The Canadian government has an unequivocal position on what it intends to say regarding the just-announced political comeback of Donald Trump: nothing.
Two years after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau blamed the then-U.S. president for inciting a riot in an effort to cling to power, the Canadian government intends to keep mum.
Conversations with Canadian officials in recent days made clear they have no intention of voicing any revulsion they might be feeling in light of the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
But already, the mere idea of Trump returning to power is being discussed discreetly among participants within international institutions.
Two of those institutions happened to be meeting last week when Trump announced another presidential run: NATO and the COP27 climate conference.
Trump’s announcement coincided with an emergency gathering of NATO leaders after a missile landed in Poland, and with UN climate talks unfolding in Egypt.
The potential implications for both of those institutions is obvious. Trump tried withdrawing from the UN climate pact. And he threatened to leave NATO or severely undermine it, while different former aides said they feared that, in a second term, he might really withdraw.
Donald Trump launches 2024 presidential run
Donald Trump officially launched his 2024 U.S. presidential campaign, setting the stage for a potential rematch with President Joe Biden. But it comes at a time when Trump’s influence within the Republican Party is divided.
Canada’s representative to NATO during the Trump years declined to describe what talks were like at the time because, she said, the confidentiality of conversations is a sacrosanct principle among military allies.
But when asked to assess the potential effect of a Trump comeback, Kerry Buck was blunt.
“It can do a lot of damage,” Buck, now retired from government, told CBC News. “In Ukraine, specifically, and everywhere else.”
Watching nervously in Europe
Buck said certain planks of NATO’s just-adopted strategic document would be called into question if Trump returned to office, like the value of alliances in dealing with China and climate change being viewed as a security threat.
To be clear, there is no NATO worth speaking of without the United States; the Americans account for almost 70 per cent of the alliance’s total defence spending.
But NATO insiders’ immediate concern isn’t Trump pulling out; it’s that he might severely weaken it, by calling into doubt its collective-defence clause.
The former president has been a topic of consternation lately in Brussels, where NATO is headquartered. One NATO-watcher there said Europeans nervously eyed the recent U.S. midterm elections for signs of a Trump MAGA resurgence.
Republican support for funding and arming Ukraine has been softening and the idea of the U.S. Congress cutting off that assistance would have untold ramifications.
Destroyed Russian tanks and armoured vehicles are seen in Kyiv, Ukraine, last week. A big unknown: what will the Ukraine-Russia outlook be on Jan. 20, 2025, when the next U.S. president takes office? (Andrew Kravchenk/The Associated Press)
But Chris Skaluba said there was relief in Brussels over the outcome of the midterms, and hope that the poor showing of Trump-style nationalists has strengthened the pro-NATO faction in Washington.
Now, he said, people in Europe are eyeing the 2024 U.S. election.
Skaluba said there are still many wild cards and unknowns about how the world might look on Jan. 20, 2025, the date of the next U.S. presidential inauguration.
“It’s hard to predict, given so much will have changed,” said Skaluba, a NATO analyst at the Atlantic Council think-tank, who previously spent over a decade in the U.S. government, at the Pentagon and in other security-related roles and as a liaison to NATO.
“What is the state of the Ukraine conflict? Is Putin still hanging on to power? … Has European and Canadian defence spending continued to rise? Will NATO have carved out an important role in countering China?”
He said all these things would matter to the precise implications of a second Trump presidency. In general, Skaluba would expect the type of turbulence we saw between Trump and allies from 2016 and 2020. But he added two caveats.
One, he said, is that the stakes are far higher in Eastern Europe than they were in 2016. Skaluba also said Trump is more experienced now in using the levers of power to get what he wants.
Consternation at climate conference
At the climate conference in Egypt last week, one participant shuddered at the thought of another Trump presidency.
A protest calling for money for climate action is seen at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Nov. 11. If he were to be elected president again, Trump would be unlikely to support current U.S. climate policies. (Peter Dejong/The Associated Press)
“That would be disastrous,” said Stela Herschmann, an environmental lawyer with Observatorio do Clima, a network of Brazilian NGOs.
“The world has no time to waste on negationist [climate-change-denying] leaders.”
It was a difficult enough conference as it stands: countries struggled over two weeks to piece together a deal that delayed a number of hard choices.
They pledged to create a fund to help poor countries affected by climate change, but with no as-yet-specified dollar figure attached to it.
Try picturing a President Trump signing a budget bill, passed by a Republican-controlled Congress, that funds UN climate support for poor countries. It’s no slam dunk, to put it mildly.
However, on some aspects of energy and climate policy, Trump’s pro-pipeline position is actually closer to that of the Canadian government.
His stated support for the Keystone XL pipeline and likely support in the Line 5 dispute would likely be welcomed in Ottawa, though it’s too early to tell whether it would affect either pipeline: the former project is currently dead, and the latter is under dispute.
Other countries watching quietly, too
The Canadian government will not opine on these possibilities.
