Prime Minister Mark Carney wrapped up his two-day, pro-Canada barnstorming tour of Alberta by rallying with thousands of supporters in his hometown on Friday night. "Alberta's my home," Carney said as thousands erupted in cheers in a party-like atmosphere at Edmonton's Expo Centre. "I grew up here," said Carney. "This city, this province, this country, have given me everything --...
Canada’s prime minister and Alberta’s premier tapped a keg, had a beer, sang O Canada and made a last-ditch pitch Friday for the province to stay in Confederation. It was a Maple Leaf love affair for Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. About 50 people squeezed in and jockeyed for position inside Red Hart Brewing in Red...
Machines do battle as Canada seeks to turbocharge drone, counter-drone industries. The Suffield Research Centre is in the heart of Alberta's Big Sky country, and is also blessed with Canada's sunniest skies, making it the perfect testing ground for one of Canada's most critical areas of innovation: drone and counter-drone technology. Once the main training ground for the tank crews...
For the first time in Canadian history, there’s an artist appointed by Parliament to promote the arts in this country, and the man chosen says he feels as if he’s been handed a blank roll of film. “The fact that this is the first time for this role, it’s a great opportunity to explore what this can or cannot be,”...
The referendum about referendums is just days away in Alberta, and Mark Carney is pulling out all the stops. There are ten questions on the ballot, not just one, and the results could have a big impact not just on Alberta, but on Canada as well. Bruce and Chantal with their thoughts on that, plus the latest shot from the...
Our latest survey finds Albertans are increasingly inclined to remain in Canada ahead of the October 19 referendum. Support for starting the process toward a binding vote on separation has not moved, with those who were undecided breaking towards remaining.
The ‘remain’ and ‘leave’ campaigns may be wrapping up as the time nears for referendum ballots to be counted, but few Albertans believe the separatist issue will be buried regardless of how Monday’s referendum turns out. New data from the non-profit Angus Reid Institute finds three-in-five (62%) Albertans believing “there will never be an end to the separatist movement” in...
The Alberta premier is acutely aware that another split on the right could lead to the UCP's downfall
Daniel Allain has been elected leader of New Brunswick's Progressive Conservative party. Allain, a Cabinet minister in the last PC government, won with more than half of the party votes. The only other candidate, Don Monahan, was elected two years ago as a first-time provincial Tory legislator. Allain, who spent four years as a Dieppe city councillor bef
for less accountability when it comes major defence contracts with the government’s plan to set up the Defence Investment Agency as a Crown corporation. Procurement Ombud Alexander Jeglic said he is “not advocating for the oversight of the DIA” by his office, but stressed that defence procurement needs a clear oversight mechanism, in an Oct. 15 interview with The Hill...
Growing up in Huntsville, Ont., I learned early that community is not an abstract concept. It has faces and names. This was not simply something I observed; it was my lived experience. Months before my 16th birthday, determined to chart a path different from the one my parents had envisioned for me, I left home. I had no plan.
Four days before the latest test of this 159-year-old Confederation — a nation that has given the world both insulin and Céline Dion — Mark Carney went to Calgary to make the case for carrying on. "Canada isn't perfect, but we are the best," he said. "And we are getting better." A day before Carney arrived, Naheed Nenshi, the leader...
A few months ago, I was talking to Michael Wernick, the former clerk of the Privy Council, and we wandered onto the subject of Alberta’s secession vote. Mr. Wernick – now the Jarislowsky Chair in public management at the University of Ottawa – said something that’s been stuck in my brain ever since. Say the referendum delivers a stout margin...
Tax reform is one of those issues that confounds conventional political wisdom. The conventional wisdom, to which most politicians subscribe, is to move cautiously, incrementally, ploddingly – to do “nothing by halves/ Which can be done by quarters.”
There’s a term in psychology for people who accuse others of doing what they themselves are guilty of: projection. A chronic liar thinks everyone else lies too. A cheater assumes others must cheat. So pointing a finger comes naturally. Plus it’s a great way to turn the tables and deflect attention from your own sins.
In May 2006, a reporter asked then-finance minister Jim Flaherty about the new Conservative minority government’s poll numbers. That same week, an Ipsos-Reid survey showed the Conservatives were up to 43 per cent support nationally. “I think it’s a credit to Prime Minister Stephen Harper,” said Flaherty, “because Canadians are thirsty for a real leader. They don’t agree with everything...
There’s a fatal flaw in Mark Carney’s grand foreign policy designs: the world has only one Mark Carney. That’s bad news for his plan to build out a bulwark against the great powers — “the hegemons,” as he calls them. With liberal internationalist leaders losing power by the day, this work is only getting tougher.
