Opinion
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(US) Buyers Beware: Canada’s New Economic Security Screen Will Keep out Predatory Acquisitions
While the USMCA or CUSMA (as Canadians prefer to call it) remains in force (or for however long it remains in force), acquisitions of Canadian assets by American entities are exempt from the requirement to pre-notify Investment Canada about the transaction. Over the last decade, Canada has moved to bolster its power to review and…
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“Country Risk” For Investors: It’s Not Canada. It’s the United States.
In this upside down and volatile world investors now inhabit, it is the United States which astonishingly is starting to fail most benchmarks in country risk and political risk assessments. These assessments are normally applied to investments from the so-called “developed” world into the “less developed world” to determine whether an investment requires a risk…
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Strategies for Canada in the New World Order
New language for the planet we’re on. The Fertile Crescent, the Ukraine’s wheat fields, the fractious Balkans, the Sudetenland. “Geography is destiny”. But Canada? Yes, for Canada, geography will always be destiny. Three oceans to the north, east and west, provided a degree of isolation while the world’s longest (hitherto-for) “undefended border” provided access to the…
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Reflections on Trudeau’s Departure and a Look Ahead
It is with some sadness that we should watch the end unfold. It is not, as some Opposition leaders have chosen to make it, a time for celebration, an opportunity to sing the political equivalent of “Ding dong the witch is dead”. Shame on them. As they ought to know, or will learn in time,…
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Where Do The Liberals Go From Here?
Political pundits are rarely at a loss for words. Yesterday’s unprecedented events in Ottawa could strike one dumb. But we will take a stab, political knifing being in season, at saying something. A Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister who, by her own admission, had lost the confidence of her Prime Minister, has resigned. But…
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Gladiator II: Canada Confronts a Re-Elected Donald Trump. Let the Games Begin.
When he enters the arena on January 20th, 2025, an emboldened President Trump won’t need a net. The rest of us will. He is spoiling for a fight and suiting up. The challenges which have become evident in very short order will test us and test us again. We in Canada must urgently think through…
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Divorce NDP Style
The NDP decision to end their agreement to support the minority Liberal government (the “Supply and Confidence Agreement”) is more about political positioning for the next election scheduled for October 2025 than about any immediate threat to the life of the current Parliament. While the media are having a field day with the NDP’s abrogation…
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Sometimes It’s Not Just a By-election…
We Won, They Lost No one was more surprised by last night’s victory than my fellow Conservatives. When St. Paul’s boundaries were redrawn 1996 the riding went from a bellwether riding to a safe Liberal seat that meant little to the ebb and flow of national politics — until yesterday when the electors of St.…
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Perspectives on Federal Budget 2024
Budget 2024: Lots of Everything all at Once Barry Campbell There is always a political calculus behind a Budget. Where a government is in the electoral cycle is a factor in a budget’s themes and measures. With a Federal election required by the Fall of 2025, a budget now would not normally be the one…