Carney's deal with Alberta, support for steel and lumber, the F-35 wins and Joly said what...

Plus the truth on Ontario's plan to hike booze prices.

So, we have a deal between Alberta and the federal government. Just what is in it remains to be seen, but if Premier Danielle Smith is moving forward with it, she clearly thinks it is a good deal.

Prime Minister Mark Carney wasn’t saying too much about the deal on Wednesday when he held a news conference to talk about supports for the steel and lumber industries.

“It is about much more than one thing and fundamentally, it’s about building this economy. It’s about making Canada more independent, and it’s about making Canada more sustainable,” Carney said.

As I write in my Toronto Sun column, we shouldn’t need announcements like this, we shouldn’t need a Major Projects Office and the fact that we do speaks to how badly we have run our economy. I appreciate what Carney is doing in signing investment deals with the UAE, with Australia and India, his launching of free trade talks with India, the Philippines and more, but if we don’t fix our system at home, then none of these deals will amount to much.

His primary focus over the next six months should be on fixing the regulatory and investment climate here in Canada so that we can expand trade. Signing free trade agreements won’t mean much if we can’t attract investment from these countries after the deals are signed because our rules and regulations make Canada unattractive.

Help for steel and lumber…

On Wednesday, Carney announced support for the steel and lumber industries mainly through tariff rate quota changes and giving preferential treatment to buying Canadian goods. Countries that don’t have a free trade agreement with us will be able to sell us less steel than previously before tariffs kick in and the government will incentivize the use of Canadian steel and lumber by subsidizing rail freight charges to the tune of 50% beginning next spring.

You can read the full announcement here, or watch his comments in the video below, but he did make some interesting comments.

“Steel and lumber are core to Canada’s competitiveness. To compete and win in this new global environment, these strategic sectors must be ready to seize new markets at home and around the world,” Carney said.

He went on to say that as he signs these other free trade agreements around the world, he needs to ensure the Canadian steel and lumber industries remain viable long enough to take advantage of these new markets. I found that an interesting comment, one that shows the PM thinking strategically about the future of our industries.

Watch his full news conference here.

Melanie Joly says she has no interest in Paris…

Wednesday morning, Industry Minister Melanie Joly held a chat with media back in Canada while she was on a trade mission in Tokyo. Mackenzie Gray of Global News asked her about my column from Tuesday which said she was eyeing an exit to Paris as Canada’s Ambassador to France.

After those comments were made public on social media, the critics came out to say this proves my story wrong. Anyone who knows politics knows that this is far from the end of the story.

The fact is, Carney is looking to change up his line-up of MPs and cabinet before he heads into another election, perhaps as early as next spring.

Will Joly depart?

Well, I spoke to more than a dozen people, most of them Liberals, who believe Joly will be part of the departure package with Bill Blair, Jonathan Wilkinson and Chrystia Freeland. After the fact I had other Liberals reach out and suggest that François-Philippe Champagne may be out as finance minister in the next cabinet shuffle, likely coming before the end of December.

Another suggested that it would be Steven Guilbeault and not Joly who would be going to Paris.

Bottom line is that Carney wants change and we will see the full extent of that change sooner rather than later.

Imagine that, the F-35 is the better jet…

We aren’t going to by the Saab Gripen fighter jet out of Sweden. Doesn’t matter that the Swedish Royal Family came here, it doesn’t matter that they falsely claimed that they could produce 10,000 jobs by building them in Canada.

The F-35 is simply the better jet, and it’s not even close.

Don’t take my word for it, take the word of the experts who graded both planes for the government back in 2021. Documents obtained by Radio-Canada, French CBC, show the scores that each plane received and it’s embarrassing that anyone is still pushing the Gripen.

The F-35 got a score of 95 per cent on military capabilities, with a total of 57.1 points out of 60.

By contrast, the Gripen-E finished with a score of 33 per cent, netting 19.8 points out of 60, according to the Department of National Defence (DND) ranking obtained by Radio-Canada.

The gap is particularly significant in scoring for “mission performance” and ability to upgrade the aircraft over its life cycle.

I’ve been saying the F-35 is the best plane we could buy for years and that view has been dismissed as shilling for the Americans or not patriotic enough.

Do we want to put our pilots in a plane like the Gripen when it doesn’t even pass on most fronts?

I interviewed former fighter jet pilot Billie Flynn about this and he said it was the best plane.

Then I interviewed military historian David Berccuson and former defence procurement Czar Alan Williams who said it was the best plane.

The elbows up crowd will not be happy when Carney announces that he’s sticking with the F-35. And if he doesn’t there is a serious claim for negligence on the part of his government.

Ontario booze price hike pushed by Ford’s finance minister…

Doug Ford has spent a lot of time branding himself as a tax fighter, a champion of the little guy, a man who fights to keep costs low. So, it was a bit of a surprise to find out his government was the one behind a push to hike booze prices and not the LCBO, Ontario’s liquor board.

As I reported in the Toronto Sun, in a front page story, Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy is the one who directed the changes for wholesale pricing of booze down to the penny.

These changes were supposed to take effect on January 1, 2026. The industry pushed back against the price hikes - generally between 10-15% but up to 70% on draught craft beef - and so the whole project has been put off until April 1, 2026.

Hopefully between now and then Premier Ford has a nice talk with Minister Bethlenfalvy and they update the system without screwing the consumer.