Separatists worked for years to manufacture Oct. 19 referendum. The Edmonton stage should have been a safe space for Danielle Smith. A place where an Alberta premier could revel in partisan applause. Instead, it was the scene of a political mugging. Smith sat on the stage, dressed in a crisp white suit, alongside her cabinet at the United Conservative Party’s...
The richest man in the world says Alberta and Saskatchewan should pick up their stuff and get out of Canada, presumably to join the United States. This is after Quebecers elected a separatist government in their provincial election. It's been quite a week on all that, and Bruce and Chantal are here to discuss.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Friday he will be in Alberta next week to deliver a speech on Canadian unity ahead of the province's referendum on separation. The House of Commons will be on a break next week after MPs head back to their ridings for the Thanksgiving weekend. Poilievre told a press conference in Burlington, Ont., on Friday he...
It was after a debate in Edmonton that Scott Aitchison’s phone started ringing. He missed it the first time because the Conservative MP, who was running for the party leadership at the time, was working the room. It’s just something, he says, that “small-town mayors do.”
President Donald Trump said that he has struck a deal to obtain diesel from Russia, a stunning reversal of years of U.S. pressure on Moscow over its war with Ukraine and an attempt to address high fuel prices ahead of the U.S. midterm elections. Trump said on social media on Friday that he struck the deal with Russian President Vladimir...
With Alberta’s October 19 referendum approaching, the electorate appears increasingly engaged, and increasingly decided. Our latest report finds that 70% of Albertans say the province should remain part of Canada, up from 65% in August. Another 22% would choose to have the Government of Alberta begin the legal process required to hold a binding referendum on separation, while just 7% remain undecided.
A new Liaison Strategies British Columbia Political Tracker finds the BC Conservatives leading the BC NDP 43% to 37% among decided and leaning voters. Liaison surveyed a random sample of 1,000 British Columbians from October 7 to October 8, 2026, using Interactive Voice Recording (IVR) technology. Participants were reached through random digit dialling (RDD) across both landline and cellular phone...
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...
Parry Sound—Muskoka MP Scott Aitchison’s upcoming departure from the House of Commons reflects the greater malaise within Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative caucus. Aitchison, Huntsville’s former mayor, sees himself, like many MPs, as a doer. Few politicians want to sit back and watch others make big decisions. They want to be cabinet ministers; some want to lead the party, and dream of...
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is calling on Ottawa to sue Stelco's American owner as part of a five-point plan aimed at protecting Canada's struggling steel industry. Poilievre was in Burlington, Ont. on Friday, speaking at a site overlooking Stelco's operations across Hamilton Harbour. The steelmaker began issuing layoff notices this week after announcing plans to lay off up to 50...
Quebec premier-designate Paul St-Pierre Plamondon is asking his team to stay mobilized as the party is set to form a minority government. He told Parti Quebecois members that they should be ready for another election campaign, even if it's not in the short term. St-Pierre Plamondon invited all his party's 127 candidates to a postelection meeting at a hotel in...
Canada’s infrastructure is under growing pressure from floods, wildfires, severe storms, aging assets, and mismanagement. When roads close, ports are disrupted, or electricity systems fail, the consequences extend beyond physical damage. Businesses lose ready access to mar...
Globalization’s fans argue that populist movements of the left and the right use global trade as a whipping boy for the other big challenge liberal democracies confront, and one which is a lot harder to address: how to enjoy the economic growth that capitalism delivers while also distributing the fruits of that growth beyond the 1 per cent. How can...
The Supreme Court’s coming ruling has the potential to reignite separatism and quake the teetering balance between courts and government
In one of the most famous television commercials in Canadian history, a man puts an eraser to a stylized map of North America and removes the border between Canada and the United States. Aired during the 1988 federal election campaign, it was the Liberals’ way of protesting then-prime minister Brian Mulroney’s negotiation of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. They didn’t...
This is not the first time Albertans have been asked to vote on matters outside their jurisdiction. Five years ago, under United Conservative Party premier Jason Kenney, the province asked its citizens whether Section 36(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982 – the one committing the government of Canada to the “principle” of equalization payments – should be removed from the...
