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Former Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall on working with (or against) Justin Trudeau

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From a FaceBook post by former Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall

Your Mom likely told you what mine told me – if you can’t say something nice ..don’t say anything at all. So maybe that’s why it has taken me a day to offer a few thoughts on Trudeau’s resignation announcement yesterday. I miss my Mom everyday but I’m not sure I will be able to follow her advice for this post. (On the other hand.. remembering some of her comments during the Trudeau years – she might be fine with this!)
I truly believe that those who put their name forward for public office, no matter how much I might disagree with them personally and politically should be thanked for their willingness to wade into the increasingly toxic waters of politics. But the undeniable truth is that Canada would be better off today had he decided not to follow in his father’s footsteps.
His Prime Ministership was manifestly the most divisive and economically damaging of any in our history…including the record of the elder Trudeau ..who generationally knee-capped the economy of western Canada with the National Energy Program.
I dealt with this particular Trudeau in my old job at First Ministers’ Conferences, in bilateral relations and one on one discussions. He struck me as someone who was the product of an abiding central Canadian/Quebec world view with a focus on progressive trends rather than policy development or political and economic thought. That was my impression anyway.
Somewhere along the way he found and then clung to wokeism and an obsession with man-made climate change. They were very trendy things for those on the left. Shiny buttons that permanently distracted Trudeau.
His government continues to risk our economy, our trade competitiveness and exacerbate affordability issues for all Canadians with his forced march to a carbon tax that in 4 years will be a debilitating $170.00 per tonne. All in the name of reducing Canada’s emissions that account for less than 2% of global emissions. Imagine – stubbornly pursuing a policy like his carbon tax that is that damaging – in the name of maybe, possibly reducing emissions by a quantum that will make no impact..no change on this thing you’ve sworn us all to fight – climate change. A leader shoving his citizens ahead of him into a winless fight, forcing them to pay for the costs of that fight and risking the competitiveness of the entire economy (at a time when we are now facing the threat of Trump’s tariffs).
The carbon tax is just one policy on a laundry list of damaging and often feckless policies that Trudeau has introduced in his 10 years as Prime Minister. He all but declared his disdain for the western Canadian resource sector. He never much liked how we made a living in the west; how we live by and rely on fossil fuels in rural Canada. He never respected the values that a majority of western or rural Canadians hold dear.
He, more than any PM in contemporary Canadian political history, was found wanting in ethics and third party investigations. He chose to fire or force out strong female Ministers rather than be held accountable for things he very much said…and very much did. All this from a self-proclaimed feminist who would regularly lecture Canadians on the importance of his ‘feminist’ view.
He offered the same when it came to Reconcilation yet he failed to fulfill his promise for clean drinking water on First Nations reserves.
He demonized millions of Canadians who were represented by the Freedom Convoy or who had concerns about lock- downs and vaccine mandates – dismissing them as un-Canadian and fringe and ..much worse.
His fiscal record and tendencies were so bad that even the big spending, big government advocating Chrystia Freeland quit his cabinet.
People will observe that Canada has never had an NDP Prime Minister. I beg to differ.
He was unserious. He said things and believed things like “The budget will balance itself” and “I don’t think too much about monetary policy “
Incredible.
I recall when I was the lone Premier and Saskatchewan was the lone province opposing his carbon tax. I know the kinds of things he and his Environment Minister Catherine McKenna said about us…about Saskatchewan..behind closed doors and to some whom they believed had assured discretion.
And yet despite all of this – I did not feel as gratified as some did when the news broke yesterday. You see yesterday was a good day for the Liberal Party of Canada. Or at least a better day than they have had in a long while. Granted the Liberals have huge hole from which to dig out but the digging could not begin until Trudeau quit.
I’d rather he had decided to lead his party into the next election. We would be much more assured of much needed change had that been the case.
Because make no mistake – with him or without him – this is a new Justin Trudeau-shaped leftwing, woke, anti-resource development Liberal party of Canada. Long gone is the pragmatism of the Chretien/Martin era. Trudeau policies for the most part will continue to be front and centre with the Liberal party long after he is gone.
I hope the Conservative Party of Canada keeps it head down, humbly asking Canadians to be their agents of much needed change.. and running like they are 10 points behind – not 20 points ahead.
I believe that Canada as we have known it- hangs in the balance of the next election. If somehow, we continue to have a federal government with the ghost-vestigial policies of the man who announced his departure plans yesterday… well that would very bad for the west and not much better for the rest of the country.

