I have about as much time for people who want to make memes calling Canada “shitty” as I do for ridiculous reporters who think they are being serious in asking American military officials about their invasion plans for Canada.

None.

Maybe I’m too rational. Maybe I’m too focused on trying to get a deal because I know the economic consequences of not getting a deal.

I come from a blue-collar city; I know people who work in the kind of plants that will be hurt by an ever-increasing tariff war. That’s why my focus is always on getting a deal, because that is the real way you protect jobs.

Marc Nixon, a man who has made a bit of a name for himself producing online content, mostly video-based, and who has done some good work — his video in response to Mark Carney saying talks can resume when the Americans stop making memes is too much for me.

I get it, people are having fun and some of them are funny, but this one, and many others, are not. I don’t see the point in running down your country to “own the libs.”

There is a tendency among some folks on the right in Canada to take their criticism of Carney and Canada so far as to endorse Trump. That’s what this looks like and it’s not where I am or want to go.

Maybe your view is different; if so, you can join the online chorus calling me a Liberal.

I’m not — I just put my country first.

That doesn’t mean cheering Carney or accepting everything he says or does. It does mean not cheering for the other guy.

As for demanding a visiting military officer explain his plans to invade Canada? Give me a break.

Here is Global News reporter Ben O’Hara-Byrne asking Admiral Samuel Paparo, the commander of the Pacific Command for the U.S. Navy about following orders to invade.

Enough with this idea that the Americans are set to invade us. Forget the idea that they are trying to take us over.

Here’s how O’Hara-Byrne defended the exchange on X after the fact.

In some ways I get it, I’ve asked provocative questions and they sometimes lead to good responses. Ben pushing back several times makes me feel something else is at play.

Too many Canadians are freaked out that the Americans are about to invade at any moment. Read the Letters to the Editor of the Globe and Mail for regular update from octogenarians writing in to say they will grab a gun or a rake to fight off the American invasion.

I understand that Trump made a bunch of 51st state comments early on. In February of 2025, I even interviewed Steve Bannon, formerly one of Trump’s top advisors, about the whole idea of whether the 51st state thing was real. In February 2025, sitting in Washington, Bannon said it was and explained why he supported it.

Since then, Trump has said many times that it’s not happening, even saying during Carney’s first White House visit that it takes two to tango and Canada wasn’t interested.

Being hysterical with the “Elbows Up” rhetoric doesn’t help anyone, but neither does trashing Canada and elevating Trump.

Let’s try to stay firmly attached to reality in all of this.

For the record, my Bannon interview…

As for the idea of counter tariffs…

This is something that seems to divide economists and politicians.

On this one, I’d say the economists are right. Not that I always think elected leaders need to follow the advice of politicians, but here they have a point.

Counter tariffs are counterproductive.

I spoke to Professor Eric Ham from Toronto Metropolitan University, the place most of us still call Ryerson, about the issue. He was pretty blunt in his assessment.

You can read it in the column or watch the video here.

Did Carney end trade talks for political reasons…

I’d say yes and no, and I’ve said so, but I’ll explain why.

Both sides are claiming the other made last-minute demands to change the deal.

They can’t both be right, or can they?

My belief, from listening to all the public statements, parsing the careful language each side uses, and speaking to many people in the know on background, is that the two sides were talking past each other.

Negotiations start out verbally and progress to written agreements.

The Canadian side said they wanted tariffs reduced on Canadian-made autos. The Americans said yes, they could reduce them to 15%, which when combined with discounts for American-made parts brought the effective tariff down to 7.5%.

When the deal started to be drafted, the Americans only had a reduced tariff for cars and light trucks, but not medium and heavy-duty trucks. The Americans say these are different classes of vehicles and were never meant to be included; the Canadian side says they believe it was always meant to be all autos.

Howard Lutnick says that the Canadian side didn’t raise the issue of medium and heavy-duty trucks until 4 p.m. on Friday.

Here’s why I don’t believe that to be true.

The CEOs of GM and Ford in Detroit called the White House to explain that they needed medium and heavy-duty trucks to have the same treatment. GM is producing the Silverado at their Oshawa plant and will soon produce the Sierra there, while Ford is retooling their Oakville plant to produce trucks like the F-350 and F-450.

Building these trucks in Canada under a 25% tariff just isn’t feasible.

My belief is that once Carney realized that he couldn’t get a deal on trucks, he decided to pull out the sovereignty card, the French-language card, and use them for all they were worth politically. So no, I don’t think he walked away from the deal for just political reasons, but I do think that once a deal wasn’t on the table, he made it political.

As I’ve written, all three major political leaders are using this spat for political gain, and it’s working for them, while the little guy pays the price.

Here’s my video rant on how Carney, Ford and Trump are all using this trade spat for their own political benefit.

Instead, figure out what to do in order to start winning, which you clearly aren’t.

That’s my advice to all Conservatives today after Monday’s disastrous showing. Three byelections and not only three losses but the Liberals took more than 50% of the vote in all three contests.

And in the one riding that the Conservatives had held for the last eight years, they fell to third and took just 12.5% of the vote. Régis Gaudreault took 3,962 votes out of 31,627 cast.

Meaning, if Gaudreault had taken a few hundred votes less, the party would be ineligible for claiming their election expenses.

That is a bad result. First to third. Barely making expenses.

The next test will be tougher…

In my column for the Toronto Sun, I wrote about how Poilievre needs to buckle up because there are more byelections coming including in Brantford-Brant South. That’s a riding the Conservatives have held since 2008 and should be a safe seat, but it’s not, it’s in play with the Liberals posing a real threat.

If Poilievre and team lose that byelection, whenever it comes, he will start facing challenges from inside the party. MPs will be looking at what happens to see if they are still safe in their ridings.

