Justin Ling

Justin Ling

Pierre Poilievre gave Joe Rogan the interview he’s never given Canadians

Pierre Poilievre’s interview with podcast giant Joe Rogan began on-theme, with the Conservative party leader gifting the skeptical-yet-gullible interviewer with a red maple leaf emblazoned 70-pound kettlebell, and stayed in the zone for the next two-and-a-half hours. The marathon chat managed to broach policy, personality, and puffery, sometimes simultaneously. And it was, if not particularly enlightening, fairly endearing. And equally...

Justin Ling

When AI contributes to tragedies like Tumbler Ridge, the government should hold tech companies accountable. Too bad Carney’s not interested

We live in a world of chatbots. The economic and social promise of large language models has driven the Western world into an AI mania that’s driving our stock markets and leading to massive investments in data centres and energy infrastructure. Yet we still don’t really know how AI works — nor the very real impacts it can have on...

Justin Ling

Trump’s war in Iran shows Carney has lots to learn about the new world order — one thing most of all

More than two decades ago, the United States invited Canada to join in a new Middle Eastern misadventure. The invitation was premised on a big lie about Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien declined to participate. It’s not that he foresaw the disaster to come — but he had a team of good advisers, as...

Justin Ling

Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have made a dangerous gamble in Iran. Why is Mark Carney cheering them on?

In Iran, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have opted to play regime change roulette. They are wagering with the lives of civilians in Iran, Israel, and the Gulf countries. They risk embroiling American and Israeli forces into yet another forever war, a military operation with no clear objectives and no way to truly win. And they do so with no...

Justin Ling

Canada just got some good news on U.S. tariffs. Donald Trump won’t let us enjoy it for long

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday issued a rare rebuke against a White House that has otherwise seemed unbound by law, nixing Donald Trump’s tariffs via statement of fact: “The President enjoys no inherent authority to impose tariffs during peacetime.” Revel in this rare bit of good news, Canada — but not for too long. This, for Trump, is a...

Justin Ling

Carney’s defence plan could transform Canadian industry — but it comes with a moral cost

As he looks to rebuild Canada’s military, Prime Minister Mark Carney has surely been thinking of C.D. Howe. Howe became William Lyon Mackenzie King’s “minister of everything” at the outset of the Second World War, when “few thought of Canada as an industrial power,” as he later wrote. He believed not only that Canada could industrialize but also that the...

Justin Ling

President Trump, I’ve got a bridge to sell you

Canada has a big, beautiful piece of infrastructure we think you might be interested in. It’s a tremendous, wonderful bridge, and it’s already been paid for — you only have to take the credit. And just because it’s you, because you’re such a clever and strong president, we named it for the best right-winger the Detroit Red Wings ever had...

Justin Ling

In the face of horror in Tumbler Ridge, these are the questions we need to be asking

The mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge is the kind of tragedy that Canada, unfortunately, has seen too often in recent decades. It will take some time to fully understand how this horror occurred. But we know the results. Nine people are dead: A mother, an educator, six children, and the shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar.

Justin Ling

We’re still waiting for Mark Carney to deliver on one of his earliest promises

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...

Justin Ling

For years, Canada has used a secret U.S.-run terror watchlist. Now Trump could use it against us

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.

Justin Ling

Mark Carney at the End of the End of History

Melos was, stuck firmly between two empires, an island of quiet stability. The Persian empire had been booted out of the territory around the Aegean Sea, which left just the Athenian Empire and Sparta cohabitating along the archipelago and island chains. While both powers were rivals, each commanding loyalty from a network of city-states, they maintained a parity and cooperation...

Justin Ling

Donald Trump’s naked attempt to destroy a global institution is working. Mark Carney should fight it

For a time, it was Kimberly Prost’s job to make sure only real terrorists appeared on the international sanctions list. Being on this list means being cut off from much of the global financial system and barred from much of the Western world. If you found yourself on such a list in error two decades ago — improperly accused of...

Justin Ling

Mark Carney talked tough in front of the world. This is how he can now back it up with action

It was a tale of two speeches. Prime Minister Mark Carney quoted Greek historian Thucydides, cited Czech democratic hero Václav Havel and outlined how the old systems of the liberal order were over.

Justin Ling

This is going to be a long year in Quebec politics — and Legault’s resignation is only the beginning

Quebec Premier François Legault resigned on Wednesday, leaving an unholy mess in his wake. Now, with the province’s largest parties leaderless, it looks like a fait accompli that the Parti Québécois will win the 2026 election — steering Canada toward a third referendum on Quebec independence.

