Peter Nicholson: Thanks, Chris. Since the events of July 2 we have quite a bit more information on the agreement between Canada and Alberta over the rules that are going to govern both the pipeline and oil sands production developments. I think there is a growing recognition that a pipeline shouldn’t be a “field of dreams” – that it is...
Prime Minister Carney has made clear from the outset of his time in office that without a commitment to implement the Pathways carbon capture and storage (CCS) project, there would be no new bitumen pipeline to the B.C. coast. The expectation was formalized in the Nov. 27 Alberta-Ottawa MOU and the May 15 Implementation Agreement. The oil sands industry has...
An Indigenous couple’s remains, repatriated to Canada six years ago, have yet to find a final resting place because their “spiritual belongings” are being held by museums in the United Kingdom. Six objects associated with Demasduit and Nonosabasut, among the last of the Beothuks of Newfoundland, are being retained by the National Museums Scotland and by the British Museum. Thanks...
Canada’s political and media spheres seem to have developed an unhealthy obsession with the CUSMA. Will it survive the whims and shifting moods of the US president? Will we ever regain the level of access to the American market that we took for granted just a few years ago? What price will we have to pay to preserve what remains...
The great promise of the post-war era was that growth and fairness could advance together. That promise is breaking down – not just because of government failures, but because the nature of growth has changed. The same knowledge economy that is generating extraordinary growth requires fewer people to create it – and concentrates its rewards in fewer hands. Today’s increasingly...
In 1995 the Canadian economy was not exactly humming along – it still hadn’t got its mojo back after the severe 1990-92 recession. The unemployment rate was 9.5%, GDP per capita had only just made it back to the level of 1989, and steep spending cuts in Paul Martin’s February budget signaled more contraction.
The name tags that RCMP officers are required to wear for identification no longer have to display their actual names, a move intended to protect them from digital bad actors. In a significant amendment to the Mounties’ Uniform Dress Manual, regular members now can choose to display only their regimental numbers rather than their names.
Today’s Roundtable discussion began with an email from former Bank of Canada governor and deputy minister of finance David Dodge to fellow Sage contributors. David posed this question and observation: “Can Canada still afford the welfare state we built in the 1960s when domestic productivity, labour force growth and investment were high and the global economic conditions were favourable? In...
I once had a very wealthy colleague who owned an Aston Martin. That’s the four-hundred-thousand-dollar car best known as James Bond’s car. He proudly drove it everywhere. But on weekdays, he drove a Toyota Camry. That more modest vehicle, he explained, was for the office. He didn’t want clients pulling into the visitors’ lot beside an Aston Martin they were...
A project to ensure Order of Canada recipients better reflect Canada’s diversity appears to have hit a cultural barrier that could limit Indigenous participation.
Canada’s ambition to become an energy superpower has revived calls for a new oil pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific coast. The provincial government strongly supports the idea, agreeing to submit a proposal to the federal Major Projects Office by July 1. Alberta argues that inadequate pipeline capacity is the principal obstacle to expanding oil sands production and increasing Canada’s...
The Liberal government in Ottawa is in the middle of a review of the Access to Information Act, required by law every five years. It’s being run by officials at Treasury Board Secretariat, a powerful central agency. So much is happening in Ottawa these days that the exercise is flying below the radar, like a ground-hugging drone.
The Parti Québécois just released its Livre bleu, a 524-page document detailing its arguments in favor of Quebec’s independence. The separatist party is inviting Quebecers to provide suggestions for a second version, I’d have a lot of recommendations, of course - on all topics - but in this short text, I’ll stick to the parts where I’m specifically criticized by...
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s own department, the Privy Council Office (PCO), has become the bad boy of freedom of information in Canada.
Secrecy surrounding cabinet documents is so absolute in Canada that critics look to theology and astrophysics for metaphors to describe it. Federal cabinet records in Canada are treated as “sacred artefacts to be shrouded in mystery for decades, hidden in a black hole beyond the contemplation of judges, commissioners, or citizens.”
In 2007, Roger Martin, then dean of the Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto, wrote a book called The Opposable Mind. It argued that the most successful leaders tend to be “integrative thinkers,” by which he meant they tackled problems holistically rather than breaking them down into component parts. Instead of seeking trade-offs, they are at ease with...
“Despite the ongoing conflict between Hezbollah and Israel which has resulted in thousands of deaths and injuries…Lebanon moved forward with the ban on antipersonnel landmines,” said the Ottawa-based group Mines Action Canada in a statement, celebrating the new addition.
Canada’s privacy laws are supposed to protect ordinary citizens from unwarranted intrusions into their personal lives. But they can also protect pedophiles. Dead pedophiles. Dead pedophiles from America.
If you want to sound wise these days, just blame the crazy state of the world on polarization. If you want to sound really wise, say that fighting polarization needs to be part of the political agenda and be sure to blame social media and Donald Trump (although not necessarily in that order) for the current chaos. Despite it being...
An F-35 crash in Alaska should give shivers to Canada’s military. The pilot survived thankfully, but the $200 million plane was completely destroyed.
