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 Tasha Kheiriddin.
The battle over Bill C-9, the federal government’s proposed anti-hate law, has blown up a cultural divide that not only pits Quebec against the rest of Canada, but seriously questions Ottawa’s willingness to tackle hate crimes. If Prime Minister Mark Carney gets the balance wrong, he risks both empowering hatemongers and fanning the flames of Quebec separatism — at a...
Is Canada going continental? This week, Prime Minister Mark Carney quietly signed Canada up for the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) initiative, part of the European Union’s plan to rebuild its military industrial base by 2030. Membership gives countries access to 150-billion euros (C$243 billion) in loans to back defence manufacturing. Canada is the first non-EU country to join. In...
Is the Liberal party’s foreign policy no longer feminist? People have been asking the question all week, ever since Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Sunday that, “We have that aspect to our foreign policy, but I wouldn’t describe our foreign policy as feminist foreign policy. Those are different points, but related.” He subsequently clarified that gender equality remains a...
Politics over principle is hardly a new story in Ottawa, but Tuesday’s budget vote provided a master class. For weeks the Conservatives huffed and puffed and threatened to blow the Liberals’ house down over their big spending ways. Conversely, the Bloc opposed the budget over its lack of spending on seniors. Green Leader Elizabeth May couldn’t support the budget’s boost...
Protectionists, start your engines. On Monday, Prime Minister Mark Carney unveiled a “Buy Canadian” procurement policy that prioritizes Canadian suppliers for all manner of federal spending, including a second set of national “major projects” he’s announcing on Thursday. “We will build Canadian, by becoming our own best customer,” Carney intoned. Ottawa will allocate nearly $186 million in new funding to...
Canada’s young people are falling behind. According to Statistics Canada, the unemployment rate for those aged 15 to 24 sits at 14.2 per cent, more than double the national average. The unemployment rate among youth attending school is 17.1 per cent, up 3.1 percentage points from last September. Among those youth who are working, many are under-employed, bouncing between short-term...
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s in a bind. On one side, there’s U.S. President Donald Trump, strangling our auto industry and cutting off trade talks, in the wake of Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s “Reagan was right, you are wrong” ad campaign. On the other, there’s Chinese leader Xi Jinping, offering to lift restrictions on agriculture and seafood imports in exchange for...
This week, over 100 homeowners in Richmond, B.C., got a notice no one wants to receive: Mayor Malcolm Brodie warned that due to a recent court decision, the title to their homes may be worthless.
It’s official: Canada is living next to an authoritarian regime. The question isn’t if the U.S. will slip into dictatorship, it’s when. When will the scales decisively tip? When enemies are jailed? When media outlets are shut down? When a golden statue of US President Donald Trump is installed at the Capitol Building? (You laugh, but plans for an “Arc...
Finance Minister François Philippe Champagne says moving the federal budget to the fall will “modernize” Ottawa’s fiscal cycle. Translation: starting this year, the main budget will land in November, with a shorter spring update replacing the former fall economic statement. Champagne claims this will increase budgeting predictability for the provinces, align with the construction season, and enable faster project starts...
Last week, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand took the podium at the United Nations to deliver Ottawa’s vision of Canadian foreign policy. She evoked “three pillars”: defence and security, economic resilience, and core values, including gender equality and environmental protection — in that order. Some commentators have cast this as a break with former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s evangelical promotion...
On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Canada’s recognition of a Palestinian state. In just a few weeks, it will also be the second anniversary of the October 7 massacre perpetrated on Israel by Hamas terrorists, when 1200 people, mostly civilian, were slaughtered, and 250 taken hostage and dragged to Gaza. Forty-eight...
The condo market is crashing. It’s official: Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Liberal government are in the housing business. Last week, Carney unveiled Build Canada Homes, a $13 billion development scheme that will help fund the construction of 4,000 modular homes on six sites across the country starting next year, and “scale” up to 45,000. The agency will “fight...
