While I was away: Antisemitism

2026/06/08 Leave a comment

Wide range of commentary on antisemitism and conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism, and the mixed reaction to PM Carney’s address to Jewish leaders. Making an address outside of the House of Commons never works, former PM Mulroney learned that with Italian Canadians, former PM Harper learned that with Sikh Canadians and PM Carney repeats those mistakes with Jewish Canadians.

And Carney should have been clearer on the extreme forms of anti-Zionism on display in Canadian cities and institutions that go far beyond legitimate criticism of the Israeli government policies and actions, particularly under the current Netanyahu government with extremist Jewish ministers in Cabinet and government:

Canada is being tested by a crisis of antisemitism, Carney says

… Mr. Carney’s speech, his first to focus on the topic of antisemitism, was met with polite praise from those in the audience, which included MPs, local and provincial politicians and religious leaders. He had faced pressure to speak in person directly about the issue.

But Jewish leaders criticized him for not addressing his government’s foreign policy toward Israel, which has included condemning the country’s conduct in Gaza and recognizing a Palestinian state – moves that some in the Jewish community have said further inflamed domestic tensions.

“When Canadian elected leaders publicly condemn Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, Jewish Canadians pay the price,” Holy Blossom’s Rabbi Yael Splansky said in recorded remarks played before Mr. Carney began speaking.

Globe editorial: The missing words in Mark Carney’s antisemitism speech

…What should he have said? That the problem is antizionism, a complete, anything-goes rejection of, and demonizing of, Israel’s existence. And that antizionism is manifesting itself on Canada’s streets and university campuses, in a complete, anything-goes rejection, and demonizing of, Jews.

This is where the Prime Minister’s courage failed him. Taking on the antizionists – the core of the problem – was not something this Liberal prime minister was prepared to do. He went into a synagogue before an invitation-only audience of 170 Jewish leaders and did not meet the moment. He didn’t mention Israel, despite his prepared remarks doing so – once. He was unable or unwilling to articulate what is behind the “scourge of antisemitism” that he rightly condemned….

Geist: Why Mark Carney’s Antisemitism Speech Did Not Meet the Moment

…Naming the crisis is only step one however, and on the parts that matter most, the speech missed the mark. Begin with where he chose to deliver it. Carney told his audience he was speaking in a synagogue but the address was for all Canadians. But a speech for all Canadians that frames antisemitism as a national problem belongs on the floor of the House of Commons, where Canadians are represented and where all MPs – whether or not they are Jewish or represent ridings with large Jewish populations – would have had to sit together and hear the need for the country to take responsibility for antisemitism. I’m happy to see Evan Solomon, Leslie Church, Anthony Housefather, Rachel Bendayan, and Ben Carr in attendance. But we need all MPs, particularly those who have said little about antisemitism since October 7th, to see this as their issue too. MPs from all perspectives sitting side-by-side only happens in the House of Commons, and it did not happen yesterday (as one rabbi noted, a speech in a synagogue was needed months ago in the immediate aftermath of the shootings).

Chris Selley: At a synagogue, Carney tells the wrong people to abandon their ethnic rivalries

…We’re lucky, and we have done a lot of things right, but we’re not special: You can’t ask people to bring their faith, culture, language and world view with them to Canada but leave any rivalries or grievances behind. That’s just not human nature. This insistence on combating dire situations with myth-making will eventually be a large part of the Liberals’ undoing. In the meantime, on the issue of antisemitism specifically, Carney’s government seems to have almost nothing to offer. And he offered it at a synagogue.

John Ivison: The crucial words Carney wouldn’t speak in his antisemitism speech

For my part, I felt that it was an unusually eloquent and heartfelt speech but that it fell short for a different reason: it failed to be honest about the cause of the corruption in the body politic.

“We welcome the peoples of the world, in all their diversity and splendour. We don’t welcome the world’s hatreds,” Carney said. “When you come to Canada, you bring your faith, your traditions, your language, your story but you leave behind your animosities.”

But that is not happening. Islamists arrive and are given permission to give vent to their ancient loathing by anarcho-socialists, and their naive campus enablers, who love Palestine but hate Canada, and despise Jews most of all.

