In today’s episode of The Line Podcast, recorded on May 8, 2026, your hosts rush through the recording so they can hang up and go focus on what really matters — today’s UFO document dump!

Kidding. But it is a short episode, because Jen Gerson is travelling this week. She’s in Ottawa, attending not one but two conferences. She reports back on the vibe from Ottawa, including her thoughts on a speech given by Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservatives. She notes that the man is much better at rebranding than at changing. They also discuss why Mark Carney and the Liberals are struggling to change, too — the choice of Louise Arbour as our next governor general isn’t bad, the hosts agree. Not exactly. But it is a worrying sign of what Matt identifies as path dependency — Arbour is a very old-fashioned move by a government that, at least in terms of what they’re saying, understands this country is in deep trouble, and needs to move fast to prepare for a new normal.

This episode of The Line Podcast is brought to you by Electro-Federation Canada. Canada’s clean electricity grid gives us a competitive edge in attracting global investment — but to maintain that advantage our system needs to break down barriers and unlock the grid. Aging infrastructure, supply chain constraints, and outdated regulations threaten our ability to expand and modernize the grid — essential components of meeting future capacity needs. Electro-Federation Canada has developed a research-backed roadmap for grid readiness focused on smart policy and regulatory alignment. To learn more, visit MakeTheSwitch.ElectroFed.com.

Next, your hosts chat about the latest from Alberta. Even though she’s been in Ottawa all week, Jen can’t quite escape the unfolding story about the data breach. She updates everyone on the latest. Matt also notes that he’s been asking for months where provincial NDP leader Naheed Nenshi has been. Well. Seems like we found him! Jen also offers a word of warning about believing the polls. That way, she says, only complacency lies.

This episode of The Line Podcast is also brought to you by Dominion Dynamics. Canada has never had true sovereign awareness of our North. Vast parts of our country are a blind spot. And when you can’t see your own territory, you can’t defend it, secure it, or respond when threats emerge. Dominion Dynamics is changing that. Dominion Dynamics is building a sovereign command and control capability that lets Canada and its allies see, respond, and defend across every domain. Dominion is starting in the Arctic, where extreme conditions demand technology no one else can deliver.

Defend the Dominion. Dominion Dynamics.

Learn more at DefendTheDominion.com.

After that, with Jen needing to bolt back to her next conference event, Matt tells her about some funny reaction he’s been getting to a column he wrote this week for the Toronto Star. He’s a bit worried that we have normalized dysfunction in this country to a point where we are starting to see parts of it as heartwarming, not alarming — a perfect real-world example of the “orphan crushing machine” internet meme. (He explains, don’t worry.) Jen notes that she’s seeing a lot of that herself on her visit to the capital. It’s looking a little bedraggled.

All that, and more, in the latest episode of The Line Podcast. Please like, subscribe and, if you want, chip us a few bucks. Even more of our competitors are selling out and taking the federal bailouts. We reject them. It ain’t easy. Please help.

(Note for video viewers: please forgive the video issues with Jen’s feed late in the third segment — we were at the mercy of hotel wifi.)

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Please sign up at those options not just for this episode, or future episodes of The Line Podcast, but so that you can also receive our other podcast series, On the Line, which releases new episodes every Tuesday morning. In case you missed it, here is last Tuesday’s episode, where Jen Gerson spoke with journalist and author John Fraser about the role of the governor general, and why he is a loud and proud Canadian monarchist.

Thanks, as always, and we’ll talk to you soon. Like, subscribe and share!

The Line is entirely reader and advertiser funded. No federal subsidies, no bailouts. If you value our work, please consider supporting us by subscribing or making a donation. Donations are not subscriptions and do not unlock paywalled content, but they help keep The Line independent

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By: Jessica Davis

Something rather remarkable happened in Canada last month. Mark Carney’s government tabled legislation to establish a new federal police force in Canada. Bill C-29 lays it out explicitly, saying: “This enactment establishes the Financial Crimes Agency as a specialized federal law enforcement agency whose mandate is to investigate financial crimes and to contribute to the recovery of proceeds of crime.”

If you’re wondering why Canada needs a specialized police force to tackle financial crimes, it’s because Canada has a $44 billion financial crimes problem. Annually, that is. This is the value of transactions that FINTRAC, Canada’s financial intelligence unit, provided in its most recent publicly available estimate. These transactions were all disclosed because FINTRAC had reasonable grounds to suspect that they would be relevant to a money laundering or terrorist financing investigation. Now, that’s not to say that all of those transactions were, technically, money laundering or terrorist financing. Some almost certainly were not; but FINTRAC deemed them relevant to an investigation, and they are our best estimate of the scope of the financial crime problem in this country. If these transactions contributed to Canada’s licit economy, they would be in the top 20 industries in Canada. (Yes: there is a lot of nuance required to really understand these numbers, and I suggest you read my analysis of that here.)

The creation of the agency might also be, in part, driven by Canada’s ongoing review by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the global standard-setter for anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing. Unfortunately, the agency is being established too late to meaningfully contribute to that evaluation (where we are likely to get poor marks for demonstrating effectiveness at combating money laundering and terrorist financing). At the same time, it will be useful to be able to point to during any follow-up visits by FATF and to help address any concerns the review raises (of which I’m sure there will be many).

The agency is also being established because the RCMP, which has historically been responsible for these investigations, has proven ineffective. This is due to many reasons: a lack of leadership and interest in financial crimes, structural issues like the resource draw that contract policing has on the force, and the prioritization of “threat to life” investigations (which there are certainly many, particularly in today’s threat environment). Many other challenges (cultural, legislative, and financial) have also contributed to a lack of outcomes from Canada’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing regime. The agency will solve some, but not all, of these problems.

But while it may have seemed to have dropped out of nowhere as part of a spring economic update, this agency has been in the works for years. It was first announced as part of the Liberal Party’s platform in 2021. Since that time, policy work has been ongoing (I’ve contributed to some of it), debates have been had, and ultimately, choices about structure and mandate were made, resulting in the introduction of Bill C-29 in late April.

What I think is really telling is that, even as the government cuts back the public service significantly, it is willing to invest $352-million, over five years, to stand up an entirely new agency. This illustrates the importance of tackling this issue.

There remain many unknowns, but two key documents that tell us about the new agency: the bill itself, and the spring economic update.

So far, we know it will be a federal law enforcement agency focused on money laundering, serious fraud, major capital market crimes, and the recovery of the proceeds of crime. The legislation is broadly drafted to allow the agency to investigate any financial crimes, so the agency’s focus could shift over time.

Financial crimes are any offence under an act of Parliament relating to financial assets (including digital financial services or markets), including laundering the proceeds of crime, and the security or integrity of Canada’s economy or financial system. This includes the Criminal Code of Canada, but also the Proceeds of Crime Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Act, as well as many other acts.

The Minister also has the power to direct the Commissioner of the Agency, and this direction is to be made public. Ultimately, the Commissioner establishes what matters should be investigated, but at the direction of the Minister.

The agency will focus on investigating serious and complex financial crimes and on participating in international efforts to counter financial crimes. This is an important precision: this does not sound like the agency will just take on all financial crime files in Canada. Instead, it will be focused on the most serious and complex crimes, most of which will have an international component and require partnerships across jurisdictions. This is also important: international investigations are complex (and time-consuming), so developing this expertise will be a skill in and of itself.

The agency will be headquartered in Ottawa, but could have offices across Canada. Again, regional representation and integration with local police forces will be critical for ensuring that files are successfully transferred to the new agency and that knowledge and skills are not lost. Having regional representation might also help facilitate the recruitment of skilled investigators and professionals, an area that is likely to be a significant challenge for the new agency.

There is also a provision for the RCMP to provide services and assistance to the new agency. This will be critical: many — most? — of the agency’s files will come from the RCMP. The RCMP also provides specialized police services (such as training, forensic science, and other services) to many police forces in Canada, and presumably, the Financial Crimes Agency will also need some of these services.

In terms of its relationship with FINTRAC, because the agency is being established as a law-enforcement agency, it will automatically be able to receive disclosures from FINTRAC. (“Police” in Canada are all disclosure recipients.) Interestingly, this changes very little for FINTRAC, except that they will likely establish a very close working relationship with this new agency — possibly their closest relationship, even surpassing that with the RCMP.

There are a lot of challenges ahead for the agency. These primarily involve coordination with the RCMP and other police forces. In this context, it’s worth remembering how the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was established from the RCMP’s Security Service. While the new organization was up and running within a few years of the McDonald Commission, it has taken decades and multiple rounds of “One Vision” deconfliction efforts to create a workable relationship between the two services.

It remains to be seen whether the RCMP and the new Financial Crimes Agency can improve on this track record of cooperation, or whether institutional in-fighting will plague both organizations.

The Financial Crimes Agency will also face significant challenges recruiting skilled staff. To be sure, there are many skilled financial crimes investigators and experts in Canada. But the new agency will face an uphill battle recruiting them from other agencies, other provinces, and even the private sector. The new agency will have to figure out a unique and compelling value proposition to recruit the best talent Canada has. (This goes well beyond offering a competitive salary: money is not everything for individuals interested in this kind of work, and an important mission, combined with a good organizational culture and minimizing bureaucracy, can go a long way towards keeping a workforce happy.)

The bottom line is that the proposed Agency is an important step for Canada in getting serious about fighting financial crime. However, there are many challenges ahead for the new organization. Anticipating these challenges, and creating legislative remedies (where appropriate) will be critical as the bill moves through committee. However, many of the most significant challenges facing the new organization will occur after the bill becomes law, and the realities of having to navigate Canada’s complex anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing framework settle in.

Dr. Jessica Davis is president & principal consultant of Insight Threat Intelligence

The Line is entirely reader and advertiser funded. No federal subsidies, no bailouts. If you value our work, please consider supporting us by subscribing or making a donation. Donations are not subscriptions and do not unlock paywalled content, but they help keep The Line independent

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By: Matt Gurney

Mark Carney’s announcement of Louise Arbour as Canada’s next governor general led me to a somewhat alarming realization this week: I might be one of the only Canadian media commentators who does not have particularly strong feelings about the woman. But I don’t. I certainly remember some of her work on the Supreme Court and some of the positions she was known to support. I remember her name floating around for a while when the former prime minister was musing about finding an eminent Canadian to look into foreign interference. But that’s basically it.

As to her selection for the top job, I guess she’ll be fine. I don’t intend that as damning with faint praise. I’m being sincere — she seems fully capable of discharging the responsibilities of the job in a competent and credible manner. Some of her older comments, such as the military being a bunch of “white boys who like guns but don’t like women or anybody who doesn’t look like them,” are just a bit awkward given her new status as Canada’s incoming commander-in-chief of the armed forces. But I suspect the military will find a way to carry on, as shall the rest of us.

What does bother me is what this selection tells us about decision-making at the highest level of our government. Arbour’s selection is a massive missed opportunity, and I’m not sure how many of those the government is going to get before it starts to regret it.

Because the next governor general should have been from western Canada. Alberta, specifically. And the fact that the PMO either didn’t realize this or couldn’t find someone to be that person ain’t a good sign, friends.

As I see it, the country faces three broad threats right now. There’s a lot of specific things that worry me, and there’s no shortage of problems that need targeted solutions, but at the macro level, there are three major issues that the Carney government must be managing.

The first is the geopolitical ramifications of the hard pivot by the United States. Even if a subsequent U.S. administration corrects back toward something resembling the baseline we’ve enjoyed since the Second World War, the damage to our confidence in the United States will be real and enduring. Canada simply has to adapt to a very different world. That’s job number one, and it’s a massive job. We aren’t moving nearly fast enough, but I think Carney gets the importance of this.

The second is the probable return of an active Quebec sovereignty movement to the front burner. Provincial polls in Quebec have tightened up a bit lately, and it’s possible a growing number of Quebecers are themselves deciding that now is not a good time to inflict another referendum on the country. But a win by the Parti Québécois is likely, based on the polls today, and they’ve been blunt about their desire to hold another referendum. This is a threat the federal government must be ready for and engaged with. For what it’s worth, given the Liberal party’s deep roots in Quebec, I suspect that if it becomes necessary to fight this fight, they will have real bench strength upon which to draw. And the prime minister will be able to receive trusted advice from people who know what they’re talking about.

And then there’s the Alberta separatism thing.

I know that the PMO is aware of the problem. You can see in some of their public statements and actions that they get it, at least a little bit. I also know from private conversations that they take it seriously, and that they think they’re on top of it.

But I’m not sure that they are. I do not think the federal Liberals have nearly the bench strength in Alberta that they do in Quebec. I don’t think they understand the lay of the land nearly as well. And I don’t think they are as engaged with the problem as they should be.

Because if they were, and a rare opportunity presented itself to make a largely symbolic appointment of a single person to represent the entire country domestically and on the global stage right as a separatist movement was flaring up in a part of the country where the federal government, especially a Liberal one, does not have the luxury of particularly impressive presence or admiration, you’d think the PMO would have seen, to quote the Trailer Park Boys, a chance to get “two birds stoned at once.”

Appointing an Albertan to be governor general has got to be just about the best bang for buck the Carney government could have gotten here. All the better if it was an overtly federalist, bilingual woman. This is just extremely basic politics. The actual physical embodiment of the Canadian state could have been from a part of the country that feels, rightly or wrongly, largely alienated from the Canadian state.

Arbour, to put it mildly, is not that person. Again, I think she’ll do a perfectly good job, insofar as governors general go. But not only is her appointment an enormous missed opportunity, it is also a real signal that despite a major projects office and an MOU to get a pipeline built, the Carney Liberals still see the world through, well, very Laurentian Liberal eyes.

You won’t hear me saying much against Laurentian elites. I am one. And I’m not into self-loathing. I have other vices.

But even I can see, from deep in the heart of Toronto, that appointing Arbour is, to borrow a hockey metaphor, like losing a four-point game. Not only did you not get the win you needed, you lost the points you needed to the team you’re trying to beat. In appointing a retired Supreme Court justice from Montreal, not only has Carney missed the opportunity to appoint an Albertan federalist, he has appointed someone who will confirm a lot of the suspicions the Alberta separatists already had about him, his worldview, the people around him, and the country in general.

