It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Fighting the Pocket Knife Creek wildfire in northeastern British Columbia in June, 2025. Credit: BC Wildfire Service
With drought conditions persisting across parts of British Columbia and forecasters calling for a warmer-than-average summer amid a looming El Niño, mining companies are preparing for a wildfire season that could test operations across Western Canada.
Some areas of the province experienced below-normal snowpack and limited spring precipitation, variables that can elevate wildfire risk, Forrest Tower, spokesperson for the B.C. Wildfire Service, said in an interview.
“We’re not seeing as many early wildfire starts this year as we have for the past three years,” Tower said. “It could take a two-day period with a large number of ignitions and from that point on, that’s basically what we’re dealing with for the rest of the summer.”
This year’s El Niño, a climate pattern where Pacific Ocean surface temperatures warm up, is predicted to be very strong and significantly alter weather, amplifying drought and warm winds, which contribute to a more intense wildfire season, according to a seasonal outlook released in June by Environment and Climate Change Canada.
“Once we have fire on the landscape, then all the other conditions come into play, and it just makes those fires more difficult to put out,” Tower told The Northern Miner.
The B.C. Wildfire Service identified several areas of concern, including the Chilcotin, Cariboo and Thompson-Okanagan regions. Teck Resources (TSX: TECK.A/TECK.B; NYSE: TECK) operates the Highland Valley Copper project in the Thompson-Okanagan area, 17 km west of Logan Lake and 50 km southwest of Kamloops.
“We closely monitor wildfire risks across our operations and have comprehensive management plans in place, with employee health and safety being the top priority,” the company said in an emailed statement to The Northern Miner about the compounding effects of El Niño in the back half of the year. The Vancouver-based miner had to suspend operations at the project in August 2021 due to wildfire risk and an evacuation order issued by the District of Logan Lake.
Growing concern
Wildfire seasons in Western Canada have intensified over the past five years, culminating in the record 2023 season when more than 2,240 fires burned about 2.84 million hectares in British Columbia, while Alberta recorded over 1,080 fires. Saskatchewan had roughly 500 wildfires that year.
“Typically, what happens in seasons [like 2023] is we’ll have two to three weeks of really stable air mass over some parts of the province,” Tower said. “Then we’ll have a breakdown of that air mass, a big lightning storm, and hundreds of ignitions.”
While the wildfire risk has always existed, 2023’s record season marked a turning point for miners, Raul Munoz, mining leader at risk adviser Marsh, said by phone. “It shifted the discussion from occasional perils that would happen to now something that is being discussed at more of a board level,” Munoz told The Northern Miner.
“Wildfires can significantly affect operations even when the fire doesn’t touch the site,” Munoz said.
While 2023 was particularly intense, many wildfire seasons have triggered widespread evacuations, major highway closures and disruptions across key resource corridors.
In B.C., Artemis Gold (TSX-V: ARTG) evacuated all non-essential personnel in 2023 and 2024 from its Blackwater gold and silver mine due to regional wildfires. Osisko Development (TSX; NYSE: ODV) temporarily paused non-essential activities at its Cariboo Gold project in B.C. and removed staff following a local wildfire evacuation order in 2024. In 2021, Cameco (TSX: CCO; NYSE: CCJ) evacuated all non-essential personnel from the Cigar Lake uranium mine in northern Saskatchewan in response to wildfires.
As wildfires intensify, they’re increasingly disrupting access roads and power infrastructure. That pressure is creating operational bottlenecks that are influencing mine planning, emergency preparedness and capital allocation decisions.
Business interruption
Power reliability has become a growing concern. Many remote operations rely on long transmission corridors that can be vulnerable to wildfire activity far from the mine itself. Even if a site remains outside an evacuation zone, damage to power infrastructure can interrupt production and affect critical systems, Munoz said.
As a result, some companies are evaluating backup generation capacity and other contingency measures to maintain essential services during prolonged outages. BC Hydro also uses preventative measures alongside regular inspections, including applying fire retardant or fire-resistant steel-mesh pole wraps coated with heat-activated barriers.
The disruptions have also attracted attention from insurers. The 2023 Okanagan and Shuswap wildfires cost Canadian insurers over $720 million. The 2024 Jasper wildfire’s insured losses were estimated at $1.3 billion.
Insurance providers are increasingly asking companies detailed questions about wildfire exposure and preparedness, similar to the scrutiny environmental, social and governance issues received several years ago, Munoz said.
While coverage remains available, insurers are paying closer attention to business continuity planning, emergency response procedures and how companies assess climate-related risks.
Those risks extend beyond fire, Munoz said. He points to the drier, hotter conditions created by El Niño. “We’re starting to see that temperature rise across the world, particularly in some of the northern latitudes,” he said. “How is the company dealing with rising temperatures for staff and working conditions outdoors?”
Designing for fire
The growing focus on wildfire risk is changing how mining projects are planned, built and operated.
“[Wildfire mitigation] starts back in the planning of a new facility,” Rob Carter, senior principal risk assessor at engineering firm WSP Canada, said. “Don’t build it halfway up a slope . . . fire goes up slopes. You want to be at the top, set back from the ridge.”
Natural barriers like lakes, rivers and mountain ridges, as well as human-made barriers like hydro and pipeline cut lines, are also being factored into project development plans to protect facilities against wildfires. Distance between buildings, materials used, and design are also being influenced by the growing threat.
