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 John Ivison.
For many years, Elbridge Colby has been one of the loudest voices in Washington calling for America’s NATO allies to pay their “fair share” on defence, in order to allow the United States to pivot toward the growing challenge of China.
One observer said on CUSMA, Canada has to propose something that allows Trump to take the credit ‘without doing something that’s bad’
Real life does not follow the binary framework of the movies, where a Bond-like hero vanquishes a grandiose, arrogant, greedy villain
The Prime Minister's grand bargain is just intentions for now. But it's harder for Alberta’s separatists to say he's trying to hobble their industry.
Just over two years ago, the Liberal government released its defence policy review, Our North, Strong and Free, which purported to focus on Arctic sovereignty by defending Canada’s coastline from maritime and airborne threats.
In the 2015 British election, the Labour party campaign team underlined their commitment to keeping their promises by literally carving them in stone. Article content When the leader, the hapless Ed Miliband, showed up to unveil the eight-foot-tall limestone slab, he turned to his spin doctor and said: “Bob, doesn’t it look a bit like a gravestone?”
Nobody could accuse Mark Carney of lacking intellectual suppleness. A week after enthusiastically endorsing the federal government’s involvement in moves to buy and convert up to 2,500 Vancouver condos that developers can’t unload, on Thursday the prime minister downplayed Ottawa’s role in the scheme. Article content At a press conference to mark the end of the parliamentary session, Carney said...
In economics, the concept of “moral hazard” describes a situation where an individual or institution is more likely to take reckless risks because they do not bear the negative consequences of those risks. It is an idea with which Prime Minister Mark Carney is very familiar, having been a vocal critic of the claim that banks were “too big to...
British prime ministers have for the past 65 years had their public image satirized in Private Eye magazine, an often-unflattering pastiche that generally finds its way into the mainstream culture. From the outset of his time in No. 10 Downing Street, Keir Starmer — who on Monday announced plans to resign — was portrayed as a dull, indecisive, overly cautious...
The Cannabis Council of Canada has announced it is suspending its advocacy operation, apparently because its member companies have given up hope that the federal government is prepared to listen to them. In a letter to Finance Minister François Philippe Champagne that foreshadowed this week's announcement, outgoing council president Paul McCarthy said the country's licensed cannabis producers have lost confidence...
The lesson is the welfare-vs-warfare debate is an irrelevancy and western societies need to be more resilient in an age of rising threats
Pete Hoekstra is not quite in the super league of undiplomatic diplomats. Before he was British foreign minister, Boris Johnson once offended the entire nation of Papua New Guinea by linking it to cannibalism. But the current U.S. ambassador can claim the rare accomplishment of uniting Canadians coast to coast in their animosity toward him.
The daily question period in the House of Commons generally subtracts from the sum of human knowledge, and Tuesday’s episode was an absolute belter in terms of confusing anyone watching. It kicked off with Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre calling the “phantom” high-speed railway between Quebec City and Toronto “a boondoggle.” This from the Conservative party that has called on the...
When Avi Lewis was elected leader of the New Democratic Party just over two months ago, he issued a boast that was almost Trumpian in its braggadocio. "Canada, mark your calendar. The NDP comeback starts now," he said. But it turns out, he was right. A Liaison Strategies poll released on Monday had NDP support at 15 per cent, with...
Jim Dinning tells the Post’s John Ivison why he is sympathetic to Premier Danielle Smith’s push to give separatists the chance to express their strongly held sentiments in a referendum
In the course of researching my biography on Irwin Cotler, I spoke with his old McGill debating partner, Moses Znaimer, the CityTV and MuchMusic founder. In typically unfiltered Znaimer fashion he wondered aloud what the former Liberal party justice minister thought about his old party, “which betrayed the Jewish community, in favour of the huge Muslim influx, of which they...
