Let Starmer’s defence-spending implosion be a warning to Carney
The lesson is the welfare-vs-warfare debate is an irrelevancy and western societies need to be more resilient in an age of rising threats
John Ivison
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 Ivison.
The U.S. ambassador blurts out Donald Trump’s bluff
Pete Hoekstra is not quite in the super league of undiplomatic diplomats. Before he was British foreign minister, Boris Johnson once offended the entire nation of Papua New Guinea by linking it to cannibalism. But the current U.S. ambassador can claim the rare accomplishment of uniting Canadians coast to coast in their animosity toward him.
With Carney and Poilievre, it’s hubris vs. pessimism in the House
The daily question period in the House of Commons generally subtracts from the sum of human knowledge, and Tuesday’s episode was an absolute belter in terms of confusing anyone watching. It kicked off with Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre calling the “phantom” high-speed railway between Quebec City and Toronto “a boondoggle.” This from the Conservative party that has called on the...
The disturbingly powerful allure of Avi Lewis’s ‘gen Z socialism’
When Avi Lewis was elected leader of the New Democratic Party just over two months ago, he issued a boast that was almost Trumpian in its braggadocio. "Canada, mark your calendar. The NDP comeback starts now," he said. But it turns out, he was right. A Liaison Strategies poll released on Monday had NDP support at 15 per cent, with...
Alberta separatists are not ‘deplorables,' says province's former finance minister
Jim Dinning tells the Post’s John Ivison why he is sympathetic to Premier Danielle Smith’s push to give separatists the chance to express their strongly held sentiments in a referendum
The crucial words Carney left out of his antisemitism speech
In the course of researching my biography on Irwin Cotler, I spoke with his old McGill debating partner, Moses Znaimer, the CityTV and MuchMusic founder. In typically unfiltered Znaimer fashion he wondered aloud what the former Liberal party justice minister thought about his old party, “which betrayed the Jewish community, in favour of the huge Muslim influx, of which they...
Liberals can do better than abandon promised free trade in Canadian booze
The first promise made by the federal Liberals in their last election platform — literally — was to unite the country by building one economy, so that Canadians can work wherever they want and goods can move freely from coast to coast. “Unleashing free trade” would “give ourselves much more than any foreign government, including the U.S., can ever take...
The man from Manitoba could play a big part in keeping Alberta from separating
As the Western premiers pulled on Team Canada soccer jerseys at the close of their meeting in Kananaskis on Tuesday, some kind of barbed comment was inevitable. Wab Kinew obliged. “I just want to tell Premier (Danielle) Smith, that she looks great in a Team Canada jersey,” the Manitoba premier said, pointedly. As host of the conference, Smith may have...
Poilievre may prove shrewd to back America’s alliance as Carney embraces Europe
If our troops are fighting in Latvia, or if Ottawa fails to renew CUSMA, a more North American policy could gain favour with voters
Carney knows from experience separatism can get very real if Alberta is mishandled
Mark Carney was asked Monday about his role in the forthcoming Alberta referendum campaign and the response was reassuring. The prime minister wasn’t exactly Henry V at Agincourt on St. Crispin’s Day, rallying his outnumbered troops in a call to arms. But he is a veteran of these campaigns from his time in the United Kingdom during the Brexit and...
Canadian troops are steeling to fight Russia. Will Ottawa back them?
An extraordinary exchange with potentially dramatic consequences for Canada took place at the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday. Vasily Nebenzya, Russia’s potato-faced permanent representative at the UN, told the council that his country’s intelligence agency believes Latvia is deploying Ukrainian drones on its territory, with the intention of attacking Moscow. “Membership of NATO will not protect you from just...
'Dangerous politics': Trump suspends joint defence board with Canada
The moment when Canada moved from Britain’s orbit into America’s can be dated precisely to Aug. 17, 1940. That was the day when Canadian prime minister William Mackenzie King and U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Ogdensburg Agreement that defined the principle of the joint defence of North America
Carney may finally be unhitching Liberals from Guilbeault’s hardcore eco-activism
Building at speeds not seen in generations, as per Mark Carney’s oft-repeated election pledge, has been less hypersonic than the prime minister might have wished. As the new parliamentary budget officer pointed out last week in an analysis of the spring fiscal update, only two of 15 projects being overseen by Carney’s Major Projects Office are actually under construction, and...
The buzz in Conservative circles this week isn’t about Pierre Poilievre
Pierre Poilievre’s speech to the conservative Canada Strong and Free Network conference in Ottawa on Thursday was a perfectly acceptable Opposition leader’s address. Modestly delivered and modestly received, it had much to be modest about. The problem was, it sounded like a reheated version of one of his speeches from last year’s election, a campaign in which he was rejected...
