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Andrew Phillips.Could there be a more Canadian headline than the one on the front page of Monday’s Star? “ Liberal s reject power to oust leader,” it proclaimed. Given the opportunity to assert some control over their leader if things go sideways, with the memory of the impasse over Justin Trudeau’s leadership fresh in their minds, the party’s members of Parliament meekly said.
..With the biggest threat to Canadian independence right next door, it is brilliant for Mark Carney to play the King card What a genius move by Mark Carney to get King Charles to deliver his government’s Speech from the Throne later this month. Given all Carney’s up to in his first week after the election, arranging for Charles to preside over the re-opening of Parliament might not seem like a big deal. There is, after all, that little matter of the...Mark Carney didn’t quite get the majority mandate he was looking for and there’s a lot of punditry out there about the problems he and the Liberals will have in managing that. It’s being called an “uncertain mandate,” a “less than strong mandate,” and the outcome has been labelled an “uneasy victory.”...Donald Trump, it seems, just can’t help himself. He can’t stop trash-talking Canada, even when he knows he shouldn’t. Trump was remarkably silent about this country for weeks, ever since Mark Carney took over as prime minister in fact. He seemed to be restraining himself, or at least turning his malevolent gaze on other countries as he announced punitive tariffs...Before the current campaign, Canada held eight federal elections in this century. Five — including the last two — resulted in a minority government. Minorities have become the norm in our multi-party system. But now is not the time for another minority. It’s not the time for another government that has to cut deals to stay in office, that’s always...I attended a Pierre Poilievre rally to figure out the disconnect between his large crowds but shrinking support in the polls I went to Pierre Poilievre’s “Stop the Crime” night in Brampton on Wednesday. I wanted to figure out how the Conservative leader could be taking luxuriant crowd baths across the country while languishing in the polls. More to the point, I wanted to find out how the people who turn out for him are dealing with that. I learned, no...To succeed in a Trump world, there is one thing liberals in both Canada and the U.S. must do One of the biggest knocks against Justin Trudeau’s government is that it failed to get big things done. It was great at announcing ambitious plans with multibillion-dollar price tags. But when it came to actually building stuff, not so much. The list is familiar: military jets that were studied for years but never arrived; housing plans that promised a lot...The most sobering thing I’ve read in the past couple of weeks comes from Timothy Snyder, the renowned historian of Ukraine. Snyder, who’s been studying modern-day authoritarianism for years, draws a strong parallel between how Vladimir Putin sees Ukraine and how Donald Trump views Canada. Most jarringly, Snyder argues that Trump is preparing the ground not just for an economic...Pierre Poilievre’s advantage is slipping rapidly away. So he’s trying something he’s never done before Who is that smiling man? Who is that affable fellow with the big grin and the adorable family, the one who seems delighted to field queries from journalists? “Thanks for the question, Bill!” Why it’s Pierre Poilievre, formerly the Dark Prince of Canadian politics, the scowler, growler and angry apple-muncher, who couldn’t be bothered to mask his contempt for the...As the campaign buses rev up for a federal election call this weekend, Donald Trump handed Pierre Poilievre a nice little gift. Trump dissed the Conservative leader hard, and publicly. Even better for Poilievre, he seemed to be favouring Mark Carney, though that wasn’t nearly as clear as Conservatives are claiming.We’re all about “Buy Canadian” these days, aren’t we? Except, it seems, for the federal government, which has chosen this moment to drop its ban on advertising with social media platforms owned by the U.S.-owned tech giant Meta.Donald Trump is a blatant hypocrite when it comes to free speech, but he’s far from the only one On Day One of the second term of his presidency Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.” He then doubled down on efforts to do exactly the opposite. In the four and a half weeks since that order, Trump and his allies have waged a campaign of what can only be described...It can’t be easy being Chrystia Freeland these days. It’s February, a particularly cold one, and she’s dragging herself all over the country — including to an audience with the Star’s editorial board on Monday morning — in pursuit of the Liberal leadership.Canadians are mad. Oh boy, are we mad! I feel it; I bet you feel it too. Almost every commentator I read this week is trying to outdo all the others in channeling our collective rage at Donald Trump. Anger can be good. It can propel you into doing things you might not dare to do otherwise. Especially when it’s...One of the most puzzling things about Donald Trump’s tariff tirades is the country he chooses to put most directly in his crosshairs. Not China, which runs a rigged trade system and has flooded the United States with cheap goods that destroy American manufacturing jobs. Oh, and is the primary source of the fentanyl that has killed hundreds of thousands...No way, no how. That’s the message from Canadians to Donald Trump’s taunts about becoming the 51st state. At least that’s what the opinion polls show, isn’t it? Yes, if you look at the overall findings. Support for joining the U.S. of A. is down around 13 per cent or 10 per cent . Those are...