“Don’t have complicated roof systems because that’s where embers and debris will start to accumulate,” Carter said. “If we get these ideas in early to put a steel roof on versus an asphalt roof, the cost is minimal. We’re trying to save them from having to make those choices later.”
The other side of risk assessment is looking at when a company’s operations might be a direct cause of the wildfire. It often involves identifying planned periods of higher energy draw during the drier part of the season, and where energy systems might be close to dry vegetation.
“We can’t forecast out years, but at least now, maybe weeks out, we can start budgeting where maintenance should happen,” Carter said. “We can start looking at vegetation management and maybe pre-position crews based on the probability of something happening next week.”
Compounding risk
“Climate change is a modifier of risks,” Sean Capstick, principal and senior climate change specialist at WP, said. Capstick worked with the Mining Association of Canada in 2020 to develop guidance on climate adaptation for mine infrastructure.
As part of the association’s guidance, Capstick said it’s imperative that mine operators ask themselves what’s a future risk and what mitigation or resilience activities are critical now. Capstick said the Canadian Centre for Climate Services recently released a tool forecasting the climate’s normal for the next 30 years, which mine operators can use to see how far out of the normal range the regional temperature will be.
“You want to say what are my decade projections for fire? Am I still okay?” Capstick said. “It’s too late to say, what am I going to do for this season? You’re going to be reacting.”
Friday, July 03, 2026
Israel Is an Apartheid State – and Its Weird Marriage Laws Show Us How
Israel is the only country in the world that does not recognise its own nationality. Why? Because a common national identity would sabotage Israel’s carefully veiled system of segregation
Israel’s supporters have gone apoplectic over a short post on X from the journalist Mehdi Hasan, highlighting Israel’s peculiar marriage laws.
Hasan asks: “Did you know that you can’t have a civil or secular marriage in Israel?”
He’s not wrong. Israel has banned civil marriage. You can wed only in a ceremony strictly controlled by religious authorities. If you want a civil marriage, you have to travel to another country.
Why, you might reasonably wonder. Isn’t Israel a modern, secular, western-style liberal democracy? After all, that’s what our politicians and media keep telling us.
The most popular rejoinder to Hasan from Israel’s apologists – that the situation is no better in Saudi Arabia – is not quite the flex they seem to imagine. So Israel offers the same human rights protections as Saudi Arabia? Impressive.
Others have pointed out that Israel inherited the so-called “millet” system from the Ottoman empire, which gave the leaders of each confessional group across the Middle East autonomous control over their community’s religious affairs.
Doubtless, 150 years ago the system worked relatively well in reducing communal tensions in religiously diverse parts of a large empire. It prevented officials in Constantinople – modern-day Istanbul – from getting dragged deeply into the day-to-day affairs of its often distant subjects.
But 150 years ago, Britain sent children up chimneys to sweep them. The law was changed around that time to stop this abusive and dangerous practice.
Israel was established nearly eight decades ago, supposedly as a secular, western-style liberal democracy. It has had 78 years to change those archaic Ottoman marriage laws.
Why hasn’t it done so?
All the bluster decrying Hasan’s post is a desperate attempt to deflect attention away from the fact that Israel’s antiquated marriage laws survive because they are useful to Israel.
In fact, they are more than that. They are a core component of Israel’s version of apartheid – a racist system of segregation Israel has successfully shielded from the view of western publics with the help of western politicians and media.
‘Demographic threat’
Israel’s ban on civil marriage is central to its efforts to prevent what past racist societies, such as apartheid South Africa and the American Deep South, termed “miscegenation” – that is, sexual relations between different ethnic groups. You might remember that the Nazis had unpleasant views on this subject too.
Preventing assimilation in the Jewish state is completely legitimate and not at all racist. You are assuming as a basis for the discussion that preventing intermarriage is wrong, while ignoring the fact that most [Jewish] girls who go with Arabs are poor girls who are being used.
Former education minister Rafi Peretz called mixed marriages involving Jews a “second Holocaust”.
In Israel, such views are entirely mainstream. In 2018, Yitzhak Herzog, Israel’s current president and the former leader of an ostensible leftwing Israeli party, described mixed marriages among American Jews as a “plague” for which a “solution” had to be found – presumably by copying Israel’s approach.
In Israel, the chief concern is not about marriages between Jews and the Palestinians under occupation – which Israel and its supporters like to present, bogusly, as a straightforward “security” matter.
In the occupied territories, Israel uses far blunter methods than laws to prevent any kind of intimate relations developing between Jews and a captive Palestinian population. It prefers physical containment and violence.
Palestinians under occupation are forcibly separated from Israeli Jews. They are hemmed into their own tightly confined ghettoes by Israel’s network of steel and concrete barriers; by the Israeli army; by checkpoints; by separate, apartheid roads in the West Bank; and by Jewish militias living on stolen lands in so-called “settlements”.
There is little chance of interaction, let alone intermarriage, in such circumstances – except when Israeli soldiers or armed Jewish settlers come rampaging into Palestinian communities to destroy crops, kill livestock, poison wells, torch homes and cars, and beat up – and sometimes kill – the inhabitants.
Nonetheless, there is still a potential vulnerability in Israel’s system of segregation.
In 1948, Israel expelled 80 per cent of the Palestinian population from their homes and lands in an area that was henceforth to be called, not Palestine, but the “Jewish” state of Israel.
