As federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre faces calls to make changes following his April election loss, the manager who ran that campaign remains an advisor, but is taking a less visible role, at least for now. Jenni Byrne’s future with the party has been a source of discussion among MPs and other Conservative supporters frustrated by the party’s loss to...
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and her hand-picked panel heard from several Albertans Tuesday who argued the only way to get the province a fair deal from Ottawa is to leave confederation. The event in Red Deer was the first in a series of town halls to address public concerns with the federal government. Some 450 people showed up to put...
Amid calls for increased transparency over the Liberal government’s negotiations with the United States, a member of the prime minister’s Canada-U.S. advisory council says that clarity will have to wait until trade talks are completed. Prime Minister Mark Carney (Nepean, Ont.) has been mum on what precisely he is seeking to accomplish in trade negotiations with U.S. President Donald Trump...
Prime Minister Mark Carney is scheduled to be in Hamilton today to make an announcement related to the steel industry. It has been more than a month since U.S. President Donald Trump doubled tariffs on steel and aluminum from 25 to 50 per cent, adding further economic insult to the two industries in Canada.
An Alberta Conservative MP said she thinks the measles outbreak in her province can be traced back to the COVID pandemic and loss of trust in vaccines due to the federal government’s lack of transparency about their risks. Article content “Years after COVID, broken trust in government health directives has not been addressed for many Canadians,” Michelle Rempel Garner, formerly...
The Weekly Nanos Tracking is produced by the Nanos Research Corporation, headquartered in Canada, which operates in Canada and the United States. The data is based on random interviews with 1,000 Canadian consumers (recruited by RDD land- and cell-line sample), using a four-week rolling average of 250 respondents each week, 18 years of age and over. The random sample of...
Another day, another tariff threat from the Trump administration. This time, U.S. President Donald Trump suggested in a letter that Canada will be subject to a 35-per-cent tariff on all goods by Aug. 1. For Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Canadian negotiating team, the approach appears to centre on keeping their head down rather than their elbows up. Canadians...
The Calgary Stampede is inevitable: no politician or pundit can resist its terrible gravity, its faux-cowboy charm, free breakfasts and boozy fundraisers. So, too, is the Conservatives’ annual Stampede barbecue, a highlight of the political circuit, which this year allowed Pierre Poilievre to emerge from stasis after a disappointing spring election result. And emerge he did, offering his base a...
Prime Minister Mark Carney is expected to announce support for the Canadian steel industry, which has been clobbered by U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs, at an event in Hamilton, Ont., later this morning. A spokesperson with his office said the announcement will impact Canadian steelworkers and the industry at large.
It’s no secret that MARK CARNEY is more dialed into C-suites than his predecessor in the Prime Minister’s Office — and far keener to sit down with energy companies that sense momentum at the highest levels of government. As Carney moves to act boldly on ready-made “nation-building” projects, corporate honchos want in — and are scoring face time.
It’s only halfway through 2025 and Canada isn’t just making record breaking sports headlines — we’re seeing the extraordinary potential of what this country can achieve. From MVPs, to record-breakers, to thriving professional women’s leagues, Canadians are showing what’s possible when talent is matched with opportunity.
The federal ethics commissioner recently released information about Prime Minister Mark Carney’s financial holdings, and how he will seek to avoid conflicts related to making decisions around them. The opposition—unsurprisingly—are pouncing, suggesting Carney divest himself of all that he currently has and put it in one blind trust so he can’t consciously or subconsciously make decisions that could benefit his...
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s ambitious plan to fast-track major projects represents a once-in-a-generation nation-building opportunity. From critical minerals and electricity transmission to pipelines and clean energy grids, these projects promise to reshape Canada’s economic landscape. But there’s a critical piece missing from this vision: ensuring the communities where these projects will be built have the necessary skilled workers...
While the government’s focus on nation-building projects and reducing internal barriers to trade and labour mobility are both welcome and overdue, Canada is at risk of putting the cart before the horse. Because if we are truly going to build up Canada’s economy, we first need to build out the sector that powers it — the electricity sector. Indeed, a...
The prime minister risks becoming the man who fell to earth if the spending reductions are miscalculated
Before I had children, I had all the answers about raising them. I mean, we were all kids at some point in our lives. What could be so hard? Then I had my own children.
