Alberta premier defends speech outlining grievances with Ottawa
CBC
After a fractious federal election campaign focused on perceived Liberal failures, the Conservative House leader is now signalling the caucus may be willing to support some of Prime Minister Mark Carney's legislative agenda when the House of Commons returns later this month.In an interview with CBC News, Andrew Scheer, who is considered by party sources to be the front-runner to serve as their interim parliamentary leader, said the Conservatives could back Carney if he needs legislative support
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Hamilton Spectator
35 minutes ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Opposition parties slam Ford government for legislature's long summer break
We're busy. See you Oct. 20. That's the rationale from Premier Doug Ford's Progressive Conservatives in adjourning the legislature Thursday for another unusually long summer break , infuriating opposition parties who said the move makes it harder to scrutinize the government's actions. The lengthy recess comes a week after MPPs voted themselves pay increases of 35 per cent with a pension plan and as Ford repeatedly talks about the need for Ontarians to work together in fighting U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs. Government House Leader Steve Clark said the break is necessary because the Conservatives passed 10 laws — including the controversial Bill 5 that fast-tracks mining and infrastructure development by bypassing provincial and local rules in which critics call a blank cheque for damage to the environment, endangered species, labour laws and Aboriginal treaties. 'It's been an ambitious sitting,' Clark added in reference to the six weeks MPPs spent at Queen's Park this spring in the wake of the Feb. 27 election. 'The government now is looking for time to implement that policy.' Not so fast, said his New Democrat counterpart John Vanthof, who called Bill 5 a 'case in point' on why the legislature needs more sitting days with more daily question periods, committee hearings and public hearings on proposed legislation. 'When you rush things through the legislature, when you shorten the time the legislature sits, you make bad legislation,' Vanthof told MPPs before the Progressive Conservatives used their majority to pass the motion for a 20-week break, which ends seven days after Thanksgiving. 'It's just actually not wanting to be accountable,' charged Liberal House Leader John Fraser. After MPPs return Oct. 20, they will sit for seven weeks until their Christmas break, meaning the legislature will have been in session for just 13 of 52 weeks this year. During breaks, MPPs typically work in their ridings. For 2026, the legislative calendar has legislators returning from their summer break on a more traditional and earlier timeline, on Sept. 14. Unless that changes.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
I'm going to get better as Tory leader, Badenoch says
Kemi Badenoch has insisted she is "going to get better" as Conservative leader, saying she is not "shy about self-criticism". It comes after shadow chancellor Mel Stride defended his boss earlier this week following criticism of her performances at Prime Minister's Questions, saying she would improve. Badenoch told the BBC: "You don't want people to be the very best they're going to be on day one." The interview followed a speech by Badenoch where she launched a commission to examine whether the UK should withdraw from a series of international agreements in order to tackle illegal migration and allow foreign criminals to be deported more easily. Since last summer's general election, when the Conservatives suffered their worst defeat in the party's parliamentary history, support for the party has slumped further and they have been overtaken by Reform UK in the polls. The Tories also suffered a disastrous set of local election results last month, losing hundreds of council seats to Nigel Farage's party. Meanwhile, there has been criticism of Badenoch's performance against Sir Keir Starmer in Prime Minister's Questions and her decision to take time to work out policy positions on key issues. Asked about Stride's comment that she would get better, Badenoch told the BBC: "The people who have done this job before have all told me that the first day is not what the last day is going to be like. "That every week is different, every week you're learning. "And that's what you want, you want people who are going to get better." Badenoch, who became Tory leader in November, admitted her party had "made some mistakes" and had "hit rock bottom" at the last general election. She said she was changing the party but "it's not going to happen overnight" - and she insisted she would definitely lead it into the next general election in four years time. Badenoch launches review into possible ECHR exit Conservatives disown Liz Truss's mini-budget The Conservative Party faces problems - is its leader one of them? Earlier this week, Stride distanced the party from former Prime Minister Liz Truss's mini-budget, saying in a speech that it had damaged their economic credibility. The £45bn package of tax cuts funded by borrowing sparked turmoil on financial markets and led to Truss resigning after just 45 days in office. Asked why she did not make a decisive break with Truss by throwing her out of the party, a smiling Badenoch said she did not whether the former PM was still a member. "Is she still in the party?," she asked, insisting that she was not interested in "any particular individual" but about how to get the country "back on track". A spokesman for Truss, who lost her seat in last year's general election, confirmed she was still a