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 Max Fawcett.
In a leaders' debate that was supposed to be all about Pierre Poilievre and Mark Carney, Jagmeet Singh ended up stealing the spotlight. While logic would have dictated that Singh set his sights on Carney and win back some of the voters who had fled to the Liberals, he instead took his biggest swipes at Pierre Poilievre — often at...
At least he still has his rallies. While public polling shows a large and durable Liberal lead, and global betting markets putting overwhelming odds on a Mark Carney victory on April 28, Pierre Poilievre can still comfort himself with the fact that thousands of people are willing to line up to hear him talk. In Edmonton, somewhere between 9,000 and...
Pierre Poilievre has been witness to a lot of change over the 21 years he’s served as a member of Parliament. He proudly resisted most of it, whether it’s changes to our social norms and mores or changes to how we see our own country and its past. That helped him win the leadership of his party and build a...
It was supposed to be a cakewalk. Instead, as Pierre Poilievre kicks off the election campaign that was supposed to be a mere formality, his odds of becoming Canada’s next prime minister get longer with each passing day. And now, for some reason, his closest provincial ally just gave Mark Carney’s Liberals a gift-wrapped political sledgehammer to celebrate the launch...
Naheed Nenshi isn’t used to asking for the spotlight. The Alberta NDP leader's unique brand of politics — politics in full sentences — made him an overnight sensation after he won the 2010 Calgary mayoral election, and he’s been able to count on the interest of journalists in Alberta and abroad ever since. Now, after winning the Alberta NDP leadership...
Pierre Poilievre knows he has a Donald Trump problem. After spending the last two-plus years imitating Trump’s approach to politics and winning plaudits from the people in his orbit, his proximity to the U.S. president and his anti-Canada policies has suddenly become an obstacle to his once-inevitable election victory. As it turns out, the reaping isn’t nearly as much fun...
After years of promising to axe the carbon tax, Conservatives watched in obvious horror as Prime Minister Mark Carney did it for them on his first day in office. They could have chosen to take a victory lap here, celebrating the elimination of a policy they’d sunk huge amounts of political time and treasure into attacking, and moved on to...
The legendary 1974 heavyweight fight between an aging Muhammad Ali and the unbeaten (and seemingly unbeatable) world champion George Foreman looked at the time like a dangerously one-sided affair. Bookies had pegged Ali as a 4:1 underdog, and his more ardent fans thought avoiding major injury — and even death — would be the real victory for the former champion...
By now, most politicians understand that the best way to deal with Donald Trump and his reckless pronouncements and policies is to take him seriously rather than literally. That was former adviser Anthony Scaramucci’s advice back in 2016, and it held true throughout Trump’s first term. And yet, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has repeatedly chosen to take him at his...
On Sunday, the sprint to replace Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader will hit the finish line. If Mark Carney wins, as most political observers expect, he should call a federal election on Monday. No waiting around for NDP leader Jagmeet Singh to change his mind again, and no bothering with testing the confidence of the House of Commons. On Monday...
“Elbows up.” That was the message Mike Myers sent to fellow Canadians at the end of last weekend’s Saturday Night Live, and it’s already resonating across the country in the wake of Donald Trump’s delivery of his long-threatened tariffs. It was the perfect hockey-oriented counterpoint to Wayne Gretzky’s repeated displays of cowardice, and a reminder of how Canadians ought to...
Canada, as it turns out, isn’t broken. That was the message coming out of Pierre Poilievre’s big rebrand rally, where he tried to reposition himself as a champion of Canada’s virtues rather than just another critic of its failures. And while Liberal partisans will look skeptically on this attempted political metamorphosis, the biggest doubters might actually be some of his...
Even Danielle Smith should be getting the memo by now. After she and Canada’s other premiers traveled to Washington to make their case against America’s proposed tariffs, only to be publicly humiliated by a Trump administration staffer after their meeting, it should be obvious that her brand of not-so-quiet diplomacy isn’t working. As CBC Washington correspondent Alex Panetta noted on...
“Everything Trump touches dies.” That’s the phrase coined by Rick Wilson, the former Republican strategist turned anti-Trump activist and Lincoln Project co-founder, who documented its many examples in a 2018 book by the same name. Now, it seems, we may have a Canadian case study to add to his list: Pierre Poilievre’s once-insurmountable polling lead.
