There’s an expression I heard years ago that I try to keep in mind for perspective on days when it feels like everyone in the world has been sent specifically to annoy and oppose me. The original version used naughty language, but I’ll clean it up for the sake of this venerable newspaper. It goes like this: If you wake...
Last week I reviewed mainly the domestic record of the government of Prime Minister Mark Carney over the past 13 months, although, as was mentioned, the principal point that Canadians seem to hold in his favour is the foreign policy perception of his ability ”to stand up to Trump.” Few could forget how Carney, with the connivance of the anti-conservative...
Prime Minister Mark Carney plans to make it easier to kill off endangered species, pollute waterways and risk human health, all in the name of fast-tracking private-sector development projects. For a prime minister who dismissed progressive Liberal MPs’ concerns over spending on child care, health care and pharmacare during a caucus meeting this week, Friday’s announcement on streamlining infrastructure project...
I feel perhaps I have been unfair to Donald Trump. Regular readers will know that he has been the subject of the occasional reproof in these corners. Among other things, it has been suggested that he is insane, incompetent, corrupt, treasonous, bottomlessly ignorant, easily manipulated, a Batman villain, and a modern-day Nero: possessed of every vice, devoid of every virtue...
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she’s ‘much more confident’ about progress on a pipeline deal after what she describes as a ‘meeting of the minds’ with Prime Minister Mark Carney in Ottawa on Friday. The Political Pulse panel weighs in.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre had an opportunity to reinvigorate his party this week at one of Canada’s most important political networking conferences. Unfortunately for the part, he delivered an underwhelming speech that lacked vision, energy and real answers to the challenges facing Canada’s conservative movement.
Pierre Poilievre’s speech to the conservative Canada Strong and Free Network conference in Ottawa on Thursday was a perfectly acceptable Opposition leader’s address. Modestly delivered and modestly received, it had much to be modest about. The problem was, it sounded like a reheated version of one of his speeches from last year’s election, a campaign in which he was rejected...
There is still a chance, however remote, that Alberta Premier Danielle Smith comes to her senses and realizes the risks associated with a separatist referendum aren’t worth the rewards they offer to her political career. But I certainly wouldn’t bet on it, and I doubt Prime Minister Mark Carney will either. And while overt federal involvement in any separatist referendum...
The first international conference devoted to moving the world off of oil, gas and coal closed last week in Santa Marta, Colombia, where more than 50 nations agreed to hold a follow-up summit and strike a new global panel to draft a roadmap for phasing out fossil fuels. It was co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, both middle powers, working...
The world is wracked by rising military and economic conflict. Yet we have few leaders competent to lead their nations through this maelstrom. Emmanuel Macron may be one but he is months away from retirement. New Japanese Prime Minster Sanae Takaichi may be another but has yet to be tested. Americans may soon be left in the hands of J.D...
Oh, goody. We now find out there WILL BE a meeting scheduled between Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Prime Minister Mark Carney bright and early Friday morning in Ottawa. The news comes to your scribbler Wednesday afternoon.
Mark Carney was doing a fireside chat last fall in Toronto and the conversation rolled around to Canada’s advantages over the United States. “We have rule of law. That’s one of the big things,” Carney quipped, and his audience rewarded him with a huge laugh.
While experience has taught Canadians that Governors-General can only be assessed once they have a record in office, Mark Carney’s choice of former Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour has prompted an overwhelmingly positive response. Carney only formally entered the political arena in January of last year but, overall, his political judgment has proved remarkably sound since he has become prime...
The scandal isn’t what’s illegal. The scandal is what’s legal. – Michael Kinsley What is so scandalous about a separatist group getting its hands on the Alberta voter list, including the names, addresses and phone numbers of nearly three million of the province’s citizens? Is it that the list appears to have been illegally obtained, and passed on to the...
The leaders of Alberta’s separatist movement spent years organizing their way into de-facto control over Alberta’s governing party, and with it the ability to direct the terms of their own referendum petition. They collected many tens of thousands of signatures, raised untold (and unknown) amounts of money and were preparing for a public vote this fall. And now, thanks to...
A network of inauthentic YouTube accounts that were portraying themselves as homegrown Albertans have spent months pushing for Alberta secession and American annexation, an incident report from the Canadian Digital Media Research Network and the Media Ecosystem Observatory found. The network has racked up nearly 40 million views by "exploiting genuinely-held grievances and repurposing them to advance narratives that normalize...
Carney says he's meeting Danielle Smith in Ottawa this week but doesn't tell Smith
Last summer, B.C.’s seniors advocate issued a report on the state of long-term care in the province. For many, it was a terrifying read. Dan Levitt found that the number of seniors languishing on wait lists for publicly subsidized long-term care had more than tripled in nine years – from 2,381 in 2016 to 7,212 in 2025. Yes, a 200-per-cent...
It must have been tempting for Prime Minister Mark Carney to appoint an absolute blockhead as the new parliamentary budget officer. Instead, in Annette Ryan, he has installed a 30-year public service veteran with Finance Department experience who has probably seen it all when it comes to juggling the numbers and concealing errors.
When the rare and relatively unfettered opportunity arises, it might be tempting for a prime minister to use the selection of a governor general to do something splashy or exciting or unconventional, like choosing a hockey player or an astronaut. And there is nothing inherently wrong with excitement or novelty. But this is perhaps not a moment for indulging in...
