National
Trudeau not seeking re-election as MP following resignation as prime minister
From LifeSiteNews
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is ending his 17-year political career, confirming he does not plan to run for a position as a Liberal MP in the upcoming election
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced the end of his 17-year career in politics, saying he does not plan to run for a position as a Liberal MP in the upcoming election.
During a January 15 press conference, Trudeau revealed that he will not seek re-election as a Member of Parliament (MP) for the Quebec riding of Papineau which he has held since 2008.
“In terms of my own decisions, I will not be running in the upcoming election,” Trudeau told reporters during a press conference alongside Canada’s premiers.
“As to what I might be doing later, I honestly haven’t had much time to think about that at all, I am entirely focused on doing the job that Canadians elected me to do in an extraordinarily pivotal time right now,” he continued.
Trudeau’s announcement comes just over a week after he told Canadians that he would be stepping down as prime minister and Liberal Party leader.
Trudeau revealed that he plans to stay on as leader until the Liberal Party’s National Board of Directors selects a new leader. He also asked for Parliament to be prorogued until March 24, by which time a new leader should be selected.
Trudeau has served as prime minister since 2015, winning three consecutive elections. However, polls have predicted a massive Conservative victory as Canadians appear to have tired of Trudeau’s radical agendas, including pushing abortion, climate regulations, and LGBT ideology targeted at children.
Trudeau’s resignation came just a few weeks after both his housing minister Sean Fraser, and his deputy prime minister and finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, announced they were stepping down from their posts.
Regardless of his resignation, every major political party in Canada, including the Conservative Party, the New Democratic Party (NDP) and Bloc Québécois, has promised to bring an election as soon as possible.
As it stands, Trudeau has suspended Parliament until March 24, meaning that the Liberal government cannot be brought down during this time. This maneuver buys the Liberal Party a couple months’ time to select a new leader and rebrand their government.
However, the selection of a new leader may not be enough to convince Canadians that the party will not continue Trudeau’s anti-life and anti-freedom legacy.
Indeed, as LifeSiteNews previously reported, each of the possible contenders for Liberal leader is set to plunge Canada into another term of anti-freedom laws.
Business
Bank of Canada governor warns citizens to anticipate lower standard of living
From LifeSiteNews
“Unless something changes, our incomes will be lower than they otherwise would be.”
Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem gave a grim assessment of the state of the economy, essentially telling Canadians that they should accept a “lower” standard of living.
In an update on Wednesday in which he also lowered Canada’s interest rate to 2.25 percent, Macklem gave the bleak news, which no doubt will hit Canadian families hard.
“What’s most concerning is, unless we change some other things, our standard of living as a country, as Canadians, is going to be lower than it otherwise would have been,” Macklem told reporters.
“Unless something changes, our incomes will be lower than they otherwise would be.”
Macklem said what Canada is going through “is not just a cyclical downturn.”
Asked what he meant by a “cyclical downturn,” Macklem blamed what he said were protectionist measures the United States has put in place such as tariffs, which have made everything more expensive.
“Part of it is structural,” he said, adding, “The U.S. has swerved towards protectionism.”
“It is harder to do business with the United States. That has destroyed some of the capacity in this country. It’s also adding costs.”
Macklem stopped short of saying out loud that a recession is all but inevitable but did say growth is “pretty close to zero” at the moment.
While some U.S. protectionist measures put in place by President Donald Trump have impacted Canada, the reality is that since the Liberals took power in 2015, first under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and now under Mark Carney, government spending has been out of control, according to experts. Rising inflation is rampant.
Canadian taxpayers are already dealing with high inflation and high taxes, in part due to the Liberal government overspending and excessive money printing, and even admitting that giving money to Ukraine comes at the “taxpayers’” expense.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, Carney boldly proclaimed earlier this week that his Liberal government’s upcoming 2025 budget will include millions more in taxpayer money for “SLGBTQI+ communities” and “gender” equality and “pride” safety.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) recently blasted the Carney government for spending $13 million on promotional merchandise such as “climate change card games,” “laser pens and flying saucers,” and “Bamboo toothbrushes” since 2022.
Canadians pay some of the highest income and other taxes in the world. As reported by LifeSiteNews, Canadian families spend, on average, 42 percent of their income on taxes, more than food and shelter costs. Inflation in Canada is at a high not seen in decades.
Media
Carney speech highlights how easily newsrooms are played by politicians
Plus! Global’s oops on Trump in the crosshairs and assuming what Stephen Harper thinks may not be the best idea!
It has never been easier, thanks to the internet, for journalists to check if they are being played for fools. But due either to sloth, neglect, habit or servility – pick one – way too many lack the motivation to use a search engine.
