Crowds greet King Charles and Queen Camilla as they arrive in Ottawa for 2-day tour, throne speech
While it's unusual in Canada for a reigning monarch to deliver a throne speech, that's not the case in some other Commonwealth countries. It just depends on how often a government extends the invitation.
In New Zealand, Queen Elizabeth read the throne speech seven times between 1954 and 1990.
Charles's speech on Tuesday in the Senate will mark the third time a reigning monarch has delivered a throne speech in Canada.
While Charles delayed a trip to Canada last year because of his cancer diagnosis, British journalist and royal biographer Robert Hardman says his appearance in the Senate now will have stemmed from a request by the federal government.
Given that U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly proclaimed that Canada should become the 51st state, Hardman says there is a clear attempt to reassert the country's place in the Commonwealth.
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CBC
13 minutes ago
- CBC
'We are very nimble': Calgary mayor keeps door open to G7 white hatting
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Globe and Mail
31 minutes ago
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The party is over. It's time to embrace a postparty system of governance
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But Washington is very clear about where the fault lies: It lies not with the chief but with the 'spirit of party' which inevitably produces such a leader. The villain is the party system which 'agitates the community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasional riots and insurrection and opens the door to foreign influence and corruption.' The only way to avoid the rise of a leader inclined in the direction of a 'frightful despotism' is to prevent the 'spirit of party' from ever taking hold. Had he been around these days, America's founding father would have undoubtedly railed against the facile notion that parties and party leaders do no more than mirror, reflect and represent underlying societal tensions and differences. They do no such thing. Parties exacerbate and exploit such differences. Unlike virtually all other institutions, the party system thrives by dividing. It is polarizing by design. 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Toronto Star
31 minutes ago
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Trump's big bill also seeks to undo the big bills of Biden and Obama
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The bill proposes new 80 hours of monthly work or community service requirements for able-bodied Medicaid recipients, age 18 to 64, with some exceptions. It also imposes twice-a-year eligibility verification checks and other changes. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Republicans argue that they want to right-size Medicaid to root out waste, fraud and abuse and ensure it's there for those who need it most, often citing women and children. 'Medicaid was built to be a temporary safety net for people who genuinely need it — young, pregnant women, single mothers, the disabled, the elderly,' Johnson told The Associated Press. 'But when when they expanded under Obamacare, it not only thwarted the purpose of the program, it started draining resources.' Initially, the House bill proposed starting the work requirements in January 2029, as Trump's term in the White House would be coming to a close. But conservatives from the House Freedom Caucus negotiated for a quicker start date, in December 2026, to start the spending reductions sooner. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has said the changes are an Obamacare rollback by another name. 'It decimates our health care system, decimates our clean energy system,' Schumer of New York said in an interview with the AP. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW The green energy tax breaks involve not only those used by buyers of electric vehicles, like Elon Musk's Tesla line, but also the production and investment tax credits for developers of renewables and other energy sources. The House bill had initially proposed a phaseout of those credits over the next several years. But again the conservative Freedom Caucus engineered the faster wind-down — within 60 days of the bill's passage. 'Not a single Republican voted for the Green New Scam subsidies,' wrote Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, on social media. 'Not a single Republican should vote to keep them.' 'REPEAL THE GREEN NEW SCAM!' reposted Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a Freedom Caucus leader.