Justin Ling

Canadians won’t let the U.S. government boss them around. But U.S. mega-corporations? Sure, why not

In December 2022, a parliamentary committee launched an investigation into “tech giants’ current and ongoing use of intimidation and subversion tactics to evade regulation in Canada and around the world.” Meta, the tech giant, took that personally.

Justin Ling

In Venezuela, Trump’s Donroe Doctrine is now in action. Canada can’t sit on its hands

The Donroe Doctrine has been put into action and the United States has re-entered the business of regime change in the Americas. Canada can’t keep sitting on our hands and hoping it will all work out. Late Friday night, American might pounded military installations across Venezuela while helicopters full of special forces descended on Caracas to snatch dictator Nicolas Maduro...

Justin Ling

Trump’s foreign policy shows what the U.S. is really thinking. Canada must respond

We now have a written copy of the Donroe Doctrine, and it makes for some unnerving reading. The National Security Strategy serves as America’s written foreign policy, laying out priorities and concerns and revealing how the United States intends to both co-operate with its allies and compete with its adversaries. The first such document of Donald Trump’s second presidency dropped...

Justin Ling

Poilievre might be safe as Conservative leader for now — but if he wants to stay that way in 2026, here’s what he must do

I was standing in the back of a half-built warehouse in Kingston in April, watching Pierre Poilievre try to rouse his supporters. “We will reject,” the Conservative leader declared ominously, “the Century Initiative.” There were a few angry shouts from audience members who knew what he was talking about. Everyone else was silent. This radical scheme, designed by “multinational corporations”...

Justin Ling

It’s been good year for Mark Carney — but he has one weakness critics will try to exploit in 2026

History is not made by great men and women acting alone, writes Mark Carney in his book “Value(s).” Leaders who accomplish big things know how to “engage, explain and emote.” Government has become too short-sighted and transactional, Carney argues. Writing in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, he calls on leaders to leverage crises to make big changes.

Justin Ling

Enough is enough, Canada. Just buy the damned jets

Canada has spent 28 years trying to buy a new fighter jet: the federal government made a decision, then unmade it, then made it again. We’ve already spent more than a billion dollars on this thing, and 1,500 Canadian jobs have been created to build it. It’s the tent pole of our plans to defend ourselves and co-operate with our...

Justin Ling

American leadership looks chaotic. The truth may be more sinister

I’m calling it the Halifax screwjob. Over 48 hours this weekend, the Trump administration sold out its most deserving ally, sided with an enemy, reversed itself, and reversed itself again. The saga is further evidence for an untrustworthy America, where bad actors are winning the power struggle.

Justin Ling

Make no mistake, this is Mark Carney’s Trump budget. It’s also missing one big thing

Touting his One Big Beautiful Bill Act in June, President Donald Trump declared America “the hottest country in the world.” With its smörgåsbord of tax cuts and tax incentives to go with America’s sky-high trade barriers, at its core were the White House’s dreams of a manufacturing renaissance.

Justin Ling

It’s good news there’s no trade deal with Trump’s America

In early October, Premier Doug Ford sat and stared at the giant floating head of Howard Lutnick as the U.S. commerce secretary explained that Canada won’t be allowed to keep its automotive manufacturing industry. Lutnick was addressing the crowd virtually, and Doug Ford was sitting in the front row. “America is first, and Canada can be second,” Lutnick declared...

Justin Ling

Pierre Poilievre’s conspiracy theorizing isn’t just wrong — it’s dangerous

I can’t believe that this needs to be said, but: It is wrong to call for the jailing of your political opponents. Perhaps somebody should tell Pierre Poilievre.

Justin Ling

Pierre Poilievre is eating the NDP’s lunch. Here’s how a new leader can save the party from itself

Recent decades in politics have made us cynical. We rarely trust our politicians to wield power effectively or honestly. Our politicians have responded by making their promises smaller and more boutique, or else giving up their power altogether. Our cynicism has made us lazy and unimaginative. And so the tools of public policy have, increasingly, become targeted tax cuts and...

Justin Ling

Charlie Kirk’s death is being used as an excuse by MAGA to grab power. This is how Canada can defend itself

“We can no longer allow,” Charlie Kirk said, “a tech oligarchy, a tech dictatorship, absent the traditional constitutional checks and balances to continue to rain terror over our speech.” This was 2022 and Kirk, one of the most important conservative influencers and organizers in America, was telling his supporters that social media couldn’t be trusted. Twitter, Facebook, Google, and the...