Nor will it comment on a consequential implication of Trump’s candidacy, one spelled out in a bluntly worded news lead from U.S. broadcaster NPR announcing Trump’s run: He tried to overthrow an election, and inspired a deadly riot to stay in office, and now he wants power again.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned Trump’s actions after the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Leah Millis/Reuters)
Canada has plenty of company in its discretion.
Other U.S. allies told CBC News they’re not saying a word about Trump’s candidacy. Spain won’t comment, Germany won’t say anything on the record. Mexico did comment — only to say it’s preserving its longstanding policy of not interfering in U.S. politics.
One Canadian official, speaking on background, said that to weigh in on the return of any politician, even this politician, would be both inappropriate and ineffective.
Inappropriate because, the official said, Canadians wouldn’t appreciate that kind of foreign commentary on our own politics; and ineffective, because it would achieve nothing aside from damaging our country’s ability to deal with Republicans, at the federal and state level.
A just-retired Canadian diplomat strongly urges Ottawa to keep mum on this topic. While in some countries, it might make sense to voice concern about a political candidate, she said it makes no sense to do that right now in the U.S.
Just-retired diplomat: ‘Zero’ benefit to commenting on Trump
Louise Blais said she participated in weekly conferences with Canada’s U.S.-based diplomats and they never even discussed the idea of raising general concerns about Trump.
“This has never, ever, ever come up in those conversations,” said Blais, who was posted in Washington, the U.S. Southeast and in New York at the UN.
“There’s a sense that while it may feel good in the moment, and it may feel politically expedient at home, whatever we would say would have zero chance of actually effecting change. So the question is: why would we try to interfere if there won’t be a positive outcome anyway, and we’ve just complicated our relationship?”
In addition to that, she said, Americans aren’t asking foreigners to speak up. Neither Democrats nor Republicans, she said, are looking to other countries to get involved in U.S. politics, unlike some countries where a political faction might plead for outside help.
If anything, she said, Canada should be looking to build out its relationships across the U.S. political spectrum: on the right, left, alt-right, far left, at the federal and state levels.
Trump, right, extends his hand to Trudeau in 2017 during their first meeting at the White House. After a tumultuous stretch, they managed to renegotiate NAFTA. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
She said hearing people’s thoughts, collecting their cell numbers and maintaining a dialogue over time is the essential work of diplomats.
Blais was one of the first Canadian officials to build connections with the original team around Trump in 2016, as a consul in the U.S. South, where she met policy advisors who later went on to become administration officials.
Toward the end of her diplomatic career, she set up meetings with some southern U.S. senators when Canada was lobbying for changes to an electric-vehicle tax credit.
So the plan, in Ottawa, is not to jeopardize relationships.
In the past, events have played havoc with those plans. In late 2015, Trudeau referred to Trump’s then-proposed Muslim ban as ignorant, irresponsible and hateful.
As Trump became the Republican nominee, Trudeau became more guarded. That’s unlike a former Canadian ambassador to Washington who expressed a clear favourite during the 2000 U.S. election.
Some Republicans still felt Canadians talked too much during the 2016 campaign: Blais recalled one famous politician telling her back then that Ottawa had already undermined its relationship with the incoming president.
We’ll see if the silence holds. To torture an old saying, a two-year presidential campaign is an eternity in politics.
NEW YORK (AP) — Teen smoking hit an all-time low in the U.S. this year, part of a big drop in the youth use of tobacco overall, the government reported Thursday.
There was a 20% drop in the estimated number of middle and high school students who recently used at least one tobacco product, including cigarettes, electronic cigarettes, nicotine pouches and hookahs. The number went from 2.8 million last year to 2.25 million this year — the lowest since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s key survey began in 1999.
“Reaching a 25-year low for youth tobacco product use is an extraordinary milestone for public health,” said Deirdre Lawrence Kittner, director of CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health, in a statement. However, “our mission is far from complete.”
A previously reported drop in vaping largely explains the overall decline in tobacco use from 10% to about 8% of students, health officials said.
The youth e-cigarette rate fell to under 6% this year, down from 7.7% last year — the lowest at any point in the last decade. E-cigarettes are the most commonly used tobacco products among teens, followed by nicotine pouches.
Use of other products has been dropping, too.
Twenty-five years ago, nearly 30% of high school students smoked. This year, it was just 1.7%, down from the 1.9%. That one-year decline is so small it is not considered statistically significant, but marks the lowest since the survey began 25 years ago. The middle school rate also is at its lowest mark.
Recent use of hookahs also dropped, from 1.1% to 0.7%.
The results come from an annual CDC survey, which included nearly 30,000 middle and high school students at 283 schools. The response rate this year was about 33%.
Officials attribute the declines to a number of measures, ranging from price increases and public health education campaigns to age restrictions and more aggressive enforcement against retailers and manufacturers selling products to kids.
Among high school students, use of any tobacco product dropped to 10%, from nearly 13% and e-cigarette use dipped under 8%, from 10%. But there was no change reported for middle school students, who less commonly vape or smoke or use other products,
Current use of tobacco fell among girls and Hispanic students, but rose among American Indian or Alaska Native students. And current use of nicotine pouches increased among white kids.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
WASHINGTON (AP) — An Alabama man was arrested Thursday for his alleged role in the January hack of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission social media account that led the price of bitcoin to spike, the Justice Department said.