Carney’s flimsy economic claims get ripped apart by his new parliamentary budget officer
It must have been tempting for Prime Minister Mark Carney to appoint an absolute blockhead as the new parliamentary budget officer. Instead, in Annette Ryan, he has installed a 30-year public service veteran with Finance Department experience who has probably seen it all when it comes to juggling the numbers and concealing errors.
There's blood in the water around the Liberals' immigration minister
Like hungry wolves, opposition MPs look to isolate and target the weakest, the most awkward or the most bumbling in the ministerial herd. The Conservatives are currently launching coordinated attacks on Lena Diab, the immigration minister. In an unsentimental social media post, the party’s immigration critic, Michelle Rempel Garner, called for the minister to be fired , after her department...
An ambivalent Trump and emboldened Putin, what could go wrong?
A pessimist could construe Donald Trump’s warning about American troop reductions in Germany as a less brazen modern equivalent to the non-aggression Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939. The U.S. president is involved in a spat with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz over his conduct in the war with Iran and has said the Pentagon is...
Carney Liberals need to save Canada, not the world
It is a time-honoured parliamentary tradition for finance ministers to congratulate themselves on making more progress than can possibly be justified by the facts. François-Philippe Champagne was no exception, as he presented his government’s spring fiscal update in the House of Commons on Tuesday. He said his government is spending less, so that it can invest more, and added that...
Patty Hajdu just put her foot in it again, and she can only be boosting Tory unity
Nothing is likely to shore up Conservative esprit de corps like the sight of Patty Hajdu rising in the House of Commons and accusing the Official Opposition of being “against Canada.”
A wealth fund that isn't starting with excess wealth
Sovereign wealth funds are typically established by countries to manage their surplus wealth. Canada has just established the Canada Strong Fund — this country’s first national sovereign wealth fund — despite being deeply in the red. In short, there is no surplus wealth to manage.
Washington’s set to eat Canada’s digital sovereignty for lunch in the CUSMA talks
Jim Balsillie said Canada was ‘hijacked’ last time around and is likely to be further disadvantaged in the pending negotiations
Avi Lewis’s NDP senses the right spots to attack Carney’s left
Former prime minister Brian Mulroney once levelled the bizarre charge that the first thing then NDP leader Ed Broadbent would do if elected to replace him would be to nationalize high-end menswear retailer Harry Rosen. It was a personal shot at Broadbent, who was renowned for his ill-fitting brown tweed jackets, but also a reminder to voters that elements within...
Carney’s feel-good video is weak medicine for our grave economic reality
Was the timing of Mark Carney’s feel-good “fireside chat” video released Sunday mere coincidence, landing as it did the day before concerning inflation numbers? Or was it a deliberate calculation to point out that Canadian fur traders were all over the northern plains before the Americans had left St. Louis, a day ahead of confirmation that consumers are now paying...
The illiberal right's expansion just suffered a serious setback
The global expansion of the illiberal right has been so seemingly inexorable that the victory of a democratic centre-right leader in Hungary, after 16 years of “electoral autocracy,” still seems implausible.
Carney’s floor-crosser power play is playing with explosives
The news that Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu is crossing the floor to join the Liberal caucus, effectively guaranteeing Prime Minister Mark Carney a parliamentary majority, has not been hailed universally by her constituents. “She thinks she knows better than her voters?” said one resident of Sarnia–Lambton–Bkejwanong on social media. “What is the flipping point? You wonder why people get radicalized...
Trump’s chief trade rep signals CUSMA is worth keeping
Jamieson Greer stands like Mount Olympus above the intellectual molehills of his cabinet-level colleagues, to such an extent that one worries for his welfare in the Trump administration. The U.S. Trade Representative spoke at the Hudson Institute think tank on Tuesday, and such was his coherence it was almost possible to set aside that his boss had just threatened to...
Liberals shove Canada into China’s menacing embrace
Canada’s finance minister was in Beijing late last week looking to deepen financial sector ties with China. Francois-Philippe Champagne said he was building on the strategic partnership deal signed between Prime Minister Mark Carney and Chinese President Xi Jinping “with eyes wide open.”
Supply management set to spoil another huge trade opportunity
Just as turkeys don’t vote for Christmas, it would be unreasonable to expect Canada’s chicken farmers to elect for more open trade with the world’s major poultry exporter. The chicken sector is, after all, one of this country’s supply-managed industries. It’s protected from most foreign competition, ostensibly in the name of domestic food security but also, whisper it, to ensure...
How to accidentally ban lower prices
Manitoba has just become the first jurisdiction in Canada to introduce legislation that would make it an unfair practice for suppliers to charge higher prices based on algorithmic pricing. Bill 49 is aimed at preventing retailers from using personal data, such as purchasing history, to set higher individualized prices. Vass Bednar, managing director of the Canadian Shield Institute, which promotes...
