Mark Carney’s defence plan might do more than just fix Canada’s ailing military
As the United States expanded westward through the vast expanse of plains, mountains and desert in the middle of the 19th century, it had a problem: mules, the U.S. Army’s preferred pack animal, were dying and piling up. An enterprising major pitched an unusual idea: Why not try out some camels? It took two years of study and debate, but...
One Canadian economy needs one competition policy
Trade policy has dominated headlines since U.S. President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign against Canada started last winter. But the re-elected Carney government in Ottawa, along with its provincial counterparts, has a unique opportunity to use the full breadth of industrial policy to position Canada to succeed – and even thrive – in uncertain global conditions. While traditional industrial policy tools...
At the G7 meeting, look for Canada to do something unusual: Lead
Foreign policy, international affairs and Canada’s role in the world have rarely been top-of-mind concerns for most Canadians. There have been some exceptions. Wilfrid Laurier won the 1911 election by rejecting the Conservative government’s proposal for a reciprocal trade agreement with the United States. 77 years later, Brian Mulroney was re-elected while endorsing a fairly similar proposal. The terrorist attack...
Keep it simple, stupid
In politics, you can't say ten things and expect people to remember one. You have to say one thing ten times. Then say it ten more. That’s message discipline. Not because your audience is dim, but because they’re distracted. Ministers are distracted. Staff are distracted. Even you are probably distracted. Message discipline isn’t about dumbing things down. It’s about making...
Canadians said no to Trump – so why is Mark Carney pushing a Maga-inspired border bill?
Canada got duped. We avoided electing an outright Trump sympathiser, but we still elected a prime minister who will align our policies with the United States. Despite all the anti-Trump rhetoric and celebration of the idea that Canada was independent and had no desire to be like the US, we are now passing Maga-inspired legislation.
Mark Carney likes to talk about growing the economy, but do ordinary Canadians care?
We’ve entered a new political era in Canada, and one of its defining features has been the Carney government’s ambitious attempts to link economic growth to Canadians’ daily lives. In nearly every speech he’s made since becoming prime minister, Mark Carney has emphasized productivity, competitiveness and business investment — not as abstract goals, but as tools we can use to...
Mark Carney’s early moves are making the Conservatives look like waterboys
Ever since the election, the Conservative Party has been giving off strong “loser energy” vibes. It’s not simply that the party failed to form government, or even that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre lost his own seat (though it certainly doesn’t help that he’s forced to press his nose up against the House’s stained glass windows). It’s more so the air...
Alberta separatist vote inches forward but most Canadians say no, according to poll
In the 20th century, when countries waged internal battles over their future, the intellectual stature of proponents and opponents was rarely in doubt. Pierre Trudeau and René Lévesque were featured on the cover of TIME Magazine in February 1978. Jean Chrétien and Jacques Parizeau would have probably enjoyed the same treatment in October 1995, had the United States not been...
As climate induced hell-fires rage across the country, Canada looks to build pipelines — in the name of national unity
The country is literally on fire. So we better get to work building more pipelines, thereby enabling us to pump even more oil out of the ground and have even bigger, hotter, wilder, more out-of-control fires. This seems to be the main takeaway from the new détente reached between Ottawa and the provinces in the name of fighting the threat...
Premier Smith says Trudeau lives in Carney's camp and that's a problem
You didn’t really think it would be that easy to get rid of him. No, Trudeau lives on. The spirit of the former Liberal prime minister is alive. The phase out the oilsands prime minister, the I listen to my green guru Steven Guilbeault and can’t see that he is a walking disaster prime minister, the I screwed up so...
Breaking down interprovincial barriers can tackle the housing crisis, too
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent meeting with provincial premiers in Saskatoon demonstrated a shared desire to collaborate on projects that will benefit Canadians facing an unpredictable trade war with the United States. An adjacent and equally important issue calling for pan-Canadian co-operation is the growing housing, homelessness and affordability crisis. All of these existential problems were discussed throughout the spring...
