The United States, under President Donald Trump, has become an unreliable partner. Its longstanding allies can no longer be confident that America will respect its commitments to come to their defence or respect its economic agreements. That is particularly true for Canada. This report identifies concrete measures to mitigate Canada’s risk of depending on an ally, trading partner, and neighbour...
Stéphane Sérafin and Geoffrey Sigalet explain why Alberta's laws on gender pronouns, early age transitioning, and access to girls' and women's sports are necessary to protect children and ensure the integrity of girls’ and women’s sports.
The onslaught of President Donald Trump’s tariffs has pushed economic security to the forefront of the upcoming federal election. The shifting political relationship between Canada and the United States will require Canada to enhance its economic and continental security activities so that it is not perceived or targeted as vulnerable. These efforts must include enhancing the resiliency of our information...
Over the last five years, competition over critical minerals has become a focal point of great-power rivalry — particularly between the United States and China. These strategic materials, including rare earth elements, are vital for producing the advanced technologies underpinning the green economy, defence industries, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing. Given that the world is rapidly transitioning to cleaner energy...
For as long as Mark Carney is Canada’s new prime minister, and beyond that into the outcome of the upcoming federal election, the country’s political leader will get lots of advice on policy and political options. This is not that kind of note. This isn’t about what government puts in the window to win support, or to avoid sticker shock...
Health care across Canada is in crisis. In addition to known burdens of disease and therapies, Canada’s processes have become too bureaucratic and burdensome. With more barriers and layers of gatekeepers than any other country, Canadians are being forced to wait unacceptably long to access new and potentially lifesaving therapies. There’s already significant shortages of doctors, nurses and hospital beds...
Canada’s best known school system founder Egerton Ryerson and the United States’ Horace Mann are each towering figures in the history of public education in North America. Both men received praise during their lifetimes – and for decades after – for leading the fight for universal tax-supported schooling. Their successes in Massachusetts and Canada West/Ontario, respectively, inspired the spread of...
Canada, like much of the world, anticipated a transactional and volatile ‘Trump 2.0’ administration. Even so, the ‘shock and awe’ nature of his first month back as U.S. president has been staggeringly disruptive. Domestically, Trump has sown chaos and pushed past institutional constraints. Internationally, he has taken significant steps towards upending the political and economic global order that has defined...
As the death toll from the ongoing opioid poisoning crisis in Canada continues to rise, jurisdictions across the country struggle to find solutions. Safe consumption sites, where people can use drugs in a supervised setting that provides clean syringes and overdose kits, have opened across Canada. Addiction medicine clinics that provide treatments for drug use have proliferated nation-wide. Controversially, the...
Canadian national spirit is high. The positive emotional reaction to the Team Canada hockey victory over the U.S. in the 4 Nations Face-Off was inspirational and historic. Strong patriotic responses have been ignited by President Donald Trump’s repeated musings about making Canada the 51st state and the use of US “economic force” (including significant tariffs on Canadian imports) to weaken...
Canada’s economy is tightly interconnected across provinces, but significant barriers to internal trade and limited worker mobility are holding back productivity, investment, and wage growth. These obstacles create major challenges for businesses looking to expand and for workers seeking new opportunities in other provinces. Instead of waiting for a national solution, provinces have the power to take bold, independent action...
On April 30, 2024, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance pushed through a late-stage amendment to the Competition Act under Bill C-59: The 2023 Fall Economic Statement. The “greenwashing amendment,” as it has come to be known, has had a dramatic silencing effect on the many businesses and associations across the country that want to communicate their environmental...
A lot of public discourse in Canada right now is about how we need to urgently remove interprovincial trade barriers in the face of the Trump tariff threat. But if we look at the actual evidence, politicians need to lower their expectations about what is possible and not jump for problematic solutions like mutual recognition of regulations.
Ken S. Coates explains how salmon farming could benefit Canada by providing economic stability to coastal communities, fostering greater co-operation with First Nations, driving technological innovation, and protecting wild salmon
The federal government is spending several million dollars a year to do indirectly what it is unwilling to do directly: help activists wage a social justice war via the courts, far away from the public eye. In recent years, the federal Court Challenges Program (CCP) has come under increasing political scrutiny. The program, which the Trudeau Liberals revived in 2018...
