Konrad Yakabuski

Konrad Yakabuski

Liberals nervously await the effects of Steven Guilbeault’s resignation on the party’s Quebec fortunes

The Montreal riding of Laurier–Sainte-Marie is ground zero for Quebec’s media elites and the beating heart of the province’s cultural industries. Not surprisingly, it skews progressive and has reliably sent left-leaning MPs to Ottawa for more than three decades. Last week’s resignation of local MP Steven Guilbeault from Prime Minister Mark Carney’s cabinet generated a minor earthquake in Laurier—Sainte-Marie whose...

Konrad Yakabuski

As the NDP faces financial crisis, radical flamethrowers play with matches

Former New Democratic Party MP Charlie Angus was being charitable when he called the party’s recent federal election campaign “an unmitigated disaster.” Under Jagmeet Singh, the most unpopular of the three main national-party leaders, the NDP lost three-quarters of its seats and failed to secure official party status in the House of Commons. Its share of the popular vote fell...

Konrad Yakabuski

Can Pierre Poilievre outrun the ‘yesterday’s man’ label?

Konrad Yakabuski

Whether it’s Carney or Poilievre, the next PM must clean house in the federal public service

The costed Conservative election platform released this week largely eschews the hyperpolarizing language that had defined Pierre Poilievre until recently. The word “broken” shows up seven times in the 30-page document, but nowhere does the Tory platform apply that descriptor to Canada as a whole, as Mr. Poilievre had been endlessly doing until the federal election campaign began. Rather, the...

Konrad Yakabuski

Pierre Poilievre spurned Brian Mulroney’s advice, and is paying the price

Konrad Yakabuski

Donald Trump has deprived Quebec sovereigntists of their strongest argument

Quebec sovereigntists have always been among the strongest supporters of continental free trade. Under Jacques Parizeau, the Parti Québécois backed the original 1989 Canada-U.S. free-trade agreement as an insurance policy against economic blackmail by the rest of Canada. Ever since, sovereigntists have favoured north-south over east-west trade links. Thanks to free trade with the United States, Mr. Parizeau wrote in...

Konrad Yakabuski

Mark Carney’s muddled fiscal messaging needs some work

Konrad Yakabuski

Carney and Freeland are perfect foils for Poilievre’s populism

There is probably no one in Canada today more qualified for the job of prime minister than Mark Carney. At 59, his life up to now has been one of awe-inspiring achievement fuelled by the pursuit of excellence in his field of specialization, central banking. His stellar reputation and real-world experience in the roller coaster global financial sector precede him...

Konrad Yakabuski

Burying the corpse: Who needs the CBC any more?

As CBC/Radio-Canada prepares to welcome a new president in January, the fate of the embattled public broadcaster has never been more in doubt, writes Konrad Yakabuski

Konrad Yakabuski

Trump’s spectacular comeback was fuelled by America’s angst

Barely two years ago, Donald Trump looked like a spent force. After leading the Republican Party to a midterm-election shellacking in 2018, losing the presidency to Joe Biden in 2020 and watching a slew of his personally endorsed candidates go down to defeat in 2022, Mr. Trump’s 2016 victory began looking like it might have been a fluke of history.

Konrad Yakabuski

Mark Carney finally enters Liberal politics – but is he too late?

Timing is everything in politics, and it has never seemed to be Mark Carney’s friend. In 2012, as the former Bank of Canada governor won international plaudits in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the then-46-year-old was already being touted as the next leader of the federal Liberal Party – the person who would return the flailing Grits to glory.

Konrad Yakabuski

The mischievousness in Trudeau’s appointment of Charles Adler to the Senate

Jaws dropped in Ottawa when then-Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper named long-time press-gallery gadfly Mike Duffy to the Senate in 2008. In the twilight of his journalistic career, the colourful Mr. Duffy was known for vehiculating conservative talking points. He was a “big name” in small-town Canada and popular among Conservative MPs.

Konrad Yakabuski

An EV trade war with China will cost Canadian consumers heavily

Back when she was foreign affairs minister, Chrystia Freeland rarely missed an opportunity to champion the postwar “rules-based international order” that had come under assault by then-U.S. president Donald Trump. In 2018, when Mr. Trump slapped tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum imports as part of a broad protectionist thrust directed mostly at China, Ms. Freeland used a speech in...

Konrad Yakabuski

Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poilievre are both playing a dangerous game

The mainstream U.S. media are generally slow on the uptake when it comes to Canada. So, it took them a while to catch on that it is no longer 2015 in the Great White North and that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is not just unpopular at home but facing political oblivion. This unexpected (by them) state of affairs has got...

Konrad Yakabuski

The Federal Court’s decision on Trudeau’s misuse of the Emergencies Act sets the record straight

It is a safe bet that most Canadians were not champing at the bit to see Prime Minister Justin Trudeau government’s use of the Emergencies Act in 2022 relitigated in the courts after a public inquiry had already concluded that the move met the threshold – albeit barely – that was required under the law.

Konrad Yakabuski

Is Trudeau’s latest vacation scandal a sign he has already checked out?

Colourful Quebec Conservative MP Jacques Gourde came up with a delicious pun to describe the varying explanations given by the Prime Minister’s Office about Justin Trudeau’s Christmas vacation at a friend’s luxury Jamaican villa. During a Wednesday House of Commons ethics committee hearing looking into Mr. Trudeau’s 10-day stay at the exclusive Prospect Estate resort, located on the site of...

Konrad Yakabuski

The next battle for Quebec could be between the Bloc and the Tories

The 4.5 million viewers who tuned into Radio-Canada’s Bye Bye sketch-comedy retrospective on New Year’s Eve and the following day were treated to a gut-splitting skit that depicted federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre seeking an optician’s advice on new glasses. The sketch, which parodied an ad for the New Look eyewear chain that ran endlessly on Quebec television in the...

Konrad Yakabuski

The Liberals are running out of time to Poilievre-proof the CBC

On New Year’s Eve, Canada’s public broadcaster offered stay-at-home television viewers a dog’s breakfast that screamed desperation. The CBC blamed “financial pressures” for its move to cancel its traditional live musical countdown to the new year. Instead, it broadcast a B-rated foreign remake of Death on the Nile, The National and a taped Just for Laughs special, as if Dec...