It’s a major missed opportunity and one that might not come again for years. This was handed to the government on a platter, and yet. This leaves me alarmed because I don’t know if the thought of appointing an Albertan simply didn’t occur to the prime minister and his advisors, or if it did and they either couldn’t think of someone or chose Arbour, anyway.

None of these options is particularly reassuring. It makes me worry that, despite what I truly believe is a high-level recognition among the PM and his top advisors that the world has changed and Canada must change with it, they’ll still fall victim to path dependency and keep doing the very safe, predictable things that a Liberal PM would have done five, 10 or 20 years ago, almost out of political reflex. And might only realize belatedly, if ever, that they should have maybe done something else instead.

But hey, I guess the good news is that no one will be demanding we recite the planets in order of their orbital distance from the sun any time soon. And that ain’t nothing, I guess.

The Line is entirely reader and advertiser funded. No federal subsidies, no bailouts. If you value our work, please consider supporting us by subscribing or making a donation. Donations are not subscriptions and do not unlock paywalled content, but they help keep The Line independent

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By: Gregory Jack

We are now a third of the way into Donald Trump’s second term as President of the United States. It has been, whatever you think of his politics, chaotic. Global tariffs. Mass deportations. Violence in American cities. War in the Middle East.

It has also been long enough to reconsider the prognostications of what a second Trump term would be like.

A little over a year ago, I wrote my first piece for The Line. In it, I argued that Trump’s return to office represented a wholesale takeover of the Republican Party by a new sort of Republican, less concerned with free markets and small-c conservative values, and more preoccupied with expansionism, nationalism and interventionist politics. I said Trump himself was the “tip of the spear” who would act to enable this New Republican movement.

What did I get right, and what did I get wrong? I would argue that my analysis was largely correct in direction, but I got the coherence of the moment wrong, and in that respect things are actually worse than I predicted.

First, the geopolitics. I argued tariffs would be one of several instruments the New Republicans would use to exert power, influence and control. This has proven largely correct. Trump and his administration have entangled America in several global confrontations, despite explicit promises to stay out of them, with Iran only the latest. The sloppy execution of the global tariff policy shift does not negate what Trump and his followers have attempted to achieve, which is turning tariffs from something to be avoided through trade agreements, into a tool to exert control. And as I wrote at the time, it has indeed turned out that no agreement with this administration is really permanent.

Territorial claims, as I anticipated, have only grown more forceful. Trump doubled and tripled down on attempts to acquire Greenland, mused about soon having the “honour” of taking Cuba, oversaw the removal of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro to face trial in the U.S., and continued his 51^st state threats toward Canada. Trump suffered the ugly falling out with Musk that I predicted, though their relationship has since proven more transactional than permanently severed.

Trump has also proceeded to withdraw America from the very multilateral institutions I called on Canada to find ways to support, despite their many failings. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s attempt to rally the middle powers of the world may represent Canada heeding that call, albeit with mixed results so far.

There are two areas where I believe my analysis was incomplete, or perhaps simply wrong. The first is the role of Trump himself. It is still not entirely clear whether a change in the presidency would result in a change in direction. Would America be able to repair the damage it has done to relationships with allies under a different Republican president? Congress has proven to be even more inept than expected, and the aggressive raids, unlawful detentions and enforcement actions against not only undocumented immigrants but in some cases American citizens have made for shocking headlines; these actions were enabled by more people than just Trump. It is clear many in his orbit share his objectives, if not his style. He may be less the architect of MAGA than he is its permission to exist.

Trump’s TACO tendencies — “Trump Always Chickens Out” — have also been underscored by incoherence and resistance in actual American foreign policy. There are clearly those surrounding him who will carry out his orders, but it isn’t everyone. The military has lost several senior leaders who have drawn a line in the sand. It is impossible to know how many others have stood up to the president behind closed doors, nor what the world would look like if he was fully and completely left to his own early morning urges.

The best way to describe the president’s overall focus is Shiny Object Syndrome. If we wait long enough, the world has learned, attention will turn elsewhere, and many of the threats have proven to be no more than bluster. But not all of them. Trump has kept the world perpetually on edge and never really knowing if he is bluffing or not. It’s likely that is all by design. No one thought we’d be seriously considering the possibility of defending Canada from an American military threat, and yet it’s clear our leaders, and the public, found themselves contemplating the possibility.

What is most grating, most difficult to understand or make sense of, is the gaslighting, and that extends beyond the president himself. Line editor Jen Gerson wondered about how to resolve this in a post on X recently, and no answer is obvious. The U.S. is not playing by any agreed-upon rulebook anymore. The world simply cannot tell which threats are serious, which are negotiating tactics, and which are nothing more than impulsive performances. Some readers may be able to relate from their own personal experiences, as every country now finds itself in an emotionally abusive relationship with the United States and the man who leads it. There is no rational response to gaslighting except naming it, and doing so has proven to do little good.

My homogeneous characterization of the New Republican was therefore a little too neat and tidy. Trump has surrounded himself with a coalition of competing interests who overlap but do not want the same state. Some want a stronger state; others want a gutted state; others still want a state that inflicts vengeance and violence on perceived enemies simply for the sake of violence, because it can. Rather than a single, disciplined “New Republican” doctrine, we have experienced a collection of interests and actors who have been released from their guardrails.

One group I predicted would benefit but has not is the American worker. Scores of economists warned the tariffs would be bad for the average American, and this has largely proven true. The original promise was that tariffs would restore jobs and wages, but that has only happened unevenly, with the benefits concentrated among the few. That this damage continues to be successfully waved aside as short-term pain for long-term gain (most recently on the price of gas), and that this framing remains largely believed by MAGA, reflects serious cognitive dissonance by a section of the electorate. There is no other way to characterize it, except to say it resembles a form of endless blind faith.

And what of the world’s response? The constraints in America have proven more durable than expected. Tariffs didn’t destroy economies — America’s or others’ — as much as many predicted. There have indeed been some benefits to some Americans, and to some companies. Damage has been done, but so far it has been managed. A Federal Reserve analysis found 2025 tariffs reaching consumers through higher prices more slowly and less severely than the 2018-2019 China tariffs. The simple claim that tariffs are immediately catastrophic for an economy has proven too simplistic.

Inflation has emerged as the real, durable threat, especially where tariffs interact with energy costs. The American worker in the U.S. is measurably not better off. The Middle East remains unresolved, but whatever the constraints were, the nuclear option has not (yet) been invoked, even if it has been tacitly threatened.

It could all still end very, very badly. I don’t think, given the past year, that anyone seriously believes the president will avoid further global conflicts in the remainder of his term. He will remain predictably unpredictable and only temporarily appeasable by flattery. The midterms remain a grounding point for those hoping for change, but how legitimate they will be is increasingly in question. No one is certain any longer that this is Trump’s final term.

Finally, Canada has proven rather inept at the policy prescriptions I offered near the end of my article. Build pipelines and buy icebreakers is still the prescription, but one that we have continued to struggle with filling. The Carney administration has said all the right things, and even done some of them, but our ability to protect our sovereignty through hard state capacity has proven questionable. We’re not moving fast enough, even if Carney believes he’s moving as fast as possible. America has proven dangerous because its state is now unconstrained; we are vulnerable because our state appears underpowered.

Now we know that there is no single, rational way to deal with this administration. The lesson for Canada is that diagnosis is not capacity. We can say sovereignty and “elbows up” as often as we like, and talk endlessly about the Arctic, pipelines, building Canada and middle power diplomacy. Unless we can actually build, buy, permit, deploy and defend at speed, sovereignty remains a slogan and security an aspiration. My original prescription was basically right. What I underestimated was how inadequately we are equipped to follow it.

If we cannot build capacity fast enough, we must change our tactics. Canada and other middle powers cannot match American hard power. Weaponizing asymmetrical advantages like critical minerals, energy reserves and Arctic geography must therefore serve as the political ammunition needed. Nor can Canada successfully appeal to the “better angels” in a deliberately unpredictable administration. We’re seeing the limits of this in the CUSMA negotiations right now. Every past concession is forgotten, replaced by a new demand. Every action taken by Canada labelled as unfair; every action by America as a just response to grievance.

We no longer have the luxury of waiting for capacity to build itself. To survive an unconstrained American state, we must become the only thing they respect: a hard target.

Gregory Jack is senior vice president with Ipsos Public Affairs (Canada)

The Line is entirely reader and advertiser funded. No federal subsidies, no bailouts. If you value our work, please consider supporting us by subscribing or making a donation. Donations are not subscriptions and do not unlock paywalled content, but they help keep The Line independent

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In this episode of On The Line, host Jen Gerson sits down with author and longtime journalist John Fraser to discuss his latest book, The Governors General: An Intimate History of Canada’s Highest Office. And the timing couldn’t be better — although the interview was recorded before the announcement, Prime Minister Mark Carney just named former Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour to be our next governor-general.

Fraser’s book is part history, part memoir, and part insider account, drawing on Fraser’s decades of experience in Canadian public life to tell the story of an institution that is often overlooked but rarely irrelevant.

This episode of On The Line is brought to you by Dominion Dynamics. Canada has never had true sovereign awareness of our North. Vast parts of our country are a blind spot. And when you can’t see your own territory, you can’t defend it, secure it, or respond when threats emerge. Dominion Dynamics is changing that. Dominion is building a sovereign command and control capability that lets Canada and its allies see, respond, and defend across every domain. We started in the Arctic, where extreme conditions demand technology no one else can deliver.

Threats don’t wait for bureaucracy. They are moving faster than our institutions. Dominion is closing that gap. Speed is now the strategic capability, and Dominion Dynamics is proving you can build capability at the speed of the threat.

Defend the dominion. Dominion Dynamics.

Learn more at DefendTheDominion.com.

Fraser brings a mix of personal anecdotes and sharp observation to the conversation, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the Canadian-born Governors General who have shaped the modern office. There’s a fair amount of gossip — some of it affectionate, some of it less so — but it’s always in service of a larger point: that the personalities who occupy Rideau Hall matter, and that the office itself has evolved in ways most Canadians haven’t fully appreciated.

From there, the conversation widens into a discussion about monarchism, the role of the Crown in Canada’s constitutional system, and why the Governor General still plays a meaningful role in the country’s political life. Gerson presses Fraser on whether Canadians take the institution for granted, and whether that neglect has left them less equipped to understand how their own system of government actually functions.

This episode of On The Line is also brought to you by Electro-Federation Canada. Canada’s clean electricity grid gives us a competitive edge in attracting global investment — but to maintain that advantage our system needs to break down barriers and unlock the grid. Aging infrastructure, supply chain constraints, and outdated regulations threaten our ability to expand and modernize the grid — essential components of meeting future capacity needs. Electro-Federation Canada has developed a research-backed roadmap for grid readiness focused on smart policy and regulatory alignment. To learn more, visit MakeTheSwitch.ElectroFed.com.

Fraser argues that Canada’s history offers a deeper reservoir of ideas and solutions than we often assume. In a political culture that tends to look outward — to the United States, to Europe, to global trends — he makes the case for looking inward, and for taking seriously the institutions that have quietly shaped the country over time.

They also talk about how the Governor General’s role fits into the modern media landscape, where political leaders dominate headlines and ceremonial or constitutional roles struggle to break through. That imbalance, Fraser suggests, can distort public understanding of how power really works in Canada, and where the safeguards in the system actually lie.

It’s a wide-ranging and often entertaining conversation about history, personality, and the architecture of Canadian governance — and why an office that rarely seeks attention might deserve a little more of it.

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The Alliance of Canadian Defence Companies is rebuilding Canada’s sovereign defence-industrial base. ACDC champions Canadian-owned, Canadian-controlled companies that design, build, sustain, and export next-generation defence systems. Change requires new processes, new policies, and new behaviour. ACDC membership is open to Canadian-controlled defence companies ready to lead that change.

To join, email Info@AllianceCanada.com.

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The Line is entirely reader and advertiser funded. No federal subsidies, no bailouts. If you value our work, please consider supporting us by subscribing or making a donation. Donations are not subscriptions and do not unlock paywalled content, but they help keep The Line independent

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By: Christine Van Geyn

Mark Carney’s majority government is now a few weeks old, but the controversy this new status has brought continues.

The Liberals are using their new majority to push through changes to parliamentary committees, bringing accusations from the opposition Conservatives, and other critics, that the moves, like the majority status itself, are illegitimate and maybe even unconstitutional.

Since the Carney government achieved majority status on April 13 with three byelection wins that followed several MPs crossing the floor from opposition benches to sit with the Liberals, social media — and my inbox at the Canadian Constitution Foundation — have been inundated with posts from angry and frustrated Canadians demanding a constitutional challenge to floor crossing. They argue that they never voted for a Liberal majority, and, in the case of former Tory Marilyn Gladu, the last of the floor-crossers, Sarnia-area voters didn’t vote for a Liberal.

But political problems are not best addressed by the courts, and in this case, there is nothing in our constitution that can or should prohibit floor crossing. If voters do not like it, the solution is at the ballot box.

Canada has a constitution similar in principle to that of the United Kingdom, where floor crossing is a normal part of the Westminster system (even if controversial politically). Members of Parliament are elected as individuals. They are free to express their will. This traces back to classic parliamentary theory from Edmund Burke that “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement”: an MP is expected to exercise independent thought. They are not objects expected to subjugate themselves to their party.

What about the Charter right to vote? Section 3 of the Charter reads: “Every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly and to be qualified for membership therein.” Could this be used to prohibit floor crossing? Almost certainly not.

Courts have interpreted section 3 to include a broader idea of “meaningful participation” in the electoral process. But even this broader approach is not broad enough to prohibit floor crossing. There are two recent cases that are relevant: Working Families and Fair Voting BC.

