First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here. Read More

Britain's King Charles III, who has broken royal taboos to talk openly about battling cancer, will Friday appear in a "personal message" filmed for a TV campaign raising funds for research into the devastating disease. Read More

Our cookbook of the week is The Christmas Companion by Skye McAlpine. Read More

A Toronto woman says her luggage was tossed out of a vehicle by an Uber driver when he heard her speaking Hebrew to her husband. The driver then refused to take them home from the airport after they arrived from a trip in the middle of the night in February. Read More

Across Canada, there are millions of dollars worth of U.S.-made alcoholic products gathering dust in warehouses, all of it pulled from liquor store shelves in most provinces in retaliation for sweeping U.S. tariffs on Canadian imports. Read More

Statistics Canada doesn’t appear to trust Canadians when it comes to gender diversity, according to a troubling consultation document compiled by the agency. Read More

According to a recent Abacus survey, only 42 per cent of Quebecers are in favour of building a new Alberta-BC oil pipeline as outlined by the MOU signed two weeks ago by the governments of Canada and Alberta. This is 13 points below the national average. Even in British Columbia, where one might expect the lowest support, 53 per cent of the respondents are favourable to the project. Why are Quebecers so unenthusiastic about this nation-building initiative? And why is opposition nearly as high in Quebec as is in BC (26 per cent vs 30 per cent), even though Quebec’s territory will not be affected in the slightest? Read More

For Canadians, the government-mandated denial of financial services to punish political opponents and muzzle dissent is all too familiar a story after the Freedom Convoy and the extraordinary measures taken when the then-Trudeau government invoked the Emergencies Act to end protests against COVID-19 restrictions. But politically motivated debanking has been a problem in the United States, too, where government officials operating largely behind the scenes have leaned on banks to break ties with disfavoured individuals, organizations, and even whole industries. Read More

Ireland has been attacking Israel disproportionally since the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre. Recently, after Israel was readmitted, Ireland announced it would not participate in the 2026 annual Eurovision Song Contest as a protest against Israel’s participation. Its announcement came in concert with similar declarations from Spain, Slovenia, Iceland, and of course, the Netherlands. To all of them, I say good riddance. Read More

In 2019, the American writer Rob Henderson coined the term “luxury belief” to refer to “ideas and opinions that confer status on the rich at very little cost, while taking a toll on the lower class.” In slightly altered form, this concept neatly captures the past decade of environmental activism in Canada. Progressives resolutely opposed the fossil fuel industry to the detriment of workers in parts of the country who depend on it for their livelihoods. But as the recent energy deal between Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith shows, an increasing number of Canadians are abandoning this luxury belief. Read More

OTTAWA — Most Canadians with a view say they don’t like the populist wave washing over much of the world, a new poll has found, even though a healthy chunk of respondents also said they support some of the same movement’s key pillars. Read More

OTTAWA — The Canada Revenue Agency paid $18 million for a chatbot the auditor general says gave her team the wrong answer 66 per cent of the time. Read More

LOS ANGELES -- The man accused of killing right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk appeared in person in a U.S. court for the first time on Thursday. Read More

Amnesty International on Thursday accused Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups for the first time of crimes against humanity during and after the Oct. 7, 2023 attack that sparked the Gaza war, with Hamas rejecting the report as "lies." Read More

OTTAWA — New Toronto-area Conservative MP Michael Ma has crossed the floor to the Liberals in a stunning political move just hours after the end of the fall Parliamentary session. Read More

OTTAWA — The federal Liberal government is pushing back the expected launch of its compensation program for individual gun owners, whose firearms the government has banned, from this fall until January 2026. Read More

OTTAWA — Former four-term MP Rahim Jaffer says he's thinking about running for the Edmonton area seat currently held by departing Conservative Matt Jeneroux. Read More

OTTAWA — The Parti Québécois is calling on the federal government to “remove” financier Mark Wiseman’s name from their list of potential Canadian ambassadors to the United States, arguing that he is “not a friend” to Quebec. Read More

An Ontario man kept his wife and four children confined in their home for years through intimidation and fear while cloaking abuse as protection that kept them healthy “in the eyes of the Lord.” Read More

A skydiver in Australia faced some terrifying mid-air moments after his parachute got caught on the plane wing just after he jumped. Read More

Marie Chapman, director and CEO of the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in Halifax, has announced that she is stepping away from the role immediately. Read More

Declining Canadian tourism is adversely affecting American businesses in every state along the U.S.-Canada border, according to a new report by the U.S. Senate Democrats' Joint Economic Committee. Read More

A women's rights organization is seeking permission from the Federal Court to challenge the government’s policy allowing transgender women to be housed in female prisons, arguing that it puts women at risk of harm. Read More

Traces of fentanyl have been found in cannabis purchased in some of Nova Scotia’s many unlicensed marijuana dispensaries, the province’s premier said Thursday. Read More