Carney's promised bail reform will be welcomed by premiers
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Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
In the news today: Carney, Metis and major projects talks; Trump's tariffs in effect
Here is a roundup of stories from The Canadian Press designed to bring you up to speed... Carney to meet with Métis groups on major projects Prime Minister Mark Carney is set to meet today with three provincial Métis groups to discuss his government's major projects legislation. The legislation allows cabinet to quickly grant federal approvals for big industrial projects that are deemed to be in the national interest by sidestepping environmental protections and other legislation. Carney is expected to be joined by the Métis Nation of Alberta, the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan and the Métis Nation of Ontario. The Manitoba Métis Federation, which represents Red River Métis, declined an invitation to take part in the meeting Wednesday, saying that inviting the Métis Nation of Ontario undermines the integrity of the gathering and puts the government's plans for major projects at risk. Trump's tariffs go into effect The U.S. began officially levying higher taxes on imports from dozens of countries Thursday, four months after President Donald Trump first announced plans to impose tariffs on most of the world while seeking new trade agreements across the board. The White House said that starting just after midnight goods from more than 60 countries and the European Union would face tariff rates of 10 per cent or higher. Products from the European Union, Japan and South Korea will be taxed at 15 per cent, while imports from Taiwan, Vietnam and Bangladesh will be taxed at 20 per cent. Trump also expects places such as the EU, Japan and South Korea to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the U.S. The Trump White House is confident that the onset of his broad tariffs will provide clarity about the path of the world's largest economy. Now that companies understand the direction the U.S. is headed, the administration believes they can ramp up new investments and jump-start hiring in ways that can rebalance the U.S. economy as a manufacturing power. Alberta separation question to be heard in court A special court proceeding on a proposed Alberta separation referendum question is scheduled to get underway today in Edmonton. Alberta's chief electoral officer, Gordon McClure, referred the proposed question to the court last week, asking a judge to determine whether it violates the Constitution, including treaty rights. The question asks Albertans: "Do you agree that the Province of Alberta shall become a sovereign country and cease to be a province in Canada?" Premier Danielle Smith and Justice Minister Mickey Amery have criticized the referral to the courts, saying the question should be approved and only face judicial scrutiny if it receives a majority vote. Quebec preparing for high-stakes byelection A high-stakes Quebec byelection could see the Conservatives win their first seat in the provincial legislature on Monday. Conservative Leader Éric Duhaime appears to be in a close two-way race with the sovereigntist Parti Québécois candidate in the Quebec riding of Arthabaska. The governing Coalition Avenir Québec, which has held the riding since 2012, seems poised to lose its third straight byelection in less than two years. Duhaime, a polarizing figure in Quebec politics, is hoping to enter the national assembly after his party failed to win a seat in the 2022 election. Mboko continues epic run versus Osaka in NBO final Victoria Mboko will take centre court once again in tonight's National Bank Open final. The Canadian tennis sensation faces four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka in the WTA 1000 tournament's title game at IGA Stadium after rallying for a thrilling comeback in last night's semifinal. Mboko saved a match point, battled from one set down and fought through a wrist injury to win a 1-6, 7-5, 7-6 (4) over ninth-seeded Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan in an epic semifinal clash. The 18-year-old rising star from Toronto became the fourth Canadian woman to reach a final at the Canadian Open, and the latest since Bianca Andreescu's title run in 2019. Mboko will move up to at least 34th in the world rankings after beginning the year outside the top 300. Shook' is a love letter to Toronto's outskirts There's a scene in 'Shook' in which the drama's lead tells a Toronto hipster that he lives in Scarborough. Her response — 'Oooh, Scarborough' — comes off as if he just name-dropped a war zone. 'That literally happened to me,' says director and co-writer Amar Wala, who grew up in the multicultural east-Toronto suburb. 'I didn't know that Scarborough had this dangerous reputation growing up. To me, it was just Scarborough. It was fine.' The moment stuck with him. 'I told myself, 'I'm going to put this in a movie one day.' It took a while, but here it is.' 'Shook' stars Saamer Usmani as Ash, a South Asian twentysomething trying to make it as a novelist while navigating his family's unravelling, a romantic entanglement and the quiet class divisions of the Greater Toronto Area. --- This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 7, 2025 The Canadian Press
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Why doesn't Canada already have a stronger relationship with Mexico?