In Working Families, a third-party political advertiser and advocacy organization in Ontario, backed primarily by labour unions, challenged Ontario’s pre-election third party spending limits. They argued that these spending limits violate the section 3 Charter right to “meaningful participation” because the law distorts the information environment voters need to participate meaningfully in an election. The case was interesting because it was framed as a section 3 right rather than as a right under section 2(b) of the Charter, which protects political expression.

The case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, where a narrow 5-4 majority struck down the law as a violation of Ontarians’ section 3 right to cast an informed vote. The majority endorsed the principle that a spending limit will infringe section 3 where it allows a political actor or third party to have a disproportionate voice in the political discourse, thus depriving voters of a broad range of views and perspectives on social and political issues.

This is a broad view of the right to vote under section 3 that triggered two dissents, both of which found section 3 was not violated.

But even if we want to take the majority’s expansive reasoning from Working Families, it will not prohibit floor crossings. Under Working Families, the strongest imaginable argument would be that voters cast ballots in an informational and partisan context, and post-election defections negate or frustrate the meaningfulness of that choice. But that runs into a basic problem: Working Families was about state action that impaired the voter’s ability to cast an informed vote during the electoral process. A floor crossing does not retroactively deprive voters of information, silence viewpoints, or prevent them from participating meaningfully in the election that already occurred. At most, it changes the later parliamentary consequences of that election. That is a very different theory.

Layer on top of this the recent decision from the Ontario Court of Appeal in Fair Voting BC. That case was a legal challenge to Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system. A group of activists argued that the first-past-the-post system violates section 3 because it fails to provide “effective representation” and meaningful participation, especially given the mismatch between vote share and seat share. The theory was that if you vote for a losing candidate, they say your vote is “wasted” and doesn’t count.

The Court of Appeal rejected that argument and held that the federal electoral system does not violate section 3. The Charter is neutral as to the electoral model, and accepted arguments by the Canadian Constitution Foundation that the model we’ve had since confederation didn’t suddenly become unconstitutional.

Applying the Fair Voting BC approach to the question of whether floor crossing violates the Charter right to vote results in no finding of unconstitutionality. Section 3 does not guarantee that your preferred candidate or party will obtain, retain, or share in governing power. If section 3 does not guarantee that seat share tracks vote share across the system, it is even harder to argue that it guarantees an individual voter that the MP elected in their riding must remain in the same caucus for the life of the Parliament.

These cases show that section 3 is about a right to participate in elections, not a right to freeze parliamentary politics after elections. Under the case law and under our broader constitutional architecture, a legal challenge to floor crossings under s 3 would fail — and it should fail. As much as people are disgusted by floor crossing, we don’t want to turn to the courts to solve everything we don’t like, especially when those things are inherently the realm of politics.

Floor crossing could be dealt with through legislation or party policy. Legislation could be introduced that triggers a byelection when there is a floor crossing. And political parties, as private associations, could create rules prohibiting it, for example, a rule that says no MP elected under another party’s banner may join this party’s caucus during the same Parliament.

The frustration Canadians feel about floor crossing is real and understandable, but it is not a constitutional problem. If Canadians want to change the practice of floor crossing, the solution lies in the democratic sphere: electing more trustworthy individuals, advocating for change in legislation or party rules, or simply, in the end, through the next election.

Christine Van Geyn is a Canadian lawyer and the interim executive director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation.

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By: Peter Menzies

Many years ago, as a naive new CRTC commissioner, I attended the Canadian film and television industry’s annual Prime Time convention in Ottawa and posed a question.

I asked Glen O’Farrell, who led the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) for many years, if there was a plan or if anyone could foresee a time in a future, more populous Canada — even 50 years from now — when the nation’s film and television industry could thrive without dependence on government subsidies.

The answer was a firm “No.” Such a day will never come.

Thus began my journey into the mindset of the regulated broadcasting and cultural content-production industries: What exists today will remain as it was in the beginning and ever shall be.

That theology hasn’t changed — it inspired the Online Streaming Act — but the world has. Members of the Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA) have for decades depended heavily on what once were reliably increasing cable company revenues — five per cent of which, thanks to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), must be directed into the Canada Media Fund, which then distributes the loot to producers. But the old adage that no one ever went broke running a cable company can no longer be stated with confidence. Cable revenues have been in decline for several years now — a trend highlighted in the Convergence Research Group’s latest report, The Battle for the Canadian couch potato: OTT and TV.

It notes that, as of last year, 48.5 per cent of Canadian households no longer have a cable or satellite subscription. By the time 2028 rolls around, that number is forecast to be 57 per cent, with revenues continuing to decline at a pace of around five per cent a year. Little wonder Rogers is offering severance packages in the hope of reducing its workforce.

Most of this is a result of the fact that, over the past 15 years, the walled garden that the CRTC had created to encompass cable firms and content producers collapsed as hordes of streaming companies swept across the border like so many Visigoths and into Canadian homes via the internet.

At this point, I could easily get into the weeds and lose you completely but, suffice it to say, I am not without sympathy for the Canadian dilemma. I’m an un-hypenated cultural nationalist who will cheer for my country and mine alone at the upcoming World Cup. I detest the fact that American entertainment and sports programming can be dumped into the Canadian market for pennies on the cost of production dollars at the expense of our own companies. That’s a situation that would not be tolerated in any other industry or country. I am old enough to remember when Canadian books, which now have a mere five-per-cent market share, sold hundreds of thousands of copies individually and millions collectively in a market half the size of today’s, and authors such as Pierre Berton and Peter C. Newman were household names. And I am wise enough to understand that Canadians’ learned preference for all things American on their screens will only continue to erode our increasingly wobbly sense of national identity which, today, is often described by our leaders as something something something.

So, foreign companies entering the Canadian market should not be allowed just to dump their product here, scoop up their profits and leave. They should, as with our domestic companies, be expected to be of benefit to not only the national treasury, but also the social fabric.

But, as the CMPA’s latest annual Profile report illustrated last month, there’s evidence to suggest foreign streamers and producers are doing that, just not in the way the Canadian industry is used to. In other words, they are not doing it as an obligation through designated, regulated funds overseen by the CRTC’s social engineers but directly as an investment. This is what is at the heart of the current dispute between the American streaming companies and the CRTC, which is — ponderously — trying to implement the Online Streaming Act as if the internet is the new cable. The Americans view having to pay money into funds as the least productive way to make attractive Canadian content that will give them a financial reward.

What has been unfolding is that the Online Streaming Act, which is now, predictably, a key point of contention in trade negotiations with the U.S., is trying to maintain the Canadian cultural funding world as it was, is and ever shall be. It, through the CRTC, is focused on keeping a system based upon 20th century realities, and not 2026.

That reveals what is the deepest flaw in the thinking upon which the contentious Online Streaming Act is based. It assumes that the “system” it is trying to maintain, in terms of supporting products that enhance Canadians’ understanding of their history, their nature and themselves, has worked. But while it has certainly functioned reasonably well as an economic stabilizer ensuring employment for actors, writers and others, there’s evidence to suggest the cultural foundations of what the current U.S. administration describes as a “51st state” have been increasingly Americanized.

An overwhelming majority of us, according to a poll commissioned by the CMPA, support the ambitions of the Online Streaming Act when it comes to maintaining cultural sovereignty. Such polls always do. But they stand in contrast to Canadians’ behaviour when it comes to consumption. Of the 52 per cent of us who still subscribe to cable, fewer than half — 43 per cent — watch domestic channels (where programming is dominated by U.S. content) while 25 per cent watch U.S. networks where there is no Canadian content whatsoever. When it comes to streaming services, we overwhelmingly choose foreign/American content.

We may talk a good game and respond robustly to polls when it comes to showing the Americans who’s boss. And while some of us may be refusing to party in Vegas or drink California wines and Kentucky bourbon, we still lap up American entertainment and sports just as if we were the good old boys and girls watching NCAA hoops in Lynchburg, Tennessee.

As Ken Whyte of Sutherland House recently put it, “Canadian consumption of Canadian content is shrinking by the year. We have Canadian media, Canadian-produced books and films and television shows, but they command pathetically small fractions of the domestic audience.”

Prime Minister Mark Carney has distinguished himself as a leader who believes that the nation must navigate the “world as it is, not as we wish it to be.”

It will require unspeakable contortions for him to apply that philosophy to the dilemma he is faced with when it comes to the Online Streaming Act in the months ahead. No doubt he will remember his appearance at the CMPA’s Prime Time conference this past winter. It was there that CMPA President and CEO Reynolds Mastin, in thanking Carney, vowed allegiance by stating that “every person in this room and the 180,000 people who work in this industry have your back, just as we know you have ours.”

It would be nice if at the end of this, people are happy and there is a rich and meaningful cultural industry that enhances the nation’s aesthetic. But if the CRTC and its codependents believe that can happen without a significant rebuild of a system it thought would last forever, it’s got another thing coming.

This is not just a glitch in Canada’s matrix of mythologies. It is, as someone once said, a rupture.

The Line is entirely reader and advertiser funded. No federal subsidies, no bailouts. If you value our work, please consider supporting us by subscribing or making a donation. Donations are not subscriptions and do not unlock paywalled content, but they help keep The Line independent

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Welcome! We hope your weekend is going great. If it isn’t, check out the latest episode of The Line Podcast — a very different format this week, but we think you’ll understand why once you watch it.

Normally we’d also tell you to check out our latest On The Line, but last week, we did a livestream instead. It was a huge success. Many thanks to Phil for helping set it up, and Paul Wells, Supriya Dwivedi, Scott Stinson and Rob Shaw for joining us as guests. You can check it out here. On The Line will be back to normal with a regular episode on Tuesday.

We want to start this dispatch by welcoming all the new readers to The Line. Jen Gerson’s scoop last week about Elections Alberta’s failure to follow up on the tip she provided about a possibly dangerous data breach to separatist organizations has brought us a lot of attention, and we’re glad to see so many new people checking us out. These dispatches are usually kept behind the paywall, but we’ll leave it down this week so that our newbies can see what we’re all about.

And, if we can impose, whether you are a new or old part of Team Line, please take a moment today to forward our dispatch onto one or two of your friends and ask that they sign up, too. A free account is fine! Having stories go viral is nice, but unpredictable, so word-of-mouth is a huge growth driver for us, and we appreciate any help you provide.

We mean it! Paid or unpaid, new or long-time fan — send this onto two friends today. Right now! Help us grow The Line.

As for Alberta and Jen, she is still on the story, watching developments closely. We have more to say about it soon. But for now, all we really need to say is that we have been highly amused to watch Albertans act like there’s some kind of Olympic event for tossing people under the bus. The separatists are fighting online. Elections Alberta and the government are attempting to shuffle the blame off onto each other. Elections Alberta says that recent legislative changes set a bar for beginning an investigation that was simply too high. The government, for its part, insists that that is nonsense and is clearly unhappy at Elections Alberta’s performance.

We aren’t lawyers. Our reading of the law aligns more with the government’s view — this looks to us like a bar that is not impossible to clear. But we also have very little confidence that this provincial government has made legislative changes in good faith. But in any event, there has obviously been a breakdown in communication and understanding about something pretty fundamental in Alberta. That’s a problem.

Expect to see more on this as the story develops.

Pivoting from one province to another, The Line would like to note with interest developments in Ontario, our most populous province but normally, if we’re honest, one of the least interesting ones.

Our readers will likely recall the trouble Premier Doug Ford got himself into recently with the purchase of a private jet. Line editor Gurney already wrote a whole column about it, so you can go see what he had to say on the details. What interests us today is the bigger picture. A series of polls done in recent weeks have shown declines for the premier and his Progressive Conservative party. We’re not sure how much of this can be laid entirely at the feet of the jet fiasco; it’s also possible one of the reasons the Tories dropped the jet like a grenade sans pin was because they saw early signs of a major softening in their poll numbers. The Liberals, who do not even have a leader, are pulling even with the government.

We’re not going to overreact to this. Indeed, there’s something almost funny about this happening in May. Those who have been watching Ford since he was elected almost a decade ago are by now familiar with this pattern. Doug begins to struggle, his numbers tank, he disappears off the radar scope for a summer up at the cottage, and comes back in the fall with his political mojo restored. We don’t really know how to explain it, and we certainly don’t like it, but we’ve seen it often enough to have a suspicion we’re all about to see it again.

But there is an interesting signal this time that we did note. A recent report in the Toronto Star featured insiders telling reporter Robert Benzie that the jet fiasco, plus recent controversial changes to the province’s access-to-information laws, were both driven entirely by the premier. Doug wanted a plane, and Doug wanted fewer pesky questions about who he’s communicating with. So he rammed both those measures through.

To which our response was, well, yeah. We’d figured that out all by ourselves. But what struck us as interesting wasn’t the content of the leaks, but the existence of the leaks.

Under Ford, the Ontario PCs have generally been a pretty tight ship. These kinds of leaks aren’t unheard of, but they’re not common. And we’re starting to wonder if some of the people around Ford are starting to get a bit nervous about his remaining political longevity. If so, we could be looking at the very early phase of a quiet effort to begin arranging a post–Doug Ford era for the Ontario Progressive Conservatives.

Like we said, it’s too soon to say. But we’ll be watching this. Our readers in Ontario should, too.

Now let’s leap all the way across an ocean, where NATO is trying to figure out what the hell Donald Trump meant this week when he announced that 5,000 U.S. troops would be withdrawn from their bases in Germany.

It doesn’t sound like a particularly complicated statement on the face of it. But the details matter a lot. Will these troops return to the United States? Will they be redeployed to a more cooperative European country, perhaps Poland? If so, that could actually be a net boost for continental security — eastern Europe could use the help. Until we know the plan, it’ll be impossible to say.

The clear intention of the announcement is punitive. The president has been musing about further troop reductions, not only in Germany but in Italy and Spain. All of this is in response to criticism of the U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran, and what Trump views as a lack of sufficiently enthusiastic NATO/European support. Indeed, the note about the troop drawdown was paired with an announcement by the U.S. that it would suspend plans to deploy a battalion of troops armed with long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles to the continent — missiles that had been pledged by former president Joe Biden to bolster European security while the continent rearms itself.