The Montreal4Palestine group continues to defend the mock hanging of a man wearing a kippah last month, saying it was directed at a specific political figure (Israeli politician Itamar Ben-Gvir), not at Jews. Will it take a real lynching to convince the waverers that this is not legitimate freedom of expression?

Given the demographics, it is clear why the prime minister was ambiguous in laying the blame.

But, as Elie Wiesel learned in the death camps, neutrality helps the oppressor and silence encourages the tormentor.

The malignancy will continue to metastasize if we keep obscuring its source.

Tasha Kheiriddin: Mark Carney in denial over what’s behind antisemitism

…Citizenship is a two-way street. Newcomers have a responsibility to respect the laws and customs of the place they choose to call home. When they not only fail to embrace Canada’s basic values, but repudiate them, there must be consequences: fines, arrests, deprivation of liberty, and in the case of non-citizens, removal from the country. Let me be clear.

That’s what Carney should have said. Instead, he listed his government’s actions to date, including Bill C-9, the Combating Hate Law. He announced the creation of a Ministerial Advisory Council on Rights, Equality, and Inclusion, one of whose jobs will be to study antisemitism. It includes one lone Jewish member, former senator Marc Gold, and features Omar Alghabra, an MP who has been photographed numerous times in the company of Islamic extremists.

This is BS. Canada doesn’t need another council to study a problem that Carney described quite fully in his remarks. Canadian Jews need to feel safe in their homes and communities. And all of us need an end to denial, inaction and the toleration of hate.

Lederman: The Prime Minister addressed Canada’s antisemitism problem. Almost nobody was satisfied

… Canada’s Jewish community, like any community, is not homogenous. There are always going to be differences of opinion. Some of the criticism is fair, but the knee-jerk sneering at the Prime Minister’s acknowledgment of Jewish Canadian pain – and his call for the rest of the country to step up – is disappointing and unproductive. The speech was not a hollow gesture, but a meaningful promise to act.

The speech, in fact, was the action. Or an action, at least.

“No Jewish Canadian should ever have to wonder whether the government sees this clearly,” said AI Minister Evan Solomon, who is Jewish. “We do. We see it, we acknowledge it, we are acting on it.”

Canada’s leader is asking the country to come together to oppose antisemitism. This should be commended, not condemned. The response to that plea tells the story of a country divided.

Stephens: Hatred of Israel and the Degradation of the West

…How is it that hatred of one country can wind up doing more damage to the haters than the hated?

All prejudice, mindless or deliberate, is mind-warping; obsessive prejudice, of the kind Israel disproportionately attracts, is even more so. There are today millions of people around the world who, with considerable media and academic assistance, have convinced themselves that the major, if not sole, cause of injustice in the Middle East and even the world is Israel’s occupation of parts of the West Bank and Gaza.

As a result, this obsession has contributed to the relative neglect of the region’s other fundamental problems, above all the abiding grip of authoritarian politics in places like Cairo and Ankara and totalitarian religious fundamentalism in Gaza and Tehran. When was the last time you heard of an American campus protest against the treatment of Kurds by Turkey (a NATO ally and longtime beneficiary of U.S. security guarantees), or the genocide in Sudan?

Why is this year’s arts biennale in Venice being roiled by the inclusion of Israel, but not of China? Why has the recent report detailing the extensive documentation of systematic use of rape and sexual torture by Hamas and its collaborators received little attention?

These aren’t just questions of hypocrisy or double standards. They are evidence of minds that have lost the capacity to think dispassionately and critically. What we should really be worried about isn’t the future of Israel; it’s the fate of the West.

Moral judgments should be made about Israel according to the same standards by which we judge other countries faced with similar circumstances. It’s when Israel is demanded to be a saint — and then, as it invariably falls short, is damned as the worst sinner — that we lose our sense of perspective and proportion.

Jack Mintz: Australia’s response to antisemitism puts Canada to shame

…Dave Rich, a leading British academic on antisemitism, concluded that labelling Zionism as a form of western colonialism is used to demonize, exclude and attack Jewish people and supporters of Israel. He also argued that claiming that Israelis are just like the Nazis in practising genocide undermines the importance of the Holocaust in defining antisemitism.

