Trump’s war in Iran shows Carney has lots to learn about the new world order — one thing most of all
More than two decades ago, the United States invited Canada to join in a new Middle Eastern misadventure. The invitation was premised on a big lie about Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien declined to participate. It’s not that he foresaw the disaster to come — but he had a team of good advisers, as...
Carney has my sympathy as he tries to navigate a war led by Trump and Hegseth
I’ve covered a few wars, in the Balkans and the Middle East, and I’ve seen plenty of military officers (including senior Americans) explain how things are unfolding on the battlefield. In my experience they’re invariably professional, cool and calm. What they’re not is what the U.S. “secretary of war,” Pete Hegseth, displayed this week in a couple of briefings on...
Polls show why Conservatives don't want an election right now - Liberals leading in most parts of the country and in every demographic group
Liberals leading in most parts of the country and in every demographic group. When you hear that Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives don’t want an election anytime soon, it might be due to the polling.
Mark Carney ties his own foreign policy in knots
Let’s peek in on Mark Carney’s Iran war foreign-policy update, beamed to us all the way from Australia. Mr. Carney supported U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran in a statement issued Saturday, and he still does, now in a different way, because the U.S and Israel probably did not act in keeping with international law, which is unfortunately part of...
After shackling Canada to Trump’s war in Iran, Carney’s course correction is wise
Few decisions are more important for a Canadian prime minister than whether to support the United States on matters of war and peace. With such decisions, legacies can be made and unmade. Jean Chrétien offers a prime example. He’s been dining out on his refusal to join George W. Bush’s coalition of the willing in the Iraq war for decades...
Mark Carney reveals why a personal touch is needed when dealing with the world’s most powerful leaders
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...
Canada’s small military is a big problem for Carney. It’s also doing him a big favour right now
In almost any context, one of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s major problems — and it’s one that he inherited, in fairness to him — is the state of the Canadian Armed Forces. Our military is too small to do all the jobs we need it to do. It lacks critical capabilities necessary for survival on the modern battlefield. Manpower shortages...
Pierre Poilievre’s great reset
After a humiliating election defeat, multiple defections from his caucus and a widening lead in the polls for Mark Carney’s Liberals, Pierre Poilievre has finally decided to make some changes. He debuted the new look at a recent speech at the Economic Club of Canada, one in which he cited the writings of Marcus Aurelius, name-checked Pierre Trudeau in a...
Game Theory vs. ‘Death and Destruction’: Mark Carney’s Trumpian Dilemma
One of the many things that could be said of the rules-based world order is that it was designed so that countries — including middle powers — would not have to rely on their wits, in the manner of a Hobbesian geopolitical Hunger Games, to survive in the face of hegemonic aggression. “The world will always be driven by great...
Trump’s Consequential War
I begin writing today with a quotation from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. In a press conference Monday morning, Hegseth celebrated Israel and its strikes alongside the U.S., while he condemned “so many of our traditional allies who wring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force.” In explaining the Trump doctrine of military...
B.C.’s Eby may not be long for the job
The premier won’t have time to turn the economy around as the prospect of an election this year looms large. Spare a moment, if you will, for British Columbia Premier David Eby. Not long ago, the former Vancouver lawyer seemed to have it in the bag. He inherited the premiership and a budget surplus of $5.7-billion from the popular John...
There are lessons for Poilievre and Carney in U.K. byelection
Pierre Poilievre, leader of His Majesty’s loyal opposition, is visiting the King’s home turf this week, where he gave a keynote speech at Margaret Thatcher’s think tank of choice. The visit comes at a good time for Poilievre to open his ears as well as his mouth. For the United Kingdom is deep into a period of political turmoil, one...
OpenAI's deal with Trump is putting Canadians at risk too
In a stunning showdown last week between the Trump administration and frontier AI company Anthropic, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth demanded that Anthropic allow its AI models to be used for “any lawful purpose,” without any restrictions. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei refused and laid out the company’s two red lines for its models’ usage by the US government: barring...
