When Xi Jinping’s plane touches down at Joint Base Andrews this week, Donald Trump intends to be there to meet it. Protocol dictates that American presidents do not usually greet foreign leaders at the airport; they receive them at the White House. The last exception occurred when President Barack Obama met Pope Francis at Andrews in 2015. The unusual gesture...
Section 7 of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects the right to “life, liberty and security of the person,” which is not to be deprived unless doing so is consistent with “the principles of fundamental justice.” This simple provision has spawned an elaborate body of legal rules that now shapes policymaking across Canada. Topics as charged as prostitution (Canada...
The United States–Canada relationship is being directly affected by a global reordering that is impacting all aspects of international relations. The prevailing Canadian view was that the centerpiece of that relationship was its trade agreements — first the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), then the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA) — which had provided prosperity to Canada for several decades...
The United States and China are advancing the frontier of artificial intelligence (AI) at breakneck speed, racing to build systems whose consequences neither country is able to manage alone. Each new generation of models arrives before governments have fully understood the implications of the last, while policy makers and regulators struggle to keep pace. Given this backdrop, is there a...
The United States has imposed tariffs on Canada and mused about making it the 51st state, and Canadians are reasonably asking what it means to run hospitals and government services on infrastructure operated by firms answerable to US law and, in the end, to US politics.
Canada has a competition problem — but it isn’t what you think. The challenge isn’t that too many large companies dominate their markets. It is that Canadian competition policy is moving toward treating market concentration as evidence of harm, even when concentration may be the result of firms competing successfully. That distinction matters because scale can create real economic benefits...
In recent years, and with particular intensity since the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel, antisemitism has become increasingly normalized in daily life worldwide. Canada is not immune. Harassment, intimidation, and violence against Jewish Canadians are rising, threatening not only individual safety but also the security and cohesion of entire communities and the country as a whole. Left unchecked...
Canada’s population growth is now almost entirely driven by immigration. But where newcomers settle does not necessarily match where the country needs them most. Three out of four Canadians already live in one of Canada’s 41 census metropolitan areas (CMAs), and that share keeps climbing. In contrast, rural and remote communities — which still generate roughly a quarter of national...
Canada’s economy is evolving, which will bring both positive and negative change. But transitions — such as moving toward a low-carbon economy, shifting trade relationships or the rise of AI — can disrupt specific workers in specific places. In some instances, people in affected sectors will keep their jobs or move into new, often similar, roles. But for those who...
During the pandemic, remote work became much more common for employees, including many public servants, whose jobs could be done from home. As public-health pressures eased, governments began to reconsider what role remote and hybrid work should play over the longer term. Governments have made different choices and have not converged on a single return-to-office (RTO) model for public servants.
What was the main message of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s now-famous speech in Davos earlier this year? There are no fewer than three competing takeaways from Carney’s address — and a recent op-ed for The Economist co-authored with Finnish President Alexander Stubb has done little to reconcile them. Now, more than half a year after Carney’s speech and for all...
In late July 2026, Statistics Canada delivered something Canadians have not heard often in recent years: good news about crime. Although Canada’s violent crime rate was essentially unchanged from 2024, Statistics Canada reported declines across several other metrics in 2025: the overall crime rate (down 2 per cent), overall crime severity (down 5 per cent), violent crime severity (down ...
On July 2, Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced a one-million-barrel-per-day oil pipeline (Alberta 2026a) from Bruderheim, Alberta, to a VLCC (Very Large Crude Carrier)-capable terminal at Roberts Bank, south of Vancouver.
China’s export controls, a more interventionist G7 agenda and Washington’s widening network of mineral partnerships have transformed the market in which Canada’s critical-minerals strategy must operate. Ottawa now needs to connect domestic industrial policy, international partnerships, and its North American economic relationship into a single strategy. In 2025, China turned longstanding concerns about critical-mineral concentration into an immediate industrial-security challenge...
Russia's Arctic ambitions are at the heart of the growing struggle for security, influence, and power in northern waters.
In July 2026, Geely-owned Lotus electric vehicles (EVs) began arriving in Canada under the arrangement reached between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Chinese President Xi Jinping in January. The deal allows an initial quota of 49,000 Chinese EVs annually to enter Canada at a reduced 6.1 per cent tariff rate, with the stated objective of encouraging Chinese joint-venture investment...
Like many advanced economies, Canadian governments are increasingly turning to industrial strategies to try to strengthen their economic sovereignty — defined here as the capacity to protect and shape key domestic economic capabilities — and to support economic growth aligned with the global energy transition and net-zero emissions goals. This represents a shift from previous decades when governments in Canada...
A generation that expected to enjoy a higher standard of living than its parents instead risks inheriting slower growth, fewer opportunities, and permanently diminished prosperity.
Chery Automobile has become one of China’s most important global automakers. Less well known in North America than BYD or Geely, Chery has nevertheless spent more than two decades building an export-oriented business across emerging and developed markets. The company’s growing interest in Canada therefore presents both an opportunity and a policy challenge. For Canadian consumers, Chery could offer more...
