Prime Minister Mark Carney said Donald Trump's threat to stall the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge will be resolved following a call with the U.S. president Tuesday. "I explained that Canada paid for the construction of the bridge — $4 billion — that the ownership is shared between the state of Michigan and the Government of Canada," Carney...
Ontario’s premier is prompting Canadians and its prime minister to “not buckle” when it comes to Donald Trump’s threats concerning blocking the Gordie Howe bridge from opening. “This is not the time to rollover and let President Trump take advantage of us,” Doug Ford said Tuesday morning while addressing the threat. “Why did he [Trump] fast-track it [the bridge] in...
Ontario Premier Doug Ford says that the possibility of an early federal election has “come up” in conversations with Prime Minister Mark Carney and his fellow premiers but he is downplaying its significance. Ford made the comment to reporters at Queen’s Park on Tuesday. His response comes in the wake of a report in the Globe and Mail which, citing...
Prime Minister Mark Carney intends to deepen defence ties and attract new business investment when he travels to Germany this week, according to government officials. Carney will depart for the Munich Security Conference on Wednesday, becoming the first Canadian prime minister to attend the conference since Justin Trudeau in 2020. More than 60 heads of state and government leaders are...
Despite an ongoing review, Ottawa made payments related to the acquisition of more U.S.-built fighters jets. Ottawa has started to make payments for key components for 14 additional U.S.-built F-35s, even as the Carney government has been reviewing future fighter-jet purchases in the context of trade tensions with Washington, sources have told CBC News. The money for these 14 aircraft...
Treason in the Air: Most Canadians Back Premier Eby’s Comment Over Alberta Separatists, Split on Premier Smith’s Retorts
Although only a week out of the tracking there is no current lift for the Conservatives or Poilievre coming out of their convention. They continue to trail the Liberals by four points. Poilievre remains 29 points behind Carney on the preferred PM tracking.
PIERRE POILIEVRE GAMBLED with his political future—and won—at the Conservative Party of Canada convention in Calgary two weeks ago. Delegates, who gathered under unseasonably warm January skies courtesy of a timely Chinook, were asked whether to grant their leader a vote of confidence. Late that Friday night, the verdict was delivered: 87.4 percent of those who cast a ballot voted...
As Albertans await some clarity from the premier as to whether she’s prepared to champion the cause of Confederation or take on the separatists in any meaningful sense, it falls to others to take up the mantle of national unity.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says "significant" deficits are in store for her province as it tries to grapple with low oil prices. The government's new budget is set to be unveiled later this month, and Smith says it's going to be a "tough" one. The premier told RED FM Calgary this week that she has ruled out tax hikes and...
Conservative MP Mike Dawson says he can't "in good conscience" accept the pay raise members of Parliament are supposed to get in April because it's unfair when Canadians are struggling to keep up with the rising cost of living. MPs are set to receive a 4.2 per cent raise on April which the New Brunswick MP says is "frankly distasteful."
The GM plant in Oshawa often feels like a mythical place. Long-time residents in the region tell stories of a time when it was a hub of prosperity for tens of thousands of families. They say, when shifts would end, there were so many GM employees that some roads would become one-way streets so workers could drive home in an...
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s well-crafted and eloquently delivered speech at Davos has been widely noted, and I want to start by offering some praise of my own. The Prime Minister is right to restate what many have said for years: Canada must become more self-reliant, less dependent and work with like-minded countries to advance our interests. Conservatives are, as always...
The prospect of Alberta leaving Canada is such a hot topic that the other potential “leavers” have been overlooked.
We’re becoming familiar with the Alberta government’s give-me-this-or-else demands. The latest one is flimsier than most: it’s based on a falsehood and it amounts to threatening to punch yourself in the face if you don’t get your way. Still, it bears attention because it points to a fundamental flaw in the Alberta separation project, which can no longer be dismissed...
Elections, like the flu, can sneak up on you. They may also be contagious. Not even one year since both men won their own elections, Mark Carney and Doug Ford have reportedly been chatting about another federal election this year.
The Canadian government’s response to the 20-year sentence imposed on Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai is the first test of the government’s new “pragmatic engagement” with China. The early signs are that Ottawa is broadly in favour of the pursuit of justice, as long as it doesn’t hamper its trade policy.
