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Nashville Predators defenseman Ryan McDonagh (27) stick checks Vancouver Canucks forward Brock Boeser (6) during the third period in game two of the first round of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs at Rogers Arena.
Can a Canadian team end 31-year Stanley Cup drought?
For the past 31 years of hockey folly, Canadian fans have greeted the NHL playoffs by telling anyone who will listen that “this year is different.”
It was 1993 when the Stanley Cup was last brought north of the border – that time by the Montreal Canadiens. But there are genuine grounds for optimism this year, with four Canadian teams competing in the last 16 for the first time in seven years.
The Toronto Maple Leafs haven’t won the Cup since 1967 and are already behind 2-1 in their best-of-seven series with the Boston Bruins at the time of writing.
The Winnipeg Jets are tied with the Colorado Avalanche, but hopes are high at the Whiteout street party, where fans gather wearing white Jets jerseys in downtown Winnipeg, after their team finished the season with eight straight wins.
Vancouver Canucks are tied with the Nashville Predators, but the Canadian fans are quietly confident after winning their division.
Meanwhile, the Edmonton Oilers are tied in their series against the LA Kings after game one, in which the world’s best player, Connor McDavid, proved unstoppable, providing five assists in a 7-4 win. The bookmakers have the Oilers as the third favorite, behind the Carolina Hurricanes and Florida Panthers, both of whom are 2-0 up in their series against the New York Islanders and Tampa Bay Lightning respectively.
Despite the prospect of making history, there is no sense that the country is getting behind any one franchise as “Canada’s team.” This is for good reason: If Vancouver and Edmonton triumph, they will face off against each other in round two.
Tribal loyalties run deeper than national ones in a country like Canada, with more geography than history.
TikTok logo displayed on a phone screen is seen through the broken glass with American flag displayed on a screen in the background in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on April 24, 2024.
Why Canada will mimic America's TikTok dance
We appear to be at a curious “hinge moment” in history where great powers are engaged in intense rivalries but at the same time are finding ways to cooperate.
Congress and President Joe Biden have just told China to sell TikTok, the social video-sharing app, or it will be banned in the US. It has also just voted to send $8 billion in military aid to Taiwan, a move the Chinese have described as a “dangerous provocation.”
At the same time, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in China attempting to thaw relations. He follows on the heels of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and recent calls between US and Chinese defense chiefs to discuss their differences.
Similar dual-track diplomacy is happening in other Western countries. Germany is “derisking” its relations with China, yet Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited Beijing earlier this month. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese undertook a state visit to China in November, the first since 2016.
Canada’s government ordered a national security review of TikTok last September and has already banned the app on government devices. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada is watching the debate in the US, and observers have little doubt that Canada will follow Washington’s lead, if the app is banned – just as it did when it blocked Huawei from its 5G network in 2022.
Sino-Canadian relations are likely to get cooler before they warm up. Interim findings of a Canadian public inquiry into foreign interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections by China will be released later this spring – details that are unlikely to lead to calls for rapprochement.
At the same time, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly is sending her senior diplomat, David Morrison, to China as a prelude to an official visit.
The general sense is that we all have to coexist in the same neighborhood, albeit, in the words of US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, “in small yards with high fences.”
Graphic Truth: Canada braces for wildfire season
As the weather warms, the US and Canada are bracing for the potential of another record-breaking wildfire season. Canada’s 2023 wildfire season was the most destructive on record, with more than 6,000 fires tearing through tens of millions of acres and blanketing the US East Coast and Midwest in smoke.
Meanwhile, the US saw the smallest number of acres burned in more than two decades last year, thanks tohigh levels of precipitation and snowfall, which kept the West mostly out of trouble. But it also experienced its deadliest wildfire in over a century in Maui, Hawaii.
Canada's federal officials are warning that this season could be even worse. Warm fall and winter conditions, combined with droughts and next to no snowfall from December to February in essential areas like southern British Columbia and the Prairies impact soil moisture levels, raising the risk of fires.Detectives pose in front of the truck used in the Toronto Pearson International Airport gold heist as they give details of the arrests made one year on in Brampton, Ontario, on April 17, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Police make a golden catch, Canada hikes capital gains tax, Haiti names transitional council, Boats wait on Baltimore, Indigenous groups eye energy investments
22.5 million: Police have cracked the case of the biggest gold heist in Canadian history, arresting six people in the $22.5 million caper that involved the theft of a container at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport last year. Two of the suspects were employees of Air Canada.
