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‘I love every square meter of this country’: Jim Carr, Canadian Jewish MP, dies at 71
(JTA) — Jim Carr was close to death from myeloma, a blood cancer, when he gave one of his last interviews to the Canadian national broadcaster, the CBC.
The Jewish Liberal member of the Canadian parliament from Winnipeg went on air ostensibly to speak about the passage of a bill he authored promoting an environmentally friendly economy in the prairie provinces that nurtured him into adulthood.
But he made it about the country he had represented in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet, the country he helped market abroad as the minister of international trade diversification from 2018 to 2019.
“Physically not great,” he said when a reporter asked him how he was doing, “but emotionally really, really solid and grateful for the chance to continue to contribute to my country. I love every square meter of this country in English, en Francais, in Indigenous languages — I wish I spoke more of them — in the language of the newly arrived and all that represents to Canada and Canadians.”
It was an identity he wrapped into his Jewishness. “I can’t separate my values and political views from my identity as a Canadian and as a member of the Jewish community,” he told the Canadian Jewish News when he was first elected to the federal parliament in 2015.
Carr died at 71 on Dec. 12, days after Canadian lawmakers passed his bill, Building a Green Prairie Economy. Members of parliament of all parties praised him as a moderate who sought to bring rivals together to better his country.
Carr had been able to speak on the floor of parliament the day the bill passed. In his remarks, he strayed from the topic at hand to praise the Canadian traditions of moderation and cooperation, frayed in recent years by increased polarization.
“The wisdom of inviting witnesses to add thoughtful commentary and an opposition that has been respectful though occasionally dissenting are what a democracy is all about, and it is always rooted in strengthening the national fabric, woven as it is from those mini threads that make Canada the envy of the world,” he said.
“With resources, natural and human, comes responsibility to each other and to the world itself. How could we not be humbled by the greatness of this magnificent country?”
Trudeau teared up in a scheduled end-of-year interview with the Canadian Press, a wire service, when asked about Carr’s death. Carr’s contributions to his Cabinet, in which Carr served in various roles from 2015 to 2021, were imbued “with such a passionate thoughtfulness about the country and how all the parts needed to fit together in order for us to be what we wanted to be.”
Carr was born the descendant of Russian Jewish immigrants in Winnipeg’s closely-knit Jewish community. He said his Jewish upbringing, and the antisemitism he encountered as a teenager, helped shape him and informed his leading efforts to bring Canadian Jews and Muslims together. He was a member of the Jewish-Muslim caucus in the Liberal Party and founded Arab-Jewish Dialogue of Winnipeg.
As trade diversification minister, he led a mission to Israel in 2018. “I’m delighted as (a) Jewish member of Parliament and as a Jewish member of the cabinet to be here representing Canada,” the Canadian Jewish News quoted Carr as saying on that trip.
Carr served in the Manitoba legislature from 1988 to 1992 and as executive director of a number of groups, including the Business Council of Manitoba, and was well-regarded in the province. Trudeau recruited him to run for office as part of his successful strategy to regain power for the Liberals in 2015.
Despite his extensive career in politics, Carr always harbored an affection for one of his first jobs, oboist in the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.
Marc Garneau, a Liberal colleague in parliament from Quebec and a former astronaut, posted his “best remembrance” of Carr on Twitter.
“He asked me if I took music in Space and I mentioned [Alessandro] Marcello’s Oboe concerto,” Garneau said. “He then told me he played the oboe and we cooked up the idea for him to play the 2nd movement at Liberal national caucus.
“He was excellent.”
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UK PM Starmer Says There Could Be New Powers to Ban Pro-Palestinian Marches
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer gives a media statement at Downing Street in London, Britain, April 30, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Jack Taylor/File photo
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the government could ban pro-Palestinian marches in some circumstances because of the “cumulative effect” the demonstrations had on the Jewish community after two Jewish men were stabbed in London on Wednesday.
Starmer told the BBC that he would always defend freedom of expression and peaceful protest, but chants like “Globalize the Intifada” during demonstrations were “completely off limits” and those voicing them should be prosecuted.
