Drones, drones, drones: Why Carney wants to spend billions on flying robots
The Canadian military currently has thousands of drones at its disposal. “It’s not enough,” a senior commander admits. The Carney government wants to add some zeros to that number: It wants one million drones, at least. And in Thursday’s budget, it is committing $2.3 billion to get there.
Today’s politicians ignore affordability at their peril
Officially, Mark Carney’s government is saying that the Republicans’ stunning losses in the U.S. midterm elections are the Americans’ own business. But this government also knows that there’s a clear line connecting the midterms to the budget being unveiled in Canada on Thursday — and that’s the affordability crisis.
Trump and tariffs had a very bad night
There is no sugarcoating the results of the midterm elections in the United States for President Donald Trump and his administration. This was an astonishing and vast repudiation of the president. When Republicans lose in South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi, Texas, Kansas, Iowa, and Georgia solidifies as a blue state, it is impossible not to affirm that a judgment has...
U.S. midterms are a rebuke to the Republicans, but not the wipeout they deserved
By the standards of American elections, this was an earthquake. The two-party system is so entrenched, and American voters’ political identities so immovable, that shifts in the balance of power in any given election tend to be muted. So the Democrats’ gains last night are, in this context, historic. When all the votes are counted, they will probably emerge with...
Keep those elbows up, Canada
Austin, Texas may have sounded like a street party as the results came in last night, but even in Canada, if you listened closely enough, you could almost hear the collective sigh of relief. Nobody who was rooting for a win by the Democrats wanted to trust the polls or the predictions of a “blue wave” after the traumatic experiences...
Hallelujah! Voter sanity has returned to America
In his 2016 election campaign, Donald Trump made a remarkable observation. “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose supporters.” At a rally in Tennessee last month, he demonstrated that his attitude hadn’t changed. He told his audience, “I could say the stupidest things, and you clap.” Throughout the midterms campaign he...
The U.S. midterms were a productive cough. But America is still sick
American streets are being patrolled by murderous secret police. The constitutional order and the division of powers have broken down. Some major media outlets have become sycophantic devotees of the ruling party, and others are following suit. A sitting U.S. president has amassed billions of dollars in ill-gotten gains from brazen and scuzzy quid pro quos.
It’s Morning in America. By all Means, Blame Canada.
In the end, Canada didn’t have to interfere in the 2026 midterms to register our preference for an outcome. Americans did it for us. To compare the reasons for Tuesday’s midterm election result to any previous midterm election result is as pointless as comparing Donald Trump’s presidency to any previous presidency. Yes, there are statistics and charts and local issues...
Poilievre faces existential test in December byelections
Prime Minister Mark Carney has just called six byelections for early December. The results could have a determining effect on Pierre Poilievre’s future as Conservative leader. They could also provide the first clues as to whether the belligerent tone of the minority Parti Québécois government is finding favour with voters.
Liberals disappointed by Justin Trudeau leave Mark Carney little room for economic error
Mark Carney doesn’t seem like much of a prankster, but you could forgive Liberals who supported Justin Trudeau’s policies for feeling as if the prime minister is endlessly pulling their collective leg. Changes of direction are everywhere. The consumer carbon tax is gone. A new oil pipeline is on the way and major resource-development projects are on track to receive...
Carney’s warp-speed spending gets a pass from the central bank — for now
Watching the governor of the Bank of Canada field questions from MPs at the House of Commons finance committee was like viewing an episode of Star Trek: Next Generation, in which Jean-Luc Picard grapples with the Prime Directive. This general order prohibits Starfleet personnel from interfering with the natural development of primitive alien civilizations.
This is no way to ‘build Canada strong’
Opposition parties banded together this week in a futile attempt to hear more expert testimony on Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Building Canada Strong Act, C-39, after dozens of witnesses warned MPs the bill is deeply flawed, and more than 100 individual Canadians and groups urged amendments or begged the government to change course on legislation that will impact labour rights...
We need a serious fiscal anchor, less debt and a cautious budget
Around the world, borrowing costs are rising, growth is only middling, economic risks are tilted to the downside and, after six years of global shocks, most countries’ fiscal buffers are depleted. The IMF’s recent conclusion from all this is that governments need to rein in their spending and borrowing. This week’s federal budget should not take the view that Canada...
Stephen Harper’s legacy is being reconsidered; his new memoir reminds us why
Winston Churchill once said that history would be kind to him because he intended to write it. And he did, producing 13 volumes of memoirs over the course of his long life. More than a decade after leaving the Prime Minister’s Office, Stephen Harper’s memoirs have finally landed with a thump — all 656 pages of them.