⅔: No gains, no pain! Canada’s new federal budget increases the tax rate on capital gains from one-half to two-thirds for some payers. The measure, which applies to businesses and individuals whose capital gains earnings exceed $250,000, is projected to net about $19 billion over the next five years.
7: Haiti on Tuesday named the 7 voting members of a transitional council that is charged with selecting a successor to Prime Minister Ariel Henry. Henry, who was unable to return to violence-wracked Haiti following a trip last month to secure international aid, has pledged to resign once the council picks a new PM. The council’s mandate runs until 2026, but it is still unclear when it will actually take power. Last month, Canada dispatched troops to Jamaica to help train an international policing mission for Haiti.
3: After a boat crash brought down a bridge at the entrance to Baltimore’s harbor last month, interrupting shipping at one of North America’s busiest ports, the city opened two alternative shipping channels to accommodate cargo boats. Shipping giant Maersk has said those aren’t deep enough, but there is intrigue afoot: The company also said it had seen unconfirmed reports of a third channel set to open later this month that would be deep enough, and that it was waiting for local authorities to confirm. The ball’s in your port, Baltimore.
3.6 billion: The Canadian government will make available up to $3.6 billion in preferential loan guarantees for indigenous groups that want to invest in natural resources projects. Those projects could include, for example, massive energy transport projects like the Trans Mountain or Coastal GasLink pipelines, as well as a range of renewable energy projects.
Biden and Trudeau: A political eclipse?
Why are Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau getting so badly eclipsed by the great totality of critics? Can good policies seize back the agenda of a lagging campaign?
President Biden is busy touting his positive economic record but is baffled when it gets eclipsed by issues like his age. He rightly touts creating 300,000 new jobs in March and dropping the unemployment rate to 3.8%, but the headlines still say he looks like a guy who might as well have watched a solar eclipse alongside Moses.
Want to brag about the bullish stock market? Biden could, but that’s overshadowed by news this week about stubbornly high prices on gas, rent, and groceries. Want to shed some light on an economic recovery? Nice try. Word that the Fed may delay rate cuts clouds it over. How about projecting US strength in the world and containing a wider war with Iran, which the US has been doing? That’s undermined by the Hamas-Israel war and the casualties in Gaza that the US appears to have little influence over.
Meanwhile, every day Donald Trump does something so astronomically weird – selling golden shoes or hawking mash-up Constitution-Bibles – that all political telescopes end up turning his way first. So all that good economic result and that big fundraising advantage, so far, has not done much for Biden.
In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is also having trouble staying unblocked. After eight long years in office, you now need to consult with Stephen Hawking on black holes to figure out if any light can escape from the event horizon of the Liberal campaign. This morning,Abacus Data released a poll showing the Conservative Party is 20 points ahead of the Liberals, the highest ever.
That kind of polling eulogy is why Mr. Trudeau is hemorrhaging leaks about his upcoming April 16 federal budget in order to recapture the penumbra of popularity he had when he was first elected. Can these new shiny programs do the trick?
- On April 1 came the CA$1 billion national school food program to ensure over 400,000 kids get school meals annually over the next five years.
- Then came the new national defense policy, “Our North, Strong and Free,” which focuses on Arctic and cyber security, increasing spending by CA$8.1 billion over the next five years, which will push Canada’s spending up to 1.76% of GDP. It’s not quite at the NATO prenup agreement of 2%, but closer.
- There is another CA$1.5 billion for a new Canada Rental Protection Fund to spur more affordable housing and rental units and then, boom, another $600 million in loans and funds to help new owners and renters.
- Oh yes, and CA$2.4 billion for the AI industry to make sure Canada doesn’t take the Large Language Model hit on the chin.
Has it worked? Have the giant budget leaks reframed the Trudeau government’s political fortunes? And more broadly for any government, can new ideas actually change political fortunes?
So far, the evidence is scant. The Abacus poll actually asked the question, “do budgets move votes?” and used the national school food program as a case study. Turns out, most folks didn’t even know about it yet. “Less than half of Canadians were aware of the program announcement” and worse, “parents with kids aged 3 to 14 years of age were actually less likely to be aware of the announcement (41%) than everyone else.”
What does that tell us? That no one is listening to Trudeau – that he’s being tuned out? Or is it more that the media is so fragmented that it takes more time to sell programs these days? Or, maybe that program got drowned out by the other four or five other announcements that spilled out.
Instead of selling voters on one big, new idea to frame the election, Trudeau has set out a smorgasbord of bureaucratic bonanzas with no central theme. Restaurants that serve buffets rarely get Michelin stars.
