Robyn Urback
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 Robyn Urback.
The NDP hopes its revival will come through public grocery stores and zero votes in Quebec
The NDP should have a singular focus for the short- and medium-term: finding a way back to official party status. Everything else can come later. In fact, everything else will only come later if the NDP is once again a party with at least 12 seats in the House of Commons. That official party status will unlock desperately needed funds...
According to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, offensive posts can cost you $750,000
There was a trigger warning included in the written decision handed down by B.C.’s Human Rights Tribunal last week. A caution – just in case someone was browsing the web, looking for tiramisu recipes or articles on the Northern Cricket Frog or something, and accidentally stumbled on the case of former Chilliwack, B.C., school board trustee, Barry Neufeld, who was...
Mark Carney the political neophyte has some awfully good political chops
“Some of you – and I salute you – have been Liberals your whole life,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said to the crowd at the Liberals’ holiday party in December. “Others, like me, are new to politics. I’m not a politician.” And then, responding to someone on his right he said: “I am now, yes, you’re right.” “Some may have...
Jamil Jivani goes to Washington ... to advance Jamil Jivani’s interests
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre was like Oprah handing out free cars when he named his shadow cabinet last May. More than half of the Conservative caucus got a role; it’s possible that the guy who vacuums the rugs in MPs’ offices was accidentally named shadow minister for small business for a brief moment during the flurry of appointments. But notably...
It is the right time – socially and economically – to scale back extended health benefits for refugees
On June 18, 2012, doctors and other health care workers all across the country staged a walkout to protest the government’s changes to refugee health care benefits in Canada. Roughly two months earlier, the Stephen Harper government had announced that cuts were coming to the Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP), which provides temporary health care coverage for refugees in Canada.
Even poor students of history can see what’s happening to the U.S.
In 1935, American author Sinclair Lewis published It Can’t Happen Here, a dystopian novel about the rise of a populist demagogue named Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip, who becomes the U.S. president after cultivating a cult following for his nationalism, anti-elitism, and quixotic promises. Windrip was fixated on restoring domestic production of material goods and hated the press.
How would Trump behave differently if he was legitimately losing his mind?
The cognitive decline of former U.S. president Joe Biden was undeniable, minutes into his 2024 debate with Donald Trump. He looked confused, bewildered, and couldn’t complete a thought. The people around Mr. Biden had clearly been aware that he was losing his faculties, which is why, for months prior, he had largely been hidden from public view. But that decision...
On our sovereignty, Canada must assume Trump will pursue the riskiest, dumbest path possible
While you were sleeping – and when he should have been – the President of the United States posted an image of a doctored map of the U.S. that included Greenland, Venezuela and Canada. It was the type of thing that your great uncle, having just discovered AI, posts while sitting in his underwear at 1 a.m., after his wife...
A pilot for Canada’s gun buyback was a failure. The Liberals are committing anyway
When an individual falls victim to the sunk cost fallacy, the consequences that follow are generally even worse. Maybe it’s an extra few thousand wasted on a rust bucket of a car just to feel like the money invested in it wasn’t for nothing. Maybe it means staying in a bad relationship that ought to have ended years ago. Maybe...
‘Serious governance’ will be the theme of Canadian politics in 2026
Heading into 2026, Canada is grappling with talk of separatism referendums in two provinces, Alberta and Quebec. It is slated to participate in a formal review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) at a time when the U.S. has pledged to “reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.” Public trust in our institutions...
Canada’s hate speech laws don’t need a rewrite. They need to be enforced
In the late 1990s, a Toronto man named Mark Harding was busily spreading his “gospel” around the city. His proselytizing took the form of printed pamphlets and telephone messages, which warned that Muslims in Canada are “like raging wolves in sheep’s clothing,” and “full of hate, violence, and murder.” Mr. Harding’s materials suggested that all Canadian Muslims are actually terrorists...