Alberta’s electoral map shows who conservatives think ‘real’ Albertans are
It truly is quite astonishingly hypocritical that the same people who have made careers railing against the way Alberta is under-represented by population in the Senate seem to get quite huffily defensive over the tabling of new electoral districts that would leave urban Albertans meaningfully under-represented compared to rural ones. Earlier this year, Alberta’s Electoral Boundaries Commission unveiled a new...
Everyone’s looking for a handout from this week’s budget. Can Carney resist?
With Americans heading to the polls for their midterm elections, it feels like Thursday’s federal budget is getting a lot less media attention than usual. Ottawa might not mind this: every time U.S. President Donald Trump twitches, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s popularity rises. But while Washington commands the headlines, Canadians should check out the creeping sea of red ink below...
Mark Carney, the Commonwealth and Variable Geometry
Prime Minister Mark Carney is returning at this writing from the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in St. John’s, Antigua and Barbuda, where his participation continued a long tradition in which Canada has not merely attended Commonwealth meetings but helped shape the organization’s evolution. “As Canada charts its path forward in this new world, we look to our fellow...
Elon Musk has spent nearly half a billion dollars swaying the U.S. midterms. Politics isn’t the only reason he should stop
In general, so long as it’s legal and not hurting anyone, I think people should be allowed to spend their money on what they want to spend it on. But how much money should be allowed to affect the democratic process sits uncomfortably alongside that preference of mine. A system in which everyone has one vote, but one person can...
‘Red flags all over’ Carney government’s buy-in of AI company Cohere
I am not, it should be acknowledged, an expert on the merits of frontier AI models. I am, however, a reasonably seasoned observer of government ministers proclaiming solemnly that they have just made a very prudent investment of taxpayers’ money, on the most favourable of terms, as AI minister Evan Solomon did this past weekend. Sometimes it works out: the...
Can the Carney government's second budget help put Canada on a path to net zero?
In the spring of 2024, nine months before he formally entered politics, Mark Carney made a couple of public appearances to discuss the state of the Canadian economy and the possible paths forward.
Canada might be on a bit of a winning streak
It is the job of the columnist to pull a bunch of disparate stories together and find the common theme that links them all. If you’re feeling particularly ambitious, you could even try and create an entire grand narrative out of all the various little data points. I don’t think the recent wave of elections and referendums in this country...
Mark Carney has flipped the plan on how to protect Canada and here is why I’m concerned
On Thursday, the Carney government released a paper outlining its security policy framework, a long-awaited exposition of its view on how to protect Canadians in this troubled world. It needs to be carefully considered by Canadians, as it portrays a country very different from the internationalist-minded, human-rights-conscious, effective diplomatic participant that Canada has been for countless decades; a country that...
Trump is already showing signs he will leave office kicking and screaming
The United States and the world, including Canada, face two more years of Donald Trump’s presidency. It could very easily be the most dangerous time in recent history, depending on how the most iconoclastic and belligerent president in American history approaches his last years in office.
Byelections in Quebec, Ontario and Saskatchewan could increase Mark Carney’s majority
Technically speaking, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s majority in Parliament will be tested in a series of byelections called for Dec. 7. The Liberals currently hold 173 of Parliament’s 343 seats, with six vacancies now up for grabs. Of the six ridings, three are in Quebec — where the Liberals hope to pick up a long-time NDP seat in Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie...
Inside François-Philippe Champagne’s balancing act delivering Mark Carney’s agenda
François-Philippe Champagne says he often drops a real-world reminder into discussions he’s having with colleagues on the big decisions that loom before Mark Carney’s government these days. Call it the “mom test.” “I say: ‘I’m not sure my mother would understand what you just said,’ ” the finance minister explains. “I use that at cabinet. I’ve used that at caucus...
Why Mark Carney’s government is using Stephen Harper’s talking points to fight young people in court
Monday evening, in what was once a Bank of Montreal, Prime Minister Mark Carney dined across from his guest of honour, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, whom he seated next to former prime minister Stephen Harper. It is not the first time Carney has signalled close ties to Harper. In September...
Don’t bet against capable Netanyahu
Tuesday’s election in Israel will take months of intense bargaining between all of the more than ten parties now to be represented in the Knesset (Parliament), before the composition of the government and the prime minister are identified. The threshold in the popular vote required to elect a legislator is 3.25 per cent of the...
