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Government House Leader Karina Gould says the Bloc Québécois and NDP are “scared of the Conservatives” due to their refusal to help bring an end to the privilege debate that has paralyzed the House of Commons for the past 10 sitting days.
As they put forward back-to-back non-confidence votes, the Conservatives continue to keep their policy plans under wraps, and maintain a wait-and-see posture on what will become of big-ticket programs like dental care, pharmacare, or the National School Food Program if they form government. But with the NDP and Bloc Québécois indicating they won’t necessarily move to bring down the government until possibly next year, strategists say there’s no political gain for the Conservatives in providing more substance unless their rivals make a non-answer cost more.
The federal Liberals are hunkering down in Nanaimo, but the party faces a near-total “wipeout” in British Columbia as the rising Conservative tide threatens to breach even the Liberals’ Vancouver bulwark, say pollsters.The Sept. 9-11 caucus retreat aimed to hash out the Liberals’ strategy ahead of Parliament’s return on Sept. 16, and the two byelections in Quebec and Manitoba that same day.
Despite “inflammatory” language in a new United Nations report accusing Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program of being a breeding ground for modern forms of slavery, a recent Senate report made similar findings, accusing the program of failing both workers, and the employers and industries that depend on them.
The Conservative Party raised more than $20.5-million in the first half of 2024, outpacing the governing Liberals’ fundraising by more than $13.6-million so far this year, and its own total by this point last year—a record-smashing four quarters for the official opposition—by more than $4-million.Yet, with nearly $7-million in fundraising this year, and nearly $3-million more in the bank at the end of 2023, the Liberals still seem to be holding their fire while the Conservatives and NDP fire shots across the bow with dueling cross-country ad campaigns launching this month ahead of two important September byelections.
The federal government has missed its own July 31 deadline to provide a draft transition plan to British Columbia’s salmon farmers, after it announced last month that those farms would be required to move to entirely land-based operations in the next five years.
As calls mount for ever-stricter bail reforms from the premiers and federal Conservatives, University of Ottawa criminology professor Justin Piché says critics “got what they paid for” by funnelling millions of dollars into policing while neglecting the courts and community support programs.And with another high-profile killing turning up the heat on the feds to take action, a former police officer says that too much meddling in what are ultimately individual decisions by judges could produce unintended consequences from a judiciary that fiercely guards against any perceived intrusion on its autonomy.
The departure of Seamus O’Regan from the Liberals’ front bench will only further erode party unity and efforts to quell dissent and dissatisfaction with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s leadership, say politicos. But whether or not there is a major shakeup in cabinet or even if Trudeau were to leave his post, recent polling by Abacus Data suggests that most Canadians couldn’t pick some of the most prominent cabinet members out of a lineup—much less care for the in and outs of cabinet or the pre-machinations of a potential leadership race.
Naheed Nenshi’s landslide victory in the Alberta NDP leadership election came with a promise to pursue divorce proceedings with its federal counterpart, but political observers and former staffers say there is still more to gain under a unified banner toward the shared goal of defeating Conservatives.On June 22, the former mayor of Calgary claimed victory as the new leader of the provincial party with an overwhelming 86 per cent of the vote, 10 times that of his closest competitor, Kathleen Ganley, the province’s former justice minister.
Sikh community advocates say they feel “validated and vindicated” by a recent national security and intelligence report looking into foreign interference activities since 2018, which found that second only to China, India—not Russia—is one of the most significant foreign interference threats facing not only the Sikh community, but also the halls of Parliament.
More than a year and a half after the Joyceville Institution abattoir in Kingston, Ont., closed down, Ontario beef farmers are ramping up the pressure on the federal government to give the 60-plus-year-old slaughterhouse a new lease on life. However, prison-farm-reform advocate Calvin Neufeld says he wants the government to finally “let it die” after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep the building on life support, with more than $1-million in repair costs projected over the next five years just to keep the building empty.
Diaspora groups say the government’s proposed foreign influence registry is a long-overdue step in the right direction to finally address their communities’ concerns and keep them safe. But national security expert Dan Stanton says the government’s “country-agnostic approach,” and unfairly high expectations from the public have the potential to create a “bureaucratic monster.”
The Speaker of the House of Commons is once again facing calls to resign from two parties in the Chamber following a raucous Question Period last week that saw two Conservatives—including the leader of the official opposition—ejected. But political observers say that addressing the real issue at the heart of the increasing erosion of decorum may not require a new Speaker, but an entirely new Parliament.
Preliminary findings from the federal Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference has found that acts of foreign interference did occur in the previous two federal elections, but did not affect who formed government and that Canada’s electoral process remains “robust,” however, it has affected Canadians’ confidence in the electoral process and foreign interference is a real phenomenon and Canada “must reckon with” it.
With thousands of job losses since marijuana’s legalization in 2018, cannabis companies large and small closing their doors due to an increasingly burdensome tax regime, and growing levels of unpaid federal debt, cannabis stakeholders say without urgent action, there may soon no longer be an industry to tax.Leading up to the tabling of the 2024 federal budget on April 16, cannabis industry stakeholders were lobbying the federal government to adjust the excise tax, which they say has hampered the industry from turning a profit more than half a decade since legalization, causing more than 4,000 job losses and leading hundreds of companies to owe millions of dollars in tax debt to the federal government.