The Nobel Peace Prize is being announced Friday and Prime Minister Mark Carney is considered a contender. Can we imagine if it’s the Canadian who takes the award and not the man in the White House who has hardly let a week go by without sounding desperate for the honour? Donald Trump claims he has ended no fewer than eight...
These days I read product labels as carefully as I used to read liner notes. You’ll not get an “assembled in” or a “distributed in” Canada past me any more than you’d have got a “the band’s third bass player got legal rights to the name and this album’s even less live than any of its founding members” album past...
The FBI affidavit filed in the Tumbler Ridge investigation is a true punch in the gut — not just for anyone who read it, but for governments forced to recognize the sheer scope of all that apparently went wrong. Worse, it’s hard not to walk away with the sense that government doesn’t have the tools it needs to thwart all...
It is hard to convey how thin a mandate the Parti Québécois has just won in Quebec, but I will try. With 28 per cent of the vote, the PQ’s popular vote share is the smallest for any winning party in any election, not just in the modern history of Canada but, as far as I can tell, in any...
Last weekend, I was in Saint-Antoine-sur-Richelieu, Que., a pastoral village 60 kilometres southeast of Montreal, for my son’s wedding. As I had a few moments to explore the town, I crossed the street from the wedding venue to check out a local park flying the tricolour flag of the “Patriotes” of the 1837 rebellion. Beneath the flag was a plaque...
Mark Carney can breathe a sigh of relief. Monday’s election results in Quebec delivered a Parti Québécois minority government that will prove thorny to handle, but the prime minister escaped the worst-case scenario: a sovereigntist premier with a strong majority government.
Quebec Conservative Leader Éric Duhaime was perhaps the night's biggest winner
Four years ago, as the Coalition Avenir Québec rolled over the competition to win 90 of the National Assembly’s then 125 seats, the Parti Québécois looked like a spent force. The sovereigntist “party of a generation” had its worst election result since its founding in 1968 by René Lévesque – the ruffled, chain-smoking everyman who charmed baby-boomer francophones – taking...
Alberta separatists are fond of pointing to Quebec’s sovereignty movement as a model. If those guys can get so much by holding a knife to the throat of the rest of the country, goes their thinking, then why shouldn’t we do the same? It’s a lousy comparison overall, given the fundamental differences between Alberta and Quebec (such as, for e.g....
Alberta’s forthcoming referendum on independence is a clear and meaningful threat to Canada’s safety, integrity, and prosperity. But a few of the other questions on Premier Danielle Smith’s democracy-o-rama — ten ballots, all to be hand-counted, with mayhem all but guaranteed at this point — might be even more dangerous. That’s because they deliberately invite a particular conversation around immigration...
The Alberta referendum on separation is less than two weeks away and it appears most Albertans have decided they want to remain in Canada; not just by a simple majority but overwhelmingly. That’s a relief. Now those voters just have to turn out to cast a ballot. In a recent poll, 72 per cent of Albertans said they wanted to...
The Carney government’s proposed labour law reforms target a serious problem: the increase in disruptions to critical industries such as airlines, ports and railways. Ottawa is taking heat from labour advocates, but the changes are a sensible measure to rebalance the interests of federally regulated employers, employees, and the public. In recent years, Canada has seen an upsurge in labour...
Canadians now have disturbing proof that the referendums of 2026 and beyond are nothing like the ones that have come before. A Globe and Mail investigation into American involvement in Alberta’s looming referendum shows that the U.S. is far more than a spectator and confirms that its interest may not be entirely in keeping our federation intact.
Separatists have been coy about how they’d work with Trump to dismantle Canada. Now they’re facing tough questions, and so they should. We’re lucky to live in a country where people can argue for ideas as radical as separatism. But our cultural politeness shouldn’t keep us from carving up such bad ideas, aggressively, in the public square...
It should come, perhaps, as no surprise that some in Alberta’s separatist movement are happy to sell out the province, swapping the authority of the Canadian government for domination by MAGA overlords in the United States. They do, after all, have no loyalty to Canada. But you’d think, in an ideal world, they’d have some loyalty to Alberta – and...
