OTTAWA—Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is going all-in on his fight to oppose the Liberal government’s vision for a high-speed rail network in Central Canada — a project that boasts support from younger voters, local political leaders and even some in western provinces.
To Poilievre, the project is a boondoggle-in-waiting with a $60- to $90-billion price tag that could spiral out of control, imperil existing transportation routes and raze through rural communities.
Senior executives from Lockheed Martin will be in Quebec on Tuesday to confirm that they plan to service Canada’s F-35 aircraft at the L3Harris facilities in Mirabel, which are currently used to maintain Canada’s CF-18 fleet.
The announcement will be their first major outing on Canadian soil since Prime Minister Mark Carney announced last year that he was reviewing the government’s plans to purchase 88 F-35s.
It isn’t possible to hate this evil man too much.[/caption]There is no great mystery behind why some nations are wealthy and others are not. The policy mix varies very little and is well understood. Countries with lower, neutral tax systems, minimal regulations, the rule of law and openness to international trade and foreign investment are wealthier than countries with higher taxes, more complicated regulations, and which are closed off to the world. Economies are the sum of the countless decisions made by people on what to buy or sell, where to invest, or where to work.
Where did this idea come from, of Canada joining the European Union? I know the Prime Minister likes to say that Canada is “the most European of the non-European countries,” whatever that means. (More European than, say, Argentina? Uruguay? New Zealand?)
And sure, we’ve all joked about it, at least once, in the heat of Donald Trump’s latest outrage (“that’s it, we’re joining Europe!”). But we are now well past a joke. Finland’s President, Alexander Stubb, is the latest world leader to appear to entertain the prospect, pronouncing it “a marriage made in heaven” that could be negotiated “faster than Finland joining NATO.”
OTTAWA — Criticism over Canada allowing Chinese electric vehicles access to Canada’s market is mounting, with industry and geopolitical analysts warning of the risks associated with increased engagement with China.
“It’s a massive risk,” said Brian Kingston, president and CEO of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association.
“Canada’s auto industry depends on our integration with North America and the U.S. specifically, that’s been the foundation of the sector, going all the way back to the auto pact.”
When Chrystia Freeland resigned as federal finance minister in December 2024, she left behind a sentence that now reads like prophecy.
Canada, she wrote, needed to keep its fiscal powder dry and eschew “costly political gimmicks, which we can ill afford and which make Canadians doubt that we recognize the gravity of the moment.”
OTTAWA — Liberal Industry Minister Mélanie Joly pointed to changing demographics following her party’s performance in the Terrebonne byelection, as new figures show Ottawa has spent millions promoting immigration from French-speaking countries abroad.
“Very important community from Haiti, also from northern Africa… things are changing across the country,” Joly said when asked about the result.
So we're not supposed to talk about the people whose ancestors built this country as a distinct group with distinct cultural interests, but we can applaud new people who show up and change the political fabric of the country to suit their particular interests? ……. https://t.co/wQna6PXCbS
— Jamie Sarkonak (@sarkonakj) April 16, 2026
Regulatory reform is a rare common ground in Canadian politics. The Carney government launched a red tape review last year and reversed several Trudeau-era regulatory policies. Cabinet minister Dominic LeBlanc has publicly criticized how red tape holds back the economy, while Pierre Poilievre has made cutting it a centrepiece of his economic pitch.
A recent survey by the Business Council of Canada found that nearly half of CEOs identify the domestic regulatory burden as the single most important factor influencing their investment decisions—higher than CUSMA uncertainty—topping the list in every survey wave since 2023.
From 2015 to 2024, the government sector in Canada—including federal, provincial and municipal—added 950,000 jobs, which accounted for roughly 30 per cent of total employment growth in the country, finds a new study published today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank.
h/t Mauser & Patti Jo
Federal housing officials approved nearly $1.2 million in taxpayer funding for a program that handed out cameras to homeless individuals as part of an arts-based exhibition, despite internal records showing the initiative struggled to meet its goals and lacked clear data on its target population.
Blacklock’s Reporter says Access to Information documents show the funding, totalling $1,199,921, was allocated through a Veteran Homelessness Program overseen by Housing Minister Gregor Robertson’s department.
I bet that bought a lot of crack.
Prime Minister Mark Carney pulled off of a political coup when his party won three byelections on Monday after enticing five members of the opposition parties to cross the floor, thus turning a minority into a majority government for the first time in Canadian history. But to suggest, as many Liberals are, that he has formed some sort of “unity government” is patently ridiculous.
Mark Carney is swaggering about Canada with his new majority government, acting as if he’d just received a landslide mandate from the electorate. The truth is he acquired his precious majority not by climbing up on his soapbox and convincing voters, but by whispering sweet nothings to five MPs from other parties, upon which they mysteriously lost their political principles and crossed the floor. Does Carney believe in democracy? It’s hard to be sure.
Yes, his party did just win three special elections. But only one of those counted (the other two were held by Liberals already and in safe Liberal ridings, so made no difference to the number of seats the party held). Without the floor-crossings, Carney would be stuck with the minority he won last April.
Ottawa boasts of nation-building while debt rises, jobs vanish, and contradictions multiply.
The Liberal Party of Canada is ecstatic. They’ve finally caught the golden ring on the merry-go-round. There were three byelections in Canada on April 13, and the Liberal Party won all three of them, which now gives them a majority government. To be clear, they have been inching their way in this direction for almost a year now, since they won a minority government in the last federal election. They have been doing this by persuading Conservative MPs to cross the floor. The last such crossing was just a few days ago on April 8, when Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu did the treacherous little dance. She was the fourth Conservative MP to do so since the general election. In the Liberal Party press release, she justified her move by calling it an “opportunity … [to] build the nation at speeds never seen before.” That’s a current Liberal talking point, but it don’t mean a thing.
The day after the Liberals secured their majority in the House of Commons there was a sense that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
In this case, it was the reminder that at 2:15 p.m. in the House, it is still “question period,” not “answer period.”
On Tuesday, Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong rose to ask the government why it had voted in favour of Iran’s membership to the United Nations Committee for Program and Coordination, which shapes UN policy on women’s rights, human rights, disarmament and terrorism prevention.
It feels like there is a campaign underway to get Canada to join the European Union. We have polls and news stories pushing the idea, and politicians seemingly regularly commenting on how or if it could happen.
It’s an utterly ridiculous idea that would see Canada surrender more sovereignty than we would in any trade deal with the Americans. To the smart set, though, the people who allow Donald Trump to occupy every corner of their brains, joining the EU is the antidote to Trump.
