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Welcome back to the real world, as we start the first full work week of 2024. Happy New Year!

For the three main federal party leaders, they have different imperatives to address.

For the prime minister, he needs to continue to get his government into gear to address the very real economic anxieties Canadians are facing.

Global inflation, fuelled by post-pandemic realities, is putting a real strain on family budgets. In particular, interest rates, raised to help cool that global inflation, are now one of the most acute cost pressures on families. With inflation itself cooling in the latter half of 2023, it is perhaps worth asking why the Bank of Canada’s inflation target is far lower than actual global inflation; we may well be in a scenario where the cure is worse than the disease if high interest rates continue to erode take-home pay.

More specifically, the PM needs to have every Minister reaching for the standard Housing Minister Sean Fraser has set.

In a matter of weeks, Fraser completely reset narratives, at least in expert and activist circles, on housing policy. Leveraging federal funding to incentivize — if not outright prod — municipalities to build more housing, to liberalize zoning and reject NIMBYism has been an absolute sea change for this government, and will pay real dividends over time to help increase supply and hopefully lower the cost of homes.

We can only wish every cabinet minister was this effective on policy and — critically — on communication.

There’s a scene in Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom where the Jane Fonda character tells a young executive, “You have a PR problem because you have an actual problem.” Truer words have never been spoken when it comes to the Trudeau government seeking a fourth mandate less than two years’ time. They have the runway to be competitive come October 2025, if they deal with the actual problems. Yes, they have messaging issues, but they first have to solve the policy challenges they’re facing.

For Pierre Poilievre, his New Year’s resolutions are in reverse order: his comms are crisp and effective, but sometimes way too self-indulgent. There really seem to be two Poilievre characters: there’s the really effective, YouTube or TED Talk-style explainer dude who breaks complicated issues down to understandable, visceral messaging, and then there’s the geeky jerk who shows up like he’s set to disrupt a first-year economics seminar to show off his own self-assumed brilliance.

To put it bluntly, the first Poilievre could well win. The Liberal hope is that Canadians see far more of the second Poilievre, and find him weird and off putting.

Eventually, with this general comms diagnostic in mind, Poilievre will need to put a bit more meat on the bones of a policy offering. He probably does not need to get too detailed, but a bit more than slogans, particularly to show some credibility on climate change, is advisable.

For Jagmeet Singh, it sort of is what it is. He’s a governing partner for the Liberals, his NDP is enjoying more power than it’s had since at least the early 1960s and yet he constantly critiques the government as if he’s not a de facto part of it (yes, I know, a confidence-and-supply agreement is not a coalition, but let’s be real about the machinations of how the deal works day by day).

He’s gambled on making a difference and delivering some key NDP policy goals, and we will see if that works come the 2025 election for his party. I suspect what won’t work is opposing the government you played a role in running, while also claiming responsibility for the parts of the governing agenda you like, but we shall see.

The election may be about two years away, but it’s pre-election season already.

(Finally, a note to regular readers: I’m back. Since December 2020, I’ve been serving as a ward councillor in my hometown of Bradford, a rapidly growing agricultural community and northern suburb of the Greater Toronto Area. That’s kept me busy, and perhaps a little less blunt in political opining. But, as we start a New Year, I’m happy to be back with this column, offering some hot takes and observations on #cdnpoli.)

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


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The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


This content is restricted to subscribers

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


As the year draws to a close, there have been a handful of year-end interviews from the Conservatives, but vanishingly few from mainstream legacy media outlets. The closest that Pierre Poilievre came were interviews with Rex Murphy at the National Post and Brian Lilley at the Toronto Sun, but neither interview can credibly claim to be anything other than a friendly chat with absolutely no pushback from the interviewers. Deputy leader Melissa Lantsman did one year-ender with CTV, but otherwise, Poilievre mostly stuck to independent right-wing outlets and with right-wing talk radio hosts. While there were some attempts to get Poilievre to talk about his plans if he were to form a government, the answers were, not unsurprisingly, vapid and unserious, with no credible path laid out.

One such example was around immigration targets. This is one area where Poilievre has to walk a tightrope between appealing to the nativists in the base he has been actively trying to cultivate, while also trying to ensure that he has the support of enough ethnocultural minority voters, primarily in the suburbs of Canada’s largest cities, where these demographics can make or break an electoral victory for a party. So how does Poilievre hope to play to both sides? By pretending that he can set immigration targets with a “mathematical formula” that takes into account things like housing, the number of doctors required, and availability of jobs. While that may have a whiff of credibility and thoughtfulness to it, which is what Poilievre is hoping to project, the problem is that it falls apart the moment you actually think about it for more than five seconds.

