While National Newswatch does not keep an archive of external articles for longer than 6 months, we do keep all articles written by contributors who post directly to our site. Here you will find all of the contributed and linked external articles from Dale Smith.
At the Pride flag raising on Parliament Hill on Tuesday, local activists and onlookers mingled with staffers, MPs and senators in the hot sun while waiting for Prime Minister Mark Carney to arrive. A group of Conservative MPs were present, including out lesbian MP Melissa Lantsman, though none would dare be photographed on stage at the end of the event...
A sense of inevitability has set into the public mood in Alberta, as it seems that a referendum on independence is going to happen this fall, in spite of a cascading series of dubious events. It shouldn’t be this way—no separatist party won an election on a clear mandate for a referendum, so there is no democratic legitimacy for one...
The federal government has known for decades that the second-generation cut-off is legally problematic. Despite nearly three years of consultations, the minister says more are needed before addressing it
After this week’s byelection results, Carney’s governing Liberals will have more unchecked power. But the party has moved away from its old progressive politics
Last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney said his government is open to debate on a ban on social media for minors as part of their upcoming online harms legislation, something that other countries are also experimenting with, considering that the harms of these addictive platforms have become fairly self-evident when it comes to mental health outcomes. It may sound like...
The NDP’s leadership race is hurtling toward the March 29 finish line, with all five declared candidates still in the race, having met their fundraising and signature-gathering requirements. There are differences emerging from the “violent agreement” that we normally see in NDP leadership races, and this could indeed be an existential choice that the party faces as they determine what...
Lais Gomes was just six years old when her father killed her mother in their home. A judge in Brazil and a former police chief, her mother had been in an abusive relationship for a long time. More than once, she’d tried to leave. Twice her family had tried to rescue her. “My father would be violent, and then he...
This was a heavy year for liberal democracy, as the second Trump presidency in the United States began actively dismantling democratic institutions in that country. If 2024 was the year of creeping authoritarianism, 2025 saw it in full bloom. Across the border in Canada, there has been a false sense of security with the rise of Mark Carney to the...
Members of the legal community are panning Ontario’s attempt to toughen up bail conditions. They say what’s proposed will further disadvantage marginalized individuals and may be unconstitutional. Among the measures included in The Keeping Criminals Behind Bars Act is a requirement for an accused person or their surety to pay upfront for their release by providing “a cash security deposit...
It’s official: there is no longer a political cost for a government invoking the Notwithstanding Clause, meaning that rights will increasingly be under threat in this country. While Quebec had set the precedent in 2019 for pre-emptively invoking the clause, which can override a certain number of Charter rights for a period of up to five years, in order to...
The federal budget includes considerable cuts to the justice system. While the Canadian Bar Association is hoping to learn more about what they mean in concrete terms, at first glance, they’re “concerning.”
While the Good Samaritan Drug Overdose Act (GSDOA) ensures immunity from charges for simple drug possession during an overdose, the Supreme Court of Canada says that protection must also extend to arrests.
While progress has been made since the federal government enshrined its commitment in law in 2021, observers say there’s still some way to go to have respectful, meaningful consultation and shared decision-making
Prime Minister Mark Carney named Sean Fraser minister of justice and attorney general this week, marking a comeback for someone who had decided to retire from politics. The Nova Scotia MP announced in December that he would not seek re-election, but changed his mind shortly before the election after a call with Carney in March. "It's an opportunity to demonstrate...
As the reality of the federal Conservative Party’s defeat in last week’s federal election manifested, infighting within the movement erupted, particularly between the leaders of provincial Progressive Conservative parties and the federal party. This was, in turn, met by accusations by some federal Conservatives that Ontario premier Doug Ford was some kind of Liberal booster, and that he was somehow...
Only three incumbent openly queer MPs are headed back to Ottawa after the 2025 federal election. There will be far fewer queer members of Parliament when the 45th Parliament is convened—likely in late May—than there were when the previous Parliament was dissolved for the election. The previous Parliament set a record for openly queer MPs and senators, and featured three...
The major political parties’ platforms were all released extremely late in this election cycle, having apparently decided to wait until after the debates were over, possibly for fear of being grilled on the details of their plans on camera, which is what happened in the last election cycle. To make it worse, advance voting had already begun (with record turnout...
While the outcome of the federal election remains to be seen, for now, the government is conducting business at least somewhat as usual. As part of that, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced his cabinet a week ago and appointed Gary Anandasangaree as the new justice minister and attorney general, in addition to his existing portfolios of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern...
On Aug. 4, 2015, then third-party leader Justin Trudeau was flying to Vancouver to attend the Pride parade when Stephen Harper surprised everyone and called the election early, opting for an 11-week campaign in the hopes of blunting pre-election advertising over the summer, and exhausting his opponents with such a long campaign. Trudeau decided that he had committed to being...