A few Palestinians remained, however, inside those borders – mostly from oversight or error. Despite covert efforts by Israel for several years after the 1948 war to force them out of the state, its officials soon came under international pressure to give these stranded Palestinians citizenship – even if in practice, as we shall see, this conferred on them very inferior rights.
Even today, Israel is extremely worried about a supposed threat from its third-class Palestinian “citizens” – officially termed “Israel’s Arabs”. Given a higher birth rate, their numbers have grown exponentially over eight decades. They now comprise a fifth of Israel’s population.
Israeli journalists, academics and politicians, including prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, regularly call the country’s Palestinian citizens a “demographic threat”, and endlessly worry about the “Palestinian womb”.
No state of all its citizens
But Israel faces a countervailing pressure. If it makes its treatment of Palestinian citizens too obviously racist and oppressive, some outsiders might start to realise it is not the secular western-style liberal democracy it claims to be.
You will hear the pro-Israel lobby in the West tell you that so-called “Israeli Arabs” have exactly the same rights as Israel’s Jewish population, guaranteed by Israel’s Declaration of Independence. That is not even remotely true.
Adalah, a leading legal rights group in Israel, has a database showing more than 70 laws that explicitly discriminate between Jewish citizens and Palestinian citizens. These laws form the core of Israel’s apartheid system.
Israel’s Basic Laws, a sort of constitution, explicitly exclude any principle of civic equality. Every attempt by a Palestinian party in Israel to get a debate in the parliament on Israel becoming a “state of all its citizens” – that is, a liberal democracy – is barred from discussion. And in 2018 the Israeli government passed a Nation-State Law declaring that Israel belongs exclusively to the Jewish people, not to all citizens who live there.
As with Palestinians under occupation, Israel has almost entirely confined its Palestinian citizens to their own segregated, underfunded, under-resourced communities (townships) on less then 3 per cent of the country’s territory.
A small minority of Palestinian citizens inside Israel live in segregated, deprived neighborhoods of what are misleadingly termed “mixed” cities. Other Palestinian citizens, the most oppressed of all, live in communities inhabited by their families for centuries but which have been criminalized by an Israeli state that refuses to recognise them.
Many hundreds of Jewish rural communities, by contrast, operate effectively as exclusive membership clubs. They have the power to exclude Palestinian citizens – a right they take full advantage of.
Separate planning structures ensure massively overcrowded Palestinian communities inside Israel are unable to build new homes and expand. Palestinian children are schooled in a separate and much inferior education system.
For the who wish to dig deeper, I have written a lengthy essay setting out the details of Israel’s apartheid system here.
The ban on civil marriage inside Israel’s borders is not usually cited, even by critics, as an example of its apartheid system of rule. But the ban persists because it is the ideal way to conceal segregation under the veneer of equal treatment.
Israel’s Palestinian citizens must marry in ceremonies conducted by their religious community’s leaders: by Muslim clerics, or by various Christian churches, or by the Druze clergy.
It is the same for Jews in israel. They must be married by an Orthodox rabbi.
So everyone faces the same restrictions. But the point is this: the equality of treatment ensures very unequal outcomes. It is designed that way.
Fascist thugs
Inside Israel, intermarriage is only possible if one party can convert to their partner’s religion.
Israel’s Orthodox rabbinate makes it impossible for Palestinians under occupation to convert to Judaism in Israel, with the head of its conversion authority stating in 2016 that any such applicants are rejected “without review because of their ethnic origin”.
Meanwhile, Israel makes it almost as difficult for anyone else considered a non-Jew to convert to Judaism, most especially Palestinian citizens. Over decades, there have been only a handful of such cases.
In practice, this means that in any relationship between a Palestinian citizen of Israel and an Israeli Jew, it almost always falls to the Israeli Jew to convert to the religion of the Palestinian citizen, whether a Muslim, Christian or Druze. That entails the Jewish partner losing their Jewish status and the many consequential privileges inside Israel that derive from that status.
Israel has found this is a much better solution than apartheid South Africa’s, where blacks and whites were explicitly barred by law from marrying. Israel can achieve the same result more quietly.
Given the entirely segregated structure of Israeli society, and the strong social taboos among Israeli Jews on “miscegenation”, the number of intermarriages in Israel between Jews and Palestinian citizens barely reaches double digits each year.
There are even groups like Lehava – Israel’s version of the Ku Klux Klan – that go around beating up Palestinians caught anywhere near the Jewish neighbourhoods of Jerusalem and terrorising any young Jewish women suspected of being romantically involved with a Palestinian. Lehava hold noisy and disruptive protests to shame the odd Jewish woman who converts and marries a Palestinian citizen.
All of this happens with a quiet wink from the authorities. The current police minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, has long been a patron of the fascist, Jewish supremacist thugs of Lehava.
In the rare cases of a Jew converting and marrying a Palestinian citizen, the Palestinian partner faces innumerable legal and social obstacles to integrating into a Jewish community to which they do not belong.
Instead, the Jewish partner moves to a Palestinian community – an Israeli version of a township like Soweto – and educates their children inside the vastly inferior “Arab” school system. The former Jew loses most of the ethnic privileges they previously enjoyed inside the world’s only “Jewish” state.
Faced with this as their future, such couples often seize the opportunity for neither to convert and instead marry and live abroad.
