On a ridge in northern France, two great white pillars rise nearly 30 metres toward the sky. Visible for kilometres across a former First World War battlefield, the Canadian National Vimy Memorial is one of Canada’s defining symbols, an expression of sacrifice, nationhood and remembrance. Each year, nearly a million people make the pilgrimage to Vimy Ridge. The memorial’s image...
On October 15, Ottawa committed $100 million to gather more offshore data for Nova Scotia’s Wind West offshore wind project. The next day, Premier Tim Houston stood beside EverWind Fuels at Point Tupper, Nova Scotia, as the company unveiled a $10-billion data-centre complex on a site long promoted for green hydrogen and ammonia; EverWind’s hydrogen project had already received nearly...
Public support for immigration in Canada has dropped sharply in recent years amid rising concerns about the cost of living and economic insecurity. Using Canadian election survey data dating from 1988, we find that people who feel economically insecure are more likely to hold negative views of immigration. This link has become stronger since 2019. Negative attitudes toward immigration also...
In July 2026, legal scholars from across the country met at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy to discuss Rainer Knopff and Ted Morton’s seminal book, The Charter Revolution and the Court Party, 25 years after its publication. The result of that conference is this series of eight essays compiled and published by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. To listen...
Canada’s new National Security Strategy and the Canada–EU summit in Montreal show how Ottawa plans to turn strategic autonomy into real partnerships. Yet a bet on Europe alone won’t deliver the resilience Canada needs, writes Vina Nadjibulla. With Japan, South Korea, Australia and Taiwan central to critical minerals, semiconductors and defence production, she calls on the upcoming foreign policy strategy...
Canada is facing a range of challenges that will drive economic transformation at the national, regional and local levels. The relationship with the United States, its largest trading partner, is changing. Investment in defence is growing. Global energy markets are shifting as investment in clean energy and electrification is rising. The changing climate and geopolitical tensions are creating new risks...
Canada is at a crossroads. In his now famous Davos speech, Prime Minister Carney warned of a “rupture in the world order” as the United States-led “rules-based order” has fractured. This and subsequent events have motivated a sense of national pride (“elbows up”) and opened a discussion on policy changes aimed at reshaping our economy in the context of this...
As Canada defines its foreign policy and rebuilds its hard power, Tom Codrington, CSS Senior Fellow, argues that its global reputation deserves strategic investment too. From cultural exports to scientific leadership, the article explores how Canada can turn its soft power into concrete gains for its security, prosperity and international influence.
This brief is the second of two policy briefs analyzing the history, law and effects of the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA). It focuses on changes to U.S. asylum law and policy since the second inauguration of President Donald Trump in January 2025, their impact on the safety of the United States for asylum-seekers and refugees, and the implications...
Canada likes to imagine itself as a compassionate society that protects its youngest citizens, but the daily realities facing children and youth at risk belie the rhetoric. The child welfare system is broken (Trocmé et al. 2019) and many of its failings were documented in the December 2025 Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights report, Nothing to Celebrate (Senate of...
In a previous commentary, I suggested that the Bank of Canada replace its near-term inflation targeting framework (maintaining two per cent inflation over a horizon of approximately two years) with a macrofinancial stability framework. This new regime would focus on ensuring price stability over a longer-term horizon, allowing policy interest rates to “lean” against financial booms and busts. In this...
Canada cannot afford to treat citizenship as paperwork to process rather than a covenant worth keeping.
The federal government’s internal accountability regime continues to grow more complex. Public service leadership is detached from policy implementation and socialized to avoid risk. Public servants should be evaluated on the rules they remove and services delivered. Those with delivery experience should be rotated periodically into roles that establish internal processes and policies. Improving the federal accountability regime requires simplifying...
Amid U.S. President Donald Trump’s on-again-off-again trade war, trade diversification has been the talk of the town. But for a country like Canada, which has long felt the gravitational pull of the enormous U.S. market, diversifying trade will be no easy feat. It also shouldn’t be the goal in and of itself. As the first part of the IRPP’s new...
Canada’s aim to diversify and grow its exports will inevitably mean a significant focus on building deeper and more beneficial linkages with the Asia-Pacific. In this report, we show that Canada’s diversification challenge cannot be fully solved by merely substituting one large market with many small ones, nor by assuming that supply chains can quickly or easily be re-wired. To...
Canada has spent thirty years pretending that internal free trade can be achieved through polite first ministers’ meetings, press conferences, action plans, and the creation of agencies.
The visibility of Indigenous women in business can seem like a relatively new story, but it is not. Indigenous women have been leading in business and trade for centuries across North America. However, Indigenous women became disconnected from these responsibilities when the Crown imposed a sex-based hierarchy with the Gradual Enfranchisement Act of 1869. Under that act a First Nations...
As prospective Canadian homebuyers and renters struggle to gain a foothold in one of the least-affordable housing markets in the developed world, housing affordability has become one of the top concerns across the country. Canada’s housing crisis is largely a function of burdensome municipal rules that constrain supply and inflate prices. Meanwhile, misaligned incentives constrain local officials’ willingness to make...
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...
