After Canada, the anti-Trump backlash moves to Australia
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A few months ago, it seemed a dead certainty that Pierre Poilievre would be Canada's next prime minister. His Conservatives had a double-digit lead in the polls over the incumbent Liberals and Poilievre channeled the mounting frustrations of an electorate fatigued by then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's decade-long tenure. But by Tuesday morning, Poilievre's hopes for national victory were dashed, and also, perhaps, his political future: Not only had the Conservatives failed to win Monday's national election, but their leader looked set to lose his own parliamentary seat.
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Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Who's responsible for online harms? Responsibility for troubled file floats between ministers
OTTAWA — As ministers settle into their new roles, discussions are underway about who is best suited to steer the government's efforts to legislate against online harms, cabinet minister Steven Guilbeault said on Tuesday. Questions have arisen about which minister and department would be best suited to handle the complicated issue after the Liberals' proposed Online Harms Act died in Parliament when Prime Minister Mark Carney triggered a federal election in March. 'It's a good question,' said Guilbeault, who oversees the Canadian Heritage department, told reporters on his way into the Liberals' weekly cabinet meeting. 'We're having conversations to see what would be the most appropriate department to bring this forward.' Canadian Heritage had been the first department to develop and later introduce the Liberals' initial plan to combat the harms Canadian users experience online. That proposal, which was released in 2021, was met with widespread backlash over concerns about the requirement for social media companies to remove content within 24 hours after receiving a complaint. Experts had warned the provision was overly broad and risked infringing on free expression, given that companies could remove legal content. The Liberals then struck an advisory group and got to work on figuring out a Plan B. Responsibility for the bill also shifted from Canadian Heritage to the Justice Department. In early 2024, former justice minister Arif Vriani introduced Bill C-63, which proposed to create a new digital safety regulator that would be tasked with ensuring social media giants took steps to reduce users' access to content, such as child sex abuse images and incite extremism and violence. That bill was also met with backlash over its proposal to introduce stiffer sentences for hate-related offences and reintroduce a controversial section to the Canadian Human Rights Act to allow people to bring forward complaints of hate speech, which civil liberties advocates and Parliamentarians said risked violating free speech. Virani spent months defending the need for the tougher Criminal Code measures to be included in the online safety bill, but last December announced the government was prepared to split the bill to help get it passed. In January, former prime minister Justin Trudeau announced his resignation and that Parliament would be suspended until March. Emily Laidlaw, a Canada Research Chair in cybersecurity law at the University of Calgary, who sat on the government's expert advisory group, said it was a mistake for the government to have combined different provisions into the same legislation and that by the time it announced the legislation would be split, 'it was too late.' 'What I'm hoping is, when they reintroduce it, they have very firmly the platform regulation law,' she says. Should the Liberals want to propose changes to the Criminal Code or the Canadian Human Rights Act, that should be separate, she said. Justice Minister Sean Fraser told reporters on Tuesday that the government was going to look at different measures when it comes to protecting children online, but would have more to say in the months ahead. One new factor in how the Liberals may decide to proceed is the fact that Carney named to his cabinet the country's first minister responsible for artificial intelligence and digital innovation, a position currently held by former broadcaster Evan Solomon, who was elected in late April's general election. The Liberals in their last bill listed AI-generated sexualized 'deepfakes' as one of the harms companies would have to take steps to tackle. Asked whether online harms would fall under his mandate, Solomon told reporters on Tuesday that it was 'up for debate.' 'But probably yeah.' Laidlaw said while she does not believe the government needs to start a new round of consultations, it ought to take a second look at the scope of harms it is seeking to tackle. For example, she suggested there was room to include the issue of identity fraud. 'I actually think it should be broadened to include some of the ways that AI can be used to facilitate harm, so it might not just be the typical social media on Instagram.' National Post staylor@ Hate crime laws to be split from Liberals' online harms bill after blowback PBO: Creating proposed online harms regulators estimated to cost $200M Get more deep-dive National Post political coverage and analysis in your inbox with the Political Hack newsletter, where Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson and political analyst Tasha Kheiriddin get at what's really going on behind the scenes on Parliament Hill every Wednesday and Friday, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up here. Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.
