Lisa Raitt, Scott Brison and Frank McKenna sit in their Bay Street investment banker offices, and they have rural Canada on their minds. We’d say “finally,” but these three grew up in those communities. To many, though, especially those living in urban centres, we are entering a new era. Lisa, Scott and Frank know that to build and do big...
Last week Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said that Albertans’ desire to go their own way and separate from the rest of Canada has never been higher. That’s a strange thing to proclaim when only two days before the separatist party got a shellacking in three by-elections, one of them in the heartland of what used to be the independence movement...
Just before Parliament recessed for its summer break, it passed Bill C-5: The One Canadian Economy Act. The bill, passed by the Senate and now law, gives Ottawa the power to remove internal trade and labour barriers between provinces and territories if a project is deemed in the national interest. I can’t help but notice how this nation-building legislation, shaped...
Maybe Prime Minister Mark Carney’s elbows were getting tired. He kept them up the entire campaign, and well, that was enough to get the job done (the job, notably, being winning the election – not standing up to U.S. President Donald Trump). And now that the election is over, Mr. Carney has allowed himself some moments of rest.
For a while there, things were going so well. Prime Minister Mark Carney — aka “the Trump whisperer” — had morphed from critic to texting buddy of the U.S. President. Over the past three months, Carney had been chatting with Donald Trump, building backchannel goodwill. After the successful G7 summit in Kananaskis, Alta., hopes were high that Ottawa would strike...
The federal government needs to stop hiring generalist policy writers and start hiring experts in their field, and then hire managers and leaders with people and management expertise. That’s how we modernize this government.
Prime Minister Mark Carney feebly capitulated to President Donald Trump on Sunday night by rescinding Monday’s scheduled imposition of a retroactive digital services tax (DST) just two days after Trump suspended trade talks with Canada over the DST and promised to hit us with more tariffs in response. This humiliating public surrender would not have happened if the government had...
Just because Canada is a kinder and gentler place than the U.S., and just because we mediate our differences with civil words not civil wars, it doesn’t mean we don’t know how to stand up for ourselves. For a 158-year-old, Canada is looking pretty good. We have come through world wars, depressions, recessions, natural and unnatural disasters, and the special...
Wildfires are once again devastating vast areas of our country – from the Prairies to British Columbia and into Northern Ontario. Thousands of residents have been forced to evacuate. Children are being transported to safety. Smoke is choking towns and cities hundreds of kilometres away. Local leaders are working around the clock, co-ordinating shelters, mobilizing emergency services and holding their...
I still remember the hope I felt in 2002 when I chose to become a family doctor. It wasn’t the most popular career path in medical school, but for me, it was a calling — the chance to build lasting relationships with patients and be there through every stage of life. More than two decades later, it’s heartbreaking to see...
Donald Trump was in Canada several weeks too early to help this country celebrate Canada Day. But the U.S. president is one reason that the annual holiday will be more political than usual this year. As King Charles said when he read the throne speech in Parliament in May, there is a “renewed sense of pride” in this country at...
Last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney and our North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies agreed to a new defence investment pledge — investing 5 per cent of annual gross domestic product (GDP) by 2035. That figure includes 3.5 per cent on core military capabilities and 1.5 per cent on defence and security-related infrastructure, such as ports and emergency preparedness systems.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government is embracing unprecedented infrastructure investment as a defining policy priority. It wants to build infrastructure and defence material at a pace not seen before in this country. But as important as building is, it’s time for Canada to “think, baby, think” as well. In the past 80 years, Canada’s comfortable position in North America, allied...
My friend, Vanessa Davis, died on April 27. The day before her celebration of life, I was in St. John’s, Newfoundland. I’d planned to write her eulogy on the flight home to Winnipeg. I went for a walk that morning; it was bitterly cold. I saw an arrow pointing me toward the Terry Fox monument, and so I followed the...
Earlier this month, after the tragic crash of flight AI171 in Ahmedabad, India, en route to London, Gatwick, Air India CEO Campbell Wilson said what needed to be said. He “first and most importantly” expressed “deep sorrow,” stated that the airline would be “focused entirely on the needs of our passengers, crew members, their families and loved ones,” and calmly...
It might seem like an odd comparison, but there’s something of the Toronto Maple Leafs about Pierre Poilievre these days. Is he also on the verge of losing a key teammate to free agency? Is Andrew Scheer considering offers from Vegas?
Prime Minister Mark Carney was elected because he said he was the best leader to deal with Donald Trump in a tariff war.
