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.
It is a rare thing to have one’s mind changed by a politician. In the words of the late prime minister Pierre Trudeau, MPs are “nobodies…like pawns in a chess game.” And yet, as I prepared to write a column questioning the Conservative opposition to C-9, the legislation designed to combat hate crimes and intimidation, I reconsidered my position after...
A politician’s worst nightmare is to be thought of as yesterday’s breakfast by voters. When prime minister, Mark Carney, signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on energy development with the premier of Alberta two weeks ago, federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre was made to look as relevant to the big issue of the day as the leader of the NDP...
Whether the government’s argument will hold water, only a Federal Court judge, who stands to gain $28,000 by saying it doesn’t, can know
The panel’s discussion focused on the ability of Mark Carney’s government to deliver on its agenda. Article content Lang, a former chief of staff to two Liberal defence ministers and now acting director at the School of Policy Studies at Queen’s University, pointed out that Carney faces the frustrations of attempting to move at speeds the bureaucracy was not designed...
Prime Minister Mark Carney has displayed a remarkable willingness to dismantle the legacy of his predecessor across the public policy board. In the coming months, he may be tempted to take another look at one of the more indefensible decisions made by former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s government: the expansion of its medical assistance in dying legislation.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith credited former prime minister Justin Trudeau for creating the independence movement in her province, thanks to a litany of nine “bad laws” — and his successor, Mark Carney, for taking the wind out of separatism with “good policy that genuinely addresses the concerns of Albertans.”
The Carney government cannot follow its conscience on Sudan because that would take it in a different direction from its trade policy
Point number four of President Donald Trump’s plan to bring peace to Ukraine screams the quiet part about the new world order at top volume: “a dialogue will be held between Russia and NATO, mediated by the United States, to resolve all security issues.”
After two years of benign neglect, Ottawa seems to have woken up to the threat to its plan to double non-U.S. exports from an obscure dispute at the Port of Prince Rupert in British Columbia. There are now seven separate lawsuits, and threats of further escalation, centred on claims by the Lax Kw’alaams and Metlakatla First Nations (collectively the Coast...
The Carney government’s self-proclaimed strategy of dealing with Donald Trump has been to hope the obvious contradictions in the U.S. president’s tariff policy would eventually compel him to strike an acceptable trade deal. “We are confident domestic pressures will create an opportunity to come to an agreement in the interests of both economies that puts us in a better position...
When Mark Carney launched the Major Projects Office in late August, he said it was designed to streamline regulatory approvals and help structure financing for proposals deemed to be in the national interest. Article content The impression left was that the government would move “at speeds not seen in a generation” to secure community consent and unlock private-sector investments for...
Separate from those comments, the federal Conservative leader lauded his party for behaving like a government-in-waiting. “We’ve had very little dissent over the past year. When was the last time you saw an internal fight? This isn’t the Jerry Springer show; we’re not throwing chairs at each other,” he said. This was obviously long before Conservative House leader Andrew Scheer...
When you have been calling for something for years and it finally turns up, it’s churlish to nitpick. So, I won’t. Article content The 2025 federal budget is clearly not a one-and-done exercise. It will take more than a single document to compensate for a decade of mismanagement — and it will be judged years from now on its results...
It’s not often that you bump into a Canadian while walking the dog in my neck of the woods in Costa Rica. But when a lady in a Toronto Blue Jays ballcap meets a man sporting an Elbows Up hat (now as passé as the Yellow Pages), a dialogue on sport and politics is bound to ensue.
The idea that the Liberals might take a hatchet to their treasured social programs seems counterintuitive, but that's where the savings are
The Conservative leader's tone and temperament aren't shifting with the post-Trump times
Prime Minister Mark Carney made a revealing comment during his recent appearance at the BMO-Eurasia business summit in Toronto when the idea was raised of Canada and the U.S. coming together to compete with China. Article content “I wouldn’t assume that that’s always the organizing principle,” he said of Canada-U.S. collaboration. “If it were, there would be more immediate progress...
The assessment that he was the best leader to deal with Trump may be borne out — just not in the ‘elbows up’ way we were led to believe
“Jam tomorrow” is a flimsy pledge to make to impatient, jaundiced voters. But that is the crux of the government’s position on Canada-U.S. trade negotiations. The opposition parties have the field to themselves at the moment. Donald Trump continues to promise more new tariffs on Canadian goods — the latest being a 25 per cent levy on cabinets and furniture...
On this national Truth and Reconciliation Day, the federal government is facing the prospect of a meltdown in its relations with two B.C. First Nations that could bring the development of the Prince Rupert Trade Corridor to a grinding halt.
Faced with a malfunctioning teleprompter during his address to the United Nations General Assembly, Donald Trump decided to extemporize. Babbling like an accident victim on his way to hospital, the president ventured the opinion that he has been “right about everything,” and that he has created the “hottest” country anywhere in the world, with the strongest economy, strongest borders, strongest...
Chrystia Freeland’s exit from cabinet, while not expected, is no great surprise. Article content The job of transport minister is unglamorous, dominated by regulation of railway rolling stock and of passenger bills of rights. The minister’s path is potholed with potentially career-limiting port, railway or airline strikes.