With tensions once again heating up in Canada's trade negotiations with the United States, and the Trump administration blaming the "elbows up" approach, Canadian officials are scrambling to build new relationships, including with one of its closest neighbours: Mexico. The effort began at the G7 summit in Kananaskis, Alta., in June, where Prime Minister Mark Carney invited Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to meet with him privately, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said from Mexico City Tuesday. Anand is in the Mexican capital with Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne to build a "bilateral economic relationship." But the trip has prompted some experts to ask why it didn't happen sooner. Carney's first trip abroad was to France and the United Kingdom, where he discussed not only broadening trade, but security ties as well and invited King Charles to deliver the throne speech. While France and Britain are key allies, Mexico is a bigger trading partner than those two countries, said Laura Macdonald, a political science professor at Carleton University. "There's a historic reluctance by Canada to engage seriously with Mexico," Macdonald said. "And there's a tendency for them to fail when they try to work together." Anand and Champagne's visit signals a willingness to change that, Macdonald added. No bilateral trade agreement, says Sheinbaum While the two senior ministers met with Sheinbaum for more than an hour and Champagne hailed the talks as "quite extraordinary," anyone hoping that they would leave with the makings of a bilateral trade deal shouldn't get their hopes up. At a news conference Wednesday, Sheinbaum said her meeting with the Canadians was "very good," but that "there is no need" for a separate agreement. "We have the trade deal with the United States, Canada and Mexico," Sheinbaum said. Anand wrote on X Wednesday that she and Champagne are meeting with Mexican business leaders on the second day of their trip "to explore new opportunities and to strengthen strategic partnerships." Getting over the halting nature of Canada and Mexico's relationship will take work, Macdonald said. Canadian businesses have been so used to prioritizing U.S. partners that there has been little effort to, for example, learn Spanish or work to overcome other cultural barriers, she said. "I don't think it's been taken seriously as a modern, diversifying economy and I think that's short-sighted and portrays our kind of colonial mindset toward the world in general," Macdonald said. "Mexicans, similarly, don't know very much about Canada, and think of it as a cold place and an extension of the United States." WATCH | 'Elbows up' sets Canada apart from Mexico in negotiations, says U.S. ambassador: Macdonald has been part of a project by the Canadian union Unifor to partner with Mexican unions to help fight labour abuses in Mexico. "It's important for Canada to be seen as part of solutions to problems of inequality in Mexico … and not just see it as a site for low-wage production as it was kind of built into NAFTA and CUSMA," Macondald said. She noted that arrangement contributed to the U.S. and Canada losing manufacturing jobs. Stuart Bergman, the vice-president and chief economist at Export Development Canada (EDC), has made a case for shoring up Canada's trade relationship with Mexico. In April, he wrote on EDC's website that only three per cent of Canada's two-way merchandise trade is attributed to Mexico, while the U.S. accounts for 70 per cent. He said that a portion of the merchandise Mexico imports from China could be replaced by Canadian equivalent products, including autos and parts. Canada-Mexico trade 'far below potential' Tuesday, the Business Council of Canada echoed Bergman's post, calling Canada (BCC)'s trade and business ties to Mexico "underdeveloped and far below its potential." Canada and Mexico buy fewer than three per cent of each other's overall exports, wrote Shauna Hemingway, the BCC's senior special adviser on Mexico and the Americas. And while Canadian investments in Mexico have increased "dramatically" since 2010, Mexican investment in Canada stalled at $3.1 billion US in 2023, she said. "Our inability to accurately assess what we mean to each other's economies … impacts our decision-making and both countries tend to look much more readily to the east to Europe and west to Asia," Hemingway said. Economists and trade experts say the potential for increased trade lies especially in goods not covered by the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) — such