Here’s how I ended my column:

MPs may seem loyal to Poilievre now, but if allowing him to keep his job means they might lose theirs, expect that to change. If the polls don’t improve, his biggest threat won’t be Carney. It’ll be the MPs sitting behind him.

That prompted an angry email from regular reader Mark who accused me of piling on Pierre.

Did you know between 2014 and now our economy has gone from around 9.6 times smaller to over 13 times smaller compared to the Us? In dollars, the US added like 6 Canadas in that time frame.

Also back then our middle class was hailed by the NYT as being the most affluent and richest, even more so than the Americans. And our youth ranked Canada 5th in happiness.

Like our economy, our middle class is no longer and young people ranked Canada 71st in happiness.

To my simple mind, the problem isn’t the Conservatives.

I would agree that the Conservatives aren’t responsible for the sorry state of Canada’s economy. If you read my work, you know that I’m more critical of Carney and his government than I am of the opposition.

Carney isn’t living up to his promises to fix the economy. He’s not peeling back the years of regulation, the bad laws and more that are holding back.

Since the election, Poilievre has been good at pointing out where Carney’s policies are failing. In order to fix it though you need to win elections and govern.

So far, Poilievre has failed to do that.

Losing four of the MPs elected with your team last year to floor crossings and another taking a Senate appointment from the government is a failure of leadership for Poilievre and his senior team. Losing a byelection so badly in a riding you once held and being 29 points back in your only second place showing isn’t good enough.

What they have been doing isn’t working, they need to do better.

If hearing that offends you, then I’m not the writer for you. My job isn’t to cheerlead for Pierre or any politician, it is to call it like I see it.

Much of my criticism of Poilievre comes with suggestions on how to improve, how to win. Political parties exist to challenge for power, to win elections and govern.

Anything else is just a debating society.

Trump administration puts Canada on notice…

I like Jamieson Greer, Trump’s USTR. He seems like a reasonable guy, someone you can reason with even when you disagree.

By all accounts, Greer has a good relationship with Carney’s cross border trade minister Dominic LeBlanc and Janice Charette, his chief negotiator. Last week I was saying that it wasn’t just the introduction of Howard Lutnick into the negotiations on Friday that upset the apple cart, we also inserted Ambassador Mark Wiseman and Carney’s chief of staff Marc Andre Blanchard.

It changed the dynamic.

We can all imagine what Lutnick would be like, he’s got a larger than life personality, he’s brash and abrasive. But I’m told it wasn’t just Lutnick, it went from three people who work well together to a room full of people looking sideways at each other.

So the trade talks fell apart, Mark Carney declared war the next day and announced dollar for dollar retaliatory tariffs.

Now, Greer is warning Canada not to go ahead with those tariffs next Tuesday.

“If Canada continues to retaliate, the United States, of course, will defend its workers and its producers and all of that,” Greer told Politico.

He went on to say that Trump would have several options in front of him if we go ahead. That could include more tariffs levied against Canadian goods or he even suggested some products could be banning over our ongoing booze ban in most provinces.

Is it really a war…

One thing Greer has been adamant about is that neither he nor the Trump administration view our current situation as a war, trade or otherwise.

Carney has clearly called it a war, he jumped to that phrase the morning after talks collapsed. I’ve been writing about the political calculus for Carney on this, but also Ford and Trump.

All three leaders can benefit from playing up this “war” for their own political gain.

And speaking of political theatre…

In my column and the video below, I spell out that Trump renaming Lake Ontario is ridiculous. Also ridiculous, Canadians renaming everything under the sun over the past decade as politicians pushed BS and most media egged them on.

Are we at a turning point in civilization? Étienne-Alexandre Beauregard, in his new book Anti-Civilization, argues that our current trajectory might lead to significant societal collapse if we continue to prioritize individualism over communal values.

I had a chance to chat with Etienne, a young man of about 25 who has authored his third book, the first published in English.

He’s looking at civilization as a whole in a way that might leave many older Canadians scratching their heads. He rejects strident individualism, the idea that marriage should wait, the need for a collective life.

In essence, he’s rejecting much of the 60s ethos that has defined North American civilization for decades.

Understanding Anti-Civilization…

Étienne defines civilization as a collective agreement to repress individual desires for a harmonious society, inspired by sociologist Norbert Elias. However, he notes a reversal of this principle since the 1960s, where the focus has shifted to personal freedom at the expense of community norms.

“When we talk about individuals today, it’s about how can I be free myself without constraints.” — Étienne-Alexandre Beauregard

Speaking from the standpoint of Generation Z, Étienne reflects on how this shift away from community has left many feeling desocialized and disconnected.

“The amount of friends that people my age have, the frequency where they see their friends... all those things are really down compared to what our parents and grandparents used to have.”

Our conversation reveals alarming trends regarding social isolation among younger generations. With fewer connections and diminishing social groups, the essence of belonging seems to be fading.

From the Amazon description of the book…

In Anti-Civilization, Étienne-Alexandre Beauregard delivers a stark diagnosis: the dismantling of the norms that once shaped Western civilization has plunged society into a profound crisis, eroding the shared reference points that sustained it throughout the second half of the twentieth century.

Runaway individualism, he argues, has fostered isolation and identity-based tensions, dissolving the social contract and replacing it with a clash of impulses and competing subjectivities. As heirs to this culture of deconstruction―and deprived of stable cultural and moral anchors―Generation Z is living through the full consequences of this illusory freedom, a pseudo-liberation that leads not to fulfillment but to alienation.

And now our conversation…

It quickly became our most read piece online. People began sharing it and commenting on it, whether at our site or on social media.

It was picked up around the world with Forbes, New York Post, the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, Jerusalem Post, the Economic Times and Times Now both in India, an many more media outlets picked up on it.

Not a lot of Canadian coverage outside of Postmedia - owners of the Toronto Sun and National Post - until CBC changed, but more on that later.

