At the end of a waitressing shift, Kristina Lampert used to separate her tips in two piles: Canadian cash and American.
But it’s been weeks since she has done that.
Freighters, the restaurant where she works, is one of the first places people can grab a bite after crossing the US-Canada border between Sarnia, Ontario, and Port Huron, Michigan.
The Blue Water Bridge, which connects the US and Canada, is in full view from the restaurant’s windows.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada may not be “totally removed” under a future trade agreement, the U.S. ambassador says, but the two countries are on the path toward a stronger relationship.
Pete Hoekstra, who serves as Trump’s envoy to Canada, says there are opportunities to secure new economic and security partnerships on the foundation set by Prime Minister Mark Carney’s visit to the White House last week.
Our parliamentary system is in a state of disrepair so advanced that it has lost much of its relevance
Whatever their opinion of the result, Canadians might take some satisfaction from the recent election, if only for what did not happen. The paper balloting process once again worked without a hitch. No one challenged the legitimacy of the result. The victors did not vow revenge upon their enemies. Democracy may be in decline or in retreat elsewhere, notably in the United States, but in Canada it remains, as we perceive it, in relatively good health, a model for others to follow.
We are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as one of the world‘s great democracies. Didn’t the Economist Intelligence Unit, in its latest annual Democracy Index, rank us 14th among the world‘s democracies, one of only 25 “full democracies” around the world? Didn’t Freedom House rank us fifth in its annual Freedom in the World report, with a score of 39 out of 40 for “political rights”?
For the past century, the United States and Canada have been the best of friends, and war between them was unimaginable. Before that, however, it was a possibility that was always at the back of mind for military strategists on both sides of the borders—in no small part because the two had gone to war before.
Today, however, anxieties have flared. President Donald Trump has spoken openly about extending the borders of the United States all the way to the high Arctic, insisting that Greenland would be safer as a U.S. territory, while Canada could join the union as the 51st state. This will happen, Trump insists, through peaceful means.
The conversation we’re having about opioids in Canada is starkly different from one year ago.
Where Canadians were once squarely focused on health policies to reduce the high number of opioid deaths — especially last spring, amid British Columbia’s drug decriminalization rollback — our attention has lately shifted, from the people who use drugs to those who sell them.
That’s in large part because of President Trump.
Mr. Trump has said that Canadian criminals send “massive” amounts of illegal fentanyl into the United States, one of the pretexts for his earlier punitive tariff measures.
I am not inclined to believe the habitual liars of the Liberal party on any matter and will trust Sam Cooper’s investigations into Canada’s role in the fentanyl trade.
Following years of diplomatic and trade tensions, China’s ambassador to Canada, Wang Di, insists the two countries can move past what he characterizes as “normal” differences.
“For China and Canada to bring our relationship back onto the right track, we need to seek common ground while reserving differences in a constructive way,” Wang said through a translator in an exclusive broadcast interview with CTV’s Question Period, airing Sunday.
“China and Canada have a lot of differences, and this is very, very normal,” he also said.
Mark Carney, the new prime minister of Canada, called the idea of Canada becoming America’s 51st state “crazy.” This assumes President Donald Trump was serious, as opposed to Trump taking a whack at former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. In his acceptance speech, Carney said, “The Americans want our resources, our water, our land, our country … if they succeed, they will destroy our way of life.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s election victory speech included a note of humility: “Over my long career, I have made many mistakes, and I will make more, but I commit to admitting them openly, to correcting them quickly, and always learning from them.” Yet it is too late to correct one of his big mistakes. Will he at least admit to and learn from it?
During the election campaign, 28 Liberal candidates (19 of them elected) signed onto a five-point anti-Israel Vote Palestine platform. Vote Palestine began as a BDS project, and quickly gathered steam after a trial run in the 2021 election. The platform contains demands — such as a two-way arms embargo against Israel, a full boycott of Israel-controlled territories and recognition of Palestine as a state — that do not reflect current Liberal policy. In total, 362 candidates signed on.
A group of wealthy Canadians calling themselves “Patriotic Millionaires” is banding together to lobby governments to increase the amount of taxes they must pay, with a campaign patterned after similar movements in the United States and United Kingdom.
But there is already pushback on the concept — even before the group officially launches in Canada — with the opposing view being that higher taxes would drive entrepreneurship away from this country.
All three of them!
Mark Carney has returned from Washington and is taking a bow from the highly supportive Canadian political media for a very cordial meeting with U.S. President Trump. He set out to replicate his mighty but unsuccessful effort as governor of the Bank of England to terrorize the British public over the prospect of the United Kingdom departing the European Union, which Britain had never voted to enter, and squeaked into the minority reelection of an otherwise failed Liberal government of Canada as the man who could stand up to Donald Trump. President Trump heaped compliments on his visitor and with some justification took credit for Carney’s election victory, said that he (Trump) was the best thing that ever happened to him (Carney) and slapped him jovially on the knee. Readers will recall that I said at every stage that the hysteria about Trump was a nothingburger and that no more would be heard about Carney’s theory that “Trump is trying to break us” and that “This country’s intimacy with the United States is over, a tragedy but the reality.” When asked about this last week President Trump said “He was running for public office,” a gracious explanation of the ludicrous canard that Trump is any kind of a threat to Canada.
In his first days as an elected Prime Minister, Mark Carney faces threats both from without and within.
The threat from without poses the most imminent danger. This country is under assault from its greatest friend. Its economic health and its very existence are at stake.
Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly privately praised the United States for taking “a hard stand on drugs” shortly after former President Donald Trump threatened 25% tariffs on Canadian exports over fentanyl and border concerns, internal government notes show.
Blacklock’s Reporter says the scripted remarks, prepared for a closed-door meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate on December 27, were released through Access To Information.
Now-former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau famously complimented China’s government.
Newly installed Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is a globalist who has frequently criticized his American counterpart, President Donald Trump.
Though Canada and China have had their difficulties, some reports indicate that the two nations are ready to “move forward” in their relationship.
It may be that the US knows how deep China is into Canada and seeks to eradicate the threat by annexing Beijing’s outpost.
The truth is we were headed into tough economic times regardless of who won the April 28 election.
A major reason – which Prime Minister Mark Carney noted prior to the vote – was the polices of his predecessor, Justin Trudeau, whose decade-long government presided over the worst record of economic growth in Canada since the Great Depression.
The province of Alberta has a legitimate grievance with the ROC (Rest of Canada).
According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, since the inception of Canada’s equalization program in 1957, which sees the wealthier provinces subsidizing their less fortunate counterparts, Alberta has made a net contribution of $67 billion, $2.9 billion alone in 2021 — which in turn represents only a portion of the province’s immense financial contribution to federal coffers and the governments and residents of other provinces.
