At Issue - June 21, 2025
At Issue is Canada's most-watched political panel, hosted by CBC Chief Political Correspondent Rosemary Barton and featuring leading political journalists; Chantal Hebert, Andrew Coyne, Althia Raj and Elamin Abdelmahmoud.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CBC
16 minutes ago
- CBC
Belarus activist imprisoned after trying to run for president released after serving 5 years
Social Sharing Siarhei Tsikhanouski, a leading Belarus opposition figure, was freed on Saturday after more than five years in prison, in the most significant move so far by President Alexander Lukashenko to try to ease his isolation from the West. The 46-year-old was driven across the border into Lithuania for an emotional reunion with his wife, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the leader of the exiled Belarus opposition. The Lithuanian government said 13 other prisoners were also released and taken there following talks between Lukashenko and U.S. special envoy Keith Kellogg. In total, five Belarusians were freed along with three Poles, two Latvians, two Japanese citizens, one Estonian and one Swede. Tsikhanouski was seen emerging from a van with a shaven head, smiling and immediately stepping up to hug his wife in a long embrace, a video released by her office showed. "It's hard to describe the joy in my heart," she said. Franak Viacorka, Tsikhanouskaya's chief political adviser, told Reuters that Tsikhanouski had lost weight and his health suffered. He said he "looks like a different person," but was in good spirits and had joked with U.S. officials. Viacorka said Tsikhanouski had described "horrible things that happened to him, but he's not broken ... He wants to continue fighting." In a post on X, Tsikhanouskaya thanked U.S. President Donald Trump, as well as Kellogg and others for their efforts to secure her husband's release. Lukashenko has been shunned by the West for years after brutally crushing pro-democracy demonstrations in 2020 and then allowing Russian President Vladimir Putin, his close ally, to launch part of his 2022 invasion of Ukraine from Belarusian territory. In the past year, he has freed more than 300 prisoners in what political analysts see as the start of an attempt to restore relations with Western governments and seek an easing of international sanctions against Belarus. Opposition politician Maria Kalesnikava and Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski are the most prominent of those who remain behind bars. "We're not done," Tsikhanouskaya wrote, calling for the release of a further 1,150 prisoners. Lukashenko issued pardons for all those released on Saturday in response to a U.S. request, said his spokesperson, Natalya Eismont. In a statement, she said the Belarusians who were freed had been "convicted of extremist and terrorist activity." She said the decision to release Tsikhanouski was "taken by the president strictly on humanitarian considerations with the aim of family reunification." Eismont said Kellogg's talks with Lukashenko had begun on Friday evening and lasted 6½ hours over dinner, covering the Ukraine conflict, the Middle East, relations between Russia, Belarus and China, and sanctions policy. "It was night when it ended," she said. "The subjects discussed were as current as can be imagined. They talked about things that concern the entire world." Reuters reported on Tuesday that Kellogg, the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Belarus in years, saw his mission as one that could help jumpstart peace talks aimed at ending Russia's war against Ukraine. Among those released by Belarus was Ihar Karnei, a former journalist at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, RFE/RL president and CEO Stephen Capus said in a statement thanking Trump, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others. Viacorka said the freed individuals had no idea where they were going when they were taken from their cells. "They were handcuffed, brought to cars, brought to the border. They were surprised, they didn't know who released them, why they were released, what was happening. It was so nice to see the happiness in their eyes." On arrival in Lithuania, they were taken to the U.S. Embassy, ate pizza and drank coke, and were given mobile phones so they could speak to their families for the first time in years, he said. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the release was "fantastic news and a powerful symbol of hope for all the political prisoners suffering under the brutal Lukashenka (sic) regime." "The free world needs you, Siarhei!" Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said on X. Tsikhanouski, a video blogger, was arrested in 2020 while planning to run for president against Lukashenko, and convicted the following year of organizing mass unrest and inciting social hatred. He was sentenced to 19½ years, one of the longest jail terms in modern Belarusian history. His supporters said the charges were fabricated and politically motivated. Sviatlana ran in the election in his place, and mass protests broke out after Lukashenko claimed a landslide victory and the opposition and Western governments accused him of rigging the result. Viacorka said Tsikhanouski's release would spur the exiled opposition.