Prime Minister Mark Carney has indicated a desire for change in the federal public service to deliver on the Liberal government’s Make Canada Strong agenda. He hopes to realign the country’s economic and political relations to respond to new global and North American realities. The question is whether the public service has the capacity to effectively and efficiently execute such...
Resource projects in Canada – including mines, pipelines, and energy infrastructure – often require engagement with affected First Nations before they can proceed. When consultation is mishandled or ignored, the consequences extend well beyond regulatory delays: projects can face costly litigation, years of uncertainty, lost investment, or even cancellation. Billions of dollars of economic activity and thousands of jobs can...
This October, Canada faces both an Alberta referendum that could catalyze an unprecedented independence vote in that province and a provincial election that could do the same in Québec for the third time in 50 years. As a result, the word “sovereignty” has again entered our national, daily political discourse. As it happens, sovereignty is one of the most frequently...
Russia’s Arctic strategy is often misunderstood in Western policy debates. Too much attention remains fixed on President Vladimir Putin, military deployments, or short-term geopolitical crises. This obscures a more important reality for Canada, the United States, and their allies: Russia’s Arctic posture is sustained by a durable network of state corporations, regional authorities, security institutions, and ideological organizations that shape...
In May 2026, the federal government published Powering Canada Strong: A National Strategy for an Electrified Canadian Economy, casting electricity as the backbone of Canada’s economic sovereignty, industrial competitiveness, and climate ambition.
The federal government’s unpredictable, fragmented approach to funding acts as a constraint on First Nations that are seeking to build long-term governance and community capacity.
Federal-provincial transfers are among the most important – and politically contested – features of Canadian public finance, yet they remain among the least understood. Based on the principle that Canadians, regardless of where they live, should have reasonably comparable access to public services at reasonably comparable levels of taxation, the equalization system serves a core stabilizing role in Canada’s decentralized...
Family members make up roughly one-quarter of Canada’s annual permanent resident admissions, and governments regularly celebrate family reunification as a pillar of Canadian immigration policy. Yet, the Family Class Program still reflects a narrow, outdated understanding of what constitutes a family and continues to impose inconsistent, sometimes opaque barriers that prevent many migrant families from reuniting.
For decades, Canada’s relationship with the United States was characterized by a binational commitment to security, prosperity, and democracy. Rapidly changing US expectations on policy, priorities, and approach – in a volatile international security environment – have added friction to the bilateral relationship. Given the power asymmetry inherent to the relationship, precedent suggests that Canada comes out ahead when it...
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s decision to select Germany’s ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS), in partnership with Norway, as the supplier of Canada’s next submarine fleet is one of the most consequential defence procurement choices Canada has made in decades. It will shape the Royal Canadian Navy, Canada’s Arctic and maritime posture, and the country’s defence-industrial partnerships for a generation. The decision...
For more than 75 years, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has existed to do one thing: keep its members secure while anchoring them in democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law (The North Atlantic Treaty 1949, preamble). Canada, as a founding member, plays a critical role in promoting these principles. The Canadian government frames its objective as ensuring...
China’s BYD has emerged as one of the most consequential companies in the global automotive transition. Once known primarily as a battery producer, it is now the world’s largest seller of battery-electric vehicles and a major producer of plug-in hybrids, batteries, and energy-storage systems. BYD’s combination of low-cost vehicles, technological innovation, and control over much of its supply chain has...
For Canada and its allies and partners, the main response to Russian claims of Arctic dominance is to see through their own icebreaker and Arctic economic development plans.
China continues to find creative ways to infiltrate and influence the West. When low-cost Chinese electric vehicles entered Western markets, they were an immediate success and sales soared. Soon after, engineers discovered that Chinese manufacturers could surveil these vehicles (Financial Times 2026). Western engineers also found kill switches in Chinese electric buses that could be used to disrupt transportation (Associated...
Express Entry was never meant to be a Canadian skilled immigration program. It was supposed to be the sorting system layered on top of the existing federal ones.
On June 1, 2026, Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered his first major speech devoted to antisemitism, telling an audience at Toronto’s Holy Blossom Temple that “Canada’s civic compact is failing Jewish Canadians.” The acknowledgement was overdue and, in important respects, welcome. But the speech fell short in others. For instance, the prime minister did not name the movements behind the...
Canada’s impact assessment process is structurally fragmented. A new AI-enabled Sovereign Impact Assessment Agent (SIAA) would speed up assessments and save money by using the federal government’s extensive but fragmented troves of data on Canadian land, water, wildlife and atmosphere to pre-populate assessment applications, identify information gaps and help inform regulators’ final decisions.
On June 12th, the American artificial intelligence company Anthropic —maker of the Claude AI assistant— issued an extraordinary statement, whose opening paragraph reads as follows: “The US government, citing national security authorities, has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including...