As news spread, so did the outrage.

Maureen Basnicki lost her husband Ken, then just 48 years-old, in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

We seem to forget that 24 Canadians died in those attacks.

We had leading scholars on terrorism and anti-semitism denounce CBC’s policy. In Washington, where Republican feelings towards Canada aren’t the best at the most, things got worse as Kash Patel the Director of the FBI and several prominent people surrounding the Trump administration voiced anger at the policy.

“I never thought Warren Kinsella would cause an international incident 😅” was the text I got from a friend.

Kinsella did create an international incident simply by reporting the truth on CBC’s policy. He didn’t create the policy, it’s not a new policy, but they restated it badly and at the worst possible time - two weeks before the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and as tensions between Canada and the United States are high.

Watch the video above, if you haven’t already so you can see me break down how this all happened, as I answer our critics and as I explain the deeper problem.

Below you can find links to follow-up columns from myself, Warren Kinsella and Lorne Gunter.

LILLEY: CBC’s 9/11 retreat doesn’t fix its terrorism problem

KINSELLA: CBC’s 9/11 climbdown acknowledges historical reality

GUNTER: CBC flip-flop on calling 9/11 ‘terrorism’ exercise in disinformation

Thought I would do a quick video because I’m basically exhausted from all the writing, all the talking to sources to get you the best info on what has been happening behind the scenes and the Carney government goes and smacks around CBC over their 9/11 language story - the don’t call it terrorism issue.

Warren Kinsella broke the story here. I followed up here.

Now there is an update here.

Also, here is the link to my latest on the trade talks and the politics that are at play for Carney, Ford and Trump. They each have reasons to keep these fights going for various electoral concerns - it’s not the whole story but it is part of it.

More tomorrow, but for now it is Friday night.

“Do not refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as terrorist attacks,” the memo read.

Someone who got the memo leaked it to my friend and colleague, Warren Kinsella, who wrote it up for the Toronto Sun. I don’t know about you, but this makes me so angry.

It’s bad enough that CBC won’t call Hamas or Hezbollah terrorist groups. They stick to a variation of the old saying that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”

That’s not how CBC actually phrases it, but the end result is the same.

Read Warren’s column.

The Devil Is in the Details...

Why did the trade talks with the United States break down?

Well, there are competing narratives out there, with the Americans blaming Canada for inserting last-minute changes and Canada claiming it was the Americans who put in the last-minute changes.

I’ve been listening and talking to all sides for days, trying to figure out how they could both claim the other was responsible for these last-minute changes. I had a theory, put it to several people in various government and industry positions, and it seems that my hunch was right.

The two sides were, in some ways, talking past each other.

The Americans offered to reduce the tariff on autos from 25% to 15%, but when the draft agreement was presented, this was just on cars and light trucks, not the medium- and heavy-duty trucks produced by GM in Oshawa and soon to be produced by Ford in Oakville. The Canadian side cried foul, said this isn’t what they agreed to, and each side claimed the other was asking for last-minute changes.

I wrote about this extensively in the Toronto Sun today. Check out the column for all the details, or watch the video below.

Some people have asked me how this could happen, and the answer is simple. Negotiations start out verbally and then turn to people writing out details and agreeing on the written word.

Saying you will reduce tariffs on autos could mean all autos to Canada but not include medium- and heavy-duty trucks to the Americans.

I’ve spoken to several people who know what was on the table who said the Canadian team was not informed about the medium- and heavy-duty trucks being part of the tariff reduction until Friday. As I reported in the Sun, executives from GM and Ford, out of their Detroit offices, told Washington they needed the medium- and heavy-duty pickups to be part of the tariff exemption.

What About the Politics of This for Carney?

Now, let’s talk about the politics of Mark Carney deciding that he would walk away from the deal last Friday. I’ve been saying for months that Carney’s plan has been to wait out Trump and hope for the Democrats to win big in the midterms.

It’s a horrible strategy.

At one point, it looked like the Democrats would win the House and the Senate. Now, it looks likely that the Democrats will win the House but not the Senate.

Though, as I was writing yesterday, even Republicans on Fox were questioning the wisdom of Trump’s trade war with Canada, given close Senate races in states like Maine, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

But beyond waiting out Trump, does Carney have a plan to stand up to Trump now, look tough, get the country excited, and then use his stance on this round of talks to sell the next deal?

Think about it.

A friend with extensive political experience was bending my ear about this idea this morning as Chloe and I chilled in the late-summer sunlight.

If Carney looks tough now, after making several concessions but getting nothing for those concessions, it makes the future deal seem palatable. I mean, the guy stood up to Trump. Now he’s getting the best deal possible, will be the narrative.

It is possible.

Simply based on the push by the Americans to say that medium and heavy-duty trucks would face a baked-in 25% tariff, the deal was unacceptable. While American officials say it was Canadians who asked for last minute changes and the Canadian side blames the Americans, Trump tell CNN’s Jim Sciutto in a phone call that calling for last minute changes sounds like him.

The government says there are more reasons the deal was a bad one, they should tell us about them as Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has been saying.

Poilievre made that point this morning while calling for a new economic action plan from the Carney government while standing in Windsor with Detroit in the background.

If you are watching the video, the English portion starts at around the 10 minute mark.

“Canadians must stand united. United in putting our country first. United for our workers, our consumers, our families. We must stand united in condemning the unjustified tariffs by President Trump,” Poilievre said.

“And we must be stand united for the many people who are now afraid for their jobs and their livelihoods. I’ve spent the last two days here at ground zero of the trade dispute right here in Windsor, Ontario. The industrial backbone of our country.”

While there, Poilievre called for the Carney government to scrap all gas taxes until July 1 next year, remove the GST from Canadian made vehicles, end the industrial carbon tax, repeal Bill C-69 and other anti-development laws, adopt his policy of no capital gains tax on money reinvested in Canada, and green light hundreds of projects awaiting federal approval.

