The line Mark Carney is walking might not be sustainable
The Liberal government has cribbed from the Conservative playbook as opponents on the left and right have faltered. But in 2026 they may face new challenges – including a renewed opposition
Andrew Coyne
While National Newswatch does not keep an archive of external articles for longer than 6 months, we do keep all articles written by contributors who post directly to our site. Here you will find all of the contributed and linked external articles from Andrew Coyne.
Something is wrong with Canadian democracy
Bill C-15, “An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget,” is 634 pages long. It creates four new Acts, repeals six more, and amends at least 45 others, on matters ranging from stablecoins to broadcasting to the marketing of freshwater fish. It is, in short, an omnibus bill, the sort with which we have grown all too familiar in...
Donald Trump – and American democracy – is getting exponentially worse
I wish I could say I told you so. A point I have tried to make over the last year or so is that Donald Trump can only get worse: that however corrupt or incompetent or dictatorial or treasonous or insane he may appear at any given moment, it will inevitably come to be seen as a relative golden age...
The Canada-Alberta deal is good policy, and probably good politics, too
Everyone could find something to hate about the energy agreement – technically, the Canada-Alberta Memorandum of Understanding – Mark Carney and Danielle Smith struck last week. For the right, the conditions on federal support for a heavy oil pipeline from Alberta to the West Coast – notably, a tightened provincial carbon pricing regime – are too onerous, if not altogether...
The Alberta-Ottawa energy deal marks a major shift in Canadian politics
Boom. Until this week, among the more reliable constants in Canadian politics were that the federal Liberals would oppose building any new pipelines to the B.C. coast (the Trans Mountain exception proving the rule); that Alberta’s United Conservatives would oppose any extension of carbon pricing (beyond what the province already had in place); and that the two governing parties, so...
Yes, the health care system is a mess, but Danielle Smith’s gambit risks failure
Yes, the Canadian health care system is a mess. Though we spend more than all but a handful of developed countries on health care, we achieve middling outcomes, leaving Canada near the bottom of the international rankings in terms of value for money. Example: Though health care now consumes nearly half of provincial own-source revenues, surgery wait times, now 3...
The PQ’s postsecession currency proposal isn’t a bridge. It’s the abyss
Oh God. We’re really going to do this, are we: Repeat the same old psychodrama, rehearse the same preposterous fantasies, repeat the same extravagant lies? Thirty years after the last secession crisis, having averted a disaster by the narrowest of margins, we’re going to do it all again? Well, it’s not a certainty. But if the election scheduled for next...
Canada’s ‘dramatic’ budget vote goes exactly according to script
You have to understand: it was always going to end this way. For all the efforts to hype the budget vote as suspenseful, for all the speculation over what the NDP or the Conservatives might or might not do, for all the indignation directed at the Liberals for failing to negotiate with the opposition, there was never any chance that...
After all the hype, Carney’s first budget fails to meet the moment
In the words of the celebrated economist Peggy Lee: Is that all there is? Has there been a budget that was preceded by more breathless hype than this one? It was to be a budget full of “generational investments” that would “swing for the fences” and “define our next century.” On the other hand, it would also be full of...
The art of no deal: Canada’s only winning move is not to play
Could we all please stop writhing and convulsing over every twitch of the Trumpmonster’s tail? For months we have been repeating the same cycle. Donald Trump issues some ghastly threat to our prosperity. Negotiations ensue. The negotiations are said to be “going well.” Then – oh no! – suddenly they aren’t. Immediately we are plunged into paroxysms of self-recrimination. Was...
Canadian politics enters its era of Illiberals and Unconservatives
Canada has a Liberal Party and a Conservative Party. Broadly speaking, they are supposed to speak for liberalism and conservatism, respectively. Often in the past they have. Where the parties have diverged from their philosophical traditions, it has been more by omission than by commission: what they failed to do, rather than what they did. What’s going on now is...
There is a constituency in the Conservative Party for Poilievre’s antics, which is really the problem
The SNC-Lavalin affair was the worst corruption scandal in federal politics since the sponsorship scandal – maybe since the Pacific Scandal. If it did not involve material gain for any of the participants, it certainly involved flagrant abuse of power, by officials from the prime minister on down. The facts, for those needing a refresher: Justin Trudeau and senior officials...
The tech oligarchy poses a unique threat to democracy
On the latest Forbes list of America’s richest people, Tesla co-founder Elon Musk ranks first, with a net worth of US$428-billion. Second richest is Larry Ellison, co-founder of the software firm Oracle, at US$276-billion. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, is close behind, at US$253-billion, followed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, at US$241-billion. What all of these gentlemen have in common...
Danielle Smith’s pipeline ransom note to Mark Carney is using Canada as her hostage
Here’s the to-do list Danielle Smith has set for Mark Carney. He has to: approve her proposal to build a pipeline from Alberta to the northern coast of British Columbia that has no private sector sponsor and no declared route;
Photo radar does not belong in a free society
Years ago I received a letter informing me that, some months before, I had run a red light, and would have to pay a fine. It included a series of pictures of the rear of my car, captured by photo radar. There must be some mistake, I thought. I’ve never run a red light in my life. Sure enough, closer...
