The fun thing about Ottawa is that it’s a town where people will swear with a straight face that they’re not thinking about a thing they are definitely thinking about, which is also the thing everyone is talking about. This week, that thing is snap-election speculation. It’s easy to picture the polls batting their eyelashes and waving seductively at the...
Everybody knows what’s happening with Donald Trump’s threat to block the opening of a Detroit-Windsor bridge. At least, everybody in the political system in Washington and Ottawa. It’s a shakedown, with a choke point in Canada-U.S. relations as leverage. Detroit border crossings have been used that way for years. Now it’s a pretty good analogy for all of U.S. foreign...
They are greyer now: greyer of hair and face, but also in perception. In their younger days, they saw things more in black and white, as we saw them. But the years have passed, and now we see them through a mist of … what? Nostalgia? Ambivalence? Maybe say complexity, and respect, and, finally, gratitude. They are the lions in...
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....
It’s not hard to imagine what would have happened if a year ago, or even a few months ago, Donald Trump had threatened to block the new Gordie Howe International Bridge linking Windsor, Ont., and Detroit. Shock and horror on the Canadian side. Front-page coverage in the Canadian media. Opposition calls for the government to do something.
Canada has a big, beautiful piece of infrastructure we think you might be interested in. It’s a tremendous, wonderful bridge, and it’s already been paid for — you only have to take the credit. And just because it’s you, because you’re such a clever and strong president, we named it for the best right-winger the Detroit Red Wings ever had...
Last week Conservative MP for Bowmanville-Oshawa North, Jamil Jivani, stated that he was going down to Washington, DC, in an effort to help move Canada-US trade relations along. Jivani has a longstanding friendship with the US Vice President JD Vance, so it would make sense for him to leverage his personal relationships in a professional capacity. Except, of course, Jivani...
The mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge is the kind of tragedy that Canada, unfortunately, has seen too often in recent decades. It will take some time to fully understand how this horror occurred. But we know the results. Nine people are dead: A mother, an educator, six children, and the shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar.
As part of his trip to Beijing last month, Prime Minister Mark Carney met with Zhao Leji, the third-ranking member of the 20th Chinese Communist Party Politburo and chair of the standing committee of the National People’s Congress. The readout that emerged from the meeting said they talked about the importance of ongoing parliamentary exchanges and “opportunities for enhanced understanding...
After Donald Trump came out this week with his latest instalment in his Browbeat Thy Neighbour series – his dip into Loo Loo Land with his Truth Social threat to block the opening of the Gordie Howe Bridge – I was keen to check in on the American reaction, from readers in both conservative and liberal media. Out of about...
If there’s one thing that’s driving me a little nuts about the active petition to foist a separation referendum on Alberta, it’s this: the claim that the process is some kind of benign and beautiful expression of democracy. Because, frankly, no, that’s not really how our democratic system is supposed to work. Canada is not California — which uses tools...
Is artificial intelligence the salvation of mankind, or its downfall? Are markets justified in bidding up AI stocks as high as they have, or is it all a bubble? Will we look back on the hundreds of billions of dollars the AI titans are currently investing in capacity as having laid the foundations for a new age of prosperity, or...
School shootings are the most senseless, shattering event that can befall a community. A feeling of ultimate loss grips the entire nation. Political leaders often have nothing more to offer than their condolences, but people want more than that. They are looking for reassurance, empathy and a sense that someone will do something about it.
When Stephen Harper was Prime Minister I wrote many columns warning about the influence that right wing Americans had on his political operation, and I spent many dreary hours trying to trace his connections south of the border. I now wonder if that was time well spent because, since the second election of Donald Trump, it has become clear that...
As a politician, federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has many well-documented strengths. He is a relentless critic of the government he wishes to replace. He grew both his party’s vote share and parliamentary seat count in the last election, bringing the CPC to within spitting distance of victory. And who could blame him for still buzzing over an 87.4 per...
The former PM has devoted much of his post-political career to helping to empower right-wing political parties, but drew the line at threatening Canada’s existence. Stephen Harper came east to celebrate the 20th anniversary of something. While he was at it, the former Conservative prime minister—whether by design or coincidence—took on the task for his party of covering for the...
PIERRE POILIEVRE GAMBLED with his political future—and won—at the Conservative Party of Canada convention in Calgary two weeks ago. Delegates, who gathered under unseasonably warm January skies courtesy of a timely Chinook, were asked whether to grant their leader a vote of confidence. Late that Friday night, the verdict was delivered: 87.4 percent of those who cast a ballot voted...
"Question period is broken," Liberal MP Corey Hogan told the House of Commons last week. In fairness to the current state of question period — and those responsible for it — this is hardly a new complaint. One could spend a long time discussing how Parliament's daily airing of grievances came to be the way it is or who has...
Donald Trump’s threat to prevent the opening of the new Gordie Howe International Bridge unless Canada compensates the United States is but the latest chapter in a series of irrational threats and unjustified punitive measures he has inflicted on our country. Never mind that Canadian taxpayers paid $6 billion for the bridge, which is why there will be a toll...