Some of these are policies he ran on in the last election. All of them would help boost Canada’s economy and Poilievre is essentially calling on the Carney government to steal his policies.

Higher prices and defending sovereignty while denying it in a land acknowledgement…

The Carney government released their long list of items that will face tariffs of between 15-50%.

Lots of fish, appliances, make-up, clothing and more.

I was writing about this for the Toronto Sun today and included something that caught my ear. The Liberals said they were doing this to protect Canada’s sovereignty and yet, they opened with a land acknowledgement gave away all the land they claim to be protecting.

Read the column for the details.

Will a trade war with Canada hurt Republicans in key Senate races…

For months the accepted wisdom was that Democrats would win in both the House and the Senate and take Congress away from the Republicans. The Carney Liberals were sure that waiting Trump out until after the midterms was the best strategy.

The thinking was that if Trump lost both houses in Congress then he’d be weaker and forced into a better deal for Canada. I never thought it was a good idea and still don’t, Section 232 tariffs on steel, aluminum, and autos are not subject to congressional or court approval - we shall see on the section 338 tariffs.

The accepted wisdom started to fall apart as Democrats elected crazy candidates in Maine and Michigan in particular.

Now the trade war is pushing things back and Democrats could win again.

Watching Fox News right now as Bret Baier asks the panel on Special Report about what is happening with Canada. All three members, including two Republicans, one of them Trey Gowdy, the former House member from South Carolina backed Canada in some way.

Gowdy said it was a bad idea to have a trade war with Canada as Senate races are up for grabs in Maine, Michigan and Wisconsin

“I wonder if it will be resolved before the Senate races, because we don’t Maine, if you are a Republican, adversely impacted between now and November,” Gowdy said.

The latest from Real Clear Polling in Maine has Troy Jackson, the Democrat, ahead of Susan Collins the longtime Republican incumbent by 2.3% including a lead in a Fox News poll.

In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, a Democratic Socialist is narrowly edging out Republican Mike Rogers and Wisconsin is considered a toss-up.

A round-up of the crazy…

Did a video round-up of all the craziness for the Toronto Sun today.

That’s what Prime Minister Mark Carney said when he was asked why it sounded like was going to war after his Saturday morning speech.

Carney used references to war multiple times in his speech and during his Q & A with reporters.

“We’re stronger now than when the United States started this trade war. More unified, more determined, more ambitious,” he said in his speech.

Not sure that I believe that to be the case, though we could be if we take the right steps, something I was writing about in my latest column for the Sun.

Previously, I have questioned whether we should consider this a trade war between Canada and the United States. The Americans say they don’t see it that way, they see it a change in trade policy, an attempt to rebalance trade.

My thinking that perhaps the Americans were right was that calling it a trade war put us in the wrong mindset. Canadians were looking for a fight with the Americans, many still are and are happy that Carney walked away from this deal.

Of course, for the devoted “Elbows Up” crowd, no deal was always the best deal. They foolishly believe we can and should walk away from the United States.

After this latest round of tariffs though, I’m fine calling it a trade war.

That doesn’t mean we should fight it…

As I was arguing in my Sun column, our response shouldn’t be to slap tariffs on American goods and match them dollar for dollar. That only hurts us, makes items imported from the United States more expensive.

The Carney team has already said they are going ahead with the matching tariffs. Let’s hope they come up with a better list of goods to tariff than last time under Trudeau who put a tariff on coffee and other groceries we don’t produce here.

My argument though is that rather than fight the Americans we should focus on unleashing our own economy.

Make Canada such an attractive place to invest in, to start and grow a business in, that the American tariffs don’t matter.

Of course, I’ve been advocating that since I heard Trump’s inaugural address where he laid out his economic plan in full.

Carney was right to walk away from this deal…

I’ve been critical of Carney for being too secretive. Canadians deserve to know what is on the table, what we are getting, what is being asked of us.

The Americans manage to do it and not hurt the negotiations.

So I was surprised when Carney was so open and blunt during his news conference this morning. What he described in his answer to the first question would be a deal breaker for any prime minister.

There are more reasons that just auto for why he walked away, and frankly, I think part of it was due to Premiers Eby, Ford and Fréchette who all opposed it for their own reasons.

New tariff impact won’t be huge, but they will hurt…

In the grand scheme of things, these new tariffs on $28 billion worth of goods won’t crush the Canadian economy. Economist Trevor Tombe from the University of Calgary has a piece in The Hub where he estimates the national impact will shave a couple of tenths of one percent off the GDP.

However…he points out that the impact will be big in certain provinces, certain communities and of course it will be big if you are one of those who lose their jobs.

His estimate, 90,000 jobs losses total.

I’m working on a piece about how we ended up at this spot, the mistakes we’ve made along the way that made things worse.

It’s a deep dive, hope to have it out tomorrow.

There was a live recording of The Curse of Politics podcast in Ottawa this week, all part of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference.

As you may have seen or heard, Kory Teneycke went off on Pierre Poilievre again. He didn’t just criticize Poilievre’s leadership style or policies; he was calling Pierre nasty names, and I don’t mean Skippy.

Don’t watch the video if you don’t like swearing.

Clearly, my call for ending the infighting is falling on deaf ears.

Teneycke won’t stop chirping at Poilievre, Poilievre won’t stop chirping at Teneycke, the online multitudes continue to denounce anyone not pledging fealty to Poilievre as leader, and now Conservative MPs are putting out statements of support for Poilievre.

It seems that Teneycke wants Poilievre gone as leader. He’s going to keep making his comments as often as he feels like it.