“You never know how strong you are,” said the late, great Bob Marley, “until being strong is the only choice you have.” In the face of the unprecedented threat from Donald Trump, this is Canada’s moment to be strong. It’s not yet clear how we’re going to measure up, but at this point the news frankly isn’t great. You only...Mark Carney came to the official launch of his campaign for the federal Liberal leadership on Thursday as the favourite in this abbreviated contest. At least that’s what the pundits seemed to have decided. Carney is the Liberal leader from central casting: whip smart; credentialed like nobody’s business; a native of the Far North who’s now connected globally; bilingual; handsome...Justin Trudeau, not to put too fine a point on it, looked like hell when he came out to announce the inevitable — that he’s stepping down as Liberal leader and prime minister. This is a man who always managed at least to look great, even when things were going against him. But on Monday he looked puffy, beaten down...Those jibes from Donald Trump about Canada becoming the 51st state are getting awfully old. Once, maybe funny. The fourth or fifth time, not so much. It’s obvious Trump is belittling this country as part of his bully tactics on tariffs and whatever else he wants. Bullying is what you expect from a bully. The real sting comes because there’s...Justin Trudeau’s Team Canada approach to Donald Trump looks, from the outside, like a total mess I hope there’s a method to the oddly disjointed response that the Trudeau government and the premiers are displaying to the Trump tariff threat. Consider Wednesday evening, after the prime minister and some of his key cabinet members met with the premiers for the second time in a week. Everyone was talking about a “Team Canada” approach, but what...I must confess: my admiration for Donald Trump’s political skills grows with each passing day. Don’t confuse this with admiration for the man himself, his character or his policies. He’s had years to reveal himself as a vile manipulator willing to indulge in racism, authoritarianism, all those things, to serve his ends. He’s a threat to his own country and...I’m glad Justin Trudeau managed to get face to face with Donald Trump and make the case that Canada shouldn’t be socked with tariffs that would send our economy into a recessionary spin. Obviously it’s better to talk directly to the Great Khan in his stately Mar-a-Lago pleasure dome than to be left on the outside peeking in. If you’re...We’re going to be fine, just fine. That’s the message coming from the Trudeau government in the wake of Donald Trump’s decisive comeback. Just so there’s no doubt, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland put it like this last week: “I want to say with utter sincerity and conviction to Canadians that Canada will be absolutely fine.” Maybe it’s just me...Trump won the working-class vote and Poilievre’s Conservatives are well on the way to doing just that too Like a lot of Canadians, I thought I knew quite a bit about the United States. After all, I lived there for five years. I reported from almost half the states and travelled in most of the others. I was married to an American for 45 years and spent time with her family in Hawaii, California and Colorado. My son...Don’t be fooled into thinking Canadians have soured on immigration — the truth is remarkable The headline number on the reduction of immigration targets announced on Thursday by the Trudeau government is massive — a cut of more than 20 per cent in the number of permanent residents admitted over the next three years. But even that understates the scale of the government’s reversal. If you add in even bigger cuts in the number of...They’re still trying to figure out exactly what happened in the British Columbia election over the weekend. But one thing is clear: Justin Trudeau lost. The prime minister wasn’t on the ballot, of course. But the outcome is yet another unmistakable sign that his time is up, not that he needed any more of those.The rest of the world knows the best tool to fight climate change. Canada is abandoning it. Canada’s carbon pricing plan is on its political death bed. Everyone but its closest family has given up on it. Even its former friends in the NDP, both federally and in the provinces, have edged away. They may regret its passing, but they don’t want to be around when the plug is pulled.There’s not much doubt what was on the minds of Justin Trudeau’s cabinet when members met in Halifax this week — at least when it comes to policy and not their party’s dismal standing in the polls. You could tell by who they brought in to speak to them. There was Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan and one...I realize that tariffs and electric vehicles aren’t the most alluring subject in mid-August, when we’re trying to hold on to the last weeks of summer. But you have literally billions of reasons to pay attention — exactly 52.455 billion reasons, which according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer is the number of your tax dollars that governments have invested in...A federal minister wanted Canadian soldiers to serve as props at a pop concert. It’s just the latest way the Trudeau government has treated national security as a joke You can’t be too careful these days. With all the fake news, misinformation and AI-generated “deep fakes” out there you can’t take anything at face value. You have to be on your guard. Which is why when I saw