Let’s get a little dystopian. There is a non-zero chance that United States President Donald Trump tries to cancel the mid-term elections, wherein 100 per cent of the House and one-third of the Senate are up for election and re-election.
Pierre Poilievre has to feel robbed by the universe – and also like some cosmic gang of thugs keeps returning to make sure his pockets truly contain nothing but lint. He was supposed to be the next Prime Minister, with the 20-point lead and command on the public mood to prove it. Then everything exploded, the banker stepped neatly into...
I wrote a book thirty years ago about the three questions posed by the great Rabbi Hillel more than two thousand years ago: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” I have returned to those questions on countless occasions since, and...
Quebec's former culture minister is apologizing for attending a Parti Quebecois election night gathering as his own party suffered a crushing defeat. The Coalition Avenir Quebec expelled Mathieu Lacombe from the party after La Presse reported Thursday that he'd attended the PQ gathering in Montreal. Outgoing Premier Christine Frechette also removed Lacombe from her cabinet. While the PQ won Monday's...
The Supreme Court of Canada says in cases where an Indigenous offender commits an offence against an intimate partner who is an Indigenous woman, a judge must apply sentencing principles related to both Indigenous offenders and victims of crime in a harmonious way. In a 5-4 judgment today, the top court provided guidance and set out a new framework for...
Canada’s economy posted a second consecutive month of job losses in September, pushing up the unemployment rate and offsetting what had been a hot streak for the labour market earlier in the year. Statistics Canada said Friday the economy lost 68,000 positions in September, coming off a loss of 42,000 roles in August. Economists had expected a gain of 9,20...
Canadian mining companies could be among the beneficiaries of the Carney government’s push for an economic agreement with resource-rich Angola, one of the first African targets in Ottawa’s global trade diversification campaign. Prime Minister Mark Carney met last month with Angolan President João Lourenco, inviting him to Canada and announcing progress in their economic negotiations. Deeper collaboration in mining and...
A candidate for British Columbia's provincial election, kicked from the Conservatives over online posts the NDP called racist, says he is truly sorry. Victoria-Beacon Hill candidate Joachim Agou says on social media that he takes responsibility for his words but rejects any accusation of racism. In one post, Agou said a car that drove through a pro-Palestine protest "should have...
When former Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne watched the results of Quebec's election come in, she says she couldn't help but draw parallels between herself and Christine Frechette. The outgoing Quebec premier stepped down as leader of the Coalition Avenir Quebec after her party failed to win any seats in Monday's election. The CAQ, founded in 2011, was in power for...
Public safety minister defends new office and its commissioner. Conservative MP Michael Cooper is calling on Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree to appear before a parliamentary committee, saying Canada's new foreign influence registry is "in shambles." In an interview with CBC News, Cooper said Tuesday's committee appearance by Foreign Influence Commissioner Anton Boegman revealed serious problems with compliance with the...
L. Ian MacDonald, a former chief speech writer for Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, editor of Policy Magazine and longtime national affairs columnist for the Montreal Gazette, has died. He was 78 years old.
Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers faced pressure over U.S. President Donald Trump's trade war with Canada during a heated debate that could sway voters in a consequential midterm race where neither candidate ruled out future duties. Trump's escalating tariffs targeting Canada came up within the first 10 minutes of the debate. Rogers was asked about an advertisement released Wednesday in...
Canada, the United States, the European Union and more than a dozen allies pledged in a joint statement Wednesday to tackle excess global production capacity of electric vehicles, batteries and solar panels, an issue Washington has blamed on China. In all, 14 countries – all members of the Group of 20 – plus the EU signed on to this communiqué...
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon says the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan will be livestreamed after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the execution would be "public."
Interim leader of the British Columbia Conservatives Lorne Doerkson has swiftly dumped a candidate in the provincial election over online posts that the NDP called racist. Doerkson said Thursday that the posts by Victoria-Beacon Hill candidate Joachim Agou cannot be tolerated and if he is elected, he will not be part of the Conservative caucus. Agou's ejection from the Conservative...
A key piece of the Carney government's economic agenda, Bill C-39, passed its first vote in the House of Commons Thursday when Conservatives voted with the majority Liberals to send the bill for study by a special committee. The 243-page bill proposes to extend the government's one-project, one-review, within one-year approach to major infrastructure projects to apply to other projects...
