Joe Oliver

Joe Oliver

Rhetoric and MOUs don't make us an energy superpower

Though superficially promising, last month’s “memorandum of understanding” between Alberta and Ottawa is in fact restrictive and self-contradictory, leaving the over-arching economic and strategic question of Canada’s future energy development mired in uncertainty. Questionable support for pipelines from the prime minister and his energy minister, obstructive laws and regulations, and at least implied vetoes for the provinces and Indigenous communities...

Joe Oliver

Mark Carney’s popularity faces gathering storm clouds

As summer winds down, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s approval rating is running around 60 per cent, still in honeymoon territory. If an election were held today, Canada338 estimates his Liberals would win a comfortable majority of 191 seats — 22 more than they won in April’s federal election. But it is hard to see how public confidence in him and...

Joe Oliver

Do what’s right for Canada, even if Trump demands it

Prime Minister Mark Carney feebly capitulated to President Donald Trump on Sunday night by rescinding Monday’s scheduled imposition of a retroactive digital services tax (DST) just two days after Trump suspended trade talks with Canada over the DST and promised to hit us with more tariffs in response. This humiliating public surrender would not have happened if the government had...

Joe Oliver

Team Carney is already in need of a reset

What a Trudeauesque beginning to the Liberals’ fourth consecutive term — theatre, false starts, evasion and unaccountability, but absent the sunny ways! The technocrat’s prologue risks rivalling the drama teacher’s denouement.

Joe Oliver

Events may force Mark Carney into more sensible policies

This election produced a startling result. After a decade of failure by a government that historians will likely give low marks to on virtually every relevant measure, the electorate decided it deserved a fourth term. There were two main reasons, both dubious: first, its terminally unpopular leader and prime minister was replaced by a charisma-free technocrat, who promised to somehow...

Joe Oliver

Trudeau redux or Poilievre for real change?

Canada cannot afford four more years of Trudeau-style progressivism that pursues net zero and produces zero growth

Joe Oliver

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me four times? Seriously?

In Mark Carney’s first month as Liberal leader and prime minister, a picture has emerged of who he is: a technocratic version of Justin Trudeau, without the charisma, great hair or ability to communicate comfortably in French, but with many of his banished predecessor’s other personality characteristics and policy propensities.

Joe Oliver

The authors of Canada's 'lost decade' would like another try

All elections are consequential. But the one just called will be more consequential than most. At a time of self-inflicted economic decline and social weakness, we find ourselves in a trade war with the Americans, who until now have bought 80 per cent of our exports.

Joe Oliver

Carney is running hard against Trump and Trudeau

No good deed goes unpunished, but the Liberals are hoping bad deeds will be forgotten. Thus their leadership candidates are running against their own party’s record. For that to work, they’ll have to convince Canadians not to believe their lying eyes.

Joe Oliver

Where do we go from here in the Trump tariff drama?

Let's have an election then clear away trade irritants, the border, defence, supply management, that are own-goals

Joe Oliver

Contrary to what Trump thinks, America needs us

In his inaugural address, U.S. President Donald Trump declared that he would overhaul the American trade system and establish an External Revenue Service to collect “massive” tariffs, duties and other revenue. Later that day, he said he was considering imposing tariffs on Canada and Mexico on Feb. 1. Canada is targeted for political, economic and ideological reasons, some defensible, others...

Joe Oliver

Time to start benefiting from our vast natural wealth again

When Pierre Poilievre becomes prime minister, as still seems all but certain even after Justin Trudeau’s exit, he will face acute economic problems: out-of-control spending, massive deficits, ballooning debt and crushing interest obligations, as well as insipid productivity and lagging growth in real GDP per capita. He will need — we will need — faster income growth but without raising...

Joe Oliver

Where do Trudeau and the Liberals go from here?

Escape from Justin Trudeau's record will be hard. Beyond that the Liberals need to move to the centre, where most Canadians are

Joe Oliver

Justin Trudeau should resign or call an early election

For someone used to getting his own way for most of his life, public hostility, repeated failure and relentless bad news must be terribly trying for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. His government began in 2015 with high hopes and widespread good wishes. Now that it is all coming crashing down, he refuses to accept blame and either change course or...

Joe Oliver

Trudeau playing with fire supporting false charges of deeply flawed ICC

In an egregious instance of malign virtue signalling, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated that because of “who we are as Canadians” he would “abide by” a blatantly political decision of the discredited International Criminal Court (ICC) to enforce arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, as well Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif, who...

Joe Oliver

The walls are closing in on Justin Trudeau

Among the myriad problems Justin Trudeau is confronting, two have an immediacy that must be especially troubling. One is political, the other economic.

Joe Oliver

Bad policies, not poor messaging, will sink the Liberals

Last week, columnist Kimberley Strassel wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the Democratic Party’s central problem is, not Joe Biden’s deteriorating cognition, but its policies. The very same day, our own Prime Minister’s Office criticized Deputy PM and Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland for poor economic messaging, a stunning public rebuke of the second most important person in the...

Joe Oliver

The shameful disinformation campaign behind the Biden debacle

President Joe Biden’s debate debacle laid bare a disgraceful willingness to deliberately mislead the public about a subject of geopolitical significance — the failing mental capacity of the world’s most powerful person. Perpetrators of this reckless disinformation campaign include the Biden family, White House staff, Democratic members of Congress, senior Democratic Party spokespeople and the progressive mainstream media.

Joe Oliver

A principled Canada would protect its Jews

Antisemitism has imposed a pervasive and pernicious double standard on the Jewish people for thousands of years, rampant during periods of extreme persecution but less overt during in periods of enlightenment, but always lurking in the swamp of human malevolence. Since 1948, that double standard extended to Israel with varying intensity. After the October 7 massacre by Hamas, it exploded...

Joe Oliver

Liberals underestimate Pierre Poilievre at their peril

In a much-remarked-on recent column — “The case for Trump — by someone who wants him to lose” — Bret Stephens of The New York Times gave U.S. Democrats a wake-up call: “You can’t defeat an opponent if you refuse to understand what makes him formidable.” Let me provide the same wake-up call to Canadian Liberals about Pierre Poilievre —...

Joe Oliver

2024 could be a pivotal year, politically, economically and culturally

The year just beginning could be a watershed, with turning points in politics, economics and culture, provided common sense and moral clarity prevail both here and abroad.

Joe Oliver

Once unthinkable, discrimination against Jews now a given on campus

The appalling Congressional testimony from the presidents of three elite U.S. universities offered an alarming revelation of institutional rot in higher education. The putrefaction is far ranging, extending to an eruption of antisemitism on campus and beyond and the weakening of core societal values, which are sapping the moral strength of western democracies.