Western civilization is under siege in Canada, activist warns

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Or sign-in if you have an account.Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney (C) arrives for a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People on January 16, 2026 in Beijing, China. Photo by Pool /Getty ImagesWASHINGTON, D.C. — Canada is grappling with debates over national identity and security as well as international trade. Ottawa is navigating U.S. tariffs and Donald Trump’s threats of higher trade duties ahead of this July’s review of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement, while also managing populist and separatist movements, hate crimes, and broader pressures on national cohesion. Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorTo gauge how these pressures are reshaping Canada’s identity and policy choices, the National Post sat down with Dimpee Brar, director of engagement for Allies for a Strong Canada, to discuss Western traditions, the Canadian identity, national security, trade, and domestic politics.Get a dash of perspective along with the trending news of the day in a very readable format.By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.The next issue of NP Posted will soon be in your inbox.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againThis has been condensed for length and clarity.Dimpee Brar: So Allies for a Strong Canada came up, like you said, after Oct. 7, and the idea was that the people marching through our streets were the same people who have marched through our institutions, who have marched through our bureaucracies, and who have marched through our halls of power. In brief, that the enemies of the Jewish people are really the enemies of Western civilization. At Allies, we believe that Western civilization comprises two roots. Athens, which gives us our philosophy, our nature, our reason, and Jerusalem, which gives us our revelation and our God. Those two together for us comprise the unique inheritance given to Western civilization as a whole.Because fundamentally, unfortunately, the case right now is that antisemitism alone is not enough to get people motivated to do anything. When they understand that this is not a Jewish issue or a Jewish problem, but an issue of Western civilization — that the prosperity and the security of the Jewish people is also an issue for Canadians writ large — that is something Canadians understand and that most people in the Western civilized world also understand.It has evolved significantly. We just hit 30,000 activists, and our job is quite simple. We are not here for a moment; we are here to create a movement. We are not a policy think tank organization, we are really about boots on the ground. The best analogy I have for you is a kind of Tea Party movement. We’re here to teach the normies how to really get the attention of our politicians. One of our campaigns, for instance, was the one to push Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officials out of Canada — to have them named, shamed, and deported. It was brought up in Parliament, and that was largely because of the Allies for a Strong Canada campaign. We have a similar campaign running right now against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for obvious reasons. Our focus is on shared threats to the security and the sovereignty of the Western world and Canada at large. These are issues that affect every single Canadian, Jewish or gentile.I think fundamentally it’s an effectiveness issue. The Jewish organizations do great work, but again, the Jewish population is simply not large enough in Canada. They simply aren’t large enough in numbers, and also in political power. We have noticed something more than troubling when it comes to our politicians: They respond to what they take to be the loudest, most obnoxious factions. Those loud, obnoxious factions happen to be extremely well-organized and very well-funded. And if there’s going to be anyone who’s able to defend and preserve these Jewish issues, it’s going to have to come from outside the community.The key is showing that the issues that face the Jewish community are not particular to the Jewish community. The shuls are being shot up, but the churches are also burning, and it’s not just the churches that are burning. We are having our statues taken down. All of these issues are expressions not just of decline, but they are basically the opening salvos of a campaign against Western civilization as a whole, and that is really our key at Allies.I had first seen Allies for a Strong Canada online, and I was desperately trying to get a hold of them. It turns out that my brother happened to know the president and CEO, Michael Westcott, and it was because of that introduction that when I met Mr. Westcott, I basically pitched myself to him. I’m one of those people who did not want to be involved in politics. I found it vulgar. I found the people questionable, and I found the success rate and the effectiveness of many of these organizations to also be … I was quite skeptical. But this is something that I believe in.I will live and die on the hill of Western civilization. I was born to two Indian immigrant parents who came to this country, who love this country, and who view themselves as Canadian, and I grew up as a Sikh. So I was born in a country that I grew not only to love, but to admire. This country has given me everything and more. This country