Unwelcome guests
None of these difficulties are accidental. It is exactly how you would expect an apartheid system that prefers to obscure its apartheid character to structure its laws – and thereby help its lobby in the West, including the western political and media class, to claim that Israel is “the only democracy in the Middle East”.
Israel learnt from the mistakes of the old South Africa. It mastered the modern arts of public relations – or at least it did until Benjamin Netanyahu tore up the script by erasing Gaza.
Inside Israel, the apartheid system extends far beyond marriage laws to touch all areas of life.
Here is another way Israel has obscured its apartheid system – again not in the occupied territories, but inside Israel itself.
The same system that denies Israelis the possibility of a civil or secular marriage also refuses to recognise that they have any kind of civil or secular identity, simply as Israelis. By law, everyone in Israel must belong to a confessional group, identified as a Jew, Muslim, Christian or Druze.
Which makes sense of another little-known fact about Israel: Israel is the only country in the world that does not recognise its own – in this case, Israeli – nationality. Why? For the simple reason that, were Israelis to share a common national identity, it would be much harder for the Israeli state to operate its apartheid system.
Israeli nationality exists only as a fiction on Israeli passports to allow the population to travel internationally. Inside Israel, everyone is identified by their confessional group.
In Israel, “Jewish” is treated as a nationality. Remember the 2018 Nation State Law. What it declared is that the state of Israel belongs exclusively to the “nation” of Jews – that is, to every Jew around the globe, not just those living in Israel.
Muslims and Christians are lumped together into a similarly artificial “Arab” nationality, while the Druze have their own, different nationality. The same Nation State Law makes clear that the state of Israel does not belong to these other, non-Jewish “nations”, despite their families having lived on the same lands for centuries. Palestinian citizens are nothing more than guests – and unwelcome ones at that.
This segregation carries through to Israel’s ID cards. These cards, which must be carried at all times, used to include a section that expressly showed the “nationality” of each Israeli. But this section attracted uncomfortable scrutiny during a lengthy and ultimately unsuccessful legal battle by a group of dissident Israelis seeking recognition of an Israeli nationality. Officials removed the category from the card. However, Israel’s population register still includes a nationality classification.
In addition to Jew, Arab and Druze, there are more than 120 other categories to deal with all the anomalies. I was just one such anomaly after I married a Palestinian Christian and entered a lengthy and difficult naturalisation process. My nationality was classed as “British”.
Why all this complexity? Why all this unique weirdness?
Because Israel needs to conceal its system of apartheid. The old South Africa simply said: one law for whites and another for blacks.
Israel knows this no longer plays well. So it has devised a convoluted, baffling system that few understand as a way to avoid attracting attention and criticism.
Special Jewish rights
So let’s end with just one example of how Israel’s apartheid system works in practice.
Notionally, Israel confers on all its citizens – Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze – equal rights as citizens. But with a sleight of hand, it then undermines those equal rights by conferring superior “national” rights on one group only, Jews. If there is a conflict between a citizenship right and a Jewish “national” right, you’ve probably already guessed that the Jewish national right takes precedence.
Education is a good illustration. All Israeli citizens enjoy a right to have their children educated, because education is a citizenship right. But lots of veiled manoeuvres – like extra budgets for National Priority Areas, special subsidies for Jewish religious schools, funding from the diaspora, and bigger tax disbursements from central government for Jewish local authorities – mean Jewish schools are far better funded than “Arab” schools.
Education for Israel’s Palestinian citizens has been underfunded for eight decades. So even though Israel’s apologists will claim the funding gaps are slowly narrowing, the continuing shortfall simply compounds a decades-long historical injustice. Arab schools are so far behind they can never catch up without aggressive additional funding Israel clearly has no intention of ever providing them with.
There are massive shortages of classrooms and staff in dilapidated school buildings. Old books are often grossly outdated and poorly translated into Arabic by the state. Palestinian educational leaders have no input into the curriculum the community’s children are taught. There are strict controls by Jewish (usually racist) officials over what can be taught and who can teach. And on top of all this, huge cultural biases in qualifying tests make it far harder for Palestinian citizens to gain entry to universities in Israel.
There are many other problems in education. For example, nearly one in 10 Palestinian children in Israel live in historic communities built on lands that the Israeli state now wishes to “Judaise” – reserve for the Jewish population – and are therefore denied all recognition.
Treated like criminals, these children rarely have schools in their communities because no permanent buildings are allowed. What buildings there are cannot be connected to the electricity or water grids. Even children of kindergarten age must typically travel long distances – sometimes close to 60 km a day – to get to a licensed school.
The forms of discrimination in education alone are endless. But they do not stop there. The discrimination is replicated in all major facets of life for Israel’s more than 2 million Palestinian citizens through these conceptual and legal contortions over religion, citizenship and nationality.
None of this should be a surprise. It is exactly what you would expect in an apartheid state like Israel.
Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at www.jonathan-cook.net.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum after the draw for the 2026 soccer World Cup at the Kennedy Center in Washington, Friday, Dec. 5, 2025. (Mandel Ngan/Pool Photo via AP)
OTTAWA — As expected, U.S. officials announced on Wednesday’s much-anticipated deadline that they’re opting against rubberstamping the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement.
In a statement following a meeting of representatives from all three countries, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer pointed to what he called the deal’s “shortcomings,” and wrote: “The United States did not agree to renew (CUSMA) in its current form.”
So, what happens next?
Annual review process kicks in
In short, not much is changing from the perspective of the average Canadian.