As prime minister, I saw firsthand that Vladimir Putin is truly evil
It was at the G8 where my growing animosity toward Vladimir Putin would start to become public. I had been accused of having a Cold War mentality and bringing that to Canada’s relations with Russia. The charge was simply not true. My view is that Russia’s natural long-term gravitation should be toward the West, not against it. I believe the...
If Carney wants to influence global affairs, he’ll need to fix Global Affairs first
Welcome to Grand Strategy Fall. The Carney government is publishing some serious stacks of paper describing how it plans to make Canada relevant again, including a national security strategy, released on Thursday; a new defence policy, already in effect but not yet published; and a full foreign policy.
Setting policy for medically assisted dying should never be rushed
There are some things you just have to get done quickly, and there are others where you should take the time you need to get it right. The key is knowing which is which. But when it comes to the thorny issues involved in medical assistance in dying, or MAID, the federal government is showing it doesn’t know, or care...
The speech Paul St-Pierre Plamondon never gave (or at least the Q&A)
“Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney declined to let Quebec’s newly-elected separatist premier deliver a speech at the Canada-European Union Summit in Montreal this week, sparking a wave of backlash in the French-speaking province
Canada’s influencers aren’t that influential after all
It’s no great secret that David Eby and the BC NDP were the biggest losers in Saturday’s BC election, which saw Lorne Doerksen and the BC Conservatives swept into power. Eby’s name has now become a verb, and anyone associated with his decision to call a snap election should be sent to the political equivalent of the Night’s Watch. But...
Hold off on the cheering: A Trump drubbing in the midterms could make things worse
The midterm elections next Tuesday could deal a deathly blow to Trumpism. Even political stats guru Nate Silver says it’s possible. A shellacking of the Republicans could convince the party that Americans are getting fed up with the White House gong show and want to move back to traditional conservative leadership. What jubilation that news would bring to the rational...
At this moment in Canadian politics, ‘normie’ is in
Former Alberta premier Ralph Klein would occasionally remark on the prosaic, conventional nature of the work he did as leader of his province. In 1998, Edmonton Sun journalist Neil Waugh wrote about Mr. Klein’s “good news” tour, during which the premier travelled across the province to spread the word about how “Albertans have turned their province into the envy of...
Did the B.C. Conservatives’ election win run against the federal tide, or with it?
Some days it feels as if Canadian democracy is a complete farce. Provincial governments elected with near majorities on the strength of 28 per cent of the vote – the same 28 per cent that in another province is worth just two seats. Referendum ballots with 10 loaded questions, none of them binding. Party leaders elected by children, non-citizens, and...
Why Doerkson’s B.C. win should give Poilievre pause
David Eby, the outgoing premier of British Columbia, must regret his decision to call a snap election after being soundly defeated this past weekend by an interim party leader few people outside of his immediate family and constituents knew six weeks ago. Say “hello” to Lorne Doerkson, the leader of the B.C. Conservative Party who is now the province’s premier-designate...
What B.C.‘s Conservative win and Alberta’s referenda should teach Pierre Poilievre
As Conservative MPs gather for their weekly caucus meetings, some are attempting to read the tea leaves from last week’s Alberta referenda and British Columbia’s big Conservative win. Saturday, David Eby’s early election gamble — two years into his NDP government’s mandate — failed spectacularly. B.C. interim Conservative leader Lorne Doerkson won a majority after running a disciplined campaign and...
Canada's big city green mayors are up against it
Apart from Alberta’s no vote on separation, this month’s elections and referendums have given progressive Canadians who care about climate little to cheer about. The country’s biggest oil and gas booster, Premier Danielle Smith is still ruling Alberta and her recent anti-immigrant referendum win, as narrow as it was, hasn’t totally dampened her intent to make new arrivals pay for...
Mark Carney, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, and the New ‘Guerre des Drapeaux’
If Mark Carney was anticipating a quiet, even raffiné Canada-EU Summit this week in this most European city of non-European cities in our most European country of non-European countries, he may already be disappointed. The Prime Minister, who recently accepted compliments from a reporter on his vastly improved French and credited his teacher for his fluency, may want to add...
David Eby treated B.C. voters like fools, and paid the price
British Columbians elected David Eby as their premier on Oct. 19, 2024. They elected New Democrat MLAs in 47 of 93 seats, giving his party a third term in government and a second consecutive majority government on that day. He was given a majority mandate to govern until 2028 if he wanted to. Speaking on election night, a freshly re-elected...