Intelligence agencies have reportedly warned that Moscow is upping preparations to assassinate leaders of companies supplying drones to Ukraine
The federal budget expected next month would be a good time for Mark Carney to start thinking small. Not in terms of economic ambition. This is not a case to pivot hard into fiscal-restraint mode, when there’s still tons to be done to get this country to compete more aggressively for investment and growth and a reduced reliance on the...
Some conservatives believe they struggle to win elections because of media bias. Some say it’s because they are unfairly maligned by people on the left. These points are debatable, but to me they are a distraction from the real reasons Conservatives are finding it hard to get traction today. Voters prioritize economic policy, keeping taxes down, and promoting trade and...
In her just-released book, Chrystia Freeland writes that she is “profoundly, sometimes embarrassingly, earnest.” True. A bit school-marmish, you might say. She also describes herself as “diminutive.” True also. At barely over five feet, she was rather unimposing. Not the most advantageous qualities for a politician. And yet she became the most powerful woman politician Canada ever produced.
One year ago this week, Doug Ford unveiled the anti-tariff ad that incurred the wrath of Donald Trump. Former deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland was given an early look at that ad, she reveals in her new book, which also makes clear she was a fan of standing up to Trump that way, even if it did make the president...
Canada is often described as a divided country, and of course it is. No country as large and diverse as ours, built on two official languages, 10 provinces, several dozen Crown-indigenous treaties and countless ethnicities, could fail to be. But lots of other countries have similar divisions, without arriving at the fix we are now in, with not one but...
Voters, please don’t be fooled into voting no to Canada in order to “send Ottawa a message.” Article content Convincing you to do that is the strategy of failed separatists who are trying to pull victory out of the voting that concludes next Monday. In this context, sending a message means endorsing a genuine separation referendum at some vague point...
If Canadians focused solely on recent commentary from union leaders and their lawyers, they’d be forgiven for thinking the current Liberal government has been engaged in a long battle against workers’ rights, culminating in a final charge against the right to strike.
First of all, that title. Chrystia Freeland chose to call her new book “Unreliable Boyfriend” — the boyfriend in question being the United States — which puts the focus firmly on her role in managing Canada’s fraught relationship with Donald Trump’s America.
Prime Minister Mark Carney has built his political reputation on being the adult in the room — and a man at ease in the corridors of power. He’s a former central banker with friends in high places, a guy who understands how the world works, and, supposedly, a leader who can handle U.S. President Donald Trump. Article content But this...
The moment for voting approaches on the Alberta referendum, and the separatists, having seemingly largely failed to convince a critical mass of Albertans to adopt their millenarian view of the province’s place within Confederation, are now putting an awful lot of weight in an alternate way to make their case – namely, that this is all about leverage. Leverage, you...
It’s unlikely Mark Carney was aiming to relaunch a national immigration debate when he popped into the New York Times last month and mentioned in passing that Canada will “resume some controlled increase in the population” once the system is under control. But that, unsurprisingly, has been the result — with opposition MPs warning about Ottawa again letting in “too...
It didn’t take long for Elon Musk, one of President Donald Trump’s attack dogs, to stick his unwelcome nose into Canada’s domestic political drama. Shortly after the Parti Québécois’s election victory on October 5th, he endorsed Quebec independence and, to pour more gasoline on the fire, said Alberta and Saskatchewan should leave Canada too. Musk, who has Canadian roots, studied...
For decades, public discourse regarding Indigenous economies in Ontario has been framed through a narrow lens of dependency or isolated community-level initiatives. Our firm’s comprehensive report, Indigenous Economic Contribution Analysis of Ontario, changes that narrative entirely. By integrating Statistics Canada’s Indigenous Peoples Economic Account with provincial input-output models, new data show that Indigenous economic activity is a robust, widely distributed...
Enough is enough. It is not at all certain that the world can take two more years of United States President Donald Trump. A dangerous and possibly demented man occupies the most powerful office in the world, and he is increasingly using it to lash out at anyone who opposes him.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of last week’s provincial election in Quebec was not the threat of constitutional turmoil, or even separation—which does not feel imminent, for various reasons. It was the silence, from nearly all parties, concerning legislation aimed at driving Muslim women who wear a hijab from public life in the province. That isn’t the stated goal of...
If it has been said that the first job of a Canadian prime minister is national unity, it was easier in recent years to forget. Before this summer, it had been 30 years since a prime minister had to worry about a provincial referendum to secede. Before this week, it had been more than a decade since a prime minister...
