Smoke rises from a fire at Wildberries' logistics complex in Elektrostal, outside Moscow, Russia, following a Ukrainian drone attack on July 18, 2026. (Tatyana Makeyeva / AFP / Getty Images)

 

"Well, starting last Saturday and just about every day since, Ukrainian drones have struck these giant warehouses belonging to Wildberries, causing massive fires to facilities outside of Moscow, outside of St. Petersburg and several cities in the south of Russia."

"The costs have come in lives. At least nine workers are dead, dozens more injured, several of whom were migrant workers from Central Asia. But of course, there's also material costs."

"Wildberries is Russia's largest online retailer. And its warehouses are full of goods from small and mid-size Russian businesses, who have taken to social media to say these attacks have caused their financial ruin."

Charles Maynes, NPR, Moscow  

"Yet another flood of videos from Russians weeping over the ‘shock’ and ‘unfairness’ of strikes on a Wildberries warehouse."

"​It doesn’t cross their minds how unfair it felt when we were just living our lives, bothering no one, in our own country and our own homes, right up until their missiles started tearing our cities apart on a chilly winter morning."

Kateryna Bohuslavska – who posts on X as “Kate from Kharkiv”  

 

"In Russia, official procedures mostly only cover arms procurement."

"So military units and individual soldiers need to buy a lot of things themselves: uniforms, food, gasoline, electric power generators, drones, cars, motorcycles, spare parts… that’s why it is possible to buy goods necessary for warfare on Wildberries." 

Pavel Luzin, senior fellow, Center for European Policy Analysis 

Smoke rises from a Wildberries facility in St. Petersburg, Russia, on July 24 after a Ukrainian drone attack. Reuters verified this social media image by matching building and other details with satellite imagery. The founder of Wildberries also confirmed there was an attack on the facility. (Social media/Reuters)

 

  A fire sending smoke pouring over St. Petersburg early Friday was caused by Ukrainian drones hitting a warehouse for a Russian e-commerce giant. St. Petersburg has been targeted by Kyiv stepping up its long-range drone strikes on Russian energy, military and logistic sites in recent weeks. Retribution for Moscow's nightly drone and missile barrages aimed at Ukrainian cities. Russian strikes at civilian targets throughout Ukraine have aimed at depressing morale of the Ukrainian population, a war crime in and of itself. Russians have never, until recently, had to face the reality that Ukrainians have lived with for over four years.

 

This was not supposed to happen. Russian President Vladimir Putin imagined a swift and easy invasion of a country incapable of defending itself. The Ukrainian response proved otherwise, rising from an initial determination to defend itself against superior numbers and weaponry, to the present where necessity drove Ukraine to invent its own military hardware capable of withstanding Russia's aerial attacks and in good time a counteroffensive to knock Russia's military back from its steady advances, to the point where Ukraine not only held its own, but retook some of its sovereign territory from rapacious Russian occupation.

 

Most recently, Russian forces were put to the test of shooting down 571 Ukrainian drones over a dozen regions, including Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russian annexed in 2014 when it began its revanchist Greater Russia enterprise. More latterly, grey smoke rose into the morning sky over highrise residential buildings in St. Petersburg, Vladimir Putin's hometown, located over 800 kilometres from the Ukrainian border. 

 

A Wildberries warehouse, for Russia's largest online retailer referred to as 'Russia's Amazon" was set on fire following the strike. The third such overnight strike on a Wildberries installation by Ukraine forces over the course of a single week. Eight night shift workers last week were killed at Wildberries sites when one of the company's main warehouses came under attack and burned to the ground, just outside Moscow. 

 

A Wildberries collection point in Moscow. The platform is popular among lower-income Russians and its network of collection points extends into small towns and villages. Photograph: Anastasia Barashkova/Reuters

 

According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the facilities were used to "supply sanctioned components for drone production and navigation equipment". This bombing campaign is one of "long-range sanctions"; Kyiv adding that the attacks are justified retribution for nightly drones Russia sends along with missile barrages everywhere in Ukraine, targeting its cities since February of 2022 when the ground invasion of Ukraine began.

 

Nationwide fuel shortages have arisen thanks to the campaign, undeniably taking its toll on Russia's financial war account. Pulkovo airport in St. Petersburg was forced to suspend flights throughout the attack, disrupting 50 departures. Two of Wildberries warehouses in the city temporarily halted their business operations.  

 

Recent months have seen escalations of long-range strikes by both Russia and Ukraine. Increasing ballistic missile numbers have been fired at Kyiv, killing dozens of residents, while ripping open apartment blocks and destroying neighbourhoods. Leading perhaps to a turnabout in attitude, when U.S. President Donald Trump seemed to back Ukraine's counterattacks on Russia; naming the strikes "an escalation that can lead to an end".

 

June of 2026, according to the United Nations, has seen a surge in civilian deaths; the deadliest month since mid-2022.  

"Russians found out their country is waging a war. The next step is for them to realize who is responsible for all the damage caused to Russia (Putin)."