But here is where the political eclipse gets really weird: The programs being pitched by the Liberal leader … are extremely popular, even with people who oppose Trudeau.
“68% of current Conservative supporters think [the national school food program] is a good or acceptable idea,” according to the Abacus poll. And even stranger, “2 in 3 of those who have a very negative impression of Justin Trudeau think it's a good idea.”
That means even if you have ideas people really like, sometimes it will not change voter intention. “It is like the Prime Minister is a shepherd with no flock,” Abacus CEO David Coletto told me. Biden has the same issue. Even though the economic numbers are good, the narrative frame of negativity is hard to shatter.
That doesn’t mean that opposition leaders – Pierre Poilievre or Donald Trump – have a lock on winning. There is lots of time ahead, and campaigns matter. Trump will have to do more than be a vindictive doomsayer campaigning as the Count of Counterfactuals (“none of these terrible events would have happened if I were President!!!,”he says of inflation and the war in Ukraine, claims which are, of course unprovable), and Poilievre might have to get off Mean Street and move to Main Street. But at least people are listening to them.
Politicians think if people look directly at their records, they will see something truly beautiful. But it turns out that direct scrutiny often blinds the electorate to their message, and voters either turn away or grab a set of glasses the opposition conveniently gives them in order to change their view.
And that’s why a political eclipse is so fascinating: When even the best policies, the ones people really like, no longer illuminate the way, it’s hard to know which way to look.
– Evan Solomon, Publisher
An organizer carries a clipboard with petitions for a ballot initiative to enshrine abortion into the Arizona state constitution during a small rally led by Women's March Tucson after Arizona's Supreme Court revived a law dating to 1864 that bans abortion in virtually all instances, in Tucson, Arizona, U.S. April 9, 2024.
High stakes in Arizona abortion ban
On Wednesday, Arizona Republicans blocked attempts by Democrats to repeal an 1864 total abortion ban that the state’s supreme court reinstated on Tuesday. The court’s move means the state must revert to the 123-year-old law making abortions almost entirely illegal except when it is necessary to save a pregnant person’s life.
That ruling came a week after a pro-choice group obtained enough signatures to put an amendment to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution on the ballot in November – all but ensuring that abortion, a major motivating issue for Democratic voters, will play a big role in how the swing state votes later this year.
It is also having political fallout beyond the Grand Canyon State with Democrats wasting no time rallying opposition to abortion restrictions. Polling shows it is an effective issue for Democrats, particularly among young voters, with whom Joe Biden has struggled to connect.
In the upcoming, razor-close election against Trump, the struggle for battleground states that will allow the winner to carry the electoral college is intense. Abortion ballot initiatives could give the Democrats a boost in the presidential election and down-ballot races, since it may drive turnout. The issue is largely credited for helping the Democrats outperform in the 2022 midterms.
Abortion will likely be on the ballot in the battleground states of Arizona and Florida. Voters in blue states New York and Maryland will also have the opportunity to vote on abortion initiatives, and Democrats are trying to get it on the ballot elsewhere, including Nevada, which is seen as a crucial swing state.
Like the dog that caught the car, Republicans now look to be in disarray on the issue, trapped between wanting to take credit for restricting abortion and fears of alienating moderates and not wanting to fuel Democratic momentum on the issue. Trump, who likes to take credit for the Supreme Court appointments that ended Roe v. Wade, now seems to sense his vulnerability on this issue. He said Wednesday he would not sign a national abortion ban, preferring to leave the matter to the states.
It’s an issue that may gain salience north of the border, where abortion rights advocates can be expected to warn against Conservative plans for Canada during the election to come.A club for hemming China in
On Monday — the day that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters that Canada is interested in joining the AUKUS defense alliance — documents were released at a public inquiry that showed that Canada’s intelligence agency believes China “clandestinely and deceptively interfered in both the 2019 and 2021 general elections.”
Also on Monday, as Chinese ships carried out exercises in disputed waters in the South China Sea, the US, UK, and Australia announced that they were talking to Japan about inviting that country to participate in Pillar II of the security pact.
China’s growing military and political belligerence is rattling other countries, and they are responding by drawing together in a way that would have been out of the question a decade ago.
Neighbors under pressure
Pillar I of AUKUS, which was announced in 2021, is a collaboration between Australia, the Americans, and the Brits aimed at adding a powerful new capacity to Australia’s military: nuclear-powered (though conventionally armed) submarines. This is a huge spend for Australia — $368 billion over 30 years — that carries an inherent political risk. And to make the deal, Canberra had to blow up relations with France by abandoning a deal to buy French subs. The Aussies only did that after a year of tense political and economic confrontations with China that left decision-makers in that country gravely concerned about its future in a neighborhood dominated by Beijing. Australia’s back was against the wall.