The first promise made by the federal Liberals in their last election platform — literally — was to unite the country by building one economy, so that Canadians can work wherever they want and goods can move freely from coast to coast. “Unleashing free trade” would “give ourselves much more than any foreign government, including the U.S., can ever take...
As the Western premiers pulled on Team Canada soccer jerseys at the close of their meeting in Kananaskis on Tuesday, some kind of barbed comment was inevitable. Wab Kinew obliged. “I just want to tell Premier (Danielle) Smith, that she looks great in a Team Canada jersey,” the Manitoba premier said, pointedly. As host of the conference, Smith may have...
If our troops are fighting in Latvia, or if Ottawa fails to renew CUSMA, a more North American policy could gain favour with voters
Mark Carney was asked Monday about his role in the forthcoming Alberta referendum campaign and the response was reassuring. The prime minister wasn’t exactly Henry V at Agincourt on St. Crispin’s Day, rallying his outnumbered troops in a call to arms. But he is a veteran of these campaigns from his time in the United Kingdom during the Brexit and...
An extraordinary exchange with potentially dramatic consequences for Canada took place at the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday. Vasily Nebenzya, Russia’s potato-faced permanent representative at the UN, told the council that his country’s intelligence agency believes Latvia is deploying Ukrainian drones on its territory, with the intention of attacking Moscow. “Membership of NATO will not protect you from just...
The moment when Canada moved from Britain’s orbit into America’s can be dated precisely to Aug. 17, 1940. That was the day when Canadian prime minister William Mackenzie King and U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Ogdensburg Agreement that defined the principle of the joint defence of North America
Building at speeds not seen in generations, as per Mark Carney’s oft-repeated election pledge, has been less hypersonic than the prime minister might have wished. As the new parliamentary budget officer pointed out last week in an analysis of the spring fiscal update, only two of 15 projects being overseen by Carney’s Major Projects Office are actually under construction, and...
Pierre Poilievre’s speech to the conservative Canada Strong and Free Network conference in Ottawa on Thursday was a perfectly acceptable Opposition leader’s address. Modestly delivered and modestly received, it had much to be modest about. The problem was, it sounded like a reheated version of one of his speeches from last year’s election, a campaign in which he was rejected...
It must have been tempting for Prime Minister Mark Carney to appoint an absolute blockhead as the new parliamentary budget officer. Instead, in Annette Ryan, he has installed a 30-year public service veteran with Finance Department experience who has probably seen it all when it comes to juggling the numbers and concealing errors.
Like hungry wolves, opposition MPs look to isolate and target the weakest, the most awkward or the most bumbling in the ministerial herd. The Conservatives are currently launching coordinated attacks on Lena Diab, the immigration minister. In an unsentimental social media post, the party’s immigration critic, Michelle Rempel Garner, called for the minister to be fired , after her department...
A pessimist could construe Donald Trump’s warning about American troop reductions in Germany as a less brazen modern equivalent to the non-aggression Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939. The U.S. president is involved in a spat with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz over his conduct in the war with Iran and has said the Pentagon is...
It is a time-honoured parliamentary tradition for finance ministers to congratulate themselves on making more progress than can possibly be justified by the facts. François-Philippe Champagne was no exception, as he presented his government’s spring fiscal update in the House of Commons on Tuesday. He said his government is spending less, so that it can invest more, and added that...
Nothing is likely to shore up Conservative esprit de corps like the sight of Patty Hajdu rising in the House of Commons and accusing the Official Opposition of being “against Canada.”
Sovereign wealth funds are typically established by countries to manage their surplus wealth. Canada has just established the Canada Strong Fund — this country’s first national sovereign wealth fund — despite being deeply in the red. In short, there is no surplus wealth to manage.
Jim Balsillie said Canada was ‘hijacked’ last time around and is likely to be further disadvantaged in the pending negotiations
Former prime minister Brian Mulroney once levelled the bizarre charge that the first thing then NDP leader Ed Broadbent would do if elected to replace him would be to nationalize high-end menswear retailer Harry Rosen. It was a personal shot at Broadbent, who was renowned for his ill-fitting brown tweed jackets, but also a reminder to voters that elements within...