Canada is at a crossroads. The issues confronting Canada in 2025 go beyond mere setbacks and can more accurately be called crises. Unless they are resolved quickly, we face a deep and potentially permanent loss of our national standard of living and quality of life. We hereby introduce the “Canada at the Crossroads” series of reports from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute...
Once hailed as cornerstones of economic efficiency and globalization, global supply chains have transformed into geopolitical battlegrounds, where countries exploit control over critical segments for strategic leverage. The latest flashpoint? Trump’s tariff threats against Canada. Since his inauguration only a few weeks ago, the U.S. president has been dangling access to the last stage of many Canadian supply chains –...
U.S. President Donald Trump made many promises on the campaign trail, but repeatedly returned to the application of tariffs as an all-purpose solution to many domestic challenges. Tariffs are, he said grandly, the best word in the English language. It should not have shocked anyone to see him move early in his return to the Oval Office to threaten foreign...
On February 1, 2025, Canada found itself on the brink of a devastating trade war with the United States. As is always the case, the spectre of war began with a larger country attacking its smaller neighbours, listing a string of grievances – its ‘casus belli,’ or cause for war. As always, the casus belli was false. They always are...
Higher education in Canada has reached a tenuous moment. For too long, it has focused on “equity, diversity, and inclusion” (EDI) at the expense of research excellence. This has occurred alongside a growing lack of viewpoint diversity among faculty and concerns over the erosion of academic freedom in Canada.
This summer, the Government of Canada confirmed its intention to procure up to 12 conventionally powered submarines to replace the Royal Canadian Navy’s (RCN) aging Victoria-class fleet.
India enters 2025 with elements of continuity and change. Prime Minister Narendra Modi leads a new coalition government in New Delhi. The world’s largest democracy remains one of its fastest-growing big economies. And New Delhi continues to pursue a multi-aligned foreign policy. However, the country faces new political demands, economic pressures, and strategic challenges, which create opportunities and constraints for...
Completion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion (TMX) project in May 2024 marked a transformative moment for Canada’s crude oil industry, increasing the amount of oil that can make it to tidewater, and unlocking significant new export opportunities. Contrary to many analysts’ expectations, early data indicates that a large amount of this new export capacity is finding its way not...
Primum non cencere – do no harm – is a foundational principle of modern medicine. And yet, in Canada, advocates of “gender-affirming care” seem to have forgotten this guiding value. As other countries rein in invasive gender treatments for children and youth amid growing scientific evidence of the uncertain benefits and harms of these treatments, Canada remains a laggard.
National pharmacare, as proposed by the federal government, will not improve patient access to innovative medicines without major changes to current gatekeeping practices. Without deeper reforms, it could make drug access worse for patients. Canadians used to be proud of their “national medicare,” but health care across the country is now in crisis (Angus Reid Institute 2023). There’s a significant...
Can Canada still build big projects or are we doomed to infrastructure decay and with it a stagnant and weak economy? This is no small matter as we head deeper into 2025. Will Canada choose to be a top-tier rich country, or fall down the economic rankings due to poor economic development and find itself among the likes of Portugal...
Americans voted for Trump with full knowledge of who he was and what he intended to do. The impacts of that U.S. electoral decision will be felt around the globe. In the immediate ramp up to his inauguration, the Trump roller-coaster was off and roaring: threats of punitive tariffs on America’s two NAFTA partners, threats to take-back the Panama Canal...
Canada is on tenterhooks as Donald Trump prepares to be sworn in as 47th President of the United States of America. The main source of anxiety is the near certainty that Trump will impose tariffs on all or some Canadian exports, as soon as inauguration day. It’s possible he will make good on his wild threat, first uttered in late...
Donald Trump’s return to the U.S. presidency will loom large over the Indo-Pacific in 2025. The global economic and security orders are already under serious strain, and Trump’s inclination for trade wars, his skepticism of alliances, and a probable imposition of tariffs at levels not seen since the 1930s will intensify the role of international trade as a geopolitical battleground...
40 years ago, the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada, also known as the Macdonald Commission, presented its report to the newly elected Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Commissioned by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in 1982, the Commission’s first recommendation was that Canada pursue a free trade agreement with the United States to foster a more...
In 2024, a record number of voters across Asia exercised their democratic rights and, in many cases, used the ballot box to punish incumbent governments they felt had fallen short. Ten regional democracies held presidential and/or parliamentary elections, including three of the largest — India, Indonesia, and Japan. If there was any common denominator among these votes, it was that...