That’s not helpful to Poilievre and, in my view, not helpful to the conservative movement and it’s something I have told Teneycke directly. Teneycke disagrees with me on that last point. He thinks getting rid of Poilievre is exactly what the conservative movement, and the Conservative Party, needs.

Can the party survive a split and leadership race?

Anthony Koch worked very closely with Poilievre on his leadership race, acting as his main spokesman. I’m not sure if they have remained tight, but Koch has offered up some criticism of Poilievre’s leadership.

That said, in a piece in the National Post this week, he argues that a leadership contest would hurt the party at this point.

“A leadership contest right now wouldn’t just be about who has the best tax plan or who performs best in a debate. Every unresolved argument on the Canadian right would suddenly have a candidate attached to it.

The populists would go after the establishment. The establishment would go after the populists. Social conservatives would organize. Libertarians would organize. Immigration would become a defining issue. Trump would become a defining issue. The convoy and COVID would somehow be litigated all over again. Quebec Conservatives and western Conservatives would discover, once again, that they do not always want the same things. The list goes on.

And because this is happening in the social media age, every disagreement would immediately become personal.”

If you want something a bit longer and a bit more philosophical about the state of the Conservative Party, read Michelle Rempel Garner’s Substack post from about three weeks ago.

My advice to all...

Since my advice to stop the infighting is being ignored, maybe I’ll phrase it another way.

Kory Teneycke isn’t going away, and he’s not going to stop making his comments. Teneycke, in my long experience with him, can be a very focused and determined man.

Let him take his shots at Poilievre, but ignore him.

For a long time, Teneycke has been living rent-free in the heads of Poilievre, his team, and many of his supporters. They all know each other, they have all been friends at various times, and they all have their own personal grievances.

It doesn’t help for Poilievre, his team, or frankly his supporters to obsess over what Teneycke says. Focus on winning, focus on proving him wrong, but focusing on him is not a path to victory.

“I’m so tired of it all,” one senior Canadian business executive who knows both men said to me this week.

A lot of people are tired of it, but if Teneycke doesn’t want to quit, and it’s doubtful he will while Poilievre is leader, then just move on and focus on other things.

About those trade talks...

I’ve written five columns on the trade talks since Monday, and by the time you read this, some of what we think we know may already have changed.

Why?

Because the situation keeps changing, but as I write, we still don’t know all the details. In fact, we know very few.

Other than that Prime Minister Mark Carney asked the eight provincial premiers who still have bans on American booze to put the booze back on the shelves.

No, we won’t be getting an elimination of tariffs; we will get a reduction. And if things go well, we won’t be slapped with more tariffs this weekend.

“Is it any good?” a friend asked about the deal.

Well, it’s better than what we have now, but let’s not pretend it’s a good deal.

It looks like Carney tried to play hardball and lost. We could have taken a different path, something I wrote about on Monday, but we chose to fight and antagonize.

Courting China and fighting Trump was always the wrong strategy.

What are we giving up...

It’s really not clear what we are giving up to get a deal where auto tariffs will likely be 15 per cent and steel and aluminum will be 25 per cent.

We’ve heard about the booze request, but what else is there?

While the Canadian side has been quiet, the Americans have been loud. Some of you might dismiss Donald Trump given how bombastic he is, but Jamieson Greer, Trump’s trade representative, is much more measured.

In a post on X on Tuesday night, Greer said the Americans were getting a lot more than we have ever been led to believe by the Canadian side.

“Congratulations Mr. President. The deal will include comprehensive market access for all American goods, economic security commitments, digital trade alignment, and many important provisions that will continue to protect our market and American workers, along with our Canadian partners.”

Digital trade alignment?

What exactly does that mean?

Dropping the Online Streaming Act?

I think dropping that act would be a good idea, but those three words could mean so much more. Are we aligning with the Americans on AI policy?

Barry Appleton, a former adviser on trade with governments in Ontario and B.C., is asking those questions in a very good piece he published yesterday.

There are some wild stories from Canada’s Parliament and Charlie Feldman wants you to know about them.

Feldman is the author of Unparliamentary: Tales from Canada’s Colourful Unparliamentary Past.

If you are a history and political nerd like I am, you will enjoy this book and hopefully our conversation.

Detractors like to say that House of Commons decorum has never been worse than it is today, but don’t be so sure. Charlie Feldman is author of the new book, Unparliamentary: Tales from Canada’s Colourful Unparliamentary Past. He joins Brian to recount stories of foul-mouthed, rowdy, drunken and altogether misbehaving MPs and senators from all the way back to Confederation right up to Justin Trudeau’s “elbowgate” that make today’s cohort seem tame by comparison. Along the way, Feldman explodes some fabled stories as myth, surveys a surprising scarcity of sex scandals, and uncovers some things we might have preferred not to know, from the story of the salmon hidden inside an MP’s pants and why feces were once thrown in the House. (Recorded July 14, 2026)

I’ve been thinking about this since Friday, ever since I watched U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer answer questions at the Iowa State Fair. Despite this being an American bureaucrat at a very American institution, all the questions were about Canada and seemingly from Canadians or Canadian politicians.

Hat tip to CBC Watcher on X for capturing this video from CBC and posting it.

The road less travelled…

My column for the Toronto Sun today was about how Greer’s words that they don’t view this as a trade war really stuck with me.

He’s not the first American official to say that. I’ve had several different American officials say it to my face.

They don’t think we are in a trade war, they view it differently, perhaps, if we had viewed it differently we would be a different position now.

That’s the crux of my column with a few things added in for context, I hope you give it a read.

Cash bail? Why yes, thank you…

The Ford government announced on Friday that they will require cash bail, starting today, for criminals in the justice system.

In my view this is good news and was the third win the Ford government had last week after changing regulations so that illegal immigrants can’t get welfare and winning at the Court of Appeal of Ontario on the ridiculous idea that there is a Charter right to bike lanes on specific roads.