A quick couple of points from us. First, we don’t necessarily view this as a bad thing. It’s sad. And it’s worrying. We liked it more when everyone was getting along. It’s nice to be nice, right? But all the signs have been pointing here for a while. The Europeans are belatedly beginning the process of a long-overdue remilitarization. This includes building out not only their armed forces but also the domestic industries that could sustain them in a time of war — indeed, given the Tomahawk deployment cancellation, it’s worth noting that the Europeans are looking at a domestic Tomahawk alternative already.

Trump’s announcement could give our European friends another good kick in the rear in the right direction, and that would be a good thing. But we cannot help but shake our heads at the absurdity of the damage the U.S. is doing to its own long-term security interests. The large American military presence in Europe is, of course, part of an American commitment to European security. But those bases and facilities are also vital components of America’s network of global power projection. The notion that the U.S. has kept up a military presence in Germany entirely as an act of charity is simply absurd. Those German bases are critical nodes of U.S. military power, and the Germans have indeed allowed the U.S. to use those facilities during the current conflict in the Persian Gulf.

These announcements by Trump broadly fit a pattern we have written about here more than once. It seems like America is currently being run by a group of people who view the entire post–Second World War global order as some kind of rip-off foisted upon gullible American leaders going back as far as Harry Truman. In reality, the Americans themselves have benefited enormously from the world order they so deliberately built, and now seem hell-bent on rapidly disassembling.

Oh well. This is a choice the Americans have a right to make for themselves. But we have a hunch that once this latest current of isolationism and bitterness works its way through the American body politic, a next generation of leaders may find themselves shocked to see how much American influence in the world has been diminished. And that diminishment can look like something as simple as redeploying 5,000 troops out of a country that will accordingly have less invested in keeping Washington happy, and all the more reason to rediscover how to stand on their own.

Finally, a note further to the above. Prime Minister Mark Carney has landed in Yerevan, Armenia, for a meeting with European leadership. Canada becomes the first non-European country to join the European Political Community proceedings. We don’t really have much to say about that, except that we hope the meetings are productive and that real results are achieved for the Canadian people and economy.

We mention it here because it makes an interesting addendum to what we just wrote above, and one with particular meaning for Canadian policymakers and commentators. Just a few days ago, in one of his typical fits of online pique, President Trump threatened the Europeans with another round of tariffs. In the process, the president blew up the trade deal that the European Union had reached with the United States — a deal that was supposed to avoid exactly this kind of spontaneous tariff levelling.

We leave it to the Americans and the Europeans to sort out their own problems. But this is yet another reminder of a point we’ve been making often lately: as long as Donald Trump is president, there really isn’t much point worrying too much about reaching a deal with the United States. No deal with the country, even one hammered out in good faith by experienced and seasoned negotiators on both sides, will have any meaning or value so long as it can all be undone by a presidential tweet.

We have a hunch Carney and his advisors have concluded this for themselves. And we find it kind of baffling when we see Canadians, including some in the official opposition, acting as though the difficulty here is Canadian intransigence or the Liberals being blinded by self-interest. There’s no shortage of those problems in our history and our Liberals do indeed have a nasty habit of conflating national interest and their own immediate short-term political self-interest.

But to focus on that while ignoring the day-to-day reality of life under Donald Trump, to us, goes beyond bizarre all the way into the delusional.

The time will come when we can cut a deal with the Americans again, and we hope it will be a mutually beneficial one. But good Lord, that time ain’t yet.

Thanks, everyone, for reading — and remember. Your homework is sending this onto two or three friends and getting them to sign up for even a free account. Help us grow The Line so we can do more work like this and what we did last week. Thank you!

The Line is entirely reader and advertiser funded. No federal subsidies, no bailouts. If you value our work, please consider supporting us by subscribing or making a donation. Donations are not subscriptions and do not unlock paywalled content, but they help keep The Line independent

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In the latest episode of The Line Podcast, recorded on May 1st, 2026, your hosts flip the usual format. This time, Matt Gurney takes the interviewer’s chair and speaks with Jen Gerson about how she unexpectedly found herself at the centre of a breaking news story — as a whistleblower.

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Rather than running through the week’s headlines, Matt asks Jen to walk listeners through how her latest column came together. You can read it at ReadTheLine.ca. Back in March, Jen was presented with information suggesting a major data breach involving sensitive government records tied to millions of Albertans. The potential consequences were severe. Individuals whose identities and locations must be kept private to protect their lives were included. Jen explains what the data was, how it was reportedly released, how it reached her, and what happened when she brought it to the authorities as an urgent matter of public safety.

The response, she says, was deeply troubling. Officials did not do much of anything — and then, more alarmingly, they misled the public about what had occurred. It’s a stark and unsettling story about a serious issue, and for The Line it represents an unusual moment: being part of the story, not just covering it.

This episode of The Line Podcast is also brought to you by Dominion Dynamics. Canada has never had true sovereign awareness of our North. Vast parts of our country are a blind spot. And when you can’t see your own territory, you can’t defend it, secure it, or respond when threats emerge. Dominion Dynamics is changing that. Dominion Dynamics is building a sovereign command and control capability that lets Canada and its allies see, respond, and defend across every domain. Dominion is starting in the Arctic, where extreme conditions demand technology no one else can deliver.

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So settle in, if you can, as Matt and Jen unpack this strange and disturbing situation out of Alberta — and how Jen ended up right in the middle of it.

All that, and not much more, in this episode of The Line Podcast.

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Please sign up at those options not just for this episode, or future episodes of The Line Podcast, but so that you can also receive our other podcast series, On the Line, which releases new episodes every Tuesday morning. Except for last Tuesday! Last Tuesday, we wrapped up our latest annual fundraiser with a YouTube livestream. Many thanks to Friend of The Line Phil for his tech help and moderation, and also to our guests: Paul Well, Scott Stinson, Supriya Dwivedi and Rob Shaw. We hope you enjoyed it! We had a great time doing it.

Back to normal next Tuesday, though — another On The Line is coming your way.

Thanks, all. Talk to you soon.

The Line is entirely reader and advertiser funded. No federal subsidies, no bailouts. If you value our work, please consider supporting us by subscribing or making a donation. Donations are not subscriptions and do not unlock paywalled content, but they help keep The Line independent

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By: Jen Gerson

Elections Alberta had reasonable grounds to know that separatists had access to the province’s voter file at least a month ago, and as far as I can tell, they did sweet fuck all about it.

Let me explain.

On Thursday, Elections Alberta obtained a court injunction to force a separatist group to take down an online database that was populated from the electoral list that is generally only available to select political staff who need access to that data to do legal voter contact and outreach. Access is limited because the voter file contains reams of personal information, including full names, addresses, electoral and local polling districts, phone numbers and emails. Typically, provincial parties will each get a copy of the voter file, and there are strict controls over who can see what, and how personal information can be used.

For very real reasons. The voter file can be used to harass public figures, or track down victims of stalking and domestic violence, which is why the database isn’t supposed to be bandied about carelessly. Holders of the file need to know who can read the data and be able to conduct internal audits of the information they are pulling from it.

At no point should the voter file be freely available to the likes of David Parker, a local political activist in Alberta, well known for his organizational efforts to elect Premier Danielle Smith, and currently running what he calls the Centurion Project.

The Centurion Project is a registered third-party advertiser that seeks “To recruit, equip and mobilize a team of community leaders across the province of Alberta to take on the task of winning Alberta’s sovereignty.”

As court filings now show, the project stands accused of creating a database based on a copy of the voter file allegedly given to Parker by The Republican Party, a fringe and failed effort to elect another well-known political figure, Cam Davies, in Olds-Didsbury during a byelection last year.

Parker’s stated goals were to amass more than 100 volunteers through his project (though he claimed to me personally that he had more than surpassed that goal and hoped to reach 1,000 by mid-April.)

Once the rando volunteers signed on, however, they were given nearly unfettered access to a database that included Alberta’s voters, including their home address, polling, and electoral districts.

The RCMP is now investigating. Separatist meetings have been met with police. Elections Alberta is investigating, and the aforementioned court injunction shut down the Centurion database on Thursday.

Later that same day, Elections Alberta issued its timeline of events:

On April 27, 2026, credible information was obtained suggesting the Centurion Project may be in possession of the List of Electors provided to a registered political party that was a legitimate recipient of the list. Inquiries into the validity of this information began immediately.

On April 28, 2026, the Chief Electoral Officer wrote to individuals associated with the Centurion Project to advise them that if they were accessing a List of Electors, they must immediately cease and desist.

On April 29, 2026, representatives from Elections Alberta, supported by members of the Edmonton Police Service, attended a meeting of the Centurion Project Ltd. being held in Edmonton, to ensure the cease-and-desist letter was received.

Event organizers were once again advised, and a copy of this directive was personally served to a representative of the Centurion Project, to immediately cease and desist accessing any information contained in the List of Electors.

That all sounds like a fast, impressive response. But. Here’s the thing. That summary is, uh, missing a few damn dates.

Like, say, March 31.

That’s when someone reported to Elections Alberta that the Centurion Project appeared to be getting promiscuous with the voter file.

On that date, an email was sent to Elections Alberta titled: “Need to report possible violation - Urgent.” In that email, someone told Elections Alberta this:

David Parker’s new Centurion Initiative appears to be soliciting volunteers. Once accepted - and there appear to be no permissions set up for that acceptance - volunteers are then given access to what appears to be the entire Alberta Voter File.

How do I know this?

I know this because that person was me. I wrote that email.

This all began in late March, after I received a tip from an anonymous source. Using a burner email account and offering no name, nor any traceable personal information, this person signed up for the Centurion Project, immediately saw what was available, and wanted to report the situation as a massive privacy breach. They didn’t want to do it directly, however, so they came to me.

I was able to verify that what the source had sent me was true. My source had access to recent personal information from what appeared to be millions of people — me included. Further, the way the data was structured, which included polling and electoral districts, made it likely to have originated from a voter file I knew the Centurion Project wasn’t supposed to have. (Parker has denied this, and says the database was compiled from a third party.)

This situation, however, put me in a bit of a journalistic pickle. If I just went out and reported on it, I knew anybody would be able to sign up and access the same data — which could potentially put people in danger of exposure.

So, I did what I thought was the right thing. With my source’s consent, I contacted Elections Alberta directly and told them what I was seeing.

On April 1, I got a call from an Elections Alberta investigator and told him what I knew save the identity of my source. The investigator seemed to take my report seriously.

On April 10, I received a Notice of Outcome, which I have attached below.

As you can read for yourself, the Alberta Election Commissioner, Paula Hale, said that while the evidence I provided was “compelling,” she couldn’t conduct further investigation because there was no proof that the information Parker compiled wasn’t gathered through legal means.

Gloss over, for a moment, the privacy implications. Instead, stop and just examine the logic of this dismissal. Even though the evidence was compelling, no further investigation into whether or not the data was legally obtained could be done. For … reasons.

Now I don’t claim to be no criminal genius, but that don’t make no damn sense.

If you have compelling evidence of a crime, you don’t not investigate said crime because it’s possible a crime wasn’t committed. You, you know, look into it?

Further, as reporting has subsequently revealed, the voter file distributed to various political parties is seeded — that is, the file has false information placed within it so that in the event of an unauthorized breach, an investigator can trace the origin of the file back to the party of origin.

I can only presume that this is how Elections Alberta came to believe that Parker’s copy of the file originated with the Republicans. That should have made investigating this complaint trivially easy — all anybody had to do was to sign up for the Centurion Project and run a few basic database searches.

Anyway, after receiving this letter, I found myself in a double journalistic pickle. I was hoping that Elections Alberta would look into it, see the blindingly obvious, and then issue an injunction allowing me to report on it. That’s not what happened. Not only was the database still freely available to anybody who signed up; but now I was the complainant, which is not a position any journalist wants to find herself in. I didn’t want to make the story about me.

So, I, uh, passed the ball along to other people whom I knew could pick it up.

And today, here we are.

I’m glad that the injunction was granted. With the list taken down, I feel comfortable reporting on the topic. But boy-o, does Elections Alberta have some explaining to do. I probably wouldn’t have written about my involvement in any of this at all except that the, shall we say, truncated timeline of events they offered today really pissed me right off.

Because it seems to me that if they had simply taken this complaint seriously enough to investigate properly a month ago, they could have received that very same court injunction before the breach came out in the media. And that’s before we begin to ask how many additional people gained access to all that personal data over the last 30 days.

The Centurion Project is an exponential exercise. Once that data is in the wild, it’s not possible to re-home it. The injunction demanded that both the Centurion Project and the Republic Party identify every single person and entity who had access to that information, along with contact information. And all I can say is — good luck, guys. If my source was able to gain access to the partial file with a burner account, I highly doubt these guys even have that information to turn over.

We simply have to operate under the assumption that basically anyone in the province, no matter how unhinged, may now have nearly universal access to the personal information of everybody who lives here, and that there’s not a damn thing any of us can do about it.

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By: Andrew MacDougall

It’s official. The Great Pierre Poilievre Tone Experiment of early 2026 is over.

After donning the mantle of the reasonable, Poilievre is back to his natural pugilistic self. And so is his team, with House Leader Andrew Scheer now accusing the (checks notes) National Post of being in the tank for the Liberals for the crime of (checks notes again) reporting the news. The Great Reset that saw the Conservative leader break bread with the Peter Mansbridges and Steven Bartletts of the world has now been rowed back to the waters Poilievre mined with great effectiveness as Justin Trudeau was sailing Canada into trouble.

Only Justin Trudeau is no longer the prime minister of Canada; he is shagging Katy Perry on a yacht after their visit to Coachella. Mark Carney is the prime minister of Canada. And Mark Carney is no Justin Trudeau (even if he might have views on Trudeau’s teenage dream).

And while politics is not governed by a series of immutable laws, it is bound by the realities of the day. Only the most gifted politicians can make the weather; most have to lean into whatever the world is giving them at the moment. Right now, Poilievre is soiling himself by whizzing into the hurricane that is Donald Trump, while Carney is putting that same wind into his sails.