Conservatives persist with cute legislative tricks, while the government tries to run a country
In another life, Pierre Poilievre would have been a lawyer. The Conservative Leader is very good at creating a narrative, at prosecuting his case, and at setting traps for wayward leaders of other parties. He did that roughly one year ago, when he used the exact words articulated by then-NDP leader Jagmeet Singh when he walked away from the supply-and-confidence...
Liberals should get real with Canadians: Pharmacare, for now, is dead
Can you mourn something that never existed? Like the idea of a happy marriage when you knew all along you settled for the first person who accepted your advances? Or the daydream of a life of luxury and indulgence, which feels possible while you’re holding a lottery ticket, but vanishes as soon as the numbers are called? What about the...
With typical Alberta governing-party arrogance, Danielle Smith waves away a scandal
Back in October, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith wiped her hands clean of any scandal involving Alberta Health Services (AHS). Seven months earlier, the Premier had tapped retired Manitoba judge Raymond Wyant to probe alleged political interference involving the procurement of children’s medicine from abroad, and contracts for private surgical facilities in the province, both of which had ties to a...
If nothing else, Danielle Smith is a disruptor
Every so often a Canadian politician comes along and decides he or she is ready to challenge the orthodoxy. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was Saskatchewan Premier Tommy Douglas, who insisted that universal, publicly funded medical care was possible in Canada, despite strong opposition from health care providers, which culminated in a doctors’ strike.
Canadians are protecting the mirage of single-tier health care. It doesn’t exist
Canadian health care as an idea, and Canadian health care as an institution, exist in two different universes. Notionally, health care in Canada is single-payer, universal and egalitarian. No one can jump the line. No one can buy better or faster care. Everyone has reasonably timely access to primary and specialist care, and critical issues are treated as true medical...
The Supreme Court used a far-fetched hypothetical to axe minimum sentences for child pornography
The members of Canada’s Supreme Court have such wonderful imaginations. They are able to look at the facts of a case – or a couple, as recently brought before them regarding prison sentences for accessing and possessing child pornography – and invent an entirely unrelated and far-fetched scenario in order to strike down a mandatory minimum sentence as unconstitutional. It’s...
Canada needs to rein in spending. How about we stop handing out billions to wealthy seniors?
Forty years ago, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney touched a hot stove. He announced that his government would partially de-index Old Age Security benefits from inflation, and very quickly, the smell of burning flesh began wafting through Ottawa. NDP MP Simon de Jong charged that Mr. Mulroney was breaking a “sacred trust” with Canadian seniors. “Two and a half million elderly...
The American right discovers that it loves cancel culture, too
This is not cancel culture, the right insists, as it scours the internet, searching for heretics. Iconoclasts will be identified – shamed, reported, and maybe even investigated – to ensure they are punished for their unacceptable opinions. This hunt is not limited to those who celebrated the assassination of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk, which is arguably legitimate grounds for termination...
Charlie Kirk is a sick nation’s sacrifice
The right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk has become a casualty of a version of America he believed could be resisted, simply, with words. Mr. Kirk built a political empire based on the premise that ideas could lead to great victories; that a high school kid could write an op-ed for Breitbart and, just four years later, speak on stage at the...
The NDP remains an unserious party for a serious time
Maybe the NDP will get its act together. Maybe it will become a real political party, a viable third option, a progressive voice in a political ecosystem where Prime Minister Mark Carney has so graciously yielded the floor. Mr. Carney uttered the word “austerity” last week in describing what to expect from his upcoming budget. That term was verboten under...
Quebec shouldn’t ban street prayer. Municipalities should enforce existing laws
Every week, for the last several months, Islamic afternoon prayers have been held outside Montreal’s Notre-Dame Basilica. The prayers are hosted by the group Montreal4Palestine, which has used the space outside the church to protest Israel’s continuing war in Gaza. It’s either a beautiful or egregiously provocative scene, depending on how you look at it. Beautiful for what it illustrates...
