🇨🇦 Canada to USA: Je divorce de toi!

After years of friendship, Canadians say the relationship no longer feels stable - and they’re quietly looking elsewhere

More than a year after U.S. President Donald Trump casually joked about absorbing Canada and repeatedly threatened debilitating tariffs on its goods, many Canadians are convinced their former pals to the south have lost the plot. New results from The POLITICO Poll suggest a lasting chill has settled over the world’s former bosom buddies. Americans are rosy as ever about their northern neighbors, but Canadians don’t share the love. Their message to America: It’s not us, it’s you. Canadians don’t see Trump’s America as merely an annoyance, the survey found. They consider the superpower next door the world’s greatest threat to peacetime. The POLITICO Poll — in partnership with U.K. polling firm Public First — finds Canadians increasingly view the United States as a source of global volatility instead of as a stabilizing ally. In survey question after survey question, Canadians say the U.S. no longer reflects their values, is more likely to provoke conflict than to prevent it and, as a result, is pushing Canada to consider closer ties with other global powers — including overtures to China that would have seemed unthinkable only a couple of years ago. Canadians were the most likely — among respondents in Canada, Germany, France and the U.K. — to say the U.S. is not a reliable ally (58 percent). A slight 42 percent plurality of respondents from Canada go even further, saying the U.S. is no longer an ally of Canada. Only about one in three Canadians, 37 percent, said “The US is still an ally of Canada.” Other results that reveal the extent of Canada’s mistrust:

• 57 percent of Canadians in the poll said the U.S. cannot be depended on in a crisis.

• 67 percent say the U.S. “challenges” — as opposed to supports — its allies around the world.

• 69 percent agree the U.S. tends to create problems for other countries rather than solve them.

Last month at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Hong Kong, I spoke passionately about a growing feeling in Canada: that our longtime closest ally, the United States, is starting to feel more like a bully than a friend.

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A Texas investor with ties to the Trump family is testing the possibility of making deals with Russian companies, even as the fighting in Ukraine rages on. The investor, Gentry Beach, said that he quietly signed an agreement with one of Russia’s biggest energy companies last fall to develop natural gas in Alaska. Mr. Beach’s deal, which he insisted was motivated by business interests and not politics, shows how Mr. Trump is starting to bring Russia back into the Western economic fold, even as few signs point to President Vladimir V. Putin being ready to stop his assault on Ukraine and U.S. sanctions against Russia remain in place. It also shows how the Kremlin’s messaging about what it says are immense business opportunities in Russia — an aide to Mr. Putin this week put their value at an improbable $14 trillion — is starting to resonate in the United States. “Trump is a transactional president,” Mr. Beach said in an interview. “I don’t think people would have felt as comfortable working with Russian companies during the Biden administration as they do during the Trump administration.” The project is in its early stages and faces steep hurdles, and Mr. Beach declined to disclose the financial details. The Russian company, Novatek, said it was “indeed having negotiations on the potential use” of its technology to liquefy natural gas in remote northern Alaska. But it did not confirm that it was working with Mr. Beach - NYT

• President Trump convened the first meeting of his new Board of Peace on Thursday, announcing $7 billion in pledges from nine member countries to rebuild Gaza while offering few details about how Hamas can be disarmed or when Israel might fully withdraw from the Palestinian territory. Hosting Thursday’s event, Mr. Trump announced that nine of the more than 20 member countries have agreed to contribute to the Gaza rebuilding effort. Several are wealthy Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which said it would donate $1.2 billion. Indonesia, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Kosovo and Albania said they would commit peacekeeping troops to Gaza, while Egypt and Jordan have committed troops to train police there. Mr. Trump also said the United States would contribute $10 billion to the board, without saying where the money would come from or whether Congress had been consulted on the matter. The event was held at the U.S. Institute of Peace building in Washington. The modernist federal building was constructed to house an organization by the same name created by Congress in 1984, and which the Trump administration largely dismantled last year. Mr. Trump’s name has since been added to the building’s facade. The foreign leaders who spoke at the event mixed praise for Mr. Trump with talk of Gaza’s bright future. But the juxtaposition of eye-popping dollar figures and thin policy details was conspicuous - NYT

Danielle Smith, the premier of Canada’s oil rich province of Alberta, wants to hold a referendum in October on measures to limit immigration to and changes she believes would give the province more rights under the Constitution. In a 13-minute televised address Thursday evening, Smith said she wants Albertans to vote on nine questions on Oct. 19. She said the subject of each question was based on what the Alberta Next Panel heard the most when consulting with Albertans during town halls and through written submissions last year, CBC reported. “The fact is, Alberta taxpayers can no longer be asked to continue to subsidize the entire country through equalization and federal transfers, permit the federal government to flood our borders with new arrivals and then give free access to our most-generous-in-the-country social programs to anyone who moves here,” Smith said. “This is not only grossly unfair to Alberta taxpayers, but also financially crippling and undercuts the quality of our health care, education and other social services.”