Canada and the U.S. remain in a trade war that’s nearing the 18-month mark, after U.S. President Donald Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on Canadian imports last February.
While the vast majority of Canadian goods are exempt from the levies because they’re covered under CUSMA — with Canadian officials repeatedly stating Canada has “the best trade deal” in the world — a slate of sectoral tariffs remain in place.
Those are having significant impacts on the steel, aluminum, auto and lumber industries.
Wednesday’s CUSMA deadline, meanwhile, was baked into the original agreement, inked during Trump’s first term.
By July 1, officials in all three countries had to say whether they wanted to renew CUSMA for a 16-year period. Because the U.S. chose not to do so, an annual review process kicks in for the next decade.
That means weeks and likely months of negotiations ahead, led by Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc and Canada’s chief negotiator Janice Charette.
Officials from the U.S. and Mexico already have a date set for official bilateral talks later this month, with representatives from the two countries having already met before. Canada, however, has not launched official negotiations with the United States.
Speaking to reporters on Parliament Hill last month, Prime Minister Mark Carney downplayed the significance of that, saying there’s a “series of … technical issues” the U.S. has with Mexico, which explains their more extensive bilateral discussions ahead of the July 1 deadline.
“But for us, there’s the more fundamental structural issues, as people know, which relate to the so-called strategic sectors, that’s the American term, the 232 tariffs that are on automobiles, on steel, aluminum, forest products, particularly,” Carney also said at the time. “We’re looking to determine whether there’s a possibility of a new partnership there.”
Any of the three countries are also able to pull out of the deal entirely with six months’ notice.
Despite Trump’s previous comments that he would prefer CUSMA not exist at all, saying he thinks the United States is better off without it, neither he nor his deputies have given any indication that they want to terminate it.
U.S. published list of irritants
Apart from the specific CUSMA process, U.S. officials release a list of trade irritants annually.
In April, Greer’s office released its longlist, with several pages specifically relating to Canada, and pointing to liquor, supply management, Buy Canadian procurement policies, and the Online Streaming Act, among others as sticking points.
In the weeks leading up to the July 1 deadline, Trump himself had also signalled the U.S. would not be renewing the trilateral trade deal.
Following the G7 Leaders’ Summit in France last month, Trump said he would rather leave CUSMA unsigned and have it immediately terminated, though he also said he may sign the deal.
Trump has also previously stated that the U.S. doesn’t need anything Canada has, and that “Canada lives because of the United States.”
In a broadcast exclusive interview with CTV Question Period last week, U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra was pressed on Trump’s rhetoric.
“There were only two countries that responded in a strongly negative way,” Hoekstra said about Trump’s trade policy and tariffs. “The rest of the world, we’ve negotiated trade agreements. We’ve worked on frameworks, and those types of things. We did not take aim at Canada.”
More recently, Hoekstra has framed Trump’s remarks as a sign the U.S. is open to offers and has urged Canada to highlight its strengths in autos, energy, and resources.
Canada prioritizing sectoral tariffs
At various speaking engagements and reporter scrums in recent weeks, Canadian officials have repeatedly downplayed the July 1 CUSMA deadline, assuring that it’s “not a cliff.”
In a letter to his American and Mexican counterparts last month, LeBlanc stated Canada wanted to see CUSMA renewed for 16 years. In the letter, LeBlanc also laid out Canada’s priorities going forward, namely eliminating sectoral tariffs.
“Canada recognizes that either or both other parties to the agreement may wish to propose areas where improvements may be warranted to strengthen North American competitiveness,” LeBlanc wrote in his letter to Greer and Mexico’s Secretary of Economy Marcelo Ebrard, adding Canada “looks forward to continued engagement” with the U.S. and Mexico.
“In parallel, discussions with the United States on addressing sectoral tariffs will be essential,” he also wrote.
The United States has declined to extend CUSMA in its current form, triggering a new round of negotiations over North America’s trade framework. Although the agreement remains in force until 2036, businesses now face renewed uncertainty as Canada, the U.S. and Mexico prepare for what could be a lengthy negotiating process.
BNN Bloomberg spoke with Tom Mulcair, former leader of the New Democratic Party and CTV News political commentator, about why uncertainty may weigh on business investment, how tariff negotiations could evolve, and the political factors that could shape the outcome of talks.
Key Takeaways
Uncertainty surrounding future trade rules could delay major business investment decisions across North America.
Canada is expected to continue pushing for the removal or reduction of tariffs on steel, aluminum, automobiles and softwood lumber during negotiations.
Midterm elections in the United States could influence the political environment and negotiating leverage in future CUSMA talks.
Donald Trump is expected to use the possibility of withdrawing from CUSMA as a negotiating tactic, even if an actual withdrawal remains unlikely.
Any revised agreement is likely to resemble the current CUSMA framework because of the deep economic integration between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.
Tom Mulcair, former leader of the New Democratic Party
Read the full transcript below:
LINDSAY: The Trump administration has officially declined to extend the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement in its current form, triggering what could be lengthy and challenging negotiations over the future of the North American trade deal. While CUSMA remains in place until 2036, the decision introduces new uncertainty for businesses, investors and policymakers. Joining us now is former leader of the federal NDP and CTV News political commentator Tom Mulcair. It’s great to have you join us.
TOM: Good to be with you, Lindsay.
LINDSAY: So, obviously, this was widely expected, this decision, but how significant is it really today, both politically and economically?