In December 2004 I was sitting in the Official Opposition Leader’s Office and the holder of that office, Stephen Harper, walked in. We were working on an election platform because we expected Paul Martin to spring an election quickly after Peter MacKay and Harper merged their respective parties into the Conservative Party of Canada.
Retired general Wayne Eyre, Canada’s former chief of the defence staff, says this country’s security and sovereignty would be best protected if we possessed our own nuclear weapons and the delivery systems to fire them at whatever targets we deemed in need of vaporization. He didn’t recommend starting a program at once, but said it would be the only real...
Canada stands at a pivotal moment in its AI journey. New research from Strand Partners, conducted on behalf of AWS Canada, reveals that 650,000 Canadian businesses have embraced artificial intelligence—a 33% increase year-over-year that outpaces the global adoption of the internet. With one business adopting AI every three minutes, the momentum is clear. Yet the choices we make today –...
A rogue ambassador to the United States, a new office in Washington for the “Commonwealth of Alberta,” another Mark Carney world tour: we’re just over a month into 2026, and already Canadian diplomacy is headed madly off in all directions. Let’s start with Conservative MP Jamil Jivani, who last week heeded a call that apparently he alone could hear and...
For the first time since his defeat a decade ago, Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper took centre stage this week with a refreshing show of bipartisanship and a call for national unity — a message the country and his party needed to hear. The occasion was Harperpalooza or Harperfest as some Conservative staffers referred to the celebrations, a week’s worth...
The cause was given an exception boost this week. The last week has been a turning point for the Conservative Party of Canada. Its devotees observed the 20th anniversary of the coming to office of Stephen Harper at the head of a reconstructed Conservative party that merged the old Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance/Reform Party. Stephen Harper thus became...
The whole co-operation initiative was obviously a distasteful task to Pierre Poilievre, one that circumstances and strategists have foisted upon him. When he went to meet Prime Minister Mark Carney on Wednesday to talk about it, his opposite number appeared equally sincere. This was a week when talk of co-operation seemed to be breaking out all over Ottawa. But the...
Former prime minister Stephen Harper spoke at an event earlier this week marking the 20th anniversary since forming his Conservative government. The Political Pulse Panel reviews Harper’s comments on Canada’s relationship with the U.S., and his urging for co-operation among all parties amid America’s aggression.
It is doubtful any country has ever been in quite the national security dilemma Canada now finds itself in: with so much land and so few people to defend it; wedged between two expansionist superpowers, one of which was until very recently our best defence against the other, but which has since become more or less aligned with it. The...
The speech heard round the world has had much impact. Mark Carney’s message to Canadians and everyone else has been widely quoted, lauded, analyzed, criticized and described as the most important speech on Canadian foreign policy since Louis St Laurent’s Grey Lecture at the University of Toronto in 1947. In discussing the speech this week with Ben Rowswell, former Canadian...
Every day, it seems, Donald Trump wields his presidential powers to undermine the Western alliance. Within the past week or so he has threatened new tariffs against Canadian aircraft exports, against South Korea and against any country (but principally Mexico) that sells oil to Cuba. And of course, there was his threat in January to annex Greenland and to tariff...
For decades, Canada has been using a secret, expansive, junk-ridden database of suspected terrorists, operated by the United States government. Known as Tipoff U.S./Canada — or TUSCAN — it serves as a form of no-fly list. Only this one is easier to be added to and harder to get removed from.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is playing with fire. Depending on what happens in the next few months, that fire could consume Smith, her Alberta United Conservative Party government, the province of Alberta, and Canada as we know it today. As premier of Alberta, Smith is trying to play the dangerous game of appeasing the separatist movement in the province while...
What an awfully nice, careful people we are. So reluctant to cause offence, even when someone spits in our collective eye. The tiny group of Alberta separatists, who are openly seeking support from a hostile Trump administration to break up the country are, at least in a political sense, spitting in our eye. They boast about meeting with U.S. officials...
CONSERVATIVE DELEGATES’ resounding show of support for Pierre Poilievre’s leadership in Calgary is more interesting than a more tentative vote would have been. The way people talk about Poilievre in Ottawa and Toronto, including a lot of long-time Conservatives, suggests they think he’s trying to be like Prime Minister Mark Carney, and he’s bad at it. The weekend’s events in...
