Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's counterparts across the country are keeping their cards close to their chest on where they stand on the major constitutional reforms Smith is sending to a provincewide vote next month. Smith's four proposals, three of which would likely require the support of seven legislatures representing over half of Canada's population (known as the 7/50 rule) and...
Ten New York Times reporters and editors interviewed Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada for an hour last Wednesday at The Times’s office in Midtown Manhattan. It was the first interview Mr. Carney had given to The Times since becoming prime minister last spring. The journalists who participated were: Joseph Kahn, the executive editor; Kathleen Kingsbury, the opinion editor; Philip...
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is pitching a plan to cut federal taxes on diesel fuel and help ensure Canada has affordable supplies of the fuel in the future. Poilievre says Canada already produces enough diesel to meet national demand, but transportation bottlenecks leave some regions dependent on U.S. imports. He proposes eliminating all tax on diesel sales until at least...
A British Columbia municipal leader says the snap provincial election at the end of October is a "party foul" that is already soaking up staff and attention from city and town elections already scheduled for Oct. 17. Cori Ramsay, a former Union of British Columbia Municipalities president who is running for council in Prince George, says the chief election officer...
As Canada plans an ambitious expansion of defence and economic activity in the Arctic, regional experts are asking whether it has enough diplomats to build the ties it wants in the North. "The Arctic is a geopolitical hot spot," said Natan Obed, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami. "The (Global Affairs) department does not have huge bench strength when it comes...
Our latest national tracking survey was conducted from September 18 to 23, following one of the busiest and most consequential stretches of federal politics in some time. Since our previous survey left the field on September 9, Prime Minister Mark Carney met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Calgary, where the two countries signed a 100-year partnership declaration focused on defence...
Familiarity with political voices varies widely, with several figures still unknown to much of the Alberta public
“Even when Trump moves on, another Trump will eventually come along. That is why it is better to truly break free and become independent, even if it means suffering for a while.” It’s a sentiment that has become ubiquitous among Canadians over the past year. It has bubbled up in coffeeshop chatter, in flags springing up on front lawns and...
Parliament is back with a substantive legislative agenda that reminds us: Democracy is nothing without accountability. For shame, then, that His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition is distracted by internal schisms and online echo chambers. This fall, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives must gain a foothold. The party’s own MPs know it. Conservative deputy leader Melissa Lantsman told reporters, “This is not the position...
Lorne Doerkson says a future Conservative government in British Columbia under his leadership would not bring in new taxes, if elected on Oct. 24, when British Columbians head to the polls in a snap election called last week. Doerkson, who was campaigning in Surrey, B.C. on Sunday, says in a party statement that Conservatives would end what he calls the...
When Kerry-Lynne Findlay abruptly resigned as leader of the Conservative Party of British Columbia last Sunday, B.C. Premier David Eby’s New Democrats were almost certainly popping champagne corks. After less than four months of Findlay’s tenure — marked by bizarre backroom machinations, hard-right staff hirings and a catastrophic exodus of 14 MLAs — the official opposition looked broken. With a...
There’s a certain water-is-wet quality to noting the furious pace of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government. The busyness feels less like a byproduct than a self-conscious mission statement, even a dare: this is how we roll, so keep up or get left behind. Even by those standards, the past two weeks have been frenetic. There was the investment summit in...
After a year of threatening to seize Greenland by force, Donald Trump has inked a deal to extend indefinite American influence over the autonomous Danish territory. It’s “a dream come true for the United States of America,” the president posted on social media this week. A day earlier, Prime Minister Mark Carney made his own announcement: Canada would be joining...
We’ve known for months that Canada’s Armed Forces have done some thinking about the admittedly remote possibility that Donald Trump’s United States might launch some kind of military action against this country. Anonymous government officials told the Globe and Mail back in January that the military had modelled a “hypothetical” U.S. invasion, apparently for the first time in a century...
Prime Minister Mark Carney says he has a “very clear mandate” from the April 2025 election. Reinforced by floor crossings and byelection victories, Carney’s majority gives his government the right to pass the Building Canada Strong Act, a sweeping 246-page bill dealing with major projects, environmental assessments and federal labour law. It’s true that we need new ports, rail corridors...
Thanks to the New York Times, Canada now knows that Mark Carney was preparing for the risk of military action arising out of Donald Trump’s 51st-state threats. That’s a major acknowledgment for the prime minister to make — perhaps one that he might have shared first with Canadians?
