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Ivison: What really goes on inside the leader's election campaign bus

Ivison: What really goes on inside the leader's election campaign bus

National Post25-04-2025

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John Ivison has been on the road with the federal leaders' election campaign tours for his eighth go-round, and offers a behind the scenes look at life with the boys and girls on the bus. Watch the video or read the transcript.
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Every election campaign brings me back to Timothy Crouse's classic account of the George McGovern U.S. presidential bid in 1972, The Boys on the Bus.
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Crouse said that what reporters know best, is not the voters but the tiny community of the press bus and plane, 'a totally abnormal world that combines the incestuousness of New England hamlet, with the giddiness of a mid-ocean gala and the physical rigour of the Long March'.
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This is my eighth general election and it's an accurate description.
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The past week on the Carney Express has involved a lot of hurry up and wait; being shepherded onto buses and planes: arriving like thieves in the night at some unremarkable hotel and leaving as the sun is coming up.
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'Did you enjoy your stay,' I was asked when checking out in Montreal. It was hard to say. We'd only been there for eight hours, six of them asleep.
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The days are a blur. On Sunday, after a rally in Nepean, we flew to Prince Edward Island, landing in the teeth of a cyclone. It was a huge relief not to end up as the eighth paragraph of a PM plane crash story.
Next morning, we flew to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and fell asleep in Quebec City.
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Once a day, we get a chance to question the candidate for 15 minutes, which forms the basis for the day's news. Not everyone gets a question, so reporters huddle – not so much a conspiracy as colleagues cooperating to ensure everyone's questions are covered.
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Most days, the candidate will take part in a ludicrous photo op requiring him to risk losing a digit on a saw at some factory or other.
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I bumped into Carney while he was having breakfast and he told me as Bank of England governor, he once had to drive a simulator around a racetrack at the Jaguar car factory. 'Has anyone ever made it round,' he asked. 'Lewis Hamilton almost did,' came the reply. The headline of the Governor crashing the economy into a wall wrote itself.
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Carney was much more comfortable playing road hockey with a bunch of 10 year olds, his only concern being that he might take out one of the kids. Elbows were down for the day.
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I've travelled on three campaigns covering Justin Trudeau, four with Stephen Harper; I was in the Rockies with Andrew Scheer and watched Jagmeet Singh longboat on the tarmac in Halifax and found quiet time to write a column on a bench in Kelowna.

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Raises, retention bonuses promised for Canadian Forces personnel
Raises, retention bonuses promised for Canadian Forces personnel

Toronto Sun

time2 hours ago

  • Toronto Sun

Raises, retention bonuses promised for Canadian Forces personnel

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Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account In addition, it is expected that around 1,400 new staff will be hired at the Department of National Defence. The initiatives were outlined Monday during a technical briefing that followed Prime Minister Mark Carney's announcement that defence spending was being significantly increased. 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Bell: Danielle Smith is playing nice with Carney — Poilievre is not

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‘Harper's dreams coming true': MPs slam Carney's fast-tracking plan
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National Observer

time4 hours ago

  • National Observer

‘Harper's dreams coming true': MPs slam Carney's fast-tracking plan

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'That's what we'll be looking at as we study this newly-introduced bill over the next few days.' 'We would vote in favour of accelerating even one project,' Poilievre said, indicating that he wants to see new pipelines in particular. 'Once a project is on that list, it's not a question of if it's going to move forward, but how,' Alexandre Boulerice, NDP critic for environment and climate change, said. 'It's like Stephen Harper's dreams coming true." Last week, BC Premier David Eby said he will not support Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's vision of building a new oil pipeline to BC's north coast. Poilievre made it clear he doesn't think provinces should get veto power over nationally important projects. 'We need a pipeline to the Pacific, and if the prime minister says he's going to wait till everyone agrees, then nothing will get done, which is what has been happening for the last decade,' Poilievre said at a press conference at Parliament Hill on Monday. 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Green Party Leader Elizabeth May also criticized the proposed legislation in a June 9 press release. 'Bill C-5 gives the federal Cabinet sweeping discretion to fast-track projects while weakening Indigenous rights and environmental protections,' May's statement reads. 'This is the first time in 40 years that Canadian environmental assessment law has been written to serve political deals first and environmental responsibility second.' Factors for determining national interest 'carefully worded' The bill lists some factors the government may consider when deciding whether a project will be listed for fast-tracking, one of which is whether it will 'contribute to clean growth and to meeting Canada's objectives with respect to climate change.' Another factor is whether it will 'advance the interests of Indigenous peoples.' Boulerice said these are nothing more than broad slogans. Mark Winfield, a professor of environmental governance at York University, was of the same mind. 'These are attempts to cover off points of potential vulnerability,' he said in a phone interview with C anada's National Observer. The bill does not have a clear definition of 'clean growth,' he said, which creates huge loopholes for approving projects or employing technologies that many Canadians wouldn't consider 'clean.' 'The government has been very liberal in its definition of 'clean' to include things like CCUS [carbon capture, utilisation and storage], critical minerals, [and] nuclear,' Winfield said. The bill raises serious questions about how the federal government will reconcile Canada's climate change obligations with all the talk of potential pipeline and fossil fuel export projects at the same time as northern Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario are going up in smoke, he added. 'Everybody thinks that it's an open door for pipelines, in fact, for oil and gas,' Boulerice said. 'It's not about solving the housing crisis with a big project of building millions of homes. It's about energy.' Carney has made repeated references to both clean and conventional energy, the latter of which refers to fossil fuels like oil and gas. Carney has referenced 'decarbonized' oil and used the Pathways Alliance's proposed multi-billion dollar carbon capture project as an example of projects that could be considered for fast-tracking. 'Oil is carbon. There's no such thing as decarbonized oil,' Angela Carter, an associate professor of political science at Memorial University of Newfoundland, said in a phone interview. 'We need to be very, very careful about this definition of clean growth. If it's a project that contributes to sustaining and growing oil production, well, that's not clean growth. It's very, very, very simple.' Bloc Québécois House Leader Christine Normandin said it's too early to say whether her party will support the bill. First, they want the government to respond to their request to split the bill into two parts, one for interprovincial trade and one for major projects. 'In a sense, this is taking what Stephen Harper tried to do with C-38 and putting it on steroids … The problem with trying to take shortcuts is it has a tendency to backfire and to make the underlying conflicts worse than ever,' Winfield said. 'Look what happened: Northern Gateway died, Energy East went nowhere, it took extraordinary steps to get Trans Mountain done.' The biggest challenge for Carney's government will likely be navigating Indigenous opposition and constitutional rights, said Michael Wernick, former clerk of the Privy Council. Indigenous Peoples have the most 'legal ability' to slow things down, he said, adding that it is not unsolvable for the Carney government but will be a key hurdle. Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak voiced her concerns with the bill on Friday and called an emergency meeting on it this week. Onlookers and experts who care about climate are looking on with 'considerable uncertainty' because the bill could allow for massive progress to be made on an east-west electricity grid or fast-tracking renewable energy infrastructure, but that may not be the case, James Rowe, an associate professor of environmental studies at the University of Victoria, said. 'Given the political economy of Canada as the fourth largest oil producer in the world … it's more likely those real powerful forces are going to get their way — and projects that might otherwise have been stopped by regulatory processes and consultations … are going to get fast-tracked,' he said.

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