Most Canadians don’t know much about the Singh decision. But if you’re the country’s Immigration Minister, you must. So it was alarming that Lena Metlege Diab seemed confused when she was asked about the seminal 1985 Supreme Court decision in an interview for a Radio-Canada podcast.
On Monday, Albertans vote on whether to stay in Canada or hold another binding referendum on quitting Canada. If the vote goes as polls suggest, a majority of Albertans will mark an X to stay in Confederation, and Premier Danielle Smith has said if that's so, she expects everyone to accept it and move on. Leaders of the independence movement...
It's no secret the long-held Canadian consensus on immigration has fractured -- pulled apart by a rapid increase in new arrivals post-pandemic and growing affordability challenges. Now, that fracture is starting to show up at the ballot box. The Parti Quebecois won a minority mandate in Quebec on a platform that included promises of tighter immigration controls, which the party...
'I think both countries are at fault. I think countries have reacted based on emotion rather than fact,' said retired General Glen VanHerck
In the final days ahead of Alberta’s referendum, MPs from all political stripes are speaking up for a united Canada, though the province’s lone NDP MP says Ottawa is “sleepwalking” on separatism, while a political scientist says the Conservative Party has been “largely silent” in campaigning for unity. “I think the federal government is sleepwalking. I think they’re asleep at...
International Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu said trade talks between Canada and India advanced over the past week as he led a major trade mission to New Delhi, Bengaluru and Mumbai. A statement from his office said the mission included representatives from nearly 300 Canadian businesses and exporters, and resulted in 34 commercial agreements worth almost $300 million. It said the...
A company pursuing a wind and hydrogen development in Nova Scotia says it has plans for a $10-billion AI data centre in Cape Breton that it describes as the largest private investment in provincial history. EverWind Fuels announced Friday that an unnamed "leading frontier AI developer" has signed a 20-year lease for a 18,600-square metre data centre in Point Tupper...
Industry Minister Mélanie Joly said Friday the U.S.-based owner of Stelco must uphold job commitments it made when it purchased the Ontario-based steelmaker or risk being forced to sell its Canadian assets. In a speech at the Canadian Club in Toronto, she also raised the possibility of the federal government taking equity positions in strategic industries. But Joly stopped short...
Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says he understands separatist disillusionment with the state of affairs in Canada but that quitting isn't the answer. Poilievre says quitting is the easy way out and Albertans are not quitters. He says the solution is to restore the greatness of a country that has been defended and built up through generations.
Immigration Minister Lena Diab is signalling immigration levels will be going up, as Canada’s population growth has seen a significant slowdown over the past two years. In September, Prime Minister Mark Carney told The New York Times that Canada will eventually resume a “controlled increase” in its population once the immigration system remains fully under control. Asked Friday at a...
Prime Minister Mark Carney continues his pro-Canada campaign in Alberta today as the clock ticks down to a referendum on whether the province should break up with Confederation. He is set to visit Red Deer with Premier Danielle Smith and later rally in Edmonton with the federalist group Forever Canadian. Carney spoke Thursday at one of the group's rallies in...
A massive data centre to provide computing power for artificial intelligence is under pre-construction just outside Port Hawkesbury in Cape Breton. EverWind Fuels said it will build the facility in two stages, with the first phase to come online by the end of 2027 and the second in 2028. The company, headed by Australian-American private equity veteran Trent Vichie, had...
Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, a longtime British Columbia NDP ally whose late wife was a legislator for the party, has thrown his support behind Green Party Leader Emily Lowan in her bid to win in her Vancouver Island riding. Lowan posted the endorsement from the president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs on social media on Friday, with Phillip...
Ottawa is adding new express entry points for permanent residency applicants in "high-wage" jobs. The government also plans to remove the requirement for an employer to prove they can't find a qualified Canadian for those jobs. Immigration Minister Lena Diab's two-pronged announcement in Kitchener, Ont., first adds new express entry points for people with Canadian work experience or with a...
“I sleep well at night,” Mike Spence says over breakfast at the Seaport Hotel, which he co-owns. The mayor of Churchill, Man., he also co-owns Wat’chee Expeditions, which has a lodge near Wapusk National Park, and he’s the chair of Arctic Gateway Group, a private company that owns the Port of Churchill, the site of a proposed new multibillion-dollar megaproject...
For the second day in a row, the federal government is announcing plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to train more skilled workers in Canada. Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu is in her home riding of Thunder Bay today rolling out a plan to spend up to $258.6 million over the next five years to train workers in critical...
Both in Alberta and nationwide, the focus of Monday’s referendum has been on the question of separation. But that’s just one of 10 questions being put to Albertans. In a variety of camps, the others are referred to as “the nine.”