The recent unprecedented use of the Labour Code provision to end disputes has prompted legal challenges and concerns about the power it grants the federal labour minister
Ontario is deep into an early election, because Premier Doug Ford likely decided that he had the perfect cover for calling for one with the inauguration of Donald Trump in the United States. Ford had reportedly been planning on calling an early election for well over six months, because he knew that he wanted to secure a fresh legislature before...
The Supreme Court of Canada is set to hear an appeal about whether or not the Ontario Superior Court should have created an intentional tort of family violence. The case of Kuldeep Kaur Ahluwalia v. Amrit Pal Singh Ahluwalia will come before the Court on February 11 and 12, with 17 intervenors lined up to speak to the matter. At...
As Canadians cope with the chaos that the second Donald Trump administration rains down on them, with ever-present threats of tariffs or even annexation, the effect this will have on our political scene will be profound. It has already become clear that the next federal election, whenever it happens, is no longer going to conform to earlier expectations—it is no...
The Federal Court has granted an expedited hearing of a legal challenge to the prime minister’s decision to prorogue Parliament until March 24. Although similar challenges to Crown prerogatives have failed in Canadian courts, the 2019 Miller II decision from the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court gives the Canadian plaintiffs hope that the courts can intervene here. Paul Daly, the University...
The Supreme Court of Canada’s 2024 workload was not quite back up to pre-pandemic levels, but it has been getting closer. And because the Court will mark its 150th anniversary this year, it will take on additional functions to mark the occasion. The Court granted 35 leaves in 2024, fewer than the 41 granted in 2023 and down from the...
The federal Liberal leadership contest is officially underway, under a compressed timeline that leaves many to complain that there isn’t sufficient time for candidates to build momentum. And little wonder—the ways in which political leaders are chosen in this country have become a quasi-American primary system that has strayed far away from its Westminster origins and has impacted the quality...
2025 was going to be an election year in Canada regardless of what happened. There had been an open question as to just when that was going to happen, given the amount of chest-thumping and parliamentary theatrics from pretty much all of the opposition party leaders. The dynamics were all blown up this week, however, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau...
Talk of creeping authoritarianism mostly conjures images of foreign places—the toxic influence of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán in the European Union as he exports his particular brand of “illiberal democracy” abroad, the attempted takeover of mechanisms of the state by the former Law and Justice Party regime in Poland or the current battles over corrupted elections in Georgia and Romania. It...
The recent spate of provincial elections in Canada were a mixed bag of results. They were in turn dwarfed by the re-election of Donald Trump in the United States, which has forced a reckoning of progressive politics and the pundit class commenting on them. There are lessons to be learned from Trump’s win, but possibly not entirely obvious ones. Most...
Alberta premier Danielle Smith released a six-minute video last week to outline what her government’s legislation on trans issues in the province will look like later this fall, and it’s pretty much as expected given what she teased earlier in February, but with a few more direct appeals to trans youth directly in an attempt to tell them that this...
The Federal Court of Appeal’s recent finding that Facebook Inc. violated its privacy obligations by failing to properly advise people about third-party app developers may deal with a version of the social media platform that no longer exists, but privacy lawyers say the legal precedent is sound. The unanimous decision earlier this month found the social media giant, now known...
Three provinces are going to the polls this fall—New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and British Columbia—and all three feature conservative parties that are shifting further away from the centre as two of them vie for re-election, and one to overtake the incumbent NDP government. In all three cases, the rights of queer and trans people are very much in question, but most...
If you listen to Canadian political commentary, a certain kind of fatalism has sunk in: a Pierre Poilievre and Conservative Party of Canada victory is inevitable in the next election, and nothing is going to matter over the next year-and-a-bit until the next federal election is scheduled. This is possibly the worst of all possible instincts to harbour, and a...
Queer diplomacy globally has made tremendous strides from the first mass demonstration outside of the United Nations in New York in 1984 to raise awareness of global LGBTQ+ rights. Canada has come a long way in terms of including LGBTQ2S+ rights as part of broader human rights advocacy, particularly over the past nine years that the Liberals have been in...
Anew report by Over Zero, a research and training group founded in response to the global need to counteract and prevent identity-based violence, examines the link between systematic targeting of queer and trans communities and democratic backsliding around the world. Decoding LGBTQ Scapegoating shines a light on how targeting LGBTQ+ communities is a central component of the authoritarian playbook that...
The federal government’s budget implementation bill contains controversial provisions that would allow the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) to use federal penitentiaries to hold migrants in immigration detention. The move comes after the provinces refused to renew agreements to house migrants in provincial facilities until the federal government can modify its existing holding facilities to house higher-risk migrants. Civil society...
Given the preponderance of “Big Lie” claims in the United States that spread falsehoods about election fraud, it’s no surprise that among the federal government’s proposed amendments to the Canada Elections Act is a new offence for spreading misinformation aimed at affecting the results or disrupting the conduct of an election. That includes false or misleading information about how elections...