"Wildberries is no longer just an online marketplace for clothing and household goods. The platform sells weapons, body armor, drones, drone components, and fiber-optics used for drones."

"All of these items are used in the war against Ukraine and help kill Ukrainians. That is why such facilities are legitimate military targets for Ukraine’s Armed Forces."

Anton Gerashchenko, Ukrainian social media influencer  

Remains of the Wildberries warehouse that burned down after a recent Ukrainian drone attack in the course of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, in the city of Elektrostal in the Moscow region, Russia July 23, 2026. Photo by Stringer TPX Reuters

 

"[The warehouse attacks added to the pain of small businesses, which in recent years have been] struggling very badly, [while probably causing only] relatively slight [damage to the industry and the economy in general; effectively stagnant, but stable]."

"[It's about] undermining public morale, and getting people to talk much more [about the war and question the Kremlin's actions]."

"[For years after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, people largely appeared complacent about the fighting.] It was something that was happening a long way off. [But that has changed this year, with regular strikes on oil refineries in parts of Russia leading to the massive fires, and now Wildberries]."

"There is now much more awareness, but there's also much more discussion, and more people are questioning what's going on and why is it happening and the conflict lasting so long. It brings it home."

Chris Weafer, CEO, Macro-Advisory Ltd. Consultancy 

"[Police allege that on May 25 and September 7, 2024, Ahmad Hassan Hajahmad, 33, attended anti-Israel demonstrations in the area of Bay Street and Front Street West], where he used amplification devices to make public statements that advocated for the detestation and harm against members of the Israeli and Jewish communities [allegedly acting] for the benefit of, and in association with, Hamas."

Toronto Police Service 

 

"It is chilling that a Toronto man has been charged with acting for the benefit of and in association with Hamas, a banned terrorist organization.

"Governments and authorities across Canada must do more to confront those who are radicalizing people in our streets to support violence and promote terrorist organizations, and ensure police and national security agencies have the counter-terrorism resources they need to enforce the law and keep Canadians safe."

Noah Shack, CEO, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs 

 

"He faces a single charge arising from speaking at public demonstrations. No violence, no weapon, no one harmed. Speaking out at a protest about the killing of civilians is protected expression, not terrorism."

"The police told the media he 'advocated for detestation and harm' but he is not charged with that. We'll be looking closely at how and why this case came to be, and we're confident it won't hold up when measured against the law."

Mohamed El Rashidy, defence lawyer for the accused 

Demonstrators at pro-Palestinian rally before the U.S. Consulate in Toronto   Chris Young, CP

 

The Attorney General of Ontario and the Government of Canada provided consent to the Toronto Police to proceed with the charge against Ahmad Hassan Hajahmad, resident of Toronto. Following which this man was arrested and charged with participation in or contributing to the activities of a terrorist group. One of the very such groups on Canada's terrorist list. Following his appearance before the Ontario court of justice the Toronto Police Service issued a statement. 

"Due to a court-imposed publication ban, the Toronto Police Service is unable to provide further details related to this investigation."

"The Toronto Police Service thanks the RCMP's INSET for their support with this investigation."

"A joint investigation by the Toronto Police Service Hate Crime Unit and INSET subsequently gathered evidence supporting the allegation that the accused acted for the benefit of, and in association with, Hamas, a designated terrorist group."

Toronto Police Service

Tensions ran high on Montreal’s downtown campuses as student activists led more than 500 protesters in support of Palestine. The rally began outside of Concordia University’s Hall building and snaked through downtown towards the McGill University campus. University Affairs

 

The Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams (INSET), is led by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, comprised of especially trained members of that group along with other law enforcement and national security partners at the federal, provincial and municipal levels. The proliferation of street demonstrations led by Palestinian student groups in Canada, incited and funded by foreign actors from abroad were initiated in the wake of the 7 October 2023 Palestinian terrorist incursion into southern Israel, led by Hamas. 

 

The protesters, labelling themselves 'pro-Palestinians' cited and repeated Hamas/Palestinian claims of Israeli genocide against Palestinians even before the Israel Defense Force had entered Gaza for the distinct purpose of routing out all Hamas agents and the terrorist leaders who had planned and executed the bloody barbarism that saw Jewish girls and women gang-raped and tortured, entire families put to the torch in their homes, farming communities torn asunder, their residents butchered, and children, the elderly and infirm and other Israeli civilians in their hundreds taken hostage into Gaza.

 

The Palestine Youth Movement held a downtown rally from Yonge and Dundas Sts. to the Israeli Consulate on Tuesday, March 18, 2025, before shutting down the intersection to traffic. Photo by Caryma Sa'd /Special to the Toronto Sun

 

Marching through Canadian streets and chanting 'Globalize the Intifada', 'Final Solution!', and 'Palestine will be free from the river to the sea', the protesters engaged in wildly uncivil and unlawful actions while threatening Canadian Jews in their neighbourhoods. On college and university campuses encampments were set up to harass Jewish students and to publicize Palestinian/Hamas propaganda, slandering both Israel and the Canadian Jewish population. While the targets of these wholesale discriminatory, racial events awaited police reaction and law action, it was in vain.

