Canada’s criminal justice system is failing its most basic test: keeping the public safe. A new report from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute reveals rising crime, falling clearance rates, and a bail system widely seen as broken. The result is a struggling justice system increasingly derailed by delays and struggling to deliver safety or accountability – eroding the trust of the Canadians...
Canada’s economic landscape is profoundly changing. A shifting trade environment, global efforts to reduce emissions and other structural trends are reshaping industries and job requirements. With these shifts, opportunities arise, but so do uneven risks and impacts. Certain communities are disproportionately susceptible to the workforce disruption these changes will bring. In this Policy Brief, we focus on mass layoffs and...
A year ago, it was not obvious that Canada–India relations could be pulled back from the brink. Diplomatic expulsions, public recriminations, and allegations of foreign interference had frozen one of Canada’s most consequential Indo-Pacific partnerships. Yet since Prime Minister Mark Carney and Prime Minister Narendra Modi met on the margins of the G7 summit in Kananaskis last June, a different...
Rather than sorting applicants by racial category, universities should focus on ensuring that all prospective students, regardless of race, have the academic preparation needed to compete fairly.
Neepawa, a rural Prairie community of just over 6,000 people west of Winnipeg, has long been shaped by its agricultural roots. It is a place made famous by author Margaret Laurence, whose Manawaka novels drew inspiration from Neepawa and its landmarks, including the stone angel monument in the Riverside Cemetery. But today’s Neepawa is no longer the small, homogeneous town...
In January, Canada and China announced a new trade framework that will lift several Chinese tariffs on Canadian exports as well as Canadian tariffs on Chinese electric cars. Set to take effect March 1, the deal will significantly ease pressure on Canadian exports of canola, pulses and seafood. While the deal is welcome relief, significant damage was done. Saskatchewan’s canola...
From a snail in a bottle of ginger beer to cannibalism to revoking a liquor licence for helping fellow Jehovah’s Witnesses, many seminal law school cases are remembered for their extraordinary facts (Hutchinson 2010). Every so often, however, a case prescribes a legal test that is equally memorable, even when the facts of the case are not. The Supreme Court...
Canada’s first-ever Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS) marks a genuine shift in how Ottawa thinks about sovereignty, security, and economic resilience. After decades of treating defence procurement as a back-office function, the government is now framing it as strategic statecraft — linking military readiness, industrial policy, innovation, and economic security. The creation of a Defence Investment Agency and the adoption of...
Since the legalization of medical assistance in dying (MAiD) in 2016, the federal government has created certain safeguards and regulatory mechanisms – including data collection – to ensure that people don’t request death because they lack access to care, including palliative care.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s widely praised speech last week in Davos was most notable for its frankness in admitting the hypocrisy behind Western support for a selectively enforced “rules-based international order.” But it also pulled no punches in calling out the coercive measures that great powers — including the United States — are increasingly employing to advance their interests.
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%...
