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 Daniel Béland.
The Québec election campaign isn’t even a week old and already, it is fraught with irony. Parti Québécois (PQ) Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon declared his position — as all PQ leaders must as the price of boarding a campaign bus — on the terms of an independence referendum as an election issue by saying he would not hold one until...
With Quebec’s provincial election exactly eight weeks away, the latest numbers — from an August 5th Pallas Data-Qc125-L’actualité poll — have Charles Milliard’s Liberal Party and the Parti Quebecois of Paul St-Pierre Plamondon a margin of error apart, at 27 and 31 per cent, respectively. Roughly 10 points back, we have Premier Christine Fréchette’s Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) in third...
With Quebec’s fête nationale of Saint-Jean-Baptiste having launched the province’s pre-election political summer on June 24th, the phoney-war phase of mudslinging and burger flipping ahead of an October 5th election is now underway.
While experience has taught Canadians that Governors-General can only be assessed once they have a record in office, Mark Carney’s choice of former Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour has prompted an overwhelmingly positive response. Carney only formally entered the political arena in January of last year but, overall, his political judgment has proved remarkably sound since he has become prime...
Nearly one year after the election that validated Mark Carney’s instincts about pursuing a career in elected politics, the principal casualty of that choice, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, finds himself in a peculiar position. Poilievre, whose party lost that election from a starting lead of 20 points, who lost his own seat, and who has witnessed a mini stampede of...
As Quebecers prepare for an election in early October, the dramatis personae of what will be a very political summer — from the beaches of Gaspésie to the Festival Western de Ste-Tite — was filled-in with another major party leader on Sunday. Christine Fréchette, 56, a former minister in the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government of outgoing premier François Legault...
We live in an increasingly uncertain world. Amid trade wars, hot wars, geopolitical conflicts, and rising oil prices, the disruption-and-destruction rap sheet of the second Trump administration grows longer by the day. As Prime Minister Mark Carney said during his now-famous Davos Speech on January 20, as a middle power, Canada must adapt to this challenging new context. Yet, despite...
Back in 2011, the popularity in Quebec of then New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton helped trigger an unprecedented Orange Wave that saw the NDP win 59 seats (out of 75) in a province that had never been fertile electoral ground for the NDP. Tragically, Layton passed away from cancer less than four months later. In the 2015 federal election...
The Supreme Court of Canada’s February 13th decision to nullify last April’s “single vote election win” in the Quebec riding of Terrebonne has increased the number of anticipated federal byelections to three — a number of exceptional importance based on the minority status of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal government in the House of Commons. The departure of University-Rosedale MP...
There is a consensus both abroad and in Canada that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s January 20 speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos was highly successful in resetting the conversation on geopolitics and trade in the face of Donald Trump’s aggressive policies and rhetoric. But if Carney became a global geopolitical sensation after his Davos address, two days later...
With less than nine months to go before a scheduled Quebec election, Premier François Legault has responded to pressure from both his polls and his party, announcing his withdrawal from the field, leaving Quebec politics in flux and his party pondering the odds of a provincial Mark Carney saving the day. In some ways, we can draw parallels between Legault’s...
How should we understand the ongoing U.S. regime change operation in Venezuela? First, there is no need to lament the extraction of Nicolás Maduro—an authoritarian leader who executed a policy of economic brutality and forced displacement against his fellow citizens yet remained in power despite receiving far fewer votes than opposition candidate Edmundo González in the 2024 presidential election. Second...
Earlier this week, Party Québécois (PQ) leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon told Quebec journalists that they were not doing a good job at covering and exposing what he depicts as the anti-Quebec policies of the federal government, which he dismissively calls “the federal regime,” as if it was some sort of dark foreign entity. This tirade against a key component of...
With Premier François Legault experiencing the throes of seemingly irrevocable voter fatigue less than a year before the scheduled October 5, 2026 Quebec election, the Parti Québecois (PQ) is benefiting from not only disenchantment with Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), but also from problems plaguing its other rivals. While the PQ’s lead in the polls has declined in recent weeks...
