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 Susan Delacourt.
Progressive-leaning folks are having a hard time watching Mark Carney link arms with the same forces that spent the past decade demonizing the Liberals. Whether it’s making a deal with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith or playing to the “bro” culture with all the sports talk and walking back feminist foreign policy, it seems like the prime minister is determined to...
For weeks now, rumours have circulated that Mark Carney could be doing a major shuffle of his cabinet before the end of this year. The shuffle that happened on Monday wasn’t the one people were talking about — or expecting.
Basking in the glow of new-found friendship between Ottawa and Alberta, Premier Danielle Smith declared that this day would never have arrived if Justin Trudeau was still prime minister. “I can tell you 100 per cent that the former prime minister would never have moved this far on these issues,” Smith said, after she and Mark Carney unveiled a whole...
It’s maybe too soon to declare the “frat house” days over, but Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has appointed himself a campaign chief who likely wouldn’t be looking for an invitation to take part in many frat-party hijinks. The news came out over the weekend in the Toronto Sun. Jenni Byrne, a polarizing figure among Conservatives, is out as campaign manager...
Something is happening on the political right about, well, rights. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is rapidly working on what looks like a bid to normalize the use of the Constitution’s notwithstanding clause, invoking it last month to end a teachers’ strike and this week to push through changes to laws about transgender health and rights.
Well, that’s settled. Mark Carney’s first budget has passed, the Liberal government lives to fight another day and everyone can feel relief that Canada isn’t getting a Christmas election. But is that relief earned, or justified?
If Canada is plunged into an election next week, we can already call it one of the most unwanted campaigns this country has ever seen. Gord Johns, one of the New Democrat MPs who gets a vote on that matter next week, said it bluntly to the Star this week: “I know certainly Canadians don’t want an election,”
Fraternity houses across the nation may have taken offence when they were compared this weekend to the team around Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. It came from Chris d’Entremont, who was explaining in a CBC interview how he had grown disaffected enough with Conservative culture to cross the floor and become a Liberal MP.
Mark Carney’s first budget has landed in a House of Commons deeply divided. Now, one of the first wave of post-budget polls shows that Canadians are similarly torn about the fiscal blueprint put before the country this week. Abacus Data went out in the field the day after the budget was unveiled and came back with what it is calling...
Mark Carney may have to do another prime-time TV address. Two weeks ago, the prime minister warned the nation of sacrifices to come in the big budget his government unveiled on Tuesday. But which Canadians will be feeling those sacrifices — beyond the public servants whose jobs will be cut — remains a story still untold.
If Canadians have to swallow some unpleasant budget medicine next week, most Canadians would rather see Mark Carney, not Pierre Poilievre, holding the spoon, new polling from Abacus Data is showing. But the same polling also shows that both leaders should be careful about tipping the country into an election with that budget. The Liberal prime minister is still more...
Donald Trump, no fan of CNN, likely wasn’t watching on Monday when the network’s poll expert ripped into the president for his tariff tantrum with Canada — and revealed how much damage it could be doing to him.
A new rule may be emerging in Canada-U.S. relations — it’s a risky business, mixing politics and baseball. Prime Minister Mark Carney admitted this week that he had no luck so far tempting Donald Trump into placing a wager on the World Series. Grinning ear to ear as he stopped by the Blue Jays practice on Thursday, Carney said: “I...
Mark Carney has floated some strong warnings about “sacrifices” to come in the looming budget and on Thursday, standing beside Doug Ford, the prime minister almost revealed what they would be. “We’ll have to move more slowly on certain aspects,” Carney said, before checking himself aloud. “Why don’t I not scoop the budget?”
Mark Carney and his finance minister, François-Philippe Champagne, have been dialling up expectations for the budget coming in less than two weeks.
Somewhere this weekend, some federal Liberals may quietly mark an anniversary that many wouldn’t have predicted they would get to enjoy while still in power. Ten years ago on Sunday, Justin Trudeau led his third-place party to a majority government, with promises of ”sunny ways” and the conviction that “better is always possible.”
Pierre Poilievre put out a series of holiday-themed posts on social media over the Thanksgiving weekend — photos of the family, praise for the work being done by food banks. One post, however, departed from all the warm fuzziness. It was an endorsement of a petition from one of his MPs calling for an end to diversity, equity and inclusion...
One of Donald Trump’s former chiefs of staff passed along a tip this week to a high-powered Canadian audience on how to deal with the president. Basically it amounted to this: Trump wants friends. “The president’s a one-on-one guy, and he’s personable. He likes to be friends with the people that he’s talking to,” Reince Priebus, who served as Trump’s...
Donald Trump is preoccupied with getting a Nobel Peace Prize. On Tuesday, we will see whether the U.S. president is interested in making peace with Canada. Mark Carney’s second trip to the White House carries a different kind of freight than his first visit in May. Five months ago, it was all about making a good first impression; walking that...
Mark Carney was presented back in June with two “emotional support chickens” — the creation of an Edmonton Oilers fan and crochet artist to help fans of the hockey team deal with playoff stress. “They give you something to hold onto while you’re trying to make it through overtime without having a heart attack,” said Ashley Sinclair, the creator, who...
