Though loquacious by nature, the finance minister wasted relatively little time Tuesday getting to the relatively good news. "Mr. Speaker, [these] are serious times and Canadians expect us to be good stewards of our economy and manage our public finances with thoughtful fiscal discipline," François-Philippe Champagne told the House of Commons as he presented the federal government's first spring economic...
If you have been wondering what meaning to attach to that irritating phrase the Carney Liberals use to describe themselves, “Canada’s New Government” – which was irritating enough when it was first employed, under Stephen Harper, when it was actually a new government – wonder no longer. As this Spring Economic Update makes abundantly clear, it means nothing whatever. Or...
“Let me make it real for you.” In that one short, sharp sentence, Finance Minister François Philippe Champagne acknowledged the political juggling act that Mark Carney’s government is trying to pull off as it embarks on its second year of power.
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.”
Congratulations, Canada! On Monday, our nation joined an exclusive club: countries with sovereign wealth funds. Norway, Kuwait and other resource-rich nations have long tapped royalties and budget surpluses to fund investment vehicles: in this era of geopolitical uncertainty and an erratic neighbour, Prime Minister Mark Carney thinks it’s time Canada does the same.
The thing about the new Canadian “sovereign wealth fund” (SWF) announced on Monday by Prime Minister Mark Carney is that, judging by what we know so far, it’ll be pretty much the opposite of what he’s comparing it to. The prime minister cited Norway as a leading example of a country with a successful SWF — and so it is...
For all the talk that Prime Minister Mark Carney is a small-c conservative his announcement that Canada will create a sovereign wealth fund was a confirmation of his capital-L Liberal predilections. The form of the fund might be a little surprising, given that the sovereign wealth funds of resource-rich nations are usually seeded with windfall earnings socked away for the...
My March podcast interview with Pierre Poilievre drew a lot of attention, but one of the sharpest responses came from Max Fawcett, an award-winning Calgary journalist who’s been sharply critical of the notion that the West’s resource sector is singled out for mistreatment. Max just flat cancelled his subscription to this newsletter, and tore a strip off me on Bluesky...
Asked about how he went bankrupt, one of the characters in Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises replies, “gradually, then suddenly.” That’s what’s in store for Canada’s supply management system, an outdated, regressive policy from the 1970s that protects the dairy and poultry sectors by artificially raising consumer prices and drastically restricting imports. It will disappear, gradually then suddenly...
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.
No Canadian prime minister has ever faced a more difficult relationship with an American president than Prime Minister Mark Carney does with Donald Trump.
Like others, my immediate thoughts upon watching Prime Minister Mark Carney’s “Forward Guidance” video was a comparison to former United States president Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “fireside chats” during the 1930s and ’40s. FDR used these chats for several purposes but, like Carney, most importantly they were a way of communicating directly with voters without the filters of media. FDR’s chats...
It’s nice that U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen got a few cheers in Canada for taking U.S. officials to task for their insults. But it’s the injury that is the real problem. Ms. Shaheen snapped back at U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who had recently said his Canadian counterparts “suck” and complained during a Senate subcommittee hearing last week that liquor...
You wouldn’t know it, from their usual delusional bluster, but Donald Trump’s team is starting to panic. And perhaps they should. The president’s popularity is plummeting. One clear reason: the economic revolution he promised has turned into a catastrophe.
While the federal Liberals smugly refer to themselves as Canada’s natural governing party, the historical record suggests that may be true, despite the danger it poses to democracy.
Let me be clear: on the underlying question, Doug Ford was right.
If U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration hoped to strengthen Canada’s hand in trade talks, it could hardly have done a better job. This week, the U.S. deputy trade representative Rick Switzer told the Council of Foreign Relations that Prime Minister Mark Carney is guilty of “political malpractice” for pitting himself politically against the president, that he’s driven by his “ego,”...
With Liberal MPs holding a majority of seats in the House of Commons, government House leader Steven MacKinnon moved a motion on Thursday that would see that majority reflected in the allotment of seats on House committees. This would be an entirely remarkable development — the sort of procedural housekeeping that occurs at the start of each Parliament — except...
In the classic Canadian tradition of diffusing the pain by enlarging the official target field, Prime Minister Mark Carney this week unveiled a 24-member Advisory Committee on Canada-US Economic Relations to buttress his negotiating team heading into the looming CUSMA review with the United States and Mexico. The committee is composed of some pan-partisan political figures, from former federal Tory...
Was John Turner right? Is Donald Trump’s weaponization of Canada’s dependence on trade with the United States vindication of the Liberal leader’s dire prophecies during the 1988 election campaign? Is this the bitter fruit of the Mulroney government’s decision, all those years ago, to sign a free-trade agreement with the United States?
We’ve been warned for months that Canada faces exceedingly tough talks on renewing the CUSMA/USMCA trade deal. With Donald Trump blowing off the importance of Canada (“we don’t need anything they have”), it was shaping up as a cage match at the negotiating table. As of this week, though, we face the very real possibility of an even more ominous...
In a recent op-ed, Liberal MP and former environment minister Steven Guilbeault wrote that the government's energy ambitions put the country at a climate crossroads. Power & Politics questions Guilbeault on his hopes for the Canada-Alberta Memorandum of Understanding, and on his thoughts regarding the current state of the Liberal party.