a headline this week saying a federal minister had lobbied for 100 Canadian soldiers to act as “backdrops” for a concert...Nothing reflects better on Joe Biden’s long career than his decision to leave the presidential race. But it was still a political execution “Nothing in his life,” Shakespeare wrote in “Macbeth” of a nobleman who faced his execution with dignity, “became him like the leaving of it.” And nothing in Joe Biden’s five-decade life in politics reflects better on him than his decision to leave it. By stepping aside and letting another Democrat carry the fight against Donald Trump, he is giving his...If you ever studied philosophy you’ll be familiar with Plato’s allegory of the cave. The philosopher described people who’ve spent their lives chained in a cave, facing a blank wall. All they know of reality is from shadows projected on the wall created by objects passing in front of a fire behind them. When it comes to the most alarming...Canadian politicians stand accused of colluding with hostile foreign governments. We deserve to know which ones Prime Minister Justin Trudeau believes deeply in the importance of maintaining confidence in our democratic institutions. We know this because he tells us so. On March 20, for example, he addressed a “Summit on Democracy” in South Korea and according to his office he “emphasized the importance of open government to build and maintain public trust in democratic institutions.”How did Justin Trudeau screw up so badly? Maybe the answer was hiding in plain sight The question I have these days about Justin Trudeau is not “will he run again?” but “how did he and the Liberals screw things up so badly?” How did they manage to fall from the heights of “sunny ways” back in 2015 to the electoral depths they’re stuck in now?Despite best efforts, Justin Trudeau can’t direct attention away from the carbon tax Governments often use budgets to change the channel from what their opponents want to talk about to what they want to talk about. The Trudeau government is no exception. It clearly hopes this week’s federal budget will dampen all the negative chatter about carbon pricing and get people focused on the great plans it has for solving the housing crisis...It’s no wonder a national security official felt compelled to leak information to the media When information about China’s interference in Canadian politics was leaked to the news media more than a year ago, the federal government snapped into action. Not so much against the interference itself, mind you, but against whoever leaked that confidential information. The hunt for the leaker or leakers is still underway, as far as I know, and they’ve been condemned...Why do so many ignore facts, like the carbon tax works? Because we’re hard-wired to follow the pack I’ve been thinking a lot about thinking — about how we come to believe what we believe and the tendency of people to cling to their beliefs in the face of a mountain of facts that contradict those same beliefs. This is hardly a new issue. We’ve been lamenting the fact that people lock themselves into self-reinforcing communities of belief...Averages can be terribly misleading. If you’ve got your feet in the freezer and your head in the oven, it’s been noted, your average temperature may be just fine. But are you comfortable? Hardly. A new global survey suggests Canada is a bit like that. The latest edition of the grandly named World Happiness Report, run out of the University...Liberals divided, NDP embarrassed, nothing accomplished: the sad story of a meaningless debate over Palestinian statehood What a weird way to make foreign policy — or whatever it was that members of Parliament occupied themselves with for most of Monday. Our elected representatives started the day by debating a motion put forward by the NDP that would have radically changed Canada’s policy on the Israel-Palestine question, tilting it decidedly toward a more resolutely pro-Palestinian stance.The consumer carbon tax is dying in Canada – and with it dies a rare and admirable attempt to treat voters as adults. Carbon pricing will clearly be dead if Pierre Poilievre and his Conservatives win the next federal election, as seems almost certain at this point. Even before that it’s dying a slow death as premiers...Predictable, legitimate protesting should not have led to Justin Trudeau-Giorgia Meloni dinner cancellation Toronto police say they’re “reviewing” what happened during a protest on Saturday night that led to cancellation of a dinner Justin Trudeau was to host for the visiting prime minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni. But if there’s a review to be done, it should focus on why a few hundred noisy demonstrators were allowed to derail a meeting between two...There’s a heartbreaking scene near the end of the First World War movie “Gallipoli” in which Australian soldiers are preparing to get out of their trenches and charge the Turkish machine guns. They’re writing letters home and leaving their watches behind because they know they’re about to die. Most have a blank, resigned expression on their faces. I wonder if...Wab Kinew’s victory in Manitoba this week is the most hopeful sign in Canadian politics in an awfully long time. Not just because he’ll be the first First Nations premier to lead a province, a hugely symbolic milestone in itself. But because of how he won — with a message of unity that contrasted nicely with the angry, divisive tone...Every Saturday, Peter Mansbridge provides thoughtful takes on this week's news stories. Subscribe for FREE! You can unsubscribe any time.
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