First Reading is a daily newsletter keeping you posted on the travails of Canadian politicos, all curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here. Read More

Health care consumes a massive share of government budgets, exceeding 40 per cent in provinces such as B.C. It should probably be the number 1 issue for every voter at election time because it costs so much: despite substantial increases in taxation over the last few years, the B.C. government increased the provincial debt from $72 billion in 2020 to over $107 billion in 2024. Read More

Israel’s arch-enemy and the head of Hamas, Yhaya Sinwar, is now dead, but UN agencies tasked with protecting the peace still haven’t been held to account. Since 1978, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has been tasked with maintaining peace along the Israel-Lebanon border. However, UNIFIL’s mandate to monitor and prevent hostilities has been systematically undermined by its own inability — or unwillingness — to act against Hezbollah’s growing military presence. Over the years, Hezbollah has entrenched itself in southern Lebanon, right under UNIFIL’s watch, preparing for an assault on Israel that could have had devastating consequences. Despite clear violations of UN Security Council Resolutions 1559 and 1701, which call for the disarmament of Hezbollah and forbid any armed presence south of the Litani River, UNIFIL has failed to enforce these mandates. Read More

Don’t beat yourself up the next time you toss some yogurt slightly past its expiration date or the mildly moldy cheese you don’t want to cut around – billions of litres of raw milk used to make those and other dairy products went down the drain long before it left the farm, a new study suggests. Read More

British Columbia NDP Leader David Eby's personal crusade to force the province's upstart Conservative Party to add "B.C." to its ballot name ended last week when a judge refused to schedule a last-minute hearing on the matter. Read More

It’s disturbingly plausible, as Tasha Kheiriddin argued here on Thursday, that Justin Trudeau might have extended his proverbial runway on Wednesday with his jaw-dropping performance before the parliamentary inquiry into foreign interference in Canadian elections. The most unhinged Trudeau and Liberal partisans are now convinced that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is some kind of Manchurian candidate — or the Indian-brainwashed equivalent — thanks to the prime minister’s claim to know the names of Conservative parliamentarians and candidates “who are engaged in or at high risk of foreign interference.” Read More

In this week’s episode, John Ivison is joined by national security expert Wesley Wark to talk about the public inquiry into foreign interference being held in Ottawa. Read More

OTTAWA -- First Nations chiefs have voted to reject a landmark $47.8-billion child welfare reform deal, reached in July with the Canadian government. Read More

Three tobacco giants are proposing to pay close to $25 billion to provinces and territories and more than $4 billion to tens of thousands of Quebec smokers and their loved ones as part of a corporate restructuring process triggered by a long-running legal battle. Read More

TEL AVIV — Late afternoon on Thursday, in the midst of a quiet holiday in Israel, a shock jolted the country. Read More

OTTAWA — A newly unsealed indictment into charges filed by the U.S. Justice Department against a government of India employee for allegedly planning to assassinate a Sikh activist in New York City reveals multiple ties between the foiled plot and the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia. Read More

VANCOUVER — Elections BC says more than a million British Columbians have already cast their ballots in advance voting before Saturday’s provincial election, smashing a record set during the pandemic election four years ago. Read More

A former Canadian Olympic snowboarder has been named in the United States as the boss of a billion-dollar transnational drug trafficking organization accused of moving massive amounts of cocaine and meth from Colombia, through Mexico and California into Canada while protecting the operation with multiple unsolved murders, including several in Canada. Read More

The expulsion this week of six Indian diplomats from Canada, and a similar move by India, marks a low point in relations between the two countries. Here’s how we got here. Read More

A prominent Israeli military analyst says that Canada should use the death of Yahya Sinwar, who helped orchestrate the October 7 massacre, as an opportunity to support Israel, but, he adds, it's more likely that some Canadians will take to the streets to mourn the Hamas leader. Read More

Liam Payne "jumped from the balcony" of his hotel room, according to authorities in Argentina. Read More

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday his government has intelligence information that 10,000 troops from North Korea are being prepared to join Russian forces fighting against his country, warning that a third nation wading into the hostilities would turn the conflict into a "world war." Read More

Asus has released its newest two-in-one laptop and tablet, and students, creatives and professionals will want to take notice.  Read More

Prosecutors are seeking a court order to assess whether an Ontario woman accused of killing three people in three cities over three days is fit to stand trial. Read More

Quebec's police watchdog says it has opened an investigation after the bodies of a mother and her son were discovered in a vehicle in the city's St-Leonard borough. They went missing earlier this week. Read More

A Canada Revenue Agency employee found ineligible for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit has lost his Federal Court bid to overturn the decision. Read More