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 Greg MacNeil.
Let’s be clear: there is nothing improper about a government gaining a majority in Parliament between elections. Some have suggested otherwise, as if something outside the rules has taken place. It hasn’t. Canada operates under a Westminster parliamentary system. Voters don’t cast ballots for a Prime Minister. We don’t vote for or against a majority government. We vote for a...
The Liberals have their Majority Government. For the past few years, politics in Ottawa has been about counting votes, negotiating support between parties, and legislative gridlock. For Liberals it’s been about surviving, not thriving. That problem is now gone. It has been replaced by a new challenge: managing a diverse caucus. The Liberals no longer need opposition parties to stay...
Canada won’t be able to recruit a generation that can’t afford a future. The raise for Canadian Armed Forces members was necessary, but it won’t fix the real problem. Young Canadians aren’t choosing careers based on wages alone. They’re choosing based on whether a job gives them a future they can actually build, and right now the CAF doesn’t. Not...
Ottawa is a foreign country. People outside it need guides and translators. They don’t speak the same language, they don’t know their way around, geographically or politically. Even the vocabulary is foreign. Normal people don’t say things like “I need to crosswalk this MC,” “Do you have an agenda item for the MIN-DM (pronounced mindim)?” or “We need a four...
On December 13, 1979, Joe Clark’s government fell after failing to pass its budget. It wasn’t supposed to happen. Clark miscounted the votes, and Canadians found themselves in an accidental election.
Ottawa says it wants an AI revolution. But before the robots arrive, there’ll be meetings. Many, many meetings. Mark Carney’s government has declared that artificial intelligence will be the future of the federal public service. A government that’s smarter, faster, and more responsive to Canadians. Imagine services that anticipate your needs instead of losing your forms. It’s the kind of...
Defence lobbyists love a good Second World War analogy. You can’t get through a defence procurement conference without someone invoking the Battle of the Atlantic or the arsenal of democracy. So let’s lean right in. If Canada’s new Defence Investment Agency is a rerun of the 1940s, then Stephen Fuhr is our C.D. Howe and Doug Guzman is our dollar-a-year...
Canadians don’t need to be told the world’s getting harsher. They chose a serious Prime Minister for a reason, and for now there’s little appetite for populist politics. They want solutions. The problem for the Carney government is that the solutions to our biggest challenges often seem at odds with each other, and how he resolves that tension will define...
I’m a big fan of Dan Gardner’s work. A couple of years ago he wrote an essay called Preparing for the Next Big One, and it’s been rattling around in my head ever since. He describes what he calls the “tombstone mentality,” the cycle of complacency that drives how societies prepare for foreseeable disasters. It goes like this...
Jean Chrétien had program review. His government restructured the federal budget from the ground up, asking fundamental questions about what government should do and how. Stephen Harper had the Economic Action Plan, launched in response to the global financial crisis. Justin Trudeau’s first term was consumed by the renegotiation of NAFTA, a trade fight that tested the Canada–US relationship in...
Ottawa has been in a sprint since January. A new Prime Minister. A new cabinet. A new agenda. Now, the House has adjourned for the summer. The BBQ circuit begins. Vacations will be taken. And whether they admit it or not, many will use the time to catch their breath and reflect. They should. Because in politics, everyone wants to...
Benjamin Franklin once said that America is “a republic, if you can keep it.” I’m not American, but I’ve always admired that quote. It’s a warning and a challenge in one sentence. A reminder that a country’s values are only as strong as its citizens’ commitment to them. Next week, Canadians celebrate Canada Day. Over the last six months, many...
The Carney government has set some ambitious targets. Defence. Productivity. Housing. Trade diversification. Infrastructure. Projects of National Interest. All of it. Every problem, fixed. Every policy lever, pulled. Every chart, up and to the right. And look, good for them. I sincerely mean it. I love these ambitious goals. The truth is, you do not get into government to manage...