Prime Minister Mark Carney has been trying to frame his October budget without inducing panic. In a rare slip earlier this month, he said that it would be “an austerity and investment” budget.
By all accounts, growing canola requires careful management: the small, shallow-planted seeds are sensitive to moisture, extreme temperatures and competition from weeds. But skillfully managing the elements turns out to be nothing compared to the perfect diplomatic balance that is required to get the product to customers. The U.S. is the biggest market for Canadian canola; China is the second...
From a political perspective, it’s not an obvious win for Poilievre, even if the public is sympathetic to the intent
His political authority rests on the perception of competence and, if the economy slows further, people will start doubting he has it
Recognition of a Palestinian state would vindicate Hamas’s strategy that jihad, violence and blood sacrifice is how you get what you want
My suggestion in a column last week after Japan struck a trade deal with the United States — that it might be better if Canada didn’t settle with President Trump just yet — was ridiculed in certain quarters.
Mark Carney told the premiers in Huntsville, Ont., on Tuesday that the federal government’s new major projects office will be open by Labour Day, representing a shift in attitude towards building big things, the prime minister said, “from ‘why?’ to ‘how?’” The statement expressed a confidence that, as with deceased baseball players in the movie Field of Dreams, “if you...
The prime minister risks becoming the man who fell to earth if the spending reductions are miscalculated
The auditor general’s report is a reminder that they're part of the solution to air security, but Canada also needs a more practical option
Justin Trudeau went to Washington for last year’s NATO summit and unveiled what he called a “credible, verifiable path” to spending two per cent of Canada’s GDP on defence … by 2032. Article content The lack of urgency and ambition was reflected in the then prime minister’s belief that two per cent is a “nominal target” that makes for easy...
Wooing Sikh voters while turning a blind eye to Khalistani sympathizers worked well for Poilievre's party during the election. Conservative party deputy leader Tim Uppal posted on social media on Wednesday morning, urging Sikhs to remember 1984. “Forty one years ago, a pre-planned attack by the Indian army named Operation Blue Star was executed against one of the Sikh’s holiest...
The Main Estimates suggest that the prime minister's message of restraint has fallen on deaf ears in Ottawa
Information manipulation poses the single biggest threat to Canadian democracy, concluded commissioner Marie Josée Hogue, in her final report on foreign interference in federal elections, earlier this year.
There have been concerns about the “presidentialization” of the Canadian prime ministership for years — worries that have been exacerbated by Mark Carney’s tendency to sign Trump-style legislative orders to grant tax cuts.
As the new prime minister reflects with pride on his unsullied cabinet, he should remember the words of P.G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster: “It’s always when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with a bit of lead piping.”
A failure to accommodate shifting circumstances is prompting questions inside the party about whether a 45-year-old man can truly change
The prime minister exited the Oval Office, and the most intense experience of his brief political career, with his dignity intact
They could grind down opponents with enough time. But the Liberals moved too quickly to dump Trudeau and install Carney for the plan to work
The Liberals will be disappointed that they fell short of a majority. But everything is relative. Three months ago, they were nearly dead.
'It would be an extremely rash politician who links events in Vancouver to federal government policy'
With two days to go until polling day, Mark Carney was careful not to break into a victory lap. At a campaign event at Seneca College in this commuter community 40 km north of Toronto, Carney was asked to grade his own campaign performance.
Even the latest mini-scandal that broke on Thursday works in his favour, given it concerns a subject he is desperate to talk about. Article content Radio-Canada reported that in Carney’s call with Donald Trump on March 28, the president brought up the issue of Canada becoming the 51st state of the United States. At the time, Carney said Trump had...
Any hopes they had of profiting from the prodigal nature of the Liberal platform disappeared when they released their own costing document
There has been a weightlessness to the Liberal campaign in the past two days, as if their internal polling shows the election is in the bag
Switch voters will likely find the prospect of adding a quarter-trillion dollars to the national debt a haunting prospect
There are probably few areas of Canada where Liberal fortunes have turned as dramatically as they have in Niagara Falls
The impact on the broader election race was a nothingburger: there simply were no flashpoints that would justify anyone shifting their vote
Singh thinks the polls have stabilized enough to make it safe for progressives worried about a Conservative win to 'come home' to the NDP
I’m reading my six-year-old son Lewis Carroll’s classic Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, with all its delightful nonsense talk about shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings.
The broad-based 'Liberation Day' exemption for Canada is good news but the crisis facing our economy remains dire
It takes some gall for an assailant to want gratitude after he stops punching you in the face but anything goes in a general election
Paul Chiang's comments, and Carney's defence of the candidate, are a sign that the Liberal party’s inexplicable attachment to Beijing remains intact
The Conservatives have a month before election day and the benefit of all opposition parties now having Carney squarely in their sights
Instead of a smooth launch to get the campaign rolling, Conservatives found themselves hurtling backwards at pace
It seems unlikely Mark Carney will be able to resist opposing Poilievre's promise to cancel industrial carbon tax mandates