Canada not even at the kid's table as Carney absent in Washington...

Plus the diss against Mulroney, Dief was a rock star, why you can't end the strike and going back to the office.

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Canada isn’t even at the kid’s table in Washington, D.C. In fact, we aren’t there at all as European and NATO leaders accompany Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the White House to meet with President Donald Trump.

Prime Minister Mark Carney will be in Ottawa meeting with Ontario Premier Doug Ford. Ford himself isn’t even in Ottawa to meet with Carney, this is an add on before he speaks to the annual Association of Municipalities of Ontario event and then hosts a thank you social for party workers at a downtown restaurant.

Meanwhile in Washington, those who are serious about international matters, and who are taken seriously, will be at the White House.

That includes, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, Mark Rutte, NATO Secretary-General, Keir Starmer, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Friedrich Merz, Chancellor of Germany, Emmanuel Macron, President of France, Giorgia Meloni, Prime Minister of Italy, and Alexander Stubb, President of Finland.

Canada is a member of NATO, just like all the countries there. We have the largest Ukrainian diaspora in the world. We have invested significantly to support Ukraine, but still no invite.

So much for Carney’s comments that “We are the most European of all non-European countries.”

Despite Carney’s decision to sprint to Europe to meet Macron and Starmer just after winning the Liberal leadership and becoming PM. Despite a return trip just after the election to tell the Europeans that we are pivoting towards them. Despite Carney signing a new “Security and Defence Partnership” agreement this past June, we simply aren’t on anyone’s radar.

We are alienated in Washington, ignored by Europe when it counts, and still involved in trade wars with China and to a degree India.

Things are going swimmingly.

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Mulroney was a truly historic figure…

You may have heard over the weekend that the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada have decided that Brian Mulroney can’t be recognized as a “National Historic Person” until 25 years after his death, meaning 2049.

This has never been the practice of the Board, and in fact, as I point out in my Toronto Sun column, both John Turner and Pierre Trudeau were recognized months after their passing. It’s another example of official Ottawa never wanting to recognize the contributions of Conservative leaders.

To tie Mulroney and his historic significance back to the plight of Ukraine, it was Mulroney who led the charge to have Ukraine recognized as an independent state as the Soviet Union collapsed. He was also able to do this while maintaining good relations with Russia’s leadership at a time when it looked like they would pivot towards Western liberal democracy.

Mulroney was key to all of that, Mark Carney can’t get an invite to a meeting, but we know official Ottawa will want to recognize Carney the first chance they get no matter the strength or weakness of his record.

It’s a ridiculous decision, but not surprising.

That said, it should be reversed.

Dief, the original Canadian rockstar politician…

As discussed above, official Ottawa doesn’t like recognizing the success of Conservative politicians.

John Diefenbaker was the biggest thing to hit Canadian politics, his fame and support outpaced Trudeaumania which would come later, but you might not know that based on how the MSM talks about the two leaders.

Thankfully we have Bob Plamondon’s new book Freedom Fighter: John Diefenbaker's Battle for Canadian Liberties and Independence to set the record straight. Bob has written several interesting books on Canadian history and you will love this one.

The feds tried and failed to end the Air Canada strike…

I’ve been banging on this drum for a while, the days of governments forcing an end to strike by ordering workers back on the job are over. In fact, they’ve been over for some time now, since shortly after a 2015 court ruling that invented the previously rejected Charter right to strike.

Now, if you think, I’ve read the Charter and there is no right to strike listed then you would be correct and would pass a reading comprehension test.

Unions have been fighting to try and get a constitutionally protected or Charter right to strike since the Charter came into being. And in case after case they rejected it from the Labour Trilogy cases of the 1980s all the way up to at least 2011, the court said no and warned against judges putting strict and limiting laws in the middle of complex labour negotiations.

Then….

“The right to strike is not merely derivative of collective bargaining, it is an indispensable component of that right. It seems to me to be the time to give this conclusion constitutional benediction,” Justice Rosalie Abella wrote in a 2015 decision.

That upended everything, pretty much made back to work legislation and as we saw this weekend, it made the federal Labour Minister’s order that both sides go to binding arbitration utterly useless.

If you want more info, including links to all the relevant case law, read my column. This ruling was a disaster, it’s more personal opinion and politics than case law and it has ruined a carefully structured balance arrived at over decades.

Until Air Canada and CUPE strike a deal, this work stoppage won’t end.

Back to work…

Now, employers it seems can order workers back on the job and that’s what the Ontario government is doing joining a long list of other employers telling the laptop class they need to be in the office five days a week.

Seems no one really wanted to be first but now with most of the big banks, Rogers, Amazon, City of Brampton and more calling for a return to work, it is safer for all employers.

I wrote about the issue here and also had a chance to chat with Caroline Mulroney, the minister in charge of the civil service for the Government of Ontario about the decision.

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