Bolstered by the Conservative Party’s record leads in the polls against the governing Liberals, attendees at the Canada Strong and Free conference last week say they’ve experienced confidence and energy unseen since the 2010s, which has given the movement a certainty in their values to unapologetically “say what they mean” and reject the “centrist orthodoxy” demanding moderation to win an election.
As the Liberals’ pre-budget charm offensive enters its third week, the new strategy to build momentum ahead of the April 16 budget has become an unintended “dress rehearsal” for caucus election readiness. But with billions of dollars in announcements already on the books aimed at winning back gen-Z and millennial voters, the louder the Liberals trumpet the good news for those Canadians, the more political observers are hearing which notes aren’t being played, and wondering what will be left for everyone else.
The Liberals have announced they will be dishing out the first portion of the long-awaited funding for a national school food program in their latest pre-budget appetizer, which they say could provide up to 400,000 more students with healthy school meals as early as this fall.
On March 20, 2020, one week after both Chambers of Parliament adjourned, the COVID-19 pandemic had grown nearly tenfold to more than 1,000 reported cases. And as the Canada-United States border officially closed to non-essential travel, parliamentary staffers of all stripes were coming to grips with the fact it could be much longer than two weeks before they returned to the Hill.
Palestinian Canadians with family trapped in Gaza say they are running out of hope after six weeks of waiting to hear if their applications for the special visa program to bring them to safety have begun processing. And as Israel threatens to launch a military operation into the border city where more than one million Palestinians have sought refuge from the war by Ramadan, some applicants have given up on waiting and have begun taking matters into their own hands to save their families.
On the same day Prime Minister Justin Trudeau extended Canada’s recognition of the United Nations’ International Decade for People of African Descent, a delegation of Black anti-racism advocates levelled accusations of anti-Black racism against the country’s highest court, and called into question the federal government’s capacity to meet the decade’s promise.
After doubling its fundraising totals in 2023 and double-digit polling leads, the Conservative Party can afford to keep its foot on the gas to keep its base revved up, redouble volunteer recruitment, and blanket the airwaves with riding-specific attack ads, say politicos. And as the governing Liberals continue to slip further behind, dismal polling and uncertainty over the future with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is deflating an urgency the party will need to build up its own war chest, according to a leading pollster.
Incumbent Conservative MPs whose ridings have changed in population by 25 per cent or more will have to go through open nomination contests, according to new rules approved by the Conservative Party’s powerful national council.“The party is opening up nominations [in ridings] that have changed 25 per cent or more,” said one Conservative source who spoke to The Hill Times on not-for-attribution basis because the new nomination rules were announced at a closed-door caucus meeting. “Population change is the criteria.”
Despite the Liberals’ vow to appeal last week’s Federal Court ruling rejecting the government’s defence of its invocation of the Emergencies Act nearly two years ago, Conservative strategists say the opposition should keep their eye on the future and the issues that are bringing them success in the present, rather than relitigating the past.
Amidst South Africa’s case before the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in its war against Hamas, the Liberal government may be trying to strike a tone of tactical neutrality to manage both a divided public and caucus. But international justice experts say silence won’t allow Canada to escape the consequences of the court’s ruling.
As the special extended family program for people in Gaza opened for applications this week, Palestinian Canadians hoping to get their loved ones to safety say they feel forced into competition against each other in order to secure one of the scarce temporary resident visas before the program’s 1,000-person quota is met.
The Conservatives still have a double-digit lead across every recent poll, but analysis by the Angus Reid Institute show that with potentially a year or more before the next election, half of the electorate are still open to changing their minds before casting their ballots.
As New Democrats excitedly unwrapped the latest expansion to the national dental program earlier this week, the Liberals are running out of time to make good on their promise to deliver the most important items on the NDP’s end-of-year supply-and-confidence agreement wish list and bring the promised pharmacare legislation home for the holidays.
As MPs continue to weigh whether House of Commons Speaker Greg Fergus’ tribute to the Ontario Liberal Party’s outgoing interim leader constitutes a breach of the non-partisan role, an expert on the Westminster system says the image of the Speaker as above party politics is an “illusion” that functioned better when politicians saw themselves as Members of Parliament first, and party members second.But as Fergus (Hull–Aylmer, Que.) says he will respect the will of the Procedure and House Affairs Committee (PROC) and Parliament, members of Canada’s Black community are questioning whether the opposition’s own “caustic hyper-partisanship” is blinding them to the historical precedence of the first Black Speaker and the message they will send to underrepresented communities if he is pushed out over a single lapse in judgment after just two months in the role.
Amid a temporary pause in hostilities in Israel’s war on Hamas and the agreed-upon release of hostages, organizers behind a protest that disrupted a big-ticket Liberal Party fundraiser last week are vowing to keep up the pressure around the country until they hear “an unequivocal call for an immediate ceasefire” from the federal government.
With the first weeks of the fall sitting now in the rearview mirror, former senior civil servant David Zussman says the lack of refreshed cabinet instructions is simply the latest example of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s increasing failure to fully utilize his cabinet ministers and a long-in-the-tooth government running on “autopilot” until the next election.