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 John Ibbitson.
Central Canadian political elites are upset with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s decision to hold a referendum that might eventually lead to a sovereign Alberta. While sovereigntist sentiment in Quebec has long been acknowledged and accommodated in English Canada, Western alienation is treated with who-do-they-think-they-are condescension.
The “gravy plane” mess lasted only a few days. But it sent a message. If Doug Ford hears that message, the Ontario Premier will soon retire. The public learned last week that the provincial government had acquired a preowned Bombardier Challenger 650 jet aircraft. On Sunday, in the wake of opposition howls, the Premier announced the government would sell the...
Much is being made of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s successful efforts to poach MPs from both the Conservative and New Democratic parties in an effort to convert his minority Liberal government into a majority. But these MPs’ parliamentary perambulations are small potatoes compared to events in the early 2000s. Floor-crossings in those years helped determine the future of the conservative...
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...
The Liberals and Conservatives offered completely different responses to the Trump administration’s abduction of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro. Those responses reflect the world view of each party. For Conservatives, foreign policy is rooted in values; for Liberals, in interests. On Saturday morning, not long after word arrived that American special forces had captured and abducted Mr. Maduro and his wife...
The world of politics often embraces contradictions. Canada faces a stark contradiction today. On the one hand, our country is dangerously divided, regionally and generationally. Both Quebec and Alberta may soon be holding referendums on sovereignty. Many younger Canadians living economically precarious lives resent the Boomers and Gen Xers, with their pensions, health care and other entitlements that millennials and...
Shortly after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau named Chrystia Freeland as his deputy PM in 2019, they began having weekly meetings. At first, things did not go well. The introverted Mr. Trudeau was visibly uncomfortable, which left Ms. Freeland feeling awkward. “Conversation could be stilted, with neither quite sure where to start,” Catherine Tsalikis wrote in her coming biography of the...
He may be bluffing, but we can’t take the chance. The federal government must assume that Donald Trump intends to impose a 25-per-cent tariff on all Canadian and Mexican exports into the United States, as he announced via social media Monday evening. Mr. Trump is also increasing tariffs on China. America’s three largest trading partners will inevitably retaliate with equivalent...
Justin Trudeau’s Liberals are unlikely to hold onto the Greater Vancouver riding of Cloverdale-Langley City in the Dec. 16 by-election. The government is deeply unpopular, and it lost much safer seats in Toronto and Montreal in by-elections earlier this year. But more is going on than simply voter resentment of a government that’s long in the tooth. The Liberal Party...
Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet is making two demands of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in exchange for his party’s support in the House: that the Liberal government enhance Old Age Security, and that it further protect supply management. Both are terrible ideas. Many have explained why this is not the time to increase funding for OAS. I would only add...
The commentariat is obsessed with the federal Liberal loss last week in the once-safe Montreal riding of LaSalle-Émard-Verdun. Few, in contrast, took note of last week’s by-election in the Ontario provincial riding of Bay of Quinte, won by Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives. Why did Mr. Ford’s PCs win their by-election while Justin Trudeau’s Liberals lost theirs? One reason might be...
Justin Trudeau’s latest Senate appointments demonstrate both the strengths and weaknesses of the Prime Minister’s purportedly non-partisan approach. On the downside, he has failed to make the appointment process truly non-partisan. Though his Senate picks sit as independents, most are progressives who support his government’s agenda.
No wonder Conservatives are champing at the bit for an election. This week’s cabinet retreat suggests the Liberals have simply run out of steam. But the Tories could still lose, if they let the next election turn into a replay of the one under way in the United States: a contest between the normals and the crazies. To prevent that...
Everybody is wondering whether Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will step down before the next federal election. They should be asking the same question of Jagmeet Singh. A pair of by-elections next month could reveal whether the time has come for the NDP Leader to depart. Mr. Singh can take pride in knowing that, thanks to him, Canada has a new...
TLN aired an interview with Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and his wife, Anaida, on the weekend. If Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tuned in, it must have ruined his vacation. Should the Conservatives win the next election, little of what Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal government enacted will survive. Mr. Poilievre rarely grants interviews with the major networks or news publications. But he...
There are good reasons to believe that a Kamala Harris administration would be a friend to Canada, now that President Joe Biden has left the race and endorsed his Vice-President to succeed him. But a Canadian government led by Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, as polls suggest is likely, might well work better with a second Donald Trump administration.
The shocking result in the Toronto-St. Paul’s by-election leaves the Liberals with only one question: should they lose the next election with Justin Trudeau as leader, or should they lose it led by someone else? After an excruciatingly slow vote count over Monday night and into Tuesday morning, Conservative candidate Don Stewart snatched from the Liberals what used to be...
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland appears to be attempting to embarrass Pierre Poilievre by forcing the Conservative Leader to vote against a new tax on the rich. This is wrong. Fiscal policy should not be used as a cudgel against political opponents. More important, the tax itself is unsound. The Conservatives should not hesitate to vote against it.
A few weeks ago, a friend who lives in the riding of Toronto-St. Paul’s heard the doorbell ring. It was Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hadn’t even called the by-election for the affluent midtown riding, and yet Mr. Poilievre was already knocking on doors in a seat that has been Liberal for decades.
Justin Trudeau was hoping his housing budget would reverse the government's slide in popularity. Instead, things have gotten worse. For the good of the Liberal Party he leads, the Prime Minister needs to think about his future. The government gambled everything on this budget.
In its well-meaning effort to encourage the migration of international students to Canada, the Trudeau government is turning swaths of our postsecondary education system into a grift. As a result, broad public support for immigration, the foundation stone of multicultural Canada, is eroding. My colleague Marie Woolf has been investigating and reporting on the flood of international students – there...
The carbon price is a dead tax walking. NDP leaders Jagmeet Singh and Wab Kinew are both helping to kill it. We are moving toward a remarkable place in which the New Democrats and the Conservatives have similar positions against the tax. Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau alone is prepared to defend it – even to his political death.
Monday’s by-election in Durham signalled a final coda for what used to be the Erin O’Toole Conservative Party and further affirmation that the party is now triumphantly in the hands of Pierre Poilievre. As expected, conservative activist and commentator Jamil Jivani took Mr. O’Toole’s old riding handily. He had won more than 50 per cent of the vote when your...
More than a decade ago, Justin Trudeau took a dispirited, strife-torn, third-place Liberal Party and recreated it in his own image, winning election after election after election. There are few voices of dissent within the party because the voices who matter all matter because of him. But the latest polls show the Liberals headed for, not just defeat, but decimation...
For no good reason, but several bad ones, the Conservatives have once again opposed an updated free-trade agreement with Ukraine, handing the Liberals political ammunition, while possibly pandering to the worst elements of their coalition. It’s a mess. There is a litmus test that conservatives should use when considering any aspect of foreign policy. If Donald Trump supports it, and...
Next Nov. 5, Donald Trump, 45th president of the United States, could be elected its 47th president. If that happens, both America and Canada will be thrown into crisis. And there is nothing Canadians can do, except watch. On Thursday, Maine’s Secretary of State ruled that Mr. Trump cannot appear on the presidential ballot in that state because he tried...
Pierre Poilievre’s 15-minute advertisement masquerading as a mini-documentary on the housing crisis contains inaccuracies and distortions. That doesn’t matter. The thing is a work of genius. The Conservative Leader has taken ownership of an issue critically important to many Canadians: the seeming impossibility of ever being able to afford a home, or even rent one.