Like a bad April Fools’ Day joke, every year on April 1, politicians in Ottawa pad their pockets the very same day they take more money from taxpayers with carbon and alcohol tax hikes.
This year may be no different.
On April 1, backbench MPs will collect a $7,900 pay raise, according to Canadian Taxpayers Federation estimates. That will push their annual salary to $211,000.
The premier of Newfoundland and Labrador says he found it “incredibly concerning” to hear senior staff from U.S. President Donald Trump’s office convey that the commander-in-chief is “very serious” when he talks about annexing Canada.
“As Canadians, we need to realize that he is not joking, that he is definitively looking towards the 51st state being Canada,” Andrew Furey told CTV’s Question Period host Vassy Kapelos, in an interview airing Sunday. “He’s had a chance to change that narrative, and not only has he doubled down, I think he’s quadrupled down now on saying that.”
An internal government report warned a year ago that allowing “the trend of negative rhetoric” about the security of the Canada-U.S. border could lead to a thickening of the 49th parallel, adversely affecting trade and travel.
The report, written by a diplomat at Canada’s embassy in Washington, said that failing to refute U.S. claims about a “crisis at the northern border” would lead to the erosion of Canada’s image as a secure neighbour.
The Trudeau gov’t lies about everything.
I do not believe they are telling the truth about the border and a report written by a lone Washington diplomat is hardly the last word on the matter.
Canadian LGBTQ2S+ advocacy group won’t visit UN forum over concerns about U.S. border
OTTAWA — Canada’s leading LGBTQ2S+ advocacy organization is boycotting travel to the U.S. — and won’t attend an upcoming United Nations event — in response to concerns about how their members might be treated at the border under the Trump administration.
“I don’t think there’s anything more important than safeguarding my staff and our community members, and also sending a strong message to the U.S.,” said Egale Canada head Helen Kennedy.
“It was a culmination and an accumulation of legislative changes, rhetoric and discriminatory policies specifically targeting gender-diverse folks that made us make this decision.”
Another win for Trump.
A Canadian citizen has been charged by U.S. authorities for allegedly using a drone to take photos of a military base in Florida.
Xiao Guang Pan, 71, faces three counts of using an unmanned aircraft to photograph vital defence installations at Cape Canaveral Space Force Base, according to a Feb. 13 press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida. On three separate days in January 2025, Pan allegedly also took aerial pictures of space launch complexes, a submarine wharf, and munitions bunkers.
The controversy over American tariffs has quickly escalated from a corrective action supposedly prompted by complaints about the porosity of both the southern and northern borders of the United States, to a comprehensive attempt to reset America’s commercial relations with the world, to restore the strength of American manufacturing and to discontinue trade and foreign aid practices from the Cold War, which were effectively bribes to persuade a variety of foreign governments to remain in the western, rather than the Soviet, sphere of influence. Following the Second World War, there was a great wave of decolonization, most of it — such as in the old British Raj, which included present-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan — voluntarily, but some of it — such as Algeria, Indochina and up to a point, Kenya and Cyprus — violently and painfully. As the Cold War developed, the foreign aid practices of the U.S. and other western countries (including Canada) had a humanitarian component topped up by the political understanding that recipient countries would remain passably co-operative with the West.
We don’t like it but it was inevitable.
Canada is in the midst of a national awakening, with a renewed sense of patriotism sweeping across the country in the face of Donald Trump’s tariff threats. The “Buy Canadian” movement which took off as the tariffs were supposed to be introduced on 1 February — now due to come into effect in March — has started having a tangible impact on retail markets. More and more shoppers are forgoing American made goods for their Canadian counterparts. The biggest beneficiary of this newfound love for crown and country seems to be the country’s previously struggling Liberal Party, which is experiencing a level of support not seen since 2023.
All Liberals are the same. A newish old face won’t change that.
Here’s a simple formula to help Canadian Heritage managers get on track when doling out millions of taxpayer dollars in grants for Canada Day celebrations.
No Canadian flag, no O Canada, no exhibit of national pride and unity — no grant money. Period. Don’t bother applying.
Let everybody wailing about colonialism which is rooted in Marxism, or pushing racist diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), disrespect and trash Canada on their own dime.
Whenever we talk about NATO it’s usually in the context of money — or the famous all-for-one, one-for-all treaty clause known as Article 5.
The provision is the bedrock of the Western military alliance, allowing leaders from Latvia to London to Ottawa to sleep better at night knowing more than two dozen other like-minded nations have their backs.
What often doesn’t get much attention is the preceding paragraph: Article 4.
No one really likes Trudeau so I am not surprised. Possession of Greenland paints Denmark as a colonial power a major no no in Euro-Land.
OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre warned U.S. President Donald Trump to not turn a “loyal friend into a resentful neighbour” with his incessant threats of tariffs on key sectors to the Canadian economy and of making Canada into the 51st state.
The shared U.S.-Canadian border has been a growing battleground in the midst of U.S. President Donald Trump’s border demands and tariff talks.
Recent data from the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) have revealed a trend – based on weight, Canadian border agents have seized significantly more illicit drugs coming from the U.S. than those heading south.
In 2024, border agents intercepted almost 8.3 million grams of illegal drugs coming from the U.S. – a 118 per cent increase from 2022, according to the CBSA.
Canada’s premiers visited Washington this week to make the case for open trade, but influential figures in the president’s circle see tariffs as the path to prosperity.
Another week, and another round of tariff threats and annexation suggestions from President Trump.
It began with the announcement of a policy imposing 25 percent tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports. In Canada’s case, those tariffs would be stacked on top of the previously introduced 25 percent tariffs on most Canadian exports, which are in a 30-day holding period. If Mr. Trump follows through on both, the rate on steel and aluminum will be a staggering 50 percent.
A Canadian truck driver has been sentenced to three years in an American prison after pleading guilty to using the refrigerated trailer of his semi-truck to smuggle people into the U.S. in exchange for money.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers arrested Husain Al Kawwaz after surveillance video appeared to show he let 10 Vietnamese citizens out of his trailer in Michigan after it left Windsor, Ont., and crossed the Ambassador Bridge around midnight on Aug. 7, 2024.
WASHINGTON — Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey says it was “chilling” to hear a top White House adviser say U.S. President Donald Trump is serious about making Canada the 51st state.
All 13 premiers travelled to Washington this week for the first time in history for a joint mission to push back on Trump’s escalating tariff threats.
Speaking to CPAC Friday, Furey says he left the U.S. capital very aware that the president was launching an attack not just on Canada’s economy but on its sovereignty.
The democratic world will have to get along without America. It may even have to defend itself from it
I wonder if we have underestimated the gravity of the situation the democratic world faces.
Even now, as the United States hurtles toward autocracy – the petty grotesqueries perhaps tell the story better than anything else: a reporter barred from the White House for not using the name “Gulf of America,” President Donald Trump naming himself chair of the Kennedy Center by a “unanimous” vote of its board – the tendency is still to describe events in relatively conventional terms. For example, the “mistakes” that Mr. Trump is said to have made in his dealings with Vladimir Putin, of the United States as an “unreliable ally” under Mr. Trump, and so forth.
Now that it’s been exposed that Thomson Reuters was being paid by the American govt through USAID, we know why Andrew Coyne has been screaming like a lunatic at Trump and Musk.
The Globe and Mail is owned by Thomson Reuters. Coyne’s newspaper is in deep shit. pic.twitter.com/LhNY9HBamV
— Dean Skoreyko (@bcbluecon) February 13, 2025
Any questions?