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National

How Long Will Mark Carney’s Post-Election Honeymoon Last? – Michelle Rempel Garner

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From Energy Now

By Michelle Rempel Garner

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney seems to be enjoying a bit of a post-election honeymoon period with voters. This is a normal phenomenon in Canadian politics – our electorate tends to give new leaders the benefit of the doubt for a time after their election.


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So the obvious question that arises in this circumstance is, how long will it last?

I’ve had a few people ask me to speculate about that over the last few weeks. It’s not an entirely straightforward question to answer, because external factors often need to be considered. However, leaders have a lot of control too, and on that front, questions linger about Mark Carney’s long-term political acumen. So let’s start there.

Having now watched the man in action for a hot minute, there seems to be some legs to the lingering perception that, as a political neophyte, Mr. Carney struggles to identify and address political challenges. In the over 100 days that he’s now been in office, he’s laid down some proof points on this front.

For starters, Mr. Carney seems to not fully grasp that his post-election honeymoon is unfolding in a starkly different political landscape than that of his predecessor in 2015. When former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau secured a majority government, he inherited a balanced federal budget, a thriving economy, and a stable social fabric from the prior Conservative government. These favorable conditions gave Trudeau the time and flexibility to advance his political agenda. By contrast, Canadians today are grappling with crises in affordability, employment, and crime – issues that were virtually non-existent in 2015. As a result, public patience with a new political leader may wear thin much more quickly now than it did a decade ago.

So in that, Carney doesn’t have much time to make material progress on longstanding irritants like crime and affordability, but to date, he really hasn’t. In fact, he hasn’t even dedicated much space in any of his daily communications to empathizing with the plight of the everyday Canadian, eschewing concern for bread and butter issues for colder corporate speak. So if predictions about a further economic downturn in the fall ring true, he may not have the longer term political runway Justin Trudeau once had with the voting public, which doesn’t bode well for his long term favourables.

Carney’s apparent unease with retail politics won’t help him on that front, either. For example, at the Calgary Stampede, while on the same circuit, I noticed him spending the bulk of his limited time at events – even swish cocktail receptions – visibly eyeing the exit, surrounded by an entourage of fartcatchers whose numbers would have made even Trudeau blush. Unlike Trudeau, whose personal charisma secured three election victories despite scandals, Carney struggles to connect with a crowd. This political weakness may prove fatal to his prospects for an extended honeymoon, even with the Liberal brand providing cover.

It’s also too early to tell if Carney has anyone in his inner circle capable of grasping these concepts. That said, leaders typically don’t cocoon themselves away from people who will give blunt political assessments until the very end of their tenures when their political ends are clear to everyone but them. Nonetheless, Carney seems to have done exactly that, and compounded the problem of his lack of political acumen, by choosing close advisors who have little retail political experience themselves. While some have lauded this lack of political experience as a good thing, not having people around the daily table or group chat who can interject salient points about how policy decisions will impact the lives of day to day Canadians probably won’t help Carney slow the loss of his post-election shine.

Further proof to this point are the post-election grumblings that have emerged from the Liberal caucus. Unlike Trudeau, who started his premiership with an overwhelming majority of his caucus having been freshly elected, Carney has a significant number of old hands in his caucus who carry a decade of internal drama, inflated sense of worth, and personal grievances amongst them. As a political neophyte, Carney not only has to prove to the Canadian public that he has the capacity to understand their plight, he also has to do the same for his caucus, whose support he will uniformly need to pass legislation in a minority Parliament.

To date, Carney has not been entirely successful on that front. In crafting his cabinet, he promoted weak caucus members into key portfolios like immigration, kept loose cannons in places where they can cause a lot of political damage (i.e. Steven Guilbeaut in Heritage), unceremoniously dumped mavericks who possess big social media reach without giving them a task to keep them occupied, and passed over senior members of the caucus who felt they should either keep their jobs or have earned a promotion after carrying water for a decade. Underestimating the ability of a discontented caucus to derail a leader’s political agenda – either by throwing a wrench into the gears of Parliamentleaking internal drama to media, or underperformance – is something that Carney doesn’t seem to fully grasp. Said differently, Carney’s (in)ability to manage his caucus will have an impact on how long the shine stays on him.

Mark Carney’s honeymoon as a public figure also hinges upon his (arguably hilarious) assumption that the federal public service operates in the same way that private sector businesses do. Take for example, a recent (and hamfistedly) leaked headline, proactively warning senior public servants that he might fire them. In the corporate world, where bonuses and promotions are tied to results, such conditions are standard (and in most cases, entirely reasonable). Yet, after a decade of Liberal government expansion and lax enforcement of performance standards, some bureaucrats have grown accustomed to and protective of Liberal slipshod operating standards. Carney may not yet understand that many of these folks will happily leak sensitive information or sabotage policy reforms to preserve their status quo, and that both elegance and political will is required to enact change within the Liberal’s bloated government.