Is Mark Carney the new Jean Chrétien? Last Wednesday, Carney used the “a word” — austerity — to describe the future of Canada’s finances in the era of Trump’s tariffs. Carney had already ordered a 15 per cent cut to Ottawa’s operational spending in July, implying a downsizing of the civil service and possibly program cuts. Then on Friday, he...
Mark Carney’s been busy these past few months, hosting the G7, pursuing foreign trade pacts, and talking with Trump on the telephone. But instead of a reset, he’s had a summer of discontent, putting us back at square one with the Americans and facing a host of challenges for the fall.
For months, Prime Minister Mark Carney has spoken about making Canada an energy superpower. He said it on the campaign trail, mentioned it again in an interview with CTV news in May, and dropped it again last weekend at the Calgary Stampede. While he usually inserts the qualifier of “both clean and conventional energy,” in an interview Saturday he stated...
For a while there, things were going so well. Prime Minister Mark Carney — aka “the Trump whisperer” — had morphed from critic to texting buddy of the U.S. President. Over the past three months, Carney had been chatting with Donald Trump, building backchannel goodwill. After the successful G7 summit in Kananaskis, Alta., hopes were high that Ottawa would strike...
It's time to confront the TDSB's mismanagement and the structural failings of our educational governance model
The PM has craftily captured the middle ground from the Tories. What a difference six months make. In December, Canada’s Conservatives were in the catbird seat with 48 per cent support, while the Liberals dropped to 19. Practically everyone pegged Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre as Canada’s next prime minister. Then Justin Trudeau stepped down, Donald Trump took office and Mark...
Well, at least he didn’t walk out. While U.S. President Donald Trump left the G7 meeting in Kananaskis Monday night, it wasn’t in the huff the world witnessed at Charlevoix in 2018. This time, after a day of huddles and the signing of a U.K.–U.S. mini-deal that slashed auto tariffs, Trump hurried back to the White House because of “what’s...
Damn the torpedoes! Canada’s Liberal government is taking aim at defence — and it’s about time. This week, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that Canada will hit the NATO benchmark of 2 per cent of GDP on defence spending this year, instead of waiting for 2032, deploying an additional $9 billion in 2025-2026. Ever the banker, he’s also deploying some...
Will Prime Minister Mark Carney’s national infrastructure dreams be kiboshed by Canada’s First Nations? That’s the question hanging over Ottawa this week — and if Carney’s not careful, the answer could well be yes.
Canada, France, U.K. condemn Israel, but let terrorists who started the war off the hook
He's prioritizing economic development, but not in the West.
The Liberals will have drop climate obsessions to stave off a referendum in 2026.
As the dust settles on the 2025 federal election, many theories are emerging about why the Liberals won, and why the Conservatives lost. Fingers point at US President Donald Trump, and the impact of his threats to Canadian sovereignty. Pocketbook issues were also a major factor, particularly for younger and less affluent voters, who skewed Conservative, but not enough to...
All three potential allies of a minority Liberal government lean hard left, crushing the possibility of nation-building projects like pipelines
With just days to go before election day and millions of Canadians already having voted, both the Liberal and Conservative parties have finally dropped their full platforms. And the two are as different in substance, structure and style as the two campaigns — for better and worse. Substance-wise, the Liberals offer a slew of big-ticket items: a $5 billion Trade...
Wednesday night’s French-language leaders’ debate in Montreal didn’t produce any knockout punches — but if you were scoring on points, Liberal Leader Mark Carney came out on top. And he did it the old-fashioned way: by letting his opponents beat each other up. Carney’s performance was far from riveting, and he frequently fell into economist-speak, such as when he talked...
As Canadians tune in to the leaders’ debates this week — in French on Wednesday and English on Thursday — they’ll hear about affordability, tariffs, immigration and even an entire segment on climate, an issue that no longer cracks the top five. But one subject is conspicuously absent from both stages: national defence. It’s a baffling omission. While the French...