$61 Billion for the Golden Dome?
The other day I noticed a CTV story about a poll, done by another polling firm, asking about Canada’s participation in the “Golden Dome” security arrangement being talked about by President Donald Trump. The firm in question does a lot of good work and so my point here is really only about this one question, and the risks of it...
Post-Mulroney, the Conservatives’ brand is ‘loser.’ It’s time for an overhaul
How have Conservatives fared since making the big swerve rightward in the early 1990s? We recall that under Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative banner they won majority governments in 1984 and 1988. Then along came the dividers, the ideologues of the Reform Party, who grabbed 52 seats in the 1993 election and then proceeded to swallow the old Tories whole.
How far-right ideas in Canada are working their way into mainstream politics
The fortunes of the Conservative Party and its leader Pierre Poilievre in Canada’s April 2025 election seemed to have shifted dramatically after United States President Donald Trump called for Canada to become the 51st state. Political pundits regarded Mark Carney and the Liberal Party’s victory — along with the failure of Poilievre to retain his own seat — as a...
War and Peace, 2025: Canada, NATO and a Rogue America
In the garden of the United Nations headquarters in New York stands a sculpture depicting a man hammering a sword into a plowshare. It is the work of Soviet-era monumentalist Evgeny Vuchetich, creator of The Motherland Calls, the war memorial in Stalingrad (now Volgograd), site of the single deadliest battle in the history of war, and grave of more than...
Will Carney’s moonshot become cannon fodder?
Domestically, the biggest current threat to Mark Carney’s success is tripping over his own heels while trying to keep a blistering pace towards tangible accomplishments. Prime Minister Mark Carney seems to be throwing the practice of conventional political expectation management right out the window, and is shooting for the stars with everything he does. While this may be refreshing, it’s...
Is addressing anti-Black racism in Canada still a policy priority?
Five years ago, on May 25, 2020, Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd in the United States and set off international protests against anti-Black racism and police violence. This was supposed to be a turning point in the fight against racism. Institutional leaders across Canada pledged to address anti-Black racism. It began with statements of solidarity that morphed into task forces...
Here is a two-step plan to rebuild Canada’s economy and it isn’t centred on our natural resources
Canada’s premiers and prime minister want the world to know that they are ready to build: pipelines, a revitalized military, new high-speed transit, an energy corridor. But if Canada is to build a truly national economy and to effectively respond to the Trump administration’s economic instability and isolation, it needs a larger, more skilled, and more adaptive workforce.
Four myths (and one truth) about the 2025 federal election
Elections are messy, emotional, and complex, and the 2025 Canadian federal election was no exception. In the weeks since the results came in, I’ve consumed a lot of commentary, analysis, and hot takes from journalists, pundits, campaign operatives, and academics. Some of it matches what I saw in the data. But a lot of it doesn’t.
Carney now has billions of reasons to buy fighter planes other than F-35s
The auditor general’s report is a reminder that they're part of the solution to air security, but Canada also needs a more practical option
Stop harassing Canadian drinkers
Two Senate bills would ban alcohol advertising and require warning labels on bottles and cans. But the parallel with tobacco is misguided
Mark Carney says sacrifice is necessary to pay for defence spending. So what will Canadians be asked to do?
Mark Carney’s bold new plan to increase Canada’s defence spending comes with two price tags. The prime minister’s announcement was clear on one of them: more than $9 billion will be injected into military spending this year alone, and increases in the years after. The other price — “sacrifice” — got a mention from Carney, but little more by way...
Liberals finally making Canada's defence a priority
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...
Pierre Poilievre Is Not Backing Down
THE COUNTRY SITS on the edge of its seat, obsessed with the question: Wither Pierre Poilievre?
Canada Goose Built a Luxury Empire by Betting Big on China
CANADA GOOSE built its brand on extremes. It outfits movie stars, Arctic scientists, and intrepid mountaineers in fur-trimmed, goose- and duck-down parkas that are engineered for temperatures as low as minus thirty degrees and retail for up to $2,145. The company is also careful to project a socially conscious side, raising millions for polar bear conservation and amassing the world’s...
