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.
One of the downsides of being prime minister is that the job doesn’t come with much vacation. Mark Carney will likely be relieved to see the House of Commons adjourn for the summer in the coming days, but he will be heading into vacation season with several storm clouds on the horizon.
Canada’s new governor-general, Louise Arbour sums up Canadian pride this way: “We don’t think we are perfect, but we believe we’re pretty well on the way there.” Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, meanwhile, chose the very day of Arbour’s installation to lay out what’s standing in the way of perfection — namely, the federal government.
One of the basic skills of being a politician revolves around how to avoid an unwelcome question. Some are pretty good at it, either deflecting or changing the subject, frustrating though it may be to journalists. Some, less expert, are visibly awkward. Others, the ones who can master charming candour, simply say, “I can’t answer that question.”
Dominic LeBlanc, Mark Carney’s point minister on Canada-U.S. relations, was no doubt feeling the pressure as he landed in Washington on Tuesday to kick-start trade talks with Donald Trump’s administration. But it’s less pressure than he was facing last year, according to some new polling from Abacus Data. Canadians’ anxiety about Trump’s trade war has declined sharply from 2025, Abacus...
Steven Guilbeault’s breakup with his Liberal government was a long time coming, but the events that set if off were swift. In an interview with my colleague Ryan Tumilty, the former environment minister and soon-to-be ex-MP underlined just how much the Liberals have changed in a matter of months.
Outside Alberta, a political consensus is emerging — not just on how the Alberta referendum should turn out, but on whether it should be held at all. That in itself is remarkable, but it does risk driving some further wedges into the national-unity debate that this referendum has set in motion.
Canadians need to stare down the stark reality of what happened in Alberta this week. Premier Danielle Smith has moved her province closer to separation than it has ever been. This brewing national-unity crisis has not come about from the tyranny of the majority — it has been created by a minority wielding too much power for its size, and...
Canadians need to stare down the stark reality of what happened in Alberta this week. Premier Danielle Smith has moved her province closer to separation than it has ever been. This brewing national-unity crisis has not come about from the tyranny of the majority — it has been created by a minority wielding too much power for its size, and...
B.C. Premier David Eby stood by Mark Carney in Vancouver on Wednesday and said he would be the one to speak hard truth to the prime minister. A day earlier, without Carney present, Eby was pretty clear on what truth he wants to tell — that the federal government is putting Alberta’s interests above those of the other provinces because...
Alberta’s separatist sentiment has borrowed heavily on what you might call Quebec envy. But make no mistake, the direction it is taking now veers far from the well-worn Quebec separatist path. Though Alberta’s discontent in the federation goes back a long way, it was only in the past decade or so that it sharpened into a focus on getting Alberta...
It’s been a rollicking week in the nerdy world of data collection in Canada — the massive privacy breach of Alberta voter information, the disturbing revelations about how AI chatbots are mining personal details, and now on the heels of all that, national census day. Tuesday is the deadline for all Canadians to complete either a long-form or short-form census...
Mark Carney was doing a fireside chat last fall in Toronto and the conversation rolled around to Canada’s advantages over the United States. “We have rule of law. That’s one of the big things,” Carney quipped, and his audience rewarded him with a huge laugh.
If anyone in Canada was sleepwalking toward the prospect of an Alberta independence referendum, events over the last few days should be enough to jolt anyone awake. A massive data breach of Alberta voter information, published by a pro-independence outfit called The Centurion Project, has sparked an RCMP investigation and some hurried efforts by the Alberta government to check whether...
Much has been said since March about how Avi Lewis has finally and fully landed in the family business, following in the footsteps of his father, Stephen, and his grandfather, David, who also were leaders for the New Democrats. But Lewis has always been in a family business. His mother, Michele Landsberg, wrote for this paper for more than 2...
“Let me make it real for you.” In that one short, sharp sentence, Finance Minister François Philippe Champagne acknowledged the political juggling act that Mark Carney’s government is trying to pull off as it embarks on its second year of power.