is the reason why a little girl like me is able to speak so boldly, so openly, and to speak on behalf of Western civilization.My belief is that the Canadian identity must come first. To have cultural cohesion in this nation, we must have one singular identity. It’s not that I reject the idea that one can be a Sikh and a Canadian; I just believe in a hierarchy of loyalties, and the first loyalty must be to Canada. So I reject the idea of the hyphens, the Sikh-Canadian, one, because it suggests that something comes before Canadian, and I believe this has really been the problem.I believe that you are Canadian, and then you can be a Sikh in private, et cetera, practice your fullest way of life. Funnily enough, the principles of Canada, the liberty that we engender, the equality we engender, the freedom of religion we engender, which again, is the unique inheritance of Western civilization, those principles allow for the greatest, fullest flourishing of many of these religious communities.One of the issues that I find with these Khalistani movements — and you see it with all of them, whether it’s the Khalistan movement, the CCP, or the IRGC — who are really the targets who suffer the most? It is the diaspora community. The ugly truth of this is this: Whether it’s Khalistan, whether it’s the CCP, whether it’s the IRGC, they view citizens here not as Canadians, but as their own. For example, the Khalistanis believe that if you’re a Sikh here, then you still fundamentally belong to India, that you’re never really Canadian.No foreign national group, interest, or nation should have such a hold over our sovereignty or such free power to move around and affect both policy and intimidate and harass our own citizens. That is a responsibility that falls on us to protect and preserve them against those people.I know polling suggests that Carney’s in a very strong position, that he’s very popular, but I’m a little skeptical and suspicious of polling, one, by methodology, two, by how the questions are framed. It is a very interesting time when two provinces are flirting with the idea of seceding from the confederation. Whether it succeeds or not is really not the point. It’s the fact that it’s taking place right now.With Alberta, we must understand, and we must be open to the fact that there are true, true grievances that Alberta has, and we must at least be able to openly name them and state what they are. For Alberta, I find they understand that the nation is in crisis, and they just happen to be much louder about it and much more angry about it. They, as the guardians of a large supply of energy, feel as if they are being left out of confederation, and they feel as if their grievances are never really responded to.I am a federalist. I want one nation. I want all my provinces. I don’t think that there is a Canada without Alberta or Quebec. I want them to be part of this large family, but I need Ottawa to be able to speak to them and at least address their concerns and grievances, and not dismiss them outright. They cannot be dismissed. To degrade them or talk down to them is not working. In fact, I think it’s actually making things worse. In many ways, the Carney government, every step it’s taking, especially in response to tariffs with the United States, is just ratcheting it up right now.We belong in the sphere of Western civilization. We are not a part of the tyrannical despotism that we see coming out of the CCP. We never have been. Canada has been among the foremost defenders of human rights around the world. This is almost a historical inheritance to our people, to our nation, and it’s something that we cannot stand for. We cannot stand for Uyghur slavery. We cannot stand for organ trafficking. We cannot stand for the encroachment and the pushing of despotism the world over.China is only interested in Canada insofar as we are attached to the United States, insofar as we have access to the American market, and insofar as we have access to American intelligence. Take that away, and China has no interest in us. It is entirely incompatible with our way of life as Canadians to be in any kind of strategic partnership with a way of life that believes that liberty is not promised to us … We believe in equality above all else. Those two ways of life cannot exist peacefully.It is to our eternal shame, and really a betrayal of the Canadian people, that we have not been told that the tariffs are about China, and I believe that as USMCA negotiations heat up in the next few weeks, we’re going to start hearing this much more. What we need to do is to be a fortress North America. There is no reason why Canada and the United States should not serve as the bulwark against the Communist Party in North America. That means shared economic security and prosperity, and that means shared continental security as well.Immigration is a threat because we are importing a lot of ways of life and beliefs that are incompatible with the Canadian way of life. The best view or the best example of this really is the Jew hatred that we have coming in. A lot of this is coming in through communities that come from places where they do not believe — or they already believe — that the Jews are some sort of existential threat. You see it as well with the Khalistani and with the CCP.So immigration at these levels is a major threat to our sovereignty and our cultural cohesion. But I want to say the problem is this: Assimilation has become a dirty word and a