This all-encompassing approach in Australia should be carefully reviewed by the Carney government. It is not just a matter of a government’s responsibility towards security. It is also an issue of social cohesion.

Like Australia, intimidating demonstrations that dehumanize Jews has led to an increase in antisemitic attacks in Canada. Reported and unreported antisemitic acts are frequent, totalling 567 per month in 2025 alone, according to B’nai Brith Canada’s annual audit of antisemitic incidents.

The Carney government should not wait for a Bondi-like terror incident before acting to curb antisemitism. So far, its effort is deficient.

Lederman: The San Diego mosque shooting is a profoundly 2026 tragedy

….What drives a 17- and 18-year-old to this kind of hatred? To end people’s lives, and then their own? Mr. Clark was about to graduate from high school. 

Consider everything we’re learning about the manosphere – misogynistic, hateful, homophobic, antisemitic, and somehow very attractive to many young men. 

A spark – caused by a bad day, a fateful encounter, who knows what – sends these kids to dark corners of the internet. Their hateful curiosity is reinforced by algorithms that continue to serve up vile ideas. These algorithms are designed to maximize engagement – and, for the social-media companies, profits. It’s all happening in the combustible environment of the divisive politics of the day, where hateful rhetoric has become the norm, not just from blabbermouth commentators, but politicians, all the way up to the U.S. President. 

In the aftermath of this tragedy, far-right Trump ally Laura Loomer posted: “The shooting in California took place at a jihadi mosque known for its hate preachers.” She wrote that it was “likely planned by Muslims” and the U.S. Islamic lobby. There are too many people who will believe her own hate-filled misinformation, uncritically.

Beyond the grief of this incident, there is an urgent need to address this emergency. We are in a confirmation-biased, hate-fuelled misinformation crisis. Wherever these two young men – boys, really – have been taught to hate like this, others are there too, lurking, reading, learning at the knees of influencers, extremist pundits, hateful politicians. The consequences, as we have seen too many times, can be deadly.

Polansky: Despair is not an option

…The perceptive reader will have noted that none of these measures requires special privileges or carve-outs for Jews or any other minority group. Moreover, all of these recommendations apply widely to problems of governance across the country. This is precisely the point. The observable social decline described here afflicts Jews acutely but not exclusively.

Similarly, the older dispensation of Canadian liberalism, now in need of restoration, allowed Jews to flourish along with other Canadians. Another way to put it is that improving the worsening situation of Canadian Jews will entail making much-needed corrections to the country as such. This is not incidental.

Against this proactive view is a growing (and largely online) sentiment, bolstered by a combination of unfavourable demographic trends and ugly news stories, that Canada is finished for Jews, and they should begin looking elsewhere. This, in fact, echoes much of the pessimism one increasingly finds among non-Jewish Canadians of all stripes about the trajectory of their country.

The French novelist Michel Houellebecq famously wrote “there is no Israel for me.” That there is an Israel (or, potentially, a Florida) for Canadian Jews should not change their calculus. By any historical measure, Canada has done quite well by them (and vice versa). They owe something to their country, and if nothing else, they owe it to their ancestors, who braved far worse to get here, to stay and fight. Canadians in general should do likewise. In this, as in other matters, they may find common cause in repairing their country’s weakening institutions.

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Carney to continue using Trudeau-era advisory board to suggest Senate appointments

2026/05/08 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to see whether there is any impact on the diversity and political leanings of Carney appointments. Trudeau appointments: 55.2 percent women, 19.8 percent visible minorities, and 12.5 percent Indigenous:

Prime Minister Mark Carney said Wednesday he will continue to rely on the independent advisory board created by Justin Trudeau to suggest Senate appointments, but gave no timeline for filling a growing number of vacancies. 

After more than a year in office Mr. Carney has yet to make a single Senate appointment. Vacancies are mounting not just among senators but also on the board tasked with selecting new members of the Senate. 

There are currently nine vacancies in the 105-member Senate and another six senators are planning to retire by the end of 2026. The Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments, consisting of federal, provincial and territorial representatives, currently has just five members. It has 24 vacancies, leaving most provinces without representation on the board. 