For one shining moment in Washington on Wednesday, a Democratic senator stared down Donald Trump’s administration with some words that many Canadians have been wanting to hurl in the president’s direction. It was during a Senate subcommittee hearing when U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — the same one who said “they suck” when referring to Canada last week — was...
When a prime minister takes to YouTube for a 10-minute address to the nation, a perfectly reasonable question is: what’s the emergency? So when Mark Carney released a video on the weekend, titled “Forward Guidance,” there was a natural temptation to look for what alarms he was trying to raise.
Mark Carney didn’t just get a majority on Monday night — he also won the precious political commodity of time.
The federal Liberals are now the strongest party in the country, as was amply on display at their convention in Montreal over the weekend. It’s not their politics that have put them there, as was also clear in Montreal. It’s the absence of politics — the ability to shape-shift into a force that can’t be pinned down as right or...
Donald Trump’s views on Canadian sovereignty appear to be constantly in motion, weaving back and forth like his social-media feed. Thanks to a British author, we learned this week that all the 51st-state talk is now on the back burner for two reasons: one lies in Trump’s respect for King Charles, and, maybe more significantly, the president doesn’t have enough...
Mark Carney seemed especially keen last week to quash any speculation that he intended to shut down Parliament and deliver a new throne speech in the near future. “It has never even entered my thinking, the possibility of that,” Carney replied, when asked about the rumours, which first appeared in The Globe and Mail.
Some Liberals, Conservatives and even New Democrats may be tempted to believe that the new NDP leader, Avi Lewis, is too far out there on the left to be a serious electoral threat. That underestimation may be a mistake. I’ve heard some serious people say over the course of the NDP leadership that a Lewis victory would spell the end...
There is nothing really new about the New Democratic Party, founded as it was in 1961. Nor with six seats, is it an official party, according to the status rules of the House of Commons. It is however, still democratic and the leadership vote culminating this weekend will point the way to where the NDP — and the progressive left...
From the moment that Donald Trump first started talking about Canada as the 51st state, all sorts of people have debated whether the president was joking or serious. The answer, it seems, is both, and we learned that this week when Pierre Poilievre sat down for an epically long conversation with the right-wing American podcaster Joe Rogan.
A significant corner was turned this week when many nations, including Canada, said no to Donald Trump. It’s a word that hasn’t been said often enough as this president runs his second term, defying all challengers and asserting that he wins all battles he wages.
Pierre Poilievre recently declared that he would prefer not to have an election anytime soon. The Conservative leader may be in the process of getting that wish. Thanks to another floor-crossing over to the Liberals and three byelections now under way, Mark Carney may have the 172 seats he needs for a majority government, possibly plus one additional MP.
Mark Carney repeatedly says he is prime minister of a new government, not simply a continuation of Justin Trudeau’s decade leading Liberals in power. New polling from the Pollara Strategic Insights firm suggests that more Canadians are buying the “new” title than those who don’t, especially among those who voted Liberal last year. Pollara shared the results exclusively with the...
No one will accuse Mark Carney of being a populist politician. But as he nears the one-year mark as prime minister, we’ve been getting some insights into how Carney is juggling the personal relations he has to manage on the world stage and also at home. It isn’t often that politicians go into that kind of detail, so Carney’s lessons...
Pierre Poilievre says he would rather work with Prime Minister Mark Carney to fight Donald Trump than plunge the country into another election to choose which man is the better negotiator. The Conservative leader declared that choice in a 40-minute podcast interview with former CBC anchor Peter Mansbridge, featuring some fascinating glimpses into how Poilievre intends to shift his tone...
Donald Trump spent nearly two hours this week proclaiming that everything is going great for the United States under his watch. In this same week, the president is getting a united rebuttal from Canada — no, things are not that great on this front. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is the latest to lay down that marker, and a strong one...
Had Pierre Poilievre had won the last election, he would not have gone to Davos to address the World Economic Forum, as Mark Carney now famously did — to Donald Trump’s scorn and world acclaim. The Conservative leader has promised for years to steer well clear of the annual gathering in Switzerland, and committed once again in the 2025 campaign...