Of course the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Criminal Lawyers Association have already launched a challenge against this.

“The cash bail provisions encroach on exclusive federal jurisdiction over criminal law. Even if Ontario could legislate in this area, the cash bail provisions conflict with the Criminal Code, which expressly requires courts to favour promises to pay over cash deposits. What Parliament made the exception, Ontario has made the rule.”

Yes, I know that grammatically, the last sentence should have a question mark at the end, but I didn’t write the legal brief.

Here is the strange thing about the issue of criminal law in Canada. The federal government sets the rules, but the provinces administer justice.

When the provinces were rightly claiming that Justin Trudeau’s bail reforms had resulted in a revolving door - remember the federal law said people should be released as quickly as possible under the least onerous conditions - the feds tried to blame the provinces. The changes happened due to federal law being altered, but they wanted to say the provinces were to blame.

Will Carney want to pick a fight with Ontario on this matter?

If I was Carney, I wouldn’t.

What about access to health care…

Of course the Carney Liberals showed up in the Toronto Star expressing concern about Alberta’s Bill 11 to allow doctors to split time between public and private care. This is the de facto situation across the entire country and in Health Minister Marjorie Michel’s home riding of Papineau, Quebec, there is even greater access to private health care thanks to the 2005 Chaoulli decision where the court turned itself into a pretzel to say that Quebecers had the right to private health care if public care was denied but the rest of the country did not.

I’ve been annoyed at the Chaoulli decision for more than 20 years, but most Canadians don’t know it exists.

“Where lack of timely health care can result in death, the s. 7 protection of life is engaged; where it can result in serious psychological and physical suffering, the s. 7 protection of security of the person is triggered,” former Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote back in 2005.

Unfortunately, due to political reasons, the full court claimed that the access to care via private delivery only applied to Quebec. Now, we have a Quebec health minister telling Alberta that what is legal in Quebec is not legal in Alberta.

I’m sure people could find small differences in the cases, but the overarching issue is the same. So too is the fact that Quebec is allowed greater leniency by Liberals than the rest of the country.

This is madness and has to stop.

Hate on Teneycke if you want, but base what you are saying in reality.

I was there for the launch of Sun News, I was there for the demise, I’ve likely interviewed Stephen Harper while he was PM more than any other journalist in English.

The claim that Harper is blaming Teneycke and Sun News for him losing the election isn’t borne out by what Harper said. There are also some claims that Harper made that aren’t true.

I go through them in this video.

Today, the Court of Appeal of Ontario agreed with me. As I wrote in my Toronto Sun column, they didn’t just overturn the ridiculous decision by Schabas, they excoriated him and his ruling.

I quoted different sections of the appeals court ruling in my column, and trust me it was tough to choose which parts to quote in such a brilliant decisions. Here, I want to quote from early in the ruling, paragraphs 3-5.

[3] The application judge’s decision presents as a straightforward application of orthodox s. 7 principles. But the application of those principles, divorced from a broader understanding of the constitution of which they are a part, has led to a surprising outcome: the conclusion that routine legislation regulating road usage is unconstitutional.

[4] Something has gone wrong.

[5] The application judge erred in law in interpreting and applying s. 7. But his decision is wrong in a more profound sense, for it subverts a fundamental principle of our democratic constitutional order: a legislature cannot bind its successors. Legislatures in the Westminster tradition are free to undo legislation by amending or repealing it as they see fit. That is the nature of democratic lawmaking in our constitutional order. Of course, all laws are subject to the Charter, but this does not preclude the amendment or repeal of legislation the legislature was under no constitutional obligation to have passed in the first place. Amendment or repeal of legislation may breach the Charter only if the breach can be established independent of the prior state of the law.

There is so much to digest here, but I am glad to see judges - who come from different backgrounds and were appointed by both the Harper and Trudeau governments - agree on fundamental principles. That should be a given, we shouldn’t think about such things, but today, we can’t those fundamentals for granted.

The idea that one Parliament, or legislature, cannot bind the hands of another is fundamental to our system. If I pass a law saying that wearing blue on Tuesdays is illegal and the next Parliament passes a law saying that it isn’t, the more recent law takes precedent.

Yes, I used a ridiculous example on purpose, but just to prove a point. It’s sad that so many people, including those who report and comment on politics, aren’t familiar with this basic concept on the role of Paliament.

No Charter right to bike lanes…

This was fundamental to the ruling, the claim by Justice Schabas that there was a right to bike lanes, grounded in Section 7 of the Charter, the right to “life, liberty, and security of the person.”

The crazy part is this wasn’t even challenged in the original case, but Justice Schabas took it upon himself to still rule on this.

“The constitutionality of the current provision was not, technically, challenged in this application, as it was enacted after the case was argued. However, the findings in these Reasons have application to the continuing controversy,” Schabas wrote in July 2025.

So, he ruled on a case that wasn’t before him to arrive at a decision that he wanted.

Sounds like a perfect liberal hack of a judge.

I’ve been warned about insulting judges before, told that I could be held in contempt of court for saying things about judges. Let’s be clear, I hold Justice Schabas in contempt, I think he is a far left activist, and I would be happy to explain why before his court.

From the appeals court ruling.

“Indeed, the application judge’s decision is replete with criticism not only of the legislation but also of the government’s conduct in promoting its passage. He went so far as to express concern that the legislation was passed despite the government’s internal policy advice and public criticism of the bill,” the appeals court ruling slapping down Schabas reads.

“None of this was relevant to the task before him.”

Paul Schabas was a political activist before he was appointed to the bench by the Trudeau government and he remains a political activist now, something his colleagues on the bench at the Court of Appeal of Ontario called him out on.

“Lest there be any doubt: in formulating policy or legislating, neither the government nor the legislature is under any obligation to accept policy advice, whether from bureaucrats, experts, or members of the public,” the decision reads.