pejorative. Assimilation was actually written in the Lord Durham Report, and assimilation has a very specific meaning.Assimilation for a nation such as ours, for Western civilization, stems from the belief that our way of life is supreme, that our principles of liberty and equality for all are good, that they are true to human nature, that this is what man needs because man, for us, is born free and equal. Assimilation was actually a good thing because the idea used to be that we believe that liberty and equality — that promise applies to those coming from India, from China, from Iran — that freedom is a good thing. We thought it was benevolent that you assimilate to this way of life because it was better for you, that this is the best way of life.Unfortunately, the immigrants today are coming into a nation that does not believe that it is best, so they have nothing to assimilate into. These immigrants are coming to a nation that is no longer confident, no longer believes in itself. For a confident nation — one that believes in itself — assimilation immigration is not going to be a problem for them. It points to the crisis in Canadian civics and the Canadian identity because we no longer know who we are.Look, Aristotle only ever gave one definition of what it meant to be a Greek versus a barbarian. It’s in The Politics, book one, and I believe it applies to the West as a whole, and this is something personal for me. Aristotle said that the difference between the Greeks and the barbarians is that for the barbarians, a woman is a slave. I am extremely concerned, especially about the status of girls and what’s going to happen to little girls in this nation. I do not want to see a situation that we see in England with those grooming gangs targeting girls. I do not want to see a situation where we see female genital mutilation here considered one among many cultural acts or just something that should be protected because it’s just one more way of life. That is not what the West stands for.First of all, we need to know what’s in those MOUs. We need to release the MOUs that have been signed. We’re not even aware of what intelligence we’re sharing or exchanging right now. I’m quite confident that if Carney were to take a hard-line approach against the Communist Party of China, a lot of this would go away. I think that’s what the president wants to see. I think it would get us a deal in no time.Whether it comes to the Arctic, we should not be allowing Chinese exploration or Chinese research projects to take place in the Arctic. Those should be Canadian-led developments. They are not a near-Arctic power, no matter how many times they tell us that. We need to secure our own borders and our own ports. Look at Vancouver and what is happening right now. Fentanyl components pour into our nation. We have super labs here, and they don’t just affect Americans dying from fentanyl; they are affecting Canadians.Remember, Fortress North America is going to make Canada and the United States the shining city on a hill. The U.S. needs Canada because Canada, again, if Canada is captured by the CCP, the Monroe Doctrine is really null and void … And Canada needs the United States. We need their military power. We need their economic power.It was an electoral strategy, and it was successful in mounting this kind of anti-Americanism and using that as a kind of guise for Canadian patriotism. But there is a problem. It works with (Carney’s) electorate. They want to hear it, but there’s a limit to these ideologies. Reality has a very funny way of punching you in the face, and it’s coming to a head with (CUSMA) negotiations. That anti-Americanism might work domestically, but it does not work when negotiating with the largest military and economic power.I wrote an article for The Federalist, and in it I expressed that our anti-Americanism is a kind of narcotic that’s dulling the pain of our own decline. It’s a way for us to evade the problems at home, to look outside and not look at what’s going on in our own streets. This is a betrayal of our people. It’s a way to get Canadians riled up and to get angry and focused on Trump while ignoring what’s happening at home.Mr. Carney, after Mr. Lutnick’s comments about how (Canada) has no real strategy in trade negotiations, went on defence. He has spoken at length about (CUSMA) longer than any subject so far, in greater frequency, and for a longer period of time. There is real fear among many that I know that Mr. Carney was never serious about getting a deal with the United States. His behaviour and his actions betray someone who does not really want a deal with (CUSMA) — who’s very happy to continue on with China, because none of this otherwise makes sense.We voted for him because he said that he would diversify our trade, not divorce us from the United States. That is a bridge too far for many. It’s not just impractical, it’s poor politics, and it’s again, choosing despotism over freedom. This is not about economics. This isn’t even geopolitics. This is about good versus evil. This is about freedom versus tyranny, and whether Canada still remains as part of Western civilization or whether we’re going eastwards now. I do not believe the people of this country are open to the idea that we are no longer part of Western civilization.National PostOur website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our newsletters here. Join the Conversation This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.