The province of British Columbia is having an election, barely two years after the last. There is, it is commonly acknowledged, no pressing matter in the public interest that obliged Premier David Eby to call it. He has called the election now, two years before its scheduled date under the province’s fixed-election-date law, for one reason only: to take advantage...
“Our people hate trade deals. Like, they f—king hate them. Do you understand?” The morning meetings between the prime minister’s top advisers were sometimes punchy affairs. But it was also where the government was connected to the political party guiding said government. The verbatim(ish) quote above was the kind of thing said by the person tasked with reporting what the...
It’s hard to imagine a country as large and as resource-rich and as intelligently populated as Canada having made such a small footprint on the world stage for so long. But until now, until these transformational times for our country, that’s been generally the case all the way since 1867. Dwarfed by the powers of Great Britain, which controlled Canada’s...
I would like to play poker for money against the people who still believe what Donald Trump and Pierre Poilievre say, because I doubt they can tell a spade from a diamond, a deuce from a Queen. As support for both Trump and Poilievre has diminished — they both have approval ratings of 32 per cent — I am starting...
The Conservative Party of Canada lost the last federal election because they couldn’t put enough distance between themselves and US President Donald Trump, and they seem very determined to lose the next one for the very same reason. Time and time again, they’ve been given opportunities to show their solidarity with Canada and their disdain for Trump and his movement...
Every September, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) high-level week converges on New York City. The week was once largely confined to the General Assembly. While the general debate remains its centrepiece, high-level week now also involves tens of thousands of delegates, observers, lobbyists, advocates, critics, enthusiasts, and hangers-on meeting in countless venues. There is “pre-HLW”, “post-HLW”, main meetings, side...
Are there lessons for Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre in this past weekend’s implosion of the short-lived leadership of the British Columbia Conservative Party’s Kerry-Lynne Findlay? Findlay, a former caucus colleague of the federal leader, lasted four months in her role before her Sept. 20 self-sendoff. From the outside, her approach seemed to be one fuelled by constant conflict, rage farming...
Mark Carney was in the room when two starkly different visions of the world order were laid before the United Nations General Assembly. One came from the secretary-general of the UN, António Guterres. The other came from Donald Trump.
B.C. Premier David Eby’s snap election call Tuesday may go down as a cynical but savvy decision that kept his government in power for another four years. Or it will be judged as a too-cute-by-half move that disastrously misjudged the mood of the electorate, leading to one of the most epic political blunders in the province’s history. Almost at the...
The statement that NDP Leader Avi Lewis posted on X on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur deserves to be reproduced in its entirety, in order to fully appreciate its malignancy and reckless stupidity. “Tonight Yom Kippur begins, the most sombre moment of the Jewish calendar,” Mr. Lewis wrote. “It’s a time of atonement – a time to grieve those...
Prime Minister Mark Carney has spent the last year and a half asking Canadians to embrace his “Canada Strong” agenda. We’ve all heard the slogans: Build more. Invest more. Approve projects faster. But while much of his plans depend on state action, they also require attracting private capital — and in some cases, trading on the value of public assets...
As a veteran columnist and editor, I can attest to the predominance of a handful of opening gambits that have stood the tests of both time and competition from political-aphorism upstarts. Harold Macmillan’s irresistible “Events, dear boy, events” and Yogi Berra’s (and Lenny Kravitz’s) “It ain’t over ’til it’s over” come to mind. In the Canadian canon, there’s Robert Bourassa’s...
We’re in a war of sorts with Donald Trump’s United States, or so the prime minister tells us. So to understand where we are right now I turned to my well-thumbed copy of Carl von Clausewitz’s “Vom Kriege” (On War), the Urtext for people who think about such things. Clausewitz, a Prussian general, was writing with the Napoleonic campaigns very...
On the world stage, he dazzles. Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks eloquently about shared values of democracy, addressing climate change, fighting for human rights, and walks his talk of like-minded countries banding together to preserve the rules-based international order. Whether its penning an op-ed in the Financial Times to announce Partners for Multilateralism with the presidents of Brazil, Kenya and...
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she is on Canada’s side in the upcoming Alberta separation referendum. But is she really? Or is she still toying with Albertans and Canadians. Pretending to be a federalist while quietly cheering on the separatists? It certainly sounded that way when she spoke last weekend at a virtual assembly on the future of Alberta.