Justin Ling

Try as They Might, Conservatives Will Have Trouble Escaping Trump

BY THE CLOSE of the first week of the forty-fifth federal election, Pierre Poilievre’s rhetorical shimmy shake was well practised. The quips, carefully written, had been frequently used. The lost Liberal decade. A new Conservative government that will put Canada first for a change. A big bring-it-home tax cut.

Justin Ling

Mark Carney needs to stop placating the mad king and actually fight Trump

There are some people who are quite displeased with the title of my new book: “The 51st State Votes.”They are even more upset at the art on the cover: A mountie flying an American flag. And to them I say: Good, be mad. I wrote this book to be a succinct recounting of this current moment in Canada’s democracy: The...

Justin Ling

Mark Carney was once ‘concerned’ about Trump. Now things have gotten worse than anyone could have guessed

In April, just days before he was elected prime minister, I asked Mark Carney whether Canadians ought to start worrying about the state of things down south. “The U.S. system is one of checks and balances, famously,” Carney began. At the core of the American system of democracy, he went on, “is the rule of law.” He gave a small...

Justin Ling

Critics of forest fire restrictions are painted as conspiracy theorists. This is why they might not be

Nova Scotia is, if you listen to a small-but-loud chorus, sliding into “authoritarianism” and “totalitarianism.” It is the testing ground for draconian “climate lockdowns” and a sign of a malignant government “paranoia.” For most Nova Scotians, their government’s decision to ban anyone from entering the woods for any reason, save on their own property — issued with the blunt warning...

Justin Ling

The worst thing Mark Carney could do is make a deal with Trump

“The worst thing you can do in a deal is seem desperate to make it.” Donald Trump may have written that bit of wisdom, in his 1987 book “The Art of the Deal,” but he’s not practising it. Ever since his administration vowed “90 deals in 90 days,” the president has been scrambling to ink trade deals before the full...

Justin Ling

Israel has been accused of genocide. This is how Canada should respond

“If genocide is an actual possibility of the future,” Hannah Arendt wrote in 1963, “then no people on earth — least of all, of course, the Jewish people, in Israel or elsewhere — can feel reasonably sure of its continued existence without the help and protection of international law.” A historian, Arendt’s life’s work was a diagnostic look at the...

Justin Ling

Mark Carney is the reincarnation of the Chrétien Liberals. That’s not a bad thing

In 1993, Liberal party leader Jean Chrétien had dinner with four top Canadian academics. Over dessert, one asked a blunt question: If you win, what do you actually want to do? “I have three priorities,” replied Chrétien. They were to keep Canada independent from the United States, keep the country together and keep the International Monetary Fund out.

Justin Ling

Canada keeps trying — and failing — to build. This is how Mark Carney should fix the problem

A half century ago, a pair of design theorists coined a new term for tough times: “Wicked problems.” It’s a type of problem, neither inherently good nor bad, that is hard to define. It calls for many possible solutions but makes it impossible to adequately test them out. Worst of all, it’s impossible to tell when you’ve actually solved it...

Justin Ling

From flights to cell phone bills, Canadians get a raw deal. This is why — and how Mark Carney can fix it

With Canadians across the country avoiding the United States like plague, many are looking to other ends of the country for their summer vacations. And they are, most likely, coming to a realization: Travelling across this country is really damn expensive. Base airfares from Canada’s two main air carriers on major routes have tripled in just five years, leaving Canadians...

Justin Ling

Despite plenty of theatre, this is why there’ll be no deal with Donald Trump

Donald Trump is a tariff man. He said so himself, this Monday at the G7 summit in Kananaskis. Nevertheless, the protectionist American president says, there’s no reason why Canada and the United States can’t hammer out their trade differences. “It’s achievable,” he nodded. Standing next to him, Prime Minister and host of the summit Mark Carney kept his poker face...

Justin Ling

Mark Carney’s defence plan might do more than just fix Canada’s ailing military

As the United States expanded westward through the vast expanse of plains, mountains and desert in the middle of the 19th century, it had a problem: mules, the U.S. Army’s preferred pack animal, were dying and piling up. An enterprising major pitched an unusual idea: Why not try out some camels? It took two years of study and debate, but...