Hamilton Spectator
4 hours ago
- Hamilton Spectator
‘No buyers' remorse' for voters as Doug Ford's Tories enjoy big poll lead
Premier Doug Ford's third-term Progressive Conservatives are enjoying an extended honeymoon with voters, a new public-opinion survey suggests. In the first major Ontario political poll since Ford's Tories were re-elected in the snap Feb. 27 provincial election, Abacus Data found the governing party well ahead of its rivals. The PCs were at 49 per cent to 28 per cent for Bonnie Crombie's Liberals, 14 per cent for Marit Stiles' New Democrats and five per cent for Mike Schreiner's Greens. Ford defied the odds Thursday becoming the first premier to win three consecutive majority 'We're seeing the highest vote share for the Tories we've measured since we've been tracking and we see Ford's personal numbers better than they've been since we've really been tracking,' said Abacus president David Coletto. 'At least right now, there's no buyer's remorse in re-electing the PCs,' said Coletto. In the February election, the Tories received 43 per cent of the popular vote to 30 per cent for the Liberals, 18.6 per cent for the New Democrats and 4.8 per cent for the Greens. Abacus surveyed 1,000 Ontarians from June 2 through last Thursday using online panels based on the Lucid exchange platform. While opt-in polls cannot be assigned a margin of error, for comparison purposes, a random sample of this size would have one of plus or minus 3.09 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. That means the poll was conducted during the first ministers meeting in Saskatoon — where Ford played a prominent role with Prime Minister Mark Carney — and as the Tories were ramming through their controversial Bill 5 designed to fast-track mining and infrastructure projects. Prime Minister hints at prioritizing energy infrastructure — such as pipelines — after first While the premier received mostly positive press for working with Carney to counter U.S. President Donald Trump's trade war against Canada, Queen's Park has been roiled by protests against the Protect Ontario By Unleashing Our Economy Act . First Nation leaders have warned there will be 'fierce resistance' if long-standing treaty rights are overridden by the law passed last week. 'Bill 5 has generated, at least from my vantage point, no ... negative implications for the popularity of this government at least right now,' said Coletto, warning that could change. 'There's a lesson for those opponents of it — that they're going to have to do far more to get the public engaged, to be opposed to this at a time when people are really focused on just getting things done.' Indeed, Ford's current standing appears largely due to his vocal stance against Trump's tariffs and a willingness to work with Carney's re-elected federal Liberals. 'There is this moment where Ontarians, like the rest of the country, are rallying around their political leader. I don't think people are overly optimistic, but I do think they get a sense that their political leaders are working together ... working with a common purpose,' said Coletto. 'We have a common goal or enemy, or however you want to frame it,' he said, pointing to the existential threat to Canada that Trump poses. The pollster said Carney's popularity is 'definitely benefiting the Liberal brand in Ontario,' which is encouraging news for Crombie's provincial Grits. But 'the collapse of the federal NDP has put downward pressure on the Ontario NDP' that's hurting Stiles' party. 'They're at the lowest we've measured them at in our tracking — 14 per cent,' said Coletto. In terms of personal popularity, Ford was at 44 per cent positive, 33 per cent negative for a plus 11 per cent favourability rating with 21 per cent of respondents neutral and two per cent unsure. Stiles was at 28 per cent positive, 25 per cent negative for plus three per cent with 31 per cent neutral and 16 per cent uncertain. Schreiner was at 24 per cent positive and 23 per cent negative for plus one per cent with 34 per cent neutral and 20 per cent unsure. Crombie, the subject of a multimillion-dollar pre-election attack ad blitz from Ford's Tories , was at 31 per cent positive and 33 per cent negative for minus two per cent with 25 per cent neutral and 11 per cent uncertain.
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
Net migration set to plummet to pre-Brexit levels
Net migration is set to plummet to pre-Brexit levels in the next year, the Government's chief immigration adviser has said. Prof Brian Bell, the chairman of the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), claimed that falling job vacancies and an increase on the restrictions for foreign workers and students were likely to push net migration down from its current figure of 430,000 to 200,000 within a year. That would return it to the pre-Brexit net migration average of between 200,000 and 250,000 before Boris Johnson became prime minister and opened up work and student visas. Prof Bell's claim would mean net migration would fall to a quarter of its record peak of 906,000 in the year ending June 2023. However, he warned that it would probably result in staff shortages in hospitality and retail, including chefs, waiters and shopworkers, which will be excluded from the list of highly-skilled or shortage occupations to benefit from overseas recruitment. Sir Keir Starmer's White Paper has proposed that some 180 occupations will no longer be eligible to recruit overseas. Migrants will only be able to obtain a job if the position is graduate-level or above in an attempt to end low-paid migration. 'Foreign workers will be limited to occupations that are crucial for the industrial strategy or for the missions of the Government. Key sectors that will not be eligible therefore are, for example, hospitality,' said Prof Bell. 'So we've seen over the last few years that, for example, chefs, there's quite been quite a lot of visas issued for chefs. That will cease once that sector is removed from eligibility, and it won't be added back in because it's not part of the industrial strategy. 'You would see hospitality suffering. Retail will be unlikely to access it, whereas advanced manufacturing and life sciences will still have access, partly because they're more likely to be graduate jobs anyway and so remain eligible.' Labour's efforts to reduce net migration follows restrictions introduced at the start of last year by the Conservatives to bar foreign workers and students from bringing in their dependants and the introduction of higher salary thresholds for migrants seeking skilled jobs in the UK. Prof Bell said the Tories' measures, combined with a slump in vacancies, would cause net migration to fall further than had been expected by the Office for Budget Responsibility. 'I think it's possible that we'll get down to more like the 200,000 mark,' he said. Official data published on Tuesday showed that the number of available jobs fell by 63,000 between March and May to 736,000 vacancies as companies held back on hiring and replacing workers who left. However, he forecast that as the economy grew net migration would revert to between 250,000 and 300,000. It could fall lower depending on the impact of the White Paper plans to require foreign skilled workers to be graduates, ban the overseas recruitment of foreign care workers and raise English language standards. 'I think we'll revert to about 300,000 although probably a little lower given the White Paper's recent changes which, if enacted, will reduce net migration by perhaps about 80,000 at the average. So somewhere just below 300,000 would seem like a plausible medium-term scenario,' said Prof Bell. His comments came as he launched a report by the MAC which warned that a proposed reduction in family visas aimed at reducing net migration risked breaching human rights law. The MAC said that raising the annual salary threshold required for a Briton to bring their foreign partner or spouse to the UK from its current £29,000 to £38,700 is 'most likely' to conflict with rules ensuring rights to a family life under the European Convention on Human Rights. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