Once upon a time there was a village menaced by a giant ogre. The villagers met to decide how to respond. “We must give him what he wants,” said one of the villagers. “Then he will go away.” “No,” said another. “We must respond with purpose and force.” In the end the villagers tried a little of both approaches. Neither...
Canada’s budget watchdog is in limbo as the Carney government gears up for a major fall reset with a new budget, new priorities, and a sweeping 15-per-cent expenditure review. No replacement has been named for Yves Giroux, the respected parliamentary budget officer who has transformed the role over his seven-year term, establishing a strong public presence and a reputation as...
Pride in service is a defining part of what it means to be Canadian. Our freedoms, our way of life, and our reputation around the globe have all been shaped and protected by the men and women who have served in uniform. Our nation’s capital is home to more than 24,000 regular and reserve Canadian Armed Forces members and civilian...
Ontario Premier Doug Ford came to Calgary last week and turned Canada upside down. He was here to loudly promote more oil and gas pipelines to the west, north and east. And beside him, grinning like a Cheshire Cat, was Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.
Maxime Bernier’s PPC spends big, but mostly on itself. The numbers don’t lie.Since its founding in 2018, the People’s Party of Canada has contested three federal elections. It has never elected a single MP - not even its leader. Its support has stalled, its membership is stagnant, and its presence in Canadian politics is marginal at best.
Canada faces an urgent, nation-defining imperative: to develop its vast northern territories not only as an economic opportunity but as a critical assertion of Canada’s sovereignty in the face of renewed threats from its southern neighbour, and amid the growing threat of China and Russia in the Arctic. The spectre of a rekindled Manifest Destiny, once a 19th-century doctrine of...
IT’S 183 DAYS since Mark Carney told Jon Stewart he was an “outsider” who’d “just started thinking” about running for a leadership role in Canadian politics. He thought fast—and announced his candidacy three days later. Now he’s been prime minister for longer than Charles Tupper and John Turner were. How’s he doing?
As Pierre Poilievre launches his byelection campaign to re-enter Parliament, he’s swapping Ottawa’s suburbs for Alberta’s vast prairie heartland—home to grain farmers, cattle ranchers, and oil-service crews, spread across an area larger than Costa Rica. Carleton was the riding he had represented since 2004, the place where he built his reputation as a combative, small-government conservative. But when it flipped...
What basic message are we sending as we condemn the purchase of Chinese-made ferries while profiting from our sale of goods and services to China? Nothing brings out the worst in our politics and public discourse than a phony crisis. The commercial decision by BC Ferries to buy four ferries from China—and the decision by the Canada Infrastructure Bank to...
Advocacy campaigns aimed at swaying legislators and regulators are nothing new. Companies have long used their influence to protect their interests. But TikTok’s recent efforts in Canada add a clever twist to this well-worn playbook that may prove to be as culturally resonant as it is politically strategic.
MY MOTHER’S paternal grandmother, Maaliaana, was born in Kangaamiut, in western Kalaallit Nunaat, sometime in the beginning of the 1900s. (Kalaallit Nunaat is an endonym for my motherland; Greenland is what the international community generally calls it.) She was the product of a one-night stand with a British whaler, at a time when ships filled with men from other places...
Police say they have arrested a man who allegedly made threats against the mayor of Brampton, Ont., and his family last month. Peel Regional Police say a 29-year-old man was taken into custody Tuesday and charged with uttering threats to cause death or bodily harm. Police say they were notified of the threats in late June and they provided Mayor...
A trade deal with the United States will likely include some tariffs, Prime Minister Mark Carney indicated on Tuesday ahead of a meeting with his cabinet. Carney told reporters he expects the trade talks with the U.S. to "intensify" ahead of the Aug. 1 deadline to secure a new agreement, but then in French he said the evidence suggests President...
The Chiefs of Ontario say Ottawa is levelling an unfair playing field for chiefs in a meeting planned with Prime Minister Mark Carney on Thursday to discuss the government's controversial major projects legislation. Carney promised in June that he would meet with First Nations after chiefs said their rights were not respected by the rush to push the bill through...
OTTAWA -- The wildfires that are flaring up across Canada again are one of the reasons public safety should be added to CBC/Radio-Canada's mandate, a new report from a research centre at McGill University argues.
