Mar 29 2023 — Erin O’Toole — Substack — The budget speech yesterday was quite anticlimactic. The speech from Minister Freeland was unusually short and nothing really stood out. The “Made-In-Canada Plan” title masked the fact that there was not really a plan at all in the budget with one major exception that I will explore below. The budget was more of a recitation […]
Mar 28 2023 — Michelle Rempel Garner — Substack — Canada’s governing Liberal Party needed a political channel changer as they dropped today’s federal budget. They’re not going to get it from what they just served up. Budget 2023 reads like something hastily pulled out of the back of the fridge for visitors the Liberals weren’t expecting, as opposed to a culinary masterpiece designed to […]
Mar 27 2023 — Michelle Rempel Garner — Substack — This morning, Canada’s governing Liberals announced they would grant a one-time, minimal subsidy to what a government source described as “lower income” Canadians. While the efficacy of the measure will be debated in the coming days, buried in the article that discussed the measure was something alarming. The measure, again – reportedly aimed at “lower-income” […]
Mar 26 2023 — Noah Smith — Substack — The semiconductor fabrication industry must diversify geographically. Currently, the fabrication of leading-edge semiconductors is highly concentrated in Taiwan, because it’s dominated by a single company, TSMC. (There’s also a little bit of production in South Korea, thanks to Samsung, but mostly it’s just TSMC.) This concentration represents an unacceptable risk to the global economy, for […]
Mar 25 2023 — Tasha Kheiriddin — Substack — The pressure has been building for months. What did Prime Minister Justin Trudeau know about intelligence reports on foreign interference in Canada’s elections, and when did he know it? Why is CSIS leaking like a sieve? Why won’t the PM call a public inquiry? And so on, and so on. Then, 24 hours before Trudeau […]
Mar 19 2023 — Tasha Kheiriddin — Substack — A country divided cannot stand, so we better get our act together. It’s been three years since the World Health Organization declared Covid19 a public health emergency. Three years that feel like thirty, leaving innumerable scars across the globe. Death, illness, economic, political and social disruption became the new normal. And Canada was no exception. […]
Mar 19 2023 — Michelle Rempel Garner — Substack — If there’s one thing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his inner circle want more than anything right now, it’s to change the political channel. That’s because the foreign election interference scandal has dominated the headlines for weeks, and Trudeau has yet to find a way to turn the heat down on questions about his […]
Mar 17 2023 — Evan Scrimshaw — Substack — There are two separate and distinct questions now raised by the controversy over David Johnston’s appointment as special rapporteur on Chinese election interference – the effects on the process of investigating Chinese interference, and the politics of the CPC attacking their own former Governor General as a Liberal partisan. I’ll dispense with the politics here […]
Mar 16 2023 — Michelle Rempel Garner — Substack — By taking on Trudeau’s latest political hot potato, Canada’s former GG is doing more harm than good. Here’s why. As a crisis about foreign interference in Canada’s elections threatens to deal a death blow to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s polling numbers, yesterday, he announced that he had selected former Governor General David Johnston to […]
Mar 10 2023 — Colin Horgan — Substack — By now you may have heard that, according to reports in both Global News and the Globe and Mail, China tried in both 2019 and 2021 to influence Canada’s elections. China’s “sophisticated strategy”, according to the Globe and Mail, whose reporters saw top-secret Canadian Security Intelligence Service documents, involved diplomats and others backing “the re-election […]
Mar 3 2023 — Scott Aitchison — Substack — The Canada Mortgage and Housing Company recently issued a report outlining the magnitude of Canada’s housing crisis. Its findings were stark. Canada needs to build 3.5 million new units by 2030 to have any chance of restoring affordability. Last week, the Ottawa Planning and Housing Committee had an opportunity to fill a drop in that […]
Feb 26 2023 — Michelle Rempel Garner — Substack — Earlier this month, Microsoft released their revamped Bing search engine—complete with a powerful AI-driven chatbot—to an initially enthusiastic reception. Kevin Roose in The New York Times was so impressed that he reported being in “awe.” But Microsoft’s new product also turns out to have a dark side. A week after release, the chatbot – known […]
Feb 24 2023 — Colin Horgan — Substack — “So much is broken and not working, and I think there’s a real frustration that things have been brought to this point by the government.” It is a familiar talking point for Canadians. But the source, this time, wasn’t Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who for months has repeatedly lamented that “everything feels broken” in Canada; […]
Feb 22 2023 — Michelle Rempel Garner — Substack — The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) recently trial ballooned plans to end its traditional television and radio broadcasts with plans to shift to entirely digitally streamed content. Unfortunately for the CBC, it was Liberal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland who inadvertently gave the best argument against this as a winning strategy for the broadcaster’s long-term viability. Last […]
Feb 21 2023 — Brian Klaas — Substack — Dark Triad traits are over-represented in positions of power. Are the halls of Congress and Parliament overrun with psychopaths? Would you swap places with a politician? Whenever I give public lectures about power, I often do a simple experiment. I ask people in the audience to raise their hand if they would willingly switch places—trade […]