By now, most of you reading this column are aware of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s announcement earlier this week that the government is launching a sovereign wealth fund (entitled the Canada Strong Fund). There is, in theory, nothing wrong with such an idea. Indeed, the logic behind such a fund is quite sound.
Earlier this month, the federal government quietly released its annual inventory of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, now with data up to 2024. The news was not good. Carbon pollution reduction effectively stalled in 2024 (down a measly 0.3 per cent from the previous year and down only 10 per cent from 2005). Canada, simply put, is not on the trajectory...
I nearly drove off the road when I heard Pope Leo’s powerful message on the radio this week.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s office wants to bust up a monopoly. I think I’m the target. Let me explain. The Privy Council Office (PCO), home of the prime minister and cabinet, has been flooded with complaints about its failures to comply with the Access to Information Act.
Canadian troops may be only days away from deploying to the Middle East to aid the U.S.’s and Israel’s war on Iran. The latest indication is a joint statement expressing concern about Iran’s restriction of oil tankers through the narrow Strait of Hormuz signed by Prime Minister Mark Carney and NATO allies late in the week.
Canadians who have neglected to pay their taxes to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) have been coming forward in droves to take advantage of new amnesty rules.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s spurious excuses for gutting the province’s freedom-of-information (FOI) law are exactly why we need transparency legislation in the first place: governments are habitual liars. Last week, the Ford government said it plans to weaken its sunshine law by erecting brick walls around every minister’s office, including the premier’s. Freedom-of-information requests will no longer be accepted. The...
For a moment there, it looked like Mark Carney would be the torchbearer for countries opposed to Trump’s big power politics. Now, not so much. In fact, it seems Prime Minister Carney is ready to embrace the “end of the international rules-based order” rather than oppose it – thanks to the confusing and contradictory statements by the Canadian government following...
On Thursday, the Liberal government finally got around to asking ordinary Canadians how to fix the country’s premier transparency law, the Access to Information Act. The Act, dating from 1983, empowers citizens to hold governments to account through requests for internal information.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was a monster. For close to thirty years, he presided over a police state that violated human rights at home and exported terror to the world. Now he is dead, crushed by the American assault on Iran that flattened his compound and sparked a regional war. From Tehran to Toronto, thousands of Iranians are celebrating...
Prime Minister Mark Carney has finally revealed his plan to turn Canada into a weapons-exporting global mega-power. “In total, the Defence Industrial Strategy is an investment of over half a trillion dollars in Canadian security, economic prosperity, and our sovereignty,” he announced this week, promising to create over 125 thousand “high-paying careers” building weapons and otherwise supplying the Canadian military...
Cuba has been plunged into darkness. Schools, hospitals and essential services are hit by rolling 12-hour blackouts. Foreigners, including Canadians, have fled. Even worse, infant mortality is climbing.
Lisa Banfield, common-law wife of the man who meticulously slaughtered 22 people six years ago, recently published a memoir of her life-on-eggshells with a controlling killer.
The head of Ottawa’s public service got an earful from the federal information commissioner about the dismal state of access to information – the sign of a growing rift between the Liberal government and Parliament’s watchdog on transparency. At a Nov. 12 meeting, Caroline Maynard presented Michael Sabia, clerk of the Privy Council, with statistics detailing the deterioration of the...
The RCMP has handed out 23 awards for excellence to officers and employees in Nova Scotia for their performance during the April 2020 mass murders, in which a gunman impersonating a Mountie murdered 22 people in cold blood.
Library and Archives Canada (LAC) gets a lot of flak for its processing of Access to Information Act (ATIA) requests, especially for its long delays to respond. But lately they’ve been doing a few things right.
A thorough media scan reveals practically no discussion about this important escalation, which would put Canada among only a few Western navies (the United States, the United Kingdom, and France) that operate submarine-launched land-attack weapons.
You may want to dust off your Bescherelles, Canadian politicos: the battle for the future of Québec is where things are going to happen in 2026. In case you missed it, today the new leader of the Québec Liberal Party, Pablo Rodriguez, announced his resignation. His resignation was precipitated by a terrible, scandalous month for the QLP — one that...
The federal government this week dumped its load of annual statistics about citizens’ use of the Access to Information Act.
Stephen Thorne has died. The bitter, unexpected death of a tough journalist who wrote about death but couldn’t report on his own. He’d have written a damn fine story about it. I was his boss for years, in Halifax and Ottawa, though Stephen had no time for bosses. He followed his nose for stories whether or not anybody asked for...
The Canadian government has avoided commenting on the United States’ controversial targeting of alleged drug-trafficking vessels in Caribbean waters.
I went back to Ottawa this week. It’s been a while since I’ve been in the nation’s capital to talk about peace issues, so when the Senate of Canada contacted me, I had to go. Prime Minister Carney’s Budget 2025 is making its way through Parliament, and the Senate’s Committee on National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs asked me and...
Pierre Poilievre’s recent video attacking Mark Carney could have been a strong argument. If not for the air quotes. When he says Carney promised he could “handle Trump” and “negotiate a win,” his fingers twitch into the familiar inverted-comma gesture. It’s a tiny move, but it says everything. Air quotes don’t persuade; they perform. They turn conviction into commentary and...