On the eve of Parliament's return to business, Mark Carney sought to manage expectations. "We are meeting at a decisive moment for our country," the prime minister told a room full of Liberal MPs on Friday. Near the end of his remarks, Carney told his caucus that this would be "a crucial session of the House of Commons."
A former New Brunswick premier says a newly proposed single economy for Atlantic Canada is needed to save a region he described as a "burning platform." Frank McKenna, who served as Liberal premier from 1987 to 1997, made the comment as a panel of business leaders said the four Atlantic provinces should work together on economic transformation. The Atlantic Economic...
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul says his country wants more liquified natural gas (LNG). In an interview with CTV Question Period airing Sunday, he told host Vassy Kapelos that “of course” there’s a market for more Canadian LNG in Europe. “We do have to diversify, not only because this Russian war against Ukraine, but also with regard to the situation...
Environmental groups are sounding the alarm on the federal government’s Building Canada Strong Act as an “astonishing undermining of environmental law,” saying it gives cabinet the authority to approve virtually any project—across the country—regardless of its environmental impacts. “The package of changes to environmental law over the last year-and-a-half … since this government first tabled the Building Canada Act has...
Bill C-39 proposes to amend controversial portion of the Canada Labour Code. Though organized labour is pushing back against the Carney government's latest major projects bill — which aims to amend a controversial portion of the Labour Code — Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu says unions will have new leverage, not less, under the proposal. "It's meant to provide, first of...
British Columbia Conservative Leader Lorne Doerkson admits to some frustration in the starting days of the provincial election but now says his party is "ready to rock." Doerkson, who had the job just hours before the NDP called an election, concedes he's been "a little bit busy" but said he couldn't pass up an invitation to the B.C. Lions match...
Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand has put "strategic autonomy" at the forefront of Canada's address to the United Nations General Assembly today. Anand's speech echoes Prime Minister Mark Carney's quest for middle powers to work together by forging deeper ties. She says Canada supports the International Criminal Court, amid Washington's quest to dismantle the institution and while critics argue Canada...
B.C. Conservative Party Leader Lorne Doerkson estimates he's said 100 times in the last few days that he's open to advice on how to change the provincial government, and he got some of that in a meeting with Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe and former B.C. premier Christy Clark. Doerkson, who had the job just hours before the NDP called an...
The Prime Minister drops a news nugget in an interview in New York -- and, not surprisingly, it makes headlines. How surprised should we be that he's asked for a risk assessment on US troops crossing into Canada? Especially in these times? Chantal and Bruce are here for that, plus a lot more, in this week's Good Talk.
The woman who came within a whisker of the B.C. Conservative Party leadership will be running for the party in the Oct. 24 provincial election in the riding in West Vancouver-Capilano. Caroline Elliott lost to Kerry-Lynne Findlay in May in the final run-off to the leadership race, with official results showing her just two per cent behind the winner. Findlay...
A Canadian diplomat was sharing intelligence with American spies in Havana and Canadians were using satellite equipment brought into Cuba by the United States when officials from both countries began experiencing debilitating symptoms caused by alleged sonic attacks linked to Russia, The Globe and Mail has learned. Two sources tell The Globe that Canada and the United States were working...
Interim B.C. Conservative leader Lorne Doerkson was spotted alongside former Liberal premier Christy Clark at a B.C. Lions football game on Friday night. Doerkson has had no public events or news conferences since a provincial election was called on Tuesday. He has been interim Conservative leader since Sunday, after the resignation of Kerry-Lynne Findlay.
Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand is set to address the United Nations General Assembly today. Anand has said her speech will touch on support for Ukraine, the Middle East and Arctic sovereignty. She said it will also touch on the middle-power strategy Prime Minister Mark Carney outlined at the start of this year. On Friday, Anand said Canada does not...
As European leaders warn that Russia may increase its so-called hybrid attacks against NATO member countries, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul insists that no members of the defensive alliance want to escalate tensions. The comments come as debate grows among European countries about how best to label and respond to increasing Russian-backed operations on the continent. In an interview airing...
The Carney government plans to use a parliamentary tool not seen since the Harper government to prioritize study of its latest major projects bill. Shortly after Bill C-39 was introduced, the government moved to refer it to a "legislative committee" — a mechanism used for some of the most consequential laws in Canadian history, including the Clarity Act in 200...
Allegations of political interference from the United States dominated the 30th day of Quebec's election campaign on Friday as Coalition Avenir Quebec Leader Christine Frechette expressed concerns that Americans were trying to help sovereigntists take control of the province. Her warnings were met with skepticism from her political rivals, but Frechette said the threat was serious enough for her to...