When Mark Carney skated over to the TV cameras at an ice rink in Ottawa this month, he introduced his hockey buddy Alexander Stubb to Canadians as “the man, the myth, the legend” and the prime minister’s “No. 1 draft choice.” Carney isn’t putting together a beer league, nor is he trying out for the Ottawa Charge, whose practice he...
New NDP Leader Avi Lewis has set his sights on bringing an end to the practice of surveillance pricing, calling it a “crystal clear example of why we desperately need government guardrails to protect us from the triple threat of Big Tech, AI and corporate monopolies that dominate every sector of our economy.” During a press conference in Ottawa flanked...
Among the former politicians and CEOs of a mining giant, a paper company, a steel company, a potash producer, a railway, a bank, and lobby groups for small business and the auto and aluminum sectors, there was a glaring omission: experts from the tech sector. The 24 people on the Advisory Committee on Canada-U.S. Economic Relations announced by Prime Minister...
Opinion on Canada’s New! Liberal! Majority! Government! has tended to divide into two camps. On one hand are those, mostly to be found on the Conservative end of things, who denounce the process by which the Liberals attained their majority – five opposition MPs, crossing the floor one after the other, like baby ducks – as illegitimate, even undemocratic. Canadians...
Jim Balsillie said Canada was ‘hijacked’ last time around and is likely to be further disadvantaged in the pending negotiations
For one shining moment in Washington on Wednesday, a Democratic senator stared down Donald Trump’s administration with some words that many Canadians have been wanting to hurl in the president’s direction. It was during a Senate subcommittee hearing when U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — the same one who said “they suck” when referring to Canada last week — was...
Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party never mentioned the prospect of an independence referendum in the last election campaign, and voters never gave them a mandate to pursue one. But that hasn’t stopped her from pushing the province into a polarizing separatist debate, one that’s already attracting attention — and almost certainly interference — from foreign powers. Worse, it might all...
The recent defection of longtime Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal caucus — followed swiftly by a string of federal byelection wins that secured a governing majority — has reignited a familiar debate in Canadian politics: the merits and risks of “big tent” political parties.
Prime Minister Mark Carney wants us to believe the rupture with the United States will be long-lasting, maybe here to stay. He suggested it again in his weekend video posted on YouTube. “Some ... believe that we should wait in the hope that the United States will return to normal,” he said. “But hope isn’t a plan and nostalgia is...
While campaigning for the presidency in Portland, in 1932, Franklin Roosevelt told a crowd “my friends, judge me by the enemies I’ve made.”. In a 2015 Presidential debate, Anderson Cooper asked the candidates which enemy they were most proud of making. There’s a deep history of politics about picking your enemies as deliberately as you choose your friends.
“Thank you for your time,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said at the close of his recent direct-to-you vlog, titled Forward Guidance. “I know it’s precious.” That’s nice. He told Canadians he is going to want to talk with them again, but promised to do so sparingly. “I know you have busy lives and you don’t need busy lives from me,”...
If you’re confused about where Canada stands heading into negotiations with the U.S. on the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement on trade, it’s likely because Prime Minister Mark Carney keeps moving the goalposts.
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...
The “gravy plane” mess lasted only a few days. But it sent a message. If Doug Ford hears that message, the Ontario Premier will soon retire. The public learned last week that the provincial government had acquired a preowned Bombardier Challenger 650 jet aircraft. On Sunday, in the wake of opposition howls, the Premier announced the government would sell the...
It seems odd to even suggest this right now, but … what if the plane was a good idea? Seriously. What if a private jet for the use of the premier and other key officials was actually worth considering?
The recent Liberal policy convention I attended in Montreal was more about convening than policy: the corridors of the Palais des Congrès were packed with 4,500 delegates networking away, while the policy sessions were sparsely attended. One session did impress me for its participants. It was the session on “Building Canada Strong,” featuring Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne, Industry Minister Mélanie...
Well, the Iranian case is up for debate, but there’s no question your commander in chief effected “regime change” here in Canada. After last week’s special elections, Mark Carney, the prime minister whose elevation Donald Trump helped bring about, has at last secured a parliamentary majority for Canada’s Liberal Party.
When a prime minister takes to YouTube for a 10-minute address to the nation, a perfectly reasonable question is: what’s the emergency? So when Mark Carney released a video on the weekend, titled “Forward Guidance,” there was a natural temptation to look for what alarms he was trying to raise.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Sunday video was a masterclass in crisis communications. He reminded Canadians of his credentials managing tough times. He described the urgent challenges Canada faces. He explained what he is doing to tackle them. He promised not to “sugarcoat” anything. He appealed to Canadians’ patriotism. And he promised to keep us posted: bookmark this YouTube channel for...
In 2016, I appointed three of the five people on the Electoral Boundaries Commission. A year later, their final report hit my desk. I was disappointed. Very disappointed. Two strong NDP seats, held by my finance minister and my attorney-general, were made into one. The urban Medicine Hat seat occupied by the then-NDP speaker of the House was cut in...
It’s a mere six months until Albertans decide whether they want to separate from the rest of Canada. And yet there is no apparent all-inclusive campaign for those of us who want to vote No.