Instead, they frequently accept the role of featherheads manipulated by politicians staging one of the oldest scams in the Machiavellian playbook, the recycled “news” announcement. I say “featherheads” (patsies was another option) because, for instance, Prime Minister Mark Carney can book news network time for a full half hour speech that is nothing more than a rehash of everything he’s been saying for the past 10 months and still lead newscasts and make the front pages.
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Here, I must pause to credit the Toronto Star. It, like other news organizations, received an embargoed copy of Wednesday’s speech in advance. It read it, saw that it contained no news and did not put a report on its front page. Others such as National Post and the Globe and Mail tried desperately to find a fresh angle within the speech but put it on their front pages anyway. CBC threw everything it had into it and CTV also led with it and tried its best to make it sound like news had happened.
Now, I am a reasonable and fair-minded person, so I would not be reacting were it just this incident that captured my attention. The PM is speaking, everyone gets excited, you review and lock in your story lineup and, ya, I get it. Been there, done that. But this was part of a troubling pattern that has emerged.
For instance, the government’s “plan” to hire 1,000 more Canadian Border Services guards was first announced in the Liberal election platform last spring. It was then, according to Blacklock’s Reporter, re-announced “April 10, April 28, June 3 and August 12.”
That Blacklock’s report was published Oct. 14 and focused on Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree’s insistence he was “not responsible” for the promised hiring that hadn’t happened yet. Two days later, Carney announced that the previously announced and re-announced plan would be announced again in the Nov. 4 budget. And the day after that – Oct. 17 – Anandasangaree announced his ministry would be doing what he said a few days previously wasn’t his responsibility and hiring 1,000 new border guards – over the next five years. A similar pattern of announcement and reannouncements took place regarding the government’s plan to hire 1,000 more RCMP officers, also not immediately but eventually. Then, last week, Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne announced a financial crimes agency would be up and running by next June. This, too, was reported as a new initiative even though the government first committed to that agency in 2021.
While not all news organizations rise to the bait, this widely carried Canadian Press story is an example of how easily the public can be misinformed by reporting that lacks proper context. Re-announcements are presented as “news” despite there being no news other than “politicians repeat what they said before to keep their names in the news.” Media that go along with this pattern of manipulation allow themselves to be accused of defining news as anything the government wishes to present as news, something about which – now that media are subsidized by politicians – they should be more cautious.
The nation needs journalists to tell the whole story or, as Robert Maynard, founder of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, put it:
“The first thing about journalism is about accuracy and fairness, but that’s not enough. It has to be about context, it has to be about depth.”
Speaking of headlines, Global News deserves a long stare and shake of the head for the one it slapped on its report of the “No Kings” protests held last weekend.
Seemingly oblivious to the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk and two attempts on the life of US President Donald Trump, Global initially went with the above illustrated “Trump in the crosshairs” headline before changing it to “No Kings Day rallies draw hundreds of thousands of protesters.” The updated version made no reference to the initial version.
There was quite a stir within the punditry when Dimitri Soudas, defrocked Conservative comms guy and former pal of notorious floor-crosser Eve Adams, wrote an op-ed for the Toronto Star criticizing party leader Pierre Poilievre. Rather than go with the disgruntled former employee angle, the Globe and Mail’s Larry Martin led the pack in leaping to a conclusion:
“Soudas wouldn’t have written this attack on Poilievre without Stephan (sic) Harper’s okay,” he posted. “It means the knives are out to get PP and they are big knives that could kill his leadership.”
Martin, who has had a very distinguished career, hadn’t confirmed what he assumed Harper was thinking and was quickly schooled by Anna Tomala, the former PM’s spokeswoman.
“Mr. Soudas does not speak on behalf of Mr. Harper,” she stated curtly.
Martin did not delete his original post but while to his credit he did post an update, it’s unclear his blushes were spared.
CTV, meanwhile, declined to include Tomala’s Harper statement in its report on Soudas’s op-ed.
Retired CTV reporter Alan Fryer, meanwhile, gave his past employer a blast on X after it delivered this headline: “Carney is going ‘where the puck is going to be’ in first trip to Asia as PM.”
Fryer’s world-weary response?
“My Lord, the headline. A leader couldn’t hope for a more compliant media.”
Finally, two commentators for news organizations were subjected to harm and intimidation last week and we learned that a third had been threatened in August. Terry Newman of National Post posted that she would be contacting police, Ezra Levant of Rebel News was laid out at a protest in Dublin and it was discovered that Brian Passifume of the Toronto Sun faced a death threat in August. I checked to see if the Canadian Association of Journalists (which has abandoned X) had something to say on their behalf. The CAJ’s most recent web post regarding abuse of journalists was on Sept. 25 in defence of Isaac Peltz of theindependent.ca and William Wilson, who writes for therover.ca.
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(Peter Menzies is a commentator and consultant on media, Macdonald-Laurier Institute Senior Fellow, a past publisher of the Calgary Herald, a former vice chair of the CRTC and a National Newspaper Award winner.)
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