Prime Minister Mark Carney’s visit to China will stand as one of the most consequential moments in Canada’s foreign policy. It not only reframed Canada’s relationship with China but also signalled a fundamentally new approach to how Ottawa intends to navigate a more fragmented, contested and uncertain world. On the bilateral front, the trip produced three tangible outcomes: a new...
Prime Minister Carney can be pleased with the results of his first official visit to China. Through a temporary trade truce, and a list of political, economic and cultural MOUs, the federal government has effectively reset relations with China to where they were in 2016, before the arrest of Meng Wanzhou at the request of the first Trump administration. The...
Prime Minister Mark Carney will travel to Beijing from January 13 to 17, marking the first visit by a Canadian prime minister to China since 2017. The trip comes amid mounting economic and political pressure from the Trump administration and reflects the Carney government’s stated objective to diversify Canada’s economic partnerships and double non-U.S. trade over the next decade. At...
Lisa Van Dusen: Senator Boehm, that was quite a year. Between the trade war, Donald Trump’s renewed undermining of multilateralism, and the geopolitical implications of American degradation — I think Trump’s recent National Security Strategy may have summed it up best as a capstone to 2025. How do you see Trump II, Year One? Sen. Peter Boehm: In foreign policy...
The year 2025 was a year of volatility, experimentation, and recalibration across Asia and Canada. Much of the volatility stemmed from U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff agenda, which upended global trade norms and injected new uncertainty into supply chains. China, meanwhile, pressed ahead with an increasingly assertive industrial strategy, even as it contended with slower domestic growth and structural...
Even modest Canadian engagement with China may be judged less on its merits than on how it is interpreted in the U.S. within a framework designed to ‘wind down adversarial outside influence.’
On November 4th, Budget 2025 shifted the Carney government’s policy priorities to economic growth and national defence in response to a rupture in Canada-US trade relations and new NATO commitments. Public finance with a focus on capital investment is the principal instrument of change. In line with this strategy, a closer look at Canada’s sagging productivity suggests the next budget...
With the release of the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS), the Trump administration has delivered a comprehensive articulation of how it sees America’s core interests, what it expects from allies, and how it plans to compete in a world defined by great-power rivalry and economic insecurity. Whatever one thinks of its ideological framing or tone, the document is strategically significant...
Canadian universities routinely use demographic criteria to restrict who is eligible for a faculty position. How do these policies shape public attitudes towards the university sector?
In September of 2023, Michael Miltenberger, former deputy premier of the Northwest Territories, spoke at a Massey College-Forum for Leadership on Water conference called The Future of Freshwater. Miltenberger described how just weeks earlier, wildfire had forced the evacuation of his own community of Fort Smith (yes, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s hometown). As he prepared to escape the Wood Buffalo...
Canadians rarely stop to think that everything they own, from their homes and savings to their farms, vehicles, and small businesses, exist only so long as government allows it. A single regulation, order, or policy change can erase a lifetime of work, uproot families, and disrupt lives. Indeed, across Canada, property owners have watched livelihoods disappear overnight through land-use restrictions...
When Canada legalized cannabis in 2018, it launched a national experiment in health, safety, and economic policy. Seven years later, the results are clear enough to measure and complex enough to debate. Cannabis has moved from the margins of public life and to the mainstream of the Canadian economy. Yet much of the federal framework that governs it remains frozen...
The COP30 Global Climate Summit in Belém, Brazil marked the 10th anniversary of the landmark Paris Accord, where countries agreed to limit global warming to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels by 2050. The world is now anticipated to heat up by 2.6 C above preindustrial levels by the end of the century.
Expectations were high as trade ministers of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific (CPTPP) gathered in Melbourne, Australia, in late November 2025, during what has been an unprecedented year for global trade. U.S. President Trump’s tariff spree has shaken the foundations of the multilateral trade order. China’s newly tightened export controls on critical minerals have threatened to grind global...
