Not-so-surprising news arrived recently from the University of California at San Diego: Academically, the kids are not all right. Not even close. “Between 2020 and 2025, the number of freshmen whose math placement exam results indicate they do not meet middle school standards grew nearly thirtyfold,” a report from the university’s senate finds. “A similarly large share of students must take additional writing courses to reach the level expected of high school graduates.” Read More

Palestinians in Gaza who applied to join relatives in Canada two years ago under Ottawa’s crisis immigration policy but haven’t received travel visas lost their lawsuits trying to force officials to act despite security problems in the war-torn region. Read More

More than two years after separating from Justin Trudeau, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau seems to coping with her ex's public romance with singer Katy Perry. Moreover, she credits him with stepping up to joint parent their three children. Read More

When Mark Carney launched the Major Projects Office in late August, he said it was designed to streamline regulatory approvals and help structure financing for proposals deemed to be in the national interest. Read More

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Thursday that his government is sending more critical minerals mining, clean electricity, and a liquefied natural gas project to a new federal office designed to streamline the regulatory approvals process. Read More

A Jewish group is urging the City of Toronto to cancel the raising of the Palestinian flag at city hall, as more than 20,000 people sign a petition saying it could "inadvertently cause division and tension." Read More

OTTAWA — The kids aren’t all right, warns Canada’s spy chief, as nearly one in 10 of CSIS’s terrorism investigations now involves at least one minor who was radicalized online. Read More

Ontario parents hoping for $10-a-day child care had better keep their fingers crossed. The $695 million in new federal money recently announced by Ontario Education Minister Paul Calandra will keep the child-care program in Ontario afloat at its current average daily rate of $19 until the end of next year, but it’s not nearly enough to expand capacity or reduce prices. Read More

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has had a difficult couple weeks. His only Nova Scotia-based MP, Chris d’Entremont, crossed the floor to the Liberals on Nov. 4. Alberta MP Matt Jeneroux then announced on Nov. 6 that he’ll be resigning his seat next spring. Read More

A 28-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly entering several homes in a single day and sexually assaulting multiple victims in Oshawa, Ontario. Read More

Chinese President Xi Jinping will not join the Group of 20 summit next week, a move that will be a blow to host South Africa that’s already facing a boycott by US President Donald Trump. Read More

In a world saturated with constant notifications and overloaded schedules, I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be still. Amid a flurry of deadlines and digital noise, I felt a desperate need to connect with something deeper, away from the hustle and bustle of daily life in Canada. Read More

You’ve got to give the ivory-tower folk credit where credit is due. In May of this year — a mere six months ago! — Alberta’s UCP government passed an omnibus election-procedures bill that lowered the threshold for petitioners seeking to use the province’s voter-recall legislation. Under the new rules, anyone who wants to dump their MLA has 90 days to gather a number of eligible-voter signatures in the riding that equals 60 per cent of the total votes cast there in the last general election. This was defended by the Conservative government, not in any great detail, as an accountability measure. And it was opposed by the New Democrat opposition, as one might expect. Read More

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Unionized Starbucks baristas are launching a wave of walkouts Thursday, a work stoppage they say could grow to become their biggest strike to date. Read More

Writer David Szalay deliberately dared his readers to face up to the "ickiness" of an affair between a 15-year-old boy and his much older married neighbour in the first chapter of his new book, "Flesh". Read More

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

Rahm Emanuel, former chief of staff to president Barack Obama and a potential presidential candidate in 2028, is an unlikely advocate for a program not normally associated with the Democrats: national service. Read More

In British Columbia, property rights are in turmoil. The B.C. Supreme Court recently declared that Aboriginal title exists on 800 acres of land in Richmond, a suburb of Vancouver. Aboriginal title, said the court, is “senior and prior” to fee simple interests. In the shadow of the decision, given the implications, Aboriginal title claims are receiving more attention. Kamloops and Sun Peaks ski resort are targets in one such claim. Meanwhile, the B.C. government has been conferring Aboriginal title across the province too. It continues to make agreements, such as on Haida Gwaii, to transfer control over land use in the province. Read More

It would have been sufficiently surreal that a U.S. president was entertaining a former al-Qaida militant at the White House who only two weeks earlier was still listed as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist with a $10 million bounty on his head. “Surreal” is a word that’s come up a lot in conversation about the event. Read More

The province of Ontario did something last month it has never done before — it defunded a supervised injection site because the chaos and disorder it was causing had reached unacceptable levels for the surrounding neighbours. Read More

An Indian man who paid a fixer $15,000 in a failed attempt to extend his work permit in Canada entered into an "illegal contract" and is not entitled to get his money back, according to a recent decision from Alberta's Court of Justice. Read More

PARIS — A decade on from deadly attacks in Paris, the world's two most notorious jihadist groups Islamic State (IS) and Al-Qaida have significantly evolved and their branches still pose a global security threat, especially from Africa, analysts say. Read More

A six-week clash between U.S. President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats that disrupted flights across the country and delayed food aid for millions is set to end within hours after the House passed a temporary funding bill. Read More