Why even Iraq war hawks should oppose this war
When president George H.W. Bush went to war against Iraq in 1991, he sought and won the consent of the Congress of the United States. Resolutions authorizing military force passed the House, by a margin of 250 to 183, and the Senate, 52-47. Mr. Bush had earlier secured the passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution 678. The cause was...
Hope for the pipeline deal to survive a clash over carbon taxes
Back at the end of November when Prime Minister Mark Carney and Premier Danielle Smith signed their memorandum of understanding (MOU), it was presented as the best of all possible worlds: Canada would get a new oil pipeline and reduced carbon emissions.
Canadians deserve to know if our military is helping the U.S. attack on Iran
Canadian Forces exchange officers working with the U.S. military were “very likely” involved at some level in planning the weekend strikes on Iran, a former Canada major-general has warned. If true, this should raise alarm bells for Canadians because it means Ottawa’s insistence that Canada is “not involved” in this operation is not just implausible, it’s misleading.
Tasha Kheiriddin: In India, Carney might be being pragmatic, but principled?
RIP Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, we hardly knew you. As Prime Minister Mark Carney alights in Australia this week, fresh from a trade mission to India, the basic premise of the strategy — “to seize opportunities in the national interest of Canadians, while defending the values they hold dear” — has been junked in favour of realpolitik: doing business with countries...
Carney’s Iran Trap: How Trump’s War Could Become Canada’s Problem
Mark Carney may have thought he dodged a bullet when he wordsmithed Canada’s position on the latest U.S.‑Israeli assault on Iran, Operation Epic Fury. “Canada supports the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security,” Carney said in a written statement released jointly with Foreign...
No time for truth in this reset with India
Mark Carney left on a trip to India last Thursday but there has simply been no time to field reporters’ queries. The Prime Minister cancelled the press conference scheduled for Monday, when embarrassing questions were to be posed, because his meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi ran long and his flight to Australia couldn’t be delayed and well, there...
Why Carney ‘s messaging on India and Iran should be reversed
In politics it’s usually best to be as clear as you can. But there are times when clarity will get you in trouble for no particularly good reason. That’s when it’s smarter to fuzz things up a bit. On India and Iran, Mark Carney has been both clear and fuzzy over the past few days. The problem is he’s been...
Did Carney go too far in offering 'support' for U.S. strikes against Iran?
Every prime minister is called upon, at one point or another, to comment on the actions of an American president. For Mark Carney, still less than a year on the job, there have already been several such moments. The latest moment of necessity arrived this past weekend, when the United States and Israel launched new attacks on Iran. The response...
Carney updates his Davos principles to back attacking Iran
In his Davos speech in January, Prime Minister Mark Carney said his government’s aim in foreign affairs is to be “principled and pragmatic.” He defined “principled” as being committed to the prohibition of the use of force, except when consistent with the United Nations Charter; and “pragmatism” as taking the world as it is, not as Canada wishes it to...
Carney picks a realpolitik side on Iran war
Mark Carney wasted no time in backing U.S. military action to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. It was a quick decision to pick a side but also to pick from a menu. It is hard to claim that preventing Iran from getting the bomb is the cause for this war.
This doesn’t sound like the Pierre Poilievre we’re used to
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...
Don’t do it
If the PM were to call an election now, he would almost certainly be punished. Despite some stellar polling, what certainly feels like a collapsing opposition leader and the foundations of some policy wins, Mark Carney must not give in to those advising him to go the polls to secure his majority.
Hold Your Horses on Quebec Sovereignty Panic
I’ve recently spent a week working in Ottawa. Keeping in mind that I work in public policy and am surrounded by political junkies, on one of those days not one but five separate people raised Quebec sovereignty with me unprompted. Clients. Colleagues. Even housemates. The anxiety is real.
Quebec’s Orange-Wave Castaway and the Shrinking NDP
Back in 2011, the popularity in Quebec of then New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton helped trigger an unprecedented Orange Wave that saw the NDP win 59 seats (out of 75) in a province that had never been fertile electoral ground for the NDP. Tragically, Layton passed away from cancer less than four months later. In the 2015 federal election...