Was the timing of Mark Carney’s feel-good “fireside chat” video released Sunday mere coincidence, landing as it did the day before concerning inflation numbers? Or was it a deliberate calculation to point out that Canadian fur traders were all over the northern plains before the Americans had left St. Louis, a day ahead of confirmation that consumers are now paying...
The global expansion of the illiberal right has been so seemingly inexorable that the victory of a democratic centre-right leader in Hungary, after 16 years of “electoral autocracy,” still seems implausible.
The news that Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu is crossing the floor to join the Liberal caucus, effectively guaranteeing Prime Minister Mark Carney a parliamentary majority, has not been hailed universally by her constituents. “She thinks she knows better than her voters?” said one resident of Sarnia–Lambton–Bkejwanong on social media. “What is the flipping point? You wonder why people get radicalized...
Jamieson Greer stands like Mount Olympus above the intellectual molehills of his cabinet-level colleagues, to such an extent that one worries for his welfare in the Trump administration. The U.S. Trade Representative spoke at the Hudson Institute think tank on Tuesday, and such was his coherence it was almost possible to set aside that his boss had just threatened to...
Canada’s finance minister was in Beijing late last week looking to deepen financial sector ties with China. Francois-Philippe Champagne said he was building on the strategic partnership deal signed between Prime Minister Mark Carney and Chinese President Xi Jinping “with eyes wide open.”
Just as turkeys don’t vote for Christmas, it would be unreasonable to expect Canada’s chicken farmers to elect for more open trade with the world’s major poultry exporter. The chicken sector is, after all, one of this country’s supply-managed industries. It’s protected from most foreign competition, ostensibly in the name of domestic food security but also, whisper it, to ensure...
Manitoba has just become the first jurisdiction in Canada to introduce legislation that would make it an unfair practice for suppliers to charge higher prices based on algorithmic pricing. Bill 49 is aimed at preventing retailers from using personal data, such as purchasing history, to set higher individualized prices. Vass Bednar, managing director of the Canadian Shield Institute, which promotes...
President Donald Trump’s late-night musing about Venezuela potentially becoming the 51st state was likely well received in the Prime Minister’s Office. It suggests that Mark Carney’s speech in Davos — widely viewed as standing up to the bully president — has persuaded Trump to move on and find an easier target than Canada or Greenland. That may be temporary, of...
Trouble from the progressive wing of the Liberal party as dozens of Liberal MPs have just broken with the government over arms sales
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s imminent majority government is a good thing for the country, according to a 43 per cent plurality of Canadians in a new Angus Reid Institute poll who prefer increased stability (versus 39 per cent who said it flouts the 2025 election result.) The decision by the NDP MP for Nunavut, Lori Idlout, to cross the floor...
It is progress that the Prime Minister’s Office is now letting Canadians know when Mark Carney speaks with President Donald Trump, but it would be much better if the read-out that followed didn’t subtract from the sum of human knowledge.
Back at the end of November when Prime Minister Mark Carney and Premier Danielle Smith signed their memorandum of understanding (MOU), it was presented as the best of all possible worlds: Canada would get a new oil pipeline and reduced carbon emissions.
In his Davos speech in January, Prime Minister Mark Carney said his government’s aim in foreign affairs is to be “principled and pragmatic.” He defined “principled” as being committed to the prohibition of the use of force, except when consistent with the United Nations Charter; and “pragmatism” as taking the world as it is, not as Canada wishes it to...
If the only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it, Prime Minister Mark Carney might consider visiting the Governor General in the coming weeks and asking her to dissolve Parliament. The latest polls are starting to show a seductive spread in his favour — both in the horse race, and as far as whom Canadians consider...