Donald Trump isn’t joking about annexing Canada. That’s the message that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shared with a group of business leaders at his hastily-convened “Canada-U.S. Economic Summit”, one that sought to address the growing threat posed by America’s president. In a so-called “hot mic” moment, Trudeau was heard saying that “Mr. Trump has it in mind that the easiest...
The Carney bounce is real. After polls by EKOS and Mainstreet showed a surprising surge in Liberal fortunes, the Angus Reid Institute — long viewed as a more Conservative-friendly pollster — reported a similar uptick in its latest soundings. After bottoming out at 16 per cent support in late December with Trudeau still at the helm, they now have the...
The race to replace Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader and Canada’s prime minister won’t officially conclude until March 9. Based on the way some people are reacting, though, it might already be over. After yet another round of high-profile endorsements for Mark Carney — this time from industry minister and Quebec political heavyweight François-Philippe Champagne, Transport Minister Anita Anand and...
As an annoyingly stubborn optimist, I try to find the good in even the worst situations. And so, as new U.S. President Donald Trump threatens Canada’s sovereignty and promises our imminent economic ruin, I’ve been racking my brain for the silver lining in all of the dark clouds forming over our country. I think I’ve found it: he’s going to...
So much for that reprieve. The pro-appeasement Postmedia pundits and Conservative politicians in Canada hadn’t even completed their victory lap over the apparent postponement of Donald Trump’s promised tariffs when Trump himself announced that he’d changed his mind. “We’re thinking in terms of 25 per cent on Mexico and Canada,” he told reporters on Monday. “I think we’ll do it...
History may often rhyme, but it gets downright poetic when it comes to the Trudeaus and Alberta’s oil and gas industry. Take Pierre Trudeau’s National Energy Program, which has been the bête noire of Albertans for more than 40 years now. It sought to grow Canada’s oil sands sector, build pipelines from coast-to-coast, and wean the country off its dependence...
Petroleum over country. For Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, that appears to be the guiding philosophy behind her unscheduled visit to Mar-a-Lago this week. Appearing as a guest of Kevin O’Leary, the television celebrity who openly petitioned for an economic union with the United States, Smith tried to sell incoming President Donald Trump on the value of exempting oil and gas...
Christy Clark almost certainly won’t win the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada, but at least she’s already made some history: never before has a candidate so quickly and thoroughly torched their own credibility as she did last week. In a recent interview with the CBC’s Catherine Cullen, she claimed the mantle of a “lifelong Liberal” — and denied...
If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, Justin Trudeau has laid down more than his share of blacktop during his nine-plus years in office. After almost a decade of Stephen Harper’s miserly approach to governing, his open-hearted approach to politics was a refreshing and welcome change. He won a majority government on a promise to make government...
When Justin Trudeau took over as the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada in 2013, his job was to rescue it from political oblivion. Two years later, he accomplished that. Now, after more than a decade in charge, he’s about to send it back there. And while there are at least a handful of Liberals left in Canada who...
“The greatest happiness,” Genghis Khan famously said, “is to scatter your enemy, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, [and] to see those who love him shrouded in tears.” That’s something Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre must be feeling deeply right now. With a seemingly insurmountable lead in the polls and the Liberal...
Chrystia Freeland has only just begun to fight. That’s one of the many possible conclusions you can draw from her remarkable resignation letter. It clearly points the blame for her government’s recently announced (and widely criticized) GST holiday and $250 rebate cheques — that she describes as “costly political gimmicks” — back at the Prime Minister. It also clearly signals...
For all the money and privilege he was handed by his parents, Donald Trump’s most valuable inheritance might be his instinctive ability to detect and expose weakness in others. He’s used it to devastating effect on any number of political foes in his own country, from former opponents like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz to his own vice-president, JD Vance...
Justin Trudeau’s Liberals haven’t technically lost the next election yet. But in the broader battle of ideas, it sure looks like they’ve already surrendered to the Conservative Party of Canada. Last week, the Liberal government announced a temporary pause on the GST for two months on an eclectic basket of goods that includes diapers, toys, beer, wine, Christmas trees, snack...
Donald Trump’s return to the White House will transform any number of issues here in Canada, from trade and energy to immigration and our relationship with NATO allies. One aspect of Trump’s second presidency that’s gotten less attention so far is what it means for the CBC and the Conservative Party of Canada’s repeated promise to defund it. But make...
