Matt Gurney
Matt Gurney is a Toronto-based journalist. He is co-editor of The Line (ReadTheLine.ca), an online magazine. He can be reached at matt@readtheline.ca.
Matt Gurney is a Toronto-based journalist. He is co-editor of The Line (ReadTheLine.ca), an online magazine. He can be reached at matt@readtheline.ca.
It’s time for Canada to pick a jet—or a mix of jets—and get it done. Our pilots deserve it, and given the state of the world, the country may need it. Carney has a majority now. He can essentially do what he wants. I hope this is near the top of his list.
Legal experts have sounded the alarm over a provision in Bill C-16 and say if it were to pass into law as written, automatic stays of proceedings if trials took too long to complete would no longer be an option, or at least would only be an option of last resort.
Every time I hear a story of some other shockingly violent crime and see the federal government absolutely incapable of coming up with any kind of meaningful communications position or policy response, I do wonder if time is on the side of the Conservatives.
This is a classic example where the government is clearly pursuing a strategy—a reset of our relationship with India—while also trying not to provoke any political backlash among voters who will be angered by such a reset. Maybe the government just doesn’t know what its plan is or how to message it.
Canada should leverage its geographic advantage—far from Europe’s front lines—along with its close relationship with Ukraine and its willingness to invest heavily to develop advanced drone and anti-drone capabilities that can be shared with and sold to allies.
So as we continue to work on conventional rearmament, it’s worth keeping an eye on this. Because if there’s a way we can do this, we should.
A few months ago, the PM spoke of sacrifice as Canada realigned around new priorities. The same theme popped up in a Globe and Mail story last week about planning work at Canadian Defence HQ about how to resist, via an insurgency, an American attack. The key line to me in that story was this: ‘Conscription has been ruled out for now, but the level of sacrifice that would be asked of Canadians remains a central topic, the officials said.’ I’ll bet it does!
Mark Carney might be a little more willing than Justin Trudeau to be judged by what he does, and not what he tells you he’s doing. We’ll see how it goes. But I find the shift refreshing.
This is a problem across Canadian society. We have become so risk averse and conflict averse that we’ve geared shockingly large percentages of our state institutions into being effectively machines that can only say ‘no’.
I think a lot of what’s coming out of Pete Hoekstra’s mouth, and Trump’s White House, is kind of bonkers, to be honest. But what’s important is that Canadians realize that Hoekstra is reliably and faithfully signalling the administration’s position on issues that are relevant to us. And I wish Canadians were doing a better job of figuring that out.
Now would be a great opportunity to do the difficult, but necessary things that are required to preserve Canada Post as an institution that will continue to serve Canadians well and efficiently for decades to come.
It’s possible that Mark Carney and Anita Anand’s trips are intended to overcome, via personal presence, some of our deficits elsewhere. It could work. The problem is that time, once bought, must be used.
Canada is probably going to need an Air Force soon, and we’ve wasted 16 years already. We can’t get back that lost time, but we can make a final decision quickly. Today wouldn’t be too soon.
Canada is now Mark Carney’s problem. He actively campaigned on it being his problem. And I’m politely asking him and his government, on behalf of 41 million of my buddies, to imagine how they’ll respond to the next crisis, when it comes. We need to know now.
I’m not sure anyone ever enjoys dealing with a call centre, but some of them actually do run reasonably well. Just do what they do. It’s an easy political winner.
The Conservative Party spent years optimizing itself to defeat Mark Carney’s predecessor but the current prime minister has a very different personality; and the NDP is a non-factor in our federal politics—so much so that a real recovery may prove extremely difficult.