Speaking to journalists earlier this week, Liberal Party of Quebec (LPQ) leader Pablo Rodriguez said he hoped that one day Quebec would sign the Canadian Constitution “when Quebec’s demands [are] accepted”. When pressed about the nature of those demands, he stated that he would not “go below” the conditions laid out by former premier Robert Bourassa at the time of...
Last week, speaking to reporters, Prime Minister Mark Carney said in French that his government’s first budget, which is due sometime in October (tabling date TBD) would be “an austerity and investment budget at the same time, and that’s possible if we are disciplined.” “We need discipline for our spending, it’s necessary,” Carney added. For example, the rate of increase...
For any readers who haven’t been following the saga, l’affaire SAAQclic is — in optics, political hazard and impenetrable digital chaos — the Quebec version of the federal cost-overrun and payroll-error scandal that was the $5 billion Phoenix fiasco. And, as the province’s summer political spectacle, the public inquiry into the mess has offered all the crisis and cover-up drama...
It is hard to overstate the political importance of the looming federal budget, the first to be tabled by Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government. This budget has been controversial since even before it was announced. In mid-May, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne stated that the government would not present a budget in 2025. Instead, he said that the government would simply...
On Monday evening, the governing Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) lost its third byelection in a row, this time with a catastrophic defeat in the provincial riding of Arthabaska. Receiving barely 7% of the votes in total, the CAQ finished in fourth place in a riding they had won by more than 50% of the vote less than three years ago...
Given the four-year preview of his first term, it should come as no surprise that even in the middle of summer, we can’t escape Donald Trump. Through ongoing executive orders, public announcements, press conferences, social media posts and shifting deadlines of tariffs, we are bombarded hourly by the former reality-show host’s presidential stylings. The difference in this term seems to...
What a difference a year makes. During this week’s annual summer retreat of the Council of the Federation (COF), also known as “Canada’s Premiers,” Prime Minister Mark Carney was unanimously praised for his leadership amid a spirit of collaboration among the provinces and territories, and between the premiers and Ottawa, to foster economic growth and internal trade. The subtext of...
Pablo Rodriguez, the former federal cabinet minister whose family fled Argentina for Canada in 1974 to escape his father’s persecution by the military junta’s “Dirty War”, has been elected leader of the Liberal Party of Quebec.
On Tuesday in the Senate Chamber, King Charles III will deliver the Speech from the Thone. The last time a monarch did so was in 1977, when his mother Elizabeth II read it during her Silver Jubilee tour. Two decades earlier, she had pronounced her first Speech from the Throne in Ottawa, an occasion that marked the young Queen’s first...
Barely two months after he and his cabinet were first sworn in and two weeks after his election, Prime Minister Mark Carney attended the swearing-in ceremony at Rideau Hall Tuesday during which two dozen new people joined his shuffled, culled and expanded ministry. More than half of them are newly elected MPs, which brings many new faces to the fore...
In his first post-election news conference, Prime Minister Mark Carney said that he’s in politics “to do big things, not to be something.” He also stated that, “Now is the time for ambition, to be bold, to meet this crisis with the overwhelming, positive force of a united Canada.” Based on some of the pledges he mentioned in his speech...
After a short yet intense campaign focused on how to strengthen our economy and protect our sovereignty in a more uncertain and threatening continental and global context, Canadians have voted and the results are in. The Liberals have done what many thought impossible barely a few months ago: they won the most seats and found a way to remain in...
The term “the Trump effect” has been used over the past eight years to describe a range of political phenomena, from certain trends in tactical disruption to the dominance of propaganda in the news cycle. As we approach the 100-day mark (on April 30th) of the unlikely American president’s second term, the Trump effect has taken on a whole new...