This was not the election result that most Canadians hoped for. According to a Leger poll taken in late October, 64 per cent of Canadians wanted to see Kamala Harris win, and only 21 per cent rooted for Donald Trump. Alberta, perhaps unsurprisingly, had the highest level of support for Trump with 29 per cent backing the Republican nominee. Ironically...
For most Canadians, Remembrance Day is a moment to reflect on the sacrifices of the past and how they helped underwrite much of the freedom and prosperity we take as a given. For Pierre Poilievre and the Conservative Party of Canada, it was apparently an opportunity to sow division within Canada — and confusion within its Christian community. “Contrary to...
As I write this, America is in the process of deciding who will be its next president. By the time you read it, the answer may already be clear. And while voters in America will either be delighted or depressed by the outcome, the calculus is a little more complicated for Canadians. That’s because barring the sort of Reagan-esque landslide...
Like most governments that are long in the tooth and low in the polls, there aren’t many issues left that look like winners for Justin Trudeau’s Liberals. But their newly-released emissions cap on oil and gas producers, and the reflexive Conservative backlash against it, might just be one. If the Liberals are smart, they’ll lean into it as hard as...
Live by the youth vote, die by the youth vote. That’s been the story of Justin Trudeau’s nine years in power, which began with his party catapulting from third place into a majority government largely on the strength of their support among young voters. As that support started to erode, so too did the Liberal Party’s grasp on power, first...
With just a week to go until the United States election and the polls somehow deadlocked between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, Canadians are left to wait and wonder. Will we be plunged back into the blender of chaos and calamity that coloured the first four years under Trump? Or will we get the conspiracy theories and rioting that followed...
Canada officially has an immigration problem. No, it’s not the one we’ve been hearing about for months now, which the federal government has belatedly addressed through policies that cap both the number of foreign students coming to this country and temporary foreign workers being used by our business community. With rents in major urban centres already dropping, the impact of...
Brent Chapman, the BC Conservative candidate for the riding of Surrey South, once wrote that Palestinians were “inbred walking, talking, breathing time bombs”. More recently, he suggested the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, the 2017 killings at a mosque in Quebec City, and the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando may have all been faked. And just last month, while...
Who are you going to trust: the Government of Alberta or your lying eyes? That was essentially the message coming from Premier Danielle Smith and the trio of UCP ministers flanking her at a press conference Tuesday announcing the province’s latest multi-million dollar ad campaign against federal climate change policy. This time it was objecting to the proposed cap on...
Sometimes, it’s what you don’t say about something that tells the real story. That seems to be the case with Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre’s silence following Monday’s shocking allegations from the RCMP about the Indian government’s illegal activities. Poilievre is the most terminally online political leader in Canadian history, and he rarely misses an opportunity to share...
Could more urgent climate coverage save the CBC from a Pierre Poilievre government? That’s the theory that was floated by five of the mothercorp’s most famous personalities in a letter they sent to editor-in-chief Brodie Felon back in 2023. In their shared missive, former broadcasters David Suzuki, Peter Mansbridge, Adrienne Clarkson, Paul Kennedy and Linden MacIntyre recommended describing climate change...
Can Conservative thinkers convince Pierre Poilievre to take climate change seriously? That’s the question that centre-right website The Hub, with some financial support from the pro-carbon pricing advocacy group Clean Prosperity, is trying to answer. In the process, they’re raising some questions about their own approach to the issue.
Chip Wilson might be a billionaire, but he can’t buy himself a clue when it comes to politics. It’s not for a lack of trying: the Lululemon founder has dabbled in more partisan affairs of late, including throwing $380,000 at something called the “Pacific Prosperity Network” (also known as the Pacific Prosperity Foundation) in 2022 and trying to defeat the...
If you ran an oil and gas company into the ground while also helping dump hundreds of millions of dollars in environmental liabilities onto the Orphan Well Association, you’d think it would be cause for a bit of embarrassment. In Alberta, it’s apparently worthy of celebration. On Sept. 18, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce honoured Perpetual Energy CEO Sue Riddell...
Live by the conspiracy theory, die by the conspiracy theory. That seems to be Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s guiding principle right now, as she stares down a vote on her leadership at November’s United Conservative Party AGM in Red Deer. During a recent town hall, Smith made it clearer than ever that there’s no rabbit hole too deep for her...
You can’t really blame Mark Carney for not taking the plunge into partisan politics just yet. The former Governor of the Bank of Canada’s supposedly imminent entry into parliament has been a popular rumour for years now, but he has continued to decline the opportunity. Instead, he recently signed on as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s special adviser and chair of...
