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 Stephen Jeffery.
The board that oversees medicine pricing in Canada and levies on big social media and online service platforms appear in submissions to the U.S. Trade Representatives review of 'unfair' foreign trading practices.
Six cabinet members and a former Liberal leadership candidate will contest bellwether ridings in the 2025 federal election, with more than half the seats based in the southern Ontario regions that helped deliver majorities for Stephen Harper’s Conservatives in 2011 and Justin Trudeau’s Grits in 2015.
Weeks after a Federal Court decision to deny certification of a class-action lawsuit initiated by Black public servants, the country’s largest public sector union has filed a human rights complaint alleging decades of anti-Black racism in the federal civil service.
The Conservatives could have won seven extra seats if the 2021 election had been contested using the 2025 electoral boundaries, though it would not have been enough to deny the Liberals minority government.
Public service unions have urged the federal government to speed up the backlog of payroll problems affecting the bureaucracy after marking the ninth anniversary of the rollout of the beleaguered Phoenix pay system.
As Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and some Liberal leadership candidates pledge to reduce federal government spending after the next election, a leading scholar on Canadian governance is urging politicians to avoid following the arbitrary and haphazard slashing underway in the United States.
More than one-third of all sponsored travel disclosed to the federal ethics watchdog’s office in 2024 was to Taiwan, with the country’s diplomatic office in Ottawa paying $126,000 worth of expenses for MPs to visit. In all, 39 instances of sponsored travel were disclosed by 32 MPs between Jan. 1 and Dec. 18, of which all but two took place...
Canadians are broadly optimistic about the future of human rights within this country, but far less hopeful about the global situation, according to a survey released by the nation’s museum dedicated to the topic. “The fact that two thirds of respondents expressed optimism about the protection of human rights in Canada, particularly regarding advancements in Indigenous rights and gender equity...
The Trudeau government has sought to reassure Canadians that it has been preparing for Donald Trump’s return to the U.S. presidency in what former senior public servants say will have been a mammoth effort across the bureaucracy, diplomatic network, and broader civil society on both sides of the border. “No one should assume that we’ve been sitting on our hands...
As voters in a Quebec riding byelection prepare to choose from the largest number of candidates in federal history, Elections Canada is working on strategies to ensure the count on election night is not significantly delayed by the protest movement that’s behind the majority of the names on the ballot. “We are already recruiting more workers to count votes cast...
For the Trudeau government, the writing has been on the wall since November, and ‘despite their best efforts, they haven't been able to get up off the floor,’ says pollster Greg Lyle. The Toronto-St. Paul’s, Ont., byelection has launched a fresh round of speculation about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s future, with two former Liberal ministers warning of fatigue with the...
A string of opinion polls show net negative or single-digit favourability ratings for the major party leaders, but pollsters say the popularity of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s party makes his personal numbers less costly than the Liberals and NDP. “There isn’t a Poilievre-mania going on across the country, he’s not wildly popular with people,” said David Coletto, CEO of Abacus...
Obama appointee Bruce Heyman says Canada must prepare for multiple challenges that 'could happen all in the first few months' of a second Trump presidency.
Federal politicians accepted sponsored travel in 2023 at a rate not seen since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, as 71 MPs disclosed trips worth more than $850,000 in total, according the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner’s registry for sponsored travel. Almost two-fifths of that expenditure came from the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA)...
Taiwan’s top diplomat in Canada says he is worried about the effect that a proposed end to sponsored travel will have on Canada’s relationship with his island nation, remarking it would be a “big loss.” The practice of organizations funding MPs’ travel could soon be under review, after the House Ethics Committee asked the committees responsible for the members’ code...
Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge has told a conference of media producers that the effects of artificial intelligence is an evolving challenge for regulation, as concerns grow about its potential to affect creative industries and promulgate misinformation.
Despite his party’s polling figures, two-term Northern Ontario Liberal MP Marcus Powlowski is looking forward to the next federal election, and says Canadians will re-elect the government after they take a close look at Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and what his party stands for. In an interview with The Hill Times, Powlowski (Thunder Bay-Rainy River, Ont.) said the Conservatives want...
House Speaker Greg Fergus intends to regain the trust of his fellow parliamentarians when the Lower Chamber resumes sitting later this month following the controversy over his appearance in a video played at a partisan event back in December, but the second- and third-largest parties in the Commons have reiterated their intention to call for his resignation.
Despite growing indifference among Canadians towards the monarchy amid speculation of a visit from King Charles III later this year, a Westminster system expert said he expects a private member’s bill on making an oath to the king optional for MPs would likely be defeated to avoid a constitutional quagmire.
Continuing drought conditions in Western Canada, a relatively mild start to winter across much of the country, and the lingering effects of El Nino threaten to create ideal conditions for wildfires to ignite this coming spring, experts have warned, as the country contends with lessons learned from the most destructive fire season in its history.
As Canada grapples with overlapping election interference scandals, extrajudicial murder allegations, and support for allies and citizens in war zones, foreign policy and defence experts have called for the succession of international crises to act as the catalyst for a rethink in improvements to global affairs apparatus.