 

Jewish-owned businesses were vandalized, Jewish parochial schools shot at, synagogues fired-bombed, Jews were ostracized and abandoned, while police organized themselves to keep public order translated as separating the Palestinian supporters from smaller groups of Jews that came out to counter-protest and in so doing informed those small groups that their presence comprised a threat to public safety by inciting violence from the Palestinian-support groups lionizing Hamas's bloodbath as an understandable 'reaction' to 'occupation'.

 

Investigators had executed a search warrant at a Toronto residence on March 7, 2025, and there seized multiple electronic devices, we now are informed. "Investigations into criminal offences committed at demonstrations do not end when the event is over", stated Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw. 

"As this investigation progressed, we worked closely with our INSET partners to pursue the terrorism charge warranted by the investigation."

These complex investigations underscore the importance of continuing to strengthen our Counter Terrorism Security Unit so we can identify and investigate evolving threats to public safety."

"We will continue to hold those who break the law accountable, no matter how long it takes."

Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw 

Hamas terrorists in Rafah, Gaza   (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

"The latest hate crime data further reinforce Canada's antisemitism crisis, with Jews targeted at rates disproportionate to any other community."

"While the number can fluctuate year-to-year, we've been tracking the proportion of hate crimes targeting the Jewish community very closely as a bellwether for what's happening in Canadian society."

"When criminals attack Jews, it's not because of how we pray."

"Nothing can justify attacks on Canadians here in Canada, no mater what  you think about what's going on a half a world away."

Noah Shack, chief executive, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs/Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA

Police tape outside synagogue in Thornhill, Ont. struck by bullets following start of Iran war. Global News

 

In Canada, police reported 4,708 hate crimes for 2024, three percent fewer than the 4,841 reported for 2024, according to Statistics Canada. Prior to this decline there were six years of increases, more than doubling the national count between 2018 and 2024. Those hate crimes that have been motivated by religious bigotry fell 18 percent to 1,114 incidents. Jewish people were targeted out of that total 788 times, 15 percent fewer such incidents than the year before, yet representing 71 percent of all religion-motivated hate crimes.

 

The target of over 15 percent of all hate crime incidents, Jewish Canadians represent just under one percent of the overall Canadian population. A Jewish Canadian is 22 times likelier to be a victim of a hate crime than is any other Canadian. In 2024, Jews accounted for 69 percent of religion-motivated incidents, and 71 percent in 2025.

 

Extremists living in Canada, along with foreign principals from abroad are involved in anti-Israel hate, fed by conspiracy theories. The leading proponents of slander against both Israel and Jews in Canada emerged from among the Canadian Muslim population whose numbers now aggregate over five times the numbers of Jewish Canadians. 

 

Violence such as fire bombings and synagogue shootings as well as at Jewish parochial schools, along with vandalism striking Jewish-owned businesses, and aggravated boycotts have wracked the Jewish community since October 7, 2023, when Palestinian student groups organized street protests that called for internationalizing the 'Intifada', while accusing Israel of 'Apartheid' and 'genocidal' intentions in the Palestinian Territories, somehow managing to bypass the origins of the current war in Gaza, propelled by the Hamas-led slaughter in southern Israel.  

"When criminals attack Jews, it’s not because of how we pray. Much of today's antisemitic violence – which includes gunfire and firebombing of synagogues and schools, vandalizing businesses, and assaulting community members – is perpetrated by extremists at home and foreign actors abroad, driven by conspiracy theories and anti-Israel hate. Governments and authorities must be unequivocal: nothing can justify these criminal acts targeting Canadians."

"Government and authorities at all levels must acknowledge the drivers of today's antisemitism, including the extremism and radicalization that fuel attacks against Jews; consistent enforcement of the law; get tough on terror; and ensure public institutions and government bodies, such as the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and the Canada Revenue Agency, are not weaponized against Canadians."

Noah Shack, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs 

Global News

 

The largest category of hate crimes at 2,391 incidents, sees race or ethnicity at the top, while Blacks were targets of 858 incidents and attacks targeting South Asians rose to 483 such events, concentrated in Ontario and British Columbia. The trend declined for most other racialized groups in Canada. Jewish Canadians were targeted more frequently than any other group, measured against population size. 

 

One Anti-Jewish hate crime occurred for every 366 Jews in Canada in 2024, compared to one for every 1,961 for Black Canadians, and one for every 9,091 Muslim Canadians, revealed the Canadian Jewish Barometer, a study co-authored by Robert Brym, emeritus sociology professor at University of Toronto. Disability, language, sex, age and immigrants or newcomers as a separate category, rose 52 percent to 562 incidents. 