If it’s Tuesday, this must be Belgium . If you’re old enough to remember this 1969 film, where a busload of hapless tourists barrel across Europe on an 18-day tour of nine cities, you probably voted Liberal in the past election, like most of Canada’s baby boomers. And you’re probably happy with the way things are going so far. But...
In this province, there’s a significant group of extremists who don’t believe laws apply to them. The extent of this destructive, dangerous nihilism is revealed with the appalling misuse of data by a separatist-linked group that exposes detailed personal information of 2.9 million Albertans. The separatists continue to ridicule the authorities while Elections Alberta investigates the massive data flip from...
The Alberta separatism movement is caught up in yet another controversy and its credibility has been blown to bits. Last week it was revealed that an affiliated group had somehow got its hands on the complete list of registered voters — all 2.9 million of them with their names, addresses, phone numbers and electoral districts — and put them up...
Like hungry wolves, opposition MPs look to isolate and target the weakest, the most awkward or the most bumbling in the ministerial herd. The Conservatives are currently launching coordinated attacks on Lena Diab, the immigration minister. In an unsentimental social media post, the party’s immigration critic, Michelle Rempel Garner, called for the minister to be fired , after her department...
If anyone in Canada was sleepwalking toward the prospect of an Alberta independence referendum, events over the last few days should be enough to jolt anyone awake. A massive data breach of Alberta voter information, published by a pro-independence outfit called The Centurion Project, has sparked an RCMP investigation and some hurried efforts by the Alberta government to check whether...
Elections Alberta could have known more than a month ago that there was a violation of the province’s voter file, exposing the personal data of 2.9 million electors in the province to unknown numbers of bad actors. They could have known because I warned them – or, rather, I tried to. I reported an anonymous tip. I got a call...
The absence of a visible leader of the Democrats will help, not hurt Democratic Party chances in the midterms.
The Liberals' $25-billion 'sovereign wealth fund' proves Mark Carney thinks governments should allocate Canada's capital
So far, there's been a lot more talk than action, and, for a guy who campaigned on rebuilding this country so it could confront existential threats to our sovereignty, more speed would be better. I suspect even the prime minister would agree.
Breaking my rule of never quoting myself, but those lines are from a column of mine from February 2017, one month after Donald Trump’s first inauguration. Since then, American democracy has experienced the respite of four years of Joe Biden, which not so much reinstated normal working conditions in journalism and comedy as slowed the slide of both towards the...
Much has been said since March about how Avi Lewis has finally and fully landed in the family business, following in the footsteps of his father, Stephen, and his grandfather, David, who also were leaders for the New Democrats. But Lewis has always been in a family business. His mother, Michele Landsberg, wrote for this paper for more than 2...
Is this it? Is this all a galaxy brain in control of a government within sight of 50 per cent in the polls can offer in the midst of a crisis? A bit of a nip here, a bit of a tuck there, but all-in-all keeping Canada on the same rotten economic trajectory?
There were several rounds of chatter over the summer and into the fall about whether the honeymoon was over for Prime Minister Mark Carney – and if not yet, when that moment would come. Elbows sagged; President Donald Trump went on blowing up like a puffer fish; tariffs were carving up certain sectors of the economy and regions of the...
It’s alarming that Prime Minister Mark Carney, citing China as a “strategic partner,” has agreed to a secret deal on co-operating with Chinese police, given the highly controversial nature of these agreements in the past.
If one thing is clear from Prime Minister Mark Carney’s economic update this week, it’s that he’s taking progressive voters for granted. Headlines like “A Canada for All” sound nice. As do statements like: “the government is protecting the essential social programs that give Canadians a fair chance to get ahead — child care, dental care, and pharmacare.”
Last year, I supported the Conservatives in the federal election because the Liberal government of the previous 10 years had produced large net capital outflows, presided over Canada’s decline in the rankings of the most prosperous countries per capita, conducted a suicidal war on the petroleum industry, self-defamed the country for attempted genocide of First Nations, was a useless member...
Why would U.S. President Donald Trump approve a Keystone-like pipeline that could eventually transport a million barrels a day of Canadian oil to refineries in the U.S. Midwest or along the Gulf coast? Trump had four full years during his first term to reverse the suspension of Keystone imposed by his predecessor, Barack Obama. He never did. Does this mean...
July 1, 2026, is an important date for the future of the Canada-U.S. Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), but there is considerable confusion as to exactly what is supposed to happen on that date. Some think it is the final deadline for negotiations to save the agreement from termination. Others think it is the starting date for a complete renegotiation of the...
It’s been nearly a week, and we are still no closer to knowing what the Carney government means when it talks about setting up “Canada’s first sovereign wealth fund.” I don’t just mean what it would do, or how it would work, or what problem it’s intended to solve. I mean, quite literally, what is it? I suspect the government...
The economist John Maynard Keynes is reputed to have said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” Still, this is a hard piece for me to write. I devoted several years of my life to helping create the Oil Sands Pathways to Net Zero Alliance and its carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS) project...
The time is coming for Prime Minister Mark Carney to overhaul his cabinet, and everyone in Ottawa has some idea how he might do it. Picking a cabinet is an increasingly difficult task. Prime ministers must ensure various regions, languages, identities, genders, loyalties and competencies are represented fairly. You need politicos, communicators and managers, and you need to instil the...