TOM: I think you hit the nail right on the head when you talked about uncertainty because, even though we have a consolation in the fact that the deal continues in force for up to 10 years unless someone gives the six-month notice to withdraw — and we’ll talk about that at the end — it is the uncertainty that this creates. Businesses don’t make decisions, especially big ones, on an annual basis; they make them long term. If you’re not sure whether this deal, or another one, is going to be in place, you’re going to hold off. And it’s not just Canadian companies that are going to be affected by that; American companies and, of course, Mexican companies as well. So, that uncertainty in the market, that instability, is characteristic of Donald Trump. He doesn’t care about creating chaos. Chaos is his middle name. He likes this stuff. He had already said, in one sentence, as he left the G7 that he doesn’t care about the CUSMA deal. He wouldn’t mind leaving it on the table and just walking away from it, but then again, he could sign it all in one sentence. So, it’s the type of thing we’ve become used to with Trump, but it doesn’t make it any easier in a business environment.
LINDSAY: Yeah, and obviously Canada has repeatedly said its priority is eliminating tariffs on steel, aluminum, autos and softwood lumber, those sectors that have been hit so hard over the last year. I’ve heard some people say that we might just have to get used to having tariffs on those sectors. How realistic is it for Canada to be able to ease some of the strain on those areas?
TOM: I think that, long term, we’re going to see a lot of those lifted, or at least attenuated, because we have been, frankly, holding our fire. Donald Trump’s main recrimination from Day 1 was, “Oh my gosh, I looked at the numbers. There’s a trade deficit for the United States with Canada. We should have a trade surplus.” Well, guess what? That trade deficit was because we practically give him, certainly below market value, $100 billion of oil per year, and all of the refining and the value-added jobs are in the States, not in Canada. So, it would be very easy for Mark Carney to say, “You want to solve that issue, that trade deficit? We can solve it overnight.” But there is no reason to go down that road. That would be the Trumpian approach. Everything is a negotiation. Everything is a tit for tat. We’re trying to get a deal that makes sense for Canada, and Carney is right. No deal is certainly better than a bad deal. Trump would try to negotiate his way toward a bad deal for us. He has already threatened to really hurt the Canadian economy, as has Howard Lutnick, especially with the auto sector. So, we’re dealing with something unpredictable. We could have never guessed that Trump would go so far as to openly talk about absorbing Canada as the 51st state and intentionally harming our economy, but that’s what he’s been doing.
The information today that was just discussed on BNN Bloomberg about the United States economy, the softness of the job sector and the economy itself, is an indication that everybody loses. This is what Ronald Reagan said in the famous video that was played by Doug Ford in the U.S. during the baseball playoffs. Everybody loses when you play this tariff game long term. Trump saw the tariffs as a gentle rain from heaven pouring billions into the U.S. Treasury, but it’s not foreign countries paying those tariffs; it’s American consumers. That is finally starting to hit home. The American economy is being hit hard by those tariffs, by Trump’s approach. Even though it’s taken a while, I think the average American has come to understand it and might push back a little bit on Trump and make him open his eyes to the fact that open markets, especially in North America, have been a good thing for the U.S. and, of course, for its primary partners, Canada and Mexico.
LINDSAY: And I wonder, too, as you say, if U.S. voters start to notice this, the impact on the U.S. economy, particularly with the midterm elections coming up, could that be something that might help Canada when it comes to negotiations, maybe a bit of leverage there?
TOM: That’s the hinge. That’s the turning point, the midterms. Everybody’s got their own guess as to how they’re going to turn out, and the situation could change radically, for example, with Iran. But if things stay on an even keel, we can expect to see Trump really get hammered in the midterms, probably lose both majorities, and that would, of course, change the political landscape completely. Once we get past those, we’re into the home stretch of Trump’s four-year mandate as soon as we start 2027. So, I think that’s the reasoning behind this.
Carney is deeply experienced. He’s dealt with bullies before. He’s dealt with blowhards before. I just mentioned Howard Lutnick. He and Trump are just New York loudmouths, always trying to push their way through, trying to bully their way through. Reality catches up, even with bullies. At some point, the average Canadian has already realized we’re going to get a deal eventually. The Americans are not walking away from CUSMA. There’s too much interest in it for them. They’re not walking away from Canadian resources, whether it’s oil or potash that goes into every acre of every farm in the United States to produce the food Americans eat. These are things Canada has that America needs, even if Donald Trump says he doesn’t need anything that we have.
LINDSAY: Which he continuously seems to be saying. I did want to touch on something you mentioned at the beginning, which is the six-month notice to withdraw. Do you think that any party here will be exercising that, particularly the United States? Because, as you say, the U.S. is not going to walk away from Canada.
TOM: I think that will be a play by Donald Trump as this thing goes on for a few months. He’ll use that threat. It’ll be an idle threat. It’ll be an empty threat, but it’s something that we’re going to have to take seriously because, if he ever did do it, of course it would hurt the Americans as much as us because, as we just explained, they’ve been winners under CUSMA, as everybody else has.