If we tied immigration levels to housing, we would never bring in more immigrants, ever. Yes, things are at a crisis level right now, but it’s also because of the complacency that provinces and municipalities have lulled themselves into (along with the plaintive wails of NIMBY constituents who want less housing so that their property values can continue to increase along with scarcity of supply). If anything, the current situation has given said provinces and municipalities the kick in the ass that they needed to start taking this seriously, while the federal government is deploying what few tools they have—namely money, in the form of the Housing Accelerator Fund—to get them to start making the necessary changes. It’s also forced the immigration department to start looking to skilled trades workers from other countries who can help with our construction needs, rather than just keeping the focus on highly skilled immigrants in mostly STEM fields. There is also finally attention being paid to the colleges, particularly in Ontario, who are running “degree mills,” that are abusive and exploitative of international students. That may not have happened without things reaching the current situation.

As for Poilievre’s continued insistence that he can speed up foreign credential recognition, particularly for healthcare workers, whether doctors, nurses, or pharmacists, that remains something of a pipe dream because he has no levers at the federal level to do that—not even money. This is the domain of private professional colleges, not governments, and they have been overly protective of their turf. Provinces have not helped because they have refused to fund enough residencies that can ensure that these foreign-trained professionals can properly meet the Canadian requirements, and again, Poilievre has no real levers there, unless he wants to send a lot more money to the provinces and hope that they won’t spend it on other things (which leads to questions about what he would cut to send that money). As for a “Blue Seal” program for these credential recognition to practice around the country, again, no federal government could make that happen.

When it comes to the deficit and spending, this is again where things are unserious. This was where Lantsman took the lead in the CTV interview, and insisted that they would achieve savings by reining in spending on “things that we don’t need or want,” which is handwavey bullshit. Every program has someone who needs and wants it, and that’s why deficit reduction programs are extremely difficult to deal with. It’s also opened up the attack line from the Liberals that it means the Conservatives will come after the Canada Child Benefit, dental care, or $10/day child care, all of which the Conservatives opposed, and who have not stated categorically that they will protect them, even though they can lead to larger savings overall, or in the case of child care, ensures that more women are in the labour force, which we need.

Lantsman did say that they would cut the ArriveCan app, which is money that is already spent so it wouldn’t achieve savings, the Canada Infrastructure Bank, or the “green slush fund,” a reference to Sustainable Development Technologies Canada, which was a Conservative creation under the Harper government. She also made reference to cutting the federal carbon price, which would do absolutely nothing about the deficit because it’s a revenue neutral levy where all funds are returned to the province in which they are collected, and redistributed in the way the province has decided (which is mostly the carbon rebate program, which the Conservatives deliberately omit from admitting it exists).

The Conservatives also keep insisting that slaying the deficit will bring down inflation and interest rates, which is not at all true. The current deficits are not being financed by printed money, and are thus only marginally inflationary (the biggest part is where provinces are using spending to juice growth beyond what the economy can sustain, hence stoking inflation). And if you look at the United States, they brought down their high inflation through productivity gains, and are still running massive debts and deficits, so the Conservatives’ logic doesn’t hold. Inflation is coming down thanks to the Bank of Canada’s measures, and rate cuts will follow soon, which will leave Poilievre to shift his goal posts on this file again.

Whether trying to justify their votes against Ukraine or how they’ll combat climate change with “technology not taxes,” there are no credible lines from the Conservatives—only slogans. But when they stack up against the government, who delivers its own meaningless pabulum lines that don’t explain their policies or how they’re addressing the various crises around the country, it’s one more reminder about how nobody is being well-served by politics right now, and that hurts everyone.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


The continued decline of our Parliament from a once serious and proud institution to a deeply unserious clown show accelerated at an alarming rate over the fall sitting, particularly in the House of Commons, thought the Senate has not been immune. As the world becomes an increasingly dangerous place, with the climate emergency now in full swing, the international rules-based order under assault by Russia and its allies, liberal democracy in the West under siege from far-right actors and the likes of Viktor Orbán as he tries to position himself as a leader in post-liberal politics, Canada is on a precipice. This should be a moment where our political class wakes up and realizes that we have a lot of challenges staring us in the face, and we should be serious adults in trying to address them. That is not what is happening, and the incentives are no longer there politically for this to happen.