Many people in Ottawa, even some who know her well, did not know until this week that the former national director of the New Democratic Party, Anne McGrath, is the survivor of a school shooting. McGrath doesn’t tend to bring it up often, but every time there is a school shooting, as there was this week In Tumbler Ridge, B.C....
Elections, like the flu, can sneak up on you. They may also be contagious. Not even one year since both men won their own elections, Mark Carney and Doug Ford have reportedly been chatting about another federal election this year.
It was perhaps fitting that former prime ministers Stephen Harper and Jean Chrétien came out of the shadows to share the spotlight on Groundhog Day. While neither offered any clue on how long this winter will last, their 30-minute, convivial chat at the Royal Canadian Geographic Society on Monday offered some insights into how Mark Carney could aspire to stay...
Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew, like his fellow first ministers, went into his big meetings in Ottawa this week with Donald Trump and the United States much on his mind. Near the top of Kinew’s list of concerns, though, was a topic that not many politicians have been eager to publicly tackle — the chaos in Minnesota.
It’s been a while since Canada’s first ministers met against the backdrop of a good old-fashioned national unity crisis. But there is nothing good or old-fashioned about the national-unity cracks looming in 2026 for Mark Carney and the premiers. When one premier walks into the meeting denouncing “treason,” as British Columbia’s David Eby did, there’s a whole new level of...
Canada’s outgoing ambassador to the United States, Kirsten Hillman, had to politely remind Americans over the weekend that Alberta separatism is a domestic issue and not something that Donald Trump’s people should be encouraging. Hillman was on the CBS TV show “Face the Nation” when she was asked about comments last week from U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who said...
In the final days before the last election, Mark Carney decided to have a little fun with some hecklers who were dogging him on the campaign trail in Nova Scotia. Carney, who was being cast as a dangerous “globalist” in some conservative circles, interrupted his remarks to address the hecklers. “It’s OK, we’ll get to the World Economic Forum in...
Canada will be marking the first anniversary of Donald Trump’s second inauguration, like many other nations, wondering where this country fits in the president’s wildly escalating ambitions on the world stage. Trump’s threats to take over Greenland are forcing Canada to consider sending troops to the Arctic island, while Prime Minister Mark Carney is simultaneously weighing what it will mean...
Donald Trump was unexpectedly low-key when asked on Friday how he felt about Canada’s new, revitalized relationship with China. “Well, it’s OK. That’s what he should be doing,” Trump said, heaping yet more praise on Mark Carney. “It’s a good thing for him to sign a trade deal. If you can get a deal with China, you should do that.”...
Even before Mark Carney headed off to China this week, he got several sharp reminders of challenges that will be awaiting the prime minister when he comes home. They come from outside the country and inside it too, and none of them are easily fixed.
It has been an alarming start to 2026, thanks to Donald Trump. In just seven days, Trump’s America has plucked a leader out of Venezuela and hauled him to the U.S. to face justice and seriously revved up its intents to acquire Greenland. At home, Trump’s decision to install federal immigration agents in U.S. cities has escalated into violence —...
Chrystia Freeland appears to have developed a knack for making career moves that shake up Liberal governments. A little more than a year since the former finance minister dramatically exited Justin Trudeau’s cabinet, triggering his departure and a whole new Liberal era, Freeland’s announced plans to step down as an MP have set things in motion for an imminent shakeup...
If the theme of 2025 in Canadian politics was to expect the unexpected, the ways in which the political world turned upside down will reverberate into 2026. Everyone will have their own surprise developments of this truly tumultuous year, but here are my top five picks for the big country-shaking shifts of 2025.
In all the flurry this week of trying to get bills passed in a near-paralyzed House of Commons, Mark Carney’s office did a rare thing — it rebuked one of its own ministers in public. It came amid a back-and-forth over whether the Liberal government was going to come to an agreement with the Bloc Québécois on hate crime legislation...
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.