Winnipeg Free Press
an hour ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Carney travelling to Europe for security, defence talks with EU, NATO
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Mark Carney will depart for Europe on Sunday for back-to-back summits where he is expected to make major commitments for Canada on security and defence. Carney will be joined by Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand, Defence Minister David McGuinty and secretary of state for defence procurement Stephen Fuhr at the EU and NATO summits, where military procurement and diversifying supply chains will top the agendas. The international meetings come as Canada looks to reduce its defence procurement reliance on the United States due to strained relations over tariffs and President Donald Trump's repeated talk about Canada becoming a U.S. state. Carney will fly first to Brussels, Belgium, starting the trip with a visit to the Antwerp Schoonselhof Military Cemetery where 348 Canadian soldiers are buried. He will also meet with Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, European Council President António Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. At the EU-Canada summit, Anand and McGuinty are expected to sign a security and defence agreement with the EU in what one European official described Friday as one of the most ambitious deals Europe has ever signed with a third country. The agreement will open the door to Canada's participation in the ReArm Europe initiative, allowing Canada to access a 150-billion-euro loan program for defence procurement, called Security Action for Europe. An EU official briefing reporters on Friday said once the procurement deal is in place, Canada will have to negotiate a bilateral agreement with the European Commission to begin discussions with member states about procurement opportunities. A Canadian official briefing reporters on the summit Saturday said the initial agreement will allow for Canada's participation in some joint procurement projects. However, a second agreement will be needed to allow Canadian companies to bid. At the EU-Canada summit, leaders are also expected to issue a joint statement to underscore a willingness for continued pressure on Russia, including through further sanctions, and call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza. After Brussels, Carney heads to The Hague in the Netherlands for the NATO leaders' summit on Tuesday and Wednesday. There, Carney will meet with the King of the Netherlands and later with leaders of Nordic nations to discuss Arctic and transatlantic security. At the NATO summit, Carney will take part in bilateral meetings with other leaders. The summit agenda includes a social dinner hosted by the king and queen of the Netherlands and a two-and-a-half hour meeting of the North Atlantic Council. NATO allies are expected to debate a plan to hike alliance members' defence spending target to five per cent of national GDP. NATO data shows that in 2024, none of its 32 members spent that much. The Canadian government official who briefed reporters on background says the spending target and its timeline are still up for discussion, though some allies have indicated they would prefer a seven-year timeline while others favour a decade. Canada hasn't hit a five- per- cent defence spending threshhold since the 1950s and hasn't reached the two per cent mark since the late 1980s. NATO says that, based on its estimate of which expenditures count toward the target, Canada spent $41 billion in 2024 on defence, or 1.37 per cent of GDP. That's more than twice what it spent in 2014, when the two per cent target was first set; that year, Canada spent $20.1 billion, or 1.01 per cent of GDP, on defence. In 2014, only three NATO members achieved the two per cent target — the U.S., the U.K., and Greece. In 2025, all members are expected to hit it. Any agreement to adopt a new spending benchmark must be ratified by all 32 NATO member states. Former Canadian ambassador to NATO Kerry Buck told The Canadian Press the condensed agenda is likely meant to 'avoid public rifts among allies,' describing Trump as an 'uncertainty engine.' Monday Mornings The latest local business news and a lookahead to the coming week. 'The national security environment has really, really shifted,' Buck said, adding allies next door to Russia face the greatest threats. 'There is a high risk that the U.S. would undercut NATO at a time where all allies are increasingly vulnerable.' Trump has suggested the U.S. might abandon its mutual defence commitment to the alliance if member countries don't ramp up defence spending. 'Whatever we can do to get through this NATO summit with few public rifts between the U.S. and other allies on anything, and satisfy a very long-standing U.S. demand to rebalance defence spending, that will be good for Canada because NATO's good for Canada,' Buck said. Carney has already made two trips to Europe this year — the first to London and Paris to meet with European allies and the second to Rome to attend the inaugural mass of Pope Leo XIV. This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 22, 2025.
National Post
an hour ago
- National Post
Barbara Kay: Canada needs to have a serious talk about the Muslim Brotherhood
Article content Nevertheless, investigations carried out elsewhere are available to us. For example, in 2021 a European Parliament committee produced an in-depth analysis of Muslim Brotherhood activity in Europe. More recently, a classified French report the group's plan to take over Europe was leaked to France's Le Figaro; writing on the subject, the Free Press's Simone Rodan-Benzaquen observed, 'The Brotherhood operates as a political project. Its goal is not sudden revolution, but gradual transformation.… And it is not coming just for France. It is coming for all of the West.' Article content The U.S. has known all about the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology since a damning 1991 memorandum by the group detailing its Islamist aims and methods surfaced in the next decade during the Hamas-centric Holy Land Foundation trial. Before the Trump era, a cone of silence, similar to Canada's, had been placed over it. (Barack Obama naively believed he could make the Brotherhood an ally.) Article content In 2017, Congress held a hearing on whether the Muslim Brotherhood should be designated as a foreign terrorist organization, but a proposal to criminalize it failed to materialize due to divisions in Trump's first administration. Now, lawmakers are trying again: early this month, a new bill was introduced to Congress with promising bicameral support. Article content Unfortunately, the chances of Canada's present government following suit — or even committing to a Europe-style investigation — are nugatory to nil. Article content My certainty springs from the concerning fact that on June 6, in Ottawa, Prime Minister Mark Carney chose MAC as his audience for a multiculturalism-themed Eid al-Adha address. A George Washington University report by the school's Program on Extremism found that MAC proudly self-identifies as a Muslim Brotherhood legacy group. The Brotherhood also hosts foreign speakers whose discourse features antisemitism, misogyny and homophobia. Article content At his address, Carney equated MAC values with Canadian values. Backlash ensued; more than one observer noted that MAC had been investigated by the Canada Revenue Agency which, in a 2021 audit document, alleged that some MAC directors and employees were involved in 'an apparent Hamas support network.' Article content It's one thing for woke, virtue-signalling global marchers to be shrouded in ignorance. We can mock their credulity. The same appearance of ignorance is inexcusable in a nation's leader. Was Carney deliberately messaging acceptance of the Muslim Brotherhood's claim for social inclusion under the aegis of multiculturalism? If so, that too is inexcusable, but also makes no sense. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has, like the Brotherhood, spawned numerous terrorist offshoots — Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad — was (finally) designated by Canada as a terrorist entity in 2024. Yet there is precious little daylight between the triumphalist end games of both IRGC and the Muslim Brotherhood. Article content A saving grace in the era of Soviet-sponsored infiltration of the West was our freedom to educate ourselves about communism's dangers without being accused of 'Marxophobia.' It's past time we had that same freedom to hold a 'national level discussion' on the Muslim Brotherhood. Article content