Things began in late summer with a Cabinet shuffle and a Liberal caucus retreat that was about the party expressing their frustration in a leader who is getting long in the tooth, and whose staff have been creating problems for the caucus as a whole. It wound up with Trudeau surviving the day, and his caucus more or less coming together, but promised action on the housing crisis, which the federal government had finally woken up to, was still some weeks away. Meanwhile, trying to remind the government about their previous “deliverology” philosophy seemed to fall on deaf ears as they convinced themselves their plunging poll numbers was simply a matter of not communicating enough, rather than of not showing results.

Things seemed to pick up in late September when Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in Ottawa, and gave a speech to a joint session of Parliament, but the high of that event was quickly shattered in the days that followed when it became clear that the Speaker, Anthony Rota, had introduced a constituent in the gallery who had fought for a Nazi unit in the Second World War, and called him a “Canadian hero.” Rota epitomized the unseriousness that has beset our Parliament, more concerned with showing off and being everyone’s friend than he was in doing the serious work of being Speaker, and even after he spent a weekend being berated for his judgment in making that introduction in the Chamber, he still tried to hang onto his job before the House Leaders had to gang up on him and make it clear that it was untenable.

Once Rota resigned, and the process to elect his replacement got underway, MPs once again decided not to be serious about the task at hand. Rather than choose the woman who had been doing the job of assistant Deputy Speaker for years in competent fashion, and who had taken on non-partisan roles in the years leading up to this, they instead chose the much, much more partisan Greg Fergus, who while affable, had absolutely no experience in the role of being Speaker, and the Conservatives immediately tried to undermine him publicly. Fergus didn’t help himself as he started peacocking, and within weeks, found himself the subject of a privilege motion, and later a committee report recommending a fine and another apology, because he didn’t have enough foresight and judgment not to record a video for a provincial party friend while in his robes and in his official office. It remains to be seen if he can maintain his role with two opposition parties looking to remove him from the job.

The government, trying to recapture its economic credentials with the communications exercise of “Team Economy” press conferences every Tuesday morning, and some actually sound housing policies finally rolling out, stepped on yet another rake in announcing a “pause” on the carbon price for home heating oil nationally, but because Trudeau made the announcement with all of his Atlantic Canadian MPs behind him, it looked like he was trying to disproportionately benefit one region in order to salvage his polling numbers there. It also undermined the integrity of the carbon pricing regime, and set off a frenzy of demands for more carve-outs, for all home heating (never mind the price differential for heating oil versus other forms), and for on-farm fuels that aren’t already exempt, and this in turn led to some of the worst abuses of parliament in recent memory.

In the leadup to several votes making these demands, the Conservatives turned Question Period into a nihilistic exercise in clip-gathering, repeating the same scripts over and over again but changing the MP they are trying to single out for shitpost videos that would be triggers for their flying monkeys to harass and intimidate those MPs. This also got used against Senators who moved a routine procedural motion so that more senators could join the debate on a bill the Conservatives decided was a pressing wedge on the carbon price they could weaponized, and when a couple of Conservative senators also joined in with the intimidation tactics, one of them in person rather than simply online, things have become incredibly heated in that Chamber as well.

To cap off just how unserious this has all become, Pierre Poilievre spent the last couple of weeks shilling for a disinformation “documentary” on the housing crisis he produced, while engaging in some of the dumbest procedural tactics to try and force the government’s hand on carbon price carve-outs, with a vote marathon on the Estimates (which had nothing to do with the carbon price, and only served to punish the staff of the House of Commons who had to put in overtime to make this happen), and make empty threats to extend the sitting into the holidays, even though there is a fixed calendar and he couldn’t do that, plus it would actually benefit the government because they’d have additional time to push through their legislation. And in forcing the marathon, Poilievre seemed to actually unite the Liberal caucus, which had been grousing pretty hard over Trudeau in the weeks leading up to it.

The absolute decay in what is happening in Parliament was on full display, in large part because nobody is actually worrying about public policy any longer—nearly everything is now just about their comms strategies, and pushing it out over social media. Everything is just performance—substance has almost entirely left the building, and every party shares the blame in this. Canadians cannot afford for our political leaders to be taking their eye off the ball at such a critical juncture in history, and yet all we have to show for this are stupid games that are eroding our institutions. It’s time for all parliamentarians to grow up, before it’s too late.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


The Conservatives have now had several votes regarding Ukraine, both around the trade agreement implementation legislation and the appropriations around extending funding for Operation Unifier, which sees Canadian troops training Ukrainians, and in each case, the Conservatives have voted against Ukraine’s interests. Days later, they began protesting that they were the real supporters of Ukraine and not the Liberals, but their proof of doing so dated to the Harper-era, and their accusations that the Liberals don’t are either non sequiturs or false conflations. It raises all kinds of questions as to just whom Poilievre is trying to send signals by these moves, and what the endgame is.