Which brings us to the hard political reality of our day: As long as Donald J. Trump is maxing out the crazy, Mark Carney will play the role of God on high. Because Carney is the antithesis of Trump. This might not be fair, but it’s a fact, and the sooner that fact is swallowed by Conservatives, the better.

Right now, it does not matter that the Carney economic world view has produced outcomes that are great for university-educated urban professionals and less great for those who aren’t. It does not matter that the cheap money policy Carney pioneered as Bank of Canada governor helped to inflate assets while flooring savings. It does not matter that Carney has swallowed his previous self whole. As long as Trump is Trump, Carney being Carney pays off. And the polls bear that out.

And so, this is not the time to imply that Carney is under or badly educated. This is not the time to declare the media in the tank for Carney. This is not the time to claim Carney is enriching himself and his former colleagues at Brookfield via the actions of the Canadian state. These are the criticisms meant to flatter your base, not the ones that will find you new recruits.

Because Carney is not only smart, most Canadians perceive him as smart. You might as well point at the sky and declare it not blue. The media (present company excluded) might be on the collective teat and, at some level, craving the approval of the Carney class, but attacking them won’t pay off beyond the already converted. And when people hear Carney attacked over his Brookfield holdings, they don’t think less of Carney, they think of Trump and his coterie who are most definitely enriching themselves while in office.

Which isn’t to say there aren’t grains of truth in each of the Conservative criticisms. We rarely bite the hand that feeds and I, too, gagged at the recent Bloomberg tongue bath about Carney and his C-suite charm offensive. I also agree that Carney’s worldview is too often blind to those who aren’t Homo Economicus (which is to say, most of us irrational beings). And I think Carney has gotten too free a ride on his personal financial affairs.

But Canadians don’t want to hear it. Any of it. At least, not right now.

What’s more, Canadians won’t be in listening mode for quite some time now that Carney has secured his majority. Again, the Conservatives might not like how Carney got there, but he did, and (again) the sooner that fact is swallowed, the better.

Even the (justified) complaint that Carney and Steve MacKinnon, the Liberal house leader, are playing silly buggers by rejigging the parliamentary committees in the manner they are is going to be ignored. Because you know who’s anti-democratic in the minds of Canadians? Donald Trump. And Carney is not Trump. Don’t shoot the messenger.

So, how do you chip away at Carney’s stone if every criticism is going to fall on deaf ears? Well, you start by not digging the hole any deeper. You start by accepting that Donald Trump is the lens through which most Canadians are viewing their politics.

And this manifests itself in ways both big and small. It means you don’t do things like go to the ultimate fighting shortly after Donald Trump has gone to the ultimate fighting. Mark Carney would never go to ultimate fighting. Not going to the ultimate fighting doesn’t make Carney anti-ordinary people, it makes him not Trump. If Trump were to say he loves water, you need to stop drinking water.

The reality is Majority Carney will either succeed or he will fail, and nothing the Conservatives have to say about it along the way will matter more than Carney’s actual end product. If Canada is no better off in a couple of years, Poilievre will be the natural beneficiary.

Chipping away means you dial down the campaign-style rhetoric and stick to the day-in, day-out task of holding the government to account. It is time to build a body of work that you can present to Canadians at election time at some point in the distant future, not add to a daily collection of attacks and memes that feel Trumpy. The current information economy incentivizes angry daily shouting but that doesn’t mean it’s what a majority of Canadians want. What’s more, if you do it often enough, for long enough, and that’s all Canadians will remember, as Poilievre found out when the exam question was changed from Trudeau to Carney in the last election.

Which brings us to our concluding reality: Poilievre is running out of time to change his perception in the public’s mind. If he doubles down on his 2022-2025 vintage, he shouldn’t be surprised to find himself still on the shelf after the next election.

Andrew MacDougall is a director at Trafalgar Strategy and former head of communications to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The Line is entirely reader and advertiser funded. No federal subsidies, no bailouts. If you value our work, please consider supporting us by subscribing or making a donation. Donations are not subscriptions and do not unlock paywalled content, but they help keep The Line independent

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Last night we capped off our week-long fundraiser with a hugely successful livestream event on YouTube. Yes, yes. It’s over. Until next year. Because we’ll definitely do this again. Because it worked. Your support completely exceeded our expectations. We are so, so humbled. Thank you all so much.

We wanted to start today by also offering a few quick thank yous to everyone who took part in our event, starting with our guests: Paul Wells, Scott Stinson, Supriya Dwivedi and Rob Shaw. All very smart people, all great friends. We appreciate them so much.

Also: special thanks to Friend of The Line Phil, who got everything for the livestream fired up behind the scenes and helped us with moderating the questions. It helped a lot — thank you, Phil.

As per tradition, during these livestreams, your hosts pick a local restaurant and order dinner from there. These aren’t sponsorships. Just a way we can show some love to a local place we like. Last night, Jen dined on takeout from Jane Bond BBQ of Calgary, while Matt had the traditional fare from Olde Yorke Fish and Chips in Leaside. Thanks to the staff there for feeding us!

But mainly, our thanks to you, the audience. Thank you for joining us, for spending an evening with us, for your questions and your ongoing support of The Line.

And thank you especially for the support during our fundraiser. As we’ve told you all over and over, this was a key part of our strategy for staying off any and all government support. In a market where our competitors are increasingly wards of the state, The Line has made both a philosophical and also a business choice to refuse any support from government that goes beyond what’s available to any small business via tax credits (etc) or via normal commercial contracts. This makes our lives harder and poorer. There’s no other way to put it. But we believe that, in the long term, that’s the only way to keep our independence and our credibility. Your support makes the consequences of that choice a little bit easier to live with. Thank you all so much.

If you didn’t donate, and meant to, the link will still work for the next two days. We won’t be flogging it anymore, but here it is, one more time, with feeling. Last chance!

And if you missed our livestream, check it out below! It was a ton of fun. We’ll do more of them.

With that, we’re going to rest today, but we’ll be back to normal soon. Talk to you then.

— Matt and Jen

Who’s ready to live stream?! Whooooo!

Matt and Jen are excited to spend some time with you tonight, the first anniversary of Mark Carney’s election win. We’ll be live from 8:00 to about 11:00 p.m. Eastern (6:00 to 9:00 p.m. Mountain). Maybe later if we’re having fun.

Join us! Get some snacks! Grab a drink!

We will spend the time breaking down the major stories of the day, taking questions from our paying subscribers (only questions left BELOW THIS POST will be featured), and chatting with a few guests and friends about issues here at home and around the world.

This is the final event in our week-long fundraiser. If you’d like to make a donation, please go here. We will be shameless about reminding you during the stream.

Many thanks to Friend of The Line Phil for setting this up on the technical side and helping with moderation, and thanks to all of you who make The Line possible and supported our campaign this year.

Talk to you soon!

— Matt and Jen

P.S.: Don’t forget to donate!

By: Matt Gurney

There really isn’t anything wrong with the idea of a Canadian sovereign wealth fund. Other jurisdictions have them. There’s no reason Canada couldn’t or shouldn’t be one of them.

But based on what was announced today, I am worried. And not even because we might be capitalizing this wealth fund with debt, which is not normally the way it’s done. I’m more worried about something very basic and fundamental. What would the wealth fund be for? What problem is it trying to solve? And what does that tell us about how things are going in the country?

A sovereign wealth fund, here or elsewhere, is a way for governments to direct — either themselves or via some sort of independent advisory board — investments that are in the interests of the jurisdiction that controls the fund. Usually, they exist to help countries diversify their economies away from over-dependence on a particular kind of financial asset, like oil royalties. This can serve multiple purposes, from creating a rainy-day fund to cushion oil shocks, to securing a nation’s long-term financial prospects by investing capital into projects or businesses that are sustainable in the long term.

By comparison, Canada isn’t a one-industry petro state. It is planning a major build-out of state capacity. New natural resource projects, infrastructure to sustain the economy, and even military and dual-use defence/civilian infrastructure could all be funded by investments from something like a sovereign wealth fund. That wouldn’t be the conventional use of such a thing. But, okay, maybe. In theory, I have no objection to the idea of creating something that acts more like an investment vehicle than a subsidy machine.

But I come back to that other question. What problem are we trying to solve here? Because a problem Canada really should not have is difficulty accessing capital to finance large projects.

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And now, back to Matt’s column …

Yes, it’s true — we are a relatively small population, rich per capita, but not a giant. But we already have lots of ways of addressing this. We are constantly bragging about our banking sector — which is well known for being both stable and capable of investing.

Then we created the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) specifically to increase the funds available for Canadian businesses looking to capitalize expansion, because (go figure) the private banks weren’t willing to take risks. Then we rolled out the Canadian Infrastructure Bank, which we needed because the BDC ended up being even more risk averse than the banks. Then we have all those regional economic development agencies. Meanwhile, the Canada Pension Plan is just aching to find quality investments with high returns for pensioners.

It is genuinely fascinating to watch our attempts to layer these things on top of each other. And I’m sure my little off-the-cuff recitation there left off a bunch of options. Canada is a country that seems to excel at creating new ways of managing a problem we can’t or won’t fix.

Or, as I joked on Twitter:

This whole thing brought to mind some of the criticisms (including my own) about the Major Projects Office. The MPO, as I’ve written before, is a thing that exists not because it’s a good idea on its own merits, but instead as a way to bypass institutional dysfunction.

Is that what a Canadian sovereign wealth fund will be — just another bypass of a problem all the other attempted bypasses did not, in fact, bypass?

At a certain point, it’s time to acknowledge that the problem isn’t a lack of novel investment vehicles. We aren’t starved of potential capital.

The problem is that no one wants to finance big projects here. The people who actually control vast sums of capital have written us off as a bad investment.

The announcement of the wealth fund was almost buried by another fascinating story. On Monday, the Financial Times published an article that quoted a series of Canadian industry leaders or experts about how regulatory burden is putting a major damper on Canadian economic productivity.

From the FT:

Canada’s leading industry groups say Prime Minister Mark Carney’s effort to cut red tape is floundering, costing the country billions more in trade losses than US President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Forestry, oil and gas, and car industry representatives told the FT they are frustrated at the pace of regulatory reform that is central to Carney’s efforts to insulate Canada from Trump’s devastating US trade war.

Those industry leaders are speaking about exactly the problem a wealth fund — and the BDC, and the infrastructure bank, and the development agencies — are already trying to solve.

Now check this Globe and Mail piece out, and see my added emphasis:

If a given infrastructure project is not being developed, it is likely because the private sector has determined that it is not economically feasible, or too risky due to onerous regulatory restrictions.

Exactly. Until we fix that we are just throwing good sovereign wealth funds after bad investment banks.

It might be worth asking ourselves why we have a major foreign paper publishing an article citing senior Canadian sources all lamenting how hard it is to get anything done in this country, on the very same day the prime minister of Canada announces a $25 billion investment intended to spin up yet another organization tasked with getting things done in this country.

Because our problem isn’t a lack of ways to compensate for the problem. We are amply provided for on that score. Our problems is, if you can believe it, the problem itself. We ought to be directing at least a little bit of our attention into figuring out what the root cause might be and how we can fix it, before we borrow another $25 billion to try to find yet another shortcut around it.

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The Line is Canada’s last, best hope for irreverent commentary. We reject bullshit. We love lively writing. Please consider supporting us by subscribing. Please follow us on social media! Facebook x 2: On The Line Podcast here, and The Line Podcast here. Instagram. Also: TikTok. BlueSky. LinkedIn. Matt’s Twitter. The Line’s Twitter.Jen’s Twitter. Contact us by email: lineeditor@protonmail.com

We’ve got a lot to talk about in the dispatch today, but we’ve also got some housekeeping, so let’s get through this as fast as we can, eh?

First of all, as always, check out the latest episode of The Line Podcast. Jen confesses to her intense rage and Matt suggests that Canada needs to assemble a strategic reserve of bureaucrats who are too rude to work nicely with others (but might actually be good at solving our problems).

And also, check out last week’s episode of On The Line, Matt Gurney spoke with Jamie Carroll of Carroll & Co., for a conversation about the Liberal Party of Canada now that Mark Carney has secured a majority government, and Gregory Jack from Ipsos, for a quick check in on what Canadians want the PM and his new majority to stay focused on.

Also! We will not release an On The Line this week. Instead, on Tuesday evening, we’ll be doing a livestream on YouTube. We haven’t done one in a long time, they’re a lot of fun, and it’ll be another chance to plug our fundraiser! So join us. Details to come on Tuesday.

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And now, on with the dispatch.

Your Line editors have noted with horror, but also resignation, yet another act of political violence in the United States. On Saturday night, in Washington, D.C., the president, the first lady, the vice president, much of the cabinet and most of the capital press corps had gathered for the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, a gala put on by the D.C. media and typically attended by the president. What is normally a night of good-natured joking and roasting was barely underway when an armed man — initial reports suggest he was anti-Trump and was hoping to kill administration officials — tried to get through the security perimeter and shot a law enforcement officer. (The officer was saved by their ballistic vest and is reported to be in good condition.)

The entire event was thrown into chaos, with the president and other VIPs whisked away to safety as cameras rolled, capturing the whole thing. Eventually, the entire affair was cancelled, and the president wrapped the evening with an unusually gracious, if typically rambling, press conference at the White House.

We would love to tell you that we were surprised by this, but we aren’t. And not just because this is the third attempt on President Donald Trump’s life, but because this is one of those worrying signs we keep seeing about the growing threat of political violence in the United States. Many Americans seem obsessed with keeping a tally of which side is responsible. We suppose we’re far enough away to be immune from that temptation. We invite our commenters to join us in that immunity. A listing of victims on both sides won’t lead anywhere, nor change a single mind.

Perhaps the only substantive comment we can offer is how sick we are of seeing the faux sentimentality that often befalls America after these incidents. This is perhaps best manifested by an article in Politico, which notes how the event and the president’s remarks afterward brought a polarized Washington together.