In politics, you can't say ten things and expect people to remember one. You have to say one thing ten times. Then say it ten more. That’s message discipline. Not because your audience is dim, but because they’re distracted. Ministers are distracted. Staff are distracted. Even you are probably distracted. Message discipline isn’t about dumbing things down. It’s about making...
Government relations has always been a human business. In Ottawa, nothing works quite the way people think it does. The org chart is a polite fiction. Power moves through invisible networks of overworked staffers, assistant deputy ministers, and policy advisors whose names you’ll never read in the paper. These are the so-called nobodies who actually run the country. That was...
Admiral Hyman Rickover, known as the father of the American nuclear navy, understood something that is true of most large systems: they rarely reward risk-takers. They tend to value process over outcomes. They remember mistakes, not initiative. And unless political leaders demand otherwise, the system rarely changes. In the 1950s, Rickover was handed a task no one had ever attempted...
One of the great enduring myths of Government Relations is that the person with the fanciest title makes the decision. Ministers are the final deciders. Deputy ministers execute. Policy Advisors analyze. The machine hums along in a perfect linear fashion. Sure. And the Leafs win the Cup every year. Anyone who has spent more than ten minutes in Ottawa knows...
The McKinley comparisons to Trump are no longer theoretical. They are baked into policy. Tariffs are rising. Protectionist industrial strategies are being rolled out. American trade is now openly transactional, backed by executive muscle and shaped by economic nationalism. This is the new normal for Canada’s closest friend and largest trading partner. This weekend, Canadians mark Victoria Day, a holiday...
“You cannot fight a war on a committee of twenty.” That was the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Lloyd George’s blunt assessment in 1916. Faced with a divided and sluggish Cabinet during the First World War, he created a five-member War Cabinet to bypass bottlenecks and focus Britain’s war effort. It worked. And it helped win the war.
That exchange in Top Gun: Maverick wasn’t just a nod to Tom Cruise’s enduring appeal as fighter pilot. It was an admission from the screenwriters that modern air combat has moved on. Modern fifth-generation fighters like the F-35 are not built for close-range dogfights. They are designed to detect threats from long distances, strike first, and vanish before the enemy...
Across the Western world, a generational shift in defence and security policy is underway. The so-called “peace dividend” that followed the Cold War, when countries reduced military spending to invest in domestic priorities, is now history. In the words of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, we now need to prepare for the defence dividend. This week, Starmer committed the United...
As the United States retreats from being a unipolar power, the prevailing global order is at a crossroads. For Canada, it’s time to start thinking about what comes next and what it means for Canadian policy. The Hub is running a new essay series to grapple with these seismic changes and offer a new clear-headed direction for Canadian foreign policy...
Canada buys military equipment ponderously and hesitantly. We’ve got lots of conditions. Rethinking and revisions. If we were shopping retail, the store owner would be tempted to ask us to leave. The reason for this approach is the deep seeded belief that the military only have one chance to get a procurement right. That there is no room for error...
Canada buys military equipment ponderously and hesitantly. We’ve got lots of conditions. Rethinking and revisions. If we were shopping retail, the store owner would be tempted to ask us to leave. The reason for this approach is the deep seeded belief that the military only have one chance to get a procurement right. That there is no room for error...
Just days before the assassination of President McKinley, Vice President Teddy Roosevelt stood before an eager crowd at the Minnesota State Fair. It was here that Roosevelt shared a vision of American foreign policy that would shape his country’s approach to international relations for more than a century. “Right here let me make as vigorous a plea as I know...
It’s 2025, three years into the Ukraine conflict. and Russia, emboldened by its military achievements, perhaps emboldened by a politically distracted NATO Alliance, targets Latvia, where Canadian troops are deployed. Concurrently, a Russian submarine in the Arctic launches attacks on critical North American infrastructure, effectively hindering our response capabilities. Swiftly, Russia achieves its objectives in Latvia. This scenario is not...