After the Operation Unifier votes, I’m not sure that we can satisfy ourselves with the explanation that Poilievre is trying to cast himself as a fighter against carbon pricing, and that he’s willing to go to cartoonish lengths to do so. That excuse never made any sense considering that Ukraine has had a price on carbon since 2011, that they will maintain it as part of their entry process into the European Union, and that the mention in the enhanced trade agreement has to do with possible border adjustments (because we will soon be entering into an era of carbon border adjustments as more countries and trading blocs adopt carbon pricing). While he has insisted that he didn’t vote against the operation, he was voting non-confidence in the government, that excuse is hard to swallow when you consider that they insisted on line-by-line votes for the Estimates, and that voting yes on this one line-item would have sent a stronger signal of multi-partisan support for the mission than the performative foot-stamping that were these 130 consecutive non-confidence votes tied to the spending allocations.

The games haven’t stopped there either. After the circus act at committee where they moved out-of-order amendments related to removing the carbon price or trying to add in wholly unnecessary language about arms sales (remember, this treaty has already been negotiated, signed and ratified—this bill is only about amending whatever domestic legislation needs to be adjusted to comply with the agreement), they proposed to force a vote in the House of Commons before heading home for the holidays, presumably to try and get it off the radar rather than let it hang over them over the holidays, and extend the beating they’re taking for a portion of their base. Government House Leader Karina Gould wasn’t going to give them that reprieve, and instead told the Commons on Thursday that she would delay scheduling the vote until the New Year so that the Conservatives can hear from their constituents and reflect on the vote, and then come back and vote in favour of the bill so that it can be unanimous and send that signal of support to Ukraine.

But sending signals are very much at the heart of what these votes are about, and the question becomes who the intended audience is for which message—because clearly, Poilievre is trying to have it both ways, believing himself to be clever enough to get away with both boasting that he and his party are supporters of Ukraine, while also being very visible in being seen to vote against this bill and the Unifier funding. The government has seized on the notion that this is the influence of MAGA Republicans, and one cannot deny that this is a base that Poilievre has been working hard to suck up to since before his leadership race began, when he was busy posing with so-called “Freedom Convoy” occupiers outside of Parliament Hill, and doing his best to sanitize their image over social media.

This is a voting bloc that he has calculated that can get him over the top in the next election without having to appeal to the political centre, because Conservatives have taken the wrong lessons from the previous two elections and the previous two leaders, who pretended to run on centre-right platforms even though everybody could see how transparently false this really was. And given how credulous this voter base really is, who huff every conspiracy theory they can find on the internet, particularly those about how Russia was trying to destroy “biolabs” in Ukraine, or how president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a money-launderer or is secretly buying yachts and Florida resorts, Poilievre knows they will buy his lies about this being about the carbon price in the treaty or their trying to add in language about arms sales. At the same time, Poilievre also has a record of being oblivious to the fact that he has been a useful idiot for far-right extremists in this country.

This is why the chair of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress is so concerned about the Conservatives’ recent votes, and has been imploring that they change their minds. She is concerned that these votes are the “thin edge of the wedge,” akin to what we are seeing happening in Washington, where America First and isolationism are taking hold in the Republicans, and Poilievre is exhibiting some of these signs, dismissing the Liberals calling him out over the Ukraine votes as “fear and falsehoods over far away foreign lands.” This language was pounced upon by the Liberals, pointing to its use by both Donald Trump and Neville Chamberlain, but again, this was a signal to a particular base. So is the fact that Poilievre won’t talk about Ukraine over Twitter, but will let Michael Chong and James Bezan do it on his behalf. That doesn’t happen by accident.

But what if the signal isn’t just to the Convoy/MAGA crowd? This is the part that increasingly concerns me—that Poilievre and the Conservatives are increasingly playing to the acolytes of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, as he positions himself for what he sees as a coming “post-liberal” world, where “illiberal democracy” works to undermine institutions and opposition—because we have seen Poilievre engaging in those same impulses. Orbánism is also spreading to the MAGA crowd in the US, and it’s trying to find a purchase in Canada, including in Poilievre’s party as the Danube Institute, which is funded by Orbán’s government, treated several of his MPs to a lavish trip to London. If Poilievre sees being coy about Ukraine as a signal to this crowd, we may be in a lot more trouble than we realize.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


Lacking in both remorse and repentance, Liberal House Leader Karina Gould recently admitted to reporters that her government would not meet its 2023 deadline to enact pharmacare legislation.