Prime Minister Mark Carney responded Thursday to tech industrialist Elon Musk's endorsement of provincial separation movements by saying Canada's future will be decided by its citizens — not by large U.S. tech firms. Speaking at a news conference in Sherbrooke, Que., Carney said Canadians can live their lives in Quebec and across the country "free from interference from foreign governments...
A new report from the Calgary Chamber of Commerce says Alberta's economic prospects hinge on its ability to attract newcomers into the workforce. The group released the survey less than two weeks before Albertans vote on 10 referendum questions, half of which deal with immigration.
Rebate program targets homeowners with heating systems that have broken down or are nearing end of life. The federal government is launching a $2-billion rebate program that it says will help homeowners in Canada lower their annual heating costs while reducing emissions when they install heat pumps in their homes. The funding will provide rebates for up to 820,000 homeowners...
The federal government’s proposed legislation setting up the Defence Investment Agency as a Crown corporation in charge of billions of dollars in procurement is an “unprecedented” move that raises questions over accountability, warn former senior public servants as opposition MPs say any weakening of oversight on federal spending would be “misguided.” The government tabled Bill C-40, the Strengthening Canada’s Defence...
The parliamentary budget officer says Ottawa's gas tax pause is offering a bigger break at the pumps to the households that earn the most. The federal government temporarily suspended the federal excise tax on gasoline, diesel and jet fuel in April, then announced last month it would extend that pause into 2027. In a new report, Ottawa's budget watchdog says...
Two American litigation funders allege Alberta separatist leader Jeffrey Rath and his firm made “false, inaccurate, and misleading” representations to keep receiving millions of dollars to finance two First Nations lawsuits against Ottawa – even after his firm had been fired and replaced. The allegations are contained in a lawsuit filed Thursday by Delaware-based Diriba Investments and Western Springs Investments...
As the RCMP investigation into Premier Doug Ford’s Greenbelt land swap marks its third anniversary, a former Ontario solicitor general says the Mounties should let the public know how the probe is proceeding. Bob Runciman, a former Conservative senator who served as the province’s top lawman for two stints between 1998 and 2003, said the federal police force needs to...
The B.C. Conservatives will spend their second consecutive day campaigning in Surrey, a critical battleground in the provincial election. The Conservatives say interim leader Lorne Doerkson will be in Surrey to make a policy announcement a day after being in the city to roll out promises for businesses that include eliminating the PST on some equipment. Surrey is British Columbia's...
Canada's oil and gas sector accounted for a lower level of emissions in 2025, despite boosts in production, while the country's overall emissions ticked up thanks to increased reliance on natural gas to heat homes. Those are among the findings in the Canadian Climate Institute's annual national emissions report, released Thursday. The institute, which receives three-quarters of its funding from...
The premiers of Alberta and Saskatchewan are shutting down a suggestion from U.S. tech titan Elon Musk that the two provinces should split from Canada. Musk, the trillionaire tech businessman and former adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, says on his social media platform X that Quebec would benefit from independence, as would the two Prairie provinces. Saskatchewan Premier Scott...
Prime Minister Mark Carney said Wednesday his government is closely tracking allegations of foreign interference in the Alberta referendum campaign, adding it is critical that votes are “free and fair.” His first public comments came the day after a federal watchdog office revealed it notified a leading Alberta separatist group, among 60 others, about legal obligations to report foreign influence.
Patrick Weiler's comments are some of the first signs of Liberal dissent to Bill C-39. A Liberal MP is calling for more guardrails as the Carney government moves to fast-track construction of major projects like pipelines, mines and ports. Liberal MP Patrick Weiler spoke in the House of Commons on Tuesday night, breaking ranks with his party on the Building...
Canada's industry minister says Stelco Holdings Inc. cannot use the trade war to justify cutting jobs it committed to maintain when it bought the Hamilton, Ont.-based steel plant, particularly when the head of its U.S. parent company has publicly backed tariffs on steel. Mélanie Joly told reporters Wednesday that the chief executive of U.S.-based Cleveland-Cliffs has supported steel tariffs and...