As Albertans await some clarity from the premier as to whether she’s prepared to champion the cause of Confederation or take on the separatists in any meaningful sense, it falls to others to take up the mantle of national unity.
The prospect of Alberta leaving Canada is such a hot topic that the other potential “leavers” have been overlooked.
We’re becoming familiar with the Alberta government’s give-me-this-or-else demands. The latest one is flimsier than most: it’s based on a falsehood and it amounts to threatening to punch yourself in the face if you don’t get your way. Still, it bears attention because it points to a fundamental flaw in the Alberta separation project, which can no longer be dismissed...
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.
The Canadian government’s response to the 20-year sentence imposed on Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai is the first test of the government’s new “pragmatic engagement” with China. The early signs are that Ottawa is broadly in favour of the pursuit of justice, as long as it doesn’t hamper its trade policy.
In December 2004 I was sitting in the Official Opposition Leader’s Office and the holder of that office, Stephen Harper, walked in. We were working on an election platform because we expected Paul Martin to spring an election quickly after Peter MacKay and Harper merged their respective parties into the Conservative Party of Canada.
Retired general Wayne Eyre, Canada’s former chief of the defence staff, says this country’s security and sovereignty would be best protected if we possessed our own nuclear weapons and the delivery systems to fire them at whatever targets we deemed in need of vaporization. He didn’t recommend starting a program at once, but said it would be the only real...
Canada stands at a pivotal moment in its AI journey. New research from Strand Partners, conducted on behalf of AWS Canada, reveals that 650,000 Canadian businesses have embraced artificial intelligence—a 33% increase year-over-year that outpaces the global adoption of the internet. With one business adopting AI every three minutes, the momentum is clear. Yet the choices we make today –...
A rogue ambassador to the United States, a new office in Washington for the “Commonwealth of Alberta,” another Mark Carney world tour: we’re just over a month into 2026, and already Canadian diplomacy is headed madly off in all directions. Let’s start with Conservative MP Jamil Jivani, who last week heeded a call that apparently he alone could hear and...
For the first time since his defeat a decade ago, Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper took centre stage this week with a refreshing show of bipartisanship and a call for national unity — a message the country and his party needed to hear. The occasion was Harperpalooza or Harperfest as some Conservative staffers referred to the celebrations, a week’s worth...
The cause was given an exception boost this week. The last week has been a turning point for the Conservative Party of Canada. Its devotees observed the 20th anniversary of the coming to office of Stephen Harper at the head of a reconstructed Conservative party that merged the old Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance/Reform Party. Stephen Harper thus became...
The whole co-operation initiative was obviously a distasteful task to Pierre Poilievre, one that circumstances and strategists have foisted upon him. When he went to meet Prime Minister Mark Carney on Wednesday to talk about it, his opposite number appeared equally sincere. This was a week when talk of co-operation seemed to be breaking out all over Ottawa. But the...
Former prime minister Stephen Harper spoke at an event earlier this week marking the 20th anniversary since forming his Conservative government. The Political Pulse Panel reviews Harper’s comments on Canada’s relationship with the U.S., and his urging for co-operation among all parties amid America’s aggression.
It is doubtful any country has ever been in quite the national security dilemma Canada now finds itself in: with so much land and so few people to defend it; wedged between two expansionist superpowers, one of which was until very recently our best defence against the other, but which has since become more or less aligned with it. The...
The speech heard round the world has had much impact. Mark Carney’s message to Canadians and everyone else has been widely quoted, lauded, analyzed, criticized and described as the most important speech on Canadian foreign policy since Louis St Laurent’s Grey Lecture at the University of Toronto in 1947. In discussing the speech this week with Ben Rowswell, former Canadian...
Every day, it seems, Donald Trump wields his presidential powers to undermine the Western alliance. Within the past week or so he has threatened new tariffs against Canadian aircraft exports, against South Korea and against any country (but principally Mexico) that sells oil to Cuba. And of course, there was his threat in January to annex Greenland and to tariff...
For decades, Canada has been using a secret, expansive, junk-ridden database of suspected terrorists, operated by the United States government. Known as Tipoff U.S./Canada — or TUSCAN — it serves as a form of no-fly list. Only this one is easier to be added to and harder to get removed from.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is playing with fire. Depending on what happens in the next few months, that fire could consume Smith, her Alberta United Conservative Party government, the province of Alberta, and Canada as we know it today. As premier of Alberta, Smith is trying to play the dangerous game of appeasing the separatist movement in the province while...
What an awfully nice, careful people we are. So reluctant to cause offence, even when someone spits in our collective eye. The tiny group of Alberta separatists, who are openly seeking support from a hostile Trump administration to break up the country are, at least in a political sense, spitting in our eye. They boast about meeting with U.S. officials...
CONSERVATIVE DELEGATES’ resounding show of support for Pierre Poilievre’s leadership in Calgary is more interesting than a more tentative vote would have been. The way people talk about Poilievre in Ottawa and Toronto, including a lot of long-time Conservatives, suggests they think he’s trying to be like Prime Minister Mark Carney, and he’s bad at it. The weekend’s events in...