Every political party that earned the right to sit in the current House of Commons — even the winning Liberals — emerged from this year’s election with a dose of humility. Sure, the Liberals were spared the drubbing that had seemed imminent at the beginning of the year, but just how far they fell beforehand and their failure to win...
Mark Carney is no doubt aware that when he uses the word “rupture” about Canada-U.S. relations, it grates on the nerves of some in Donald Trump’s circle. So it was interesting to see the prime minister doubling down on the rupture language in his numerous appearances at the United Nations this week. Now Carney is even using it to say...
Mark Carney doesn’t appear to be in a big hurry to make a new trade deal with Donald Trump and a new poll is revealing a striking reason for why that may be so — a lot of Canadians don’t believe the U.S. president would abide by any new deal he makes with Canada. A full 64 per cent of...
It’s become popular in Mark Carney’s new Liberal government to talk in sports metaphors. The prime minister often sprinkles his speeches with hockey references and the timing of the next major-project announcements has been repeatedly framed around forthcoming tournaments, such as the Grey Cup. There aren’t many sports, though, in which backward movement is equated with success — perhaps the...
Justin Trudeau amassed quite a few journalists to his team during his long run at the top of the Liberal party. Chrystia Freeland was the first star recruit and while she ultimately was a big part of Trudeau’s undoing, her departure from Mark Carney’s government closes yet another door on that Liberal era. Freeland’s farewell message, which didn’t pack the...
One leader is learning how to be more of a politician. The other leader is trying to be less of a partisan. Much of this learning for Prime Minister Mark Carney and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre will take place in the heat of daily question period in the House of Commons, sparring with each other.
Politicians of all stripes have been appealing for calm after the U.S. shooting death of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, fearing the backlash it could provoke in an already divided America. Some of that fear is squarely focused on a constituency that was hugely important to Kirk — disaffected young men, who have been increasingly leaning conservative all over the globe...
Ken Dryden’s death has touched off a torrent of praise, all well-earned, for the success he made of his life — as a hockey legend, an author, a lawyer, a teacher and a politician. Prime Minister Mark Carney, talking to reporters on Monday, extolled all those wins and called him the embodiment of “Big Canada.” It was Dryden’s life in...
Donald Trump was in Canada several weeks too early to help this country celebrate Canada Day. But the U.S. president is one reason that the annual holiday will be more political than usual this year. As King Charles said when he read the throne speech in Parliament in May, there is a “renewed sense of pride” in this country at...
It was one year ago this week that the unravelling began for Justin Trudeau’s time at the top of the Liberal party — and it is a story that started and ended in two side-by-side ridings in the heart of downtown Toronto. Tuesday marks the anniversary of the byelection in Toronto—St. Paul’s, a riding that had been held by the...
Matt Gurney: Let’s open with something of a confession. Or maybe a strategic repositioning of the shield I use to cover my bottom from being called out for bad predictions. In the immediate aftermath of the election, I would have said, with no reservations, that I thought Pierre Poilievre was safe as Conservative leader. I still think that, but now...
Donald Trump’s abrupt departure from the G7 meeting on Monday night wasn’t exactly an insult to his host Mark Carney, who, with typical Canadian courtesy, thanked the president for showing up, however briefly. Trump left behind him, as usual, a collection of eyebrow-raising remarks, including some throwaway lines as he departed on Air Force One about how Canada, his host...
Mark Carney’s bold new plan to increase Canada’s defence spending comes with two price tags. The prime minister’s announcement was clear on one of them: more than $9 billion will be injected into military spending this year alone, and increases in the years after. The other price — “sacrifice” — got a mention from Carney, but little more by way...
Susan Delacourt: Thanks to Doug Ford, I have had a song stuck in my head for days this week. “Love is in the Air,” a one-hit wonder from the 1970s, turned into the soundtrack of the first ministers’ meeting after the Ontario premier walked in singing it.
Mark Carney wants to you know that he is the leader of “Canada’s new government.” The prime minister slipped that into a few of his very first appearances in the Commons. This Liberal government is not entirely new, of course, but neither is the phrase. It’s how Stephen Harper branded his government when it came to power two decades ago...
“Humility” is a word that is being thrown around a lot as the new House of Commons gets to work this week. Mark Carney kicked off his formal address to the throne speech on Thursday with avowed “great humility” at the task before him. Other MPs, new and old, have told the House too that they return after the last...
King Charles no doubt had many reasons for his whirlwind trip to Canada this week, but really, it all goes back to one moment in the dead of winter earlier this year. It happened at the White House in February, when British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, with a flattering flourish, issued a royal invitation to Donald Trump for a second...
Matt Gurney: Over the last few weeks, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s postelection government has been shaping up. A cabinet has been announced. Parliamentarians are being sworn in — including the PM, for the first time. Some key staff positions remain unfilled. With the House returning next week and the King coming to town, what’s your sense of where things stand...
Mark Carney isn’t getting much of a honeymoon as a new prime minister. It’s been a bit of a bumpy ride since Carney swore in his new cabinet just a week ago, which featured some surprising new ministers, as well as some conspicuous absences, such as Nate Erskine-Smith, who pronounced himself disrespected.
