On a personal level, Preston Manning is a good and decent person. He is friendly, insightful, and kind. While I came from the Progressive Conservative wing of the conservative movement, I did not view him as the great destroyer of that once-great party. If anything, I saw him as provocative and an idea disruptor. All the ideas weren’t my cup...
SEASONED POLITICAL OBSERVERS will tell you that their circles—relatives, friends, colleagues—can often double as informal focus groups. By talking politics with real people, and not just those with their noses pressed against the glass, you can sometimes detect early signs of trends, however noisy they may be in a world where media cycles constantly overlap.
On to Plan C.Pierre Poilievre made a belated campaign pivot last Wednesday to focus more heavily on U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war. Now the Conservative Leader has pivoted again.He’s taking big swings to try to knock down Liberal Leader Mark Carney’s reputation as an economic manager. Before it’s too late.
In Mark Carney’s first month as Liberal leader and prime minister, a picture has emerged of who he is: a technocratic version of Justin Trudeau, without the charisma, great hair or ability to communicate comfortably in French, but with many of his banished predecessor’s other personality characteristics and policy propensities.
The 2020s have been the most volatile decade of my life so far. Once Jan. 1, 2020 hit, everything went haywire. We’ve lived through multiple, serious life-changing world events: the COVID-19 and its after-effects, climate disasters, rising partisan political and now the ripple effects of international economic uncertainty (hello, tariffs and trade wars).
United States President Donald Trump is mashing up the global order. I have a theory.Last week, Trump imposed so-called “reciprocal” tariffs on American trading partners. His actions sent markets plunging, investment funds devaluing, and panic rising. There are no rules for the new global economic regime.
During a speech in Victoria on Sunday, Mark Carney quipped: “We’re sending Doug Ford onto FOX News to show them that we’re not messing around up here,” which made Liberal supporters in the room laugh. Then, he added: “And we’re going to send Danielle next. Well, maybe we won’t. We won’t send Danielle. That’s a bad idea. Strike that.” The...
There is no danger that Alberta won’t return plenty of Conservative MPs to the House of Commons at the end of April. It’s practically a sacrosanct duty in a federal election to elect as many Conservatives as possible. So why is Premier Danielle Smith talking as if the Conservatives are going to lose? Why isn’t she boosting their chances across...
Liberal Leader Mark Carney should feel right at home in Alberta: after all, he was raised there. But his trip there this week feels more like a political minefield than a homecoming. That’s largely due to his recent quip that while he’s happy to dispatch Ontario Premier Doug Ford to advocate for Canada in Washington, he wouldn’t send Alberta Premier...
If you have paid attention to Pierre Poilievre in recent months, you could be forgiven for thinking he is afraid of journalists.From the outset of the campaign, the Conservatives have aggressively tried to limit journalists’ access to their leader and undermine their ability to ask him tough questions about how he hopes to govern the country.
Mark Carney calls it “dramatic.” Former Reform party leader Preston Manning says it’s just the plain truth.Whatever way you look at this flurry of talk about Western secession if the Liberals win the federal election on April 28, it has injected another dose of existential rhetoric into a campaign already laden with do-or-die propositions.
“We will cut back on foreign aid to dictators, terrorists, and global bureaucracy,” Poilievre told some 4,000-odd supporters in Kingston last week, “to bring our money home.” He repeated that notion again in Trois-Rivières on Friday: “I will be cutting waste, bureaucracy, consultants, foreign aid and other unnecessary expenses,” he declared. Poilievre appeared on Radio-Canada this week for a lengthy...
Even if Trump is using tariffs to negotiate better deals with trading partners, that process could take up the rest of his presidency. After all, he has levied punitive tariffs against scores of countries. If these countries want to negotiate an exemption or a carveout, they will have to stand in a very long line to get to the president.
It can be easy to forget, following the news, that Mark Carney, the leader of the Liberal party and the odds-on favourite to win the 2025 federal election, has never done this before. He has never won a local council race. He didn’t serve on his school board. He isn’t a sitting MP. Carney’s resume outside of politics is unimpeachable...
It was the end of a long day, but Pierre Poilievre had more energy in the evening than in the morning. “Wow, what a wonderful crowd,” the Conservative Leader said in Oshawa, Ont., as he quickly stepped onto a two-foot-high platform in an airplane hangar and went into his slogans. “Who’s ready to axe some taxes?” he said at the...
On April 2, or what Donald Trump declared “Liberation Day” (The Economist called it “Ruination Day”), leaders and citizens across the interconnected world paused for an hour to watch an American president launch a global trade war. Abusing yet again the power of the captive audience that comes with the office, Trump unleashed the most destructive set of measures of...
