This is where Mark Carney’s majority hopes will be decided
Mark Carney’s majority dreams are in the hands of the normally separatist voters of Terrebonne, a suburban community north of Montreal. Carney won 169 of 343 seats in the House of Commons on election night last April, just three short of the 171 he needs to govern with full control of the chamber. Since then, he has lured three Conservative...
Carney was finally in the House, but his opponents had already lost interest in the war
In recent days, it’s been as rare to find Prime Minister Mark Carney in Parliament as it is to spot the elusive boreal owl in the woods around Ottawa. A nine-day foreign trip, on top of a prior mission to China, plus breaks in the parliamentary schedule, and important prime ministerial business have all kept him from the House of...
Carney’s Canada is not the only country searching for friends in the Trump era
The prime minister has been flying all over the world lately, doing his best to drum up new business opportunities for Canada. No criticism there. It’s a huge part of how Canada will adapt to this strange new global order, and he’s probably better suited to it than most. But let’s not miss out on chances to find new opportunities...
Carney's coveted majority remains just out of reach
Has the war in Iran torpedoed a federal election in Canada? Just two weeks ago, speculation abounded that Prime Minister Mark Carney might call a vote to capitalize on sky-high polling numbers and his desire for a majority mandate. But 10 days into Operation Epic Fury, the likelihood of Canadians going to the polls this spring has radically diminished. The...
An international norm is being questioned after Trump’s Iran strikes. As two of the officials who helped established it, we’d like to set the record straight
This past week, a New York Times columnist argued that a Canadian-led change to norms of international governance called Responsibility to Protect was now a “weak spot” that risks being exploited by today’s aggressors. The Responsibility to Protect was described by historian Martin Gilbert as “the most significant adjustment to sovereignty in 360 years.” It holds that when a government...
Carney is making Poilievre's excuses too easy
After avoiding the media for several days during the India leg of his 10-day international trade trip, Prime Minister Mark Carney finally addressed the media and spoke to the controversy caused by the unnamed Privy Council Office official who erroneously claimed India was no longer involved in foreign interference or transnational repression in Canada. During the back and forth with...
Mark Carney’s government may feel new, but poll suggests Canadians still have Trudeau-era worries
Mark Carney repeatedly says he is prime minister of a new government, not simply a continuation of Justin Trudeau’s decade leading Liberals in power. New polling from the Pollara Strategic Insights firm suggests that more Canadians are buying the “new” title than those who don’t, especially among those who voted Liberal last year. Pollara shared the results exclusively with the...
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.
Annette Ryan, Canada’s Next PBO, Will Rise to the Challenge
On March 9, the Honourable Wayne Long, Secretary of State for Financial Institutions, tabled the certificate of nomination in the House of Commons to ask members of Parliament to approve Annette Ryan as the next Parliamentary Budget Officer of Canada. Ms. Ryan, who currently serves as a deputy director at the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre, or Fintrac, is...
Prime Minister: It’s time to address all Canadians on antisemitism
Three Toronto-area synagogues were hit by gunfire in the span of one week last week. No one was obtuse enough to express “shock.” These acts are not shocking when one Toronto synagogue has been vandalized 10 times in 18 months. When swastikas were spray-painted on three Jewish-owned businesses in Montreal – and on a synagogue in Winnipeg, and two in...
Carney has a hard time explaining Canada’s position towards India
TORONTO—For the last week or two, any time the federal government has tried to explain what this country’s position actually is towards India, we haven’t come off looking great. There is a very simple explanation for this incoherence, but there is also a more alarming one, and I think that one is worth spending a minute thinking about. First, let’s...
Poilievre can't quit his climate denying bots.
After a few days of plaudits for sounding more mainstream, Poilievre reminds everyone he is a climate denier, and lacks an understanding of the global marketplace. The Trump administration has dented, but not ended, the drive towards emissions reduction. Capital investments in energy were expected to hit $3.3 trillion in 2025. Of every 3 dollars invested, 2 were going to...
Carney’s New CUSMA Cards: Trump’s Gulf War and the Ghost of Jimmy Carter
Donald Trump’s third Gulf war will almost certainly decide the fate of his presidency and the Republican Party in the November congressional elections. As the conflict widens under the hardline leadership of Mojtaba Khamenei—the son and successor to Iran’s longstanding supreme leader—the humanitarian and global economic fallout are devastating. In an ironic twist, this colossal disaster may have just handed...
Carney’s jarring, bloodless, defensive response to Trump’s war on Iran
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s response to war in the Middle East has so far seemed hasty, morally queasy, intellectually convoluted and—attempts at clarification, notwithstanding—continues to be deeply disappointing to many Canadians. His first statement, within hours of the beginning of hostilities, stopped just short of full-throated support for the United States-Israeli campaign, surprising from a prime minister who lectured the...
PM Carney was right to walk back support for a war with no exit strategy
In the world of global diplomacy, the distance between a targeted mission and a regional conflict is often measured in days. For those of us who have lived and worked in the Middle East, watching the current escalation is not just a matter of tracking headlines. It is a visceral experience. My stomach is in knots because I know what...
Do Carney and Poilievre have different visions for the Canada-U.S. relationship?
The clearest attempt at a line of demarcation during Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's speech on Canada-United States relations was an apparent rejoinder to Prime Minister Mark Carney's insistence that a "rupture" has occurred. Quoting a John F. Kennedy hymn about the geography, history, economics and necessity that have brought Canada and the U.S. ever closer, Poilievre said the former president's...
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...
Carney has my sympathy as he tries to navigate a war led by Trump and Hegseth
I’ve covered a few wars, in the Balkans and the Middle East, and I’ve seen plenty of military officers (including senior Americans) explain how things are unfolding on the battlefield. In my experience they’re invariably professional, cool and calm. What they’re not is what the U.S. “secretary of war,” Pete Hegseth, displayed this week in a couple of briefings on...