I don’t think we’re going to get it passed by the end of this year,” Gould told the press, “but we’ll definitely keep working” she added, almost cheerfully.

With the House of Commons holiday break fast approaching, her message shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise. By the time Gould finally acknowledged her government’s tardiness, there were only twelve sitting days left in the calendar year. As fellow Loonie Politics columnist Dale Smith has written, even 20 sitting days would likely have been insufficient to pass legislation. Twelve would have been unthinkable.

The NDP should have been the most frustrated by this development. After all, pharmacare is their signature policy demand.

Instead of ramping up the pressure, though, and lambasting the government for its poor punctuality, they meekly allowed the Liberals to continue procrastinating.

Perhaps they thought they could not leverage any more policy wins this year (after the Liberals tabled its anti-scab bill). Or perhaps the holiday season has made them overly charitable. Either way, they need to be much tougher on their supply-and-confidence partners.

Because believe me, the Liberals knew how long it would take to pass pharmacare legislation. They also knew all the necessary steps it would take to draft, introduce, and debate that legislation, before seeking its passage through both the House of Commons and the Senate.

But they dawdled and delayed, lingered and loitered, showing a complete disregard for the assurances they once made.

Now, as 2023 comes to an end, they have next to nothing to show for themselves. No Canada Pharmacare Act. No list of essential medicines from the National Drug Agency. No bulk purchasing plan. Nothing.

The answer why, is quite simple. It’s not a result of finite funds, or a struggling economy, as Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has suggested.

Rather, it is because the wealthy pharmaceutical and insurance industries are hell-bent on maintaining Canada’s inadequate patchwork of drug coverage plans. And they have unleashed the full power of their lobbying efforts to keep it that way.

These industry types don’t care that approximately 7.5 million (one in five) Canadians either have no prescription drug insurance or lack adequate insurance, under the current status quo. Or that almost one million Canadians had to forgo heating their homes and spending money on food to fill their prescription. Or that three million others simply went without their necessary medication.

Immense profit is their only concern, and they’ll have it, so long as they can prevent the government from lowering the obscenely high price of prescription drugs in this country.

As many in academia, civil society, and leftist political circles have long advocated, a single-payer, universal pharmacare system is the best solution to bring drug prices down. At the same time, it will improve the health of millions of Canadians, while saving the country billions.

In a recent 2023 study, the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated that such a system would result in $1.4 billion in annual savings. By 2027-28, those savings would rise closer to $2.2 billion.

Others, like University of British Columbia professor Steve Morgan, and Carleton University professor Marc-Andre Gagnon, anticipate much greater annual savings. According to their estimates, pharmacare could save anywhere between $7.3 and $11.4 billion, respectively.

While various experts differ in their projections, all agree that pharmacare, and access to more affordable drugs, will reduce hospitalizations and emergency room visits.

Alas, as transformational as the system would be, the likelihood of it getting implemented, much less enduring beyond the current Liberal tenure in office, appears tenuous at best.

Even if the NDP succeeds in pressuring the Liberals to adopt a universal, single-payer pharmacare system – their preferred system – it may be too late to become effectively entrenched from C/conservative assault.

For the entirety of his eight years in office, Justin Trudeau has had to contend with fierce hostility from the Conservative Party of Canada. They have outright opposed – and even vowed to scrap – almost every policy they deem remotely progressive, regardless of its merit.

Take the carbon tax, for instance.

Knowing how controversial the new tax would be, Trudeau attempted to neutralize its threats. He allowed provinces to create and administer their own carbon pricing systems, sent rebate cheques to low- and middle-income citizens, and bought a multi-billion-dollar pipeline to help justify its existence. Still not satisfied, Trudeau also introduced carbon contracts to, among other things, help secure the survival of his emissions pricing scheme.

If you think that means the tax is safe, though, think again.

Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has unequivocally promised to “axe the tax” should he become prime minister. And you can bet he will do the same to a future pharmacare program.

If the NDP wants to ensure pharmacare lives on after this government, they are going to have to demand an end to Liberal tardiness. Already, it may be too late.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


This content is restricted to subscribers

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


This content is restricted to subscribers

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


This content is restricted to subscribers

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.