Before he was appointed to the federal cabinet two years ago, Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree wrote letters urging Canadian officials to approve the immigration application of a man they had determined was a member of a terrorist organization. The letters, dated 2023 and 2016, were written on Anandasangaree’s House of Commons letterhead and sent to the Canada Border Services...
The husband of a former Alberta premier is questioning why Premier Danielle Smith is inviting her husband to sit in on government meetings. Lou Arab is married to former premier Rachel Notley and has long been a senior leader with the Canadian Union of Public Employees.
The Liberal Party’s campaign co-director is launching a new strategic firm with a roster of political, governance and policy experts in a bid to translate the party’s successful campaign blueprint into one for the private sector. Andrew Bevan’s new firm is called Catalyze4, a deliberate riff off a word Prime Minister Mark Carney used repeatedly during the campaign and since...
Officials confirmed that building new infrastructure for the F-35s will cost more than $2 billion.
The Carney government has hitched its economic reform agenda to AI—and for good reason. AI is reshaping everything from healthcare to defence. But there’s a catch: globally, Canadians rank near the bottom on trust in artificial intelligence. Abacus Data is picking up the same problem. As CEO David Coletto warns, that makes public support fragile. A savvy political leader—or an...
Most countries will likely have to accept some baseline tariff rate on their goods by the United States, Prime Minister Mark Carney signalled Tuesday morning, on his way into a meeting with his cabinet on Parliament Hill. “There is not much evidence at the moment — from the deals, agreements and negotiations with the Americans, for any country or any...
Ottawa -- The annual pace of inflation accelerated to 1.9 per cent in June as consumers were paying more at car dealerships, Statistics Canada said Tuesday.
Prime Minister Mark Carney is scheduled to convene the Incident Response Group in Ottawa today to discuss the ongoing wildfire situation across the country. Carney also convened the group of ministers and senior officials a little over a month ago in response to an earlier wave of wildfires, which peaked in May and June, then receded, and have now flared...
While Canada has pledged to invest five per cent of its GDP to defence by 2035, one expert says the military will need to address staffing shortages, low recruitment levels and commit to internal reorganization if they actually want to hit that target. In an interview with CTV Your Morning on Monday, David Fraser, CTV military analyst and a retired...
Prime Minister Mark Carney will meet with his cabinet today for the first time since U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to impose steep new tariffs on Canada. Trump said in a letter to Carney last week that the United States will put a 35 per cent tariff on Canadian goods starting Aug. 1.
Prime Minister Mark Carney's cuts to government spending will include the foreign service, just as Global Affairs Canada aims to expand its presence abroad. Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne sent letters to ministers on Monday asking them to find savings of 7.5 per cent in their budgets starting next spring. Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand says that will include Global Affairs...
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre was slammed by several separatist opponents in the province Monday after he said that the province should stay part of Canada, no matter what. “Pierre Poilievre and the federal Conservatives want Albertan votes but not Albertan autonomy. Saying Alberta should stay no matter what shows exactly how little respect they have for the province’s right to...
The Conservatives want Prime Minister Mark Carney to sell all the assets in his blind trust to avoid any possible conflicts of interest. Carney set up a blind trust after he was sworn in as prime minister in March and the details of how it works were made public on Friday.
The Canadian International Trade Tribunal has ordered the government to pause its multimillion-dollar procurement of night-vision binoculars for the military, following a complaint from a Canadian firm that claims the contract’s restrictive criteria favours an American supplier.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is calling for a tougher stance on immigration, saying Monday he wants to see "very hard caps" on the number of newcomers allowed into the country. Speaking to reporters at a news conference in Ottawa, Poilievre said the country has struggled to integrate newcomers and he wants to see more people leaving than coming in "while...
EDMONTON -- Premier Danielle Smith's hand-picked panel hearing how to fix relations with the federal government is set to get down to work this week with back-to-back town halls.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that the letters he sent to Prime Minister Mark Carney and other leaders about new tariff rates are "the deals", as Carney prepares to meet with his cabinet on tariffs and the trade negotiations. Trump appeared to be losing patience with his administration's efforts to make trade deals with nations around the world...
MONTREAL -- One of four men accused in an alleged anti-government plot to forcibly take possession of land in the Quebec City region was granted bail on Monday.
Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne is looking for feedback from Canadians on national security and defence spending and fortifying the Canadian economy amid an ongoing trade war as he prepares to deliver a federal budget in the fall.
An American helicopter manufacturer has reached a confidential settlement with the families of six Canadian military members killed in a helicopter crash off the coast of Greece five years ago. The families sued Sikorsky in 2023 after a CH-148 Cyclone flown by the Royal Canadian Air Force crashed into the Ionian Sea at full speed in April 2020.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump says he has finally found a way to achieve his goal of removing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, accusing him of mismanaging the U.S. central bank's $2.5 billion renovation project.
ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) -- Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested Tuesday that she has no plans to step down as she dodged questions about Jeffrey Epstein and her clash with a top FBI official, seeking to press ahead with a business-as-usual approach in the face of right-wing outrage that has plunged the Justice Department into turmoil.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he is pushing Texas Republicans to redraw the state's congressional maps to create more House seats favorable to his party, part of a broader effort to help the GOP retain control of the chamber in next year's midterm elections.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Seventeen immigration court judges have been fired in recent days, according to the union that represents them, as the Trump administration pushes forward with its mass deportations of immigrants in the country.
BAGHDAD (AP) -- An oil field in Iraq 's Dohuk province was set ablaze Tuesday after being struck by a drone.
BANGKOK (AP) -- Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang says the technology giant has won approval from the Trump administration to sell its advanced H20 computer chips used to develop artificial intelligence to China.
U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday he would punish Russia with tariffs if there isn’t a deal to end the war in Ukraine within 50 days. The Republican president made the announcement during an Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. “We’re going to be doing very severe tariffs if we don’t have a deal in 50 days,”...
GREENBELT, Md. (AP) -- A federal judge in Maryland scolded the Trump administration on Friday for its "utter refusal" to detail its deportation plans for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, including where the government plans to send him and whether he'll get a chance to fight his expulsion before he's whisked away.
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) -- An independent U.N. investigator and outspoken critic of Israel's actions in Gaza said Thursday that "it was shocking" to learn that the Trump administration had imposed sanctions on her but defiantly stood by her view on the war.
Atlantic Canada faces a substantial challenge in the realm of tax competitiveness. Across multiple dimensions of taxation, the region imposes higher tax rates than most other Canadian provinces.
The Cambodia-Thailand relationship has deteriorated since a border clash broke out on May 28 and has led to the death of one Cambodian soldier. The conflict, not the first between the two countries, stems from a longstanding dispute over the lines of demarcation, dating back to early 20th century negotiations between Thailand (then Siam) and the French colonial authorities in...
A collection of SubStack publishing within Canadian public affairs.
For readers of a certain generation, Lloyd Axworthy represents a Golden Era for Canada on the international stage during the 1990s after the Cold War. Serving as Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Lloyd Axworthy helped to shift power away from the nuclear-armed superpowers toward increased multilateralism, international institutions, and disarmament. Chief among his accomplishments is the global treaty...
RCMP officers continue to break rules around investigative note-taking, despite a decade-old commitment to fix the problems.
A pioneering effort to make the federal government more transparent has been shut down. The National Capital Commission (NCC) removed hundreds of original documents from its website after an adverse ruling from the official languages commissioner.
U.S. President Donald Trump wrote letters to over two dozen trading partners last week, threatening a fresh set of tariffs. Canada was among them and is now facing the possibility of 35% tariffs on all Canadian goods that don’t comply with CUSMA, the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement, if a deal isn’t reached by August 1st. Where do our negotiations with the Trump...
On July 8, Quebec RCMP arrested four men connected to the Canadian Armed Forces. They are accused of trying to create an extremist militia and planning to forcibly take a plot of land north of Quebec City. Two of the four men are active members of the military, three have been charged with terrorism facilitation. The case adds to the...
David Herle, Scott Reid, Jordan Leichnitz, and Kory Teneycke provide insights on the latest in Canadian politics.
To kick off the week, we tackle a few big stories in two realms of Canadian politics: the military, and the federal public service. First, the Ottawa Citizen's David Pugliese tells us about the investigation into a Facebook group where military members of one regiment regularly share misogynistic, racist and derogatory content. He also shares his thoughts on another story...