Justin Ling

If Mark Carney has had a less than impressive start, this is the reason why

Delivering his maiden speech in the House of Commons on Monday, Prime Minister Mark Carney wisely tacked towards humility. “I have much to learn from the members of this great House. I will make mistakes,” he said. “I have no doubt that you will call them out, and for good reason.” Carney acknowledged that our parliamentary system may seem arcane...

Justin Ling

Make housing cheaper without prices coming down? Mark Carney’s new housing minister is talking in riddles

Here’s a puzzle: How do you make homes more affordable without making them cost less? It’s a riddle that ex-Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson is promising to solve in his new role as federal housing minister. But I’m here to tell you it’s no ordinary brainteaser, but a paradox.

Justin Ling

With his new cabinet, Mark Carney is going for the wrong kind of change

Prime Minister Mark Carney has unveiled his new cabinet, and he has tasked his team with changing government. Not “small change,” he insisted, but “big change.” Applying the measuring tape to his new government, however, we can conclude that the freshly-elected prime minister is exaggerating just how radically different his new team really is. And in his medium-sized change cabinet...

Justin Ling

Mark Carney will be tempted to adopt Justin Trudeau’s playbook. He should put country before party instead

I discovered my favourite bit of wartime propaganda recently. In chunky pale blue and red font, the poster reads: “THE SLACKER MUST NOT RULE CANADA. VOTE UNION GOVERNMENT.”

Justin Ling

On this issue, Mark Carney and Pierre Poilievre couldn’t be more different. But at risk are scores of lives

When President John F. Kennedy asked Congress to fund the establishment of a dedicated foreign development agency in 1961, he did so by letting them know that the world was watching. “The eyes of other industrialized nations, awaiting our leadership for a stronger united effort,” Kennedy said. “The eyes of our adversaries, awaiting the weakening of our resolve in this...

Justin Ling

Why Did the Republicans Want to Fundraise for Pierre Poilievre?

A curious fundraising website reveals an abandoned GOP-Conservative collab. “Donate today,” the website proclaims, next to the grinning face of the Conservative Leader, “to help Pierre Poilievre and our common sense Conservative team axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime.” If you stumbled across this donation site — which asks for up to $1,72...

Justin Ling

Pierre Poilievre’s platform might be full of slogans. But this one policy of his is a great idea

For every American worker, American businesses invest $24 (U.S.) into the domestic economy. For every Canadian worker, Canadian businesses invest just $11 (U.S.) back into Canada. That gap, mentioned frequently by Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, is a bright red warning light that something has gone wrong in the Canadian economy. Up until 2014, America and Canada’s per-worker investment rates were...

Justin Ling

Mark Carney’s election platform aims to make Canada self-reliant — but the plan is at risk of self delusion

In unveiling his party’s full platform Saturday morning, Mark Carney released a strange plan for strange times: A protectionist plan to return Canada to the world stage. The costed platform document, released after Canadians have already begun voting, sets the stakes in its second sentence: “Our sovereignty is under threat.” In response, Carney wants to open markets, integrate with our...

Justin Ling

Election debates are core to our democracy. But this change made a mockery of them

In an election campaign that has been obnoxiously micromanaged, where the aspirants to lead our country have treated journalists — and, by extension, the public — with varying levels of disdain, last night’s debates should have been a breath of fresh air. Instead, the whole affair was hijacked by right wing conspiracy-minded outlet Rebel News and another right-wing network. We...

Justin Ling

The Jonathan Pedneault Interview - The co-leader of the Green Party is oddly well-suited for this moment

“In its letter, that we received this morning at 7:20am,” Jonathan Pedneault said, the Leaders’ Debate Commission announced that it would “exclude the Green Party of Canada from the leaders’ debates.” This decision is “unjust and baseless,” Pedneault told a gaggle of reporters at a hastily assembled press conference at his campaign office. "Their decisio…

Justin Ling

Tale of the TLMEP - Trudeau and Poilievre visit Quebec's most important TV programme

It’s debate week on the Chaos Campaign, but arguably the most important conversation of the campaign transpired last night. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and Liberal leader Mark Carney visited Radio-Canada’s nouvelle maison to participate in Tout le monde en parle, the wide-ranging panel show hosted by comedian Guy A. Lepage, and watched live by at least one million Quebecers every...

Justin Ling

While everyone focuses on Carney and Poilievre, some of the election’s most interesting ideas are coming from an unlikely place

“In many ways,” Jonathan Pedneault says, “the Greens have been at the forefront of identifying threats.” Risk-detection may not be the first attribute that comes to mind when thinking about the Green Party. But Pedneault, the party’s co-leader along with stalwart Elizabeth May, is hoping to convince Canadians that, in dark, weird, and uncertain times, the Greens are up to...