Polls show why Conservatives don't want an election right now - Liberals leading in most parts of the country and in every demographic group
Liberals leading in most parts of the country and in every demographic group. When you hear that Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives don’t want an election anytime soon, it might be due to the polling.
Mark Carney ties his own foreign policy in knots
Let’s peek in on Mark Carney’s Iran war foreign-policy update, beamed to us all the way from Australia. Mr. Carney supported U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran in a statement issued Saturday, and he still does, now in a different way, because the U.S and Israel probably did not act in keeping with international law, which is unfortunately part of...
After shackling Canada to Trump’s war in Iran, Carney’s course correction is wise
Few decisions are more important for a Canadian prime minister than whether to support the United States on matters of war and peace. With such decisions, legacies can be made and unmade. Jean Chrétien offers a prime example. He’s been dining out on his refusal to join George W. Bush’s coalition of the willing in the Iraq war for decades...
Mark Carney reveals why a personal touch is needed when dealing with the world’s most powerful leaders
No one will accuse Mark Carney of being a populist politician. But as he nears the one-year mark as prime minister, we’ve been getting some insights into how Carney is juggling the personal relations he has to manage on the world stage and also at home. It isn’t often that politicians go into that kind of detail, so Carney’s lessons...
Canada’s small military is a big problem for Carney. It’s also doing him a big favour right now
In almost any context, one of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s major problems — and it’s one that he inherited, in fairness to him — is the state of the Canadian Armed Forces. Our military is too small to do all the jobs we need it to do. It lacks critical capabilities necessary for survival on the modern battlefield. Manpower shortages...
Pierre Poilievre’s great reset
After a humiliating election defeat, multiple defections from his caucus and a widening lead in the polls for Mark Carney’s Liberals, Pierre Poilievre has finally decided to make some changes. He debuted the new look at a recent speech at the Economic Club of Canada, one in which he cited the writings of Marcus Aurelius, name-checked Pierre Trudeau in a...
Game Theory vs. ‘Death and Destruction’: Mark Carney’s Trumpian Dilemma
One of the many things that could be said of the rules-based world order is that it was designed so that countries — including middle powers — would not have to rely on their wits, in the manner of a Hobbesian geopolitical Hunger Games, to survive in the face of hegemonic aggression. “The world will always be driven by great...
Trump’s Consequential War
I begin writing today with a quotation from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. In a press conference Monday morning, Hegseth celebrated Israel and its strikes alongside the U.S., while he condemned “so many of our traditional allies who wring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force.” In explaining the Trump doctrine of military...
B.C.’s Eby may not be long for the job
The premier won’t have time to turn the economy around as the prospect of an election this year looms large. Spare a moment, if you will, for British Columbia Premier David Eby. Not long ago, the former Vancouver lawyer seemed to have it in the bag. He inherited the premiership and a budget surplus of $5.7-billion from the popular John...
There are lessons for Poilievre and Carney in U.K. byelection
Pierre Poilievre, leader of His Majesty’s loyal opposition, is visiting the King’s home turf this week, where he gave a keynote speech at Margaret Thatcher’s think tank of choice. The visit comes at a good time for Poilievre to open his ears as well as his mouth. For the United Kingdom is deep into a period of political turmoil, one...
OpenAI's deal with Trump is putting Canadians at risk too
In a stunning showdown last week between the Trump administration and frontier AI company Anthropic, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth demanded that Anthropic allow its AI models to be used for “any lawful purpose,” without any restrictions. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei refused and laid out the company’s two red lines for its models’ usage by the US government: barring...
Why even Iraq war hawks should oppose this war
When president George H.W. Bush went to war against Iraq in 1991, he sought and won the consent of the Congress of the United States. Resolutions authorizing military force passed the House, by a margin of 250 to 183, and the Senate, 52-47. Mr. Bush had earlier secured the passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution 678. The cause was...
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.
Canadians deserve to know if our military is helping the U.S. attack on Iran
Canadian Forces exchange officers working with the U.S. military were “very likely” involved at some level in planning the weekend strikes on Iran, a former Canada major-general has warned. If true, this should raise alarm bells for Canadians because it means Ottawa’s insistence that Canada is “not involved” in this operation is not just implausible, it’s misleading.
Tasha Kheiriddin: In India, Carney might be being pragmatic, but principled?
RIP Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, we hardly knew you. As Prime Minister Mark Carney alights in Australia this week, fresh from a trade mission to India, the basic premise of the strategy — “to seize opportunities in the national interest of Canadians, while defending the values they hold dear” — has been junked in favour of realpolitik: doing business with countries...
Carney’s Iran Trap: How Trump’s War Could Become Canada’s Problem
Mark Carney may have thought he dodged a bullet when he wordsmithed Canada’s position on the latest U.S.‑Israeli assault on Iran, Operation Epic Fury. “Canada supports the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security,” Carney said in a written statement released jointly with Foreign...
No time for truth in this reset with India
Mark Carney left on a trip to India last Thursday but there has simply been no time to field reporters’ queries. The Prime Minister cancelled the press conference scheduled for Monday, when embarrassing questions were to be posed, because his meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi ran long and his flight to Australia couldn’t be delayed and well, there...
Why Carney ‘s messaging on India and Iran should be reversed
In politics it’s usually best to be as clear as you can. But there are times when clarity will get you in trouble for no particularly good reason. That’s when it’s smarter to fuzz things up a bit. On India and Iran, Mark Carney has been both clear and fuzzy over the past few days. The problem is he’s been...