At a Montreal-area press conference, Mr. Carney gave no indication of when he would begin addressing the vacancies in the Senate. “We will be appointing senators in due course, and I will take into account the advice of the independent advisory committee that was established by my predecessor,” he said. 

Source: Carney to continue using Trudeau-era advisory board to suggest Senate appointments, Carney not planning to allow senators in Liberal caucus, senior government official says


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An impatient Mark Carney would rather bypass the public service than reform it

2026/01/12 4 Comments

Public service reform is a thankless task politically and takes an inordinate amount of time, effort and political support. Needed but rarely executed given previous failures like UCS.

Former deputies need to share some of their concrete experiences with efforts in public service reform and lessons learned, rather than more general diagnostiques and recommendations. More on the how and less on the why:

…Unlike his predecessors, Mr. Sabia took over as Clerk of the Privy Council with decades of business experience under his belt. That makes him an oddity in Ottawa, where most senior bureaucrats have never worked outside the capital, much less outside government.

Therein lies the problem that Mr. Carney and Mr. Sabia face as they try to inject new dynamism into a public service that has long operated according to the principles of risk minimization and strict adherence to procedure. The senior bureaucracy is almost exclusively composed of individuals who climbed the ranks during an era of increasing centralization of power and policymaking in the Prime Minister’s Office. Their skill set revolves around keeping the dust down, rather than disrupting the status quo. 

As in any organization, however, disruption is a necessary component of innovation. And the federal public service is desperately in need of it. 

“[N]otwithstanding the massive increase in hiring over the last decade, too few public servants have been hired for the leading-edge skills required for modern government,” write former PCO clerk Kevin Lynch and ex-PCO official James Mitchell in their newly published book, A New Blueprint for Government. “When Amazon can deliver a package to almost anyone in Canada the next day, public expectations for government service standards increase accordingly. Yet those expectations are too often not being met.”

Source: An impatient Mark Carney would rather bypass the public service than reform it

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Keller: Mark Carney is already struggling with Justin Trudeau’s immigration legacy

2025/11/12 Leave a comment

Captures the challenge and the resulting disruption well:

…The challenge is that for three years the Trudeau government opened the door to what was effectively an unlimited number of notionally temporary immigrants. They came “temporarily” with the aim of staying permanently. (And who can blame them?) They paid tuition to a fly-by-night college and accepted minimum wage jobs in the hope of parlaying that into citizenship.

In the year 2000, there were 67,000 people holding a temporary work permit. By the end of 2024, there were 1,499,000. 

In 2000, there were 123,000 student visa holders. By the end of 2023, there were more than one million.

Between 2011 and 2015, the number of refugee claims made in Canada averaged about 17,000 a year. Last year, there were 190,000. This year, claims are on pace to hit 110,000.

In 2015, there were 10,000 people in Canada who had applied for refugee status and were awaiting a decision. The figure is now 296,000….

Source: Mark Carney is already struggling with Justin Trudeau’s immigration legacy

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Carney says temporary foreign worker program needs a ‘focused approach’

2025/09/12 2 Comments

Not much new in terms of messaging:

Prime Minister Mark Carney said Wednesday the temporary foreign worker program needs a “focused approach” that targets the needs of specific sectors and regions.

Carney’s comments came as he outlined the government’s plans for the fall during an address to the Liberal caucus at their annual retreat in Edmonton.

The prime minister said the government’s plan to return immigration rates to “sustainable levels” includes reducing the number of non-permanent residents to “less than five per cent” of the total population.

Temporary workers and international students made up 7.1 per cent of Canada’s population as of April 1, according to Statistics Canada.

“Now, it’s clear that we have to work to continue to improve our overall immigration policies, and the temporary foreign worker program must have a focused approach that targets specific strategic sectors and needs in specific regions,” Carney said in his speech to caucus.

“So we’re working on that. Setting those goals, adjusting and working to ease the strain on housing, public infrastructure and our social services while we build that strong economy.”

At a press conference in Brampton, Ont., on Tuesday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre once again called on the government to scrap the temporary foreign worker program due to high youth unemployment, which hit 14.6 per cent in July.

Poilievre said immigrants are not responsible for housing and employment challenges and instead blamed the government. 