The unveiling of Stephen Harper’s official parliamentary portrait has provided a moment of unexpected catharsis in Canadian politics. Speaking at an event hosted by the Royal Canadian Geographic Society this week, the former prime minister said there is a tendency in Canada to focus on past mistakes, at the expense of pride in the country’s achievements. The same might be...
As Conservatives celebrate the 20th anniversary of Stephen Harper’s first election victory this week, there’s a lot of chatter about what Pierre Poilievre can learn from his success. In 2006, Mr. Harper captured 36 per cent of the popular vote, and won. In 2025, Mr. Poilievre was a far better vote-getter, earning 41 per cent of the popular vote –...
Foreign diplomats in Ottawa are applauding the vision of Canada’s foreign policy direction outlined by Prime Minister Mark Carney in his Davos address, but they’re coming to different conclusions about how it will get implemented.
Bell Canada and SAP Canada have signed a deal to jointly develop a Canadian‑operated cloud solution aimed at serving Canadian governments and regulated industries that require strict control over sensitive information. Under a memorandum of understanding, the companies will establish a fully Canadian-isolated cloud alternative intended to help ensure sensitive government, citizen and organizational data remain within Canada. The partnership...
Seventy-one per cent of Canadians agree with B.C. Premier David Eby’s recent statement that “to go to a foreign country and to ask for assistance in breaking up Canada, there’s an old-fashioned word for that, and that word is treason,” according to a new poll from Canada Pulse Insights.
Prime Minister Mark Carney is heading to Germany later this week for the world's top security conference, as Canada works to update its own defence policy. Carney's office says he will leave for Munich Wednesday, and be in Germany until Sunday.
The federal government recorded more than 2,600 cases of employee misconduct and wrongdoing last year, resulting in at least 145 terminations and 783 suspensions without pay. The misconduct and wrongdoing allegations run the gamut from sleeping on duty to sexual harassment, racial discrimination, workplace violence, privacy breaches, timesheet fraud, inappropriate social media posts and the theft of government property like...
A decade after the Department of National Defence pledged to fix systemic inequities facing military reservists, a new report from the Canadian Forces ombudsman concludes that little has changed — leaving ill and injured Primary Reserve members navigating a fragmented system marked by delays, confusion and unequal treatment. In the report — titled Marking Time: A Decade of Stalled Progress...
In an effort to address range anxiety and get more drivers into electric vehicles, the federal government is committing to fund and further expand the country's EV charging infrastructure. The ministers of the environment, energy and transport are expected on Tuesday to announce $84.4 million in funding for more than 8,000 new chargers across the country. Another $5.7 million will...
The Conservatives on Tuesday introduced a motion calling on the government to bar non-citizens convicted of serious crimes from making refugee claims. The motion also calls on the government to prevent asylum claims from people whose cases are still working their way through the courts. The motion is related to an explosion in extortion-related crimes. British Columbia Premier David Eby...
Conservative MP Jamil Jivani has returned from Washington criticizing Canada’s tariff deal with China and questioning why Ottawa is lagging Mexico in trade talks, following a mission to the United States that both he and the Liberals are keeping under wraps. In an op-ed published in the National Post on Sunday, Jivani wrote that he met last week with U.S...
President says he won't allow opening until U.S. 'is fully compensated for everything we have given' Canada. U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening to block the opening of the Gordie Howe Bridge, poised to become the newest border crossing between Windsor, Ont., and Detroit. "I will not allow this bridge to open until the United States is fully compensated for...
Prime Minister Mark Carney and Ontario Premier Doug Ford have discussed the possibility of an early federal election in casual conversations about the importance of a majority mandate to deal with uncertain economic times, according to three sources. The sources said the Progressive Conservative Premier, who has forged a close relationship with the Liberal Leader, offered his opinion that the...
The federal Liberal government is rejecting a call from the Opposition Conservatives to grant a tax reprieve on severance packages for laid-off General Motors workers in Ingersoll, Ont. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre sent a letter Sunday to Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne calling for an exemption to the withholding taxes applied to severance pay. Champagne's office flatly rejected the call Monday...
The German auto industry is keen on expanding its presence in Canada and is in the midst of discussions, Berlin’s economic minister says. Katherina Reiche, Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, said the Canadian auto sector strategy laid out by Prime Minster Mark Carney last week “is very attractive” for Germany. “I can’t go into detail, but please take the...
