Canada loses 83,900 jobs in February as unemployment rises to 6.7%

https://www.westernstandard.news/news/canada-loses-83900-jobs-in-february-as-unemployment-rises-to-67/71871

Canada’s economy lost a net 83,900 jobs in February, while the unemployment rate increased to 6.7%, according to data released Friday by Statistics Canada.

Job losses occurred across both goods-producing and service sectors. Statistics Canada said the scale of the monthly decline has not been seen in nearly 17 years, excluding the months of pandemic lockdowns.

The results fell short of economists’ expectations, which had projected a gain of about 10,000 jobs and an unemployment rate of 6.6%. In January, the economy lost 24,800 jobs while the unemployment rate declined to a 16-month low of 6.5%.

Over the past two months, Canada has shed a total of 109,000 jobs. That loss nearly offsets the gains of 189,000 jobs recorded between September and December.

Recent weakness in the labour market has coincided with slower economic growth and the impact of tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump on sectors including steel, autos, lumber and copper.

Economists and the Bank of Canada have warned that additional job losses could occur as businesses delay investment and implement layoffs in response to economic uncertainty.

Youth unemployment rose to 14.1% in February, close to the highest level recorded in September 2025, Statistics Canada reported. Employment among core-aged workers between 25 and 54 also declined, falling by 37,000 — the largest drop since January 2022. Continue…

Former president of national gay rights group resigns to take up fight against Muslim Brotherhood

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/former-president-of-national-gay-rights-group-resigns-to-take-up-fight-against-muslim-brotherhood

The former board president of Egale Canada, a leading Canadian group that advocates for LGBT rights, says she now wants to devote her energies to fighting antisemitism.

Jacki Lewis is managing partner of Toronto law firm, Lewis & Associates. She has 30 years’ experience representing refugees before the Refugee Protection Division and Federal Court of Canada and was president of Egale Canada’s board for more than 10 years.

“My reasons for leaving are that I have been with the organization for a long time and my politics and priorities lie with fighting antisemitism with Tafsik Organization (a Jewish Civil Rights group),” Lewis wrote in a Thursday email to National Post.

“It is not the priority of Egale at this time, to take on the fight against the Muslim Brotherhood. Their focus lies elsewhere while I believe that the Muslim Brotherhood remains one of the greatest threats to Western democracy and our way of life, which includes the rights of the 2SLGBTQI community.”

She disputes media reports alleging she left Egale because the organization has failed to include antisemitism in its advocacy work. Stating that she has been misquoted, Lewis insists she “never said that Egale is antisemitic and I do not believe that it is.”

In a Thursday X post, the publisher of Blacklock’s Reporter, Holly Doan, asserted Lewis as president of a “leading #LGBTQ rights group resign(ed) on complaints the community has failed to confront #antiSemitism.” Doan added that “federal agencies would not say whether funding for Egale Canada will be reconsidered.” Continue…

Canada is ‘one of the centres of antisemitism, globally,’ says Israeli ambassador, on tour of targeted synagogue

https://nationalpost.com/news/israel-ambassador-iddo-moed-thornhill-synagogue

The Israeli ambassador to Canada called the country “one of the centres of antisemitism globally” during a visit to a Thornhill, Ont., synagogue that was shot at last week.

While Ambassador Iddo Moed noticed “a rising trend in antisemitism” following his arrival in Canada in August 2023, it was after the October 7 terror attacks on Israel that a “dramatic spike” occurred, he said.

“It created a lot of concern in Israel. It drew the attention of the highest political levels in spite of the fact that we are, at the same time, busy with the war,” he told National Post on Thursday, in an exclusive interview. “We really came to realize that Canada has become one of the centres of antisemitism globally that we need to monitor much more closely,” Moed said. Continue…

China Owns Canada's Only Antimony Mine — Holding Canada's Trump Card

https://www.thebureau.news/p/china-owns-canadas-only-antimony

Beaver Brook in Newfoundland could produce five percent of the world's antimony supply — a mineral critical to warfighting that Washington now calls a national security emergency. China shuttered it.

In the rugged interior of Newfoundland, an hour’s drive west from the Canadian Forces Base in Gander, sits a dormant mine with profound implications for the nation’s security and prosperity. Beaver Brook could be the largest North American producer of antimony — a critical mineral threaded through the entire spectrum of modern military hardware, from small arms and artillery shells to advanced missile seekers and night-vision goggles.

But China owns the mine and shut it down in early 2023 — one year before Beijing imposed export controls blocking antimony sales to U.S. military end users, driving prices from about US$5,900 per tonne to more than US$50,000.

Antimony forms in crystalline masses, often clustered in dark silver needles — nature's own suggestion of the gunmetal world it enters. It was little known before Washington recognized that Beijing had quietly secured a near-monopoly over the world’s critical mineral supply, antimony among them. The metal fires every conventional round, hardens military components, and provides the infrared edge that defines lethality in modern conflict. Armies could not sustain combat for even a single day without it — a reality that has driven urgent U.S. efforts to stockpile it, revive domestic processing, and cut reliance on China and Russia.

The Newfoundland mine was acquired in December 2009 by Hunan Nonferrous Metals Corporation, a Chinese state-linked producer, for $29.5 million. It went silent in 2013 — the year Xi Jinping secured his presidency — revived in 2019 under China Minmetals Rare Earth Group, employed roughly 100 workers, shipped concentrate to China, and was abruptly shuttered again in 2023. It has not produced since.

In a microcosm, The Bureau’s reporting on Beaver Brook surfaces a contest that is reshaping geopolitics in ways inconceivable only a few years ago — one waged not with weapons but through control of the materials that make weapons. The questions it raises for Canada are urgent. Continue…