Ottawa should be mindful of the risks of deepening trade with China because Beijing could leverage it for economic coercion in the future, says a prominent Tokyo-based academic on a Canadian speaking tour, sponsored by Japan’s government. Kazuto Suzuki is a professor at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Public Policy and a member of the government’s Council for...
Ahead of the federal budget, the government is under pressure to make Canada a more competitive place for business investment – but the task is a tricky political undertaking
Adviser wrote in June 2024 that Canada has international obligations to ICC. An internal memo told Justin Trudeau's government that it was expected to pursue the arrests of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his then defence minister and Hamas leaders if the International Criminal Court were to issue the warrants being prepared by one of its prosecutors. Trudeau and his...
With just days before Alberta's vote on an independence referendum, longtime Quebec sovereigntists are distancing themselves from the western province's separatists. Question 10 of 10 on Monday's referendum ballot asks whether Alberta should remain in Canada or if the government should start the legal process to hold a subsequent, binding referendum on separation. Advance polls opened Tuesday and run until Saturday.
Referendum day in Alberta is on Monday. The provincial referendum has 10 questions about immigration policy, constitutional reform, and whether Alberta should remain in Canada or hold a binding, second referendum on quitting the country. Advance voting locations opened Tuesday and close Saturday night. Over 1,400 polling stations will be open Monday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Here's what...
Prime Minister Mark Carney told thousands rallying in Calgary on Thursday night that Albertans should vote to keep the province in Canada, arguing that failing to do so would cause "deep division and great uncertainty." "Vote like Canada depends on it," he told a crowd of roughly 5,000 people. "Because it does." Carney spoke at a Forever Canadian rally ahead...
The CEO of Cleveland-Cliffs said the company’s decision to issue hundreds of layoff notices at the Stelco plant in Hamilton, Ont., was a “business decision to concentrate production.” In an exclusive interview with BNN Bloomberg Thursday, Lourenco Goncalves said he intends to rehire the laid off workers, calling the job cuts “temporary.” “Stelco is having a great year, we are...
OTTAWA -- Former deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland says it's important for national security reasons that Canada do everything it can to diversify trade away from the United States.
One of the most recognizable names in Canadian politics — who served as the prime minister’s top deputy for nearly a decade before playing a pivotal role in his political downfall — is telling all in a new book. Chrystia Freeland’s 416-page book, titled “Unreliable Boyfriend,” describes itself as “part memoir, part polemic, and part blueprint for Globalization 2.0,” giving...
Billions of dollars are being pumped into defence. “If we are going to rearm,” says Flavio Volpe, “shouldn’t we do it ourselves?” If Flavio Volpe’s plan comes together, Canadian automotive workers will soon be building military vehicles, creating a crucial backstop for an industry imperilled by the trade war with the United States.
Prime Minister Mark Carney was swamped by selfie-seeking well-wishers Thursday as he toured through Alberta's largest city to rally the pro-Canada vote ahead of Monday's referendum on separation. Carney urged Albertans to not only vote for Confederation, but to also reject the nine other questions on the ballot involving immigration and the Constitution. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she needs...
The British Columbia Conservatives have dumped a teenage candidate in the provincial election after he was accused of posting "offensive" online remarks about Hitler and the Holocaust. The party said Thursday that Vancouver-Strathcona candidate Jordan McIntosh was no longer a Conservative candidate and if elected he would not sit in the caucus. The Conservatives announced his removal from the slate...
Trudeau first asked Freeland to run in 2013. He fired her over Zoom 11 years later. In Unreliable Boyfriend, one-time finance minister and deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland digs into how her political relationship with Justin Trudeau went from a warm face-to-face invite into public service to a cold Zoom call where he booted her from the finance role years...
Cindy Mitchell left the federal public service this past spring through workforce adjustment, the process used when federal positions are being cut or eliminated. She was entitled to a transition payment, including $42,151 that was supposed to be transferred into her registered retirement savings plan. The money was issued as a paper cheque. It never reached her bank.
Rallies organized by the No Kings network opposed to President Donald Trump were held Saturday in cities and communities across the U.S., with an aim of getting people out to vote early in the midterm elections.
White House press secretary Katie Zacharia is transitioning out of the role after a brief and rough tenure as President Donald Trump's chief spokeswoman. A person familiar with the matter said Zacharia is transitioning out of the job. The person was granted anonymity to discuss a personnel decision not yet made public.
