🇨🇦 Policy Hawk

Canadians will now start being able to send and receive money in seconds. Any hour, any day, all year round. As announced in Budget 2026, Canada's Real-Time Rail starts rolling out today. Over the next year, financial institutions and payment providers across the country will come on board, reaching more than 9 in 10 Canadians. Faster, safer payments for families and businesses, on national infrastructure owned and operated here at home. That strengthens our economic sovereignty.

It's been officially confirmed that Stellantis has sold the Brampton assembly plant to Roshel. We will have something up soon ourselves.

NEW: For a week, we pressed DND for updated information on soldiers injured in the deadly CFB Wainwright fire, including how many remained in critical condition. DND wouldn't disclose that number. So someone else did. globalnews.ca/news/12143238/…

New article from me. The Cyclone is a failure. It’s also a priceless lesson in work Canada will have to do again. Civilian designs are sometimes the best starting point for things the CAF needs. If all we get from the Cyclone is “never do that again,” how does that help us? 1/2

In Budget 2026, we’re backing the Canadian artists who tell our stories. That means if you’re a Canadian artist, you won’t pay tax on up to $45,000 of income derived from your creative work.

Earlier today I approved a Request for Federal Assistance from the Government of Alberta and Acute Care Alberta for nursing support related to the ongoing treatment of 22 Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) members who were injured in the tragic fire at CFB Wainwright on October 17th.  The Canadian Armed Forces is mobilizing resources to respond to this request.  Working in partnership with the medical teams at the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton and Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary these additional resources will ensure that the injured soldiers continue to receive excellent care during their ongoing recovery.

OK guys, I guess we aren't getting an update on the CFB Wainwright members in a critical condition Three follow-up emails to the Department of National Defence on this have gone unanswered. We asked Premier Danielle Smith's office, who directed us to Acute Care Alberta. Acute Care Alberta directed us back to DND. The Prime Minister's Office directed us back to DND. ICYMI: we asked for this update, along with updated patient numbers, on Sunday evening -- citing conflicting information in recent stories we'd seen. DND published a statement three days later, but it didn't include this information.

Update on personnel injured in Canadian Forces Base Wainwright incident: canada.ca/en/department-nati…

One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up. So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us." Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026. There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true. But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone. Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were: 1) End the war 2) Focus on cost of living/inflation 3) Put America First 4) Change our relationship to Israel Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.) In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you. The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night. If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest. But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there. I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.

Someone needs to remind CBC they’re the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation David Cochrane, live from Toronto, solemnly dissecting Kentucky-6 and Virginia-1 margins, the precise “magic number” of three House seats, and the Senate path through North Carolina, Ohio, and Maine like he’s calling a CNN Decision Desk. Full audition energy for a US Democrat comms job The Boomer bait is strong with this one: endless US midterm wall-to-wall coverage while actual Canadian politics gets the B-reel. At some point the red maple leaf on the set starts looking like a prop

Telesat got a $2.3B government contract. Its CEO is a personal friend of the Prime Minister. He's not on the PM's conflict screen. Last week, the Ethics Commissioner asked me to send him the details. Here they are.