Canada: government & governance January 2025-

Canada Federal Liberals 17 April 2024-
Canada – U.S. November 2024–

Andrew Coyne: Reduce our dependence on the U.S.? Sure, but it’s a lot harder than it sounds
The kinds of adjustments that are required of us, the things we’ve been papering over, hoping they would solve themselves – the issues we could get away with avoiding, until now – are massive and intractable.
Recognizing both the gravity of the Trumpian threat and the opportunity in the public passions it has unleashed, a bevy of commentators, left and right, have emerged with prescriptions for what Canada can or must or will do in response.
Thus, if you are on the left, the current crisis just proves the need for an industrial strategy, with subsidies for targeted industries and tighter restrictions on foreign takeovers and forced repatriation of pension funds’ overseas investments, and so on. And if you are on the right, it clearly confirms the need to slash taxes, cut red tape, speed up approval of energy projects etc., etc.
Now we have had our wake-up call. So: Diversify our trade! Build pipelines to the east and west! Meet our NATO defence commitments! Boost national productivity! Abolish interprovincial trade barriers!
Okay. These are lovely ideas, all of them. But they are a lot easier said than done. If they weren’t they’d have been done already. I understand the urge not to “let a crisis go to waste.” But it will take a lot more than fear of the American colossus or a rush of patriotic sentiment to make them a reality.
Trump’s pursuit of a ‘golden age’ jolts Canada to confront its growth problem
Although it’s still unclear whether tariffs will ever be imposed on Canada, federal and provincial leaders say the trade spat is an opportunity to pursue economic growth opportunities beyond the United States.
Canada’s competitive concerns became a flashpoint of conversation Friday when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hosted an economic summit with business, labour and public-policy leaders in Toronto on 48 hours notice.
Businesses have long lamented regulatory hurdles, project approval delays and an uncompetitive tax structure that they say make Canada a less attractive place to set up shop than the United States. Promises to fix these fundamental problems are rarely kept.
“The difference that Donald Trump and his tariff threats have made is that we are now, as people often are, quite a bit more energized at the prospect of losing something compared to the prospect of not gaining something,” said William Robson, the chief executive of the C.D. Howe Institute.

6-8 January
Justin Trudeau’s resignation: What happens now that Parliament is prorogued and other questions, answered
(Globe & Mail) On Monday morning outside Rideau Cottage, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he will resign from his role as Liberal Leader after just over nine years leading the country.
Mr. Trudeau, 53, said he will remain as Prime Minister until the Liberal Party elects a new leader and that Governor-General Mary Simon had granted his request to prorogue Parliament until March 24.
For months Mr. Trudeau had been adamant in public and in private conversations that he would lead the Liberals into the next election against Pierre Poilievre’s front-running Conservatives. But he capitulated after what began as a few sparks of internal revolt six months ago mushroomed into a full-scale crisis for his minority government by the end of 2024.
The final push for his exit was spurred by Chrystia Freeland’s public rebuke in mid-December of the Prime Minister’s policies and politics.
“I intend to resign as party leader and as Prime Minister after the party selects its next leader through a robust, nationwide competitive process. Last night, I asked the president of the Liberal Party to begin that process,” Mr. Trudeau said in his announcement.
Prorogation is a regular function of how Parliament works. A Parliament is defined as the period between elections and each Parliament is divided into sessions. There are no rules on how many sessions there must be or how long a session can last, according to the Senate of Canada website.
The prime minister has to ask the governor-general to prorogue Parliament, and typically the prime minister will make this request when an election begins. Proroguing Parliament effectively puts a stop to all activity. The current government remains in power but there are no Question Periods nor new bills put forth. Any voting, committee work and investigations are halted. Bills that hadn’t yet received royal assent die on the Order Paper. In other words, those laws cannot be passed but when a new session begins, similar bills can be put forth.
Prorogation ends with the beginning of a new session, after which there needs to be a new Throne Speech. It also differs from dissolution, because after a prorogation, the current government returns. Dissolution terminates all parliamentary functions and paves the way for the next general election.
Opposition MPs cannot topple the government when Parliament is prorogued because all government business comes to a halt, including non-confidence votes that would bring down Justin Trudeau’s Liberals.

11 January
‘An embarrassment to the country,’ critic says as prorogued House leaves bills at risk of abandonment
The Online Harms Act and First Nations Clean Water Act are among dozens of bills likely to fizzle
(CBC Radio The Current) The government will continue to operate in the meantime. But all parliamentary activity, including existing bills, comes to a halt. That means some key pieces of legislation, like the Online Harms Act (Bill C-63) could be abandoned.
The act (which was split into two separate bills in December) intends to better protect children from online predators. It completed its first reading and is now awaiting its second reading in the House of Commons. …
The First Nations Clean Water Act, Bill C-61, is awaiting its third reading in the House of Commons.
It proposes new measures to protect freshwater sources, establish minimum national drinking water and wastewater standards in First Nations, create a new First Nations-led water institution to support communities and provide sustainable funding for maintaining water quality.
3 January
Andrew Coyne: The coming chaos in federal politics and how we got here
We are about to receive one hell of a civics lesson. It will be a particularly painful one for the Liberals, who are staring at political oblivion and have many agonizing weeks and months to go before then. But the country will suffer along with them.
We have been scraping by for decades, narrowly avoiding one disaster after another, with a political and constitutional order that is cracked in several places. A number of those cracks are about to open at the same time.
… The Liberals began losing altitude in the polls in early 2017, and for the last year and a half they have been in freefall. The leader who was their prize asset in 2015 is now their biggest liability.
But he won’t go – or at least, has been unwilling to go, to date – and they have no way to force him out. Even in his present weakened state, his powers, as party leader and as Prime Minister, are so immense that few Liberal MPs to this day are willing to put their names to demands for him to go. It’s all “a consensus of the Ontario caucus” this and “a majority of the Atlantic caucus” that.
Worse, if he were to go, no one can agree on how to replace him. Years of centralized, top-down, leader-driven government, with cabinet ministers as little more than props, has left a field of second-raters as possible successors.
But what even would be the process? Another elephantine, months-long, one-supporter-one-vote race like the last one, as prescribed by the party constitution? But that is unthinkable, with the country under economic attack by our erstwhile American allies. …