Europe lets Carney lead on poking the Trump bear
President Donald Trump’s late-night musing about Venezuela potentially becoming the 51st state was likely well received in the Prime Minister’s Office. It suggests that Mark Carney’s speech in Davos — widely viewed as standing up to the bully president — has persuaded Trump to move on and find an easier target than Canada or Greenland. That may be temporary, of...
Carney offers the NDP a revival, if it's shrewd enough to take it
Trouble from the progressive wing of the Liberal party as dozens of Liberal MPs have just broken with the government over arms sales
A Liberal majority might finally stop kowtowing to Quebec
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s imminent majority government is a good thing for the country, according to a 43 per cent plurality of Canadians in a new Angus Reid Institute poll who prefer increased stability (versus 39 per cent who said it flouts the 2025 election result.) The decision by the NDP MP for Nunavut, Lori Idlout, to cross the floor...
Carney’s credibility faces friendly fire in the war with Iran
It is progress that the Prime Minister’s Office is now letting Canadians know when Mark Carney speaks with President Donald Trump, but it would be much better if the read-out that followed didn’t subtract from the sum of human knowledge.
Hope for the pipeline deal to survive a clash over carbon taxes
Back at the end of November when Prime Minister Mark Carney and Premier Danielle Smith signed their memorandum of understanding (MOU), it was presented as the best of all possible worlds: Canada would get a new oil pipeline and reduced carbon emissions.
Carney updates his Davos principles to back attacking Iran
In his Davos speech in January, Prime Minister Mark Carney said his government’s aim in foreign affairs is to be “principled and pragmatic.” He defined “principled” as being committed to the prohibition of the use of force, except when consistent with the United Nations Charter; and “pragmatism” as taking the world as it is, not as Canada wishes it to...
The election temptation of Mark Carney
If the only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it, Prime Minister Mark Carney might consider visiting the Governor General in the coming weeks and asking her to dissolve Parliament. The latest polls are starting to show a seductive spread in his favour — both in the horse race, and as far as whom Canadians consider...
Trump’s tariffs on Canada are about to get worse
The 6-3 majority U.S. Supreme Court decision on the unlawful nature of President Donald Trump’s emergency act tariffs suggests democracy is still alive in the Great Republic. Friday’s decision reaffirmed the basic constitutional principle about the separation of powers between Congress and the president, clarifying that Trump has no authority on his own to impose tariffs using the International Emergency...
Let the turf war over Carney’s defence-spending bonanza begin
The sight of David McGuinty as a silent presence at the prime minister’s announcement Tuesday of a new defence industrial strategy was a reminder that, while that government purports to be a team, it is really a confederation of warring tribes. The defence minister is ostensibly the lead author of the plan, but it seems to have been hijacked by...
Carney seeks 'parliamentary exchange' with a China that targets our MPs
As part of his trip to Beijing last month, Prime Minister Mark Carney met with Zhao Leji, the third-ranking member of the 20th Chinese Communist Party Politburo and chair of the standing committee of the National People’s Congress. The readout that emerged from the meeting said they talked about the importance of ongoing parliamentary exchanges and “opportunities for enhanced understanding...
When mass murder meets politics
School shootings are the most senseless, shattering event that can befall a community. A feeling of ultimate loss grips the entire nation. Political leaders often have nothing more to offer than their condolences, but people want more than that. They are looking for reassurance, empathy and a sense that someone will do something about it.
Lai sentence a test for Carney's new trade deal with China
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.
As others fall apart, Canadians are at long last coming together
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...
Poilievre finally tackles the Trump test and looks more statesmanlike for it
The main criticism of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s convention speech on Friday was that in 40 minutes or so, he didn’t mention the words “Donald Trump” — or how he would respond to the president’s intimidation.
Carney’s diversification plan will turn to disaster if China attacks Taiwan
In his speech at his party’s convention in Calgary on Friday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre expressed his wariness about the “strategic partnership” the Carney government has struck with China. Cognizant that many western Conservatives welcomed Beijing’s tariff relief on canola provided by an agreement to allow 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles into Canada, he did not expand on his misgivings.
Party support for Poilievre this weekend can't guarantee his job stays safe
In the spring of 2001, a group of MPs resigned from the official Opposition Canadian Alliance caucus, in protest at the faltering leadership of Stockwell Day, to form the so-called “Rebel Alliance.” By fall, seven MPs established the Democratic Representative Caucus (DRC), led by their parliamentary leader, Chuck Strahl.
Sources say Ottawa considering Swedish jets over F-35s for half of fleet
The petulance displayed by the U.S. ambassador to Canada is exactly what you might expect from Pete Hoekstra if he had just been informed that Canada intends to spend half the money earmarked for new F-35 fighter jets on the rival Swedish Gripen. Hoekstra apparently skipped the class on diplomacy being about saying the nastiest thing in the nicest way...