On that front, Mr. Carney has already gained a reputation for being dismissive and irritable with various players in the political arena. While this quick-tempered demeanor may have remained understated during his relatively brief ascent to the Prime Minister’s office, continued impatience could soon become a prominent issue for both him and his party. Whether dismissing reporters or publicly slighting senior cabinet members, if Carney sustains this type of arrogance and irritability he won’t be long for the political world. Without humility, good humor, patience, and resilience he won’t be able to convince voters, the media, the bureaucracy, and industry to support his governing agenda.

But perhaps the most important factor in judging how long Mr. Carney’s honeymoon will last is that to date he has shown a striking indifference to nuclear-grade social policy files like justice, immigration, and public safety. His appointment of underperforming ministers to these critical portfolios and the absence of a single government justice bill in Parliament’s spring session – despite crime being a major voter concern – is a big problem. Carney himself rarely addresses these issues – likely due to a lack of knowledge and care – leaving them to the weakest members of his team. None of this points to long term political success for Carney.

So Mr. Carney needs to understand that Canadians are not sterile, esoteric units to be traded in a Bay Street transaction. They are real people living real lives, with real concerns that he signed up to address. He also needs to understand that politics (read, the ability to connect with one’s constituents and deliver for them) isn’t an avocation – it’s a learned skill of which he is very much still a novice practitioner.

Honeymoon or not, these laws of political gravity that Mr. Carney can’t avoid for long, particularly with an effective opposition litigating his government’s failures.

In that, I think the better question is not if Mark Carney can escape that political gravity well, but whether he’ll stick around once his ship inevitably gets sucked into it.

Only time – and the country’s fortunes under his premiership – will tell.

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Business

Trump confirms 35% tariff on Canada, warns more could come

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MXM logo MxM News

Quick Hit:

President Trump on Thursday confirmed a sweeping new 35% tariff on Canadian imports starting August 1, citing Canada’s failure to curb fentanyl trafficking and retaliatory trade actions.

Key Details:

  • In a letter to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Trump said the new 35% levy is in response to Canada’s “financial retaliation” and its inability to stop fentanyl from reaching the U.S.
  • Trump emphasized that Canadian businesses that relocate manufacturing to the U.S. will be exempt and promised expedited approvals for such moves.
  • The administration has already notified 23 countries of impending tariffs following the expiration of a 90-day negotiation window under Trump’s “Liberation Day” trade policy.

Diving Deeper:

President Trump escalated his tariff strategy on Thursday, formally announcing a 35% duty on all Canadian imports effective August 1. The move follows what Trump described as a breakdown in trade cooperation and a failure by Canada to address its role in the U.S. fentanyl crisis.

“It is a Great Honor for me to send you this letter in that it demonstrates the strength and commitment of our Trading Relationship,” Trump wrote to Prime Minister Mark Carney. He added that the tariff response comes after Canada “financially retaliated” against the U.S. rather than working to resolve the flow of fentanyl across the northern border.

Trump’s letter made clear the tariff will apply broadly, separate from any existing sector-specific levies, and included a warning that “goods transshipped to evade this higher Tariff will be subject to that higher Tariff.” The president also hinted that further retaliation from Canada could push rates even higher.

However, Trump left the door open for possible revisions. “If Canada works with me to stop the flow of Fentanyl, we will, perhaps, consider an adjustment to this letter,” he said, adding that tariffs “may be modified, upward or downward, depending on our relationship.”

Canadian companies that move operations to the U.S. would be exempt, Trump said, noting his administration “will do everything possible to get approvals quickly, professionally, and routinely — In other words, in a matter of weeks.”

The U.S. traded over $762 billion in goods with Canada in 2024, with a trade deficit of $63.3 billion, a figure Trump called a “major threat” to both the economy and national security.

Speaking with NBC News on Thursday, Trump suggested even broader tariff hikes are coming, floating the idea of a 15% or 20% blanket rate on all imports. “We’re just going to say all of the remaining countries are going to pay,” he told Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker, adding that “the tariffs have been very well-received” and noting that the stock market had hit new highs that day.

The Canadian announcement is part of a broader global tariff rollout. In recent days, Trump has notified at least 23 countries of new levies and revealed a separate 50% tariff on copper imports.

“Not everybody has to get a letter,” Trump said when asked if other leaders would be formally notified. “You know that. We’re just setting our tariffs.”

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