Politics

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday is set to consider a measure to end the emergency justification used by President Donald Trump to impose sweeping tariffs on Canada — and enough Republicans may vote to ensure the resolution passes. The vote on the Democratic measure comes as Trump is due to announce his so-called “reciprocal” tariff plan that seeks to reorient global trade, an action the U.S. president has taken to calling “Liberation Day.”Wednesday is also the day when a temporary exemption on some products from the earlier 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods is set to expire. Yet it still wasn’t clear before Trump’s announcement if those tariffs — meant to address what the White House claims is a failure to stop the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. — will return.Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of ...

A third Conservative Party candidate was removed from its roster of those running in the upcoming federal election late Tuesday evening, hours after two other candidates had been ousted. Lourence Singh, the party’s nominee for the British Columbia riding of New Westminster-Burnaby-Maillardville, was scrubbed from the party’s list of candidates while his own campaign website now redirects to the riding’s donation page on the Conservative website.Singh’s Instagram page for his campaign also says it cannot be loaded, though his Facebook remains active with his most recent post made Tuesday morning, resharing a union endorsement for Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.“Mr. Lourence Singh will not be a candidate for the Conservative Party,” a spokesperson for the Conservatives told Global News...

Canada is bracing for a fresh round of U.S. tariffs as a trade war launched by President Donald Trump continues to dominate the federal election campaign. Trump has pledged to unveil on Wednesday so-called “reciprocal” tariffs on multiple countries on what he has dubbed as “Liberation Day.”It’s not yet clear what the specifics are of his new trade policy and whether Canada will be included, or what the levels of tariffs could be.“The president will be addressing the decades of unfair trade practices that have ripped our country off and American workers off,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday in previewing Trump’s announcement, while declining to offer any further details.Wednesday also marks the deadline for Trump’s temporary exemption of auto parts and other goods ...

The five leading federal political parties have qualified to participate in the upcoming leaders’ debates for this month’s general election. Liberal Leader Mark Carney, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh, Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet and Green Party co-leader Jonathan Pedneault will face off in the French-language debate on April 16 and the English-language debate on April 17.The independent Leaders’ Debates Commission said Tuesday the Liberal, Conservative, New Democrat, Bloc Quebecois and Green parties each met two of the three criteria set shortly after the election was called last month.The People’s Party of Canada only met one of those criteria — that a party must have candidates nominated in at least 90 per cent of all fede...

When Albertans cast their ballots in this spring’s federal election, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh wants voters in the traditionally conservative-leaning province to believe his party has the best chance at competing against the Conservative Party of Canada, which at dissolution held 30 of 34 seats in Alberta. Singh was speaking at a campaign rally at a community centre in the Edmonton Centre riding on Tuesday, where he promised that if the NDP form government, he would protect Canada’s public health-care system by banning American companies from buying Canadian health-care facilities and broadly taking steps to prevent the emergence of for-profit care in the country.Singh expressed optimism about his party’s prospects in Alberta this election, reminding attendees of how the NDP pulled off an u...

Survivors of intimate partner violence are suing the federal government, claiming their Charter rights have been violated due to backlogs in the court system allowing abusers to walk free without having to go to trial. The statement of claim filed in the Federal Court of Canada on Monday alleges the plaintiffs have been denied justice by the government adhering to strict time limits on criminal proceedings set by a landmark 2016 Supreme Court of Canada ruling.Although the s0-called Jordan ruling was meant to protect the constitutional right of defendants to be tried within a reasonable timeframe, survivors and lawyers behind the lawsuit claim abusers have taken advantage of the time limits and gone on to abuse their partners again.“We have a crisis,” said Cait Alexander, a plaintiff and fo...

The Conservative Party has dropped a candidate from its roster of nominees in Quebec, the second person the party has ousted on the same day. Stefan Marquis, who was running for the Tories in the Quebec riding of Laurier – Sainte-Marie, said in a post on X he had received a call Tuesday morning from one of the party’s operations managers in the province and was told that he would no longer be the Conservatives’ candidate.“I was told without further note that ‘certain’ individuals within the party had consulted my recent posts on Twitter-X and deemed these sufficient reason to end our political collaboration,” Marquis wrote.Marquis did not elaborate what posts specifically were referenced but criticized the Conservatives for their decision, saying the party had “cut loose a devoted ally” wh...

A Conservative candidate says he has been removed by the party over past comments he made in a podcast suggesting former prime minister Justin Trudeau should face the death penalty. Mark McKenzie, who was seeking a seat in the Ontario riding of Windsor-Tecumseh-Lakeshore, told Global News in an interview Tuesday that the remarks he says he made while co-hosting a comedy podcast in 2022 were “all a joke” and he regrets making them.In the podcast, McKenzie also voiced his support for public hangings.Mackenzie, who is a city councillor in Windsor, Ont., said his comments were taken out of context, adding that he doesn’t stand by them.“My co-host at the time was not a big fan of Justin Trudeau, so we jokingly said about public hangings in other countries. It was all a joke. It was a comedy pod...

Canadians are feeling record low levels of economic optimism and satisfaction in public services like housing and health care, a new analysis of Gallup polling suggests, presenting major challenges for whichever party forms government after the federal election. Tuesday’s report, presented as a series of “tests” for Canada’s next prime minister, compiled nearly two decades of data collected annually from the pollster’s surveys of long-term issues in over 100 countries.While the most recent polling was conducted months before U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff policies caused further economic uncertainty, the report suggests declines in Canadian attitudes toward the economy and U.S. leadership have been persistent for years.It also suggests the economic concerns highlighted in more recent...

With U.S. President Donald Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” of tariff implementation fast approaching, Senate Democrats are putting Republican support for some of those plans to the test by forcing a vote to nullify the emergency declaration that underpins the tariffs on Canada. Republicans have watched with some unease as the president’s attempts to remake global trade have sent the stock market downward, but they have so far stood by Trump’s on-again-off-again threats to levy taxes on imported goods.Even as the resolution from Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia offered them a potential off-ramp to the tariffs levied on Canadian imports, Republican leaders were trying to keep senators in line by focusing on fentanyl that comes into the U.S. over its northern border. It was yet anothe...