Eric Council Jr., 25, of Athens, is accused of helping to break into the SEC’s account on X, formerly known as Twitter, allowing the hackers to prematurely announce the approval of long-awaited bitcoin exchange-traded funds.
The price of bitcoin briefly spiked more than $1,000 after the post claimed “The SEC grants approval for #Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all registered national securities exchanges.”
But soon after the initial post appeared, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said on his personal account that the SEC’s account was compromised. “The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products,” Gensler wrote, calling the post unauthorized without providing further explanation.
Authorities say Council carried out what’s known as a “SIM swap,” using a fake ID to impersonate someone with access to the SEC’s X account and convince a cellphone store to give him a SIM card linked to the person’s phone. Council was able to take over the person’s cellphone number and get access codes to the SEC’s X account, which he shared with others who broke into the account and sent the post, the Justice Department says.
Prosecutors say after Council returned the iPhone he used for the SIM swap, his online searches included: “What are the signs that you are under investigation by law enforcement or the FBI even if you have not been contacted by them.”
An email seeking comment was sent Thursday to an attorney for Council, who is charged in Washington’s federal court with conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and access device fraud.
The price of bitcoin swung from about $46,730 to just below $48,000 after the unauthorized post hit on Jan. 9 and then dropped to around $45,200 after the SEC’s denial. The SEC officially approved the first exchange-traded funds that hold bitcoin the following day.
Google, Meta and TikTok have removed social media accounts belonging to an industrial plant in Russia’s Tatarstan region aimed at recruiting young foreign women to make drones for Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Posts on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok were taken down following an investigation by The Associated Press published Oct. 10 that detailed working conditions in the drone factory in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, which is under U.S. and British sanctions.
Videos and other posts on the social media platforms promised the young women, who are largely from Africa, a free plane ticket to Russia and a salary of more than $500 a month following their recruitment via the program called “Alabuga Start.”
But instead of a work-study program in areas like hospitality and catering, some of them said they learned only arriving in the Tatarstan region that they would be toiling in a factory to make weapons of war, assembling thousands of Iranian-designed attack drones to be launched into Ukraine.
In interviews with AP, some of the women who worked in the complex complained of long hours under constant surveillance, of broken promises about wages and areas of study, and of working with caustic chemicals that left their skin pockmarked and itching. AP did not identify them by name or nationality out of concern for their safety.
The tech companies also removed accounts for Alabuga Polytechnic, a vocational boarding school for Russians aged 16-18 and Central Asians aged 18-22 that bills its graduates as experts in drone production.
The accounts collectively had at least 158,344 followers while one page on TikTok had more than a million likes.
In a statement, YouTube said its parent company Google is committed to sanctions and trade compliance and “after review and consistent with our policies, we terminated channels associated with Alabuga Special Economic Zone.”
Meta said it removed accounts on Facebook and Instagram that “violate our policies.” The company said it was committed to complying with sanctions laws and said it recognized that human exploitation is a serious problem which required a multifaceted approach, including at Meta.
It said it had teams dedicated to anti-trafficking efforts and aimed to remove those seeking to abuse its platforms.
TikTok said it removed videos and accounts which violated its community guidelines, which state it does not allow content that is used for the recruitment of victims, coordination of their transport, and their exploitation using force, fraud, coercion, or deception.
The women aged 18-22 were recruited to fill an urgent labor shortage in wartime Russia. They are from places like Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, as well as the South Asian country of Sri Lanka. The drive also is expanding to elsewhere in Asia as well as Latin America.
Accounts affiliated to Alabuga with tens of thousands of followers are still accessible on Telegram, which did not reply to a request for comment. The plant’s management also did not respond to AP.
The Alabuga Start recruiting drive used a robust social media campaign of slickly edited videos with upbeat music that show African women smiling while cleaning floors, wearing hard hats while directing cranes, and donning protective equipment to apply paint or chemicals.
Videos also showed them enjoying Tatarstan’s cultural sites or playing sports. None of the videos made it clear the women would be working in a drone manufacturing complex.
Online, Alabuga promoted visits to the industrial area by foreign dignitaries, including some from Brazil, Sri Lanka and Burkina Faso.
In a since-deleted Instagram post, a Turkish diplomat who visited the plant had compared Alabuga Polytechnic to colleges in Turkey and pronounced it “much more developed and high-tech.”
According to Russian investigative outlets Protokol and Razvorot, some pupils at Alabuga Polytechnic are as young as 15 and have complained of poor working conditions.
Videos previously on the platforms showed the vocational school students in team-building exercises such as “military-patriotic” paintball matches and recreating historic Soviet battles while wearing camouflage.
Last month, Alabuga Start said on Telegram its “audience has grown significantly!”
That could be due to its hiring of influencers, who promoted the site on TikTok and Instagram as an easy way for young women to make money after leaving school.
TikTok removed two videos promoting Alabuga after publication of the AP investigation.
Experts told AP that about 90% of the women recruited via the Alabuga Start program work in drone manufacturing.