Chinese imports are already causing problems for Canada we shouldn’t allow
There is a reason why the United States and Canada consider China a “non-market economy.” Beijing, rather than market forces, determines production and prices. Since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2000, it has been able to access Western markets, without offering reciprocal access. A very good case study is currently before the Canadian finance minister, François-Philippe Champagne.
Carney risks wrath of Washington in Davos address
One of the most sage voices on social media in these nebulous days is that of Polish academic Slawomir Debski. To those lamenting that NATO is dead as a result of Donald Trump’s intrigues over Greenland, and the imposition of tariffs on allies that deployed troops to Greenland, he pointed out that the alliance has survived worse. He cited the...
MAGA has its sights on Alberta
Steve Bannon is in the ratings business these days, so he can say outrageous things with impunity. On his influential War Room podcast last week, he talked about Prime Minister Mark Carney’s “kowtowing” visit to China and said: “Let me be blunt, you are playing with fire. You will rue the day you did that. President (Donald) Trump is not...
Carney has leverage with China for a ‘partial’ deal on EV, grain tariffs
What do you do about a superpower you don’t trust but can’t afford to ignore? Prime Minister Mark Carney will hope he can find the answer to that puzzle during his visit to Beijing this week. Canada is caught in the crossfire between a Trump administration that has veered sharply towards protectionism and a Chinese regime whose actions are often...
Carney has other West Coast fish to fry before an oil pipeline
It’s very apparent the Metlakatla won't back any new developments until Ottawa addresses their anger over a questionable propane contract One oil spill would destroy a way of life, is what Marilyn Slett said she told Mark Carney when he visited Prince Rupert, B.C. to discuss conservation and economic opportunities in the region.
Canada can help Trump secure the Arctic without seizing Greenland
Canada is offering to contribute military assets to a multilateral force being proposed by Germany and Britain to boost NATO’s presence in Greenland, government sources said. One official said that Prime Minister Mark Carney raised with allies the issue of reinforcing the Arctic, including Greenland, when he was in Europe last week. “We welcome the German and British plan and...
China is infiltrating Trump’s hemisphere, but not in Greenland
The Danish people are feeling shocked, and not a little betrayed, by President Donald Trump’s threats to annex Greenland, a constituent part of the Kingdom of Denmark, says one of the country’s most senior diplomats. “Denmark has done everything the U.S. has asked of us. They called and we delivered: in Iraq, Libya and especially in Afghanistan, where we had...
Carney’s docility to Trump’s roguery could come back to bite Canada
In the past days and weeks, we have witnessed the Finlandization of Canada. In Finland’s case during the Cold War that meant, in the words of the Finnish political cartoonist Kari Suomalainen, “bowing to the East, without mooning the West.”
Starkly different reactions by Carney and Poilievre to Venezuela are revealing
It seems clear that there was great excitement in the Poilievre household on Saturday morning, as news of the surgical strike by U.S. special forces in Venezuela filtered through. Pierre Poilievre’s wife, Anaida, is Venezuelan, and like many of her fellow citizens, she likely rejoiced in the arrest and deportation of the illegitimate president Nicolás Maduro.
Mark Carney’s conceivable tragic fall will come from hubris
It has been curious to watch Prime Minister Mark Carney’s parade of year-end interviews while reading Paul Litt’s excellent 2011 biography of former prime minister John Turner: Elusive Destiny. Many of Turner’s qualities, as noted by journalist Ron Graham in a Saturday Night magazine profile ahead of the 1984 Liberal leadership election, could equally be said of Carney.
Canada and the EU can win an arms race with Russia, even without Trump
In the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s Sunday meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the U.S. president said he spoke with the leaders of France, Finland, Poland, Norway, Italy, the U.K. and Germany, as well as the presidents of NATO and the European Commission. Canada was notable by its absence, despite committing an additional $2.5 billion in financing and loan...
In these dark days, look to Irwin Cotler
In these dark days, look to Irwin Cotler. No wonder hope seems so much harder to conjure up than despair when one reads the daily news. In particular, the counter-revolution against the post-war liberal consensus being led by Donald Trump inspires dread and fear.
Canada’s tolerance of antisemitic intolerance has gone too far
Osman Azizov, who allegedly hunted Jewish women, has been released on bail. How warped are our values in the name of accommodation and diversity
How I changed my mind about the Liberals ending religious exemptions for hate speech
It is a rare thing to have one’s mind changed by a politician. In the words of the late prime minister Pierre Trudeau, MPs are “nobodies…like pawns in a chess game.” And yet, as I prepared to write a column questioning the Conservative opposition to C-9, the legislation designed to combat hate crimes and intimidation, I reconsidered my position after...