Adam Radwanski

Adam Radwanski

Mark Carney’s foreign investment summit is like speed dating. The risks are real, but the opportunities could change Canada

Think of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s foreign investment summit, this coming Monday and Tuesday, as a speed-dating session. Sure, there will be speeches — most notably by Carney himself, as well as by Stephen Harper — at the gathering of global CEOs at Toronto’s Four Seasons Hotel. Plus panels, breakout sessions, and other stuff you’d typically associate with a conference...

Adam Radwanski

Carney’s $1-trillion investment summit to feature pipelines, nuclear build-outs and data centres — but no airports

Oil pipelines, nuclear build-outs, mines and data centres will highlight Mark Carney’s pitch at next week’s elite gathering of foreign investors in Toronto. But he will not be offering up Canada’s airports, at least according to a list of potential investments that the government began distributing to selected Investment Summit attendees on Wednesday.

Adam Radwanski

Canada’s economy can survive almost anything Donald Trump throws at us — but there could be a price to pay

Canada’s economy is strong enough to stand up to Donald Trump. Given the years of self-flagellation that preceded this trade war, you might not have known that. All the talk of lacklustre productivity, of regulatory roadblocks and uncompetitive tax policies, could easily have given you the impression that we’re here for Trump’s taking.

Adam Radwanski

Donald Trump’s negotiators saved Canada from making a big mistake

Canadians may owe Howard Lutnick a debt of gratitude. It was a final-hours intervention by the U.S. Commerce Secretary, who’s peculiarly belligerent toward Canada even by the standards of Donald Trump’s White House, which seemed to coincide with new American demands that scuppered the tentative trade agreement between the two countries.

Adam Radwanski

If this deal’s auto-industry relief isn’t better than it first appears, Doug Ford should keep his booze ban

This is not, by early appearances, the deal that Canada’s automotive sector wants or needs. As trade negotiations entered crunch time this week, industry leaders warned with increasing urgency that Mark Carney could not afford to settle for a rumoured cut to U.S President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canadian-assembled vehicles that would still leave the tariffs too high for those...

Adam Radwanski

Why is the U.S.-based Steelworkers union sticking up for Canada against Trump? I went to Pittsburgh to find out

An improbable show of support for Canada came recently, from amid the hollowed-out streets and rusting mills of Pennsylvania’s steel country. The people who work at the few remaining steelmaking facilities in the Pittsburgh region’s Mon Valley have plenty to worry about closer to home. The decades-long contraction of their industry has left high unemployment and rampant poverty, and the...

Adam Radwanski

Trump is holding our economy hostage. Here is what Carney cannot give up to the U.S. during trade talks

First do no harm. That’s not an easy ask of anyone trying to defend their country’s interests in a negotiation with U.S. President Donald Trump. Not when he’s wielding the world’s biggest economy as a weapon, and seems less interested in strengthening it than in harming others.

Adam Radwanski

Will Mark Carney put our airports on the block? PM likely to signal which Canadian assets are for sale at summit

In a matter of weeks, we might find out just how eager Mark Carney really is to sell off our airports. We should also get a better sense of which other Canadian assets foreign investors want.

Adam Radwanski

Donald Trump is betting on our weakness. We can’t afford to prove him right

Donald Trump is counting on Canada having weak resolve — freaking out and turning on each other and crawling to him with fresh concessions, in the face of his latest menacing of our economy. The next month will be about proving him wrong. And so far, we’re not off to a half-bad start.

Adam Radwanski

Doug Ford’s U.S. booze ban is a winning card in fight against Trump’s stacked trade deck

Raise a glass to Doug Ford, and most of his fellow premiers, for continuing to keep American liquor off our shelves. Because if there was somehow any doubt that we need to hold on to any sliver of leverage against Donald Trump, as trade negotiations heat up, it was erased by the way his hostage-taking of the Gordie Howe bridge...

Adam Radwanski

Hey, big spender: Why we need to start giving Carney a bit less benefit of the doubt

Mark Carney is committing enormous sums of public money with little explanation, in ways that neither Justin Trudeau nor most other prime ministers before him could have gotten away with. It can be easy to look past, because of the financial gravitas that Carney carries.

Adam Radwanski

Why we should laugh off Doug Ford and Danielle Smith’s costly pipeline scheme

Just how nonsensical does a pitch for a new oil pipeline have to be, in the current political climate, to be rejected out of hand? Courtesy of Doug Ford and Danielle Smith, we’re about to find out.