Amid ongoing debate about provincial sovereignty, most Albertans would vote to stay in Canada, according to a new survey from the Angus Reid Institute. Fewer than three in 10 Albertans, 29 per cent, said they would vote for separation if a referendum were held today. Most of those respondents said they are leaning toward that position rather than firmly committed...
Potential deals on legislation could keep the Liberal government in power. Liberals and Conservatives are working out a path that could keep the government in power, sources tell CBC News, while Prime Minister Mark Carney continues to downplay the likelihood of a spring election. Asked on Monday whether an election was coming, Carney demurred. “It’s time to do a lot...
British Columbia's government is supporting a private bid to host a new international bank to finance military projects by democratic nations, with Premier David Eby calling Vancouver the "strategic choice" to host it. The Defence, Security and Resilience Bank is intended to finance military projects for members of NATO and its allies. Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto have also been pit
The BC Green Party has announced it will not be renewing an accord with the governing NDP when it expires next month. The deal known as the Co-operation and Responsible Government Accord was intended to stabilize the government with its one-seat majority, while both parties worked on shared goals, but Green leader Emily Lowan says there have been "stalled or...
Alberta's sport minister says he hasn't signed his name to a petition that seeks to force a referendum on the province quitting Canada. Andrew Boitchenko says he and Premier Danielle Smith's United Conservative Party government are focused on strengthening Alberta's position within Canada. Boitchenko's comment comes after a leader for the group organizing the separatist petition said some unnamed members...
The Liberal who unseated Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre from his Ottawa-area riding in the last election is criticizing the government's new return-to-office policy for federal workers. Bruce Fanjoy, who represents the Carleton riding in the House of Commons, says there's no evidence it will boost productivity and warning it will increase pollution. He also says the new policy makes it...
Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand is calling on China to release Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai after he was sentenced to 20 years in jail today under a sweeping national security law. Canada joins numerous peers, including the United States and the European Union, in condemning Beijing for the sentence imposed under a law used to crack down on Hong...
Canada’s Arctic is one of the most exposed places on the planet, where communications routinely fail — satellites fade, cellular networks vanish, hardware freezes. Those problems led Ottawa-based Dominion Dynamics to build AuraNet, a software layer tied to rugged sensors that can push high-definition video, photos and audio through the frontier’s dead zones, allowing military commanders to swiftly assess threats...
The new submarines Canada plans to buy will not arrive with all the necessary equipment to operate under Arctic ice, meaning they will require modifications after delivery, the head of the navy says. Vice-Admiral Angus Topshee said Canada will need to add under-ice gear to the boats after they arrive, such as upward-facing sonar that can detect and map overhead...
The GM plant in Oshawa often feels like a mythical place. Long-time residents in the region tell stories of a time when it was a hub of prosperity for tens of thousands of families. They say, when shifts would end, there were so many GM employees that some roads would become one-way streets so workers could drive home in an...
Nearly all Alberta Conservative MPs are declining to comment on the province's separation talk, saying they do not want to give it more oxygen, and don't want to undermine Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's chances of forming government in the next election. Pollsters say the issue should be taken very seriously. Most Alberta Conservative MPs aren’t talking publicly about a push...
Report suggests alliances will require sustained work to survive. Almost every foreign diplomat you run across lately simply gushes about Prime Minister Mark Carney's Davos speech, and how his remarks about middle powers banding together went viral in Europe. As much as the speech represented a wake-up call for Canada and its allies, a new report that sets up the...
The Canadian military has destroyed 2,000 Second World War pistols but is still waiting to hear from Ukraine on whether it wants the rest of the guns for its arsenal. The latest update from the Department of National Defence on the fate of the Browning Hi-Power pistols reveals a topsy-turvy strategy for the aging handguns. In October 2022, the Canadian...
Elly Alboim, a former CBC parliamentary bureau chief, longtime political consultant and professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, has died at 78, his family tells CBC News. Alboim joined the CBC in 1970 and worked at the broadcaster for more than two decades. In 1977, he became parliamentary bureau chief and national political editor for the network — a job he held until 1993.