It’s not about the notwithstanding clause – it’s about the Charter
The conservative meltdown over the notwithstanding clause, now in its second week, shows no sign of abating. The ruckus began, you’ll recall, over the federal government’s intervention in a case now before the Supreme Court of Canada involving a legal challenge to Bill 21, Quebec’s infamous law banning the wearing of religious symbols across much of the public service, which...
The three fiscal taboos Canada can no longer afford
It’s possible Mark Carney never meant to use the a-word. He was answering a question in French, after all, and you know how that can trip him up sometimes. But there it was. Asked if the fall budget would be an austerity budget, the Prime Minister did not attempt to deny it. Neither did he answer another question, not asked...
In Canada, householders must use ‘reasonable force’ against an intruder. That’s perfectly reasonable
After a Lindsay, Ont., man was charged with aggravated assault for allegedly knifing an intruder in his apartment – the alleged intruder was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries – the Premier of Ontario was quick to vent his outrage. “You should be able to protect your family when someone’s going in there to harm your family and your kids,” Doug Ford...
A government can’t kill people for no reason? When will this judicial madness end?!
When an Ontario court found, two weeks ago, that Bill 212, provincial legislation ordering the removal of bicycle lanes from three major streets in Toronto, was a violation of cyclists’ Charter right to “life, liberty and security of the person,” conservatives were apoplectic. It was judicial activism run amok, they agreed. Canada’s ever-inventive courts had discovered a “right to bicycle...
Continuing the Israeli military campaign in Gaza can no longer be justified, morally or strategically
There is a tendency to the categorical in any discussion of Israel and Gaza. The obsessive focus of so many critics on Israel’s sins, real or alleged, as if it were the only such offender, or the worst, or even remotely comparable to the bestial dictatorships aligned against it, is met by an equal and opposite insistence that all such...
The final obstacle to Trump’s dictatorship may be the people he needs to borrow from
The president of the United States is commonly described as the most powerful man on earth. Nevertheless, his powers are ordinarily circumscribed in numerous ways, formal and informal. There is the Congress, of course, and the courts, and the rule of law they are sworn to uphold. But there are also the institutions under the presidency, which though they ultimately...
Hard line? Soft line? There may be no way of dealing with Trump that works
Once upon a time there was a village menaced by a giant ogre. The villagers met to decide how to respond. “We must give him what he wants,” said one of the villagers. “Then he will go away.” “No,” said another. “We must respond with purpose and force.” In the end the villagers tried a little of both approaches. Neither...
New leader, or new system? The Conservatives ponder life under two-party politics
The NDP, it is well known, is in deep trouble. With seven seats and 6.3 per cent of the popular vote in the recent election, the party posted its worst showing, not only since its founding, but since the founding of its predecessor, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, in 1935.
Can we find the extra $50-billion we promised NATO we’d spend on defence out of cuts in other spending? Yes, we can
Well that was easy. Canada has just officially signed on to NATO’s latest target for military spending: 5 per cent of GDP, to be achieved by 2035. All it took was a stroke of the prime ministerial pen. If only most things in life were so simple. We only just announced, as you’ll recall, that we’d meet NATO’s former target...
No more half measures: to get out of our growth rut, Canada needs radical tax reform
So we’re agreed. The Canadian economy is in such a state of crisis that bold measures, previously unthinkable, are now in order. To quote the Prime Minister, we must do things we never imagined at speeds we never thought possible. Or is it we must do things we never thought possible at speeds we never imagined? Whatever. Things! Speed! Just...
Overstaffed, overpaid and underperforming, the CPP investment fund is in need of a sharp course correction
This time they waited until page 41 to admit it. As with most things at the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, its annual reports have become increasingly bloated over the years. Once, the organization responsible for investing Canadians’ public pension savings reported on its activities each year in a relatively straightforward fashion. The typical CPPIB annual report in those days...
This was the moment Charles became King of Canada, and Canada his kingdom
The original idea at Confederation was that this country would be called the Kingdom of Canada: like the United Kingdom, the Kingdom of Sweden, and so on. But there was concern this would antagonize the Americans, so instead we settled on the “Dominion of Canada” – a fine title in its own right, but one that eventually fell into disuse...
The only thing worse than not having a budget is having one
There was widespread outrage when the Carney government announced it would not release a budget this spring – or even, as first envisaged, in the fall. Only after a couple of days of appalling press was it announced the regular fall economic statement would be upgraded to a full budget. You can understand why people would be upset. As a...
The slow crumbling of Canadian democracy
Our parliamentary system is in a state of disrepair so advanced that it has lost much of its relevance
My Winnipeg, their decision - Winnipeg South is Canada’s most reliable bellwether riding. I went into the political trenches with the people who hope to represent it
Conservatives go door-knocking in Winnipeg South to win over voters in a riding that, in most elections of the past century, has supported whichever party forms government in Ottawa. Liberal Terry Duguid has been the MP here since 2015.
In the U.S., defying the courts is a constitutional crisis. In Canada, it’s a simple matter of paperwork
Not three months into Donald Trump’s second term, the United States has entered the constitutional crisis everyone knew was coming, but somehow hoped would never arrive. The Trump administration is now openly defying a Supreme Court ruling ordering it to bring home Kilmar Abrego Garcia – a U.S. resident who, though he has neither been charged with nor convicted of...