“They’ve allowed massive abuses of the international student, temporary foreign worker and asylum claims system, with rampant fraud that happened right under their nose. And as a result, our youth can’t find jobs or homes,” Poilievre said.

”(Carney’s) allowing corporations to bring in a record number of temporary foreign workers this year at a time when youth employment numbers are their worst in three decades.”

Government data show the number of temporary foreign workers coming to Canada decreased significantly in the first six months of the year. About 119,000 temporary workers arrived in the first half of 2025, down from more than 245,000 in the first half of 2024.

The government’s current target for temporary workers is to admit about 368,000 this year and 210,000 next year.

Before Carney’s speech, former immigration minister Marc Miller said “you can’t just scrap” the temporary foreign worker program and accused Poilievre of trying to whip up “anti-immigrant sentiments.”

“We need immigration whether we like it or not in this country,” Miller said….

Source: Carney says temporary foreign worker program needs a ‘focused approach’

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Keller: Yes, Canada should (mostly) end our temporary foreign worker programs 

2025/09/11 Leave a comment

Nice reminder of previous comments (Trudeau did the same in 2014):

…Prime Minister Mark Carney used to get this. Back in 2013, when he was governor of the Bank of Canada, he told a parliamentary committee that “one doesn’t want an overreliance on temporary foreign workers for lower-skill jobs, which prevent the wage adjustment mechanism from making sure that Canadians are paid higher wages but also that firms improve their productivity.”

He added that temporary foreign workers should be for “those higher-skilled gaps that do exist.” 

In plain English, he said that bringing in highly skilled people to fill high-wage jobs was good for Canada, but allowing business easy access to lots of temporary foreign workers for entry-level jobs was a recipe for suppressing the wages of low-wage Canadians, and discouraging companies from raising productivity through labour-saving technologies. 

That was the right answer. It was also a good foundation for future immigration policy.

But last week, Mr. Carney said the opposite. Pushing back against Conservative criticism, he said that “when I talk to businesses around the country … their number one issue is tariffs, and their number two issue is access to temporary foreign workers.”

Mr. Carney, please rediscover your 2013 answer. Aside from being economically sound, it is immeasurably more politically saleable. Just ask British Columbia Premier David Eby.…

Source: Yes, Canada should (mostly) end our temporary foreign worker programs

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The Functionary: New clerk expectations

2025/06/21 Leave a comment

More notes of caution but I wish them well:

…But are they too alike? That’s the worry. Both bring a Goldman Sachs-style mindset with big ambition that prizes speed and outcomes, which could drive them to barrel ahead — not listening, not slowing down, ignoring red flags.

Would deputies raising alarms about a Phoenix-style pay disaster get heard? Or would they be dismissed as risk-averse and stuck in public-service inertia?

As one long-time deputy minister said:

“Neither Carney nor Sabia has worked in the parts of government that actually deliver services. Finance manages crises — it doesn’t build systems. Fixing immigration or modernizing service delivery isn’t about reacting fast. It’s about designing complex programs, managing risk, and building IT that actually works. That’s not their wheelhouse.”

Goldman pace, Ottawa reality. The kind of style that works at Goldman Sachs — where there’s a deep bench of talent ready to step in — doesn’t translate easily to the public service, where replacements aren’t so easy to find or groom. Burnout here carries real risks, and losing top talent isn’t as simple as hiring the next in line.

Tellier and Sabia also came up in a different era. Barking orders and command-and-control leadership were the norm in the 1990s. But that style is now widely seen as outdated.

These days clerks prioritize wellness and mental health. And many public servants are tired. They haven’t a breather since the pandemic. There’s been Trump’s trade war, the federal election, two government transitions, and new crises keep coming – wars, fires.

Can the public service handle a hard-driving, two-year push for massive changes – with the chaos of layoffs? And can Carney stay focused to get his big things done?

The new guard is, well, older. Carney and his lieutenants — Sabia, chief-of-staff Marc-André Blanchard, and principal secretary David Lametti — are all white, male Boomers or Gen Xers leading a millennial-dominated public service that’s 58-per-cent women. 

Many public servants have only ever worked under the Trudeau government, where wellness, DEI, values and ethics, and work-life balance were top priorities. Money flowed and the public service grew. Gears are now shifting to high performance, speed, outcomes, spending and job cuts. That’s a culture shift.

