“Canadian Politics”

As Canada looks to untangle itself economically from the US, the country’s landlocked oil patch is eyeing new customers in Asia through a pipeline to the Pacific. Not everyone is on board.

The oil-rich province of Alberta has had one demand for Prime Minister Mark Carney: Help us build an oil pipeline — and fast.

It’s no small task — in fact, some argue it has become near-impossible to build a pipeline in Canada because of laws designed to bolster environmental protections. Three oil pipelines have died on the vine in the past decade over fierce opposition.

The media loves a good dramatic story to report.

When Conservative MP Chris D’entrement crossed the floor to join the Liberals, journalists licked their chops at the prospect of covering all the apparent dysfunction in the party that led up to his decision.

The federal government is expecting the budget to pass a final confidence test by a slim majority Monday as Liberals work behind the scenes to corral enough opposition votes to avert an election.

A senior Liberal told The Globe and Mail Sunday that Prime Minister Mark Carney does not have the votes at this point to win a confidence vote.

There’s always hope.

Attempting perhaps to turn a story about his own leadership into a story about whether the Canadian news media have unfairly focused on dissent within the Conservative caucus, Pierre Poilievre challenged reporters on Wednesday to pay as much attention to the recent criticism levelled against the federal government’s budget by Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith.

Of course, that Erskine-Smith might deviate from the Liberal government’s official line is hardly surprising at this point. The left-leaning Liberal backbencher has spent much of the past decade displaying a willingness to go his own way, so much so that many members of the parliamentary press gallery probably no longer consider it newsworthy when he does.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and his office will not say if his caucus will be whipped by party leadership and urged to vote against Prime Minister Mark Carney’s budget next week — a vote that could trigger another election if the minority government falls.

Asked by reporters in Calgary on Friday if he was confident that all his members of Parliament would vote against the budget in the House of Commons on Monday, Poilievre wouldn’t directly answer.

LPC internal polling must be saying Poilievre is vulnerable if an election is forced. 

The independent thought alarm went off in the Liberal universe again, and of course, the culprit was Ontario MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith. The MP for Beaches-East York has made a habit of using both his brain and his mouth since he entered politics a decade ago, which is a combination that will earn any MP a permanent seat on the backbench (though Mr. Erksine-Smith did enjoy a brief stint as housing minister in the final and desperate months of the Justin Trudeau government).

In the wake of Chris d’Entremont crossing the floor to the Liberals, there has been pressure on Pierre Poilievre to show that he’s changing.

In interviews after joining the Carney government, d’Entremont said that his former party was run like a frat house.

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has had a difficult couple weeks. His only Nova Scotia-based MP, Chris d’Entremont, crossed the floor to the Liberals on Nov. 4. Alberta MP Matt Jeneroux then announced on Nov. 6 that he’ll be resigning his seat next spring.

Both decisions were obviously unfortunate. No political leader would ever willingly want to go through these types of political headaches. This was especially true when last week’s focus should have been squarely on a federal Liberal budget touting a much-higher-than-expected deficit of $78.3 billion.