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.
They are greyer now: greyer of hair and face, but also in perception. In their younger days, they saw things more in black and white, as we saw them. But the years have passed, and now we see them through a mist of … what? Nostalgia? Ambivalence? Maybe say complexity, and respect, and, finally, gratitude. They are the lions in...
Is artificial intelligence the salvation of mankind, or its downfall? Are markets justified in bidding up AI stocks as high as they have, or is it all a bubble? Will we look back on the hundreds of billions of dollars the AI titans are currently investing in capacity as having laid the foundations for a new age of prosperity, or...
It is doubtful any country has ever been in quite the national security dilemma Canada now finds itself in: with so much land and so few people to defend it; wedged between two expansionist superpowers, one of which was until very recently our best defence against the other, but which has since become more or less aligned with it. The...
Suppose there were a country, let’s call it Outlandia, that declared its intent to annex Canada – to take over its territory and subject its people to its rule – if not by military means, certainly by economic. Now suppose a group of fellow travellers within Canada offered to assist Outlandia with its hostile takeover. Nothing violent, mind you, but...
The Prime Minister’s speech at Davos was on Jan. 20. In the days since then, Donald Trump or his officials have: claimed, without evidence, that the Prime Minister had retracted the speech in a private conversation with the President; referred to the Prime Minister, for the first time, as “Governor” Carney; threatened to impose a 100-per-cent tariff on Canada in...
Mark Carney’s Davos speech appears to have caught Canadians’ attention. The Angus Reid Institute has a new poll out showing him with a 60-per-cent “positive” rating (to 34 per cent “negative”), up eight points since December. Spark Insights has him at 61 per cent. And Pierre Poilievre? Just 36 per cent rate him positively, according to Angus Reid; 39 per...
The War of the Greenlandic Accession appears to have ended before it began, the President of the United States having supposedly negotiated a deal on the island’s future with the Secretary-General of NATO, a deal that a) no one can describe in any detail, b) neither of them has any mandate to negotiate and c) appears to amount to a...
Well, that got their attention. Since the Prime Minister’s visit to China, the American media – and social media – have been filled with expressions of shock and amazement. For critics of Donald Trump, it was payback for his bullying and abusive treatment of America’s nearest neighbour and historic ally. For the President’s supporters, it was a sign of Canadian...
Perhaps you know this story. The CBC once held a contest in which the object was to complete the phrase “as Canadian as … ”, in the style of “as American as apple pie.” The winning entry: “As Canadian as possible, under the circumstances.” It was a self-deprecating joke about Canadian nationalism, at the time. Today, it describes a very...
Which is the most ludicrous part of the Trump administration’s attempt to portray the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, as a criminal? Is it the suggestion that the distinguished 35-year public servant somehow took it into his head, at the end of a career unmarked by any previous stain on his integrity, to try to smuggle a $2.5-billion...
At some point almost every young person comes to one of two startling realizations, that seem to upend everything they have ever been taught. The first: We’re the bad guys. America, Canada, the West: We’ve done all sorts of terrible things! All that rot about democracy and freedom, fighting dictatorships and all that, when it’s our leaders who are the...
Occam’s razor is the principle that the most plausible explanation of events is the simplest. Most often this is true. To account for Donald Trump, however, we need a different hermeneutical instrument. Say hello to Occam’s kazoo: the principle that the most plausible explanation, so far as Mr. Trump is involved, is invariably the stupidest. To understand his motives in...
The pollsters are trying to tell us something. For much of the past year, the dominant strain of Canadian political coverage has focused on the struggles of Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre, especially as contrasted with the brilliant successes of his opponent, Mark Carney. How could it not? Mr. Poilievre saw a 25-point lead evaporate in the space of two...
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
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...
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...
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...
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 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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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;
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 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...
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...
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.
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...
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...