Canadians feel it – higher taxes, longer wait times, and public services that don’t serve us well. Yet behind these frustrations lies a deeper problem: Canada’s government sector has grown in size while becoming less and less productive. Over the past two decades, government spending has increased, but the return on our tax dollars has declined. From 2007 to 2023...
Violent crime in Canada’s cities has not only risen – it has become a growing threat affecting urban communities across the country. While headlines often focus on year-to-year fluctuations in crime, the Urban Violent Crime Report, Volume 2 reveals a deeper and more troubling reality: over the past decade, violent crime has increased significantly across Canadian cities, spreading beyond Toronto...
Dubbed a “generational investment” that will help define the next century, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first federal Budget, tabled on November 4, includes broadly anticipated themes. The 400+ page document proposes trimming day-to-day operational government spending, increasing investments in capital projects and the military, and introducing measures to make Canadian businesses more competitive. The goals are clear: “More than 75%...
The Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada held its inaugural Indo-Pacific Forum in Ottawa on October 1- 2, 2025, nearly three years after the launch of Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS). The Forum brought together stakeholders from the Government of Canada, academics, think-tank experts, private-sector leaders, and policy researchers from across the Indo-Pacific to assess progress and offer actionable advice on how...
The 47th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit and Related Meetings, held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, October 26-28, showcased both the bloc’s diplomatic strengths and its strategic vulnerabilities. U.S. President Donald Trump’s attendance dominated the proceedings, and featured the signing of legally binding trade agreements with Malaysia and Cambodia, framework arrangements with Thailand and Vietnam, and memoranda of understanding...
We commonly measure how much governments spend and how many people they employ but we rarely weigh the benefits taxpayers receive in return for their hard-earned dollars. This report introduces a basic framework and lays the groundwork for new indexes that will track the size and performance of governments in Canada over time, focusing on federal and provincial activities.
As Prime Minister Mark Carney travels to Asia on a quest to build trade ties with more countries in the wake of an ongoing tariff war with the United States, new data from the non-profit Angus Reid Institute, in partnership with the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, finds favourable views from Canadians towards most Asian countries but little knowledge, especially...
On October 9, Beijing unveiled sweeping new export controls on rare earths and related technologies, marking a major escalation in its use of critical minerals as a geopolitical tool. The move tightens China’s grip on the supply chains that underpin global defence and advanced manufacturing. In response, the U.S. and its allies — including Canada — are accelerating efforts to...
In Canadian resource development, the concept of “consent” has become a litmus test for ideological and philosophical divides. While such debates may be intellectually stimulating, they pose a serious obstacle to project development. Proponents seek clear expectations and standards when committing capital and building things. The Canadian legal and political systems have plodded along inelegantly on the question of Indigenous...
Last Thanksgiving, Ottawa was expelling Indian diplomats; this week, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand is in New Delhi. The contrast captures how far relations have come – and how fragile the progress remains. Ms. Anand’s visit, Canada’s first ministerial-level trip to India in two years, also signals that the diplomatic reset launched by prime ministers Mark Carney and Narendra Modi...
Budget 2025 will be tabled in Parliament by Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne on November 4th. It is an opportunity for Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government to set a new policy direction for Canada. Uncertainty is high. Stakes are high. Will the government meet the moment – the hinge moment, as Carney would say? Will Budget 2025 be fiscally responsible? James...
Canada risks falling dangerously behind in the global race to harness the productivity-enhancing power of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). Despite its world-class universities, highly educated population, and a history of AI research excellence (particularly emanating from the Greater Toronto Area), Canada’s workplace adoption of GenAI is currently less than half that of the United States.
Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand is making Canada's the first ministerial-level trip to India in two years in mid-October 2025 as the Canada-India relationship continues to thaw after a lengthy freeze during the end of previous Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s time in office. New data from the non-profit Angus Reid Institute, in partnership with the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada...
The signing of the Canada-Indonesia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) last week is a significant boost to Canada’s economicdiversification agenda.
Alexander Dalziel examines how Russian media presents and frames the North American Arctic as a factor in Russian defence and security to the Russian public.
