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 Phillips.
There’s an old clip going around on social media this week showing Stephen Harper on his feet in the Commons batting away a question about the supposed impropriety of a Liberal MP crossing over to join his Conservatives. It was 2006 and Harper was being accused of “seducing” Liberal David Emerson over to his side. The then-PM first shrugged it...
The Carney Liberals are in grave danger of repeating a mistake the Conservatives made a year ago. They’re running the risk of eliminating the person they see as their principal opponent — but who is also one of their biggest assets, maybe the biggest of all.
Coming from another president, there are parts of the United States’ new “National Security Strategy” that would be welcome. It’s well past time, for example, that the U.S. acknowledged it cannot and should not try to lead the “free world” and impose its system on other countries. Barack Obama, no less, took steps down that road more than a decade...
If you listen to the noise coming out of British Columbia, rather than pay attention to what’s actually going on, you might conclude the province’s NDP government simply hates pipelines. A new line to the B.C. coast, they keep saying, is a terrible idea. It’s just a pipe dream, a “fantasy” in the words of Premier David Eby. Worse, the...
The verdict in Ottawa this week seems to be that the Carney government was darn lucky to get its budget passed in this minority Parliament. Judging by the political panel shows and the judgment of pundits, including some in the Star, the fact that a Christmas election was avoided by a mere two-vote margin in the Commons and the government...
So it turns out we really are those people, the ones who say “sorry” when someone steps on our foot, the ones who can’t stop apologizing when we’ve done something wrong or even — especially, really — when we haven’t. Prime Minister Mark Carney said over the weekend that he apologized to Donald Trump for those Ontario TV ads that...
When Mark Carney became PM, the book on him was we were getting a cerebral policy wonk. What a change that would be from the politics-first, poll-worshipping Liberals of the late Trudeau years! If that was ever true, it sure isn’t now. It hasn’t taken Carney long to become a cynical pol when the circumstances call for that, to tailor...
When it comes to Mark Carney, Donald Trump and the White House meeting that swallowed much of this week, I’m with John Cleese — or at least the character he played in the movie “Clockwise.” “I can take the despair,” he famously said. “It’s the hope I can’t stand.”
When people talk about being “diplomatic” they usually mean something along the lines of being tactful, sensitive, of smoothing over difficult issues. In that sense Donald Trump’s top diplomat in this country, U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra, must be the least diplomatic guy around.
When it comes to politicians, especially newcomers to public life, journalists have a well-worn modus operandi. We build ’em up, then we tear ’em down. For Mark Carney, the teardown phase seems to be well underway. The man hailed as a political miracle-worker a scant few months ago now apparently can’t get anything quite right.
Suddenly it seems there’s a new narrative out of Ottawa and it goes roughly like this: Canadians aren’t so concerned about Trump and tariffs and all that anymore. They’re back to worrying about those old favourites that dominated our politics back in the old days (i.e. about 10 months ago) — inflation, the cost of living, and unaffordable housing...
Today’s theme: provinces — or more to the point, provincial governments — acting stupidly. This is always a rich vein, but never more so than this week. We begin in Alberta, where the government of Premier Danielle Smith has tied itself in knots and managed to make the province an international laughing stock over a policy that might well amount...
I hadn’t heard of Joseph Martin until five minutes ago, and I bet you hadn’t either. Martin is a Republican state senator from a rural corner of Maine, not exactly a power position. Even most Mainers, as they call themselves, would probably have a hard time picking him out of a lineup. But Sen. Martin is suddenly famous, or more...
What on earth has gotten into those Canadians? The United States, specifically Donald Trump, has “done nothing but treat them with the utmost respect.” The Trump administration has “protected the integrity” of its trade deal with Canada, but the Canadians have tossed that aside and decided that “the guardrails are off.” Frankly, it’s hurtful. The U.S. sees Canada as a...
No matter how bad things are, it seems they can always get worse. I wrote about the situation in Gaza earlier this week, focusing on the repeated reports of hungry, desperate people being shot and killed as they scrambled for food at distribution hubs. That’s bad enough, but even in the past few days the horror there has become even...