Adam Radwanski

Carney’s condo controversy is a warning about two of his biggest liabilities

Mark Carney has only himself to blame, for the controversy that erupted last week when he announced a half-baked plan to buy up vacant condominiums. But the blowback, as strong as any he’s faced since becoming prime minister, may ultimately prove a blessing in disguise both for him and for the country

Adam Radwanski

The Gordie Howe bridge is still closed and Trump won’t open it. What that says about “Fortress North America”

Donald Trump has made the Gordie Howe International Bridge into a big, beautiful monument to the futility of trying to jointly advance the economic interests of his country and ours. There are so many reasons for Canadians to be furious about Trump blocking the bridge’s opening: the pain to industries that need a faster crossing at the Windsor-Detroit border, the...

Adam Radwanski

Canada remains vulnerable to surging world energy prices — and some of that is our fault

Inflation has surged to its highest level in years, Statistics Canada announced Monday, and we can rightly blame U.S. President Donald Trump and his war in Iran for the oil-fueled increase.

Adam Radwanski

Why Mark Carney might be hiding behind Doug Ford on the Billy Bishop expansion

Mark Carney made the mistake of hiding behind Doug Ford, during the push for an expansion to Billy Bishop airport. And as a result, the prospect of jets and millions more passengers flying onto and off the Toronto Islands every year — which the prime minister seemed initially to want — is looking more unlikely by the day.

Adam Radwanski

Mark Carney’s top negotiators aren’t that worried about Donald Trump’s CUSMA threats. Maybe you shouldn’t be either

The people leading Canada’s trade talks are not as worried as you might think about Donald Trump’s latest threats to end North American free trade. It was somewhat jarring, this week, to take in the calm demeanour projected by chief trade negotiator Janice Charette, at an automotive conference, and lead cabinet minister Dominic LeBlanc, and ambassador Mark Wiseman at a...

Adam Radwanski

Honda just issued a warning about its future in Canada. That could inadvertently hand a win to Chinese EV makers

One of Ontario’s biggest and most reliable automakers is warning Canadians not to take its presence here for granted. “Companies don’t automatically keep building vehicles in the same country just because it’s always been that way,” Honda Canada president Dave Jamieson told an industry summit convened by the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association in Vaughan this week.

Adam Radwanski

Ontario’s electricity bills are set to shoot up. But Mark Carney has a big idea that might keep them in check

Ontarians could soon be facing a massive energy bill. Electricity demand between now and 2050 will likely double, according to projections, and to meet it Doug Ford’s government intends to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on new nuclear reactors alone. Throw in anticipated refurbishments of existing reactors, plus new transmission lines and other power generation projects, and the costs...

Adam Radwanski

Yes, you’ll be able to invest in the Canada Strong Fund. If only we knew what it was

If you’re a patriotic Canadian who believes we need to build up this country as rarely before, Mark Carney wants you to put your own dollars into it. And despite a high degree of skepticism among his friends in the financial world, he’s serious about offering a government-backed guarantee that you’ll get your money back.

Adam Radwanski

Danielle Smith’s referendum plans show the folly of Carney giving further concessions on energy policy

Lost in the controversy around the substance of the referendum questions that Alberta Premier Danielle Smith will put to voters next fall has been that the timing is nearly as striking. Less than three months ago, via a memorandum of understanding, Prime Minister Mark Carney gave Ms. Smith many of the concessions on energy and environmental policy – among them...

Adam Radwanski

Meet Tim Hodgson, the unconventional Energy Minister with a Bay Street eye for deals

For companies that arrive cap-in-hand to pitch energy or mining projects that might meet Canada’s moment of economic reckoning, a sit-down with the most influential member of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s cabinet can be a novel and jarring experience. Tim Hodgson isn’t much for the pleasantries that usually kick off such meetings, sometimes at length, with other ministers. Nor does...

Adam Radwanski

Power-sector lobby steps up criticism of Ottawa’s Clean Electricity Regulations

The association representing Canada’s power utilities is stepping up its criticism of the federal government’s proposed Clean Electricity Regulations, as Ottawa prepares to release a final version of the new rules by the end of the year.

Adam Radwanski

Industrial carbon price more effective to reduce greenhouse gases than consumer policy, report says

Canada’s carbon pricing system for heavy industrial emitters is by far the country’s most impactful policy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and roughly three times more effective than the more controversial carbon price paid by most consumers, according to new research being released on Thursday.