From the Fraser Institute

By Ross McKitrick

During the Superbowl, Doug Ford ran a campaign ad about fearlessly protecting Ontario workers against Trump. I suppose it’s effective as election theatre; it’s intended to make Ontarians feel lucky we’ve got a tough leader like Ford standing up to the Bad Orange Man. But my reaction was that Ford is lucky to have the Bad Orange Man creating a distraction so he doesn’t have to talk about Ontario’s high taxes, declining investment, stagnant real wages, lengthening health-care wait times and all the other problems that have gotten worse on his watch.

President Trump’s obnoxious and erratic rhetoric also seems to have put his own advisors on the defensive. Peter Navarro, Kevin Hassett and Howard Lutnick have taken pains to clarify that what we are dealing with is a “drug war not a trade war.” This is confusing since many sources say that Canada is responsible for less than one per cent of fentanyl entering the United States. But if we are going to de-escalate matters and resolve the dispute, we should start by trying to understand why they think we’re the problem.

Suppose in 2024 Trump and his team had asked for a Homeland Security briefing on fentanyl. What would they have learned? They already knew about Mexico. But they would also have learned that while Canada doesn’t rival Mexico for the volume of pills being sent into the U.S., we have become a transnational money laundering hub that keeps the Chinese and Mexican drug cartels in business. And we have ignored previous U.S. demands to deal with the problem.

Over a decade ago, Vancouver-based investigative journalist Sam Cooper unearthed shocking details of how Asian drug cartels backed by the Chinese Communist Party turned British Columbia’s casinos into billion-dollar money laundering operations, then scaled up from there through illicit real estate schemes in Vancouver and Toronto. This eventually triggered the 2022 Cullen Commission, which concluded, bluntly, that a massive amount of drug money was being laundered in B.C., that “the federal anti–money laundering [AML] regime is not effective,” that the RCMP had shut down what little AML capacity it had in 2012 just as the problem was exploding in scale, and that government officials have long known about the problem but ignored it.

In 2023 the Biden State Department under Anthony Blinken told Canada our fentanyl and money laundering control efforts were inadequate. Since then Canada’s border security forces have been shown to be so compromised and corrupt that U.S. intelligence agencies sidelined us and stopped sharing information. The corruption went to the top. A year ago Cameron Ortis, the former head of domestic intelligence at the RCMP, was sentenced to 14 years in prison after being convicted of selling top secret U.S. intelligence to money launderers tied to drugs and terrorism to help them avoid capture.

In September 2024 the Biden Justice Department hit the Toronto-Dominion Bank with a $3 billion fine for facilitating $670 million in money laundering for groups tied to transnational drug trafficking and terrorism. Then-attorney general Merrick Garland said “TD Bank created an environment that allowed financial crime to flourish. By making its services convenient for criminals, it became one.”

Imagine the outcry if Trump had called one of our chartered banks a criminal organization.

We are making some progress in cleaning up the mess, but in the process learning that we are now a major fentanyl manufacturer. In October the RCMP raided massive fentanyl factories in B.C. and Alberta. Unfortunately there remain many gaps in our enforcement capabilities. For instance, the RCMP, which is responsible for border patrols between ports of entry, has admitted it has no airborne surveillance operations after 4 p.m. on weekdays or on weekends.

The fact that the prime minister’s promise of a new $1.3-billion border security and anti-drug plan convinced Trump to suspend the tariff threat indicates that the fentanyl angle wasn’t entirely a pretext. And we should have done these things sooner, even if Trump hadn’t made it an issue. We can only hope Ottawa now follows through on its promises. I fear, though, that if Ford’s Captain Canada act proves a hit with voters, the Liberals may distract voters with a flag-waving campaign against the Bad Orange Man rather than confront the deep economic problems we have imposed on ourselves.

A trade dispute appears inevitable now that Trump has signaled the 25 percent tariffs are back on. The problem is knowing whom to listen to since Trump is openly contradicting his own economic team. Trump’s top trade advisor, Peter Navarro, has written that the U.S. needs to pursue “reciprocity,” which he defines as other countries not charging tariffs on U.S. imports any higher than the U.S. charges. In the Americans’ view, U.S. trade barriers are very low and everyone else’s should be, too—a stance completely at odds with Trump’s most recent moves.

Whichever way this plays out Canada has no choice but to go all-in on lowering the cost of doing business here, especially in trade-exposed sectors such as steel, autos, manufacturing and technology. That starts with cutting taxes including carbon-pricing and rolling back our costly net-zero anti-energy regulatory regime. In the coming election campaign, that’s the agenda we need to see spelled out.

