These are the 30 most read items on National Newswatch, from the last seven days.
Ontario MP Marilyn Gladu left the Conservative caucus to join Prime Minister Mark Carney's Liberals on Wednesday, pushing the government closer to a majority ahead of three byelections next week. Carney welcomed her to the caucus in a meeting at his office Wednesday afternoon. "I couldn't be happier," he said alongside a smiling Gladu. He said Gladu was "one of...
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is shuffling his deck, sending Elon Musk-style letters to his shadow ministers asking them to prove their worth. Monday’s email was referred to by one Conservative as “DOGE-like” — a reference to Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” which sent emails to U.S. federal government workers last year demanding that they list their past week’s accomplishments or...
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's communications director Katy Merrifield is resigning. Merrifield announced her departure in an email sent to the Conservative caucus Tuesday, adding her last day working in the Opposition Leader's Office will be Friday. The message says Micah Green will become the new communications director and Sam Lilly will be the new media relations director.
Whit Fraser, a former journalist and the husband of Governor-General Mary Simon, says the couple are planning their exit from Rideau Hall. Mr. Fraser, who spoke with The Globe and Mail ahead of the release of his memoir, was reluctant to provide details about their wife’s plans, but the 84-year-old, whose official title is vice-regal consort, signalled that Ms. Simon...
It should not have ended this way. It should have ended with a national celebration of an amazing, vibrant, and still young woman who managed to surmount all the challenges in a mostly male world; who managed to storm through a mostly male engineering school right up to the day she graduated summa cum laude ; who managed to get...
The dam has burst. Rigid messaging is ending. Long live the give-and-take of conversation. SUDDENLY, OUR POLITICS is all about the written and spoken word. Not so long ago, we had a prime minister who did his best to hide for weeks and an opposition leader who refused to take reporters with him on a national campaign. Now, the newish...
Iran, the United States and Israel agreed to a two-week ceasefire, an 11th-hour deal that allowed U.S. President Donald Trump to pull back from his threat to unleash a bombing campaign that would destroy Iranian civilization. Hours after the announcement, Iran and Gulf Arab countries reported new attacks Wednesday. It was not clear if the sporadic attacks would be enough...
A veteran Canadian journalist facing unproven and disputed allegations that he is working as a pro-Russian operative was the subject of several interviews during an investigation involving the RCMP, the Star has learned. The exact purpose of the inquiries is unclear, but sources familiar with the probe said members of the RCMP-led INSET national security body had conversations with numerous...
Liberal MP Chris d’Entremont, who crossed the floor from the Conservatives in November, says current Conservative MPs have “absolutely” asked him what it’s like being a Liberal. “They want to know what the caucus structure is, what we talk about, what kind of input that we have in decision making,” d’Entremont told host Mike Le Couteur in an interview on...
The man who announced he was seeking the Conservative nomination in Pierre Poilievre's former riding of Carleton in February now says he's dropping out of the race. Blair Turner, a police officer from the Ottawa area, ran for the Tories in Ottawa South in the federal election last April and lost to Defence Minister David McGuinty. Poilievre lost the seat...
Dissatisfaction and worries about their future under Poilievre’s leadership has many questioning whether or not a bolder move to spark change is required. Up to 40 Conservative MPs are worried that they could lose their seats if Pierre Poilievre leads the party into the next election against Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney, said two federal Conservative sources after the party...
Brian Masse says the law needed to be modernized — but more regulation is needed. The former MP who spent more than a decade pushing to legalize single-event sports betting says he doesn't regret it — but says its implementation is in some ways "sad" and "deplorable." He also says more regulation is required to curb the volume and methods...
The prime minister will secure a majority government if his Liberals win two of the three byelections. Premier Doug Ford is appealing for political “certainty” in Canada ahead of contentious trade negotiations with U.S. President Donald Trump. Ford, in Texas on a trade mission to promote Ontario, stressed “it was the right move” when he called an early Ontario election...
Now that the federal New Democrats have selected Avi Lewis as their leader, Canadians know the leadership offering that they will be presented by the major parties in the next campaign. Now the race is on between the parties to try to frame the ‘ballot question’ of the next campaign – whenever that may be. But at this moment, given...
The policy debate at the Grits' upcoming convention seems intentionally designed to avoid being a distraction from the party’s core messaging as it sits on the cusp of a majority, but it's also not time for a victory lap, say observers. As Liberals from across Canada descend on Montreal this week, observers expect the party’s national convention to be light...