You want to say something that isn’t blindingly obvious. You want to talk about something people care about. If possible you want to spin a clever line or two. What you don’t want to do, generally speaking, is rub people’s faces in things they’d rather not look at. So for people like me in the opinionating line, the temptation always...
Hell froze over. The lion lay down with the lamb. Quebec nationalists agreed English-speaking Quebecers aren’t actually a big threat to French in that province. On the list of unlikely events, that last one might not seem earth-shaking outside Quebec. But after years of treating the province’s million-strong Anglo community as a convenient punching bag, it’s a very hopeful sign...
Of all the turnarounds engineered by Prime Minister Mark Carney over the past few months, none is bigger than the enormous commitment to new defence spending he announced on Monday. For in this case Carney isn’t just reversing Justin Trudeau’s policies (we’re all used to that by now). He’s pulling a U-turn on himself. As recently as April, Carney was...
It’s still early days, but so far I’m pretty impressed with what I see from Canada’s new conservative government. Voters clearly wanted a big change after a decade of Justin Trudeau’s Liberal approach, and boy are they getting it.
It didn’t take long for Donald Trump to make a liar — or at least a fool — out of his own ambassador to Canada. Pete Hoekstra did a round of introductory interviews last week as he made his debut as Trump’s representative to this country. One of his key messages was that all the talk about annexation is “over.”...
Could there be a more Canadian headline than the one on the front page of Monday’s Star? “Liberals reject power to oust leader,” it proclaimed. Given the opportunity to assert some control over their leader if things go sideways, with the memory of the impasse over Justin Trudeau’s leadership fresh in their minds, the party’s members of Parliament meekly said...
What a genius move by Mark Carney to get King Charles to deliver his government’s Speech from the Throne later this month. Given all Carney’s up to in his first week after the election, arranging for Charles to preside over the re-opening of Parliament might not seem like a big deal. There is, after all, that little matter of the...
Mark Carney didn’t quite get the majority mandate he was looking for and there’s a lot of punditry out there about the problems he and the Liberals will have in managing that. It’s being called an “uncertain mandate,” a “less than strong mandate,” and the outcome has been labelled (on page one of the Star no less) an “uneasy victory.”...
Donald Trump, it seems, just can’t help himself. He can’t stop trash-talking Canada, even when he knows he shouldn’t. Trump was remarkably silent about this country for weeks, ever since Mark Carney took over as prime minister in fact. He seemed to be restraining himself, or at least turning his malevolent gaze on other countries as he announced punitive tariffs...
Before the current campaign, Canada held eight federal elections in this century. Five — including the last two — resulted in a minority government. Minorities have become the norm in our multi-party system. But now is not the time for another minority. It’s not the time for another government that has to cut deals to stay in office, that’s always...
I went to Pierre Poilievre’s “Stop the Crime” night in Brampton on Wednesday. I wanted to figure out how the Conservative leader could be taking luxuriant crowd baths across the country while languishing in the polls. More to the point, I wanted to find out how the people who turn out for him are dealing with that. I learned, no...
One of the biggest knocks against Justin Trudeau’s government is that it failed to get big things done. It was great at announcing ambitious plans with multibillion-dollar price tags. But when it came to actually building stuff, not so much. The list is familiar: military jets that were studied for years but never arrived; housing plans that promised a lot...
The most sobering thing I’ve read in the past couple of weeks comes from Timothy Snyder, the renowned historian of Ukraine. Snyder, who’s been studying modern-day authoritarianism for years, draws a strong parallel between how Vladimir Putin sees Ukraine and how Donald Trump views Canada. Most jarringly, Snyder argues that Trump is preparing the ground not just for an economic...
Who is that smiling man? Who is that affable fellow with the big grin and the adorable family, the one who seems delighted to field queries from journalists? “Thanks for the question, Bill!” Why it’s Pierre Poilievre, formerly the Dark Prince of Canadian politics, the scowler, growler and angry apple-muncher, who couldn’t be bothered to mask his contempt for the...