Pro-Palestinian marches have become a regular feature in London since the October 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel that triggered the Gaza war. Critics say the demonstrations have generated hostility and become a focus for antisemitism.
Protesters have argued they are exercising their democratic right to spotlight ongoing human rights and political issues related to the situation in Gaza.
Starmer said he was not denying there were “very strong legitimate views about the Middle East, about Gaza,” but many people in the Jewish community had told him they were concerned about the repeat nature of the marches.
Asked if the tougher response should focus on chants and banners, or whether the protests should be stopped altogether, Starmer said: “I think certainly the first, and I think there are instances for the latter.”
“I think it’s time to look across the board at protests and the cumulative effect,” he said, adding that the government needed to look at what further powers it could take.
Britain raised its terrorism threat level to “severe” on Thursday amid mounting security concerns that foreign states were helping fuel violence, including against the Jewish community.
“We are seeing an elevated threat to Jewish and Israeli individuals and institutions in the UK,” the head of counter-terrorism policing, Laurence Taylor, said in a statement, adding that police were also working “against an unpredictable global situation that has consequences closer to home, including physical threats by state-linked actors.”
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War Likely to Resume After Trump’s Rejection of Latest Proposal, Says IRGC General
Iranians carry a model of a missile during a celebration following an IRGC attack on Israel, in Tehran, Iran, April 15, 2024. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
i24 News – A senior Iranian military figure said that fighting with the US was “likely” to resume after President Donald Trump stated he was dissatisfied with Tehran’s latest proposal, regime media reported on Saturday.
The comments of General Mohammad Jafar Asadi, one of the top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders, were relayed by the Fars news agency, considered as a mouthpiece of the the powerful paramilitary body.
“Evidence has shown that the Americans do not not adhere to any commitments,” Asadi was quoted as saying.
He further added that Washington’s decision-making was “primarily media-driven aimed first at preventing a drop in oil prices and second at extricating themselves from the mess they have created.”
Iranian armed forces are ready “for any new adventures or foolishness from the Americans,” he said, going to assert that the Iran war would prove for the US a tragedy comparable with what was for Israel the October 7 massacre.
“Just as our martyred Leader said that the Zionist regime will never be the same as before the Al‑Aqsa Storm operation [the name chosen by Hamas leadership for the October 7, 2023 massacre in southern Israel], the United States will also never return to what it was before its attack on Iran,” he said. “The world has understood the true nature of America, and no matter how much malice it shows now, it is no longer the America that many once feared.”
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Trump Says US Navy Acting ‘Like Pirates’ to Carry Out Naval Blockade of Iranian Ports
A view of Iranian-flagged cargo ship M/V Touska as the US Navy Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided missile destroyer USS Spruance conducts its interception in a location given as the north Arabian Sea, in this screen capture from a video released April 19, 2026. Photo: CENTCOM/Handout via REUTERS
President Donald Trump said on Friday the US Navy was acting “like pirates” in carrying out Washington’s naval blockade of Iranian ports during the US and Israel’s war against Iran.
Trump made the comments while describing the seizure by US forces of a ship a few days ago.
“We took over the ship, we took over the cargo, we took over the oil. It’s a very profitable business,” Trump said in remarks on Friday evening. “We’re like pirates. We’re sort of like pirates but we are not playing games.”
Some of Tehran’s vessels have been seized by the US after leaving Iranian ports, along with sanctioned container ships and Iranian tankers in Asian waters.
Iran has blocked nearly all ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz apart from its own since the start of the war. Trump has imposed a separate blockade of Iranian ports.
The US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28. Iran responded with its own strikes on Israel and Gulf states that host US bases. US-Israeli strikes on Iran and Israeli attacks in Lebanon have killed thousands and displaced millions.
The war has raised oil prices and led to the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for about 20 percent of global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments.
Trump, who has offered shifting timelines and goals for the war that remains unpopular in the US, has faced widespread condemnation over his comments on the conflict, including when he threatened to destroy Iran’s entire civilization last month.
Many US experts said last month that American strikes on Iran may amount to war crimes after Trump threatened to target civilian infrastructure.