Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - March 7, 2025, Winnipeg, Manitoba B4 ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM NEWS I CANADA / WORLD FRIDAY, MARCH 7, 2025 Newfoundland history has lessons for ‘imperialist’ Trump regime: Furey S T. JOHN’S, N.L. — The outgoing premier of Newfoundland and Labrador says he’s drawing on the province’s history as he urges Canadians not to underestimate U.S. President Donald Trump’s “imperial- ist” ambitions. In a recent interview, Andrew Furey was clear: he says Trump is launching an attack on Canada by sowing economic chaos to create instability. And he warned that eco- nomic pressure can be just as effect- ive as tanks and gunfire at eroding a nation’s independence and sovereign- ty. “In Newfoundland and Labra- dor, we know that all too well,” the premier said. “It was the economic forces, not the military forces, that caused us to lose our independence and choose to join Canada.” Trump has kept Canadians frustrat- ed and bewildered for months, threat- ening punishing tariffs on Canadian goods and then changing his plan at the last minute. As of Thursday evening, he had imposed 25 per cent tariffs on most Canadian goods, but paused duties on some imports linked to the auto industry and lowered lev- ies on potash to 10 per cent. Energy flowing from Canada to the U.S. was subject to 10 per cent duties. Meanwhile, Trump regularly calls the Canadian prime minister “Governor Justin Trudeau,” and has threatened to use “economic force” to make Canada the 51st state. “He has shown by his threats that he has an expansive agenda, a terri- torial agenda, and that feeds an im- perialist approach,” Furey said. Jeff Webb, a history professor at Memorial University, agrees that dire economic circumstances influ- enced Newfoundlanders when they voted to become a Canadian province in 1949. But they didn’t do it under force, he said in a recent interview. Newfoundland was a self-gov- erning dominion of the British Em- pire until 1933, when Canada and Britain stepped in to help bail the region out of financial hardship. The Great Depression hit Newfoundland hard, and the dominion had accrued a large debt sending soldiers to fight in the First World War. As a condition of the bailout, New- foundland gave up self-governance, and instead agreed to be ruled by a commission appointed by the British government, according to Memorial University’s Newfoundland and Lab- rador Heritage website. By the 1940s, Britain and Canada thought it would be best for New- foundland to join Canada, but they didn’t force it, Webb said. When 52 per cent of Newfoundlanders voted in 1949 to join Canada rather than re- turn to self-government, many hoped Confederation would bring financial stability and help them avoid the des- titution that plagued the region under its own government, he said. “We didn’t get arm-twisted into this,” Webb said about Newfound- land’s Confederation with Canada. “It’s incredibly different from what we’re getting now. And what we’re getting now is crazy, nonsensical bullying.” “Part of the craziness of this is that there are no sensible parallels,” he said of Trump’s behaviour toward his northern neighbour. Historian Sean Cadigan noted that some of Newfoundland’s hardships before it joined Canada were a result of the Trump-like tariffs it imposed on foreign manufacturers. It was al- ready costly to make things in New- foundland — an island in the North Atlantic Ocean — and the taxes just made everything expensive, he said. The cost of living became unbearable, particularly in rural Newfoundland. “The lessons that I’ve learned from protectionism, is that it just hurts a lot of people, especially rural people,” the Memorial University professor said. “Tariffs create tremendous social and economic divisions. They create win- ners and losers, and the stress among the losers can be terrible.” The United States under Trump is absolutely “acting in an imperial manner,” said Blayne Haggart, an associate political science professor at Brock University. And he agrees with Furey: Canada needs to take it seriously. “I think we’re taking the threat of the tariffs seriously,” Haggart said in an interview. “But what comes next? … I don’t know yet if Canadians, and particularly our political lead- ers, fully understand what it means to chart a separate course from the United States.” That will involve costly measures such as strengthening the Canadian military; relying less on the United States for regulatory approvals for drugs and manufacturing; and even strengthening weather forecasting systems as Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency fires workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “I’m 52 years old. This is the worst crisis that Canada has faced in my lifetime,” he said. “It’s been disappointing to me that the federal leadership vacuum was allowed to persist for so long … I understand the reasons for it but it’s still incredibly concerning.” — The Canadian Press, with files from The Associated Press SARAH SMELLIE PAUL DALY / THE CANADIAN PRESS Outgoing Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey warns Canadians that ‘it was economic forces, not the military forces’ that caused Newfoundland to lose its independence. Ottawa unveils plans to build military hubs in the Arctic OTTAWA — The federal