Carney’s reciprocal tariff retreat might seem like a betrayal, but it makes sense
“Elbows up” was always a campaign-winning but policy-losing strategy. We have all unfortunately become students of the mercurial menace that is Donald Trump, and we know that the U.S. President is less a serious negotiating partner than an obstinate toddler – and you don’t go “elbows up” against toddlers for the simple reason that they are, in a word, insane...
Memo to Mark Carney: Canada’s existential crisis is in health care
Months ago, Canadians were told we were in an emergency. U.S. President Donald Trump “wants to break us, so America can own us,” said then-candidate Mark Carney, who would successfully sell Canadians on his readiness for real change. “We will not let that happen.” Mr. Carney made the case that the tariffs being threatened by Mr. Trump constituted “the most...
Gary Anandasangaree must resign as Public Safety Minister
It would be tolerable – though just barely – if Gary Anandasangaree was, say, minister of Fisheries, or minister of Artificial Intelligence. One does not need to know about gun licensing, for example, to work on a transition plan away from open net-pen salmon farming on the West coast; a firewall preventing a minister from weighing in on matters involving...
Did we really have to make this D-list MAGA singer famous in Canada?
The continuing controversy involving Sean Feucht, the American Christian rocker and MAGA darling who has been denied permits for his concerts all across Eastern Canada, has become just dreadfully irritating. It is irritating to watch Mr. Feucht’s critics conflate his opinions – on abortion (he’s against it), on homosexuality (he believes it is a perversion of God’s will), on the...
#MeToo changed our culture, but it couldn’t change our courts
The whole world changed in the near-decade between two of the most high-profile sexual assault trials in recent Canadian history. But inside the courtroom, it was as if no time had passed at all. Outside, the world had been fundamentally reordered by a pandemic, by a reality TV star twice elected U.S. President, by the murder of a Black man...
Mark Carney should add the gun buyback program to his kill list
Prime Minister Mark Carney wasted no time in axing a signature Justin Trudeau policy the moment he took on the job. It wasn’t that the carbon tax was bad policy, per se, or focused on the wrong target or poorly administered or needlessly bureaucratic. Indeed, Mr. Carney was broadly supportive of carbon pricing as a mechanism to curb greenhouse gas...
The digital services tax was bad policy, but killing it now makes us look terribly weak
Maybe Prime Minister Mark Carney’s elbows were getting tired. He kept them up the entire campaign, and well, that was enough to get the job done (the job, notably, being winning the election – not standing up to U.S. President Donald Trump). And now that the election is over, Mr. Carney has allowed himself some moments of rest.
Considering accessory to manslaughter? Don’t worry, you’ll get to keep your gym membership
An Ontario court justice has sent a strong message to criminal thugs all across the province who might find themselves in a scenario where they could help a friend evade justice: Go ahead. You won’t necessarily go to jail. In fact, you might be able to keep your gym membership. In July, 2023, in the Leslieville area of Toronto, Khalila...
Mark Carney’s early moves are making the Conservatives look like waterboys
Ever since the election, the Conservative Party has been giving off strong “loser energy” vibes. It’s not simply that the party failed to form government, or even that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre lost his own seat (though it certainly doesn’t help that he’s forced to press his nose up against the House’s stained glass windows). It’s more so the air...
We need a by-election in Terrebonne
In a less partisan, more conciliatory political environment, there would be cross-partisan consensus about the need for a by-election in the Quebec riding of Terrebonne. It’s not simply that the margin of victory was razor-thin, with the Liberals’ Tatiana Auguste winning the riding by a single vote. Nor is it about the flip-flopping of the result: Terrebonne was first won...
Danielle Smith is against forest fires, but she’ll leave this lighter right here
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith absolutely, unequivocally does not want to see a cockfight. She’s merely provoking these specially bred roosters and will soon release them together in a pen. Whatever happens, happens. She has been adamant in her opposition to forest fires. “They’re dangerous,” she says, as she gingerly places a pack of matches on a pile of dry leaves...