 

The Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right (IMCR), which is allegedly linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Qods Force, claimed responsibility for two shootings in Canada. Global News

 

"There's a lot of hate that's spreading out there that doesn't rise to the criminal level, whether we're talking about bullying in schools, discrimination in the workplace and general attitudes that people are confronted with as they go about their daily lives."

"These numbers are an important indicator of what our community is facing, but of course behind each number is a story of a family and a community that has suffered a hate crime."

Noah Shack, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs 

"The aim ​was to prevent any association with Adolf Hitler, so as to strip it of that mystique."

"[That mystique was encouraged by the Nazis' cult of personality around Hitler, under whose rule the] Fuehrer birth house [was an art museum. Hitler only lived there for a few weeks in 1889 before his family moved out]."

Stephan, Mlczoch, head, history department, Austrian interior ministry

 

"I think on the whole, the people of Braunau have accepted it and can live ‌with it." 

"I think it isn't a bad approach but whether it works as we all hope and expect, we'll have to wait and ​see."

Braunau Mayor Johannes Waidbacher 

 

"Every year at the Mauthausen concentration camp memorial there's a ceremony ⁠to say: never again. And in Braunau they're saying: let's forget as soon as possible." 

"The world won't ⁠forget where the worst mass murderer in history was born. Wikipedia won't change its entries."

"[There will be no reduction in the number of neo-Nazis making] the pilgrimage to Braunau." 

Robert Eiter, Mauthausen Committee/Network Against Racism and Right-Wing Extremism

A new police station will be officially opened in Adolf Hitler's birth house in Braunau am Inn, Austria, on Wednesday. A memorial stone outside reads 'for peace, freedom and democracy, never again fascism, million dead remind.' (Matthias Schrader/The Associated Press)

 

Austria, the country that gave the United Nations one of its successive Secretary Generals, and when it finally became public that he had joined the Hitler Youth during WWII, his reputation plummeted. That didn't stop Austrians from electing him to its presidency in defiance of reports of his Nazi past. Because the United States in its follow-up investigations determined that he might have been involved in war crimes, he was declared persona non grata in the U.S.; an awkward position for a man who from 1972 to 1981 was present in New York, presiding over the United Nations. Nor later in 1986 to 1992 when the president of a purported ally of the U.S. wasn't permitted entry to the United States.

 

Adolf Hitler, born in Austria, led Germany to 'occupy' Austria in the 1938 Anschluss and the Germany army was welcomed with huge Austrian public enthusiastic displays of joy at their annexation. The 17th-century building near the German border where the Fuehrer was born in 1889 has undergone a transformation, at a cost of $32 million refurbishment to turn it into a police station in the town of Braunau Am Inn. The stated purpose was to deter Austria's ascendant far-right from pilgrimages to the Nazi dictator's birthplace.

 

The once-yellow roughcast walls were whitewashed under contract by the Austrian architecture firm Marte. Above the entrance now hangs a police sign. A memorial stone with the inscription: "For Peace, Freedom and Democracy. Never Again Fascism, Millions of Dead Warn", remains dutifully in its place on the pavement before the renovated building.  

 

Austrian police officers stand in front of the new station. (Matthias Schrader/The Associated Press)

 

 Following Hitler's annexation of Austria, 65,000 Austrian Jews were murdered, 130,000 forced into exile. The far-right political party FPOe founded by former Nazis is currently Austria's most popular political party. The political party has about 37 percent backing by Austrian voters, reveals polling aggregator Europe Elects.

 

The house was owned by the same family from 1912 onward, leased in 1972 to the Austrian state, where it became a centre for disabled people. Its last private owner, Gerlinde Pommer, vetoed any transformation of the house, contesting its expropriation by the state, despite that neo-Nazis frequently flocked to the place where their worshiped hero had been born.

 

Finally, the Supreme Court approved purchase of the 800-square-metre property, three years after a law was passed in 2015 to take control of the dilapidated building. Demolishing the site as an option was out of the question for historians who urged Austria to acknowledge its role in the slaughter of over six million Jews, as well as Roma, gays, the disabled and mentally unfit and political prisoners.

 

Turning the building into a historical memorial risked the likelihood that extremist fascists would continue to visit the site, as to a sacred memorial to the greatness that was the Nazi conquest of Europe. In the end, an commission of experts guided a final decision to make it into a police station insisting the permanent police presence would "clearly show" -- stated the Austrian government -- that no commemoration of Nazism would be acceptable, the site would be "neutralized". 

 

"But that's absurd: humanity will not forget where the worst mass murderer in history was born", charged Robert Eiter, representing an association of escapees from the concentration camp, Mauthausen Committee Austria. 

 

Vehicles are parked outside the building where Adolf Hitler was born, which has been converted into a police station by Austria's government in hopes of preventing it from serving as a place of ‌pilgrimage for neo-Nazis, in Braunau am Inn, Austria, July 16, 2026. REUTERS/Angelika Warmuth

 

 

"This [appointing Mykhailo Drapatyi, a popular and innovative general, as the new head of Ukraine’s armed forces], brings a breath of fresh air and new hope to the struggle of free people for freedom and justice. It is a voice for change that could not be ignored."