as raw materials like lumber and critical minerals, as well as on goods U.S. President Donald Trump has slapped with high tariffs (or threatened to do so), including steel, aluminum, copper, autos and pharmaceuticals. Anand said Canada and Mexico have agreed to build a work plan that focuses on resilient supply chains, port-to-port lines of trade, artificial intelligence, agri-food, the digital economy and energy security. WATCH | G7 prompted Canada-Mexico diplomatic efforts, says Anand: On the periphery of Canada's diplomatic efforts toward Mexico, a rumour emerged that the two countries had agreed to create a "trade corridor" somehow bypassing U.S. duties. The rumour appears to have come from a seemingly AI-generated YouTube video from the channel PPR Mundial posted July 18, alleging Canada and Mexico are planning to divert $120-billion worth of U.S. trade from American ports by delivering goods by rail and sea "without entering Texas ports" in a so-called "Northern Corridor." The video claims Canada's exports like steel, "maple" and lumber will head to the Gulf of Mexico via a "coastal shipping bridge." The distance between the two countries' largest ports, the Port of Vancouver and Port of Manzanillo, is around 4,917 kilometres by ship according to one estimate. The video is riddled with factual errors, including the types of customs charged on goods passing through the U.S. as well as trade and economic figures, and rarely cites verifiable sources. "The first thing I thought is, 'How in the world would this be done?'" said Debra Steger, professor emerita at the University of Ottawa's faculty of law and a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and the C. D. Howe Institute, specializing in international trade law. "I guess if you went out into international waters, sure, OK. But I mean, how many goods could you put on ships and how long would it take for them to get there? And putting things on planes — you can't put everything on a plane and it's very, very expensive." Steger added that she hopes Champagne and Anand are exchanging information with Mexican officials on their respective countries' negotiations with the U.S. It's unclear if that has happened. When asked repeatedly by reporters Tuesday evening, the ministers declined to answer whether they knew why Mexico has been so far spared the 35 per cent tariffs on non-CUSMA-compliant goods. Anand said only that Canada and Mexico's trade relationships to the U.S. are complex and different. Carney indicated Tuesday that Canada could ease up on retaliatory tariffs and that he would have a phone call with Trump when it "makes sense." Sheinbaum spoke with Trump shortly before news of her country's 90-day exemption from the upped tariffs.
Associated Press
9 hours ago
- Associated Press
Ontario premier says he doesn't trust Trump and warns the US president could reopen trade pact
TORONTO (AP) — The leader of Canada's most populous province said Wednesday he doesn't trust U.S. President Donald Trump and expects the president to soon reopen the free trade agreement he agreed to in his first term. Ontario Premier Doug Ford said the federal government needs to prepare for that to happen this fall. Ford made the comments after the country's provincial premiers and Prime Minister Mark Carney met in private for the first time since Trump escalated his trade war by hitting Canada with a baseline 35% tariff last week. The new tariff, which took effect on Friday after the two countries failed to hit an Aug. 1 deadline to secure a new trade agreement, applies only to goods not covered by the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement that Trump negotiated during his first term. Trump previously hailed the agreement as 'the fairest, most balanced and beneficial trade agreement we have ever signed. ' Carney has said about 85% of trade with the U.S. remains tariff-free because of USMCA. Ford said Trump likely won't wait for the scheduled review of the agreement next year. 'He's not waiting until 2026. At any given time, President Trump — not that he even follows the rules — he can pull the carpet out from underneath us,' Ford told reporters in Toronto Wednesday. 'I'm going to ask the people, do you trust President Trump? I don't.' Carney told a press conference on Tuesday that he has not talked to Trump in recent days but would speak with him 'when it makes sense.' Sector-specific tariffs on Canada, like the 50% duty on steel, aluminum and copper, remain in place. Carney also suggested he may lift counter-tariffs if that helps Canada in the ongoing trade dispute.