The rise and spread of electric vehicles is one of the biggest stories of our century, and it’s still unfolding. In time, and far less of it than its skeptics would like to admit, this story will transform the global auto industry, destroy millions of barrels per day of oil demand and force petrostates like Saudi Arabia (and Alberta) to...
John Rustad was in the midst of a political comeback for the ages, one that saw him kicked out of his old party, take over as leader of a new one and ride the popularity of Pierre Poilievre’s anti-carbon tax message to the top of the polls. He even made the leader who kicked him out of BC United, Kevin...
This is apparently how the carbon tax ends in Canada: not with a bang but a surrender. Last week, B.C. Premier David Eby acknowledged his government wouldn’t maintain the province’s long-standing consumer carbon tax — one that predates the federal version by a decade — if a future federal government eliminates its own. The desperate promise may yet revive his...
When Jagmeet Singh was selected by NDP members to replace Thomas Mulcair in 2017, it looked like they had found their answer to Justin Trudeau. As the Canadian Press’s Kristy Kirkup wrote at the time, “He’s young, hip and brimming with charisma, a likable rookie with an eye for style and a robust following on social media who wants to...
For as long as it’s been in conflict with America and its democratic allies, Russia has tried to defeat them from within. It used any number of propaganda techniques over the decades to foment division, sow dissent, and undermine the consensus around democratic principles and ideals. And then, long after it looked like the cold war had been won by...
When Pierre Trudeau decided it was time to leave back in 1984, he took a walk in the snow. At the rate things are going for Justin Trudeau, that’s a luxury he may not have. As his party’s MPs gather in Nanaimo for their annual caucus retreat and people in Montreal prepare to vote in a crucial Sep. 16 by-election...
He finally did it. After months of speculation about the fate of the confidence and supply agreement that bound his party to the federal Liberal government and a few days of being taunted as a “sellout” by Pierre Poilievre, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh pulled the plug on the deal Wednesday.
When former Alberta premier Jason Kenney first introduced the idea of an oil and gas “war room,” it was supposed to help the province go on the attack against its supposed environmentalist enemies. Instead, the so-called “Canadian Energy Centre” has consistently exposed the weaknesses in the armour of both Alberta and its favourite (and favoured) industry. But its critics shouldn’t...
At some point, even for the toughest of cookies, enough is enough. After years of enduring threats, harassment, and even an illegal surveillance campaign by local police officers — one that never resulted in criminal charges — Alberta NDP MLA Shannon Phillips announced last week that she was resigning from politics. “I’m the next in a line of woman politicians...
Pierre Poilievre isn’t exactly known for holding his tongue, least of all when it’s on an issue that could hurt Justin Trudeau’s Liberals. As Immigration Minister Marc Miller quipped recently, “that guy’s never shut his mouth in his life.” And yet, when it comes to the question of foreign interference in Canadian democracy, one that was raised again in a...
When Kevin Falcon took over as the leader of the BC Liberal Party, he clearly wanted to put some distance between himself and an increasingly unpopular prime minister. In the process, he somehow managed to make himself even less popular than Justin Trudeau — and put the BC Conservative Party on the doorstep of power for the first time in...
Once again, the Conservative Party of Canada is trying to bait Mark Carney into entering the political fray. After passing what they called a “Common Sense Conservative motion” in the House of Commons finance committee calling on Carney to testify, CPC finance critic Jasraj Singh Hallan doubled down on the partisan silliness. “Carbon tax Carney needs to come to Finance...
In Alberta, depending on which conservative politician you ask, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is everything from an authoritarian tyrant to an effete eastern elite. But if you asked Danielle Smith, and she was forced to tell the truth, she’d describe him in decidedly different terms. No, she may not like him — but right now she needs him more than...
He just can’t help himself. With a double-digit lead in the polls and the governing Liberals clearly on the ropes, you might think Pierre Poilievre would stick to safe political messaging around the cost of living and need for lower taxes. Instead, he’s busy trading in obvious and inflammatory lies about the prime minister and his apparent responsibility for everything...
So close and yet so far. That was the story in the 2015 federal election for the NDP, who spent much of the campaign looking like a threat to finally win their first majority before getting outflanked by Justin Trudeau’s Liberals and his pledge to run deficits. Now almost a decade later, it’s happening again, except this time it’s Pierre...