Canada's defence minister came to Alberta Wednesday to highlight the billions of military dollars being spent there, with less than two weeks to go before Albertans vote on whether it's time to quit Confederation. David McGuinty, with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith standing beside him, reiterated that Ottawa is investing $8 billion in ongoing military projects in the province. He said...
Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers has broken with U.S. President Donald Trump over his trade war with Canada as the Republican faces a tight race in a state hit hard by the tariffs. In a campaign ad posted on social media Wednesday, Rogers said people in Michigan "know that Canada is not our enemy." "We need to end this tariff...
The Canadian government has withdrawn its sponsorship of an anti-disinformation conference in Lithuania that feature panels talking about the United States as a foreign interference threat. Samantha Lafleur, a spokesperson for Global Affairs, said the government wasn’t comfortable with the framing of some of the panels and Canadian officials will still take part in the conference but will not chair...
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump said that he has struck a deal to obtain diesel from Russia, a stunning reversal of years of U.S. pressure on Moscow over its war with Ukraine and an attempt to address high fuel prices ahead of the U.S. midterm elections.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) -- The first Michigan Senate debate between Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed was combative Thursday as the two candidates continuously attacked each other and, according to the moderator, even continued debating during a commercial break.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- When Democratic nominee James Talarico stopped holding campaign events in the Texas Senate race, his Republican opponent Ken Paxton saw an opening to pounce.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon says the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan will be livestreamed after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the execution would be "public."
President Donald Trump said that he has struck a deal to obtain diesel from Russia, a stunning reversal of years of U.S. pressure on Moscow over its war with Ukraine and an attempt to address high fuel prices ahead of the U.S. midterm elections. Trump said on social media on Friday that he struck the deal with Russian President Vladimir...
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon says the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan will be livestreamed after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the execution would be "public."
Prime Minister Mark Carney is returning to Turkey later this month as he seeks to boost trade and defence ties with a country with rising importance. Carney was in Turkey for the NATO summit in July, and his office says he will again visit the country from Oct. 21 to 23. He will start in Ankara to meet with President...
Canada and the European Union plan to link next-generation payment systems to enable faster cross-border transactions, according to a draft joint statement prepared for a summit between Ottawa and Brussels later this month. This will help remove obstacles to business and investment between the two jurisdictions, according to the statement, an early version of a summit communiqué that was viewed...
A pilot stabbed another pilot and then apparently tried to crash to aircraft carrying dozens of Israelis on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. Passengers and crew staged a dramatic intervention to subdue the attacker and the plane eventually made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia. The FlyDubai flight travelling from the United Arab Emirates to Israel landed safely after...
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...
Canada has spent thirty years pretending that internal free trade can be achieved through polite first ministers’ meetings, press conferences, action plans, and the creation of agencies.
A collection of SubStack publishing within Canadian public affairs.
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...
Artificial intelligence has moved from a promising general-purpose technology to an increasingly consequential layer of economic, social and public infrastructure. It is already raising productivity, expanding access to expertise, accelerating scientific discovery and creating new ways to deliver services. At the same time, AI systems are implicated in fraud, manipulation and cyberattacks and unreliable results and misinformation. The most capable...
At Issue this week: What does the Parti Québécois win mean for a federal government now facing separatist challenges on two fronts? The Liberals' major projects bill faces stiffening pushback. And the PQ’s uphill battle to abolish the monarchy from Quebec politics.
After their deepest diplomatic rift in decades, how are Canada and India rebuilding trust and their relationship?
Albertans will go to the polls to vote in a referendum on October 19. By now, everyone knows about the question on whether Alberta should stay in Canada, or hold another referendum on whether to separate. But there are, in fact, nine other proposals Albertans are being asked to vote on. Matthew Scace is a staff reporter for The Globe...
A leaked draft offers a peek at an EU-Canada relationship. Or is it a partnership? Just don’t call it associate membership. Guest host Camille Gijs, POLITICO’s senior trade reporter in Brussels, tells Nick Taylor-Vaisey the idea was “born dead” — in the words of one diplomat. Also, Ottawa reacts to the PQ victory in Quebec. Europe doesn’t. And Europe and...