Carney’s chief of staff choice a throwback to better days
Bill Davis, one of Canada’ finest premiers and an icon of effective governance, was asked how many political staff he had in his premier’s office. After musing for a few seconds, he said, ‘’I don’t think there were ever more than 13, I knew them all well — even their families.” Asked how many he thought were in Premier Doug...
Carney’s new defence plan takes seriously the darker world we're now living in
Justin Trudeau went to Washington for last year’s NATO summit and unveiled what he called a “credible, verifiable path” to spending two per cent of Canada’s GDP on defence … by 2032. Article content The lack of urgency and ambition was reflected in the then prime minister’s belief that two per cent is a “nominal target” that makes for easy...
Danielle Smith is playing nice with Carney — Poilievre is not
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith plays ball with Carney unless or until he screws over Alberta
Carney takes a risk by choosing guns over butter
Of all the turnarounds engineered by Prime Minister Mark Carney over the past few months, none is bigger than the enormous commitment to new defence spending he announced on Monday. For in this case Carney isn’t just reversing Justin Trudeau’s policies (we’re all used to that by now). He’s pulling a U-turn on himself. As recently as April, Carney was...
Canada’s Role in the New Transatlantic Security Dynamic
The Trump administration’s increasingly confrontational approach to NATO, and its questioning whether America remains the primary guarantor of European security, has forced members to rethink their role in, and approach to, the Alliance. This includes Canada, which maintains a strong national interest in a secure European continent and will want to respond accordingly.
Never mind the numbers, Carney's pledge to boost defence spending is welcome news
Don’t get me wrong, anything that moves Canada closer to its two-per-cent-of-GDP commitment for national defence spending is a good thing. I’m not sure we can instantly achieve the many good things Prime Minister Mark Carney promised Monday in a speech in Toronto. For instance, Carney promised to raise defence spending to two per cent from 1.7 per cent of...
Carney, Eby and Ford should cool their deregulatory rush
Canada is weakening environmental safeguards and threatening relationships with the country’s First Nations in a mad rush to generate new resource-extraction developments. If steps aren’t taken quickly to bring First Nations onside with major projects, Canada should prepare for strained relations and a barrage of court injunctions and blockades with enormous power to slow industry.
Mark Carney can’t be allowed to ram through his plan to build big
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. And so on Friday, when Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a new omnibus bill that gives cabinet the right to circumvent environmental laws in the name of getting big resource projects built, perhaps it was noteworthy that Environment and Climate Minister Julie Dabrusin was not one of the five cabinet ministers...
Conservatives need to do some serious soul-searching
If any political party in the country needs to do some serious soul-searching, it is the Conservative Party of Canada. For starters, the party managed to lose an election it was widely expected to win, and win in a rout of the hapless Trudeau Liberals.
The Election Was a Warning. Canada Needs Dramatic Change
The federal election was, at best, a reprieve for Canadian sovereignty, democracy and citizen well-being. It is also a warning: a new approach that addresses the forces of division and demolition is desperately needed. In a remarkable demonstration of civic solidarity and political pragmatism, many Canadians, including urban New Democrats and nationalist Bloc Québécois supporters, voted strategically to prevent a...
How long will Mark Carney’s honeymoon last?
Susan Delacourt: Thanks to Doug Ford, I have had a song stuck in my head for days this week. “Love is in the Air,” a one-hit wonder from the 1970s, turned into the soundtrack of the first ministers’ meeting after the Ontario premier walked in singing it.
The Quebec Liberal leadership contender who could put a stop to a surging separatist tide
For those of us who’ve been through the wringer of very divisive referendums, the threat of separatism is devoid of charm. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, an able politician whose success is founded on an understated populism, has decided to put her own threat under wraps for the time being and that’s a very good thing for Canada. Meanwhile, you guessed...