Jimmy Lai, the pro-democracy former Hong Kong media tycoon and a fierce critic of Beijing, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in one of the most prominent cases prosecuted under a China-imposed national security law that has virtually silenced the city's dissent.
Former cabinet minister Chrystia Freeland says when it comes to the U.S. and its relationships with other countries on the world stage, it needs to "get their act together." Since his 2025 inauguration, U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened several countries, including Canada, with annexation and tariffs on goods, creating an ongoing trade war. Freeland, fresh off her January resignation...
Jamil Jivani’s solo mission to Washington has provoked confusion and consternation among some of his Conservative colleagues who want to avoid the party looking cozy with Donald Trump’s administration. Jivani, a friend of U.S. Vice-President JD Vance since they attended Yale Law School together, paid a visit to Vance’s office in what he described as an attempt to “build bridges”...
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Under questioning from Democrats Tuesday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick acknowledged that he had met with Jeffrey Epstein twice after his 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a child, reversing Lutnick's previous claim that he had cut ties with the late financier after 2005.
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) -- Republican Sen. Susan Collins announced her reelection bid Tuesday, betting that she can hold onto her coveted Maine seat despite a renewed Democratic effort to oust her in a race that could determine control of the U.S. Senate.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Americans' hope for their future has fallen to a new low, according to new polling.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Americans' hope for their future has fallen to a new low, according to new polling.
Foreign diplomats in Ottawa are applauding the vision of Canada’s foreign policy direction outlined by Prime Minister Mark Carney in his Davos address, but they’re coming to different conclusions about how it will get implemented.
President says he won't allow opening until U.S. 'is fully compensated for everything we have given' Canada. U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening to block the opening of the Gordie Howe Bridge, poised to become the newest border crossing between Windsor, Ont., and Detroit. "I will not allow this bridge to open until the United States is fully compensated for...
Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand is calling on China to release Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai after he was sentenced to 20 years in jail today under a sweeping national security law. Canada joins numerous peers, including the United States and the European Union, in condemning Beijing for the sentence imposed under a law used to crack down on Hong...
Jimmy Lai, the pro-democracy former Hong Kong media tycoon and a fierce critic of Beijing, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in one of the most prominent cases prosecuted under a China-imposed national security law that has virtually silenced the city's dissent.
Former cabinet minister Chrystia Freeland says when it comes to the U.S. and its relationships with other countries on the world stage, it needs to "get their act together." Since his 2025 inauguration, U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened several countries, including Canada, with annexation and tariffs on goods, creating an ongoing trade war. Freeland, fresh off her January resignation...
Since the legalization of medical assistance in dying (MAiD) in 2016, the federal government has created certain safeguards and regulatory mechanisms – including data collection – to ensure that people don’t request death because they lack access to care, including palliative care.
A collection of SubStack publishing within Canadian public affairs.
The head of Ottawa’s public service got an earful from the federal information commissioner about the dismal state of access to information – the sign of a growing rift between the Liberal government and Parliament’s watchdog on transparency. At a Nov. 12 meeting, Caroline Maynard presented Michael Sabia, clerk of the Privy Council, with statistics detailing the deterioration of the...
The RCMP has handed out 23 awards for excellence to officers and employees in Nova Scotia for their performance during the April 2020 mass murders, in which a gunman impersonating a Mountie murdered 22 people in cold blood.
Library and Archives Canada (LAC) gets a lot of flak for its processing of Access to Information Act (ATIA) requests, especially for its long delays to respond. But lately they’ve been doing a few things right.
Really? Donald Trump now says he will refuse to allow the multi-billion-dollar new bridge between Canada and the U.S. to be opened. That's the bridge Canada paid for, and Trump heralded just a few years ago. It's the latest twist in the trade war, and it's just one of the stories we focus on today with Althia Raj and Rob...
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The federal government recently announced that it is scrapping the zero emissions vehicle mandate – brought in by the Trudeau government in 2022. Zero emissions vehicles such as EVs were supposed to make up 20 per cent of all new car sales this year, increasing to 100 per cent by 2035. This is the latest Trudeau-era climate policy that Prime...
The final remaining agreement constraining U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons expired last week. The New START treaty was established by President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev in 2010. And since then the treaty has governed much of the global landscape concerning nuclear weapons and non-proliferation. Reporting suggests both sides remain in talks. Yet as the U.S. threatens...