But if he does actually withdraw, so people understand, the current deal continues for 10 years. It has to be reviewed annually, but it continues. It’s the same deal. Any of the three parties can simply give six months’ notice to the other parties, and then they’re out of the deal. So, I’m absolutely expecting Trump to try to play that card at some point along the way to try to put pressure on everyone. For him, everything’s a negotiation. Everything is bartering. Everything is trying to gain an advantage over the people you’re discussing things with. So, sure, “The Art of the Deal,” per Trump, will probably involve that six months’ notice. But again, it’ll be chaotic for the markets, for businesses. Trump’s middle name is chaos. He’s going to try to convince everybody that he’s been a big successful winner, no matter what the result is, even if it’s the same deal.
Lindsay, Trump said CUSMA was the best deal ever. He’s the one who signed it. Now he’s saying it’s a lousy deal. He brought in CUSMA because he said that NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the precursor, was the worst deal ever in history. If you look at NAFTA and you look at CUSMA, guess what? They’re very, very similar, and in many respects identical. So, this is the pure Trump game. He wants to be able to boast that he got something out of it. We’ll see whether that actually comes to pass.
LINDSAY: And just lastly, I know you’re not an analyst or an adviser, but what do you think Canadian businesses and investors should be watching for in the coming months, just in the last 30 seconds or so?
TOM: Well, the first part is what we looked at at the beginning. I think that a lot of those businesses are going to hold big decisions. They’re just going to put themselves in a holding pattern, and they’re going to say, “We’re not going to make that massive investment south of the border, or going the other way, because there’s too much uncertainty.” So, I think that’s one of the things that we’re are going to be seeing the most, a waiting period as people try to decide whether there’s going to be a new deal.
I actually do believe that cooler heads will prevail, that there will be a good deal that will resemble a heck of a lot of CUSMA, which resembled a heck of a lot of NAFTA. But Trump, of course, has never been satisfied with anything that anybody else did. He gets to criticize that and says that he’s going to come up with something much better. We’ll see. We will see, indeed.
LINDSAY: Okay, we’ll have to leave it there. Former leader of the federal NDP and CTV News political commentator Tom Mulcair joining us live. Tom, thanks so much. Appreciate your time.
TOM: All the best, Lindsay.
---
This BNN Bloomberg summary and transcript of the July 2, 2026 interview with Tom Mulcair are published with the assistance of AI. Original research, interview questions and added context was created by BNN Bloomberg journalists. An editor also reviewed this material before it was published to ensure its accuracy and adherence with BNN Bloomberg editorial policies and standards.
U.S. declines CUSMA renewal, cites deal’s ‘shortcomings’
OTTAWA — The trilateral trade deal between Canada, the United States and Mexico, known as CUSMA, will enter an annual review process, as U.S. officials opt not to extend the agreement.
“The United States did not agree to renew (CUSMA) in its current form,” wrote U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer in a statement to CTV News. “As a result, (CUSMA) is not renewed.”
“The United States will continue to engage with Mexico and Canada to address the agreement’s shortcomings and our trade deficits with these countries,” Greer added. “However, the agreement remains in force pending resolution of these issues or until the agreement’s termination.”
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard, Pool)
Representatives from all three countries met virtually on Wednesday to discuss the future of the agreement, after Prime Minister Mark Carney previously indicated he wasn’t anticipating any resolution, and U.S. President Donald Trump signalled he was unlikely to sign an extension.
Wednesday wasthe deadline for officials in all three countries to say whether they wantedto renew the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) for a 16-year period. Because the U.S. chose not to rubberstamp it, an annual review process kicks in for the next decade.
Representing Canada in the meeting were Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc and Canada’s chief negotiator Janice Charette. Both have tried to assuage concerns about Wednesday’s deadline by repeatedly assuring that it’s “not a cliff.”
In a statement after the meeting, LeBlanc said he reiterated Canada’s preference to have CUSMA renewed. Mexican officials have also said that’s what they wanted.
Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc makes his way to a meeting of the federal cabinet on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang
“We agreed on the importance of continuing our discussions and identifying ways to ensure trade and investment frameworks between Canada, the United States and Mexico continue to support North American prosperity and competitiveness,” LeBlanc wrote in the statement. “For Canada, this includes substantive discussions with the United States on addressing sectoral tariffs on Canadian steel, aluminum, autos and lumber.”
“We look forward to further engagement with the United States and Mexico in the coming weeks and months as we work together to strengthen our shared economic prosperity,” he also wrote.
Ebrard also said he’s set to meet with U.S. officials later this month for bilateral talks to address some of their trade irritants, and that Mexican officials hope to reach some agreement soon to reduce uncertainty for industry.
On Tuesday, Carney downplayed expectations for the meeting, telling reporters in Kuujjuaq, Que. that he was “expecting a constructive exchange,” but adding he “wouldn’t expect any drama,” and he was “not looking for (his) pen.”
Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly slammed the agreement, inked during his first term in the White House. Whether the U.S. administration planned to extend it, however, was unclear until Wednesday’s talks.
Following the G7 Leaders’ Summit in France earlier this month, Trump said he would rather leave CUSMA unsigned and have it immediately terminated, though he also signalled he may sign the deal.
Speaking at a digital event hosted by BMO earlier this week, Canada’s former chief CUSMA negotiator Steve Verheul said while there was “a possibility for it to come together,” he expects negotiations to continue beyond the U.S. midterm elections in the fall, and possibly into next year.
Steve Verheul, Canada's former chief trade negotiator. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
“We’re looking at a very different kind of discussion than we had in President Trump’s first term,” Verheul said. “At that point we were trying to negotiate 34 chapters of an agreement, and that was a very different kind of scenario than we’re looking at now.”
