Trade
What about free trade within our own country with other provinces?
Free trade with everyone but ourselves. Canadians have been hearing a lot of talk about the need for and benefits from free trade with the Americans, the Europeans, the Chinese, and the Americans. Yeah, let’s get it done. What about free trade within our own country with other provinces? Not so much. We have been […]
What’s at stake in Canada’s lost Philippines helicopter deal?
Tensions between the Canadian government and the Philippines could not have come at a worse time for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Canadian companies looking to reach new customers across Southeast Asia. One week before Trudeau’s visit to India, Rodrigo Duterte, president of the Philippines, hastily cancelled a major Canadian export deal after news broke that the […]
Runway Holiday: the Queen steals fashion week
At first, it seemed like one of those photoshopped memes where someone sticks Mr. Bean’s face on Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet in the “Alas, poor Yorick” scene, or inserts Donald Trump into incongruously presidential White House settings like the Oval office or the Rose Garden (Wait, what?!). The Queen sitting in the front row at London Fashion […]
Strong, integrated, modern transportation system ‘fundamental’ to Canada’s future prosperity: Garneau
Transport Minister Marc Garneau has some heavy lifting to do with a few signature pieces for the Trudeau government’s environmental agenda. Most notably, Mr. Garneau’s (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce-Westmount, Que.) department is responsible for taking the lead on legislation barring crude oil tankers from traversing British Columbia’s ecologically sensitive North Coast, working with provincial and territorial governments to […]
FCM calls for Ottawa to ensure money earmarked for new trade and transportation corridor fund is spent on local priorities in rural and northern communities
Canada’s national association of municipalities is calling on the federal government to ensure funding earmarked for trade and transportation corridors is spent on locally identified priorities in rural and northern communities, including “airport, marine and road projects that promote economic development.” The recommendation is one of dozens included in the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ pre-budget […]
Agriculture lobbyists pushing hard on NAFTA, CPTPP deals: lobbyists registry
Canada’s federal Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay (Cardigan, P.E.I.) was the most lobbied cabinet minister last month with 19 groups filing communication reports with him, while International Trade was the most lobbied department in the government with 268 communications, according to the January statistics from the federal lobbying registry. Insiders said they were not surprised to […]
Transportation
DFAIT-CIDA merger has led to a foreign ministry dominated by development staff
It is always enjoyable to stay in touch with former foreign ministry colleagues in my “retryment.” Like “Godwin’s Law” of the internet, or any discussion of United States politics that leads to Donald Trump, it is inevitable when two or more former employees from the Department Now Known As Global Affairs gather together, the talk inevitably […]
Texting, sit-downs, and lots of waiting in hotel rooms: the ins and outs of NAFTA lobbying
Dozens of industry groups are dispatching executives to every round of the NAFTA renegotiation, and using texts, emails, and phone calls to try to talk to Canada’s negotiating leads about what is being discussed with representatives of Mexico and the United States. Lobbyists describe a scene with plenty of “sitting around in hotel rooms” waiting […]