As the campaign buses rev up for a federal election call this weekend, Donald Trump handed Pierre Poilievre a nice little gift. Trump dissed the Conservative leader hard, and publicly. Even better for Poilievre, he seemed to be favouring Mark Carney, though that wasn’t nearly as clear as Conservatives are claiming.
We’re all about “Buy Canadian” these days, aren’t we? Except, it seems, for the federal government, which has chosen this moment to drop its ban on advertising with social media platforms owned by the U.S.-owned tech giant Meta.
On Day One of the second term of his presidency Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.” He then doubled down on efforts to do exactly the opposite. In the four and a half weeks since that order, Trump and his allies have waged a campaign of what can only be described...
It can’t be easy being Chrystia Freeland these days. It’s February, a particularly cold one, and she’s dragging herself all over the country — including to an audience with the Star’s editorial board on Monday morning — in pursuit of the Liberal leadership.
Canadians are mad. Oh boy, are we mad! I feel it; I bet you feel it too. Almost every commentator I read this week is trying to outdo all the others in channeling our collective rage at Donald Trump. Anger can be good. It can propel you into doing things you might not dare to do otherwise. Especially when it’s...
One of the most puzzling things about Donald Trump’s tariff tirades is the country he chooses to put most directly in his crosshairs. Not China, which runs a rigged trade system and has flooded the United States with cheap goods that destroy American manufacturing jobs. Oh, and is the primary source of the fentanyl that has killed hundreds of thousands...
No way, no how. That’s the message from Canadians to Donald Trump’s taunts about becoming the 51st state. At least that’s what the opinion polls show, isn’t it? Yes, if you look at the overall findings. Support for joining the U.S. of A. is down around 13 per cent (Leger Marketing) or 10 per cent (Angus Reid Institute). Those are...
“You never know how strong you are,” said the late, great Bob Marley, “until being strong is the only choice you have.” In the face of the unprecedented threat from Donald Trump, this is Canada’s moment to be strong. It’s not yet clear how we’re going to measure up, but at this point the news frankly isn’t great. You only...
Mark Carney came to the official launch of his campaign for the federal Liberal leadership on Thursday as the favourite in this abbreviated contest. At least that’s what the pundits seemed to have decided. Carney is the Liberal leader from central casting: whip smart; credentialed like nobody’s business; a native of the Far North who’s now connected globally; bilingual; handsome...
Justin Trudeau, not to put too fine a point on it, looked like hell when he came out to announce the inevitable — that he’s stepping down as Liberal leader and prime minister. This is a man who always managed at least to look great, even when things were going against him. But on Monday he looked puffy, beaten down...
Those jibes from Donald Trump about Canada becoming the 51st state are getting awfully old. Once, maybe funny. The fourth or fifth time, not so much. It’s obvious Trump is belittling this country as part of his bully tactics on tariffs and whatever else he wants. Bullying is what you expect from a bully. The real sting comes because there’s...
I hope there’s a method to the oddly disjointed response that the Trudeau government and the premiers are displaying to the Trump tariff threat. Consider Wednesday evening, after the prime minister and some of his key cabinet members met (virtually) with the premiers for the second time in a week. Everyone was talking about a “Team Canada” approach, but what...
I must confess: my admiration for Donald Trump’s political skills grows with each passing day. Don’t confuse this with admiration for the man himself, his character or his policies. He’s had years to reveal himself as a vile manipulator willing to indulge in racism, authoritarianism, all those things, to serve his ends. He’s a threat to his own country and...
I’m glad Justin Trudeau managed to get face to face with Donald Trump and make the case that Canada shouldn’t be socked with tariffs that would send our economy into a recessionary spin. Obviously it’s better to talk directly to the Great Khan in his stately Mar-a-Lago pleasure dome than to be left on the outside peeking in. If you’re...
We’re going to be fine, just fine. That’s the message coming from the Trudeau government in the wake of Donald Trump’s decisive comeback. Just so there’s no doubt, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland put it like this last week: “I want to say with utter sincerity and conviction to Canadians that Canada will be absolutely fine.” Maybe it’s just me...