Justin Ling

If Pierre Poilievre can’t handle the media, who else will he avoid confronting?

If you have paid attention to Pierre Poilievre in recent months, you could be forgiven for thinking he is afraid of journalists. From the outset of the campaign, the Conservatives have aggressively tried to limit journalists’ access to their leader and undermine their ability to ask him tough questions about how he hopes to govern the country.

Justin Ling

Pierre Poilievre Wants to Slash Canadian Foreign Aid

“We will cut back on foreign aid to dictators, terrorists, and global bureaucracy,” Poilievre told some 4,000-odd supporters in Kingston last week, “to bring our money home.” He repeated that notion again in Trois-Rivières on Friday: “I will be cutting waste, bureaucracy, consultants, foreign aid and other unnecessary expenses,” he declared. Poilievre appeared on Radio-Canada this week for a lengthy...

Justin Ling

Who Has the Best Housing Plan?

I hope everyone had a pleasant Liberation Day. I’m coming to you from overcast Kingston, Ontario, where Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is campaigning. All party leaders have spent the past 24 hours scrambling to respond to Donald Trump’s quixotic tariff announcement — which, conspicuously, left out Canada and Mexico. While we still face a litany of sector-specific tariffs, everyone is...

Justin Ling

The international community has been silent on this growing threat. Worse, Mark Carney’s Liberals mostly have been too

Thanks to tactful diplomacy, Canada and Greenland share a border. Thanks to increasingly an increasingly aggressive foreign policy coming out of Washington, the two countries now share an existential threat, as well. While all of Canada’s political leaders now, finally, recognize the need to take Arctic sovereignty seriously, Canada needs to immediately stand up for Greenland as it faces intimidation...

Justin Ling

Let’s not sleep on Justin Trudeau’s last good idea

In one of his last acts as prime minister, Justin Trudeau put forward a genuinely great idea: Get the RCMP out of local policing. It may not have been a terribly sexy note to end on, or one that even garnered much press. But after ten years of presiding over a police department mired in internal dysfunction, it is a...

Justin Ling

We can no longer rely on America. This is how we forge a new place in the world

“We strongly support your right to determine your own future,” President Donald Trump declared Tuesday night. In the next breath, he declared that “one way or the other” America would seize control. Trump was talking about Greenland, but Canadians should see themselves in that bizarre threat from a power-mad president.

Justin Ling

Elon Musk isn’t the Trump adviser Canadians should fear the most. This man is

A month of escalating threats emanating from the White House has left Canada shocked. From President Donald Trump’s initial vow to impose stiff across-the-board tariffs to the menacing invitations that Canada surrender its sovereignty altogether, Canadians have been caught off guard. But if you’re familiar with the work of Peter Navarro, none of this should have been a surprise...

Justin Ling

Carney and Freeland are right about the Trump threat. But I’m getting worried our next PM has no real plan

The international order is crumbling. Canada is facing an existential threat. Our closest ally says it wants to conquer us. And to meet this enormous challenge, we need the status quo. That is the consensus message coming out of two nights of debates between the four men and women vying to become the next prime minister, anyway.

Justin Ling

Please: Anyone but Doug Ford

“Doug Ford here,” the Progressive Conservative leader texted me recently. “I will stand up and fight US tariffs to save Ontario jobs.” He informed me that I have two options: “REPLY > YES if you’re with me and the PC team.” Or, I could reply “stop to stop.” This column is my reply: stop.

Justin Ling

Foreign countries aren’t undermining trust in Canada. Our own politicians are

“Trust in Canada’s democratic institutions has been shaken, and it is imperative to restore it,” Justice Marie-Josée Hogue writes. “This can only be achieved through greater transparency.” That sage advice, tucked in the preface of Hogue’s voluminous report on the threat of foreign interference— and Ottawa’s response to it — is perhaps the most important thing our leaders should take...

Justin Ling

A distracted Canadian government shouldn’t forget about this giant foe

You can tell a lot about the value of a democratic movement based on how hard the despots work to undermine it. By that metric, there’s a lot of value in the Free Nations of Post-Russia Forum. The Kyiv, Ukraine-based organization is an umbrella group for the various dissident groups and sovereigntist movements which are struggling to free themselves from...