These are the 30 most read items on National Newswatch, from the last seven days.
Prime Minister Mark Carney says Canada stands by the Venezuelan people's "right to decide and build their own future in a peaceful and democratic society" after U.S. President Donald Trump announced American forces captured Venezuela's president early Saturday morning. "Canada has not recognised the illegitimate regime of [Nicolás] Maduro since it stole the 2018 election," Carney said on social media...
Alberta Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz is quitting cabinet and says she will also soon be leaving the legislature altogether. Schulz made the announcement on social media Wednesday. She says she has offered her resignation from cabinet effective Friday and will step down as the United Conservative legislature member for Calgary-Shaw by May. "Timing is everything in life and in politics,"...
Longtime NDP MP takes 'shit disturber' ethos across the country — and to YouTube. Sitting in Ottawa's Rainbow Bistro, preparing for his band to play a gig, former MP Charlie Angus was reflecting on the past year. His plan to quietly retire and write a book turned into creating viral videos viewed around the world and a cross-Canada tour to...
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has been captured after a large-scale US strike on the capital city of Caracas, according to US President Donald Trump, who said more details will come in an 11 a.m. ET news conference. Trump told Fox News he watched Maduro’s capture in real-time “like a television show.” Trump said Maduro is aboard the USS Iwo Jima...
While grappling with job cuts and the looming spectre of a full-time return to office, the federal public service will be under the microscope to deliver on ambitious files key to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s mandate in 2026, from trade negotiations to defence procurement to building homes. That’s as a long-awaited report from an expert panel suggested the government should...
Canada's next election will turn on how much people want to escape the chaos and division Trump brings to their lives. Conservatives have a horse bred for a different race. Trump was sworn into office again a little more than 300 days ago. In 300 days, Americans can hit the reset button. Most Canadians are really hoping that they do...
Treasury Board President Shafqat Ali says the federal government hasn't worked out details of its plans to cut the bureaucracy and boost the amount of time public servants spend in the office. Ali said in a recent interview with The Canadian Press the government is still finalizing its workforce adjustment and return-to-office plans. Hundreds of federal employees have been warned...
President Donald Trump's plan to take control of Venezuela's oil industry and ask American companies to revitalize it after capturing President Nicolas Maduro in a raid isn't likely to have a significant immediate impact on oil prices. Venezuela's oil industry is in disrepair after years of neglect and international sanctions, so it could take years and major investments before production...
The dire warnings about AI keep coming. Eric Schmidt, former chief executive of Google, says that within a few years, millions of independent AI agents working together “will develop their own language.” And “we won’t understand what they’re doing.” They will have escaped human control. The University of Montreal computer scientist and AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio told The Guardian this...
Critics also call on PBO to expand use of peer review. This year, two things will happen to Canada's fiscal watchdog: Interim Parliamentary Budget Officer Jason Jacques will be replaced or made permanent, and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) will publish its review of the office. While the OECD report will not come out for several months...
During the Liberals’ Dec. 11 Christmas party just hours after Conservative MP Michael Ma crossed the floor to the government, soirée hosts James Maloney and Mona Fortier joked to ecstatic attendees that their favourite number was “172”. That’s the minimum number of MPs a party needs to get a simple majority in the House of Commons. With Ma’s crossing, the...
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre paused when asked how he’d describe the last year. He was speaking with The Globe and Mail as part of a run of year-end interviews, many of which focused on the news of the two MPs who quit his party and joined Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals. The surprise defections brought the minority Liberals to within...
The daring ouster of the president of Venezuela by the U.S. military sent shockwaves through the Western Hemisphere as President Donald Trump heralded the operation in the oil-rich Latin American nation a success. Prime Minister Mark Carney reacted on Saturday afternoon by noting that one of the first actions taken by his new government in March was to impose additional...
The pollsters are trying to tell us something. For much of the past year, the dominant strain of Canadian political coverage has focused on the struggles of Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre, especially as contrasted with the brilliant successes of his opponent, Mark Carney. How could it not? Mr. Poilievre saw a 25-point lead evaporate in the space of two...
It has been curious to watch Prime Minister Mark Carney’s parade of year-end interviews while reading Paul Litt’s excellent 2011 biography of former prime minister John Turner: Elusive Destiny. Many of Turner’s qualities, as noted by journalist Ron Graham in a Saturday Night magazine profile ahead of the 1984 Liberal leadership election, could equally be said of Carney.