The real leadership test may be less about what gets done — and more about how.

Source: New clerk expectations

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Theo Argitis: Canada’s great immigration experiment is ending 

2025/06/20 Leave a comment

Good take:

For nearly the first time in our history, Canada’s population growth has come to a near standstill. Remarkably, the state of things is such that we are celebrating this as a policy success and long-overdue correction.

Statistics Canada released its quarterly population estimates, showing the country grew by 20,000 people in the first three months of this year. That’s the third weakest quarterly increase in data going back to 1946—and less than one-tenth the average quarterly gain over the past three years.

Four provinces and one territory—Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia, and Yukon—actually posted population declines.

The numbers reflect the dramatic reversal of policy late last year by the former Trudeau government, when it abruptly tightened permit approvals for international students and foreign workers after overseeing record immigration levels since 2021.

Under the plan, the intake of new permanent residents, or what the government calls immigrants, would be lowered from 485,000 in 2024 to 365,000 by 2027.

The number of non-permanent residents living in Canada—which had increased five-fold since 2015 to more than 3 million—would be cut by about one million over two years.

That post-pandemic rush of newcomers exacerbated housing shortages, strained public services, and disrupted the job market. It was perhaps the worst policy error of the past two decades, and in need of correction.

But, ironically, the sharp reversal in policy is now creating its own problems, impacting everything from demand for cell phones and banking services to funding for universities and colleges.

The whole episode has been a mass social experiment that will be studied for years.

“You’re going to see a ton of research on this, no question, because it’s like this little experiment here in Canada that no other country has done to this extent,’’ said Mikal Skuterud, a labour economist at the University of Waterloo and director of the Canadian Labour Economics Forum. “And there’s all kinds of dimensions to how this impacted the economy.”

The latest numbers suggest the government’s curbs are beginning to work. While still elevated, the number of non-permanent residents has started to decline—down almost 90,000 from its peak in September. The number of permanent residents, or immigrants, is now running at an annual pace closer to 400,000, down from nearly half a million.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has essentially adopted the Trudeau plan, which if successful will keep the current population steady at about the current 41.5 million level over the next two years. It would mark the first time since Confederation in 1867 that the country saw zero population growth.

Yet when viewed over the full horizon, the curbs will simply bring the average population growth rate for the decade back to about 1.3 percent, which is much closer to historical norms. We’re simply correcting a major policy anomaly.

Looking back, it’s too early to know for certain what effect the population surge had on wages and joblessness, according to Skuterud, who notes that younger Canadians, in particular, may have borne the brunt of it, given they tend to compete with newcomers for entry-level jobs.

What’s less in dispute is how the immigration surge lowered average living standards.

The evidence suggests that looser entry requirements over recent years brought in lower quality workers. Because of this, the economy failed to grow in line with population. The size of the pie didn’t grow fast enough to keep up with the number of people trying to take a slice.

The end result was the erosion of public confidence in immigration, which could linger in Canadian politics for years.

This is particularly true among younger Canadians, who now appear more open to curbing immigration levels. For many, tighter labour markets and more affordable housing—not higher population numbers—are the priority. Slower immigration supports those goals.

So, how did the government misjudge the situation so badly? And is there a lesson here for the Carney government?

Part of the problem stemmed from the unique distortions of the pandemic. The government overestimated labour shortages and then overcompensated by opening the immigration floodgates.

But there was also a broader miscalculation. Trudeau emerged from the pandemic with renewed ambitions and a belief that he had an expanded mandate to pursue transformative change, including on the immigration front.

Ambition, however, has a way of outpacing reality. And overshooting is always a risk when leaders grow too confident in their ability to enact change.

Carney is now putting forward an ambitious agenda of his own. Whether he’ll draw any lessons from Canada’s great immigration experiment remains to be seen.

Source: Theo Argitis: Canada’s great immigration experiment is ending

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The Functionary On PM Carney’s Work Style

2025/06/11 2 Comments

Another interesting assessment of Carney’s management style:

“For too long, when federal agencies have examined a new project, their immediate question has been ‘why?’ With this bill, we will instead ask ourselves ‘how?’” he said.

