The News Rundown

NDP MP Lori Idlout crossing floor to Liberals, PM Carney two seats shy of majority

Nunavut NDP MP Lori Idlout will cross the floor to join the Liberals, inching Mark Carney’s Liberals closer to a majority government.
In a statement late Tuesday night, NDP interim leader Don Davies announced Idlout’s defection from the party, saying he was “very disappointed” she had decided to join the Liberal caucus.
Davies said: “The position of the New Democrats on floor crossing is longstanding and clear. We believe that when someone rejects the decision of their electors and wants to join another party, they should put that decision to their voters.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney said he was honoured to welcome Idlout into the Liberal caucus, calling her voice an “invaluable contribution” on social media.
Idlout said she made her decision after “hearing clearly from Nunavummiut that this is a crucial moment for Nunavut and for all of Canada,” and praised Carney as “our first prime minister from the North.”
It’s perhaps not the most ringing endorsement, but it’s a stark contrast from what she was saying a month ago, when she chided the Liberals for choosing “to ignore the concerns of Nunavummiut.”
In the past six months, she also accused the government of “looking to prevent justice” by appealing a lawsuit over medical experiments allegedly conducted on Inuit children, railed against the fast-tracking of a hydroelectric project by saying that, “Carney has pitted Indigenous nations against each other and infringed on Indigenous rights and title,” and said she was “disgusted by the Carney government’s response to Nunavut.”
To be fair, Idlout may have concluded that she would have more influence over policies that affect her territory from inside the government than she did with a party that couldn’t manage to garner enough votes to gain official party status. And indeed, in a statement announcing her defection, she said that, “We need a strong and ambitious government that makes decisions with Nunavut — not only about Nunavut.”
New Democrats are now down to six seats in the House. The move comes one day after voting began in the federal NDP leadership race, with former leader Jagmeet Singh’s successor to be announced at the end of the month. Idlout endorsed Avi Lewis for party leadership at an event in Ottawa last week.
She spoke highly of Lewis at his campaign event in Ottawa on March 5, after previously calling him “the strongest out of all the other leadership candidates.”
The ideological crevasse between Carney’s pragmatism and Lewis’ socialism is simply too gaping to give Idlout the benefit of the doubt. What we have here is an elected official who places her own career above any principles she might once have had. And she is by no means the only one to do so.
In recent months, three Conservatives — Chris d’Entremont, Michael Ma and Matt Jeneroux — have also crossed the floor. Ma had so little shame, he made an appearance at the Tory Christmas party, where he posed for a photo with Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, before attending the Liberal holiday celebration the next day.
This latest floor crossing leaves the Liberals with 170 seats, just short of a majority. Carney announced date for byelections in three federal ridings: Scarborough Southwest, Terrebonne and University—Rosedale. If the Liberals win two of those byelections – which will be held April 13 – it would give them a majority of 172 seats.
The Toronto ridings, University—Rosedale and Scarborough Southwest, were vacated when two high profile MPs, Chrystia Freeland and Bill Blair, stepped down earlier this year.
The voters in the Quebec riding of Terrebonne saw the result of their election overturned by the Supreme Court in February after serious voting irregularities.
The news also was proceeded by a major spending announcement by Carney, who announced a $35B investment in Arctic defence and Northern infrastructure, interestingly enough at the same time the Nunavut MP was brought into the caucus.
The plan is new, but the money is not. The funds were previously announced in 2022 as part of a North American Air Defense Command (Norad) modernization strategy.
After four years, the government has laid out a blueprint to spend the money it had previously earmarked. In a background briefing, defence officials say contracts are now going out for tender and the government is now actively looking for builders in the private sector to help it expand its air bases.
A news release issued by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) stated that “previous governments had lacked the scale and the breadth of strategy that the vast region demands.”
“After decades of limited and piecemeal investments in the North, Canada’s new government is acting with a sale of ambition worthy of this vast region and its peoples,” Carney said. “We are securing every corner of this terrain, unlocking its vast resources and delivering the strong connected network of communities that Northerners deserve.”
Officials are concerned that there may not be enough workers in the North. The government is seeking request for proposals from builders across Canada, but says they want bids that prioritize employing the 140,000 Northerners and Indigenous Peoples in the Arctic.
Carney’s blueprint includes spending $32 billion at forward operating military bases in Yellowknife, Inuvik, N.W.T., Iqaluit, Nunavut and at Deployed Operating Base (DOB) in 5 Wing Goose Bay in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, N.L.
Two new Northern Operational Support Hubs will be built in the Yukon capital of Whitehorse and in Resolute, Nunavut, while smaller support nodes will be constructed in the Nunavut hamlets of Cambridge Bay and Ranklin Inlet. Another $294 million will be used to upgrade the Rankin Inlet Airport and to the Inuvik Airport runway.
While another floor crossing appears to show the Carney Liberals's strategy of getting a majority government before the next election, he's certainly sparking conversation about it. Meanwhile, the media laps up the spending announcements instead.
Supplementals:

