We find ourselves suddenly returned to the great days of the set-piece speech. At a time when attention spans are said to be shorter than ever, when the media is consumed with clickbait and politics is all about getting likes on TikTok, in recent weeks the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition have each chosen to deliver lengthy, learned, intricately argued speeches on, of all things, foreign policy.
Coyne back on his meds?
A majority of Canadians say members of Parliament should not be allowed to cross the floor to another party and should face an “immediate” byelection if they do so, a new poll suggests.
However, Wednesday’s Ipsos poll conducted exclusively for Global News found Canadians’ displeasure with floor-crossing MPs has not hurt the overall approval for Prime Minister Mark Carney or his Liberal government.
OTTAWA — Nearly half of Canadians say they would vote Liberal if an election were called today, giving Prime Minister Mark Carney’s party its largest lead since 2016.
Forty-nine per cent of decided voters would vote for the Liberals, while 35 per cent would vote Conservative, according to the Postmedia-Leger poll that was taken between Feb. 27 to March 2. That’s a two-point jump for the Liberals and a three-point drop for the Conservatives since late January.
Pierre Poilievre, leader of His Majesty’s loyal opposition, is visiting the King’s home turf this week, where he gave a keynote speech at Margaret Thatcher’s think tank of choice. The visit comes at a good time for Poilievre to open his ears as well as his mouth.
For the United Kingdom is deep into a period of political turmoil, one that is seeing the fragmentation of the country’s vote, with the mainstream and historically dominant Conservative and Labour parties ceding ground to insurgents from either extreme.
“I’m going to be on the phone full steam, and later on, do a U.S. trip,” Premier Doug Ford told reporters at Queen’s Park on Monday. The Toronto Sun responded with its trademark headline treatment: “Doug, you’re not helping,” warning his CNN appearance risked inflaming an already bad situation.
There’s no doubt Premier Ford’s plain speaking makes for good television. But he must walk a fine line: advocate for Ontario’s interests, yes, but without handing U.S. politicians an excuse to dismiss Canada’s case as foreign meddling. On Monday, on Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room, he crossed that line.
The U.S. Supreme Court was unequivocal: The tariffs imposed under the Trump administration were unconstitutional in their legal rationale. That distinction matters. The court did not declare tariffs themselves illegitimate. It rejected the justification used to impose them.
There were two speeches inside the speech on Canada-U.S. relations that Pierre Poilievre gave Thursday. One was intended to make him sound like a grown-up. The other was to make him sound different than Mark Carney.
The first part was the kind of political repositioning that Mr. Poilievre has long needed.
The NDP should have a singular focus for the short- and medium-term: finding a way back to official party status. Everything else can come later. In fact, everything else will only come later if the NDP is once again a party with at least 12 seats in the House of Commons. That official party status will unlock desperately needed funds for a starving party: more than $1.1-million, for example, for a party leader’s office budget. There’s another million and change for research. Money for technology, printing and travel. Plus dedicated spots on parliamentary committees, and daily questions during Question Period. A political party needs those things to get its message out, to fundraise, and to grow.
I have a pretty high tolerance for political spin. You kind of have to when you’ve spent years in the House of Commons and on the ground here in Alberta. But a recent opinion column published right here on this platform claiming “moderates are fleeing” the Conservative Party crossed the line from standard spin straight into fiction.
It’s a perfect example of a double standard in our national media that’s getting harder and harder to ignore. As a western and rural Conservative, I’d be the first to suggest there’s always been a left-leaning bias in parts of the press. But since Mark Carney took over the Prime Minister’s Office? It’s on a whole different level. Every single day, it seems like many in media are simply a megaphone for Liberal insiders to vent their wishful thinking about their opponents. Meanwhile, the Carney government gets a near free pass on policies that are actively crushing a once prosperous middle class.
If the only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it, Prime Minister Mark Carney might consider visiting the Governor General in the coming weeks and asking her to dissolve Parliament.
The latest polls are starting to show a seductive spread in his favour — both in the horse race, and as far as whom Canadians consider best prime minister.
After announcing months ago he’d be exiting politics last fall to focus “entirely” on his family — who live in Victoria — ex-Conservative Edmonton MP Matt Jeneroux flew to the airport just south of his riding on Wednesday to announce his new allegiance to the Liberals.
Jeneroux says that Mark Carney’s World Economic Forum address in Davos, Switzerland, inspired him to switch teams; after hearing it, “it felt disingenuine and quite simply wrong to be sitting on the sidelines anymore.”
Ooooooh! @fancypants_s https://t.co/ac7F9hUrCu
— Patti Jo (@TheSupeHero) February 23, 2026
Even if Prime Minister Mark Carney secures a slim majority through more floor-crossings and upcoming byelection wins, the governing Liberals could still call an early election this year in an effort to obtain a stronger mandate to deal with challenges such as the ongoing trade war with the United States, say pollsters.
“The longer they wait for an election, the less control that they might have over what the election’s about,” said Nik Nanos, chief data scientist for Nanos Research, in an interview with The Hill Times. “The reality is, if there’s an election this year, it’ll be about free trade because we have the July 1 date where the negotiations [for the renewal of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement] are supposed to start.”
When one of Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative MPs, Jamil Jivani, travelled to Washington to meet with Trump administration officials, he chose to chastise Canadians for having an anti-American “hissy fit” in an interview with MAGA site Breitbart News.
It’s hard to imagine a more harmful piece of public relations for the Conservatives.
And it is a golden opportunity for Mr. Poilievre.
The “Hissy Fit” comment only upsets the Elbow people who somehow can’t see that in the LPC they support the very people who have made Canada “Poorer than Alabama”.
A year ago, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith was called a traitor.
Now Smith is compared to Hitler’s Nazis.
And she is not compared to the Nazis by the usual unhinged social media bottom feeder.
No.
Smith is slimed by the former premier of Alberta. That’s Rachel Notley.
Smith is also slimed by the former deputy premier of Alberta. That’s Thomas Lukaszuk.
The walls of Parliament shook this week with yet another floor-crossing of Edmonton MP Matt Jeneroux to join Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal caucus. This wasn’t just a procedural shift in the halls of Parliament, it is a stark symbol of a new, unsettling reality in Conservative politics.
While floor-crossing is a historical reality and, let’s be honest, Liberals have crossed to the Conservatives before, the difference here is the context. The toxic reaction surrounding this crossing exposes a genuine bottom of the barrel moment for the political discourse, particularly within the Conservative movement.
I do not think it honest to declare yourself a moderate and a conservative after a decade of the LPC’s corrosive rule.
