elections Canada spokesperson Matthew McKenna told National Post that Canada Elections Act “doesn’t include a mechanism to appeal the returning officer’s review of the nomination paper.”

“The timelines in the Act are in place to ensure that there is sufficient time for ballots to be printed and the proper quality assurance steps taken in time for voting at advance polls,” wrote McKenna in an email.

It does not bode well for the Conservatives in Quebec City. Quebec Centre is known for being more progressive and the Conservatives are not necessarily in the running. For example, in 2021, Conservative candidate Bianca Boutin received 9,239 votes, half of Duclos’ tally, and finished third behind the Bloc Québécois.

Although Pierre Poilievre had great ambitions for this city: after all, the party held his national convention in the riding of Quebec Centre in 2023.

Now that the party no longer has a candidate, the Bloc Québécois’s support has increased considerably. However, the Liberals remain in the lead, according to polling aggregator 338Canada .

“In the absence of a Conservative candidate in the riding of Québec Centre, the choice of citizens rests on two options: the continuation of the Liberal centralizing policies pursued by the MP of the last 10 years or the protection of the higher interests of Quebec proposed by the Bloc Québécois,” said Bloc candidate Simon Bérubé.

Liberal candidate Jean-Yves Duclos said that “with global challenges and uncertainties hanging over our society and economy, the worst policy would be to isolate and divide ourselves.”

National Post
atrepanier@postmedia.com

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