How much easier it will be instead for Canadian politicians to play the populist hero with vague anti-Trump posturing. But that would be poor substitute for a long overdue pro-Canadian economic growth agenda.

From LifeSiteNews

By Emily Mangiaracina

Attorney General Pam Bondi and the public are demanding that the FBI release the full set of files related to the investigation of reported intelligence asset Jeffrey Epstein.

The FBI released about 200 pages of files on Thursday pertaining to sex trafficker and reported intelligence asset Jeffrey Epstein, a mere fraction of the thousands of pages of files said to be in the FBI’s possession.

After a request by the recently created Congressional “Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets” for the complete declassified Epstein files, the FBI issued to Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office what she described as “approximately 200 pages of documents, which consisted primarily of flight logs, Epstein’s list of contacts, and a list of victims’ names and phone numbers.”

Conservative commentator Jack Posobiec, who was among several media pundits spotted on Thursday outside the White House with binders reading “The Epstein Files: Phase 1,” confirmed in a Thursday podcast immediately afterward that the binder contains flight logs and a “rolodex of some of names we already knew from Epstein Black Book.”

Commentator Liz Wheeler, who also received Thursday’s Epstein file binder, confirmed the same, telling on X how Bondi did not discover until Wednesday night that the Southern District of New York “was hiding potentially thousands of Epstein files, defying Bondi’s order to give them all to her.”

“We’re talking recordings, evidence, etc. The juicy stuff. Names,” Wheeler added.

“These swamp creatures at SDNY deceived Bondi, Kash, and YOU. Be outraged that the binder is boring. You should be. Because the evil deep state LIED TO YOUR FACE,” she continued.

In light of this withholding, Bondi on Thursday ordered FBI Director Kash Patel to deliver the “full and complete Epstein files” to her office by Friday at 8 a.m.

She noted in her letter that she learned from a source that “the FBI Field Office in New York was in possession of thousands of pages” of Epstein files.

While some Epstein flight records have been released in previous litigation, they remained limited, as does other information regarding Epstein’s associates. U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn filed a subpoena in late 2023 to obtain the complete flight logs, and in January 2025 accused Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of blocking her request.

As reported extensively by LifeSiteNews, the Epstein saga has drawn international headlines for years after it became apparent the billionaire sex offender had ties to the Clintons, Prince Andrew, Bill Gates, and other high-profile elites.

Investigative Journalist Whitney Webb has discussed in her book “One Nation Under Blackmail: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime That Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein,” how the intelligence community leverages sex trafficking through operatives like Jeffrey Epstein to blackmail politicians, members of law enforcement, businessmen, and other influential figures.

One example of evidence of this, according to Webb, is former U.S. Secretary of Labor and U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta’s explanation as to why he agreed to a non-prosecution deal in the lead-up to Epstein’s 2008 conviction of procuring a child for prostitution. Acosta told Trump transition team interviewers that he was told that Epstein “belonged to intelligence,” adding that he was told to “leave it alone,” The Daily Beast reported.

While Epstein himself never stood trial, as he allegedly committed suicide while under “suicide watch” in his jail cell in 2019, many have questioned the suicide and whether the well-connected financier was actually murdered as part of a cover-up.

These theories were only emboldened when investigative reporters at Project Veritas discovered that the major news outlets of ABC and CBS News quashed a purportedly devastating report exposing Epstein.

On December 18, 2023, Senior U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska of the Southern District of New York issued an order to unseal hundreds of documents revealing the identities of individuals who hold various connections to Epstein.

The 4,553 pages of documents then released to the public were heavily redacted and included the names of more than 150 people identified during the investigation of Epstein and his sex trafficking operation. However, many of these individuals had already been identified in previous public documents and interviews, and many were not accused of crimes.

In the final batch of unsealed documents, Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre said he paid her $15,000 in 2011 to have sex with Britain’s Prince Andrew, and that she had sex multiple times with retail mogul Leslie Wexner, who was a financial client of Epstein’s for at least 20 years.

A full list of the names of people mentioned in the previously released Epstein files, including many who have not been accused of any crimes, can be found here. Previously published Epstein flight logs show that former President Bill Clinton along with Secret Service members, actor Kevin Spacey, comedian Chris Tucker, and British model Naomi Campbell all flew on Epstein’s private plane central to his sex trafficking case, dubbed the “Lolita Express” by the media.