Politics

Canada’s most important security and intelligence alliance should be able to weather the current political storm engulfing Washington, according to journalist and filmmaker Richard Kerbaj. Kerbaj, the author of The Secret History of the Five Eyes, told The West Block’s Mercedes Stephenson the long-standing spy partnership has survived political disagreements between its member countries in the past.“The Five Eyes [has] been around for a long time now. You know, six decades, seven decades, eight decades, depends on how far back you trace its roots,” Kerbaj said in an interview.“But it’s survived every single administration and government that it served. And I like to think that regardless what it’s hit by, it will continue to do so.”The Five Eyes intelligence alliance comprises Canada, the ...

Descrease article font size Increase article font size The Liberal Party of Canada has announced two leadership debates — one in English and one in French — to be held in Montreal later this month, ahead of the vote to determine their next leader and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s successor. On Saturday, the party announced the French debate will take place on Feb. 24, and the English debate the following day.🗓️ Save the dates! pic.twitter.com/NHIK8amywI— Liberal Party (@liberal_party) February 8, 2025The debates fall less than two weeks before the March 9 vote to secure the Liberal Party’s new leader. Story continues below advertisement “This is a time for Liberals across the country to exchange ideas and engage...

The federal body tasked with monitoring elections for foreign interference says it has briefed Liberal leadership candidate Chrystia Freeland’s campaign about a Chinese-backed operation that has been spreading disparaging articles online about her. The Security and Intelligence Threats to Election Task Force (SITE) said in a statement Friday that the “information operation” was identified by Global Affairs Canada’s Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM Canada) and traced to a popular WeChat news account linked to China.“RRM Canada detected coordinated and malicious activity about Ms. Freeland,” the statement said.It estimated that between two million and three million WeChat users globally saw the campaign, which included articles published to an anonymous blog that were then spread by over 30 oth...

Demonstrators across America have been turning out in droves to protest President Donald Trump’s early actions. Thousands of people have been gathering in cities across the U.S. this week, with a concentrated push on Wednesday, to decry everything from the president’s immigration crackdown to his rollback of transgender rights and a proposal to forcibly transfer Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. People protest outside of the headquarters of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) before Congressional Democrats hold a news conference in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 3, 2025. Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images Protesters in Philadelphia and at state capitol buildings in Minnesota, Michigan, Texas, Wisconsin, India...

The Chinese artificial intelligence chatbot DeepSeek is being banned on some Canadian government mobile devices due to “serious privacy concerns” — and other departments are being urged to do the same. An email from the Treasury Board Secretariat’s chief information officer Dominic Rochon shared with Global News says the concerns stem from DeepSeek’s “inappropriate” collection and retention of sensitive personal information.It says the app has already been restricted from government mobile devices managed by Shared Services Canada (SSC), which delivers digital services to many government departments and teams.“I encourage these organizations to work with SSC to further implement the restriction on all department-managed devices,” Rochon wrote in the email sent Thursday.“Organizations not s...

Descrease article font size Increase article font size Federal Liberal leadership candidates will have to cross another hurdle Friday to remain in the race — a payment of $125,000 to the party. The party requires candidates to pay a total entrance fee of $350,000 in instalments.The candidates still in the race have made two initial payments of $50,000 each — one payment to launch their campaigns and the second to obtain access to the party’s membership list.Those candidates who meet today’s deadline will still have to make a final payment of $125,000 by Feb. 17 at the latest.On Thursday, former Liberal House leader and leadership candidate Karina Gould said her campaign is doing everything it can to remain in the race, despite not having the r...

The federal government is hosting a summit in Toronto Friday aimed at bolstering the economy in the face of Canada’s rapidly changing relationship with its largest trading partner. U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to impose sweeping tariffs this week has been put on pause until March 4.That looming threat and the volatility of his administration has many business and labour leaders urging Canada to look for alternative trading partners and ways to strengthen internal trade.The summit is being hosted by the government’s newly created advisory council on Canada-U.S. relations, and includes business and labour leaders, Indigenous leaders and public policy experts.Flavio Volpe, a member of the advisory council and president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association, says he hopes the...

U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats and talk about making Canada the 51st state have made Canadians angry — very angry. A new poll by Ipsos for Global News found a whopping 68 per cent of Canadians surveyed think less of the United States as a country, after Trump threatened Canada’s economy with 25 per cent tariffs that were meant to go into effect this week, before being paused.Nearly half of all respondents, 46 per cent, said they strongly held that negative perception.“What surprised me is the intensity of the responses,” said Sean Simpson, senior vice president of Ipsos Public Affairs.The high number of people voicing strong opinions, he said, means “this isn’t some idea they have that they may or may not act on. This is something that they intend to follow through on. The fe...

Jamieson Greer, President Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. trade representative, said on Thursday that a universal tariff needs further study to gauge its impact on rising U.S. trade deficits, and put countries on notice they must lower import barriers to maintain access to the U.S. market. Greer told a U.S. Senate confirmation hearing that Trump’s campaign promise of imposing at least a 10% universal tariff would be examined under an inauguration day trade memo, which ordered a report by April 1.He said the study would also examine the impact of a growing U.S. goods trade deficit, which on Wednesday reached a record $1.2 trillion for all of 2024 as imports surged.“Part of the question is how large of a trade deficit do we want, because the trade deficit represents, in large part, manufactu...

With just one week left until Canada’s tax “holiday” ends, new data suggests it may have had little impact in its first month. Moneris looked into spending patterns between Dec. 14, 2024, when the tax “holiday” began and Jan. 15. Comparing the data to the same period in 2023-24, the payment processing firm found no year-over-year increases in spendingIn fact, the data showed purchasing may have slowed during that time.Across Canada, the data showed overall spending was down by four per cent, with the transaction count down by one per cent and the transaction size down by three per cent.“Consumers probably loved that they were paying… less in these categories, but they didn’t love it enough to respond to it by going and doing more of what they just did,” Sean McCormick, director of business...