Articles by Campbell Clark

May 22 2020 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — Remember the Resistance? The four small-c conservative premiers were lined up on a magazine cover alongside a pre-election Andrew Scheer and touted as the real counterweight to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. More recently, last year’s election left an apprehended national-unity crisis in its wake, with the revival of the Bloc Québécois and the seething rejection […]

Apr 3 2020 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — Once the White House’s coronavirus task force released its own model predicting that 100,000 to 240,000 Americans could die from COVID-19, it was inevitable that there would be more questions about what Canada’s projections say. If there’s one thing that social distancing and self-isolation have made common, it is wondering where all this is going. […]

Mar 24 2020 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — “Enough is enough,” Justin Trudeau said to Canadians flouting self-isolation guidelines. “Go home and stay home.” That wasn’t all. He once again raised the prospect that if people don’t listen, the government can and will step in with tough measures to enforce the social-distancing rules. It doesn’t want to, but … Any parent will recognize […]

Feb 22 2020 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — There was more than one message in Justin Trudeau’s call for the barricades to come down. One was that the government was losing patience, and that there soon would be action. The other was that Indigenous leaders now had a last chance to intervene to persuade protesters to end the blockades, and that public support […]

Feb 20 2020 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — Justin Trudeau’s government is appointing judges using a very Liberal interpretation of the merit system. From the outside, the selection process has many of the features of a merit system: open applications, advisory committees to come up with a short list and appointment by the justice minster. But on the inside, there are Liberal steps […]

Feb 1 2020 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — For a few weeks in January, events moved the Middle East to the centre of Justin Trudeau’s world. A U.S. drone strike killed an Iranian general and an Iraqi militia leader outside Baghdad’s airport and sparked fears of war. Canada, which had no warning, pulled some troops back from Iraq to Kuwait, putting the Canadian […]

Jan 13 2020 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — Canada’s Transportation Safety Board will have a role in the investigation into the downing of Flight 752, but the big questions will only get answers if Iran is willing to give them. That became clear as senior officials with the TSB, Canada’s air-disaster investigator, told reporters that their Iranian counterparts have invited them to play […]

Dec 15 2019 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — Justin Trudeau has set up his second-term government like a leader who realizes he just had a narrow escape. He has created rows and rows of defensive barriers between the Prime Minister and political risk. During his first term, Mr. Trudeau made himself the face of virtually everything his government did. Everything, seemingly, came from […]

Dec 12 2019 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — So much for parliamentary reform, and political transparency. Liberal MPs have no time for that stuff. They voted against giving MPs more power four times on Wednesday, and then tried to keep the whole thing secret. In their first official caucus meeting of the new Parliament, Liberal MPs held the votes on governance required under […]

Dec 4 2019 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — Of course Justin Trudeau is two-faced in dealing with Donald Trump. Canadians know that. Don’t Americans know it? How can the U.S. President not know it, too? Canadians have seen Mr. Trudeau smile and nod while sitting beside Mr. Trump as he threatened to damage the Canadian economy. Even Canadians with no love for Mr. […]

Nov 28 2019 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — You don’t see Justin Trudeau around as much these days. We hear from him a lot less, too. Someone – the Prime Minister himself, presumably – must have decided Canadians prefer it that way. Politically, it is probably wise, too. Mr. Trudeau hasn’t been invisible, but he has been low-key in such a very un-Justin-Trudeau […]

Sep 6 2019 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — Are Jagmeet Singh’s race and religion election issues? Of course they shouldn’t be. But now the NDP Leader is addressing the question directly. His party just released a striking French-language TV ad aimed at Quebeckers that shows him without his turban, with long locks, then putting on both his turban and boxing gloves, as he […]

Aug 11 2019 — Campbell Clark — CBC — The Foreign Affairs Minister is doing a lot of travel within Canada. When Chrystia Freeland goes to a steel-pipe manufacturer to talk about the new North American free-trade deal, as she did Friday, it is a way to send a message that the Liberals are concerned with lunch-box issues, industry and jobs. It also says […]

Aug 6 2019 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — New British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab came to tell us Canadians we’ll be even closer partners after Brexit. But no, Mr. Raab, you’ll be too busy staring at your navel for the next few years, and sorting out the mess with your biggest partners after Brexit, for us to focus on each other. We Canadians […]

Jun 29 2019 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — The provincial premiers who took Ottawa to court over the carbon tax have seen it blow up in their faces. Just look at what Ontario’s Court of Appeal said on Friday, in crisp legal prose, and in black and white. First, the federal government’s carbon-levy “backstop” is perfectly within Ottawa’s jurisdiction. And second, it’s not […]