Most cabinet shuffles unfold with a flurry of attention on all the new faces, and Mark Carney’s first ministry after the election has plenty of them. But this was a shuffle with an unusual amount of attention on who and what wasn’t there — big names from Justin Trudeau’s time in office and of course, Trudeau himself.
Susan Delacourt: One word leapt out at me in a piece you wrote for this paper last week, Matt, and it was this one: “killed.” As in, the Conservatives got killed in the election. I agree that their hopes got killed — especially the hopes they had when they were 20 points ahead of the Liberals. But here’s the thing...
It’s called “the weave” — Donald Trump’s rambling, random rants when he has anyone’s attention — and Prime Minister Mark Carney can now say he experienced one at the president’s right hand. For more than 30 minutes in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump was weaving all over the place, but not dodging. Yes, he wants Canada to become part...
Mark Carney is new to politics, but in a matter of months, he is learning that each fight gets tougher. He handily won the Liberal leadership in March. His election victory a week ago was tighter. This week, he’s up against Donald Trump, and the newly elected prime minister has to be aware that the stakes in this contest are...
Whenever the House of Commons does get together again, it will be bigger, but will it be any less nasty than the last one? A lot of people are saying it should be, including newly elected Conservative MPs such as Chris d’Entremont and Scott Aitchison, talking optimistically in postelection media interviews about their expectations of a tone shift.
Donald Trump went on social media on Canada’s election day to endorse himself as the best leader for this country. Canadians politely disagreed, handing victory to Mark Carney and the Liberals — a vote for stability amid the chaos Trump keeps wanting to wreak on Canada.
Jagmeet Singh, in a tough election fight, is opening up about another tense period in his life as New Democratic Party leader — the winter of 2023-24, when real and credible death threats put him and his family under heavy RCMP protection for weeks on end.
Matt Gurney: A few weeks ago, I expressed some irritation with the candidates. I still feel that way. This has been an uninspiring campaign. We are, we’re told, facing major, existential threats to our way of life and maybe even our national survival. And I honestly can’t recall a single policy proposal from any of the parties off the top...
Years ago, someone put a Canadian spin on the old joke about the chicken crossing the road. Question: Why does a chicken cross the street in Canada? Answer: To get to the middle of the road. As the 2025 election winds down to its last hours, let it be noted that this was a campaign about forcing all the political...
Susan Delacourt: Well, the debates are now behind us, advance voting is under way, and I am thinking a lot this weekend about the whole idea of change. I wonder whether the debates changed anything. I’m curious to see if poll trends change in the last week of this election. And I’m also reflecting on Pierre Poilievre and whether we’ve...
Three leaders walked on to a stage in Montreal on Thursday night with one mission — to take the front-runner shine off Liberal Leader Mark Carney. If there was any doubt about Carney’s lead in this election, it was dispelled within minutes after the opening of the English-language leaders’ debate.
Doug Ford and Pierre Poilievre agreed on one subject this week: change is needed. The federal Conservative leader is saying that Canada needs change. The Ontario premier is saying that Poilievre needs to change his campaign team.
One of the more searing images of the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign came during the debate when Donald Trump kept lurking behind Hillary Clinton on stage. Clinton, who lost that election, would recall later in her book that she found it “incredibly uncomfortable,” and considered telling Trump: “Back up, you creep.”
Matt Gurney: Something the small but mighty team at The Line is doing during the campaign is a fun little feature with a profane name we publish on Fridays. It’s an accountability/fact-check feature. Last week, we noted in it that the parties were more or less behaving and keeping relatively honest. As late as the middle of this week, that...
Canadians didn’t get an “axe the tax” election in 2025, as Pierre Poilievre hoped, but that may be just as well for the Conservatives. New polling from Abacus Data shows that Liberal Leader Mark Carney, not Poilievre, is getting credit for axing the carbon levy — by a margin of nearly two to one.
Mark Carney calls it “dramatic.” Former Reform party leader Preston Manning says it’s just the plain truth. Whatever way you look at this flurry of talk about Western secession if the Liberals win the federal election on April 28, it has injected another dose of existential rhetoric into a campaign already laden with do-or-die propositions.
Matt Gurney: I want to ask you a specific question about the campaign — a few different parts of it, really. But I want to lead with a broader question, just as a vibe check. Does this feel like an election yet? I have to say, it doesn’t to me. It’s my job to follow this stuff. I do! But...
In a normal election campaign, the ballot-box question would revolve around what voters want. But Canada is not in a normal campaign, and a lot of time is being spent in this one focused on what Donald Trump might want.
Canada didn’t emerge totally unscathed from Donald Trump’s shock-and-awe day of sweeping tariffs this week, but the general agreement in this country is that it could have been a lot worse.
Pierre Poilievre went into this election campaign with plenty of political skills, but lacking one he needs right now — the ability to turn enemies into friends. That could be a tall order for this take-no-prisoners Conservative leader.
Welcome to Election 2025 and the weekly campaign edition of On The Contrary, in which Susan Delacourt and Matt Gurney will be tracking the race by focusing on the five people who have made things interesting or game-changing.