The News Rundown

Stephen Harper says Canada must urgently reduce its dependence on the U.S.

This past week marked the 20th anniversary of the election of the Harper conservatives and to commemorate the occasion Stephen Harper was in Ottawa for the unveiling of his official portrait and a series of other events to celebrate the occasion.
Alongside this came a lot of retrospective coverage in the media of the government’s almost 10 years in power.
A lot of the predictions made in the 2015 election turned out to be true.
Stephen Harper in the 2015 election chastised Trudeau for wanting to run tiny modest deficits saying that the deficits would not be small and that debt would explode. This happened with budgets and debt with the highest being $110b during the pandemic and down to $78b in late 2024.
The Conservatives in 2015 also warned of uncontrolled migration amidst the media spectacle of the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis that was one of the first cases in Canadian media of fake news when young Alan Kurdi was shown drowned on TV while his family was attempting to flee to Canada. This made the media and Liberal party call for a massive amount of refuges coming into the country.
About 39,000 refugees came in but the uncontrolled migration that was warned about manifested itself in 2017 with first Roxham road, subsequent flows of refugee claimants into Canada, and more recently refugee claims via the temporary foreign worker program and international students.
The Conservative laws to improve ethics in parliament caught a scandal. Specifically the Director of Public Prosecutions Act of 2006 caught the SNC Lavalin scandal that was the beginning of the end for the Trudeau administration.
The Harper conservatives were also right about Canada Post suggesting it would go insolvent but instead the incoming government in 2015 promised to keep door to door delivery without worrying about the ramifications.
Other things include cutting funding to UNRWA before it was known just how corrupt the organization was (UNWRA had ties to the Oct 7, 2023 attacks into Israel) and crime.
Most of the tough on crime reforms put in place have been reversed either by law or by the courts. Now the current government is looking to implement bail reform to ensure people who need to be in jail stay in jail.
The media coverage this week of all the events has been surprisingly favourable. Favourable enough that it caught our eye.
For the vast majority of his Prime Ministership Harper faced an adversarial media. Fake news and distortion and bias and sensationalism wasn’t nearly as bad then as it was now but it still existed.
It existed and was coming on full steam in 2015 around the election. Specifically with the Mike Duffy case that saw media bleachers set up outside the court for a rather inconsequential trial since similar “crimes” took place during the Trudeau administration with little to no consequence. The Alan Kurdi case was also important as it was a rallying factor that shifted the race and was largely driven by the media.
Stephen Harper left office over 10 years ago and while some people think that this is the sole reason for the change in tone there is another.
Media filters and the consistent coverage of the Trump administration.
People who both watch and produce the news bring invisible lenses, filters, based on experience or their own emotional experience, that drastically limit how they see what they watch.
Those filters determine what stands out, what’s important, what’s scary, and what gets ignored.
While in the past Harper was seen as stiff and scary the media, and Canada’s sole focus on the Trump administration has enabled Harper to seem more moderate and more accommodating.
These filters create a phenomena similar to having the idea of having two people witnessing the same facts, data, and news, can see different outcomes or even movies as you may have it.
The first approach that has been common from Carney, his government, and the media has been the idea that Canada is the victim of American bullying and the existential threat that the US poses.
The second is that we’re in this position because of self-inflicted weakness over the last 10 years of government.
Depending how you see either Carney and our current government or the Trump administration or the media your perspective likely falls into one of those two camps despite mostly similar facts and information being presented.
Harper was able to cut through these media bubbles and bring both movies together onto one screen, meaning he was able to speak to both the US existential threat audience and those who see Canada’s problems as more so inflicted by ourselves after 10 years of Liberal government.
On the US Harper said that the US has become “hostile” and said “Canadians are understandingly shocked, bewildered and angry" regarding the US administration, we must focus on policy and decrease our dependence on the US.
He even went as far as suggesting reciprocal tariffs against the US, a stance that the Carney government has even ruled out, for now.
He also said that “we must make any sacrifice necessary to preserve the independence and the unity of this blessed land.”
The idea being that tariffs would work to offset what he called “obvious attempt[s] to move Canadian manufacturing south of the border”.
This breaks down the barriers between media silos and those witnessing two different realities because first it speaks directly to the fears and concerns many have about the US administration. Secondly, Harper is still held in high esteem by the modern Conservative Party of Canada and many in Western Canada, this also breaks down those media walls. It also helps that many people have had a warming in perception of Stephen Harper.
This was also used as a pivot to discuss national unity. In his keynote address he said, “when we're talking about national unity and pride, our government always proudly flew our flag at full mast”.
This was backed up with a call for an oil pipeline, “not someday, but right now” to the pacific coast in part to ensure we “do not become a captive resource colony of the U.S.” by shipping our most valuable commodity to a single customer.
He also said what everyone had been thinking: “after 2015, many of the gains we made for our country were either reversed squandered, leaving Canada so much weaker and more divided”
These words were designed to appeal directly to the current Conservative base while the words about the US resonate with those who fear the US and probably voted for Carney.
By using this exact messaging in the same speech or even week where moderate Canadians are amenable to hearing his message this creates the opportunity to further break down the media silos present in our country.
If you agree with Harper on the US in the same speech as he says the comments about unity and division, you’re more likely to break out of a media bubble if you are in one.
The biggest problem that faces Canada could be that both sides, the idea of an exterior threat being our biggest problem or our own policy languishing over the last 10+ years causing our current pains is consistently reinforced by the media narrative and it takes something like Harper’s speech to break the barriers down.
To conclude we’ll share Harper’s closing words at his portrait unveiling that all Canadians should take stock of: “We all want Canada to be the true north, a true north, as strong and as free as it can be, in every way that counts, the best country in the world. Only then can we say that we have been true to this great country.”
Supplementals:

This next story is a bit of an odd one, because it shows just how quietly governments can change something that could effect all Canadians, and if not for some people taking action, we wouldn't know anything about it.
A digital archive of Canada’s history is set to disappear this spring as Parks Canada moves to deactivate its Canadian Register of Historic Places website. In a statement, the National Trust for Canada said Parks Canada told provincial and territorial partners in December 2025 that the register "would be taken down in spring 2026."
It said the reason given by Parks Canada was that the database had become technologically obsolete with security vulnerabilities and outdated coding. Although the site has not had a major update in 15 years, it has remained an invaluable resource, especially for heritage conservationists. The register is a national searchable database of historic places recognized by federal, provincial, territorial and local governments containing about 13,500 listings.
When Stephen Taylor, CTO at Shift Media Strategies and a popular conservative commentator read the original CBC Nova Scotia story about the imminent closure of Parks Canada's Canadian Register of Historic Places website, he knew he had to act.
Taylor said: "Reading into [the story]... I felt it would be a tragedy to lose that resource. I felt there was a huge urgency to preserve it, ironically preserving our history, even though that was the point of the original website."
That weekend, Taylor used artificial intelligence tools to download all of the data on the old Parks Canada site and rebuild it using modern web standards. The new site, called Heritage Guide Canada went live online within 24 hours of the news story being published on the CBC News website. The site is not a copy of the original site; it features a cleaner and more modern layout that is designed to be easier to use and navigate.
Taylor said preserving history is important at a time when Canadians are grappling with external threats and reaffirming Canada's place in the world. While he's content running the website using his own resources, he said he's open to other options, saying: "If the government changes course and decides to rescue the initiative, I'm happy to even give them the website if they find it's a better website than their own."
Ironically, Taylor says that he only heard about the story because, according to him, an NDP friend of his sent him the story and said 'can you imagine if Stephen Harper had done this, what the reaction would have been?'
Taylor said: “Quite ironic that we're in this age of renewed nationalism and our Prime Minister is telling our story internationally, and yet we were about to let this beautiful resource of Canadian stories just wither.”
Other than the original CBC story and then the updated story by them after Taylor created his website, there has been no media coverage on the fact that the federal government was planning on sundowning such a valuable resource, without an adequate replacement resource, in this era of digital catalogues and repositories, when "one proud Canadian" as CBC called Taylor, was able to do it in a weekend at minimal cost.
Supplementals:

End the UCP': AB Resistance's two-year mission to dethrone Danielle Smith

This week a second recall campaign failed to garner the necessary signatures to go to recall vote. The campaign targeting Airdrie-East MLA Angela Pitt concluded collecting about 2200 of the 15000 or so signatures needed.
This comes after in January the campaign targeting Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides failed gathering about 6,500 signatures of the 16,000 or so needed.
Where did the campaign originate?
Initially it was thought that the unions that traditionally support the NDP were behind the coordinated effort.
A third party advertiser registered with Elections Alberta called AB Resistance has been angling for year to engage in such a campaign.
AB Resistance otherwise known as ABR was founded by Marg Tokar in 2024 as a Facebook group. Back in January she guested on Real Talk with Ryan Jespersen.
Real Talk with Ryan Jespersen is an online daily news talk show. Jespersen used to broadcast with 630 CHED in Edmonton.
Marg Tokar on the broadcast said, "When it came to the campaign, Danielle Smith's campaign with the UCP, I was watching closely, and I really started having some questions. And there were a lot of videos coming out that were not what she was telling Albertans. I'll tell you the line for me, the line in the sand was just prior to the election when I had a canvasser come to my door and assure me that once the campaign was over and Danielle Smith was elected, the party would be getting rid of her."
This interview and the connections that Tokar has to ABR was detailed in an article at the Western Standard.
The article shows Tokar pledging to get rid of Danielle Smith as early as October 16, 2022.
The 2024 Facebook posts say, “We are organizing to go to war, information war. We are up against a government that routinely pays for 'bot' accounts to make the most ridiculous statements on their behalf, hidden behind a veil of secrecy first in their War Room, now in the Premier’s office. Let it be noted, we didn’t start the war.”
In a December 2024 blog post on their own website ABR takes interest in the Recall Act.
Those behind the group claim they do not want the NDP to lead the province but were driven to get rid of Danielle Smith primarily.
Tokar was a life long conservative and stopped when Smith became leader.
From late 2022 to 2024 Tokar built up ABR recruiting members online.
David Gray who is an energy economist and former energy advisor to Danielle Smith served on ABR’s executive when Danielle Smith led the Wildrose in 2014, Gray then became AB Resistance’s Chairman in 2024.
Tami Smith, a former Edmonton school teacher, serves as the director of ABR.
Laurie Dufresne-Wade is listed as ABR’s contact with Elections Alberta.
Jenny Yeremiy, a geophysicist and former Alberta Party candidate in the 2023 general election, served on the ABR board. Tokar has claimed that Yeremiy stepped down from her position prior to filing an application to recall her MLA, Demetrios Nicolaides.
After the 2023 election ABR was looking at six ridings where the UCP won with a combined total of just over 2,000 votes.
The targets were Muhammad Yaseen (Calgary–North), Rajan Sawhney (Calgary–North West), Mickey Amery (Calgary–Cross), Nicolaides (Calgary-Bow), Nathan Neudorf (Lethbridge–East), and Peter Singh (Calgary–East).
Going back to the Real Talk interview, Tokar told Jespersen that ABR does not fund any recalls. This is the important bit because if they did, it would violate recall financing rules.
ABR registered as a third party advertiser in late 2024.
ABR received $12,924 after they registered in the final quarter of 2024, $7,684 coming from donations of $250 or less. They then received $13,101 in the first nine months of 2025, $5,027 from donations below the $250 threshold.
Chris Evans, an Edmonton ER doctor who has expressed frustration with Alberta’s healthcare system and often reposts negative comments on X, has been ABR's largest financial backer.
In the final quarter of 2024, Evans donated $3,000 to ABR, while the next-highest donor contributed $740. Similarly, CGME INC, a business 100% owned by Evans, donated $4,500 in the first three quarters of 2025.
ABR has a typical warped view of the UCP government. A view that suggests planted opinions by the media. Specifically with the language used suggesting that the UCP government is fascist.
In a December 2024 post they wrote, “This is it, Alberta! If you really want to get rid of this fascist government before there are not enough pieces left to put back together, we must do it now, and we must do it together!”
The group who views the government this way has now expanded membership to beyond 10,000+ according to Tokar. These types of people are the kind of people who absolutely hate Danielle Smith but cannot explain why rationally or point to one singular reason.
Laundry list persuasion.
When it comes to the recall campaigns Tokar was adamant that they do not organize or initiate the recall campaigns but the social media tells another story.
The social media outright calls on people to start recall petitions and was offering to help anyone who wanted to start one suggesting they’d provide strategies and timelines.
The article in the Western Standard includes timelines and detailed strategies that ABR engaged in.
The endgame now at this point is for ABR to use this organization heading into the next election.
While initially the target was 6 MLAs and to remove Smith and end the UCP a legitimate organization has appeared.
The media in the province led most everyone to believe that these recall campaigns were organic because the province was fed up with the UCP.
The reality though is that an online group with about 10,000 followers had the idea of removing the UCP and the media couldn’t even find them.
Western Standard should be commended for actually doing journalism on this and finally telling Alberta who’s behind the recall campaigns.
Supplementals:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/recall-petition-angela-pitt-fails-9.7071130