"The high expectations of the Ukrainian people must be met with a clear vision for ending the war for independence, a strong team and decisive actions aimed at saving the lives of our soldiers, automating the frontline, delivering asymmetric strikes and crippling the Russian economy."

Mykhailo Fedorov, former Ukraine defence minister 

 

"I offered Mykhailo a prominent position within the government that would enable him to unify the technological sector of our state and ensure its development."

"Our shared wish is one – victory over the enemy and conditions at the front and in pressure on Russia that would force Russia toward peace."

"A significant path has been travelled, the defence of Ukraine continues, and every warrior deserves dignified treatment."

"We have come a long way. The defence of Ukraine continues. And every soldier deserves to be treated with respect."

"I am grateful to Syrskyi and to] every one of our soldiers [fighting on the frontline]." 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy  

Oleksandr Syrskyi and Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kharkiv, Ukraine, in 2022.  Metin Aktaş / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images file

 

In a sudden move a week ago President Volodymyr Zelenskyy decided to remove his popular defence minister, his prime minister and several days later the commander-in-chief of his armed forces. Puzzlingly, this at a time when Ukrainian drones are hitting Russian refineries, while Moscow's summer offensive has stalled on most front areas and Ukraine has been restoring some of its sovereign territories.  Relations with Trump have settled down, and Ukraine has been given permission to manufacture its own U.S.-style interceptor missiles.

 

Yet at this signal time in Ukraine's history its president has announced a new "political strategy" through the reshuffling of its major war figures responsible for these successes. Thousand of Ukrainians poured into the streets across the country to protest the removal of  the popular Mykhailo Fedorov, credited as a key architect of Ukraine's advances in a drone warfare breakthrough. With no satisfactory explanation for the removal, Ukrainians fed up with corruption and alert to malfeasance, have campaigned for his reinstatement as minister of defence.

 

On the surface it appears that a generational conflict over how best to wage a modern war should proceed, as well as conflicts over corruption, inclusive of turf battles between the Defence Ministry and the generals, plus a president with a reputed tendency to remove subordinates who become too popular in the public regard, lest they become competitors for his alpha-executive governing position. 

 

With the acute realization that he may have made some awkward decisions that would not be well received not only by the Ukrainian public, but by the White House and Ukraine's NATO allies, Mr. Zelenskyy has been left to scramble in hopes of containing the fallout. It has become clear that deep institutional tensions on command structures in Ukraine which were brewing for months, have led to this crisis in confidence.  

"Probably [Zelensyy] didn't grasp fully how Fedorov has become so closely associated with positive changes."

"And the overall protest morphed into broad debate on war strategy and battlefield management."

Mykola Bielieskov, Kyiv defence analyst  

Former Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov holds a briefing in Kyiv on Thursday.  Danylo Antoniuk / Future Publishing via Getty Images

 

The disrupter-style hacks that were championed by younger officials tended to raise the hackles of old-guard battlefield tacticians, Mykhailo Fedorov first among them. Fedorov's innovative approach to the battlefield had won the approval of many officials in NATO, who privately expressed disappointment that Mr. Zelenskyy moved against his continuing in the role of Minister of Defence. 

 

Five consecutive nights saw thousands of noisy protesters outside the president's Kyiv office following Fedorov's dismissal as Minister of Defence, as rallies took place in over a dozen cities.  The public pressure succeeded in having the president reverse course, to fire Ukraine's commander-in-chief, Oleksander Syrsky and to replace him with another reform-minded commander, while offering Fedorov a new high-level government role. 

 

It had been widely rumoured that bad blood in battlefield disagreements between Fedorov and Syrsky led the commander-in-chief to demand that a choice had to be made by Zelenskyy; either Fedorov had to leave or he would. That choice was made, and then reversed under the weight of public censure. 

 

Syrsky's appointment to lead Ukraine's military arrived two years ago, replacing another poplar head of the armed forces, General Valery Zaluzhny, top commander during the February 2022 Russian invasion. A number of military issues led Zaluzhny to clash with Zelenskyy; the latter's request to mobilize 500,000 new soldiers one of those irritants.  It was likely that political ambitions on Zaluzhny's part finally poisoned their relations.

 

Disagreement between those who believe that drones and robots should drive the war to its winning conclusion as opposed to those who place their trust in conventional infantry and artillery to win the war has the former now feeling vindicated. The military tactics with the use of drones have unquestionably turned the tide of the war in Ukraine's favour. 

 

According to an interpretation by a European diplomat stationed in Kyiv, the turbulence between generational factions, corruption currents and personal egos are all involved. "All three of those reasons are  true. But also Fedorov is a political threat to Zelenskyy; many groups wanted to take him down." 