Conservative Party member. In a speech earlier, Badenoch sought to flesh out her party's approach to tackling illegal immigration. She launched a commission, which will be led by Tory peer and former justice minister Lord Wolfson, to look at the potential consequences of leaving international treaties including the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and whether this could help the government take back control of the asylum system. The ECHR, which was established in 1950, sets out the rights and freedoms people are entitled to in the 46 signatory countries and is a central part of UK human rights law. However, Badenoch said it had become a "sword used to attack democratic decisions" and to halt attempts to deport illegal migrants and foreign criminals. The Tory leader said she now believed the UK "will likely need to leave" the ECHR "because I am yet to see a clear and coherent way to fix this within our current legal structures". But she said she would not commit to this without "a clear plans" and "a full understanding of all the consequences". The commission is due to report back at the Conservative Party's annual conference in the autumn. If the commission concludes that it would not be practical to leave the ECHR, she said she would abide by that, stressing that her aim was to control immigration and remove foreign criminals from the UK. "If there is a way to fix that without leaving the ECHR ... then that's great because my objection is not about the ECHR so much as it is the problems we're trying to solve," she said. Whether to leave the ECHR has been a divisive issue for the Conservative Party. During last year's leadership contest Badenoch argued leaving the treaty would not be a "silver bullet" for tackling immigration, while her rival Robert Jenrick, now shadow justice secretary, said the party would "die" unless it left. However, since becoming Tory leader, Badenoch has hardened her stance. Last month, the government said it would bring forward legislation to make clear Parliament needs to be able to control the UK's borders and to clarify how aspects of the ECHR should apply in immigration cases. Sign up for our Politics Essential newsletter to keep up with the inner workings of Westminster and beyond.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Carney and Trump are holding private talks to drop tariffs
Prime Minister Mark Carney and U.S. President Donald Trump are having discussions out of the spotlight to reach a trade deal and lift tariffs. Sources with knowledge of the conversations first confirmed the calls with CBC/Radio-Canada and Industry Minister Mélanie Joly later told reporters that Carney and Trump are talking to each other. A source, who spoke on the condition they not be named, said the two leaders have had a few phone calls in the evenings and exchanged text messages about trade since Carney's visit to the White House last month. There have been no public readouts of the talks between Carney and Trump. Sources said the conversations are aimed at reaching an agreement on the trade war launched by the U.S. against Canada. Carney and Trump have talked openly about a desire to chart a new economic and security deal, but the Canada-U.S. relationship appeared to hit a snag earlier this week when Trump doubled tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports. The tariffs, now at 50 per cent, are a further blow to the Canadian industries that are the U.S.'s biggest supplier of the Wednesday, Carney only said "intensive discussions" were ongoing and that his government was readying reprisals if negotiations with the United States failed. Sources told CBC/Radio-Canada they are hoping for some sort of Canada-U.S. trade deal by the time Trump and Carney meet at the G7 summit — just 10 days from now in Alberta. Asked Thursday how close the two sides are to a deal, Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc said he's not talking about it publicly. Speaking in French, Joly confirmed there have been talks and said it's normal during a trade war to have diplomatic discussions. "We won't negotiate in public," she added in English. "We'll let the prime minister do his work." A White House spokesperson told CBC News that Trump was "directly" involved in talks with Canada, but didn't mention Carney specifically. "Talks with Canada continue about trade, border security and defence matters. Any deal announcements, however, will come from President Trump himself," spokesperson Kush Desai said in a official with the U.S. embassy said "both the president and prime minister, or members of their teams, have publicly acknowledged that there are ongoing conversations. But this is not something that will be negotiated in public." Earlier this week, Trump's envoy to Canada, Ambassador Pete Hoekstra, told a crowd in Toronto the deal "is being settled at the highest levels of the U.S. government with the involvement of the highest elected officials." The direct conversations between Carney and Trump were first reported by the Globe and Mail. Carney, who campaigned on the promise he'd take on Trump, has been under pressure to respond to the president's latest tariff salvo. The Canadian Steel Producers Association called the doubled tariffs a "crushing blow" to the industry and said the move effectively blocks Canadian steel from entering the U.S. market. The association wants to see immediate counter-tariffs on U.S. metals. Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who said he's in daily talks with the prime minister, called for retaliation if an agreement can't be reached "in the next few days." "Let's hope they get a deal. But if they don't, let's come out guns ablazing," he told reporters Thursday at Queen's Park.
