Remember Brexit? That time a Conservative Party directed widespread voter frustration at a single easy scapegoat, smothered the public with misinformation, and were rewarded with their biggest electoral victory in decades? Something similar is happening today in Canada. The scapegoat this time is the “carbon tax.” That’s actually just one part of a complex carbon-pricing policy that imposes a fuel charge on consumers and industry alike while delivering a rebate directly to most Canadians. The principle is simple: raise the cost of something and people find ways to use less of it. But it’s als ..read more

POLITICS / JUNE 2024 Justin Trudeau’s Last Stand In an exclusive interview, a confident prime minister addresses his doubters BY JUSTIN LING Published 6:30, April 10, 2024 Justin Ling speaks to Justin Trudeau in Ottawa.(Photo courtesy of Adam Scotti) Inside the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is hunkered down with his cabinet for three days of meetings. Built in the postwar boom by the Canadian National Railway as the capstone of the city’s rail station, the hotel has hosted heads of state and world leaders as well as John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s famous bed-in ..read more

It’s Pierre Poilievre’s Canada now. That’s what the pundits say. That’s what the numbers say. It’s a brave, perhaps deluded, outlier who will take odds on the Liberal government remaining in power after the next election. Between February 15 and 21, Abacus Data found 41 percent of surveyed Canadians intended to vote Conservative, well ahead of the Liberals, who sit at 24 percent. Over at 338 Canada, a March projection based on a weighted average of polls had the Tories at 211 seats, compared to 63 for the Liberals. All that shakes out to a greater than 99 percent chance Poilievre wins a—possi ..read more

Montreal’s Olympic Stadium has been called any number of things—a big white elephant, a giant spaceship. But many locals know it as the Big Owe. The name refers to the hundreds of millions of dollars the vexed landmark has cost the province over the past three decades—to construct it, maintain it, repair it, overhaul it, and now (if the Coalition Avenir Québec government has its way), slap a new roof on it. Le Stade is undeniably a prized part of Montreal’s heritage and visual landscape. With its striking elliptical shape designed by French architect Roger Taillibert and featuring a 165-metre ..read more

On January 23, when federal judge Richard Mosley ruled that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet had overstepped their authority by invoking the Emergencies Act, I thought back to that terrible February when “angry fringe groups” sparked a national debate over how elected authorities should deal with widespread civil disobedience. I’m speaking, of course, of the Wet’suwet’en protests. The “angry fringe” quote came from Jason Kenney, Alberta’s then premier, in 2020, two years before Trudeau used almost the exact same words to describe the “Freedom Convoy,” which had driven trucks and ..read more

McGill University has been an integral part of Montreal’s landscape since its founding in 1821, but more than 200 years and twelve Nobel laureates later, the possibility of moving some of its operations out of Quebec now looms over the world-class institution. The potential relocation is just one of many options being considered by the university as it begins to feel the impact of tuition hikes recently announced by the province’s ruling Coalition Avenir Québec government. Canadian students would go from paying approximately $9,000 to around $17,000, starting in the fall of 2024, while intern ..read more

Conservative politicians across Canada spent the final weeks of 2023 escalating their war on the environment. They focused most of their artillery on climate—a striking denouement to the worst year of extreme weather in human history. On November 22, with his province still recovering from a summer of record drought and wildfire, British Columbia Conservative leader John Rustad held a press conference to announce that “British Columbians are not facing an existential threat from the changing climate. It isn’t a crisis.” In the following weeks, the Conservative premiers of Alberta and Saskatch ..read more

Several years ago, I developed an intense and unrequited interest in the letter Z. It is the one letter whose name changes at the forty-ninth parallel. Even now, I can only read it as “Zed” with effort. You’ve read it too, and its sound in your mind tells you something important about who and where you are. Z is a small hook on which I have hung an excessive weight of fear and hope. Z means that I am here. On most days, being in Canada does not mean much beyond the ordinary, but there are days when I cannot read or hear or say the letter Z without a sense of stupid, unearned relief. One was t ..read more

On June 18, Canadian Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar was shot dead as he left the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia, at night. The forty-five-year-old was a prominent figure in the Sikh community in BC. He had moved to Canada from the Indian state of Punjab in 1997 and worked as a plumber. At the time of his killing, he was president of the Sikh temple in Surrey. Many in the Sikh community in Canada believed that the Indian government had something to do with the murder. Then, on September 18, following weeks of worsening ties with India, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made ..read more

In the spring of 2005, Sophie Grégoire wed Justin Trudeau, son of a Canadian prime minister. She arrived at the Montreal church in a 2004 Rolls-Royce Phantom, wearing a custom gown from local atelier Les Noces Couture and clutching a bouquet of white roses. After the Catholic ceremony, 180 guests enjoyed a reception at the now-closed Hotel Le St-James, where they dined on Alberta beef and danced to Brazilian music. The couple’s relationship began in 2003, on a romcom-worthy first date during which Canada’s future prime minister was so lovestruck that he walked into a lamppost. We know all the ..read more