Canada

A year-end poll from Nanos suggests Canadians will want to see action from the Liberal government on major economic files in the new year.

Just over one in five respondents to the poll published this week said jobs and the economy were the most important national issues — more than double the 10 per cent who listed relations with the United States and President Donald Trump as their top priority.

Inflation, health care and immigration rounded out the top five concerns for Canadians.

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 a “yes” vote to succeed in either province.

Heading into 2026, Canada is grappling with talk of separatism referendums in two provinces, Alberta and Quebec. It is slated to participate in a formal review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) at a time when the U.S. has pledged to “reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.” Public trust in our institutions have plummeted, down nearly 10 percentage points between 2013 and 2024 for our justice system, 13 percentage points for trust in police, and more than 15 percentage points for schools.

Jewish community leaders and a former Liberal justice minister are calling on Prime Minister Mark Carney to appoint a new antisemitism envoy and provide extra funding for community safety amid rising anxiety after the Bondi Beach Hanukkah shootings.

They say filling the vacant envoy post is a matter of urgency after a spike in antisemitic incidents, including multiple thefts of mezuzahs from the doorways of Toronto Jewish homes this month. A mezuzah contains a parchment inscribed with scripture.

Deborah Lyons resigned in July as Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism, telling the Canadian Jewish News she was exhausted after spending nearly two years “waking up every day to a fight.”

I have long wondered what exactly Deb was fighting.

It was absurd that she demanded we protect Jews from the Muslims her employer imported and coddled.

Barb was so tone deaf she called us out for not rallying to her battle cry.

Apparently she missed how for the past decade her employer viciously slandered dissenters as Islamophobes and racists for warning of Islam’s threat to Canada

A threat aided and abetted by the very best our political class, media and universities had to offer.

Deb failed to see Antisemitism is an elite value not a Canadian value.

Maybe Barb will find time in retirement to watch CBC for some needed indoctrination.

After a wild year in Canadian politics that began with Justin Trudeau’s resignation and ended with Conservative MPs crossing the floor to join Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal government, 2026 is shaping up to be just as action-packed.

It’ll be a year where U.S. trade talks will loom large. Meanwhile, federal opposition parties will make key decisions on their futures as the Liberal government — just one seat shy of a majority government — strategizes what to do next.

As we close the book on 2025, the Canadian political landscape is not just altered, it is unrecognizable. For those of us within the “bubble,” this year served as a reminder that the old playbooks are obsolete.

In 12 months, we witnessed the fall of a populist juggernaut, the erasure of a major party’s official status, and a pivot toward an economic realism that only few saw coming.

If 2024 was defined by anxiety, 2025 was the year of the “Great Realignment.” A year in politics can seem like an eternity, yet change often arrives in a heartbeat. Looking back, we see the moments that snapped the trajectory of the country. These “small waves” have provided a rare opportunity to recalibrate priorities and capture the quiet frustrations of a changing electorate before the tide turns again.