OTTAWA — Canada’s two main political party leaders won’t boast about the connection, but they have at least one important thing in common these days: As a new session of Parliament opens Monday, they’re both sitting on hot seats.
Facing upcoming periods that may well determine their political fates, Prime Minister Mark Carney and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre are both approaching hurdles they need to get over in the coming weeks and months to ensure their grips on power.
With the ongoing trade war with the United States, frequent annexation rhetoric from U.S. President Donald Trump, and the potential for two separatist referendums at home, Prime Minister Mark Carney is facing some of the most serious challenges confronted by any prime minister. Still, his performance is receiving mixed reviews from some political players who say Carney’s handling of the situation is a “technocratic” one, driven by officials in the Prime Minister’s Office and the Privy Council Office, when he should be opening up to the country.
“We’re facing a truly existential crisis,” said John English, a historian, author, and former Liberal MP in an interview with The Hill Times. “We have to recognize that we’re in real trouble.”
As Prime Minister Mark Carney moves to allay concerns about lifting tariffs on Chinese EVs, Premier Doug Ford says Ottawa needs to “step up” to protect Ontario’s auto industry.
Speaking to Rural Ontario Municipal Association conference delegates at the Sheraton Centre on Monday, Ford reiterated his alarm at Carney’s new agreement with China.
OTTAWA—Another federal election so soon?
Most Canadians are not opposed to the idea, new research shows, but only if an early election was triggered to secure the stability and functioning of the country’s Parliament.
Despite a snap election less than a year ago that led Mark Carney’s Liberals to a minority victory, new polling from Abacus Data shows that 41 per cent of Canadians would support a general contest being called early if doing so would result in “a majority government that could provide more political stability in Canada.”
NEW: Premier Doug Ford says PM Carney didn’t inform the Ontario government about the EV tariff reversal before striking the deal with China.
Ford says this is going to be a “big problem.”#onpoli pic.twitter.com/8B6hF1bifp
— Colin D'Mello | Global News (@ColinDMello) January 16, 2026
Ontario premier slams Canada’s ‘lopsided’ new EV deal with China
Ontario Premier Doug Ford isn’t mincing words about Canada’s new electric vehicle deal with China, saying Friday that Chinese manufacturers are gaining a foothold in the country’s auto market at the expense of workers in this country.
“The federal government is inviting a flood of cheap made-in-China electric vehicles without any real guarantee of equal or immediate investments in Canada’s economy, auto sector or supply chain,” Ford said in a statement issued shortly after news of the deal broke.
Premier Doug Ford is panning Prime Minister Mark Carney’s slashing of Canada’s 100 per cent tariff on Chinese electric vehicles.
“Make no mistake: China now has a foothold in the Canadian market and will use it to their full advantage at the expense of Canadian workers,” Ford warned Friday after Carney reached a deal with Beijing in exchange for China cutting retaliatory levies on Canadian canola and seafood.
“The federal government is inviting a flood of cheap made-in-China electric vehicles without any real guarantee of equal or immediate investments in Canada’s economy, auto sector or supply chain,” the premier said in a statement.
The loss of Canada’s automotive industry is inevitable assuming Trump holds true to course and reshores manufacturing.
And EV’s are not the future but that won’t stop Carney and his plans to turn bad policy into profit for the China class.
This may be a tacit admission by Ford that the Great EV Gamble came up snake eyes.
“To fix this mess, Prime Minister Carney and the federal government need to urgently step up and support Ontario’s auto sector,” he added.
“That means making the sector more competitive by ending the electric vehicle mandate, harmonizing regulations with key trading partners and scrapping federal fees that do nothing but add thousands to the cost of making vehicles and chase away investments,” stressed Ford”
Ontarians support Premier Doug Ford’s removal of Crown Royal whisky from LCBO shelves to protest the company’s closure of its bottling plant here, a new Abacus Data poll suggests.
Ford has vowed to stop selling the popular Manitoba-made rye at Ontario liquor stores after U.K.-based Diageo shutters its Amherstburg factory near Windsor next month, which will cost about 200 jobs.
“Crown Royal should have thought twice before closing their plant here,” the premier told reporters at Queen’s Park on Tuesday, expressing concerns Diageo is moving jobs stateside.
It’s distilled in Manitoba.
As Prime Minister Mark Carney heads to China for talks aimed at boosting trade, Premier Doug Ford is imploring him to keep Canadian tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles.