Days after Prime Minister Mark Carney confirmed he studied the risk of U.S. military action against Canada, a former advisor to U.S. President Donald Trump said it can’t be ruled out. Anthony Scaramucci, who famously served as Trump’s communications director for 11 days in 2017 and has since become one of his loudest critics, said Trump is such a “wild...
UCP sees support drop in Calgary by 10 points since the spring. New polling suggests both impressions of Premier Danielle Smith personally and support for her party are slipping in Alberta, with the UCP now essentially neck-and-neck with the opposition NDP. The Janet Brown Opinion Research Poll for CBC News suggests 41 per cent of respondents would vote for the...
P.E.I. MP says he was warned that move would mean losing parliamentary secretary role. Charlottetown MP Sean Casey says he was removed from his position as parliamentary secretary to the minister of veterans affairs because he supported an NDP private member's bill that targeted arms exports to Israel. In March, Casey said he was warned by the Liberal whip that...
The Liberal government has taken another step forward in talks with the Swedish defence company Saab as it considers acquiring its advanced radar planes for the Royal Canadian Air Force. Ottawa and Saab agreed on a non-binding term sheet that supports more detailed negotiations on a fleet of GlobalEye aircraft. Prime Minister Mark Carney announced at the CANSEC defence expo...
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy says it would be shocking to the average American to see the United States invade Canada. Dunleavy made his remarks in an onstage discussion at the Global Business Forum in Banff, Alta., days after Prime Minister Mark Carney told the New York Times that his government has studied the "extreme tail risk" of U.S.-led military action...
Drivers on Prince Edward Island are getting a break on fuel taxes until early next year. Premier Rob Lantz announced today that the government is suspending the provincial fuel tax until the end of January. It will remove 8.47 cents from the price of a litre of gasoline and 14.15 centre from a litre of diesel, starting tomorrow.
The White House says U.S. President Donald Trump has done “more than anyone” to protect Canada from threats, after Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent comments that he has prepared for the unlikely risk of U.S. military action against Canada. When asked by The Globe and Mail on Thursday about Mr. Carney’s comments, Anna Kelly, principal deputy press secretary at the...
There’s “no urgency” to strike a trade deal with Canada, according to Washington’s trade representative, as Canada continues to supply a variety of key exports to the U.S. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer made the comments to American network CNBC Friday morning when asked about progress toward a deal with Canada. He said U.S. President Donald Trump is “comfortable” with...
MP for area says Canadian authorities still withholding some key details. The Canadian government has disclosed a handful of fresh details around the delays in opening the Gordie Howe International Bridge, as well as some information related to the cost to build the sprawling span connecting Ontario and Michigan. But the MP whose questions triggered the disclosure says he’s “not...
The federal government has announced a preliminary agreement for the acquisition of six GlobalEye detection aircraft that would be built in Canada by the Swedish firm Saab in collaboration with Canada’s Bombardier. In a statement on Friday, the government said the agreement will serve as the basis for final negotiations surrounding the purchase of these radar aircraft and the production...
British Columbia's attorney general says she has asked the federal government to change the Criminal Code to ensure accountability for artificial intelligence companies after a "disturbing" report that OpenAI's chatbot coached the Tumbler Ridge shooter before the deadly attack.
RCMP say a Quebec City man is facing charges after he allegedly threatened Prime Minister Mark Carney. The 45-year-old suspect appeared in court on Thursday, where he was charged with uttering threats to cause death or bodily harm. He also faces a charge of wilfully promoting hatred against an identifiable group.
Atlantic Canada could become one of the country's most prosperous regions if it leverages its abundant talent and resources as a "single economy," a group of business leaders say. The Atlantic Economic Panel -- made up of seven well-known executives and entrepreneurs -- released a report Friday that they say could serve as a guide for the economic transformation of...
Quebec's incumbent premier says she is concerned about possible interference in the provincial election by the United States. Coalition Avenir Quebec leader Christine Frechette told journalists she alerted Prime Minister Mark Carney and requested a meeting with him. She was reacting to a news report published by Quebecor media outlets that said American officials had attempted to negotiate directly with...
Poll also suggests decline in people who say they feel mainly attached to Alberta. With a little more than three weeks to go until the Oct. 19 referendum, a new poll done for CBC News suggests support for separation has softened since spring. Janet Brown Opinion Research, in a random survey of 1,200 Albertans between Sept. 8 and 21, asked...