There was no clear “winner” of the French-language leaders’ debate on Wednesday night in Montreal, but the lack of a clear loser, and the takeaways based on expectations, produced a number of results. First, it is quite clear that this debate is unlikely to be particularly consequential in terms of shifting party standings in this campaign, partly because no party...
During a speech in Victoria on Sunday, Mark Carney quipped: “We’re sending Doug Ford onto FOX News to show them that we’re not messing around up here,” which made Liberal supporters in the room laugh. Then, he added: “And we’re going to send Danielle next. Well, maybe we won’t. We won’t send Danielle. That’s a bad idea. Strike that.” The...
The headline in Tuesday’s Journal de Montréal said it all: “Sondage Léger: les Québécois passent l’éponge sur la mauvaise semaine de Carney, toujours solidement en tête”. En anglais: a Léger poll was showing that Quebec voters had “wiped the slate clean” on Mark Carney’s bumpy launch in the province, where he’s now surfing a 20-point lead. Even in an age...
After months of prime ministerial departure and succession drama, of bilateral chaos, avoidable economic uncertainty, and a spit-take reversal in the pre-campaign polling snapshot, the 2025 federal election is finally underway. The campaign begins as support for the Liberals, who had trailed the Conservatives in the polls for more than a year, has surged, partly because of the departure of...
Now that Mark Carney is Prime Minister, federal elections could be triggered very soon. Since Justin Trudeau announced his resignation on January 6 amid both a bilateral trade war and a deeply troubling questioning of Canada’s sovereignty from a rogue president of the United States, the Liberals have dramatically improved their standing in opinion polls. This is so much the...
Sunday evening, as expected, Mark Carney easily won the Liberal leadership race. More than easily; resoundingly, with more than 86% of support from party voters. Even as he steps into daily political life with the full-throated endorsement of his own party, the scope of Carney’s victory does not erase his most obvious Achilles’ heel: a lack of prior political experience...
On the evening of March 4th, the same day the United States imposed 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, President Donald Trump gave the first major speech of his second term, the conventional first-year, post-inaugural adaptation of the State of the Union address, the presidential speech to a joint session of Congress. In the House chamber Tuesday night, he delivered...
On Monday and Tuesday evening, the remaining four Liberal leadership hopefuls participated in the only two official debates of this unusually short race: one in French and one in English. Because Mark Carney seems way ahead in the race and likely heading toward a crowning, these two debates provided an opportunity to test his debating skills and imagine how he...
Canada’s Conservatives are becoming increasingly nervous as recent polls suggest that the Liberals, due to a cascade of game-changing events, have significantly closed the polling gap between the two parties. Some data also shows that, under the hypothetical leadership of Mark Carney, the Liberals would tie the Conservatives in terms of popular vote. Under normal conditions, considering that the Liberals...
The most striking irony in U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s first appearance at NATO in Brussels on Wednesday was his reiteration of Donald Trump’s insistence on an increase to 5% of GDP in defence spending for Alliance members at a time when Trump himself represents the greatest security threat to Canada.
Earlier this week, the Liberal Party of Canada allowed six candidates seeking to replace Justin Trudeau to formally enter its leadership race. This means that the party only excluded one leadership hopeful: Liberal MP Chandra Arya, who was the first to announce he would like to run for the leadership after Prime Minister Trudeau announced he would step down.
On the first day of his second presidency, Canadians feared that Donald Trump would impose 25% tariffs on their country. This is why many of them were relieved when they noticed he did not mention Canada at all in his inauguration speech. Canadians typically like it when U.S. presidents pay attention to them, but with President Trump, it is the...
When Steve MacKinnon, Justin Trudeau’s minister of employment, was asked two days after Trudeau announced his intention to resign whether he’d be entering the race to replace him as Liberal leader, it wasn’t so much what MacKinnon — the MP for Gatineau — said but the way he said it that telegraphed his thinking. MacKinnon was asked the question in...