Politics

Three cabinet ministers are wrapping up their visit to Washington, D.C., and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is set to address the mayors of some of Canada’s biggest cities as Canada’s 30-day reprieve from U.S. tariffs continues. Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson, Defence Minister Bill Blair and Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne are all in Washington, wrapping up meetings with U.S. officials this week. The three ministers are expected to speak to the media Thursday.A group of mayors of the 23 largest cities in Canada are also meeting Thursday in Ottawa to “discuss key shared priorities amid an upcoming federal election, and the impacts of a Canada-U.S. tariff war.”The Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ Big City Mayors’ Caucus will hold a press conference later in ...

Descrease article font size Increase article font size Canada Post has laid off dozens of managers as the national postal service says it is facing a “critical financial situation.” “As Canada Post continues to respond to the significant financial and operational challenges it faces, the corporation conducted layoffs earlier this week of almost 50 management employees as part of a corporate-wide restructuring,” the Crown corporation told Global News in an email on Thursday.The company said about half of the impacted employees were located in Ottawa and the rest were in Toronto and other parts of the country.“These decisions are never easy, but they reflect the critical financial situation the corporation is currently facing,” Canada Post said....

Liberal leadership hopeful Chrystia Freeland is expected to outline an aggressive plan to reach Canada’s NATO defence spending targets by 2027. The former finance minister and deputy prime minister is expected to lay out her plan to boost defence spending to two per cent of Canada’s GDP in just two years on Thursday.A source close to Freeland told Global News Wednesday night that the rapid rollout of new defence spending is required due to the world becoming “increasingly volatile and dangerous,” and that Canada must move quickly to both meet international commitments and defend the country’s sovereignty.No details were immediately available on how Freeland would accomplish that goal, which would amount to a massive reshaping of Canada’s spending priorities.Successive Canadian governments ...

Two new polls suggest Quebeckers are feeling pretty good about their relationship with Canada these days. Between December and February, the share of Quebecers who said they were “very proud” or “proud” to be Canadian increased 13 points from 45 per cent to 58 per cent, according to an Angus Reid poll conducted online Sunday and Monday.The online poll was conducted among 1,811 respondents and has no margin of error. It says the percentage of people in Quebec expressing pride in Canada increased faster than it did in the country as a whole. The poll recorded an average increase in national pride across Canada of nine points, from 58 per cent to 67 per cent.The Prairies are dragging the average down, with Alberta up three points, Saskatchewan up four points and Manitoba down four points. Rep...

Sitting in the depths of Steve Bannon‘s chaotic War Room, Global News has an important question for the right-wing media mogul: How seriously should we be taking the president’s insistence that Canada should become the 51st state?Very, apparently.Bannon, a former top aide to U.S. President Donald Trump, says he knows exactly what’s going on. Dramatically shaking his rumpled grey hair, he tells me that we, Canadians, are “misreading the situation” before crossing his arms and launching into a spiel that he seems to have been waiting his whole life for — drawing from his experience serving in the navy, in the Pentagon and his master’s degree in national security studies.He is unequivocal in his belief that Trump’s interest in Canada is strategic and geopolitical and that we’re missing the po...

While Canada won a temporary reprieve from Donald Trump’s tariff threats on Monday, the mercurial U.S. president could still be a significant presence in the upcoming federal election. The saying goes that a week is a long time in politics. In 2025, Trump’s first two weeks back in office has seemed like multiple lifetimes — at least in terms of the impact on the Canadian political conversation.The opposition Conservatives have been laying track for a year to make the upcoming election about the carbon tax. But with the threat of Trump’s tariffs hanging over Canada’s head and Liberal leadership frontrunners backing away from a consumer carbon price, the pressing political question appears who is best to lead the country through a potential trade war with our largest economic partner.Dan Arn...

After getting a 30-day tariff reprieve from the U.S. government, Defence Minister Bill Blair said he believes Canada can avoid further tariff threats if Ottawa can show the recent border plan is stopping the flow of drugs and migrants into the U.S. “They asked that we do a better job of policing our side of the border, and we’ve agreed to invest significantly on that,” Blair told Global News from Washington, D.C.“If we are able to demonstrate that those investments are producing real results for both of our countries … then we may be able to avoid a return to discussion with respect to tariffs.”After agreeing to hold off on imposing tariffs on Canada on Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump posted online that he was “very pleased with this initial outcome.” He said the 30-day pause would all...

Descrease article font size Increase article font size Global News has obtained video of an interception by the RCMP of migrants illegally entering Canada from the United States as Ottawa ramps up border security amid growing pressure from the new Trump administration. Aerial video shared with Global News on Wednesday was taken from a surveillance aircraft as Mounties stopped the migrants near the Emerson border crossing in Manitoba last month.The video shows thermal imaging of six people who were arrested crossing the border illegally on Jan. 14. The people were from Chad, Jordan, Sudan and Mauritania, Global News has learned. Get daily National news Get the day's top news, political, economic, and current ...

Despite a pause in U.S. tariffs, there is looming uncertainty and concern about how a potential trade war could hit Canada’s medicine supplies. Canada has been given a 30-day reprieve from U.S. tariffs threatened by President Donald Trump, but that has done little to allay fears in the pharmaceutical realm.“I think there’s a concern here that any sort of tariff war on this space could send ripples throughout the supply chain,” said Mina Tadrous, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy.Tadrous told Global News the concern stems from the fact that the supply chain for medications is so global that the production of each drug crosses multiple borders before Canadians get the finished product from their local pharmacy.“So, the structure of how tarif...

Descrease article font size Increase article font size Pierre Poilievre says a Conservative government would bring in mandatory life sentences for those convicted of trafficking, production and distribution of over 40 mg of fentanyl. The Conservative leader said early Wednesday the penalty should be the same as murder.The Conservatives also want traffickers caught with between 20 mg and 40 mg of the drug to be sentenced to 15 years in prison.According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, two milligrams can kill a person. Health Canada says “a few grains” can be deadly. 0:45 Fentanyl czar to work across jurisdictions: McGuinty ...