That’s a signal.

He expects the public service to change how it works: less process, more results. Less caution, more action. Fewer barriers, more execution.

The bill also creates a Major Projects Office — a single federal point of contact to help priority projects through assessment and permitting.

It’s a tall order: a major cultural shift from administration to execution. From gatekeepers to doers. Public servants managed to do it during the pandemic, when rules loosened and they were galvanized by the mission to protect the health of Canadians.

But this time around it won’t be easy. As one long-time deputy minister put it, this is about a “client-focused approach to delivery” for a system built on managing risk and compliance.

“This legislation is a test for us to prove we can deliver. People are excited, but we’ll have to work really hard to do it,” said a senior bureaucrat not authorized to speak publicly.

“How do we streamline our processes to be more efficient? How do we actually think about the national interests of the country while recognizing environmental and Indigenous rights? That culture shift is a different way of thinking and focuses on execution.”….

Ready or not, Carney demands answers
Word has spread fast that Carney doesn’t suffer weak briefings. He’s known to cut them short when officials can’t answer his questions — and to call people out when they’re unprepared.

The stories get retold, maybe reshaped — it is Ottawa, after all — but the message has landed: come ready or don’t come at all.

Everyone’s heard a version: Carney meets with a senior bureaucrat who can’t answer a question. He stops the briefing cold and in so many words tells them to come back when they know their file. Ouch.

The risk in that kind of exchange? Officials might start pulling their punches — and stop speaking truth to power.

Carney brings a “toughness,” as one senior bureaucrat told me. He expects the clerk and deputy ministers to know their files cold. No vague answers. No promises to follow up. He wants clear answers in the room. “He digs and digs,” said one official. “People will just have to adjust and be ready for that.”

Source: The Functionary On PM Carney’s Work Style

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Yakabuski: Le parti de la Charte

2025/04/07 Leave a comment

Right signal on pre-emptive use of the Charter:

…Lorsqu’on lui a demandé si son gouvernement avait l’intention d’intervenir devant la Cour suprême du Canada dans l’éventualité où cette loi se trouverait devant le plus haut tribunal du pays, M. Carney a répondu par l’affirmative. « Mon gouvernement a un malaise avec l’utilisation [préventive] de la “clause nonobstant” », a-t-il affirmé à propos de la disposition de dérogation enchâssée dans la section 33 de la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés. « L’enjeu est [de savoir si] on a des droits ici au Canada ou non. Un droit est un droit. Si on utilise trop souvent la “clause nonobstant” de manière [préventive], on dit qu’on n’a pas de charte des droits ici au Canada. C’est une question pour la Cour suprême. Ce n’est pas plus compliqué que cela. »

Or, la Cour suprême s’apprête déjà à examiner la question du recours préventif à la disposition de dérogation dans le dossier de la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État québécois, la loi 21. Cette cause sera entendue bien avant que toute contestation de la loi 96 puisse arriver devant le plus haut tribunal du pays.

S’il s’oppose uniquement à l’utilisation préventive de cette disposition, pourquoi M. Carney souhaite-t-il intervenir dans le dossier de la loi 96 si la question doit être, selon toute probabilité, réglée avant même que la Cour suprême n’accepte d’examiner ce texte législatif ? Est-ce que le chef libéral aurait plutôt sauté sur l’occasion de se prononcer sur la loi 96 afin d’envoyer un signal affirmant qu’il entend défendre la minorité anglophone du Québec ? Lui seul le sait.

Ce qui est toutefois clair, c’est qu’un gouvernement fédéral mené par Mark Carney chercherait à éliminer la capacité des gouvernements provinciaux à recourir préalablement à la disposition de dérogation. Ce n’est pas un détail. Le délai entre l’adoption d’une loi provinciale et le moment où la Cour suprême détermine si elle viole la Charte canadienne des droits peut s’étendre sur plusieurs années. La loi 21 fut adoptée en 2019, et on ne sait toujours pas ce qu’en pense le plus haut tribunal du pays.