President Donald Trump suggested on Friday that his newly minted press secretary, Katie Zacharia, might not stay on the job much longer. Trump said he told Zacharia that she didn't have to do this job and that if he were her, he would reconsider the position. Zacharia faced mounting questions about her background and resume during her first week on...
At a packed rally in Texas Thursday, James Talarico compared his U.S. Senate campaign to David -- who fought Goliath -- as the Democrat faces more than $158 million in outside spending by Republican leadership and the world's richest man, Elon Musk.
Ottawa should be mindful of the risks of deepening trade with China because Beijing could leverage it for economic coercion in the future, says a prominent Tokyo-based academic on a Canadian speaking tour, sponsored by Japan’s government. Kazuto Suzuki is a professor at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Public Policy and a member of the government’s Council for...
Adviser wrote in June 2024 that Canada has international obligations to ICC. An internal memo told Justin Trudeau's government that it was expected to pursue the arrests of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his then defence minister and Hamas leaders if the International Criminal Court were to issue the warrants being prepared by one of its prosecutors. Trudeau and his...
U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra says American officials are "closely watching" Canadian politicians for signs of election interference ahead of the pivotal midterms next month. During an interview on the "The Really Big Show" podcast that was posted last week, Hoekstra said political ads run by the province of Ontario last year could be interpreted as political interference. U.S...
Pete Hoekstra, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, is warning Canadian politicians to stay out of American politics, saying officials are monitoring potential “political interference in the U.S. midterms.” In an interview with “The Really Big Show” podcast, Hoekstra suggested the actions of several Canadian politicians, including Industry Minister Mélanie Joly, could amount to interference in close American races just weeks...
Canada, France, the United Kingdom and Australia expressed deep "regret" Tuesday over the postponement of Palestinian presidential and legislative elections. The votes were set to happen next month. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has delayed them until September 2027. In a media statement, Canada and its allies said the delay deprives Palestinians of the chance to vote and noted that elections...
The federal government’s internal accountability regime continues to grow more complex. Public service leadership is detached from policy implementation and socialized to avoid risk. Public servants should be evaluated on the rules they remove and services delivered. Those with delivery experience should be rotated periodically into roles that establish internal processes and policies. Improving the federal accountability regime requires simplifying...
Amid U.S. President Donald Trump’s on-again-off-again trade war, trade diversification has been the talk of the town. But for a country like Canada, which has long felt the gravitational pull of the enormous U.S. market, diversifying trade will be no easy feat. It also shouldn’t be the goal in and of itself. As the first part of the IRPP’s new...
Canada’s aim to diversify and grow its exports will inevitably mean a significant focus on building deeper and more beneficial linkages with the Asia-Pacific. In this report, we show that Canada’s diversification challenge cannot be fully solved by merely substituting one large market with many small ones, nor by assuming that supply chains can quickly or easily be re-wired. To...
A collection of SubStack publishing within Canadian public affairs.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s ad-lib brought down the house at Thursday night’s Forever Canadian rally in Calgary. “They’re a little touchy down there at the moment,” he added, to roars from a crowd of about 5,000.
RCMP officers who responded to the April 2020 mass murders in Nova Scotia will receive bravery medals from Governor General Louise Arbour. An announcement is expected “imminently,” says an Arbour spokesperson. The medals follow 23 awards for excellence quietly distributed last year by RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme to RCMP members and employees who managed the grisly incident, in which 2...
Prime Minister Mark Carney has finally charted a course out of the morass that is 24 Sussex Drive, the official residence of Canada’s prime ministers since 1951. Carney’s June announcement of a private-sector competition to “modernize” the decrepit building, abandoned in 2015 and later put into mothballs, was welcomed by heritage advocates as an end to a political impasse. A...
NDP Leader Avi Lewis joins Nick Taylor-Vaisey for a bonus episode of “Playbook Canada.” In a wide-ranging interview, they discuss the prime minister’s popularity, fishbowl culture, how to talk to Albertans about oil, what socialism means today, the U.S. politicians Lewis is watching and what he’s learned about his late father Stephen’s legacy. They also discuss Bill C-39, the government’s...
In the last days of Alberta’s referendum campaign, Catherine Cullen talks to the Alberta NDP leader and the head of a pro-separatist third-party advertiser about their plans to get out the vote on Monday – and the pitfalls of thinking that the referendum outcome is in the bag. Then, foreign interference has been a top concern in the lead up...
For nearly five years, Ukraine has defied expectations, resisting a much larger military with Western support and remarkable resilience. But is one of its most important allies in the process of changing sides?
A pay raise feels earned. Higher prices feel like something being taken away. When incomes fail to keep pace, the consequences reach well beyond the household budget.