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/article/pm-carney-announces-35b-investment-in-arctic-defence-northern-infrastructure/

In the 2019 Alberta election a controversial policy was to close Alberta’s supervised consumption sites. Now the Canadian Centre of Recovery Excellence (CoRE) conducted a study that found the closure of an overdose prevention site in Red Deer did not result in an increase deaths, emergency department visits or ambulance calls for site users.
Alberta Mental Health and Addictions Minister Rick Wilson said his ministry will consider the study to see whether other the supervised consumption site should also close.
CoRE studied the outcomes for the Red Deer clients but also compared them to clients using the similar program in the Lethbridge program.
Dr. Monty Ghosh, an addiction specialist said that the study was well done but it shouldn’t be a reason to shut down other supervised consumption sites.
This story received marginal coverage in Alberta media with a single story covering it from Global News.
The study itself is short, 8 pages including cover page, and is available online for free. Anyone can read it and it is linked in our supplementals.
National Post columnist Derek Finkle compared the study to results in Toronto and did a deeper dive into the data.
The Red Deer facility closed on March 31, 2025. It studied outcomes between June 30, 2024 and September 27, 2025.
The study used data linked to provincial health card number of the clients.
The study itself compared Red Deer to Lethbridge and found there was no increase in deaths among Red Deer clients after the site closed.
It also found the highly potent drug carfentanil caused more than half of Red Deer’s overdose fatalities, which could easily lead one to hypothesize deaths would increase post-closure — but they didn’t.
There was a slight increase in in-patient hospitalization for Red Deer clients after the facility closed and the number of opioid related EMS events remained stable.
Last week CTV Toronto published a headline: “Drug overdoses in Toronto up nearly 50 per cent since last January, city data shows.”
This was attributed to the government closing injection sites within 250m of daycares and schools a year ago.
The fine print of that story says that fatal overdoses remained constant and they were in line with the average from the previous year after the Toronto site closed.
The story here is that previous data suggesting harms reduction was amplified with supervised consumption sites seems to be at odds with what has been experienced in recent years.
The Ford government also telegraphed Friday that they would be closing the province’s remaining supervised consumption sites but there was no link to the Alberta study.
Supervised consumption was something that most progressive parties championed and were even part of core NDP platforms until very recently.
This was believed to be a social policy that would just work but now there’s another plank of data that says otherwise.
Data and numbers on their own are innocuous and it’s their interpretation that leads to people being offended and becoming upset.
The case of supervised consumption perhaps not being a good thing is not something that the media can talk about all that freely.
That explains the vacuum of coverage we have seen this week on this story.
But with this study in hand we should question the use of supervised consumption and use that to inform policy making of the day until more data or another study comes along.
That will make some people upset and that’s why this wasn’t heard from in the media this week.
Supplementals:

B.C. chiefs tell MP Aaron Gunn to 'chillax' about land acknowledgments

This week's BC story is a bit of a strange one, and it comes down to some strange reporting on a strange story.
BC Conservative MP Aaron Gunn, known for his politics documentaries on Youtube, recently weighed in on the First Nations land rights issue that has been ongoing in BC, following recent court decisions that mean BC's laws have to align with UNDRIP, and another decision recognizing Aboriginal title in an urban area of land in Richmond.
Gunn is warning that governments regularly making land acknowledgements threatens the bedrock of Canadian society: private property rights. In a social media post earlier this week, Gunn questioned the practice of governments opening meetings by recognizing that they are taking place on the traditional or unceded territory of Indigenous nations.
He said: "If the federal government truly believes in the private property rights of Canadians, they should probably stop opening every public meeting by proclaiming the gathering on the “unceded territory” of this or that First Nation. Doing so reinforces the radical and dangerous legal concept that most Canadians live on “stolen land”. This is Canada. One country. For all Canadians."
His remarks quickly spread across social media and drew responses from political figures in British Columbia, including BC Conservative leadership candidate and MLA Harman Bhangu. Bhangu said the issue reflects a broader conversation happening among British Columbians about the security of property ownership.
However, the Canadian Press saw the story differently, and told it from one side only: a quippy response from the leaders of four First Nations located in Gunn's riding, who told Gunn in a written statement that he should "chillax".
In a joint statement, the chiefs from the Tla'amin, Homalco, K'omoks and Klahoose nations said that "harmless" land acknowledgments only recognized "the history of the place" where people held events.
The nations said that land acknowledgments "have never seized private property, cancelled a mortgage, repossessed a pickup truck or altered a single title deed anywhere in Canada."
"Chiefs from four First Nations communities are urging the public to please approach Aaron Gunn with no caution whatsoever. He is completely harmless, though momentarily unsettled by the alarming possibility that someone might acknowledge the land before a meeting."
It said the chiefs "had two words for the MP — chillax, bud."
The statement said: "No one is going anywhere. Canada will survive the brief moment of honesty. Until then, chiefs across the region continue to reassure the public that land acknowledgments have not, to date, resulted in any land back."
Gunn responded to the joint statement on social media on Thursday by saying it was "unfortunate to see a number of bands making light of what is an extremely divisive time in our politics."
He said: "For the first time in our history, homeowners are receiving official letters from the government informing them that their home may no longer belong to them. This is not hyperbole; it’s real, and as a Member of Parliament, it is my duty to stand up for my constituents and their rights.
Additionally, decision-making authority over public lands including parks, forestry and other developments, are increasingly being transferred to groups that 95% of British Columbians have no ability to vote for or hold democratically accountable – all on the basis of ethnicity.
Most of all, we need to end the kind of identity politics that pits Canadians against one another. Whether you are Indigenous or not, we are all Canadians. We all belong here, and we all deserve to call this place home."
Some 150 property owners in Richmond did receive official letters from the City of Richmond after the B.C. Supreme Court decisions on a First Nations land claim (Cowichan Tribes v. Canada), which gave the Cowichan Nation title to 7.5 square kilometres of land in South Richmond. But no property owner has received an official letter or an eviction notice from a First Nation or government body due to this trial. Both the federal and provincial governments are appealing the court’s decision.
Spencer Chandra Herbert, minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation of British Columbia, spoke about Gunn’s initial comments and the joint statements from the Chiefs of the First Nations. “I think a bit of humour to this is important,” he said. “There seems to be a manic anxiety quality coming from some Conservative politicians around acknowledging history, acknowledging that First Nations people have been on this land for thousands of years. To my mind, it isn’t controversial, and I find it perplexing why we’ve seen legislation in this house to try to ban acknowledging history. Like, come on, “Chillax Bud” is probably the kindest way to approach this.”
Even so, It's hard for British Columbians, especially homeowners to "chillax" when 3 different court decisions in the past 9 months have all pointed towards a trend that could grant a lot of new possibilities for land title in the province, and when it comes to home ownership, instability is not something that is desired. While land acknowledgments may seem harmless, and maybe they are, Gunn raised an important issue that the media completely ignored in favour of telling just one side of the story.
Supplementals:

Firing Line

Canada sheds more than 100,000 jobs in first two months of year

The jobs reports from Statistics Canada has been bobbing up and down over the last year. Now though the reality of the situation can’t be denied. Canada has lost more than 100,000 full times jobs since the beginning of 2026.
This wipes out almost all job gains from 2025.
Unemployment rose to 6.7%, the highest since the pandemic. Wholesale and retail trade took the biggest hit.
The government’s response to this is that US trade actions are causing the shifts.
Carney mentioned this while visiting Norway saying, “the US trade actions against Canada are causing big adjustments in the Canadian economy.”
He also tried to dampen the blow by saying that we still created more jobs than the United States. That however is a bit disingenuous though because according to the U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics, they say the US has actually lost about 6000 jobs over the last 6 months. The bureau says the last six months saw the U.S. economy gain about 243,000 jobs and lose about 249,000.
Market analysts expected the labour market to gain 10,000 jobs but because that didn’t happen this is a very worrying sign for Katherine Judge, executive director and senior economist at CIBC Capital Markets.
She said, "This is clearly a very worrisome report for the [Bank of Canada] that shows that labour market slack has increased and activity is frozen amidst trade uncertainty.”
The Bank of Montreal called the report exceptionally weak and they echoed the analysis regarding seeing almost no job growth over the last year.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre tied this back to Carney’s anniversary of becoming Prime Minister. He said in a post on X, “Mark Carney’s shrinking economy is now making international headlines. He has delivered the only shrinking economy and the 2nd highest unemployment in the G7 and now 100,000 jobs have vanished in 2 months. His economic credentials are all an illusion. The results show he is just another Liberal.”
While speaking to reporters he said, "It is true that we have global problems and we cannot discount or try to control what President (Donald) Trump does. But all the countries are facing those tariffs. None of them have a shrinking economy like we do under Mark Carney here in Canada."
The most honest and direct reporting on the matter came from the BBC. The BBC mentions the Trump tariffs, the uncertain future of the USMCA trade deal, and Canada’s relationship leaving it vulnerable to the United States.
An interesting nugget of information from the most recent report is that if you compare Alberta to the rest of Canada the province has created 85,000 jobs while the rest of the country has lost a net of 33,200 over the last year. This was nine times the amount added by the next highest growth province.
This tells the story of what Canada needs to do. Alberta has been undertaking an effort since 2019 to diversify the economy and capitalize on the natural resources sector.
Had Canada had export capacity and a regulatory framework that allowed for the growth and expansion of the energy industry, it’s safe to say that what Alberta saw would have been mired in more places around the country.
This jobs report will likely be excused by the media and most Canadians since it’s easy to point the finger and say this is a result of what’s happening in the United States, Donald Trump is bad.
But at the end of the day we are the masters of our own domain and can do whatever we want whenever we want to grow our economy and transform this country.
As we head into Carney’s second year, let’s ask ourselves, what are we going to ask the government to do about it?
Are we going to ask for more projects to be approved that tap into our primary industries and export capacity?
Are we going to aim to get a lower tariff rate in USMCA negotiations? (Note: As of right now Canada has one of the lowest raw tariff rates sector by sector compared to many countries with the United States, some sources estimate the average to be as low as 3.1% due to USMCA.)
With that, should the American actions be blamed or should we look inward?
The question: is there the will power to do so? Or will a languishing jobs report make the Canadian media establishment and political class feel too good about themselves because they can point the finger at the Americans?
Supplementals:

Quote of the Week

“Mark Carney’s shrinking economy is now making international headlines. He has delivered the only shrinking economy and the 2nd highest unemployment in the G7 and now 100,000 jobs have vanished in 2 months. His economic credentials are all an illusion. The results show he is just another Liberal. - Pierre Poilievre on Canada’s shrinking job numbers.

Word of the Week

chillax - a portmanteau of "chill" and "relax," meaning to calm down, take it easy, or behave in a laid-back manner

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Show Data

Episode Title: Chillax, Bud
Teaser: A Nunavut floor crossing accompanies Arctic spending, an Alberta consumption site closure didn’t result in more deaths, and a BC MP is told to chillax on land acknowledgments. Also, Canada has lost 100,000 jobs in 2026 so far.
Production Code: WC-460-2026-03-14
Recorded Date: March 14, 2026
Release Date: March 15, 2026
Duration: 56:23
Edit Notes: Pause Patrick, Sneeze Shane

Podcast Summary Notes

Duration: XX:XX