Firing Line

Vancouver councillors push for World Cup to ban ICE agents

The upcoming FIFA World Cup this summer has been politically charged even though Canada, the USA and Mexico are jointly hosting the event together, ostensibly as a form of North American unity and cooperation, but since the election of Donald Trump, it seems that some in Canada are not a fan of having the US take the lead.
Five months out from Vancouver's first FIFA World Cup game, two progressive city councillors want the city to pre-emptively ban US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, otherwise known as ICE, from the events.
On Tuesday, Green Party councillor Pete Fry and COPE councillor Sean Orr submitted notice of a motion to ban ICE agents from being deployed in any FIFA-related security operations during the six-week event this summer. Council is scheduled to vote on the motion on Feb. 25.
Fry said the motion, if passed, will require the city to share the motion with Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow to see if her city, which is also hosting FIFA games alongside Vancouver and fourteen cities in the US and Mexico, is interested in passing a similar decision.
The motion comes after Italian news outlets revealed that an ICE unit will operate in Italy during the upcoming Winter Olympics. Outraged Italians flooded the streets of Milan after the news broke protesting the agency's presence at the games. Advocates in Miami are also pressing FIFA to protect fans from "overzealous immigration enforcement" during the event this summer.
ICE agents have made international headlines over their campaign of terror, arbitrary detentions and extra-judicial killings in cities across the US — most recently Minneapolis, where they have killed two citizens so far this year.
Fry said: “I personally have very strong feelings around ICE’s tactics and the extrajudicial execution of American citizens, and the detention of migrants and the deaths that have happened under their watch in the last year … As an off-white guy, and I look at who’s being targeted in a lot of these things … it’s infuriating.”
But ICE already has agents in Vancouver and there have been no public indications it wants to have more here during the World Cup.
ICE has agents at U.S. consulates in Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal and Toronto, and the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa. They work for ICE’s investigations branch, whose mandate is to stop international crime before it makes it to the U.S. They work in conjunction with Canadian police, primarily sharing information about human and drug trafficking, financial fraud and weapons dealing.
Aaron Hoffman is a professor of political science at Simon Fraser University who focuses on international relations, terrorism and counterterrorism, political communication and U.S. foreign policy.
He said a ban of ICE agents in Canada was unlikely because of their already limited powers in this country, and the potential of worsening the already tense U.S.-Canadian relations ahead of this year’s renegotiations of the free trade agreement between the U.S., Canada and Mexico. But he didn’t think the prospect of an increase in ICE personnel — even investigative agents — would be one Canada or its citizens would readily agree to.
Hoffman said: “Right now, ICE is a toxic product, even the parts of it that might be relatively benign from the perspective of Canadian national security interests. It would be difficult … for a Canadian government, any Canadian government, to agree at the moment to increase ICE presence, at least until things calm down in the United States.
Regardless of whether Fry's petition succeeds or not, it's clear that cooperation between Canada and the US is on the backburner and that local politicians are ready to politicize and import American problems into Canada.
Supplementals:

https://vancouversun.com/news/ice-is-already-in-vancouver-but-some-city-councillors-want-them-banned-from-the-world-cup

Quote of the Week

“Quite ironic that we're in this age of renewed nationalism and our Prime Minister is telling our story internationally, and yet we were about to let this beautiful resource of Canadian stories just wither.” - Stephen Taylor on creating a new website for Canadian historical places

Word of the Week

Heritage - valued objects and qualities such as cultural traditions and historic buildings that have been passed down from previous generations.

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Show Data

Episode Title: Preserving Our Heritage
Teaser: Stephen Harper’s portrait unveiling shows a media turnaround, a Canadian heritage website was almost lost entirely, and the people behind Alberta’s recalls are unveiled. Also, some Vancouver councillors want to ban ICE during the FIFA World Cup games.
Production Code: WC-455-2026-02-07
Recorded Date: February 7, 2026
Release Date: February 8, 2026
Duration: 1:02:15
Edit Notes: Pause and over talk with first two stories

Podcast Summary Notes

Duration: XX:X