 

Volodymyr Zelenskyy with Oleksandr Syrskyi at the handover of drone missiles to the Ukrainian army in Kyiv in December 2024. Photograph: Sergey Dolzhenko/EPA

  

"We can't back down. We need a full Team Canada approach.Everything is on the table, but Ontario can't do it alone. We need the support."

"I'm tired of the bully trying to take our lunch money all the time. We always seem to be on our back heels. We need to be on the offence ... We need to stand up to the bully, and we need to hit him tariff to tariff -- all the way across the board."

"And that's my message to the prime minister. We need a plan moving forward."

Ontario Premier Doug Ford 

 

"There is not a chance in hell that U.S. alcohol is going back on a shelf in British Columbia. And I'm proud of that, and I know the British Columbians support that."

"And the idea of the president that he can bully us into whatever he wishes is incorrect."

"This attempt by the president to hurt Canadians to, for some reason, attack our country was entirely predictable. [He] will probably do it again. And there's no reason to believe that this is the bottom in terms of where he's willing to go."

"The end of the trade agreement between the United States and Canada would be devastating for Americans and for Canadians alike. The extent of that self-inflicted injury on the United States would be profound. U.S. business will be very clear with the president about that." 

British Columbia Premier David Eby

 

"It most certainly is time for us to intensify our negotiations, be very ambitious."

"The ultimate goal isn't to counter-tariff and further weaken the North American economy. The ultimate goal is to get to a renewed agreement, a trade agreement that is going to build and ensure that our North American economy is more competitive moving forward."

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe

U.S. President Donald Trump, left, watches as a Spanish soccer player shakes hands with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the World Cup final on Sunday. The next day, Trump hit Canada with threat of 50 per cent tariffs. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press)

 

Fighting another war in the Middle East that is beginning to wrack up American casualties, making the Trump administration very unpopular in significant sectors of the U.S. voting public, hasn't distracted Donald Trump from his delusionary vendetta-pathology of making his trading partners and neighbours suffer pangs of trade punishment for imagined trade imbalances that Mr. Trump insists preys on the American economy. Even nature herself has come in for some extraordinary treatment, assigning her extreme weather tantrums to Canadian forest-management malpractise.

 

As for a generous move by the Government of Canada to improve truck traffic flows between the U.S. and Canada in the busiest such trade exchange benefiting the U.S. as much as it does Canada, by fully committing to paying for the enormous cost of installing a new bridge between Windsor and Detroit, riled President Trump who claimed the U.S. was being cheated again, despite Canada paying the complete $6.4 billion cost of building the Gordie Howe International Bridge. Toll revenues in the initial years of operation were to have paid off this debt but yielding to Trump pressure Canada is now deprived of that debt-revenue in the interests of Trump's 'permission' to open the bridge to traffic as intended.

 

Canada's wildfires sending plumes of smoke over the border another wrathful issue, and the punishment for Canada in not immediately shielding the U.S. from the out-of-control wildfire smoke wafting over to the U.S. necessitated another round of tariffs subject to the new Section 338 invoked by Mr. Trump's ire, where cement, dairy products, wood products, alcoholic beverages, paper products, sporting equipment, jewelry, glass products, salt, essential oils, clothing, swimming pools, gaming consoles, smartphones, lamps and furniture products now come with hefty 50 percent tariffs attached. 

 

Financial Times

 

Yet when the provinces respond to these devastating tariff impositions by imposing tariffs of their own, the Canadian boycott of U.S. alcoholic products by provincial liquor commissions enrages the Trump administration. According to a White House fact sheet Canadian imports of U.S. alcohol have decreased between March 2025 to February 2026 by 81 percent, an intolerable situation. Canadian provinces have made it abundantly clear that as soon as Mr. Trump moves the needle downward on his ever-increasing tariffs, they have no intention of lifting their boycotts.  

"I think this does provide a big reset to the negotiation agenda and will force Canada into difficult decisions in the coming 29 days."

"What we're hearing from our clients right now is those that are hit, that are caught by this list, their export sales are going to go to zero, and this is actually quite catastrophic. Because the 50 percent tariff is very, very high, and no one else in the world has to pay that. Right? This is a new tariff unique to Canada."

William Pellerin, international trade partner, McMillan LLP 

Prince Edward Island premier Rob Lantz speaks to reporters with fellow premiers at a press conference closing the Council of the Federation meetings in Charlottetown on Wednesday July 22, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren Calabrese

 

Economists are aware of the documentation studies that reveal when governments impose tariffs seeming to be paid by exporters, what is actually occurring is that their own citizens are being taxed. The National Bureau of Economic Research published a paper by a Harvard University economist and a economist at University of Chicago which studied the extent to which the 1918-19 [Trump's previous administration] as well as 2025 tariffs ended up with the American public and not the exporters. The tariff pass-through rate to U.S. importers, they concluded is "pervasively high, during both the 2018-2019 and 2025 episodes". With 80 percent of the burden of the former and 94 percent of the latter tariffs paid by the U.S. public.