Forgive us, but … America does not have a problem coming together after a catastrophe. They’re actually really good at that, probably because of all the practice they’ve had. America struggles at staying sane after the immediate unifying afterglow of some deranged act of violence has faded, and that only takes a day or two. America is also chronically useless at meaningfully grappling with the root causes of its extremely high baseline violent crime rate relative to other Western countries. This is only becoming more painfully obvious next to its deeply polarized political culture.

There is nothing about these kinds of incidents in America that is surprising. Indeed, as we’ve previously noted, it’s really only surprising that we see as few of them as we do. If you want to impress us, American neighbours, maybe focus more on getting ahead of these things before they happen, not just rallying after they already have.

Next up, Justin Trudeau took time out from partying with influencers last week to make an appearance at a CNBC event in Singapore, where he unburdened himself of his deep thoughts on economic coercion. In particular, he related a story about how, early in his time as prime minister, the Bombardier C-series jet was being pushed out of the market by pressure from both Airbus and Boeing. The effect, Trudeau said, was to drive Canada into the arms of the Chinese, who were more than happy to drive up with “a dump truck full of money” to buy Bombardier. As he tells the story, it was only after he intervened with Macron, Merkel, and Trump at a G7 summit in Sicily that Airbus bought the C-series.

This is not the first time Trudeau has put himself out there as a sort of freelance opinionator on global issues since his departure from politics early last year. In January, he brought his girlfriend Katy Perry to the annual gathering of the globalist elite in Davos, where he delivered a speech on the virtues of soft power. This followed his quasi-official luncheon (also with Perry) with the former prime minister of Japan and his wife back in December.

So let’s put this directly: Justin, what are you doing?

As we’ve said repeatedly here at The Line, we would have been more than happy to never mention Justin Trudeau again once he was done with politics and (we had hoped) no longer in any position to do deliberate and explicit damage to the country. But he’s out there talking, so here we are.

Let’s briefly review the situation. By the time Trudeau left office, Canada’s relationship with the United States was in a ditch, in part because of his smarmy habit of negging Donald Trump. Our relationship with India had collapsed entirely over the Hardeep Singh Nijjar affair. Relations with China had been in a deep freeze since the Meng Wanzhou detention. Mexico was annoyed at our shifty and underhanded approach to trade negotiations. Trudeau had decided a G7 summit was the place to lecture Italian leader Giorgia Meloni over her government’s stance on LGBTQ+ rights, something that made him (and Canada) a laughingstock in the Italian press. Canada’s NATO allies had spent years watching us underfund our own defence commitments while lecturing others about the importance of the rules-based international order. A quarter century of national consensus on immigration was destroyed overnight by his government’s decision to admit pretty much anyone. The fiscal situation he left behind was, depending on your preferred metric, somewhere between dire and catastrophic.

Do we need to go on? Because we could, for pages.

On top of all that, there is the Bombardier story itself. Because the other thing that happened during Trudeau’s tenure was that the C-Series program that he was in Asia boasting about saving was eventually absorbed entirely into Airbus and rebranded as the A220. Bombardier actually exited the commercial aviation business. So, the “save” was real, in the narrow sense that Quebec jobs were preserved and a Canadian-designed aircraft is still in the air. But the C-Series is an Airbus product now. Make of that what you will.

Mark Carney is currently trying to do something quite difficult: repair and rebuild all of these relationships simultaneously; manage an existential tariff fight with Washington; stand up a more serious approach to defence; all while trying to restore some small degree of fiscal credibility. He is doing this from an extremely weak position thanks to his predecessor. Trudeau’s Singapore speech, with its self-congratulatory framing and breezy advice about economic coercion, does not make this easier. Every time Trudeau pops up to offer Canada’s supposed wisdom to the world, foreign governments (and Canadians, for that matter) are reminded of the decade under which so much of that credibility was squandered.

There’s a well-established tradition in Canadian politics, and in most Westminster democracies, of former leaders stepping back from the public stage. Not disappearing, necessarily, but keeping a low profile, writing memoirs, joining corporate boards, chairing the occasional foundation. The convention exists for good reasons. A sitting prime minister cannot do their job if their predecessor is out there running a parallel foreign policy track from conference stages in Davos or Singapore.

We have no particular objection to Justin Trudeau enjoying his post-political life. If he wants to date Katy Perry, that’s his business. If he wants to turn up at Coachella and be photographed in a crowd full of influencers, we genuinely could not care less. But there is a meaningful difference between living your life publicly and conducting freelance statecraft. The first is harmless. The second, when you are as compromised a figure as Justin Trudeau, is something closer to an ongoing liability. Canada is trying to rebuild. The least Trudeau could do is get out of the way.

As we all find ourselves staring down the barrel of the July 1 deadline for a CUSMA review, the U.S.-Canada trade file begins to ramp up rhetorically. Why in this specific moment? Well, we can only begin to guess; but it sure seems like simmering tensions began to eke into public view.

At a Senate Appropriates Committee this week, New Hampshire senator Jeanne Shaheen — who has been in office during a dramatic drop in cross border tourism to her state since began The Troubles — took sharp aim at Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

One of U.S. President Donald Trump’s more, uh, pointed creatures, Lutnick recently summed up Canada’s trade approach by saying we “suck.”
Shaheen was having none of it:

“How does insulting our closest ally and neighbour help the businesses in my state of New Hampshire and states all across this country that are hurting because of the loss of Canadian business and tourism?” she asked.

Lutnick put the blame for the loss of dollars squarely back on us:

“It is outrageous that Canada will not put U.S. spirits on the shelf. It is insulting and disrespectful to America that they won’t even put—” Lutnick began before he was cut off by the Senator who noted, rightly, that Canadians’ decisions to pull American liquor from the shelves was a retaliatory measure, and a direct response to the U.S. president’s near-metronymic habit of both insults and outright threats.

While Sen. Shaheen was, rightly, defending the interests of her American constituents, at least some of us in Canada would like to offer her just a bit of thanks for at least recognizing that fact.

The whole exchange really got us mulling on why dealing with the current U.S. administration feels so tiring and difficult.

The problem is not merely that Trump et al are insulting toward Canada. Who cares if they insult us? Trump insults everybody. It would speak poorly of us if they weren’t insulting us.

We’re a hockey nation. We can take a hit. And some of Trump’s complaints are fair, even if the way he expresses them are non-normative and offside. That’s not the problem.

The problem is that the Trump team is not fighting clean. In an ordinary fight, one side takes a shot, another retaliates; both sides escalate to the point where either one team “wins” — or everybody decides the fight is dumb. Either way, in a healthy dynamic, there is an airing of grievances followed by resolution and repair.

And there are always going to be disagreements, especially between individuals (or nations) that are so closely interconnected. People fight! That’s fine.

But with Team Trump, that’s not how any of this works. The entire admin has taken on Trump’s narcissistic tendencies, and those personality traits are very obvious in how they approach the nation-to-nation relationship.

They take a shot. We retaliate ... and then they act like the victim of our retaliation, as if they have no self-awareness, agency or role in the dynamic they are facilitating. The most powerful nation on earth, and they’re constantly speaking in passive voice, as if they are put upon by the consequences of their own actions. It’s classic DARVO stuff. And it’s maddening.

If you’ve ever been in one of these kinds of relationships, you know how it plays out. This approach prevents meaningful resolution and repair, because we simply cannot trust that the other party is capable of seeing our perspective and coming to a workable compromise in good faith. So the fight festers into a state of mutual contempt; on the Trump side: “how dare the inferior nation offend us? Who do these parasitic supplicants think they are?” which implicitly demands a level of submission Canadians won’t accept. By comparison, on the Canadian side the sentiment is: “What thin-skinned crybabies. If you want to throw a punch, throw a punch. But own it.”

There’s nowhere to go with that dynamic. The conflict calcifies into something far more serious than the underlying disagreements that provoked the fight in the first place.

And now, two months away from a deadline, that’s where we find ourselves. No one really knows whether negotiations have totally stalled, or if conversations are ongoing. There’s news the Americans have demanded concessions to even come to the table, even though the Canadians have noted that concessions have already been granted (notably, the dropping of the Digital Sales Tax.) We’ve got Carney issuing warnings about the “weakness” of our overreliance on America; and noting that Team Canada will be taking no notes from the Americans on how to proceed, here.

Meanwhile, it does look like the U.S. and Mexico are busy hammering out a deal.

We at The Line offer only a few notes of caution. Firstly, we fully expect ample propaganda from both sides as this issue re-enters into the American attention span. We don’t need to be Elbows Up to keep Eyes Open about what we’re being fed, and from whom.

Secondly, we don’t actually expect either side to negotiate in public. And we remain skeptical of any attempts to score political potshots under the guidance that Canada should be laying out its full strategy — presuming we have one — for the betterment of domestic scrutiny or consumption.

It’s simply impossible to know which country has adopted the most effective approach to dealing with Donald Trump on trade at present. Maybe the Mexicans have it right. Maybe the Japanese nailed it. Or, maybe, not playing a rigged game is the only way to win. We probably won’t be able to assess that correctly for years, yet.

And lastly, for the Conservatives specifically, we know domestic politics never sleeps, but this weird attempt to claim that the last election was won by the Liberals because they promised to secure a good deal with the U.S. is totally bizarre. Carney won the last election by openly articulating a generational rupture in the U.S.-Canada relationship, and by successfully presenting himself as the best person to navigate that shift. Carney didn’t seek that rupture, as Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre claimed — Donald Trump did.

Whatever critiques can be fairly levelled at Mark Carney, Canada is responding to the world Donald Trump is trying to remake. Not the other way around. We had a “free trade” deal before Donald Trump took office. How’d that work out? Further, claiming that there is some kind of “free trade” deal on offer that Carney is mucking up is delusional. To say nothing of the fact that this line of attack certainly ain’t widening the Conservative tent.

Anyway, the final point is simply this: we reserve our right to criticize the prime minister and how he responds when we have a better sense of what his plan is, and how well he executes it. Until then, we’re not going to be the Useful Idiots assuming that it’s really the Americans who have Canada’s best interests at heart.

A quick final note. The Line has a reputation, and we don’t deny it’s earned, for being a glum place. As we discussed in the latest podcast, we do this deliberately. We think that Canada needs more of this!

But. There are still good news stories. And we want to highlight two of them. They’re related and, sadly, of late very close to our hearts.

First: Alberta is lowering the age for breast cancer screenings. Starting in a year, the age for self-referral will be set at 40, down from 45. In the meantime, the path to a mammogram would be simplified. This is in response to an alarming trend being seen across the world of younger and younger women being diagnosed. Since early detection makes a huge difference, this is an extremely welcome step. We’d like to see it rolled out even faster, but are glad to see it happen at all.

Second, and related: Toronto City Council has just named November 19th as Early Age Onset Cancer Awareness Day. This was brought about by the advocacy of the Colorectal Cancer Resource & Action Network; colon cancer is another cancer that is showing up alarmingly earlier in the population, and is much easier to treat if caught early.

Our comments are simple. First, good. We welcome these steps. We hope to see more of it. And second, to our beloved audience, get yourselves checked. You owe it to your families to never be ambushed by these awful diseases, or any other. Early detection matters. It can save lives. Do yourself and your loved ones a favour and get checked for everything you can. And if you encounter any resistance, go somewhere that’ll take cash and pay for it yourself. Trust us. It beats the alternative.

Thanks, everyone. And remember: we’re trying to close out the fifth day of our fundraiser on a winning note. If you liked what you just read, click the little blue button and donate what you can.

The Line is Canada’s last, best hope for irreverent commentary. We reject bullshit. We love lively writing. Please consider supporting us by subscribing. Please follow us on social media! Facebook x 2: On The Line Podcast here, and The Line Podcast here. Instagram. Also: TikTok. BlueSky. LinkedIn. Matt’s Twitter. The Line’s Twitter.Jen’s Twitter. Contact us by email: lineeditor@protonmail.com

Recently, Line editor Matt Gurney wrote a column about accountability in Canada. In short, he wrote that it was basically dead. The only thing that seems to work, he wrote, is fear of U.S. President Donald Trump. When he gets angry about something, we’ll take action.

Gurney also issued a challenge to the readers. He asked for you to write in with examples of when there were actual consequences for failure in the public sector. The examples were few and far between, but we did get some. In the spirit of raising your hopes, The Line would like to offer this up as an exhibit of real accountability in Canada.

It’s endangered, yes, but not quite extinct yet.

Hello! Sorry to interrupt. We’ll get you back to it in a minute.
But. We are running our annual fundraiser, and we could really use
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Our goal today? Another $10,000 in donations.

It’s a tall order. We’ll need your help.

The Line is working on a big change — something much different than
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and grow. So help us with that. Click the little blue button below and
chip in whatever you can so that we can hold the line … and grow.

And now, back to the accountability …

A few notes: we received a series of submissions about public officials who were fired after committing crimes or being convicted of crimes. We chose not to include those, as we felt that fell a bit outside the scope of a collection of stories about political accountability. That’s different from criminal liability. (There is one interesting exception, though, below.)

We also received some suggestions where voters gave a politician the boot after a failure (Jodi Gondek’s defeat in Calgary’s last mayoral election received several entries.) We chose not to include those, either — that’s a form of accountability, yes, but it seemed a bit too far off the mark of what we were looking for.

So here’s what’s left. Enjoy, if that’s the word.

PEOPLE WHO GOT FIRED:

In 2016, Health Canada suspended Dr. Norman Viner, the head of its clinical trials unit. The issue was that Viner was allegedly double-dipping and continuing to work at a hospital and a long-term care home while he was supposed to be on the Health Canada clock. Health Canada proceeded to fire Viner a year later, thus beginning a long legal journey. The case was complicated; Viner denied any wrongdoing, said his supervisors knew he was still practicing medicine, and called the entire thing a witch hunt. In the end, he appealed his firing to the federal labour relations board, which ultimately sided with Health Canada and upheld the firing.

Read about it in the Ottawa Citizen.

In a much more recent example, the Manitoba government just reportedly fired Bobbi Taillefer, a former teacher’s union leader, who had been appointed by the provincial government to be the province’s first commissioner of teacher conduct. What the province apparently did not know was that Taillefer had moved out of Manitoba. Like, by a lot. All the way to Florida. We can understand the appeal, but Premier Wab Kinew recently announced that the government had let Taillefer go.