Like Australia, Japan is being driven to closer cooperation with the United States by its concerns about an increasingly powerful and assertive China. Japan’s trade-focused economy depends on international shipping passing freely through the South China Sea, for instance, where China has been clashing with the Philippines.
So Tokyo has reason to be interested in Pillar II of the AUKUS arrangement, which focuses on defense technology sharing, including quantum computing, hypersonic missiles, artificial intelligence, and electronic warfare — all areas where China presents a technological challenge, and where Japan could offer expertise.
With China rapidly expanding its military, Japan has decided to break with its post-war pacifist tradition and dramatically increase defense spending.
Northern lightweights
Canada is also opening its checkbook, but at a much smaller scale, which would explain why the AUKUS partners are making a point of talking about doing business with Japan, rather than Canada.
Nobody is talking about adding other countries as full members, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday, but proceeding on a project-by-project basis.
Historically, Canada spends little on defense, falling well short of the 2% of GDP that NATO members have all agreed to spend. In an increasingly dangerous world, though, pressure is mounting for Canada to step up, and on Monday, Trudueau’s government did roll out a five-year plan to bring defense spending up to 1.76% of GDP by 2030, up from 1.38% last year.
Allies welcomed the announcement, but there was nothing significant enough to make Canada a much more desirable partner for AUKUS, says Eugene Lang, a former Liberal defense official turned Queens University professor. Officials are interested.
“I just don’t know that we're doing anything to get their attention,” he says. “What they're doing in AUKUS is investing in developing brand-new technologies. To my knowledge, Canada has not got any specific money set aside for any of that.”
University of Ottawa Professor Thomas Juneau, who has interviewed allied officials about Canada’s potential role in AUKUS, found that Canada is increasingly seen as a free rider in defense and intelligence circles. It’s not surprising that Japan was invited before Canada, he says.
“It's really normal for AUKUS to bring in Japan before Canada because Japan is not only a much bigger country than we are, but it's right next to China.”
Wolf warriors
On the other hand, because of its Five Eyes intelligence-sharing experience, Canada could more easily cooperate with AUKUS than Japan, says Graeme Thompson, a senior analyst with Eurasia Group.
And while it may not be spending enough money to be taken seriously, the Trudeau government has moved to be more circumspect in its relationship with China, limiting Chinese investment in critical minerals and being cautious about research projects.
“The scales have fallen from a lot of politicians’ eyes in the West,” Thompson says. “The question remains, how do you have constructive diplomatic and economic relations with Beijing, while at the same time competing with them geopolitically and seeking to build up and maintain deterrence?”
China will object to the new alliances being organized around it, but don’t expect Beijing to stop buying sabers and rattling them.
“China has a rising economy, so the idea that its rising economic power wouldn't come with rising geopolitical ambition is a fantasy, and we've kind of believed in that fantasy for a while, not just in Canada but in other Western countries,” says Juneau.
“But it was a fantasy all along.”
Cityscape of the Guanabara Bay at the peak of Corcovado Mountain in the Tijuca Forest National Park in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1 July 2019.
Hard Numbers: Brazil bets on tourists, Canada braces for flames, Biden beefs up bridges, Is Ottawa spending too much money?
3: Brazil has now, for the third time,prolonged visa-free entry for citizens of the US, Canada, and Australia. For years, Brazil’s visa policy has operated on the principle of reciprocity — “we ask of your citizens what you ask of ours” – but in 2019, the Bolsonaro administration scrapped that for the US and others to boost tourism. While current President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva pledged to reverse that decision, the flood of US tourists has made it a hard sell. Brasilia now says it’ll wait until next year at the earliest.
6,000: As Canada girds for another “catastrophic” summer wildfire season, Ottawa hasdoubled the tax credit for volunteer firefighters to $6,000. Last year was the country’s worst wildfire season on record, with blazes that displaced more than 230,000 people and sent smoke billowing across the US, blanketing major cities with smog for days at a time.
830 million: Speaking of governments spending money, the Biden administration announced Thursday that it has earmarked $830 million to make US infrastructure — roads, bridges, rails, and ports — more resilient to climate change. The money will go to 80 different projects across 37 states and territories.
59: Is the Canadian government spending too much money? Some 59% of Canadians think so, according to anew survey (carried out just in time for tax season!) The partisan divide is stark though — more than three-quarters of conservative voters said Ottawa is too loose with its cash, but just 30% of Liberal voters agreed.