 

A German think tank, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, analyzed $4 trillion of shipments between January 2024 and November 2025, concluding that U.S. consumers and importers paid 96 percent of the cost of Trump's tariffs; foreign exporters paid four percent. A National Bureau of Economic Research paper and an analysis by New York Federal Reserve researchers estimated approximately 90 percent of the U.S. tariffs' economic burden fell on Americans.

 

Across the border, Canadian studies document how protectionism harms Canadian consumers. A Montreal Economic Institute study lat month estimated supply management -- which involves quotas and high tariffs on dairy eggs and poultry -- cost the average Canadian $224 annually in inflated food prices. Statistics Canada's income survey and low-income cutoffs [a threshold for relative poverty] suggested that inflated food prices effectively slid about 120,000 Canadians below the poverty line. So much for supply management. 

"A lot of that [Canadian tourism to Vermont dropped 40 per cent] has to do with the rhetoric that the president has used, [referring to Trump’s threats to turn Canada into the 51st state and repeatedly calling the prime minister 'governor'."

"We really value our relationship with Canada both emotionally and financially, and economically."

Democratic Vermont Sen. Peter Welch

 

"How are you [Jamieson Greer, U.S. trade negotiator] approaching the risk of retaliatory tariffs from Canada now that you’ve imposed 50 per cent duties on a wide range of products that were previously exempt?"

Colorado Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet  

 

"Yes or no, when the new tariff on Canada takes effect, will Canada have higher tariffs than China on some products?"

"Let me work through that math. The 50 per cent tariff is higher than a number of tariffs on China."

Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden 

Left: Colorado Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet. Right: U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. CTV News

 

 

 

"[It is] ironic [that DEI programs are] often structurally incapable of even seeing antisemitism, let alone addressing it."

"If your DEI lens only recognizes race-based disadvantage, and cannot grapple with religious, cultural, economic and national dimensions, then Jews -- who are the most targeted group in the country -- are effectively rendered invisible."

"Some of the research shows an inherent tension between DEI frameworks, and the ability to understand antisemitism."

"When DEI is framed almost exclusively around systemic barriers defined by race, it cannot grapple with how antisemitism operates along religious, cultural, economic and national lines."

"The result is that antisemitism is frequently not mentioned at all in institutional DEI policies, or, when it is, the national dimension of Jewish identity is explicitly excluded."

Rhonda Lenton, former president, York University

 

"That 25 percent [one in four Jews seriously considering leaving Canada] is not people packing suitcases; it's a measure of lost trust. They are questioning whether Canada is still living up to its commitments on multiculturalism and minority rights."

"When that many members of a historically successful minority are thinking in those terms, it's not just a 'Jewish problem'. It's a warning light for every minority in this country."

"We're finding that strong negative attitudes toward Israel's very right to exist have bred a great deal of antisemitism in recent years. They're different focal points -- Jews on the one hand, Israel on the other -- but they have become closely linked forms of antipathy."

Sociologist Robert Brym, University of Toronto 

Israel’s Ambassador to Canada, Iddo Moed, looks at bullet holes fired at the Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto Synagogue in Vaughan, March 12, 2026. Photo by Peter J. Thompson /National Post

 

According to the Canadian Jewish Barometer 2026, representing a new national survey through a medium compiled by former president of York University Rhonda Lenton and University of Toronto sociologist Robert Brym, non-Jewish Canadians hold less favourable views of Jews at present than was the case two years earlier, while attitudes toward Israel have become far less favourable over the same time frame. The authors of this new national survey conclude that the greatest exacerbating factor is the diversity, inclusion and equity programs that have succeeded in eroding sensibilities. 

 

The web-based survey undertook to question 3,062 Canadian adults from mid-January to mid-February of 2026. Oversampling polls of Jews, Muslims and Quebecers drawn from a Leger Opinion Panel, made for detailed subgroup analysis. Positive sentiment toward Jews was found to have dropped in comparison to a similar 2024 survey; agreement with negatively-worded statements about Jews rose by roughly five percent on average, considered to be statistically significant.

 

Non-Jewish Canadians with the most favourable view of Jews fell by eight percentage points in the two- year period, while those with slightly positive views dropped by 15 points. Leading the authors to deduce  that the 'golden age' of Canadian Jewry -- from the 1960s to the early 2020s -- giving way to a hostile environment. The Barometer notes that Jews suffer more police-recorded hate crimes per capita than any other ethnic, racial or religious group in Canada, since the Israel-Hamas war.

 

Rising incidents of hostility have caused a psychological toll within the Jewish community In 2024, 63 percent of Jews felt less safe in Canada than they did five years earlier and by 2026 that figure leapt to 88 percent, where close to seven in ten Jewish parents are concerned over their children's safety in school. Fear, discomfort and discussions over emigration represent newly measurable trends, with one in four Jews seriously considering leaving Canada.

 

The prevailing atmosphere is that non-Jewish Canadians are markedly more critical of Israel; strong and moderate support declining, while weak support, outright opposition and uncertainty have all gained traction. More Canadians describe their view of Israel as unfavourable than favourable, with a majority stating their opinion that the Gaza campaign represents 'genocide'. 

