Op-Eds
Published in the Financial Post.
Just when the Americans have elected an aggressive president and just before the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (the old NAFTA) is due for re-negotiation, the Liberal government, with all-party agreement, supports an egregiously protectionist piece of legislation that will only make Canada’s political problems with the Trump administration that much worse.
As a self-inflicted injury, little surpasses Bill C-282, a Bloc Québécois member’s private bill that sailed through the House of Commons last year. The bill, helped along by the well-financed dairy lobby, would embed Canada’s supply management system in law, prohibiting any trade agreement from allowing as much as one additional gram…
Published in the National Post.
The C.D. Howe Institute has invited me to use this column to summarize the Regent Debate that the institute held in Toronto on Sept. 24. It was a well-attended and rollicking affair with a learned audience of several hundred or more people. The former governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, and I defended the motion that the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States would be an opportunity for Canada. Our very worthy opponents were the former minister of finance John Manley, and the former Liberal politician and chair of the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary, Martha Hall Findlay. It is well-known that after Christie described president Trump as “Donald Duck…
Published in the Toronto Star.
It is critical for Canadians to have a conversation now about the prospect of a second Trump presidency. While the decisions of any U.S. president reverberate in Canada, Trump’s world view and governing style could wreak havoc on our politics and economy.
We have three major concerns for Canada with a Trump presidency as we outlined in the latest Regent Debate hosted by the C.D. Howe Institute: Damage to the Canadian economy, geopolitical security and a sinister, insidious deterioration of our discourse and democracy.
Conrad Black and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie argued the other side in the debate — that a Trump return was an opportunity for Canada — and it was a…
Published in the Financial Post
As if productivity, growth, housing and health care weren’t challenges enough for Canada, an old threat is quietly re-emerging: Quebec separatism. The Parti Québécois (PQ), headed for government, is promising another referendum. The gathering storm demands attention.
In the 2018 Quebec provincial election the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) handed the PQ an historic defeat, reducing it to just 10 seats. The decades-long debate over Quebec’s place in Canada was widely assumed to have been settled, at least for this generation. But six years later the PQ is ahead in polls and its charismatic young leader promises to hold a referendum on sovereignty if elected. If an election were held today, the…
Published in the Financial Post.
With the recent wrap-up of Ottawa’s month-long public consultation on levying tariffs on electrical vehicles (EVs) made in China, let’s paraphrase a story Nobel Prize-winner Paul Krugman once used to explain the often under-appreciated benefits of free trade:
Consider a Canadian entrepreneur who starts a new business that uses secret technology to transform Canadian lumber and canola into affordable EVs. She is lauded as a champion of industry for her innovative spirit and commitment to Net Zero. But a suspicious reporter discovers that what she is really doing is exporting Canadian-made lumber and canola and using the proceeds to purchase Chinese-made EVs. Sentiment turns sharply…