government will build northern military operation- al support hubs in Iqaluit, Yellowknife and Inuvik, Defence Minister Bill Blair announced Thursday, while promising there will be more to come as Ottawa ramps up its military footprint in the Arctic. The hubs are the cornerstone of the federal government’s Arctic security strategy, which committed $2.67 billion over 20 years to building them. Blair was in Iqaluit Thursday to an- nounce the first three locations and said the department is planning to build more than the five operational hubs dis- cussed in Canada’s new defence policy last April. “The discussions that we’ve been hav- ing in the subsequent 10 months clearly indicates that there may be additional locations,” Blair told The Canadian Press. He didn’t offer a precise number. “It’s been an ongoing discussion with Canadians, but also with our allies, that Canada needs to do more to secure its sovereignty and defend our country,” Blair added. “And the Arctic is prob- ably the most important place to do it.” Operational support hubs are not mil- itary bases. The Department of Nation- al Defence says they support military operations through communications and transport infrastructure and by providing secure storage for supplies. The hubs will also be tasked with as- sisting search and rescue efforts in the region. Currently, military aircraft tak- ing part in search-and-rescue missions in the Arctic often have to fly in from hundreds of kilometres away — par- ticularly for searches in Nunavut. While the Iqaluit, Yellowknife and Inuvik hubs will build on the infra- structure already in place for NORAD Forward Operating Locations in those locations, it’s not clear what kind of mil- itary functions the hubs will carry out. Asked whether he sees fighter jets be- ing stationed at the hubs in the future, Blair said those operational discussions will happen in due course. “Ultimately, I think the Air Force has got to tell me, for example, what to do with the fighter jets,” Blair said. He said while the government has invested $230 million in extending the airport runway in Inuvik, the facility’s six hangars can’t accommodate the new F-35 fighter jets Canada is buying. “There’s challenges in that region on fuel depots. I don’t want the military to compete with the community for power generation and heating,” he said. “I think there’s a real opportunity for us to talk about the things that we need to do from the military side that would be mutually beneficial to the commun- ity and the people that live there.” The announcement is being wel- comed by the territorial government and the City of Iqaluit, since the mil- itary is promising improved infra- structure in the city to operate the hub — including better communications, water and power facilities. Northern premiers have been lob- bying Ottawa to tie infrastructure up- grades to military spending, both as a means of nation-building and to help push Canada toward its NATO spend- ing target of two per cent of national GDP. “This is a window where we see any infrastructure coming to the North is, I think, a win for Canada and for Nuna- vut,” Premier P.J. Akeeagok told The Canadian Press. “Whenever there’s major invest- ments, especially in government such as military, that comes with really good jobs.” Thursday’s announcement offered few details about which items of infra- structure will be upgraded to support the hubs. Blair said those discussions haven’t happened yet because the first step was to select the locations. “One of the challenges is, until we actually named the operational support hubs, we couldn’t go to the next stage of those discussions about what now needs to be done,” Blair said. He said the debate about Canada’s NATO defence spending target isn’t just “about how much money we have to spend.” “I really want to start talking about how much money we’ll have to invest, and what’s the best way to invest those dollars that’ll help build our country and secure our sovereignty,” he added. Blair said those conversations should take into account what “the people in the North need” and how Ottawa can “invest in things that are mutually beneficial.” While plans for the hubs were an- nounced nearly a year ago, federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre recently committed to building a mil- itary base in Iqaluit if he wins the next election, and doubling the number of Canadian Rangers in the Arctic. — The Canadian Press NICK MURRAY DUSTIN PATAR / THE CANADIAN PRESS Defence Minister Bill Blair made the announcement Thursday about increasing the Canadian Armed Forces’ presence and readiness across the Arctic and the North during a press conference in Iqaluit, Nunavut. Iqaluit, Yellowknife, Inuvik announced as hub sites Rare tropical cyclone makes landfall on Australian coast BRISBANE, Australia — Early wind and rain from a rare tropic- al cyclone began lashing part of eastern Australia on Thursday as schools were closed, public trans- port was stopped and desperate residents got around shortages of sandbags by buying potting mix. Tropical Cyclone Alfred is fore- cast to cross the Queensland state coast somewhere between the Sun- shine Coast region and the city of Gold Coast to the south early Satur- day, Bureau of Meteorology man- ager Matt Collopy said. Between the two tourist strips is the state capital