For the most part since coming to office, Prime Minister Mark Carney has deftly used a mixture of discretion and flattery in managing Donald Trump. The process has been remarkably successful – it’s even been several days since Trump last talked about annexing Canada. Unfortunately, at a moment when Canada most needed to tread carefully, we’ve managed to score a...
I have a lot of friends who work in the public sector. Over the years, I’ve noticed that their approach to work is … different from those of us who’ve spent time in the private sector. Public service emphasizes process, consensus and caution. But in the private world? It’s simple: get it done or you may lose your job. Neither...
IN 1997, Andrew Steeves and Gary Dunfield sought to set up a small literary press. Steeves grew up outside Moncton, but he didn’t want the press to be in what he calls a place “littered with the trash of capitalism.” Ottawa, where Steeves went to university, was “the Death Star.” So Steeves and Dunfield opened up shop first in Wolfville...
Bell, Rogers, and Telus should be excluded from the wholesale internet access regime.
With Canadians across the country avoiding the United States like plague, many are looking to other ends of the country for their summer vacations. And they are, most likely, coming to a realization: Travelling across this country is really damn expensive. Base airfares from Canada’s two main air carriers on major routes have tripled in just five years, leaving Canadians...
Canada will have to find $150 billion in the sofa cushions to make good on its five per cent of GDP commitment this week to NATO in 2026. That’s $150 billion annually in the next 10 years. Split into two portions: 3.5 per cent of GDP dedicated to military spending and 1.5 per cent on “defence-adjacent’’ infrastructure investments.
Political power, it goes without saying, has become overly concentrated in the Prime Minister’s Office in recent decades. It’s the unelected appointees, the Katie Telfords, those who have the prime minister’s ear daily, who wield the power. They’re the inner circle – cabinet, the outer circle. We shouldn’t expect it to be much different under Prime Minister Mark Carney. Under...
An Ontario court justice has sent a strong message to criminal thugs all across the province who might find themselves in a scenario where they could help a friend evade justice: Go ahead. You won’t necessarily go to jail. In fact, you might be able to keep your gym membership. In July, 2023, in the Leslieville area of Toronto, Khalila...
When Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that the feds would be interested in pipeline projects for “decarbonized oil,” the folks at the Pathways Alliance must have felt their hearts skip a beat. The oilsands consortium took it as a sign that the federal government might embrace a pitch by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to approve a new pipeline to the...
In a world distracted by the dipsy-doodle diplomacy of U.S. President Donald Trump, it’s all too easy to dismiss Canada as a passive spectator in the long and troubled saga of the Middle East. But history tells a different story, one marked by bold diplomacy, principled independence and quiet but consequential leadership. Today, as the region edges toward wider conflict...
City hall is removing a historically accurate mosaic of Samuel de Champlain in an attempt to sanitize the past
It's time to confront the TDSB's mismanagement and the structural failings of our educational governance model
Well that was easy. Canada has just officially signed on to NATO’s latest target for military spending: 5 per cent of GDP, to be achieved by 2035. All it took was a stroke of the prime ministerial pen. If only most things in life were so simple. We only just announced, as you’ll recall, that we’d meet NATO’s former target...
There is still hope, in this desperate hour, for Canada to change course on a controversial bill that has outraged Indigenous leaders and threatens to destroy any goodwill brokered between the treaty partners that built this country. The Senate, which has a healthy number of Indigenous senators, and Mary Simon, Canada’s first Indigenous Governor-General, could have a role to play...
Thursday or Friday, the Senate will hold its final vote on bill C-5, which contains two bills in one, one on internal free trade, the other the Building Canada Act. By all indications, a large majority of senators will vote in favour of the bill. They shouldn’t. The Building Canada Act will give Prime Minister Mark Carney’s cabinet the authority...
Whether it’s attracting investment, ensuring labour mobility, or improving productivity, housing is what makes economic growth and transformation possible.
A month after losing the election, Pierre Poilievre made personal phone calls to a number of right-wing influencers who’d helped fuel his campaign. He wanted to thank them for their work — and, presumably, get them to start talking about him again. These are the political content creators with tens or hundreds of thousands of followers on Youtube, X, TikTok...
Canada’s public service has a new top dog. Michael Sabia, a former deputy finance minister and CEO in both the public and private sectors, was appointed by Prime Minister Mark Carney as Clerk of the Privy Council, cabinet secretary, and head of the public service. “I can’t think of a better person to be Clerk of the Privy Council than...
As the hoarding came down around the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald at Ontario’s legislative compound earlier this month, the countdown began: How many days until some misguided activist decides to once again deface this tribute to Canada’s most consequential prime minister?