Like a lot of Canadians, I thought I knew quite a bit about the United States. After all, I lived there for five years. I reported from almost half the states and travelled in most of the others. I was married to an American for 45 years and spent time with her family in Hawaii, California and Colorado. My son...
The headline number on the reduction of immigration targets announced on Thursday by the Trudeau government is massive — a cut of more than 20 per cent in the number of permanent residents admitted over the next three years. But even that understates the scale of the government’s reversal. If you add in even bigger cuts in the number of...
They’re still trying to figure out exactly what happened in the British Columbia election over the weekend. But one thing is clear: Justin Trudeau lost. The prime minister wasn’t on the ballot, of course. But the outcome is yet another unmistakable sign that his time is up, not that he needed any more of those.
Canada’s carbon pricing plan is on its political death bed. Everyone but its closest family (the Trudeau government) has given up on it. Even its former friends in the NDP, both federally and in the provinces, have edged away. They may regret its passing, but they don’t want to be around when the plug is pulled.
There’s not much doubt what was on the minds of Justin Trudeau’s cabinet when members met in Halifax this week — at least when it comes to policy and not their party’s dismal standing in the polls. You could tell by who they brought in to speak to them. There was Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan and one...
I realize that tariffs and electric vehicles aren’t the most alluring subject in mid-August, when we’re trying to hold on to the last weeks of summer. But you have literally billions of reasons to pay attention — exactly 52.455 billion reasons, which according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer is the number of your tax dollars that governments have invested in...
You can’t be too careful these days. With all the fake news, misinformation and AI-generated “deep fakes” out there you can’t take anything at face value. You have to be on your guard. Which is why when I saw a headline this week saying a federal minister had lobbied for 100 Canadian soldiers to act as “backdrops” for a concert...
“Nothing in his life,” Shakespeare wrote in “Macbeth” of a nobleman who faced his execution with dignity, “became him like the leaving of it.” And nothing in Joe Biden’s five-decade life in politics reflects better on him than his decision to leave it. By stepping aside and letting another Democrat carry the fight against Donald Trump, he is giving his...
If you ever studied philosophy you’ll be familiar with Plato’s allegory of the cave. The philosopher described people who’ve spent their lives chained in a cave, facing a blank wall. All they know of reality is from shadows projected on the wall created by objects passing in front of a fire behind them. When it comes to the most alarming...
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau believes deeply in the importance of maintaining confidence in our democratic institutions. We know this because he tells us so. On March 20, for example, he addressed a “Summit on Democracy” in South Korea and according to his office he “emphasized the importance of open government to build and maintain public trust in democratic institutions.”
The question I have these days about Justin Trudeau is not “will he run again?” (which is unknowable at the moment) but “how did he and the Liberals screw things up so badly?” How did they manage to fall from the heights of “sunny ways” back in 2015 to the electoral depths they’re stuck in now?
Governments often use budgets to change the channel from what their opponents want to talk about to what they want to talk about. The Trudeau government is no exception. It clearly hopes this week’s federal budget will dampen all the negative chatter about carbon pricing and get people focused on the great plans it has for solving the housing crisis...
When information about China’s interference in Canadian politics was leaked to the news media more than a year ago, the federal government snapped into action. Not so much against the interference itself, mind you, but against whoever leaked that confidential information. The hunt for the leaker or leakers is still underway, as far as I know, and they’ve been condemned...
I’ve been thinking a lot about thinking — about how we come to believe what we believe and the tendency of people to cling to their beliefs in the face of a mountain of facts that contradict those same beliefs. This is hardly a new issue. We’ve been lamenting the fact that people lock themselves into self-reinforcing communities of belief...
Averages can be terribly misleading. If you’ve got your feet in the freezer and your head in the oven, it’s been noted, your average temperature may be just fine. But are you comfortable? Hardly. A new global survey suggests Canada is a bit like that. The latest edition of the grandly named World Happiness Report, run out of the University...
What a weird way to make foreign policy — or whatever it was that members of Parliament occupied themselves with for most of Monday. Our elected representatives started the day by debating a motion put forward by the NDP that would have radically changed Canada’s policy on the Israel-Palestine question, tilting it decidedly toward a more resolutely pro-Palestinian stance.