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 Les Whittington.
When it comes to theatre of the absurd in public life, nothing tops pipeline politics. There was Alberta Premier Danielle Smith—who has accused the Liberals of hamstringing Big Oil, crushing her province’s aspirations, and inciting Albertans to break up the country—turning to the feds to build her long-sought new pipeline.
Commenting on the trucker convoys that took place in 2022 in Ottawa and Coutts, Alta., prominent security analyst Wesley Wark said, “I think the history of the Freedom Convoy has really not settled into the Canadian consciousness.” “It may be some time before we really figure out for ourselves what was involved here, what was at stake,” Wark, a senior...
Jean Chrétien’s fondest moment as prime minister was his refusal in 2003 to join the United States-led attack on Iraq. The decision, taken after all-night deliberations, spared Canada from participation in then-U.S. president George W. Bush’s ill-fated mission based on false claims that then-Iraq leader Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
The former PM has devoted much of his post-political career to helping to empower right-wing political parties, but drew the line at threatening Canada’s existence. Stephen Harper came east to celebrate the 20th anniversary of something. While he was at it, the former Conservative prime minister—whether by design or coincidence—took on the task for his party of covering for the...
Mark Carney has apparently wanted to be Canada’s prime minister since he was old enough to seriously entertain such ideas. But you still have to wonder what he must have been thinking about his job as he sat under the global spotlight watching United States President Donald Trump get jiggy with it at the World Cup draw in Washington, D.C...
There’s a lot to remember about Ken Dryden, but I always remember how, in the mid-2000s, he was the most popular person in the public domain in Canada. Wherever he went, people turned out in large numbers to see the renowned Hall of Fame goalie. Then-prime minister Paul Martin, flying around the country on a Liberal election campaign, sometimes took...
Much is being said about Prime Minister Mark Carney’s determination to turn around the massive vessel known as the federal bureaucracy to overcome built-in inertia and achieve faster, more efficient results helped along by digital innovations. Aside from the deeply ingrained risk aversion of senior managers themselves, the biggest challenge may be bringing the federal public service into the modern...
If there was ever a pipeline that was not going to get built, it was the Northern Gateway project to construct an oil conduit near some of the most cherished, pristine forest and marine areas of British Columbia’s north. The possibility of oil spills from the 1,170-kilometre line to carry oilsands bitumen from Alberta to a tanker terminal on the...
At the top of the to-do list for Canada’s prime minister will be arranging to sit down with Donald Trump to discuss the devastating trade war the United States president has launched against this country. While the Liberals’ Mark Carney and the Conservatives’ Pierre Poilievre have vowed to fight the extensive tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, both have also...
When the history of what could be a widening war in Europe is written, it will be interesting to see if it will be recorded how United States Vice-President J.D. Vance led his boss into an explosive, epoch-making verbal clash with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Feb. 28. Engaged in a war for survival against a Russian invasion propelled by...
We’re all taking United States president-elect Donald Trump too literally. Instead of being upset that Canada is being lumped in with Mexico in Trump’s threats of huge import tariffs, we should really be concerned that we are being lumped in with China. The Nov. 25 tweet that most likely spelled at least the temporary end of open Canada-U.S. trade ties—not...
The preferred trade negotiating tactic of Canada’s premiers—via Ontario Premier Doug Ford—of tossing Mexico to the wolves couldn’t be more ironic. NAFTA only came into existence because then-prime minister Brian Mulroney—watching then-American president George H. W. Bush negotiate free trade with Mexico in 1991—decided to join the talks that eventually replaced the existing United States-Canada trade agreement...
Mark Carney has finally entered the political fray, although in a special role that will allow him—at least for now—to go right to the heart of government decision-making without having to bother with all the issues around getting elected. Be that as it may, his arrival on the scene as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s now-official adviser on the economy gave...
The long-awaited shift toward lower interest rates as set by Canada’s central bank appears to be upon us. It is widely believed that the conditions for the easing of borrowing costs and mortgage pain by the Bank of Canada have been provisionally met. Indeed, BoC Governor Tiff Macklem’s efforts to wring inflation out of the economy by pushing up commercial...
I’m guessing no one can tell me off-hand how many programs to support Canadians, and their domestic and global priorities the current Liberal government has brought in during its eight-plus years in power. You can go through the recent budget document page by page and still have no idea. Unless you count them one by one, which would take hours...
You have to ask: how many women have to die before Canadians start taking intimate partner violence seriously? Three women had to die in the Ottawa Valley before government leaders—particularly among Ontario’s blinkered Doug Ford regime—began to seriously consider measures to address the issue and provide some assistance to hard-pressed community-run shelters for women seeking to escape violent partners...
Bank of Canada Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn Rogers set off another round of alarm bells with her March 26 speech on this country’s productivity problem which she said has become an economic emergency endangering Canadians’ very standard of living. In probing the issue, she dwelled on the long-standing lack of business investment in machinery and equipment by Canadian companies. This...
You have to wonder what, toward the end of his life, Brian Mulroney thought about the country he loved so much. Like Pierre Trudeau, Mulroney seems better appreciated after passing away than he was when he resigned from politics. Today, there is a widespread recognition of the lasting importance of United States free trade, the GST, his early environmental awareness...
It seems long COVID can be a political thing, too. Heading into a year that will mark half a decade of the pandemic and its fallout, the federal Liberals are still being battered by the economic and political impact of the once-in-a-century health emergency.
Large-scale military incursions or politically motivated attacks were subject, for the most part, to international condemnation in the decades after the slaughter of the Second World War. But the censure of this kind of organized violence seems to be weakening, most recently of course in the world’s half-hearted reaction to Russia’s bloody, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
At least it’s not as bad as Texas, where local governments are trying to figure out how to use the law to block women from passing through on their roads to obtain an abortion in a neighbouring state. But Canada’s right-wingers are still lining up to import whatever they can from the culture wars that.