It’s been a strange Canadian election campaign, dominated by a politician who isn’t on the ballot, or even a citizen of our country: US President Donald Trump. While initially the Conservatives thought Trump’s win might help them – who would have better relations with Washington, ultra-progressive PM Justin Trudeau or Elon Musk-approved Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre? – that theory quickly...
Liberal Leader Mark Carney should feel right at home in Alberta: after all, he was raised there. But his trip there this week feels more like a political minefield than a homecoming. That’s largely due to his recent quip that while he’s happy to dispatch Ontario Premier Doug Ford to advocate for Canada in Washington, he wouldn’t send Alberta Premier...
“This is a uniquely important election … As the Prime Minister and Team Canada work to stand up to President Trump and protect our economy, I do not want there to be distractions … That’s why I’m standing aside as our 2025 candidate in our community of Markham—Unionville.”
The 45th Canadian federal election is the Liberals’ to lose. That’s not a line anyone would have written two months ago. But today, just three days into the campaign, opinion polls show the party ahead by up to seven points. All the gains the Conservatives made in the past two years have melted like the proverbial snow in springtime.
Canada’s 45th general election is upon us, and it’s shaping up to be the nastiest we have ever seen. Already, the personal attack ads are flying. The Liberals are painting Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre as a MAGA Mini-me who will sell out Canada. The Conservatives claim Liberal leader Mark Carney is a clone of PM Justin Trudeau: elitist, globalist, and...
Will ethical issues upend the Liberal election campaign? The Conservatives certainly hope so — and they’re getting a hand from an unlikely source: the Canadian media. At a news conference in London, Globe and Mail reporter Stephanie Levitz and CBC News anchor Rosemary Barton grilled Prime Minister Mark Carney on his personal finances. “For a guy who has spent most...
It’s official: Mark Carney has won the prize of prime minister. Now, he must figure out how to keep it. Carney comes to the job with a lot of pluses, chiefly his steady demeanour and economic experience, but also a pile of vulnerabilities. Already the Conservatives are gleefully exploiting them, branding him a liar, sellout, and globalist. They are saturating...
We’ve all heard it, and for a while, it was tempting to believe. No matter how nutty US President Donald Trump’s statements or actions are, there is a reason. He’s a business guy. He makes deals. He might be rude, crude, a little unhinged, but he has a plan. He’s smart. He knows what he’s doing. Just wait. You’ll see...
Welcome to the 2025 trade wars. United States President Donald Trump’s tariffs threaten to upend Canada’s economy, and those of the world at large. Millions of Canadians could lose their jobs and businesses. The hour demands leadership like never before. So what should Ottawa do, and not do? I’ve got a few ideas, but I will start with the most...
As a bilingual native Quebecer, I always dread French political debates where no one speaks the language fluently. But one must make these things tolerable, so Monday night, 8 p.m., my daughter and I settled in to play “Judge the French” at the Liberal leadership debate, which was also the only way to convince an apolitical teenager to watch. The...
Did he or didn’t he? Did former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper really offer then Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney the job of finance minister in 2012? Carney, now running for the Liberal Party leadership, made the claim twice in the past few days, in English on CBC and in French on Radio Canada in response to whether he’d...
“Events, dear boy, events.” As British prime minister Harold Macmillan opined half a century ago, they are what politicians most worry about. They upend the best laid plans, as they are doing in Canada today. Over the past month, the combination of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation and U.S. President Donald Trump’s return has shifted Canadian public opinion. Nanos’ latest...
It’s over. For now. Until he decides to hit us again. After a weekend of pain, Canada has 30 days before the United States decides if we’ve been good enough, or we deserve another beating. Tariffs? Takeover? Who knows what President Donald Trump has in store for us. But one thing is clear: we can never trust him again.
On Saturday, the United States declared economic war on Canada. Starting February 4, Washington will apply 25% tariffs on all Canadian imports, apart from energy, which will be tariffed at 10%.