Brisbane, Australia’s third-most populous city which will host the 2032 Olympic Games. “The wind impacts, we’re already seeing those start to develop on the exposed locations along our coast with gusts reaching 80-to-90 km/h. We are expecting those to continue to develop,” Collopy told reporters in Brisbane. Alfred is expected to become the first cyclone to cross the coast near Brisbane since Cyclone Zoe hit Gold Coast in 1974 and brought widespread flooding. Cyclones are common in Queens- land’s tropical north but are rare in the state’s temperate and dense- ly populated southeast corner that borders New South Wales state. More than 4 million people lie in the cyclone’s path. Alfred was 240 kilometres east of Brisbane and moving west Thurs- day with sustained winds near the center of 95 km/h and gusting to 130 km/h, Collopy said. The storm is expected to maintain its wind strength before hitting land. But the greatest fears are for the expected flooding over a wide area. Modelling shows that up to 20,000 homes in Brisbane, a city largely built on a river floodplain, could ex- perience some level of flooding. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said 660 schools in southern Queens- land and 280 schools in northern New South Wales were closed Thurs- day as weather conditions worsen. The federal government had de- livered 310,000 sandbags to Bris- bane and more were on the way, Albanese said. “My message to people, whether they be in southeast Queensland or northern New South Wales, is we are there to support you. We have your back,” Albanese told reporters in the national capital Canberra. A shortage of sandbags in Bris- bane, a city of more than 3 million people, led some to buy sacks of pot- ting mix as an alternative, accord- ing to Damien Effeney, a chief exec- utive of a rural supplies business. “I think between availability and the time that people have to queue to get sandbags, they’re just mak- ing the easier choice and grabbing potting mix,” Effeney said, adding one customer bought 30 bags from his store at Samford on Brisbane’s northwest fringe. Several Brisbane sandbag col- lection points were either empty or people had to line up for hours to collect available sandbags. A beach volleyball business complained that some of its sand had been stolen to fill bags. Brisbane streets were largely empty of traffic and supermarket shelves had been stripped bare of basics including bread, milk, bot- tled water and batteries. Public transport in the affected area was stopped from Thursday and hospitals were limited to per- forming emergency surgeries until the danger had passed. Strong winds downed trees and cut power to 4,500 homes and businesses in northern New South Wales on Thursday, officials said. New South Wales also received heavy rain and rivers were rising across the region. Emergency au- thorities advised 14 communities in the state’s north to evacuate their homes on Thursday to avoid the risk of being trapped by floodwaters. The coast near the border has been battered for days by abnormally high tides and seas. A 12.3-metre high wave recorded off a popular Gold Coast beach on Wednesday night was a record for the area, officials said. But the cyclone’s slower progress toward the coast had a downside, meteorologist Jane Golding said. “We’ll have longer for the rain to fall and the wind to do the damage,” Golding said. — The Associated Press JOHN PYE AND ROD MCGUIRK Canadians should expect AI-enabled foreign meddling in federal election OTTAWA — The federal cybersecurity centre says China, Russia and Iran are very likely to use tools enabled by artifi- cial intelligence in attempts to meddle in the coming general election campaign. In a new report, the Canadian Cen- tre for Cyber Security says it expects individuals affiliated with the Chinese government will continue to target di- aspora communities, pushing narra- tives favourable to Beijing’s interests on social media platforms. Cybercriminals are also likely to take advantage of election-related oppor- tunities to perpetrate scams, says the centre, which is an arm of Canada’s cyberspy agency, the Communications Security Establishment. The centre says that despite these threats, it is very unlikely that AI-enabled activities will fundamentally undermine the integrity of the general election. An election campaign is widely ex- pected to begin shortly after the Lib- erals choose a new leader to succeed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The federal centre says hostile for- eign actors are using artificial intelli- gence to flood cyberspace with false information and are using botnets to spread this disinformation. It warns that AI is also being used to create deepfake pornography targeting politicians and public figures — pre- dominantly women and gender-diverse people. An example of those tactics emerged Thursday. Rapid Response Mechanism Canada, a federal unit that monitors the online environment for signs of foreign inter- ference, detected a campaign to in- timidate, belittle and harass people in Canada who criticize the Chinese gov- ernment, said Global Affairs Canada. Global Affairs said it had contacted the victims of the new campaign, en- gaged with the relevant social media companies and raised concerns direct- ly with the Chinese embassy in Canada. — The Canadian Press JIM BRONSKILL ;