Read about it via Global News.

This is an odd one, but back in 2020, Calgary fired three officials, including the general manager, from the city’s parking department. All that was ever reported officially was that they’d been let go. CBC News reported that there had been an internal whistleblower complaint about a “serious” matter. That’s all we ever found out.

Read about it, as much as there is to read, at the CBC.

Staying in Alberta, back in 2023, the provincial government fired the mayor and half the city councillors of Chestermere. The details are complicated, but in short, there had been complaints to the province’s municipal affairs ministry about a dysfunctional municipal government. A provincial inspection found problems and issued directives to address them. And the local officials, reportedly, simply kind of ignored them. And were fired. Byelections were held and all the fired officials were replaced.

Read the whole, strange story in the Calgary Herald.

This probably could be a whole sub-genre, but consider this a representative example. In 2021, the board of the London Health Sciences Centre, a large hospital in London, Ontario, fired its CEO, after it was revealed that he had repeatedly travelled to the United States on personal business during the pandemic-related travel restrictions. The trips weren’t illegal, and the executive, Paul Woods, said that he quarantined after every visit. The trips to the U.S., where his family lived, took place when the hospitals in London were being hit by outbreaks. The staff and public were outraged, and Woods was fired.

You can read about this one in the CBC.

Interesting note: This might undermine the entire notion of accountability, but not for nothing, it wasn’t long before Woods was running another major Ontario hospital, where he remains today.

This is honestly just kind of a weird one: a few months ago, the Canadian Coast Guard fired a captain who failed to answer a distress call. (Answering distress calls is a big part of why we have a Coast Guard.) Lou Callaghan, the captain, agreed that his vessel had received the distress call from a fishing boat in distress, but insisted that he was simply waiting to be ordered by his superiors to initiate the rescue. The Coast Guard, for its part, said that Callaghan had a duty to respond to the call for help immediately, not to wait for orders to do so. This one also went to the labour relations board, which sided with the Coast Guard.

Read about it in the CBC.

PEOPLE WHO RESIGNED:

When the “Freedom Convoy” rolled into downtown Ottawa in February of 2022, it is fair to say that many people in positions of authority did not exactly cover themselves in glory. High on that list was Peter Sloly, then the chief of the Ottawa Police Service. As the protest dragged on and the people of Ottawa were something close to besieged, Sloly appeared to have no plan to remove the truckers from the downtown core. What he did have was a hot temper and there were soon stories of repeated bust-ups with senior staff. Or, as the CBC put it: “Multiple sources have told CBC News that Sloly allegedly belittled and berated senior Ottawa Police Service officers in front of their colleagues, and has failed to put forward a solid operations plan to end the crisis.” Sloly left the force mid-crisis and everyone seemed to think this was a good idea.

Read about it on the CBC.

This one is more about personal accountability than an indication of the strength of our institutions, but in 2023, John Tory, in his eighth year as mayor of Toronto, was revealed to have been in a lengthy affair with a young staffer. He was 68 at the time, and married. A number of councillors (and Ontario Premier Doug Ford) wanted Tory to remain in his job, but he stepped down six days after the story first broke. There had been speculation that Tory might attempt a comeback with a mayoralty bid this fall, but he has said he will not run for his old job.

The Toronto Star has the story here.

Sometimes these stories can be infuriating and funny. So it was with Rod Phillips, who as Ontario finance minister in 2020 whisked himself off to a two-week vacation to St. Barts, right as his boss was pleading with everyone to stay home during the early days of the COVID pandemic. The punch line is that his social media accounts posted a photo of him sitting by a roaring fire, wishing his constituents the best of the holiday season, while he was (presumably) sitting by a pool. This wasn’t just embarrassing for the Doug Ford government at home, but it received international press, because everyone enjoyed a story about public officials breaking COVID rules. Phillips resigned from his ministry upon his return, was appointed back to cabinet in a different portfolio the following year, but later resigned as MPP and didn’t seek re-election.

Read about it on the BBC (!) here.

THE ONE CRIMINAL EXCEPTION WE CHOSE TO INCLUDE:

Sometimes accountability takes different forms. In the build-up to the 2011 Ontario election, the Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty cancelled plans for two natural-gas power plants in the Toronto suburbs and moved them to Sarnia and Napanee, where they would be less likely to bother Liberal voters. The auditor-general found the decisions, to protect a couple of safe seats, could end up costing Ontario taxpayers more than a billion dollars. McGuinty would eventually resign, although the Liberals would win the subsequent election with Kathleen Wynne as leader. His former chief of staff, meanwhile, was convicted of improperly deleting computer records relating to the scandal and sentenced to four months in jail. David Livingston would serve 35 days of his sentence in a correctional facility before being released to finish the rest of his time “in the community.”

Here’s the Toronto Star on how that one wrapped up.

We know this isn’t comprehensive! But it was an interesting slice of perspectives from our readers. We hope you enjoyed them, and that the years ahead provide us many, many more examples of a return of an immune system to our country’s political life.

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The Line is Canada’s last, best hope for irreverent commentary. We reject bullshit. We love lively writing. Please consider supporting us by subscribing. Please follow us on social media! Facebook x 2: On The Line Podcast here, and The Line Podcast here. Instagram. Also: TikTok. BlueSky. LinkedIn. Matt’s Twitter. The Line’s Twitter.Jen’s Twitter. Contact us by email: lineeditor@protonmail.com

In the latest episode of The Line Podcast, recorded on April 24th, 2026, Matt Gurney and Jen Gerson open with a plug for their ongoing fundraiser. Day three is off to a great start, but we haven’t hit our target yet. If you can help us out, please go here. Every dollar counts. The Line accepts no bailouts and no subsidies, and competes against much larger outlets that have gladly (or even reluctantly) taken the government money. We need your help to compete. Please give what you can.

Having gotten the telethon out of the way, for the rest of the segment, they run through the latest developments in the Canada–U.S. trade dispute. Jen wonders why there’s suddenly so much activity, and Matt offers a surprisingly mundane answer: we’re running out of time before the deal runs out. They assess the credibility of both sides in the negotiations and, in a move that may frustrate some listeners, also take a look at comments made by Pierre Poilievre this week. Jen suggests he’s living in a fantasy, and Matt explains what he thinks he’s doing when he attacks Mark Carney for not wanting a deal. Matt broadens the conversation to include the opposition in the United States as well, and warns that if Canada’s strategy is simply to rag the puck until the midterms, it may be time to rethink the plan. The Democrats may be more predictable, but they’re not necessarily going to be much friendlier on the trade front. Trump, and MAGA, have moved the needle on that one. Probably for a generation.

Next, Jen discusses her latest column, which leads to a longer conversation about Canadian complacency and the difficulty of reforming a country that places such a high premium on avoiding hurt feelings. Matt notes that her argument aligns closely not only with his recent writing on the collapse of Canadian accountability, but also with something he wrote years ago — a piece about expectations, and how they can be a problem.

They wrap up with a quick, and somewhat frustrated, update from their respective home provinces. As Matt puts it, we’re not sending our best.

All that and more in the latest episode of The Line Podcast. And if you like what you heard, don’t forget to go help us hold the line.

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Please sign up at those options not just for this episode, or future episodes of The Line Podcast, but so that you can also receive our other podcast series, On the Line, which releases new episodes every Tuesday morning. In case you missed it, here is last Tuesday’s episode, where Matt Gurney spoke with Jamie Carroll of Carroll & Co., for a conversation about the Liberal Party of Canada now that Mark Carney has secured a majority government, and Gregory Jack from Ipsos, for a quick check in on what Canadians want the PM and his new majority to stay focused on.

Thanks, all. Talk to you soon.

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The Line is Canada’s last, best hope for irreverent commentary. We reject bullshit. We love lively writing. Please consider supporting us by subscribing. Please follow us on social media! Facebook x 2: On The Line Podcast here, and The Line Podcast here. Instagram. Also: TikTok. BlueSky. LinkedIn. Matt’s Twitter. The Line’s Twitter.Jen’s Twitter. Contact us by email: lineeditor@protonmail.com

By: Jen Gerson

Your strengths are your weaknesses, and your weaknesses are your strengths. That’s an idea that strikes me as more obviously true as I get older, and it’s one that can be applied to both individuals and nations. Most of us are pretty ordinary and similar around the middle, but if you want to understand where your vulnerabilities lurk, look at the strengths you’ve built up around yourself. And if you ever want to discover the ways in which you are uniquely strong, lean into the discomfort of weakness.

Two items had me chewing on that point this week; the first, most obvious, was Prime Minister Mark Carney’s “Forward Guidance” video — a banker’s fireside chat delivered to Canadians ahead of what is likely to be three months of unpredictable chicanery preceding the renegotiation, extension, or full-blown abandonment of CUSMA/USMCA/MUSCA.

“Many of our former strengths, based on our close ties to America, have become weaknesses. Weaknesses that we must correct,” Carney noted in a 10-minute presentation that, for some reason, absolutely refused to retire Mike Myers as a shared symbol of Canadian resistance.

There is absolutely no question that Canada’s geopolitical and cultural closeness to America has, historically, been among its greatest strategic strengths; simultaneously, our inter-dependence is also an incredible liability when the U.S. goes bonkers. Which, historically, it does tend to do from time to time.

Hello! Sorry to interrupt Jen’s column. We’ll get you back to it in a minute.
But. We are running our annual fundraiser, and we could really use
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that’s incredible, but we need to keep the momentum going —
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Our goal today? Another $15,000 in donations.

It’s a tall order. We’ll need your help.

The Line is working on a big change — something much different than
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chip in whatever you can so that we can hold the line … and grow.

And now, back to Jen’s column …

Recently, I was re-reading a spot of U.S. history and couldn’t help but find myself yelling at the page: “Good lord, the Loyalists were right! Those ‘patriot’ rebels were hypocritical, conspiratorial loons who killed and dispossessed their neighbours over duties on tea.” I mean, King George was no winner as far as British monarchs go, but if the rest of the Anglosphere is any indication, the U.S. would have soon gained responsible government with the rest of us in short order without bloodshed.

It’s hard to read any U.S. history and fail to conclude that our beloved revolutionary kinsmen to the south are reliably cuckoo-for-cocoa-puffs. But then, maybe a touch of the crazy is a necessary precondition for those with the audacity to build a new system of government that eventually sends men to the moon and seeks to lead the world under a liberal order.

Strengths and weaknesses. See what I’m saying, here?

The next item that tipped me off on this point was this graph that made the rounds of late, based on polling on morality by the Pew Research Center. It found that Americans were almost uniquely likely to rate their fellow citizens as morally bad. (To which I say: do you see what they do to each other periodically throughout history? Again, the Loyalists were correct to flee into the northern wilds still controlled by the British.)

Of course, for all our cultural similarity, Canada proved the polar opposite of the 25 countries studied. We were bizarrely willing to rate our neighbours as morally good.

As Canadians are wont to do every time a graph comes around that puts us at the top of something, we shared this fascinating bit of research with a very characteristic helping of smug glee. This is the kind of unearned self-regard that a genuinely moral person would try to guard against, but given current events, I suppose we can give ourselves the odd point.

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A high sense of our own morality and trust in our neighbours, that’s generally regarded as an unmitigated good. This is the kind of shared feeling that promotes community, and fosters and maintains shared resolve in the face of adversity. It’s the sentiment that allows groups to come together in moments of crisis.

Our high-trust society is something that is almost universally — perhaps uncritically — regarded as a strength.

You see where I’m going, here.

We don’t often ask ourselves wherein lies the weakness of this trait.

Firstly, trust in one’s neighbour ungrounded by judgement and discernment isn’t a virtue. It’s dumb. Carney’s quote: “Many of our former strengths, based on our close ties to America, have become weaknesses,” is painfully passive. Our close ties to America were not merely the happy accidents of geography. We chose those economic ties. We trusted them and we allowed ourselves to grow complacent and dependent as a result of that trust — which, in hindsight, seems about as smart as trusting a crackhead neighbour to look after the family puppy while we went on vacation. We did it because it was easier, I guess.

Secondly, the Pew research assumes we believe ourselves to be morally superior, but is this actually true? What shared moral standard are we even judging ourselves by? So much of our own self-perception is rooted in assumptions like our robust social safety net — our health care and education systems, for example.

Fine, as far as it goes. But what happens to that perception, and to the identities we’ve built around that perception, if we’re forced to confront the reality of those systems right now? The health care, education, and other social programs we believe define us so sharply from America are in states of decline and decay, guys. Is our compliant, moral nature helping us, here? Or has our high-handed attitude prevented us from confronting the state of ourselves honestly and forthrightly?

During last week’s podcast, I recounted an anecdote from several years ago. For a brief period, CBC ran a comedy vertical called, originally, CBC Comedy because, for some reason, the public broadcaster has to be absolutely everything to everybody and then complain about its lack of funding to deliver much of anything particularly well.

CBC Comedy, if you remember it (and I bet that you don’t), was exactly as funny as you’d expect from a government-sponsored-comedy vertical, which is to say, not even a little bit. In fact, the only gratification any single taxpayer got out of this failson of an endeavour was the joy to be gleaned by making fun of it — which I and several other journalists did quite religiously for a time.

Anyway, one day we all received nearly identical DMs from the vertical’s editor asking us, nay, pleading with us, to please lay off.

Because, as unfunny as this thing clearly was, the writers were trying really hard.

Being morally superior Canadians, we proceeded to publish these earnest pleas in full, mercilessly mocking CBC Comedy, its bosses, and everyone who ever worked there.

Shame failed to have the intended effect. CBC Comedy never got better. And, having never improved, now no longer exists.

Ever since then, I see this attitude eating away at everything in Canada. In fact, it’s gotten worse.