After weeks of riding high in the polls, Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre has become much more emboldened in his pronouncements and public statements, and the warning signs about authoritarian tendencies are all starting to show themselves. One example was his screed in the National Post where he demanded that corporations fire their lobbyists because he would take...
The 2024 federal budget contains several measures for the legal system, most of them having to do with new funding for legal aid. It also includes reallocated funding for unused judicial positions, as well as promised legal assistance for renters. There are also criminal measures being announced for auto theft and financial crimes, as well as more funding for the...
Last week, nearly a year to the day since Uganda passed its latest draconian anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, the country’s constitutional court upheld the law as valid—a move advocates worry is going to lead to violence against queer and trans people in the country. While the United States has made policy changes around Uganda in the wake of the legislation, Canada has...
There were national headlines made last week when the citizens of the town of Westlock, Alberta, voted in a new bylaw about “neutrality” in public settings that essentially bans rainbow crosswalks and Pride flags from town property. What is notable about this incident is that this arose from a citizens’ initiative, using tools that are supposed to lead to greater...
Bill C-63 is a significant departure from an earlier effort to pass online harms legislation, which died on the order paper when the 2021 election was called. The new bill has narrowed its scope to focus on the protection of children. It outlines seven categories of online content it seeks to police, including communicating intimate content without consent, defined to...
Could the government be one step closer to monitoring Canadians’ porn habits? Bill S-210, the Senate bill reintroduced in 2021 from an earlier version in the previous Parliament that would require age verification for anyone in Canada to look at explicit materials online, got a shot in the arm last week as Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre expressed support for...
For now, it appears Canadians will have to wait, at least until after the next election cycle, but the word from the Minister of Justice is that it will happen. "There's nothing more consequential or significant than deciding the context, circumstances, and timing of someone's passing," Virani said in a recent CBA National podcast interview. "That is, by definition, a...
The BC government has reached a settlement agreement in a Charter challenge around the funding of legal aid that will see $29.1 million invested in Legal Aid BC to help provide family law services for those fleeing domestic violence. The Centre for Family Equity (formerly the "Single Mothers' Alliance") launched the challenge in 2017 to redress major cuts that BC...
In the wake of Danielle Smith’s announced policy about limiting gender-affirming care in Alberta and taking other measures such as parental notification for changed pronouns and preferred names in school and limiting trans women’s participation in sports, there has been no shortage of questions as to what the Justin Trudeau and the federal government can do to stop it. The...
Alberta premier Danielle Smith appearing as a featured guest at a Calgary event last week featuring American far-right entertainer Tucker Carlson was a choice. In the aftermath, she tried to brush off criticisms by claiming that she doesn’t vet the ideologies of people who interview her, but Carlson wasn’t some journalist—real or pretend—in a scrum or press conference, but on...
What standard of proof should disciplinary hearings in provincial jails rely on? The balance of probabilities or beyond a reasonable doubt? That's the question the Supreme Court of Canada will have to answer, having granted leave to the John Howard Society of Saskatchewan, which is challenging prison regulations in the province. Under those rules, imposed penalties can deprive inmates of...
Last week, there was a major hullabaloo made of Rebel Media personality David Menzies being detained by an RCMP protective detail when he tried to accost Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland as she left an event. In the wake of the incident, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre tried to assert that this was reflective of eight years of Justin Trudeau’s government...
The House of Commons witnessed its fair share of chaos during last year's fall sitting. Speaker Anthony Rota resigned in disgrace after recognizing a war veteran who fought alongside the Nazis Nazi as a "Canadian hero." His replacement, Greg Fergus, also faced criticism for appearing in a video tribute to an Ontario Liberal MPP while wearing his Speaker's robes. Also...
New Brunswick premier Blaine Higgs has declared that he’s not going to back down from his attacks on trans kids. As part of his year-end interview with The Canadian Press, he said he will not be moved from his policy on outing students to their parents if they request changing their pronouns or preferred names in a school setting, returning...
An Ontario court has dismissed an attempted defence of a defamation suit launched by drag performer Caitlin Hartlen and Rainbow Alliance Dryden. This is after an individual, Brian Webster, asserted on his public Facebook page in September 2022 that drag performers at an all-ages event in Dryden, Ontario, were “groomers,” and singled out Hartlen in his post. Webster tried to...
In Canadian politics, 2023 was the year that the moral panic around “parental rights” made a comeback in a very big way. New Brunswick started implementing policies in May that would force teachers to report to parents if students wanted to change their name or pronouns at school, even if those students didn’t feel ready to tell their parents. As...
One particular story has been lurking under the surface for the past couple of months, which was how a group of Conservatives took a fairly lavish trip to London courtesy of the Danube Institute. While the Liberals, in particular, enjoy pointing out just what kinds of bills these MPs racked up courtesy of the Institute, particularly because there is some...