Two weeks before byelection day, pollsters Nik Nanos and Quito Maggi are predicting a Liberal advantage in the riding of Terrebonne, Que. The presence of 42 independent candidates and the use of a “write-in” or “adapted ballot” could prove decisive in the tightly contested April 13 byelection in Terrebonne, Que., say some Liberal sources and pollsters, adding that a close...
U.S. president was unaware Charles is Canada's head of state, Robert Hardman writes in new book. An upcoming book authored by a prominent royal commentator says U.S. President Donald Trump was primarily interested in annexing Canadian territory just above the U.S.-Canada border — and his respect for King Charles may have quashed that goal. The book, titled Elizabeth II: In...
Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne has been unable to participate in decisions related to the federal government’s proposed high-speed rail line after setting up an ethics screen last year due to his partner’s ties to the Crown corporation behind the project. The screen means the finance minister has had to recuse himself from all discussions related to the Alto proposal for...
Deputy minister of national defence Christiane Fox broke conflict of interest rules by hiring an old acquaintance when she was the deputy immigration minister, the federal ethics watchdog has found. Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Konrad von Finckenstein published an investigation on Wednesday finding that Fox improperly influenced her department to hire Björn Charles in March 2023. Fox sent...
It’s a flashpoint in the hotly contested race to become the provincial Liberal candidate in Scarborough Southwest. Where do you live?
President Donald Trump said Thursday Pam Bondi is out as his attorney general. Trump in a social media post named Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche as the acting attorney general, though three people familiar with the matter have said he has privately discussed Lee Zeldin, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, as a permanent pick. It marks the end...
The Conservatives are calling on the Liberals to give Canadians some relief at the pumps by suspending federal taxes on gas and diesel for the rest of the year. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Thursday that lifting the fuel excise tax, clean fuel standard and GST surcharges from gas and diesel would save consumers about 25 cents a litre. That...
Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon is pushing back on the Conservatives’ calls to cancel the proposed high-speed rail line between Toronto and Quebec City. Construction on the multi-billion-dollar infrastructure project, overseen by the Crown corporation Alto, is set to begin in 2029 or 2030. But, speaking to reporters this week, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre called the project a “boondoggle” and...
By the time you read this, U.S. armed forces may well have launched a ground war in Iran. Or they may have begun to withdraw from the region and go home. There could be a ceasefire, in exchange for Iran’s agreement to open the Strait of Hormuz. Or the war could have escalated further, with stepped-up U.S. attacks on Iranian...
A leaked transcript of a meeting between Indigenous leaders and British Columbia Premier David Eby, about his plan to suspend the province's Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, or DRIPA, shows them accusing him of "absolute betrayal" and colonialism. Speaker after speaker in the 17,000-word transcript of Thursday's meeting, obtained by The Canadian Press, criticize Eby's handling of...
'It was a nonsensical operation from beginning to end,' national security expert says. Canadian Armed Forces members used their own personal social media accounts, computers and networks at home during the COVID-19 pandemic and gathered information about Canadians, violating intelligence-gathering rules, according to a newly released report. The internal military report obtained by CBC News provides a new look behind...
The office of the federal ethics commissioner says Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne’s personal relationship with a senior manager at the Crown corporation responsible for building high-speed rail does not constitute a conflict of interest. In an email seen by CTV News, an adviser from the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner (OCIEC) stated that “there is no...
The federal government should consider a one-to-two-point increase in the GST and slower growth in non-defence spending to finance a massive jump Canada’s military budget, according to a new report from the C.D. Howe Institute. “Some combination of tax increases, spending cuts, or taking on more debt is required,” wrote authors Colin Busby and Nicholas Dahir. The analysis warns that...
Beijing is pushing Ottawa to back its bid to join a major free trade agreement between Indo-Pacific nations, including Canada, Japan and Australia, according to a Canadian senator who just returned from a diplomatic mission to China. Senator Clement Gignac, who co-chairs the Canada-China Legislative Association, said he in turn urged his Chinese counterparts to lift travel sanctions on Canadian...
On Sunday, after his runaway victory in the federal New Democratic Party’s leadership race, Avi Lewis linked his own anti-Zionist views to an ancestor’s opposition to the creation of a Jewish state in the Middle East. “My great-grandfather was a leader in the [Russian anti-Zionist] Jewish Labour Bund,” said Mr. Lewis, who noted that it was founded in 1897, five...