The Supreme Court on Friday turned away an attempt to use a new Missouri congressional map backed by President Donald Trump, potentially putting an end to a long-running legal dispute as absentee voting is underway in the midterm elections.
The Trump administration on Friday appeared to ramp up its use of U.S. government-funded political advertisements promoting President Donald Trump, airing its second TV ad in three days while expanding its spending on the first to at least $443,000.
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- New Jersey 's Democratic lieutenant governor has resigned after the governor demanded he step down over sexual harassment allegations and ethical lapses involving his relationships with women.
MONTGOMERY, Alabama (AP) -- President Donald Trump vowed to campaign in 35 of the most competitive battleground districts in the final sprint to November's midterm elections.
Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand has put "strategic autonomy" at the forefront of Canada's address to the United Nations General Assembly today. Anand's speech echoes Prime Minister Mark Carney's quest for middle powers to work together by forging deeper ties. She says Canada supports the International Criminal Court, amid Washington's quest to dismantle the institution and while critics argue Canada...
- Vietnamese President To Lam and Prime Minister Mark Carney have upgraded the ties between their two nations to a strategic partnership. In an address on Parliament Hill today, Lam said it's time to go beyond a 2017 pact that covered investment, defence and academia, and to forge deeper ties with longer-term goals. Lam told MPs, senators and diplomats that...
Canada’s former ambassador to the United States is urging Canadian business leaders to prepare for a lasting shift in the country’s economic relationship with its largest trading partner, rather than assuming things will eventually return to the way they were. “I think we need to find a new path,” said Kirsten Hillman in Banff, Alta., on Thursday. Her remarks came...
Republicans will likely lose control of the House of Representatives in the coming weeks. The big question on a lot of minds is whether the Senate will shift to Democratic control as well. Here’s how this match up looks right now. Republicans hold 53 seats, the Democrats have 45 and there are 2 Independents, who mostly lean Democrat. When there...
Vietnam's most powerful politician is in Ottawa for a state visit Thursday aimed at deepening trade and diplomatic ties as middle powers confront American and Chinese coercion. Vietnamese President To Lam serves as Communist party general secretary, making him more powerful than his country's prime minister. Lam has events scheduled for Thursday with Gov. Gen. Louise Arbour, Prime Minister Mark...
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...
A collection of SubStack publishing within Canadian public affairs.
Artificial intelligence has moved from a promising general-purpose technology to an increasingly consequential layer of economic, social and public infrastructure. It is already raising productivity, expanding access to expertise, accelerating scientific discovery and creating new ways to deliver services. At the same time, AI systems are implicated in fraud, manipulation and cyberattacks and unreliable results and misinformation. The most capable...
The RCMP commissioner has warned the Carney government that proposed reductions in security measures for the modernization of the official residence at 24 Sussex Drive will “result in an increased overall security risk,” says an internal document. The RCMP has been meeting with senior government officials since 2025 to discuss trimming the estimated bill for hardening the property against attacks...
At Carney’s invitation, the world’s biggest institutional investors are arriving in Toronto to look over opportunities to invest in Canada — opportunities that may not yet be ripe for their taste. About 300 chief executives and senior managers gather Monday evening and Tuesday at the Four Seasons in Toronto. Between them they manage $120 trillion in assets, fifty times the...
The Prime Minister drops a news nugget in an interview in New York -- and, not surprisingly, it makes headlines. How surprised should we be that he's asked for a risk assessment on US troops crossing into Canada? Especially in these times? Chantal and Bruce are here for that, plus a lot more, in this week's Good Talk.
This week, the Liberals introduced their new “Building Canada Strong Act," which is generating controversy over its proposed changes to environmental reviews and workers' ability to strike. Environmental Defence’s Julia Levin explains her worries that the plan will “steamroll” nature and communities, while Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon argues the bill will respect labour rights and environmental concerns, while getting the...
At Issue this week: The Liberals move to push through accelerated major project approvals as unions push back. Was B.C.’s snap election call about Trump's trade threats or opportunism? And the possible strategy behind the Mark Carney's comments about a possible U.S. invasion.
B.C. Premier David Eby has staked his government on an early election, pitching to voters that U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to Canada’s economy and sovereignty forces him to request a new mandate from voters. But could the snap election call backfire if those voters instead decide that it was a cynical attempt to take advantage of the disarray within...