FIFA President Infantino and UEFA President Čeferin have been accused of aiding and abetting war crimes (specifically, the transfer of civilian population into occupied territories) and crimes against humanity (specifically, apartheid) under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Communication was formally filed with the ICC Office of the Prosecutor on 16 February 2026. The complaint centres on FIFA and UEFA’s inclusion of Israeli football clubs based in illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian territory that were built on land stolen from Palestinian people. FIFA and UEFA permit these clubs to play in leagues organised by the Israel Football Association and host matches on the seized land. They also provide financial and structural support to settlement clubs, some of which have played in the UEFA-organised competitions - according to the complaint - Euro-med Human Rights Monitor

After pulling out of the World Health Organization, the Trump administration is proposing spending $2 billion a year to replicate the global disease surveillance and outbreak functions the United States once helped build and accessed at a fraction of the cost, according to three administration officials briefed on the proposal. The effort to build a U.S.-run alternative would re-create systems such as laboratories, data-sharing networks and rapid-response systems the U.S. abandoned when it announced its withdrawal from the WHO last year and dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal deliberations. While President Donald Trump accused the WHO of demanding “unfairly onerous payments,” the alternative his administration is considering carries a price tag about three times what the U.S. contributed annually to the U.N. health agency. The U.S. would build on bilateral agreements with countries and expand the presence of its health agencies to dozens of additional nations, the officials said. “This $2 billion in funding to HHS is to build the systems and capacities to do what the WHO did for us,” one official said. The Department of Health and Human Services has been leading the efforts and requested the funding from the Office of Management and Budget in recent weeks as part of a broader push to construct a U.S.-led rival to the WHO, officials said. Before withdrawing from the agency, the U.S. provided roughly $680 million a year in assessed dues and voluntary contributions to the WHO, often exceeding the combined contributions of other member states, according to HHS. Citing figures in the proposal, officials said the U.S. contributions represented about 15 to 18 percent of the WHO’s total annual funding of about $3.7 billion - Washington Post

A Russian woman who was charged with lying to the FBI about her ties to Russia’s main intelligence agency -- and then drunk-texted an FBI agent while out on bail -- has pleaded guilty. Nomma Zarubina changed her plea on February 19, according to federal court filings, about two months after a judge revoked her bail for repeatedly messaging an FBI agent and ordered held in jail. In addition to pleading guilty to the lying charge, she also admitted to a second charge related to her immigration status, court filings showed. “Zarubina’s intentional concealment of her misconduct and her lies about her affiliation with Russian intelligence were an affront to law enforcement’s national-security efforts,” the Justice Department said in a statement. A native of the Siberian city of Tomsk, Zarubina moved to the United States in 2016 and built up a network of professional and personal connections among Russian emigre groups, as well as at American think tanks and activist organizations - RFE/RL

• An IT blunder has revealed an apparent smuggling ring that has moved at least $90bn of Russian oil and is playing a central role in funding, the Financial Times reported on Friday. Russia has established an extensive "shadow fleet" of oil tankers and uses clandestine networks to evade sanctions, potentially involving vast sums. Russian nationals with alleged links to the country’s military and intelligence services have been operating aboard these tankers, according to information shared by Western and Ukrainian intelligence services

Ukraine’s Paralympic athletes will skip the opening ceremony of the Milan-Cortina Winter Games next month in protest at the International Paralympic Committee’s decision to allow Russian athletes to compete under their national flag, Ukraine’s National Paralympic Committee has said. “The Ukrainian Paralympic team and the National Paralympic Committee of Ukraine are boycotting the opening ceremony of the 14th Winter Paralympic Games and demand that the Ukrainian flag not be used at the opening ceremony of the Paralympics-2026!,” the committee said in a statement published late Thursday night. The decision follows that of Ukrainian government officials, who announced on Wednesday they would boycott the March 6 ceremony in Verona. The IPC declined to comment when approached by AFP on Friday, adding they were in contact with the Ukrainian Paralympic Committee. Ukraine’s fury was sparked by the IPC decision to allow six Russians and four Belarusians to take part under their own flags at the Milan-Cortina Paralympics rather than as neutral athletes. Russia and Belarus had been banned from the 2022 Paralympics following the invasion of Ukraine, although they were permitted to compete as neutral athletes in the Paris Summer Paralympics two years later. Ukraine’s Sports Minister Matviy Bidny called the decision “outrageous”, and accused Russia and its ally Belarus of turning “sport into a tool of war, lies, and contempt” - AFP

Florida lawmakers have passed a bill to rename Palm Beach International Airport after President Donald Trump. The bill to rename the south Florida hub passed the state Senate Thursday with 25 votes in favor and 11 votes against, all from Democrats, two days after Florida’s House of Representatives passed the measure 81-30. The bill now awaits Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ signature, and the name change is subject to the approval of the Federal Aviation Administration. According to the text, the act would take effect in the beginning of July. The move comes as Trump has already applied his name to a slew of things – renaming buildings and government initiatives after himself in ways unprecedented for a sitting president. Florida GOP leaders said they wanted to rename the Palm Beach airport after Trump, the first president to declare permanent residency in Florida. “This is the President’s hometown, he lives five miles away from the airport,” said bill co-sponsor Republican Florida Rep. Meg Weinberger, according to CNN affiliate WLUK.

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