Who do I trust? That’s the question Liberals need to ask themselves as they prepare to choose a new leader — because it’s the question voters will be asking in the next federal election. But it’s not about trust in the macro sense: is this person honest? Will they keep their promises? Do they have the smarts and experience for...
The tariffs are coming. Not today, but perhaps on Feb. 1. That’s what U.S. President Donald Trump suggested on Monday, after his inaugural address. Trump’s speech made scant mention of tariffs, only that he would be establishing an “external revenue service” that would “tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.”
On Monday, Donald J. Trump takes office as the 47th President of the United States. His return to the White House is bad news for Canada, notably, his threat of massive tariffs that could trash our economy. We'll know on Monday exactly what he has planned, but if he goes through with 25% tariffs on all our exports, he will...
For years, it’s been assumed that the biggest threat to Canadian unity comes from the province of Quebec. It hosted a separatist terrorist movement in the 1960s and is home to the sovereigntist Parti Québécois. It held two referenda on separation, the last of which saw the country hang together by less than one per cent of the vote. Today...
It started as a joke, but it’s not funny anymore. At a rambling press conference on Tuesday, US president-elect Donald Trump made his intentions clear: he would use “economic force” to make Canada the 51st state. “Canada and the United States: That would be really something,” Trump opined. “You get rid of that artificially drawn line and you take a...
At 11 a.m. ET on January 6, 2025, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau finally put the country out of its misery and resigned.
Happy New Year, and hope this finds you enjoying the start of 2025. Hope springs eternal as we make our New Year’s resolutions, including mine, which is to resume regular posts here. That was supposed to start Monday, not today, but alas, events, as they say, intervened. It’s Friday, January 3, my one day off this week (yes, I worked...
Chrystia Freeland has never been my favourite politician. Her positions are too left-leaning, her speaking style off-putting. Her interview with Secretary of State Hilary Clinton at the 2023 Liberal Convention was cringey in the extreme.
After cheers rang out in Damascus this weekend at the toppling of brutal Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, there came another sound: that of countries slamming the door on Syrian refugees. On Monday, 15 European nations declared that they would no longer grant them asylum. Some, like Austria, are discussing deportations; German politicians are suggesting that the country charter aircraft and...
Canada as the 51st state? Apparently, that’s what U.S. president-elect Donald Trump suggested at his impromptu dinner with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at Mar-a-Lago last Friday. When Trudeau said Canada couldn’t stomach 25 per cent tariffs, Trump mused about annexation and suggested that while prime minister is a better title, Trudeau could be governor of this 51st state. Sources told...
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals may be anxious about the rise of Pierre Poilievre, but their real problem isn’t the Conservative leader. It’s Donald Trump. With the former president returning to the White House in January, Trudeau faces a rapid dismantling of his progressive agenda at the hands of Trump’s new administration. From immigration to the environment, trade to health...
U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump is not just revving his engines — he is ready to go. There have been a flurry of proclamations and appointments, including that of former ICE director Tom Homan as his “border czar.” What will Homan do in the role? At the 2024 National Conservatism Conference in Washington, he promised, “Trump comes back in January…. I...
Justin Trudeau hopes to be remembered for many things: legalizing marijuana, increasing family support payments, renegotiating NAFTA, and steering the country through the COVID-19 pandemic. Many Canadians might applaud his actions; the first two were major planks of his 2015 election platform, back in the day when voters still embraced his “sunny ways.”
The sharks are circling the tank. Yesterday, former BC Premier Christy Clark made headlines for eyeing the Liberal leadership, when it eventually opens up. Clark is taking French lessons, and according to sources who spoke to the National Post, several Chrétien and Martin-era Liberal organizers are supporting her potential candidacy. Clark tempered the speculation on X, writing that “The Prime...
Love him or hate him, you’ve got to give Justin Trudeau credit. He is the political equivalent of a cockroach. You can spray him with invective, stomp on him with slogans, drown him in bad polls, and still he scuttles along, fighting to survive. And not only survive, but attack, accusing his opponents of the greatest sin in politics: being...