 

Universities and other organizations must retool how DEI is operationalized to identify where anti-Jewish bias is being inadvertently baked into policy, according to Ms. Lenton. Perhaps the best, most effective place to start the process, is government itself with its 'progressive' dedication to DEI. The Barometer indicates that more hours of classroom teaching of the Holocaust correlates with slightly more positive attitudes toward Jews, but that effect is slight. Many non-Jewish respondents in Quebec particularly, under-estimate the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust.   

"A program designed to be inclusive ends up being exclusive of the group that experiences the highest rate of hate crimes in the country. The only 'good Jew' in many DEI framings, is a Jew without any national ambitions for the Jewish people."

"That's includes revisiting definitions metrics and recommended strategies [to identify where anti-Jewish bias is baked into policy] and making sure that Jews are recognized as a vulnerable minority in all the dimensions in which they are targeted."

Robert Brym

  

"Whether justified based on available surveys or not, the perception itself is politically significant. For many Canadians, antisemitism is no longer viewed solely as a domestic prejudice inherited from Europe’s past, but increasingly as a problem linked to contemporary demographic and concomitant cultural change. In short, more immigration from Muslim countries. The constant and massive anti-Israel demonstrations that have rocked Toronto and Montreal have left a broad, distinctly visual impression."

"Perhaps the most revealing demographic pattern in the survey was the connection between antisemitic attitudes and dissatisfaction with Canada itself. Respondents who viewed Canada negatively were significantly more likely to feel negatively towards Jews than those who expressed confidence in the country and its institutions."

Sago, Public Square, The Hub  

 

 

 

"I want to speak to you from the heart about a photo going around from last weekend. I'm so sorry for the harm it caused."

"At one of the many public events at Stampede, I was approached by the Israeli ambassador. We had a very brief and frank exchange during which a photo was taken."

"After talking to many people in the community over the last couple of days, I better understand the immense hurt this has caused a lot of folks [taking into account the famine, children's deaths, the horrors of the war in Gaza]." 

Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi

 

"It always starts with anti-Israel talk and then grows into something far, far worse."

"If you want to be premier, start acting like it."

"We meet with the ambassador of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. The Aga Khan comes this year You have to respect them and refrain at all costs from demonizing."

"[Nenshi's action] shows a real lack of maturity."

Rob Anderson, chief of staff, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith

Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi with Iddo Moed, Israeli Ambassador to Canada, at the Calgary Stampede. (Photo credit: Embassy of Israel photo/via Facebook)

 

The provincial NDP leader, Naheed Nenshi saw fit to publicly apologize for his photo in which he stands smiling next to Iddo Moed, the Israeli ambassador, during the Calgary Stampede festivities. In so doing, more than adequately demonstrating the lack of honour and judgemental capabilities that reside deep within the New Democratic Party and Nenshi's own sense of self-preservation within that atmosphere. 

 

For a more well-rounded perspective on democratic points of view and an obviously better understanding that the Israel Defense Forces entered Gaza following the devastatingly grotesque invasion by thousands of Palestinian terrorists -- hell-bent on slaughtering Israeli civilians, from children to entire families, the elderly and the young alike, while triumphantly videoing the mass rape and torture of Jewish girls and women -- in a reaction that any country within the international community would commit to in defense of its own, Quebec Senator Leo Housakos unequivocally stated that he stands "shoulder to shoulder" with Ambassador Moed and the people of Israel, "the only democracy in the Middle East, where freedom, human rights, and the rule of law prevail".

 

When that photo of the two men; Nenshi and Ambassador Moed went public the response from among the public element that decries Israel's very existence and considers mass rape and slaughter of Jews to be nothing less than a 'push-back' against 'occupation' reminded Nenshi of his NDP-stripe obligations where the October 7, 2023 atrocities were hailed as pay-back for Israel's very existence. That his stance, having the effect of empathizing with 'Palestinian victims' of a response to their terrorist government's declaration of war, mentioning nothing that might have caused the Israeli military's campaign to destroy Hamas, adds substantially to the current climate of faulting Jewish Canadians for Palestinian feral war-mongering, is obviously of no concern to Naheed Nenshi. 

 

At that same event, Ambassador Moed had set up brief greeting and photo ops with a number of others. Premier Danielle Smith, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Conservative Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre, and former federal NDP leader Tom Mulcair had no problems with such standard diplomatic overtures, but then none of them are infused either, with that very special undercurrent that operates in certain circles, of opposition to the very reality of existence of the Jewish state.  

"No democratic leader should apologize for engaging with the accredited representative of a sovereign democratic nation."

"Such remarks reinforce efforts to isolate Israel, legitimize anti-Zionist exclusion, and contribute to an environment in which antisemitism increasingly flourishes."

Abraham Global Peace Initiative president Avi Abraham Benlolo 

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