Jim Dinning tells the Post’s John Ivison why he is sympathetic to Premier Danielle Smith’s push to give separatists the chance to express their strongly held sentiments in a referendum
Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney had a concise way of describing the job’s main responsibility. Of all the files that land on a prime minister’s desk, he liked to say, two can never be delegated to anyone else: national unity, and the relationship with the United States.
The political significance of 2 consecutive quarters of bad GDP data. Pierre Poilievre popped up before reporters who were waiting outside a cabinet meeting on Tuesday and in the span of 10 minutes the Conservative leader managed to use the word "recession" more than two dozen times. "Mr. Trump's policies are affecting all G7 countries, and none of them are...
We recall last year when U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra said that annexation talk was over. “From my standpoint, from the President’s standpoint, 51st state’s not coming back,” he said. “It’s done.” Yeah, sure. This week Donald Trump posted “51st State” on Truth Social. It came with a link to an article about the Canadian economy dipping into a recession, the...
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...
Are Canadians worried? Apparently not. So what's wrong with us? Has 'elbows up' gone to our heads?
In the course of researching my biography on Irwin Cotler, I spoke with his old McGill debating partner, Moses Znaimer, the CityTV and MuchMusic founder. In typically unfiltered Znaimer fashion he wondered aloud what the former Liberal party justice minister thought about his old party, “which betrayed the Jewish community, in favour of the huge Muslim influx, of which they...
Watching Canada slide toward another episode of national unity trauma has been profoundly saddening for those of us who lived through the country’s last, near-death encounter with a secession crisis. In 1995, I was serving as assistant secretary of constitutional affairs in the Privy Council Office, responsible for generating policy arguments and messaging for the federalist coalition. The last stage...
There’s a fantasy among some Alberta separatists that Quebec separatists are their friends. Not likely. They are risky company for an Alberta politician of any stripe. As Premier Danielle Smith visits Quebec for friendly talks with the new premier, Christine Frechette, she knows who to avoid. It’s much noted in Quebec that the separatist Parti Quebecois could win a provincial...
To start the week, in this column space, you would have read how Alberta Premier Danielle Smith gave us a ballpark price tag for Alberta leaving Canada and becoming its own country. It was a ballpark number. Around $400 billion in start-up costs for an independent Alberta. $25 billion to $50 billion in yearly costs.
Ontarians could soon be facing a massive energy bill. Electricity demand between now and 2050 will likely double, according to projections, and to meet it Doug Ford’s government intends to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on new nuclear reactors alone. Throw in anticipated refurbishments of existing reactors, plus new transmission lines and other power generation projects, and the costs...
Someone tuning in to the victory address by new B.C. Conservative leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay could have been forgiven if they thought they’d somehow stumbled across a speech being given by a U.S. Republican from Texas. “In our national anthem, we cry out to God to make our land glorious and free,” Ms. Findlay told the gathering of Conservative party faithful...
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith drops a political bomb, a financial bomb, a bomb dropped on the separatist assumptions of way more gain than pain by Alberta leaving Canada and striking out on its own. Almost $400 billion in start-up costs to set up an independent Alberta. Roughly $80,000 for every Albertan. Somewhere between $25 billion and $50 billion in yearly...
Ever since Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced the referendum on a referendum there has been a flurry of speculation from one end of the country to the other. Most of it comes in the form of a warning: things could look much more dire if this confusing referendum question propulses Albertans into a real referendum on separation. Separatists don’t give...
Mark Carney is usually good at speaking truth to power, but yesterday he failed. In an address to Jewish Canadians at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, he named the problem — rampant antisemitism — but failed to offer a solution. He failed to send a message to those causing the problem. And he failed to understand the nature of Canada itself.
Steven Guilbeault finally had enough. The renewed deal between Alberta and Ottawa, which lowers the headline industrial carbon price and weakens or eliminates other climate policies he fought for as the minister of environment and climate change, made it abundantly clear that he could no longer sit in the Liberal caucus. Indeed, the writing was so obviously on the political...
When reporters asked Mark Carney about Steven Guilbeault’s decision to quit the Liberal caucus and his seat, months after walking out of cabinet over the Alberta MOU, the Prime Minister was gracious. He wished him and his family well. As reported by Radio-Canada, Carney said: “C’est sa décision, c’est normal, c’est la vie” — it’s his decision, it’s normal, that’s...
The first promise made by the federal Liberals in their last election platform — literally — was to unite the country by building one economy, so that Canadians can work wherever they want and goods can move freely from coast to coast. “Unleashing free trade” would “give ourselves much more than any foreign government, including the U.S., can ever take...
Central Canadian political elites are upset with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s decision to hold a referendum that might eventually lead to a sovereign Alberta. While sovereigntist sentiment in Quebec has long been acknowledged and accommodated in English Canada, Western alienation is treated with who-do-they-think-they-are condescension.