The journalists willing to call out subpar performance are aberrations in a culture that lionizes niceness as a defining virtue. Perhaps if we trusted each other less, our media culture would be more effectual at policing real power. The old accountability mechanisms are simply no longer attached to meaningful consequences; we publicize inputs instead of outputs; the metrics of how we declare success are never objectively defined; the bureaucracy expands to meet the growing needs of the bureaucracy; timelines and goalposts shift; projects stall indefinitely; demands for answers to governments go unanswered; failures become learning opportunities; and boondoggles disappear into the night.

Hey, does anybody remember those superclusters? Never mind, something something gay AI Supercomputers, now. Onto the next thing, with zero lessons learned. It’s the Canadian way. And speaking of computers, we are now at the point that re-publishing a Government of Canada press release serves as its own punchline:

“This program, part of the Canadian Sovereign AI Compute Strategy, will enable the development of large-scale, Canadian-based compute infrastructure to advance AI research and innovation, while safeguarding Canada’s national interests.”

You don’t even need to add anything to that statement to make it objectively hilarious. I hear a laugh track in the back of my mind as I read it. CBC Comedy, eat your heart out.

This is the wasting illness that is eating at the bones of the polity.

Sure, everything has gone to shit, we can’t actually build anything, the economy is going into a tailspin, we’ve lost a definable sense of ourselves, and nobody ever seems to be held accountable for any single thing that goes wrong.

Well, but, everybody means well.

(Do they?)

This is the trap of a high-trust society.

Everybody is trying hard.

(So what?)

We trust that we’re mostly good enough — right up until the moment personal circumstances force us one by one to confront the reality of our own institutional decline.

But, hey, we’re nice people, after all. Moral. Better.

Look, a little smarm is healthy for the soul. Too much works like acid to leech the calcium that’s meant to hold the structure upright.

Your weaknesses are your strengths. But your strengths are also your weaknesses. If we hope to withstand the madness of the lunatic revolutionaries on our heels, we’re going to need to stare square-face at both.

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The Line is Canada’s last, best hope for irreverent commentary. We reject bullshit. We love lively writing. Please consider supporting us by subscribing. Please follow us on social media! Facebook x 2: On The Line Podcast here, and The Line Podcast here. Instagram. Also: TikTok. BlueSky. LinkedIn. Matt’s Twitter. The Line’s Twitter.Jen’s Twitter. Contact us by email: lineeditor@protonmail.com

By: Matt Gurney

If people were giving up on Canada — specifically, people with means — how would we know?

That’s not rhetorical, and it’s a more complicated question than you might think. Almost two years ago, Jen Gerson and I both began hearing many interesting anecdotes about wealthier Canadians, those with options, quietly leaving the country. There were fascinating hints of data that backed up our hunches, too. Jen wrote a column about it; so did I. But we both had the same problem. It’s a rule in our line of work that the plural of anecdote is not data. That is to say, just because you hear the same thing a bunch of times doesn’t mean it’s true. But two years ago, when I kept hearing the same thing over and over, I went looking for the data.

And I couldn’t find it. It doesn’t exist.

Let me back things up a bit. People move in and out of Canada all the time, and for lots of reasons. For basically my entire lifetime, way more people wanted in than out, and of course they did. For much of the world, Canada is a beacon of opportunity and safety. And God bless anyone who comes here legally and builds a better life for themselves and their families. You’ll never hear me say a word against an immigrant — they’re incredibly brave. And as they arrived, and arrived much faster under the former prime minister, our national population surged.

The flip side of this strong and sustained desire among many to move here, though, is that as much as some Canadians hate to admit it (and gosh, do they really hate admitting it), for many of us — not all, not most, but many — we can equal or exceed the quality of life offered here by going elsewhere. Canada is objectively good, but for some, it’s not the best.

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But. We are running our annual fundraiser, and we could really use
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Our goal today? Do even better on the second day than the first.

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The Line is working on a big change — something much different than
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chip in whatever you can so that we can hold the line … and grow.

And now, back to Matt’s column …

I’m not telling you to leave the country! Obviously, everyone’s own values matrix will differ. But as much as Canada has to offer, in some categories, we’re simply outclassed. If you have money, you can get better health care. You can pay lower taxes. You can find a more competitive business environment. You can buy shockingly better houses and properties. (Once, out of morbid curiosity, I spent an hour figuring out what I could get for a house in some of America’s largest cities if I sold my house in Toronto. Even after adjusting for the currency exchange, the difference was honestly hard to believe.) And let’s not downplay this: our weather is garbage for a third to half the year. The thrill of a long, dark and cold winter wore off for me years ago.

What if we were in a situation, Jen and I both wondered two years ago, where a lot of people were still choosing to come to Canada to improve their lot in life, so our total population was going up, but many Canadians, specifically those with money and options, were deciding to get out to improve theirs? Or, what if, I wondered in a bit of added nuance, wealthier and more mobile Canadians were starting to get their money out, even if they chose to stay most of the year? You know, to be near the kids and grandkids.

Here’s how I expressed what I thought was happening two years ago: “You don’t have to stop being Canadian. You don’t have to uproot your family and leave your friends and stop going to your favourite pub or coffee shop. But you establish an option. A legal and banking presence in another jurisdiction. Maybe a place to live that you list on AirBNB when you’re not using it. You set up a corporate structure that causes some of your money to migrate out of Canada, again entirely legally, and exist somewhere else. Maybe you spend a few months out of the country every winter, maybe you don’t. But you could.”

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I think that’s happening. But I can’t prove it’s happening. The scenario above isn’t really captured in a stat. You can do that and not trigger any kind of declaration or tax consequence. People can still live here, at least most of the year. They still pay taxes here. They can purchase properties abroad, or rent them. And shift either their entrepreneurial efforts or portions of their cash flow to other countries. The U.S. is a big one, but not the only one. I know many people doing this in Europe and Latin America. And none of this is captured in any particular dataset.

Not that I didn’t try to find it! Two years ago, I called a few smart people, including a StatCan source, to ask about this. I explained what I thought was happening, and asked how I could find out if it actually was or if I was overreacting to a few coincidences. They confirmed what I more or less suspected: it wasn’t possible to prove or disprove my hunch. There just isn’t any metric that neatly captures the scenario I think is happening.

When someone leaves and gives up their residency status, that’s captured in government data. When someone just sort of begins shifting some of their time and money to another jurisdiction, that’s harder. What separates a partial departure from Canada from a long vacation? What’s the empirical difference between quietly moving your money to another jurisdiction, just in case you end up moving there, and simply investing in an asset abroad?

My friends and sources did actually agree on one thing, though. They generally concurred that I was onto something — that wealthy Canadians, those with assets that could move, were behaving differently than normal; specifically, they were setting up Plan Bs outside of the country. They also said that if there was to be something that captured this, and it would only be a rough proxy, it would be entrepreneurial activity. If we started seeing strange drops in things like business start ups within Canada, that could be a signal that Canadians with the money and ambition to create new commercial ventures were starting to behave differently. Specifically, that they were choosing to not do that in Canada. To do it abroad, if they did it at all.

Well. Ahem.

You might have seen this report from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. They found that business “exits” (businesses that cease operations) have exceeded “entries” (new businesses) for six quarters. They called it an entrepreneurial drought. That’s interesting. But what was most interesting was the timing. The timeline of when the CFIB saw this tipping point in the trend aligned very, very closely with when Jen and I both began to get the feeling that something unusual was happening.

And the trend itself — rising exits, slowing entries — goes back years before that. We moved into the negative in 2024, but the trend baked in years before that, after COVID. The CFIB report captures that (see chart on page four) but also, perhaps more tellingly, also captures a much longer-term trend. That’s on the fifth page. With the exception of when the pandemic first hit, exits don’t surpass starts. That hasn’t happened in 40 years. And it’s been the case now for six quarters in a row.

More bluntly: we now have evidence of that the thing my stat nerds told me might be a signal emerging right at the time I began thinking there might be a signal. And this signal is, historically speaking, unusual.

It’s not a slam dunk. I admit that. I offer this entire column more as a hypothesis in need of testing than a firm conclusion. I still can’t say with confidence that this is happening, because I still don’t know how to prove it. And there are lots of other things that could explain a slowdown in entrepreneurial activity. An older population will open fewer shops. Consolidation of businesses as boomers try and sell and retire could be a major factor. Plus there’s just all the awful uncertainty that we’ve lived through in recent years, with a literal plague, geopolitical upheaval, trade wars, actual wars … a lot has been going on.

I’ll stipulate to all that. But I’m stubborn, and I still think my hunch two years ago was right. I wish I had a better way to prove it. The one thing I’ve got, though, is what I was told to watch for. And now it looks like it might be happening.

I’ll continue to watch this. And if anyone has a better suggestion of what stat or dataset would confirm or deny my hunch, lay it on me. In the meantime, I’ll worry about this. Because a country like Canada can’t survive if the people who would drive its prosperity collectively start to give up and make other arrangements. And I think they’re starting, and continuing, to do exactly that.

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The Line is Canada’s last, best hope for irreverent commentary. We reject bullshit. We love lively writing. Please consider supporting us by subscribing. Please follow us on social media! Facebook x 2: On The Line Podcast here, and The Line Podcast here. Instagram. Also: TikTok. BlueSky. LinkedIn. Matt’s Twitter. The Line’s Twitter.Jen’s Twitter. Contact us by email: lineeditor@protonmail.com

By: Greg Quinn

With each passing day the United States continues to demonstrate its unreliability and unpredictability as an ally.

Donald Trump frequently vents his frustration and anger at those of us on the right side of the argument (as opposed to those on the wrong side such as Russia, to whom he is surprisingly nice). This has led to the question of future defence spending in many countries, including Canada, coming to the fore.

As the debate over the purchase of the F-35 continues (see my piece in The Line from last year), the real question is what happens next as we move to the next generation of military aircraft?

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At the minute, the reality is most of us are stuck with the F-35, but there should be no assumption that we will be stuck with U.S. equipment going forward.

That leads us to the snazzily titled Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) a sixth-generation future fighter program being developed by the United Kingdom, Italy and Japan.

In the words of BAE Systems (one of the leading commercial partners in the programme), GCAP is:

A truly international endeavour that will see the United Kingdom, Italy and Japan work together with a shared ambition to develop a next generation fighter aircraft

It added that GCAP:

[Brings] together the governments of the U.K., Italy and Japan, and their respective industries, to collaborate on shared military and industrial objectives in the delivery of a next-generation combat air capability. By fostering close collaboration between industries and governments, the programme is a cornerstone of strategic defence and security partnerships, and will deliver the capability to defeat the future threats of 2040+ with a targeted in-service date of 2035.

There is already talk of Canada joining this program, initially as an observer with the possibility of greater involvement down the line. There are many reasons why Canada should become more involved.

Most obviously is the need to decrease dependence on the United States for defence equipment and material. While some say the current U.S. approach is only temporary and that things will get back to normal when President Trump leaves the White House, I believe that shows a staggering level of naiveté.

To me, there has been a generational change in U.S. politics and in the thinking of the majority of the U.S. public. Rightfully there is anger at the freeloading the rest of us in NATO have taken advantage of under the U.S. defence umbrella. While that is changing, I have no doubt the average American will continue to harbour grievances at this, especially when encouraged by U.S. politicians. And name me a politician who won’t use any issue to score cheap political points?

And let us not have rose-tinted spectacles about the U.S. of old. Even in the depths of the Cold War they were not adverse to doing things that were for their own benefit — even at the expense of us erstwhile allies.

The United States wasn’t exactly an enthusiastic supporter of the U.K. during the Falklands War. Indeed, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, never failed to hide her antipathy to the U.K. and her pro-Argentinian stance. America also stood against the U.K. and Israel during the Suez War in 1956. There was also significant criticism of the U.K. in U.S. circles for “cutting and running” in Basra following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

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Donald Trump may well have done us all a favour in saying out loud what I suspect many in the U.S. think. So, some gratitude is needed there for opening up our eyes and showing that the U.S. (like us all) has its own interests.

Or as Lord Palmerston, a famous British foreign secretary and prime minister more eloquently put it in 1848: “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”

It is therefore beholden on all of us in these current times to find those allies who best share our values and work with them. Hence, why Canada should join GCAP and work with countries not only with whom it has a shared history the U.K.) but also Italy and Japan.

But there are wider reasons, including the fact that Canada will, if it becomes a more involved partner, get its own share of the work, therefore increasing jobs and getting more sovereign control over its own defence equipment.

Yes, GCAP is still very much a program in development and some will point to that being a weakness. Indeed it is. But the more countries that come on board, the less risky it becomes and the closer to reality it becomes. This is not Canada going it alone with the CF-105 Arrow, or the U.K. trying to do the same with the TSR2. Instead it is a group of highly skilled countries sharing the risk for the sake of increased sovereignty and capability.

What better way to do that than to join together on a defence program such as GCAP? At the same time, it would show the United States that there are potential consequences for their actions, while making clear our commitment to defence.

So come on board, Canada, and join the party. I am sure you will be welcomed with open arms.

Greg Quinn OBE is a former British Diplomat who has served in Estonia, Ghana, Belarus, Iraq, Washington, D.C. (seconded to State Department), Kazakhstan, Guyana (as High Commissioner), Suriname (as Ambassador), The Bahamas (as High Commissioner), Canada (as Consul General Toronto and Calgary), and Antigua and Barbuda (as resident British Commissioner) in addition to stints in London. He now runs his own government relations, business development and crisis management consultancy: Aodhan Consultancy Ltd (www.aodhaninc.co.uk).

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The Line is entirely reader and advertiser funded — no federal subsidy for us! If you value our work, have already subscribed, and still worry about what will happen when the conventional media finishes collapsing, please make a donation today. Please note: a donation is not a subscription, and will not grant access to paywalled content. It’s just a way of thanking us for what we do. If you’re looking to subscribe and get full access, it’s that other blue button!

The Line is Canada’s last, best hope for irreverent commentary. We reject bullshit. We love lively writing. Please consider supporting us by subscribing. Please follow us on social media! Facebook x 2: On The Line Podcast here, and The Line Podcast here. Instagram. Also: TikTok. BlueSky. LinkedIn. Matt’s Twitter. The Line’s Twitter.Jen’s Twitter. Contact us by email: lineeditor@protonmail.com