I’m not sure I’ve even pulled the most damning quotes because every time I look, I see new quotes that should leave him questioning his future as a judge.

Speaking of crazy court/tribunal rulings…

Last month there was a tribunal ruling in Ontario that said people in the country illegally were still entitled to welfare. I wrote about it at the time and said it was a crazy ruling that the Ford government needed to deal with.

They promised to do so at the time and on Thursday announced that they had.

Friday morning I was forced to write about the ridiculous take by the Toronto Star’s “senior immigration reporter” Nicholas Keung. It seems, based on his stories, that Keung has never met someone he doesn’t think should be in Canada.

I’ll say as the son of immigrants, who grew up in an area where kids with parents who had Canadian accents were the strange ones, most immigrants don’t back illegals getting welfare.

Still, this was the Star’s headline on the story.

As I point out in my Sun column, Parsa is himself an immigrant having come from Iran with his family as a child.

But sure, the Star’s “senior immigration reporter” smears him as racist.

Let me explain something to you. When a reporter says “experts” say and they only find experts from one side, that is them finding the people they agree with to say what they want said.

I'm a columnist, I am paid for my opinion. Too many people in my business are paid not to give their opinion and yet they do, and they do it using “experts” who just happen to agree with them.

Trade talk options don’t look good…

There were plenty of people willing to spin early on Friday that something good was happening with the trade talks in Washington. I’ve had trouble seeing how this gets settled based on what I know and I wrote about that earlier in the week and again yesterday morning.

The sticking point that I couldn’t get past was that the Americans want a whole bunch of things now, immediately, like booze back on the shelves, but they don’t want to act on auto tariffs or softwood lumber and they want immediate action on changes to how their quotas are handled under supply management.

That leaves the premiers of Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec unable to work with them.

Yes, I get it that provincial premiers don’t handle trade talks, but how do any of them turn around and surrender on booze - the strongest card they have - while getting nothing in return.

CTV is now reporting that things are in fact not looking good. Global is reporting a big gap between the two sides.

The optimism that I heard from several people early Friday was gone by late afternoon.

There were times when I just wanted to jump in and say something, and aside from a few tweets - and my pre-recorded and scheduled videos that I produced before I left - I resisted the urge. Even on the flight home, when I realized that I would have to pay for wifi, I declined to because doing so would mean I would have to justify it by working and writing.

Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do and I am blessed to do it, but everyone needs a break to recharge. And if you can’t tell, I’ve been recharged and have lots to say.

Ben Mulroney’s secret plan to run for Conservative leader…

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Ben Mulroney wants to be leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. Sure, he’s denied it, sure his family has been tight with Pierre Poilievre and helped raise lots of money for him.

But…

If you have the kind of knowledge that only the gnostics do and you can read secret meanings into tweets, then clearly Ben is running.

He’s not, but that didn’t stop me from teasing him as we chatted about politics today.

Is the WNBA a league for women or people who say they are women…

I’m looking forward to watching Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham of the Indiana Fever play against the Toronto Tempo when they come to town next week. No, the WNBA is not the NBA, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy women’ sports and the WNBA has a quality product that of late is drawing a lot of controversy.

We can look to the flagrant fouls committed against Clark and Cunningham, or we can look to the fact that the WNBA can’t define what a woman is.

That is the topic of my latest column for the Toronto Sun.

Don’t expect this discussion to end there though, because in Canada, we have sporting groups like Skate Canada taking tough political stands on this issue. After Alberta passed their Fairness and Safety in Sport Act last year, Skate Canada said they would not host events in the province, because they don’t believe in protecting women’s sports for women.

I’ve asked them for comment for two days in a row now and not had a reply. Will see if one is coming soon or if they are just going to ignore me.

Oh, and while Skate Canada won’t host events in Alberta due to their very reasonable legislation, I haven’t seen Skate Canada say they will boycott the Olympics where men in women’s sports is now banned.

The troubling poll numbers for Poilievre…

If you support the Conservatives and Pierre Poilievre, ignore the rash of summer polls that are all over the map. This isn’t me saying polls aren’t to be trusted, I do trust polls from reputable firms using reputable methods - watch who I cite and who I don’t.

But right now we are in the middle of summer and in the past two weeks we’ve seen polls showing a Liberal lead of four points and a Liberal lead of 20 points and everything in between.

That’s crazy.

There is one poll that I was writing about today in the Sun that Conservatives should be concerned about. It’s all on who Canadians can trust on certain issues and unfortunately, at this point, Carney is beating Poilievre.

As my colleagues at National Post put it when they first reported on this, it’s about vibes, not policy.

You can read the column here or watch the video below.

Everything is awesome in Canada, right…

Eric Kam is a gift to Canada that more people need to experience. He’s a professor of economics at Toronto Metropolitan University, the place most of us still call Ryerson.

He’s also pretty blunt when it comes to speaking out about the economy.

Last week, we saw what are still weak unemployment numbers come out from Stats Canada and Official Canada jumped up and down like it was the best thing ever. We added more jobs that the Americans, we are stronger than the Americans, we are awesome.

Except, did you know that our jobless rate is still much higher than the United States? That’s even after altering our measurements to the American view of the statistic.

We love to tell ourselves sweet little lies about how we are doing.

Dr. Eric Kam isn’t having any of that. Enjoy our chat.

It’s also weird that his office is calling the trip a personal commitment and saying it was vetted by the Ethics Commissioner but offering no details.

We put Carney and his Italian vacation on the front page of the Toronto Sun today.

You can read my column on the issue and what is really happening in the trade talks here.

The good news is the talks are going better than they were. The bad news is, there are still many hurdles to arriving at a deal including Carney offering to the Americans the idea that provinces will end their booze ban when he’s not delivering for the hardest hit provinces and their issues.