If you’ve ever driven from Toronto to Florida, you’ve likely encountered the visual cacophony of billboards along America’s Interstate Highways. These range from posters for injury lawyers and gentlemen’s clubs to fast food outlets and reminders that Jesus loves you. Upon reaching Florida, one might chuckle at an AC repair ad proclaiming, “Your wife is hot.” But lately, these roadsides...
The bizarre end—for now, anyway—of the political career of outgoing Liberal MP Paul Chiang got a lot of attention last week, and you can see why. It was newsy. It was germane to two major political questions: which party is better placed to tackle foreign interference, and also, Mark Carney’s surefootedness as a new and largely untested political leader. In...
My nephew Julian is eight. He doesn’t watch the news, doesn’t read newspapers, and hasn’t even heard of Peter Mansbridge. But two months ago, he marched into the kitchen and told my sister, with full conviction, “Carbon Tax Carney. If Carney wins, Canada loses.” Word for word. The line from a Conservative ad he saw on YouTube. He has no...
The 2025 election leaders’ debates are set for April 16-17, and speech writers are furiously writing and rewriting blurbs in anticipation. The election is necessarily focused on “the Tangerine’s” tantrums in the south, and the impacts on this country. But we can do better than run a one-issue election. Here are a set of questions that could spark some depth...
Matt Gurney: I want to ask you a specific question about the campaign — a few different parts of it, really. But I want to lead with a broader question, just as a vibe check. Does this feel like an election yet? I have to say, it doesn’t to me. It’s my job to follow this stuff. I do! But...
In a normal election campaign, the ballot-box question would revolve around what voters want.But Canada is not in a normal campaign, and a lot of time is being spent in this one focused on what Donald Trump might want.
A few weeks ago, I argued that the strongest political opposition to Donald Trump resided right here in Canada.Turns out, that’s an increasingly dangerous place to be.
The Bloc Québécois had expected to easily win a new riding in the Laurentians North of Montreal. The ‘Carney effect’ is being felt even in those parts of the province where the Liberals haven’t won a seat in years. Tim Watchorn is the mayor of the beautiful Laurentian village of Morin Heights. This is my neck of the woods and...
'I resile to no one in terms of my understanding of the West,' says Liberal Leader Mark Carney, leading people to rush for the closest dictionary.
It's ironic that the strongest defenders of Canada's Jewish community are the Conservatives, who the Liberals often accuse of conspiring with neo-Nazis and white supremacists
The CBC's Olivia Stefanovich, Evan Dyer and David Thurton report from the road with the main parties as Week 2 of the campaign draws down. Our panel of party insiders also discusses how parties are positioning themselves and attacking each other.
He promised sunny ways but left behind a divided country. THE MORNING AFTER leading the Liberal Party to a stunning come-from-behind majority in 2015, Justin Trudeau, prime minister–in–waiting, showed up at a Montreal Metro station. He was there to greet surprised commuters and, in many cases, share his gratitude for the victory. A cynic might have dismissed it as staged...
In these disorienting days, Canadian leaders are responding in real time to a deeply uncertain world. On the day the president of the United States launched a global trade war, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith chose to look on the bright side. The United States, she wrote, had decided to "uphold the majority of the free trade agreement … between our...
I hope everyone had a pleasant Liberation Day. I’m coming to you from overcast Kingston, Ontario, where Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is campaigning. All party leaders have spent the past 24 hours scrambling to respond to Donald Trump’s quixotic tariff announcement — which, conspicuously, left out Canada and Mexico. While we still face a litany of sector-specific tariffs, everyone is...
In the 1975 Spielberg summer blockbuster Jaws, a line that had become a running on-set joke about the stinginess of producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown in failing to supply a boat big enough to assist the film’s shooting barge made its way into the final cut, becoming one of the most quoted, and misquoted, lines in movie history. “You’re...
It is nearly impossible to win a federal election unless you are able to attract two key constituencies of “swing voters” — blue collar workers and new Canadians.This formula has been the key to the Liberals’ success and the Conservatives’ failure in the last three federal elections and has reshaped how all parties campaign.
In late June 1939, the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Information produced three posters to boost domestic morale and focus the public anxiety about the war around them and the anticipated coming invasion.One poster read “Freedom is In Peril / Defend It With All Your Might.” A second poster read “Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory.”
Historian and journalist Mark Bourrie writes, “This book is about how Canada made its own version of Donald Trump, albeit with fewer guns and less rioting, but with lots of trucks and lies.” Around the world extreme right-wing leaders are coming to power, authoritarians who offer “easy and simple answers to complicated questions.” Aggressive people see an opportunity, and COVID...
Liberal fortunes today are clearly in the hands of their leader Mark Carney - For every one point ballot box advantage today is a two point advantage on the preferred PM tracking.