The Star reported Monday that Carney’s officials are in “active discussions” with Beijing about lowering or dropping the 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese EVs that Canada imposed in 2024.
That’s because the prime minister — who has brought Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe with him on the trade mission — hopes that, in exchange, China will remove its punitive counter-tariffs on Canadian canola and seafood.
OTTAWA — Canadian negotiators are in “active discussions” with China about lowering or dropping tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles in exchange for easing punitive Chinese counter-tariffs on Canadian canola and seafood, but government officials declined to say how it might affect Canada’s trade tensions with a U.S. administration that is hawkish on blocking China’s EVs from North America.
On the eve of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s trip to Beijing, the talks are considered so politically sensitive as the U.S. and Canada navigate the upcoming negotiation to renew the North American free trade pact that Canadian officials would say very little about the tariff dispute that is jamming Ottawa between China and the U.S. and opened a double trade war for this country.
It appears Ford was not asked for comment.
Some days are just like that: gut wrenching stories that beg to be told but are buried by perpetrators or brushed off by media then land on my desk with pleas for help.
Sometimes it’s about bureaucratic bungling, delay, refusal to comply with political orders, even lying to deputy ministers and ultimately to the minister so that the politician has no clue as to what is really going on. Occasionally, the tale smells bad as in the case of a federal agency which was recently in the news over a high-profile incident that revealed their arrogance. The agency has also been systematically withdrawing lucrative products from the marketplace to the apparent benefit of insiders.
It is not just the attack on Venezuela, breaches of the United Nations’ Charter, or the use of illegal force that still somehow left a dictatorship in place.
It is not just the threats to annex Greenland or to make Canada the 51st state — both of which would violate the territorial integrity of sovereign states protected under international law.
It’s not just the admiration that U.S. President Donald Trump has for Russia’s Vladimir Putin or Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, both in the process of illegally annexing territory.
The Elbow People are afraid! I doubt Canada will receive support beyond “words”.
The NDP leadership race could be turning into a nail-biter with no clear winner in sight. But it’s unclear if Canadians are tuning in.
The field of candidates now has three front-runners, several NDP strategists and analysts tell CBC News.
Weeks before the critical membership sign-up deadline of Jan. 28, the outcome remains unpredictable, with no particular candidate having a sure path to victory and all showing signs of momentum.
Nothing to see here just CBC working to prop up a reliable LPC stooge bloc.
Canada faced a fork in the road in the 1980 federal election: stick with the centrist Progressive Conservative government of Joe Clark, or turn hard left with the Pierre Trudeau Liberals. Canada — or more accurately, Eastern Canada — chose Trudeau.
The die was cast, and Canada would never be the same. In his final four years in office, Trudeau would fundamentally transform Canada, and not in a good way. It’s like the country fell off a cliff, politically speaking.
(Incognito)
“Thucydides warned that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Carney’s tragedy is that he quotes the rules‑based order while presiding over a country whose economic structure is colonial and whose security ultimately depends on the very power he is theatrically chastising. Posturing without power is not prudence. It is provocation without a plan. And yes it’s dangerous.”
Mark Carney’s and Canada’s Dangerous Refusal to Face Reality.
Mark Carney and most Canadians are behaving as if Canada is an independent pole in a multipolar order, when the world he actually inhabits is a hierarchy being brutally clarified by Washington. Trump’s revamped… pic.twitter.com/2WahDg5rCf
— James E. Thorne (@DrJStrategy) January 7, 2026
The China Class sent Chretien in advance of Carney’s arrival. The Liberal Party should have to register as foreign agents.
Canada's Mark Carney will travel to China next week. It's the first visit by a Canadian PM since 2017, and the next step in a multi-year attempt to recalibrate relations between Canada and China that requires trying to heal some deep rifts, I told @CBCNews. The reality is that… pic.twitter.com/5yqCihDLTY
— Michael Kovrig (@MichaelKovrig) January 7, 2026
Carney may not be working with Trump but he certainly isn’t working for us.
The Liberals and Conservatives offered completely different responses to the Trump administration’s abduction of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro.
Those responses reflect the worldview of each party. For Conservatives, foreign policy is rooted in values; for Liberals, in interests.
On Saturday morning, not long after word arrived that American special forces had captured and abducted Mr. Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre issued a statement on X. “Congratulations to President Trump on successfully arresting narcoterrorist and socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro, who should live out his days in prison.”