The 6-3 majority U.S. Supreme Court decision on the unlawful nature of President Donald Trump’s emergency act tariffs suggests democracy is still alive in the Great Republic. Friday’s decision reaffirmed the basic constitutional principle about the separation of powers between Congress and the president, clarifying that Trump has no authority on his own to impose tariffs using the International Emergency...
The sight of David McGuinty as a silent presence at the prime minister’s announcement Tuesday of a new defence industrial strategy was a reminder that, while that government purports to be a team, it is really a confederation of warring tribes. The defence minister is ostensibly the lead author of the plan, but it seems to have been hijacked by...
As part of his trip to Beijing last month, Prime Minister Mark Carney met with Zhao Leji, the third-ranking member of the 20th Chinese Communist Party Politburo and chair of the standing committee of the National People’s Congress. The readout that emerged from the meeting said they talked about the importance of ongoing parliamentary exchanges and “opportunities for enhanced understanding...
School shootings are the most senseless, shattering event that can befall a community. A feeling of ultimate loss grips the entire nation. Political leaders often have nothing more to offer than their condolences, but people want more than that. They are looking for reassurance, empathy and a sense that someone will do something about it.
The Canadian government’s response to the 20-year sentence imposed on Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai is the first test of the government’s new “pragmatic engagement” with China. The early signs are that Ottawa is broadly in favour of the pursuit of justice, as long as it doesn’t hamper its trade policy.
The unveiling of Stephen Harper’s official parliamentary portrait has provided a moment of unexpected catharsis in Canadian politics. Speaking at an event hosted by the Royal Canadian Geographic Society this week, the former prime minister said there is a tendency in Canada to focus on past mistakes, at the expense of pride in the country’s achievements. The same might be...
The main criticism of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s convention speech on Friday was that in 40 minutes or so, he didn’t mention the words “Donald Trump” — or how he would respond to the president’s intimidation.
In his speech at his party’s convention in Calgary on Friday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre expressed his wariness about the “strategic partnership” the Carney government has struck with China. Cognizant that many western Conservatives welcomed Beijing’s tariff relief on canola provided by an agreement to allow 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles into Canada, he did not expand on his misgivings.
In the spring of 2001, a group of MPs resigned from the official Opposition Canadian Alliance caucus, in protest at the faltering leadership of Stockwell Day, to form the so-called “Rebel Alliance.” By fall, seven MPs established the Democratic Representative Caucus (DRC), led by their parliamentary leader, Chuck Strahl.
The petulance displayed by the U.S. ambassador to Canada is exactly what you might expect from Pete Hoekstra if he had just been informed that Canada intends to spend half the money earmarked for new F-35 fighter jets on the rival Swedish Gripen. Hoekstra apparently skipped the class on diplomacy being about saying the nastiest thing in the nicest way...
There is a reason why the United States and Canada consider China a “non-market economy.” Beijing, rather than market forces, determines production and prices. Since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2000, it has been able to access Western markets, without offering reciprocal access. A very good case study is currently before the Canadian finance minister, François-Philippe Champagne.
One of the most sage voices on social media in these nebulous days is that of Polish academic Slawomir Debski. To those lamenting that NATO is dead as a result of Donald Trump’s intrigues over Greenland, and the imposition of tariffs on allies that deployed troops to Greenland, he pointed out that the alliance has survived worse. He cited the...
Steve Bannon is in the ratings business these days, so he can say outrageous things with impunity. On his influential War Room podcast last week, he talked about Prime Minister Mark Carney’s “kowtowing” visit to China and said: “Let me be blunt, you are playing with fire. You will rue the day you did that. President (Donald) Trump is not...
What do you do about a superpower you don’t trust but can’t afford to ignore? Prime Minister Mark Carney will hope he can find the answer to that puzzle during his visit to Beijing this week. Canada is caught in the crossfire between a Trump administration that has veered sharply towards protectionism and a Chinese regime whose actions are often...