“Now we’re looking at pursuing a number of bilateral irritants that the U.S. is trying to reach some kind of accommodation on,” he added. “And there’s a handful of trilateral issues that are also under consideration, but most of, if not all of, the agreement is going to remain as it is now.”
In an interview with CTV News Channel on Wednesday, former senior White House trade adviser Kelly Ann Shaw called July 1 “a boring day when it comes to the trade agenda” because of the advanced indicators Trump would not vote to extend CUSMA.
Any of the three countries are also able to pull out of the deal entirely with six months’ notice. Despite Trump’s previous comments that he would prefer CUSMA not exist at all, saying he thinks the United States is better off without it, neither he nor his deputies have given any indication that they want to terminate it.
U.S. President Donald Trump talks to media after disembarking Air Force One. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Speaking during a fireside chat at the Hudson Institute — a Washington, D.C.-based think tank — in April, Greer compared certain provisions within CUSMA to “load-bearing pillars,” which currently function well within the agreement, and that the United States doesn’t want to change or get rid of.
“There are certainly things in there that are valuable, but we do have to have some kind of a protocol, or something with Mexico and one with Canada separately, I think, to deal with issues specific to those countries,” Greer said at the time.
Amid talks around the future of CUSMA, Canada and the U.S. remain in a trade war that’s nearly at the 18-month mark, after Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on Canadian imports last February. While the vast majority of Canadian goods are exempt from the levies because they’re covered under CUSMA, a slate of sectoral tariffs remain in place.
With files from CTV News’ Rachel Aiello and Abigail Bimman
Key U.S. complaints against Canada ahead of trade review
OTTAWA -- The U.S., Canada and Mexico are due to meet on July 1 to review a trilateral trade agreement after a period of heightened tensions between Washington and Ottawa.
The agreement, known as CUSMA, must be reviewed every six years under a deal made during U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term. Trump has been noncommittal on renewal.
As Trump threatens Canada by calling the country the 51st U.S. state, Canadians have cut back on travel and stopped buying American products. The opening of a new bridge connecting Windsor in Ontario to Detroit has been delayed.
Below are some of the issues the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office (USTR) highlighted in its 2026 National Trade Estimate report on Canada released earlier this year. A spokesperson for Canada’s minister in charge of U.S. trade declined to comment on these irritants.
Dairy and supply management
Washington has criticized Canada’s supply-managed dairy, poultry and egg sectors, saying production quotas and tariff-rate quotas limit access for U.S. exporters. Canada imposes tariffs that can exceed 200 per cent on imports above quota levels.
The U.S. has also complained about Canada’s administration of dairy import quotas created under CUSMA and raised concerns over milk pricing policies and market access for U.S. dairy products. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government has said previously supply management will not be on the negotiating table.
Buy Canadian policies
The U.S. says Canada’s new Buy Canadian initiative gives preference to Canadian firms and domestically produced steel, aluminum and wood in major government contracts.
Washington has also objected to measures adopted by provinces including Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia that restrict or disadvantage U.S. suppliers in procurement competitions.
Wine, beer and spirits
Most Canadian provinces control alcohol distribution through government-run liquor boards, which the United States says impose barriers ranging from listing restrictions and pricing rules to distribution requirements.
The issue became even more contentious after several provinces stopped distributing U.S. alcohol products in response to Trump’s tariffs on goods from Canada from last year. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has refused to put U.S. liquor back on shelves unless tariffs are removed or a new trade deal is reached.
Digital services tax and streaming
The U.S. continues to monitor Canada’s digital services tax, which Ottawa pledged to repeal but had not formally eliminated by the end of 2025, the March report from USTR said.
Washington has also raised concerns about Canada’s Online News Act, which requires major digital platforms to compensate Canadian news organizations, and online streaming rules that require certain services to contribute to Canada’s broadcasting system.
Canada’s government has signaled it will back off plans to force entertainment companies such as Netflix to contribute to Canadian productions, saying it doesn’t want consumers to face higher costs.
Agriculture and seeds
The U.S. says Canada’s seed registration system is slow and cumbersome, limiting market access for some U.S. seed and grain exports.
Washington also continues to object to restrictions affecting imports of certain fresh fruits and vegetables.
Intellectual property
Canada remains on the U.S. Trade Representative’s Watch List for intellectual property protection.
The U.S. cites concerns about counterfeit and pirated goods, including sales at Toronto’s Pacific Mall, as well as issues related to patent protections and geographical indications.
Labour enforcement
While Canada has adopted measures intended to block imports produced with forced labour, Washington says enforcement remains insufficient and could allow such goods to enter the Canadian market.
Earlier this month, Canada introduced new legislation to strengthen the ban on importing goods produced with forced labour.
Alberta energy market
The U.S. says Alberta’s electricity market continues to disadvantage U.S. power producers.
Washington says stakeholders have complained that electricity generated in neighbouring Montana is given lower priority than equally priced power produced in Alberta, limiting access to the province’s energy market.
Pharma pricing
Washington says Canada’s Patented Medicine Prices Review Board unfairly depresses prices for innovative medicines by excluding the United States and Switzerland from the basket of countries it uses to benchmark patented drug prices.
U.S. industry argues the approach artificially reduces the value of innovative medicines in the Canadian market.
(Reporting by Promit Mukherjee; Ediitng by Caroline Stauffer and Sanjeev Miglani)
.jpg)