The federal government is not revealing whether it will act on calls to pass a law that would criminalize denying that Indigenous children suffered abuses in Canada’s residential school system. The issue has bubbled in the background of Canadian politics for several years and gained prominence after several First Nations announced they had located potential unmarked graves at former school...
The federal Immigration Department halted a pilot program that matched skilled refugees with job vacancies and granted them permanent residency, leaving Canadian businesses and fresh hires in limbo days before Christmas. The unexpected decision to pause the Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot, communicated last week in a letter to groups involved in the program, has dismayed and surprised non-profit recruiters matching...
The federal Leaders’ Debates Commission says a settlement has been reached with the Green Party after it challenged its exclusion from the 2025 debates ahead of the general election. The commission posted a brief statement on its website Tuesday. “The Green Party of Canada and the Leaders’ Debates Commission have agreed to a mutual settlement of the Green Party of...
Manitoba Hydro said Thursday it is restoring power to residents of a northern First Nation after a downed power line forced residents out. Completion of the challenging repairs came a day after the chief of Pimicikamak Cree Nation urged Prime Minister Mark Carney to send in the military to deal with the crisis caused by the outage. The community has...
The leader of a rival party to Premier Danielle Smith's United Conservatives says they're scrambling to organize on the chance Smith tries to undercut them by calling a spring election. "Time is not on the side of the UCP," Peter Guthrie, the head of Alberta's new Progressive Tory Party, said in an interview. "If you look at us organizing, we're...
Canada is set to tighten immigration rules and accept fewer new residents, students and temporary workers in 2026. The ongoing cuts are a major shift for the country, which had been boosting immigration levels for years. First introduced in late 2024 and updated again in November, the new caps and lower targets are meant to reduce Canada’s unemployment rate, address...
Unlike the U.S. Logan Act, Canada has no law on the books stopping citizens from meeting with foreign governments. Federal officials say that Alberta separatists going around Ottawa and repeatedly meeting with U.S. officials to advance their cause is legal for Canadians, within certain limits, even though similar behaviour could be prohibited elsewhere. When separatist organizer Jeffrey Rath claimed last...
Gov. Gen. Mary Simon has announced 80 appointments to the Order of Canada — a list that includes Olympians, journalists, Indigenous leaders and doctors. Simon's office announced six new companions, the highest level of the Order of Canada; 15 officers; and 59 members, the introductory level in the order. Six appointments are a promotion within the Order of Canada and...
No one need shed a single tear for Nicolás Maduro, a ruthless dictator who extinguished Venezuela’s democracy and set its economy into a death spiral. His sins are many: stolen elections, numerous alleged crimes against humanity, and more than a decade of exploitation of what once was and should still be a prosperous country. And of course, the Trump administration...
The new year will bring some big changes to the rules on in-office work for many employees across the country -- including tens of thousands of provincial government staff in Ontario and Alberta who will soon be required back in the office full-time. As of Jan. 5, Ontario provincial government employees will be expected to work in the office five...
Liberals roll out a personal support worker tax credit to run from 2026 to 2030. The coming year will see some changes to existing tax measures, the abandonment of others and some help for personal support workers. But overall changes to the taxes individuals pay will be minor in 2026. Daniel Rogozynski, an accountant and professor at the University of...
A pollster says separatist movements in Alberta and Quebec are unlikely to succeed as long as Canadians feel a persistent sense of insecurity and anxiety about the future. David Coletto, whose polling firm Abacus Data has been studying what it calls the "precarity mindset" in Canada for the last year, says that uncertainty would need to ease in order for...
An increasingly aggressive Russia coupled with China’s growing influence have renewed Canada’s focus on Arctic defence and sovereignty — and how to assert control over its remote northern geography. The focus is on both increased surveillance — knowing what and who is poking around up there — and having military assets in place to deter any aggressor before they consider...
Over the past few months, President Trump has deployed an imposing military force in the Caribbean to threaten Venezuela. Until now, the president used that force — an aircraft carrier, at least seven other warships, scores of aircraft and 15,000 U.S. troops — for illegal attacks on small boats that he claimed were ferrying drugs. On Saturday, Mr. Trump dramatically...
Consensus analysis of the 2025 election results includes this thesis: centre-left ‘progressive’ voters abandoned the NDP and voted for the Liberals under Prime Minister Carney and gave him his victory. Why? Two broad reasons: 1) to unite against Donald Trump and 2) to unite against the possibility that Pierre Poilievre could be prime minister. Of course, there is more to...