En interdisant aux provinces de recourir de manière préventive à la disposition de dérogation, la Cour suprême imposerait une limite fondamentale à la souveraineté des provinces dans leurs champs de compétence. C’est ainsi que le constitutionnaliste Guillaume Rousseau qualifie la proposition de M. Carney de « radicale ». Une loi québécoise « pourrait être suspendue pendant six ou sept ans, en attendant un jugement de la Cour suprême, et ce, même si cette loi vise à régler un problème immédiat », a écrit Me Rousseau dans une chronique publiée cette semaine dans Le Journal de Montréal.

Professeur à l’Université de Sherbrooke, Me Rousseau a été nommé le mois dernier coprésident du nouveau Comité d’étude sur le respect des principes de la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État sur les influences religieuses par le gouvernement caquiste. C’est un fervent défenseur de la souveraineté parlementaire du Québec. Il n’en demeure pas moins qu’il soulève une question importante sur la pertinence de la disposition de dérogation si on interdit son utilisation préventive — surtout au Québec, où la suspension d’une loi linguistique pendant plusieurs années (en attendant que la Cour suprême détermine son sort) pourrait avoir une incidence non négligeable sur le déclin du français.

« Nous sommes le parti de la Charte, et nous allons intervenir à la Cour suprême dans les cas qui [pourraient] venir », a déclaré le chef libéral la semaine dernière lorsqu’il a été interrogé pour la première fois sur la loi 96. Qu’on se le tienne pour dit : le Québec a beau être « incroyable » aux yeux de M. Carney, il n’a pas l’intention de le laisser faire.

Source: Le parti de la Charte

… When asked if his government intended to intervene before the Supreme Court of Canada in the event that the law was before the highest court in the country, Mr. Carney answered in the affirmative. “My government is uncomfortable with the [preventive] use of the ‘notwithstanding clause’,” he said about the exemption provision enshrined in section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. “The issue is [to know if] we have rights here in Canada or not. A right is a right. If we use the “notwithstanding clause” too often in a [preventive] way, we say that we do not have a charter of rights here in Canada. This is a question for the Supreme Court. It’s not more complicated than that. ”

However, the Supreme Court is already preparing to examine the issue of the preventive recourse to the derogation provision in the file of the Act respecting the secularism of the Quebec State, Bill 21. This case will be heard long before any challenge to Bill 96 can come before the highest court in the country.

If he opposes only the preventive use of this provision, why does Mr. Does Carney wish to intervene in the file of Bill 96 if the matter must, in all likelihood, be settled even before the Supreme Court agrees to examine this legislative text? Would the Liberal leader have rather jumped at the opportunity to vote on Bill 96 in order to send a signal stating that he intends to defend Quebec’s English-speaking minority? Only he knows.

What is clear, however, is that a federal government led by Mark Carney would seek to eliminate the ability of provincial governments to use the waiver provision beforehand. It’s not a detail. The time between the adoption of a provincial law and the time when the Supreme Court determines whether it violates the Canadian Charter of Rights can extend over several years. Law 21 was adopted in 2019, and we still do not know what the highest court in the country thinks of it.

By prohibiting the provinces from making preventive use of the waiver provision, the Supreme Court would impose a fundamental limit on the sovereignty of the provinces in their fields of jurisdiction. This is how the constitutionalist Guillaume Rousseau describes the proposal of Mr. Carney of “radical”. A Quebec law “could be suspended for six or seven years, pending a Supreme Court judgment, even if this law aims to solve an immediate problem,” wrote Me Rousseau in a column published this week in Le Journal de Montréal.

Professor at the Université de Sherbrooke, Me Rousseau was appointed last month as co-chair of the new Study Committee on Respect for the Principles of the Act on the Secularism of the State on Religious Influences by the Caquist Government. He is a fervent defender of Quebec’s parliamentary sovereignty. Nevertheless, it raises an important question about the relevance of the derogation provision if its preventive use is prohibited — especially in Quebec, where the suspension of a language law for several years (pending the Supreme Court’s fate) could have a significant impact on the decline of French.

“We are the Charter party, and we will intervene in the Supreme Court in cases that [may] come,” the Liberal leader said last week when he was first asked about Bill 96. Let’s take it for said: Quebec may be “incredible” in the eyes of Mr. Carney, he has no intention of letting him do it.

Filed under Interculturalisme, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

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