If this president has somehow permanently changed American politics, if there is a Trump 2.0 with someone like J.D. Vance, Canada must embrace the wider world, as Mark Carney is doing. It's not only prudent, it is essential.
Former federal cabinet minister Kerry-Lynne Findlay cast herself as the one, true blue Conservative in the campaign for the B.C. party leadership that culminated Saturday evening with her narrow, fourth ballot victory. Article content “B.C. Liberal insiders are trying to take over the Conservative party of B.C.,” declared Findlay’s campaign literature. “They want to steal the Conservative name and push...
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.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s separation referendum is federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s opportunity. If he takes it. Alberta is ground zero for the conservative movement in Canada. It has long asserted a more populist, free market, small government hold on the Conservative Party of Canada, past and present. It has outsized political influence on the direction of the party, given...
One word kept coming up this week, as Steven Guilbeault tendered his resignation from a government in which he no longer thought he could do his most important work. The word was “room.” As in: Is there still room on the Liberal benches for an ardent environmentalist? Can the party offer room for pipeline and resource proponents, alongside people animated...
If you’re a patriotic Canadian who believes we need to build up this country as rarely before, Mark Carney wants you to put your own dollars into it. And despite a high degree of skepticism among his friends in the financial world, he’s serious about offering a government-backed guarantee that you’ll get your money back.
News of strain in Canada’s economy comes after more than a year of a trade war with the U.S. — and a day after Prime Minister Mark Carney pitches Canada as a tool to help make America great again. The Pulse Panel weighs in.
When I first went to Ottawa as a member of Parliament, I didn’t go because I believed the system was working. Quite the opposite. Like many Albertans, I was frustrated. Western Canada was too often ignored, our industries were misunderstood and decisions affecting our livelihoods were being made by people who had little understanding of how this country works outside...
Steven Guilbeault is gone, but, oh, the wreckage he leaves behind. No single politician, apart from ex-prime minister Justin Trudeau, did more to create today’s separatist movement in this province. The former environment minister’s extremist climate policies, coupled with massive expansion of federal power, imprinted a fixed belief that Liberal Ottawa despises Alberta and can never be trusted.
I have a pretty good idea what a lot of people think I should say about Alberta’s sovereignty referendum, and I have a good idea of what I actually think. The problem is the two don’t line up very well. What a lot of people think that I (and others like me) should say is, mostly, nothing. As an opinionator...
As Alberta careens toward a bedevilling referendum this fall, Team Canada finds itself in desperate need of a captain. Premier Danielle Smith got us into this mess, so it shouldn’t be her. Provincial NDP leader Naheed Nenshi, an unimpressive adversary of the premier’s thus far, would be an uninspired choice.
The battle for the heart of the UCP is finally on. Premier Danielle Smith’s ministers and MLAs are firing out messages to current and former party members. It’s time to take the UCP back from the fringe separatists. That’s the theme.
The reality is that many Albertans — and not just those already convinced that separation is the only answer — are legitimately frustrated with their province’s status in Canada.
The speech Mark Carney delivered to the Economic Club of New York on Thursday was many things. In the room, it was a stability balm amid a global drama: Canada is the reasonable, rational source of solutions, not problems. “A country that’s predictable, reliable and principled in a world that’s anything but,” Carney said in his summation. As a narrative...
As the Western premiers pulled on Team Canada soccer jerseys at the close of their meeting in Kananaskis on Tuesday, some kind of barbed comment was inevitable. Wab Kinew obliged. “I just want to tell Premier (Danielle) Smith, that she looks great in a Team Canada jersey,” the Manitoba premier said, pointedly. As host of the conference, Smith may have...
Canada will buy the GlobalEye aircraft from Swedish manufacturer Saab, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced on Wednesday at the CANSEC defence industry conference in Ottawa. Canadians could be forgiven for having two questions: What does that mean? And also, what does it mean?
Important referendums are usually defeated. But successful or not, they always divide families, communities and nations. The wreckage stems from the high emotion, the purely polemical arguments and, most often, the nasty personal attacks that are part of a referendum circus. Canada, like most advanced democracies, has held very few referendums. In part, that is so because governments don’t like...
Canada has plenty of land, relatively few people, and a housing affordability problem. What’s this got to do with high speed rail? The discussion around housing affordability often stalls out at the conundrum of how to protect the asset values of those who own homes today, while at the same time giving those who want to own a home a...
If our troops are fighting in Latvia, or if Ottawa fails to renew CUSMA, a more North American policy could gain favour with voters
Liberal MP Steven Guilbeault was, for a time, the right man for the moment. That moment was 2019 and a few years that followed, before the worst polarizing effects and economic shockwaves of the COVID pandemic took hold and climate change still rates as a top political concern for Canadians. Guilbeault, a former Greenpeace activist turned Liberal politician, based much...
The horror! The horror! Before the night is over, one side will paint a horrifying picture of an independent Alberta and the other side will speak of shameless fear mongering. The man was ready. He had what he believed was his ace in the hole. He was just waiting for the chance to use it. It didn’t take long.