Canada once rejected America’s aggressive, unlawful foreign policy. Today Mark Carney embraced it
Canada’s response to the U.S.–Israeli strikes on Iran exposes a fault line at the heart of our foreign policy. We invoke international law and the “rules based international order” when adversaries engage in unlawful actions, but abandon those same rules entirely when it’s the Americans — whose current government 60 per cent of Canadians now see as a threat —...
Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have made a dangerous gamble in Iran. Why is Mark Carney cheering them on?
In Iran, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have opted to play regime change roulette. They are wagering with the lives of civilians in Iran, Israel, and the Gulf countries. They risk embroiling American and Israeli forces into yet another forever war, a military operation with no clear objectives and no way to truly win. And they do so with no...
Carney meets the moment, backs Trump against Iran
Prime Minister Mark Carney was forced to admit an unpalatable truth Saturday, that despite his declaration that the old order had been irreparably ruptured it was still very much intact.
Mark Carney supports the latest attacks on Iran. Don’t expect the Canadian public to share that view
As I write this late Saturday morning, news is still coming in about the joint U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran. The targets reportedly included senior regime figures and missile infrastructure. Iran has responded. World leaders are trading statements. The situation feels fluid and dangerous. Prime Minister Mark Carney has reacted in a way that is far different than how...
Poilievre's newfound tough stance on Trump likely too little, too late
Is it too late for Pierre Poilievre? The Conservative leader gave an impressive speech this past week to the Economic Club of Canada in Toronto in which he laid out a Conservative strategy for dealing with the erratic and very anti-Canadian U.S President Donald Trump. “Canada cannot control the decisions of foreign presidents,” Poilievre said. “But we can control the...
The New Poilievre: Further from Trump, Closer to Carney
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre tried to get back in the game this past week. Poilievre did that with a speech in Toronto on Thursday that actually mentioned President Donald Trump by name. More notably, he mentioned Trump in a critical way. Poilievre has been under increasing criticism for his reluctance to go after Trump and his administration for both the...
We shouldn’t let American players’ Trump meeting ruin our love of hockey
I paid for my Sunday morning beers one at a time during the men’s gold medal Olympic game. I wanted to be able to walk out of the bar immediately if the Americans won the game, which is what I did as soon as Jack Hughes put the puck past Jordan Binnington. I was in a little bar in the...
Danielle Smith delivers a budget fitting of the NDP during a financial crisis — but Alberta’s economy is not in crisis
Alberta might be landlocked but the province is sinking in a sea of red ink — and red faces. An embarrassed United Conservative government admits its new deficit-riddled budget unveiled Thursday breaks the province’s own law against running deficits — a law the UCP introduced in 2023 when the government was flooded with oil-generated revenue and buoyed by an $11.6 billion surplus.
The high cost of climate alarmism
The premier defector from, and debunker of, the “Green Terror,” which holds that climate change is an existential challenge to the continuation of life on earth, is probably Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre and former director of the Danish government’s Environmental Assessment Institute. He has been a prominent climate change skeptic for years, and has roiled the...
Donald Trump may yet survive – but he is currently losing
There will be no Ceausescu moment, no “at long last sir have you no decency” turning point, no dramatic climax in which the tyrant’s power suddenly evaporates: That instantaneous, simultaneous crystallizing of long-inchoate doubts, wherein those who feared him lose their fear, and those who believed in him lose their faith. Life rarely supplies the needs of narrative, and if...
Poilievre finally counterattacks on the Trump front - The Alberta separation front, though, remains a problem
What happens when Canada needs bold action but the global figure most closely associated with political radicalism is the man Canadians hate the most in the entire world? Welcome to the conundrum facing Pierre Poilievre and Canada’s Conservatives. Lots of lights on Canada’s national dashboard are blinking red, but the country is fearful of the kind of radical disruption represented...