From the column.

Ontario’s Doug Ford is highly unlikely to agree to put American booze back on the shelves without some sort of resolution on autos. There is a way to bring any American tariffs on Canadian autos or auto parts down to 1–2% while still allowing the Trump administration to declare a win, but that hasn’t been part of the talks so far.

Quebec Premier Christine Fréchette is equally unlikely to surrender on supply management for dairy, or the booze ban, just weeks before an election in which the separatist Parti Québécois might win without significant gains for her province. And can anyone expect British Columbia’s David Eby to put bourbon back on the shelf when B.C. softwood lumber faces an effective tariff rate as high as 47%?

This is a massive issue and Carney’s bad decisions over the last 18 months have put us in a weaker position than we should be in and the Americans are starting to put pressure on us.

Anyway, enjoy the video, will have a further update later today.

Last week, while I was away on vacation, I left behind videos explaining why neither Jason Kenney nor Doug Ford are coming for Pierre Poilievre’s job. Though as Sam pointed out, maybe Kory Teneycke is, I’ll ask him eventually.

But I kept hearing that I need to talking for Sam about why China doesn’t want Poilievre as CPC leader.

Truth is, the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t really want any Conservative as leader. That’s something Sam and I talked about in this video.

Beyond discussing at length the leadership turbulence, we also discussed the real reasons Larry Brock decided to step down as an MP and it has nothing to do with crossing the floor, collecting a pension or getting a reward.

It started with a case involving a man who imported a large amount of cocaine into Canada, but the judges didn’t decide to throw out the mandatory minimum sentence against him based on the case of Edward Smith, they invented a new case and decided on that.

I couldn’t tell you how many times judges have done that since, but I have documented many cases of this over the last decade and detail three in this video.

Here are the links.

LILLEY: Supreme Court wildly off base in child pornography ruling

LILLEY: Supreme Court issues conflicting, ridiculous rulings on mandatory minimum sentences

LILLEY: Supreme Court ruling on child luring sentencing all politics\

The rich need to pay their fair share. How often do you hear politicians talking about that?

Justin Trudeau used to say that all the time. He jacked up all kinds of taxes. You hear it from Democrats in the States, Liberals in this country. You’re hearing it from the socialist mayor of New York. Zora Mamdani’s ideas are being adopted by politicians here in Canada.

He’s going to drive a real soak the rich agenda. And he’s doing that with his pied-a-terre tax. He’s driving out investment and major investors from New York.

And yet people still say, well, the rich don’t pay their fair share. They don’t pay enough.

I want to show you some things that will actually show that this is not the case. So I pulled the numbers from StatsCan and from the Fraser Institute that studied this.

Did you know that the bottom 20% of income earners in this country pay just 0.7% of all personal income tax?

Now, I’m not advocating for the bottom 20% to be paying more. If you’re in the bottom quintile, you’re not making much money. And you’re probably struggling.

But 0.7%, that’s what the bottom 20% pay.

The top 20%, which is people making, families making over $270,000 a year, they earn 49.5% of all income in the country. And they pay 65.3% of all taxes.

We’re going to break it down even further in a moment, but think about that, 49.5% of the income pay 63.5% of the taxes.

You get into the middle and they’re making about 15% of all income, paying about 10%. This is not the story that you hear out there.

Now, let me show you the top 1%, the 1% versus the rest of us.

Let’s go back to that Occupy Wall Street language of the top 1%.

To be a top 1% income earner in Canada, you have to earn over $294,000 a year. In the United States, to be in the 1%, you are earning in the millions.

We do not have that kind of wealth in this country.

This is the same pattern that’s been going on for years. And I’m going to break it down even further.

The bottom half in Canada earns, bottom half of income earners in Canada, 50% of the population earned 17.5% of all total income. They pay 5% of total income tax. The middle 40%, earns nearly half of all income, 47.5%, but they pay 39.5% of the tax bill.

The top 10% earns 34% of all income, and they pay 55% of the entire tax bill.

So enough with the idea that the rich don’t pay enough.

Do we want a fair tax system? Of course.

Do we want one that isn’t rigged so that people at the bottom are paying everything or the people in the middle carry the bill and folks at the top get away scot-free?

No, that’s not what we want.

But it’s also not what we have.

The rhetoric doesn’t match reality.

And this is something that I have been writing about, talking about for well over a decade. I’ve shown this on TV, on online videos, I’ve written columns. The research is there.

You can find this data from Stats Canada. You can find the reports by the Fraser Institute.

Most people in the media aren’t going to let you in on this.

Want to debate if wealth should be concentrated this way? That’s another debate, but you can’t say the rich aren’t paying their fair share.

There’s another reason why you should be subscribing, brianlilley.com, so that you get this sort of thing.

What is the reality though?

It depends on how you measure.

I’ve had my share of issues with Ford over policy, everything from spending to his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, as I lay out in this video, Ford’s record is more conservative than his detractors give him credit for and the numbers back that up.

Enjoy the video and debate - civilly - in the comments.

His answer then is the same as his answer now, he’s not interested.

Yet, now Kenney can’t even post about supply management without some taking that as a cue that he’s clearly looking to unseat Pierre Poilievre.

That doesn’t come from Poilievre himself or his team, this is all part of the online rumour mill from Poilievre’s online supporters. Funny thing, I’ve been asking Kenney about this idea that he’ll seek the federal leadership since they started surfacing just after the last federal election and his answer hasn’t changed - no thank you.

What funny is that after I kept being told by person after person that not only was Kenney running but that Kory Teneckye was running his campaign, I spoke to both of them about that. They both laughed out loud, in separate conversations, because neither one had ever heard that claim before.

Hopefully, Kenney’s latest comments, the Politico story about them, and this video, help stop the rumours.

We’ll see.