Six years ago, after Gabriel Wortman of Nova Scotia committed the deadliest mass shooting in Canadian history, the Trudeau government banned more than 2,500 models of firearms because they looked scary. Even though other models of the same firearms had the same firepower, those versions were not banned because they lacked the militarist features that made the others look like “assault-style” weapon.
OTTAWA — In this discussion with Jason James, I break down the stunning rise of Liberal floor-crosser Michael Ma — a story The Bureau has led Canadian media on with at least 10 investigative reports since mid-December 2025, culminating in our coverage of his suspicious cross-examination of expert Margaret McCuaig-Johnston.
This is a wide-ranging conversation.
When news broke that the Donald Trump administration and Iran had agreed to a two-week ceasefire, markets reacted instantly. Oil prices plunged within minutes, wiping out days of gains and triggering a wave of optimism. For many consumers, the assumption seemed obvious: lower oil prices should mean lower food prices.
That assumption is fundamentally flawed.
Let’s just do the right thing by Heritage Canada and rename it for what it is, the Canadian Ministry of Propaganda. Or if you want to follow the official style sheet, Propaganda Canada.
Top of mind today is a draft rewrite of Canada’s Citizenship Guide, Discover Canada. This is the book they give prospective immigrants, an explanation of how the Government of Canada sees itself, the country, and the people living in it. The present one was published in 2012 during the Stephen Harper ministry, when Heritage Canada was known as Canada Citizenship, Immigration, and Multiculturalism.
The news that Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu is crossing the floor to join the Liberal caucus, effectively guaranteeing Prime Minister Mark Carney a parliamentary majority, has not been hailed universally by her constituents.
“She thinks she knows better than her voters?” said one resident of Sarnia–Lambton–Bkejwanong on social media. “What is the flipping point? You wonder why people get radicalized? This is why people get radicalized.”
The Liberal party may yet lose byelections in Toronto’s University–Rosedale and Scarborough Southwest next week, but the odds are about as likely as Canada or Scotland winning this summer’s World Cup (about 150 to 1). The third byelection in Terrebonne in Quebec will be closer, but with Gladu’s road-to-Damascus conversion, it has become less crucial to the Liberals.
Nobody’s separating. Yet what’s happening in the suburban riding of Terrebonne on Monday may tell us something just as consequential about the country.
Three federal by-elections are being held that day. Two are in safe Liberal ridings in Toronto vacated by former ministers Chrystia Freeland and Bill Blair. The third is in Terrebonne. The largely francophone community northeast of Montreal is where Liberal candidate Tatiana Auguste defeated the Bloc Québécois’s Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné by a single vote in last year’s general election. That result was eventually annulled by the Supreme Court over irregularities with mail-in ballot envelopes.
He’s building it by defection.
As Canada lowers its tariffs and imports more electric vehicles from China, an upcoming report from New York-based labour rights researchers is making new allegations of forced labour practices at the world’s bestselling EV manufacturer, BYD.
China Labor Watch (CLW) received a complaint last fall from one of the thousands of migrant workers brought to Hungary from China to help build BYD’s first European plant in the city of Szeged — a $6-billion investment intended to supply the European market with around 300,000 vehicles per year.
The conventional wisdom is that the Canadian economy should be a big winner from the surge in oil prices following the escalation of conflict in the Middle East. Canada is the fourth-largest exporter of crude oil in the world: when prices rise, Canadian oil generates more revenue, corporate income, higher wages, and government royalties.
The OECD’s latest outlook points to a more complicated reality. Canada is no longer a petrostate; while the oil and gas sector is still large enough to cushion Canada from the worst macroeconomic consequences of the Iran war, the structure and geography of Canadian economic growth have added many more trade-offs to managing resource profits.
Former Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu has crossed the floor to the Liberals, according to statements from both her and Prime Minister Mark Carney on Wednesday morning.
“At this important moment for our country’s future, Canadians with a broad range of experience and perspectives are uniting to build Canada strong. I am honoured to welcome Marilyn Gladu today as the newest member of this government and our Liberal caucus,” Carney said in a social media post.
Immigration experts say the front-line officials charged with initially questioning refugee claimants do not have enough latitude to probe the details of claimants’ stories, even if there is reason to doubt them.
The issue of how and when claimants are questioned came to public attention late last month. That’s when figures provided to MPs on the Commons immigration committee revealed that the Immigration and Refugee Board, which adjudicates asylum claims, has since 2019 processed more than 45,000 refugee cases based on paperwork alone, without in-person hearings, as it deals with a backlog of claims.
The Conservative Party is calling on the House of Commons ethics watchdog to launch an investigation into whether Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne breached ethics rules regarding his partner’s involvement in a federal government-funded high speed rail project.
In a letter to Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Konrad von Finckenstein, Conservative ethics critic Michael Barrett made the case for an investigation, pointing out that the company heading the project, Alto, is to receive millions of dollars in funding from the budget that Champagne introduced last fall and has defended in both the House of Commons and committee.
CALGARY — Cabinet turned to marketing experts and focus groups to test slogans and logos as Canada’s housing shortage worsened, according to internal records that raise fresh questions about priorities in addressing affordability.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, the Privy Council Office commissioned nationwide focus groups to gauge which branding concepts would best convince Canadians the government had a plan to fix the crisis.
I bet “Blame it on Trump” was touted as a favourite to win.
Canada’s finance minister was in Beijing late last week looking to deepen financial sector ties with China. Francois-Philippe Champagne said he was building on the strategic partnership deal signed between Prime Minister Mark Carney and Chinese President Xi Jinping “with eyes wide open.”
A more appropriate ophthalmological analogy would have been to say that Canada will henceforth turn a blind eye to Beijing’s excesses.
On March 25, Prime Minister Mark Carney claimed that “affordability is the best that it’s been in over a decade.”
Unfortunately, Carney’s claims are simply untrue and merely another aspect of the Potemkin nation that Carney and his Liberal government have sought to substitute for Canadian society.
Housing prices are dipping in Canada’s priciest markets, but real estate experts say it’s not necessarily the break for which potential first-time homebuyers have been waiting — and that break may never come.
TD Economics said in a report last week that it expects home prices to slide 0.3 per cent across Canada this year, after a weak performance in the market over the last two quarters, with Ontario and B.C. facing the biggest drops.
