The News Rundown

PM Carney names Louise Arbour as Canada’s next governor general

Canada has a new Governor General. Prime Minister Mark Carney has appointed former Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour as our next Governor General.
Arbour has also served as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
Arbour also led the 2021 review of sexual misconduct in the military.
We hope that the Governor Generals of Canada are primarily needed for their ceremonial services. These include presiding over ceremonies, granting Royal Ascent to legislation, and dissolving and proroguing Parliament. But there have been times in Canadian history when the Governor General had to act as the Constitutional spare tire preserving good government.
The past two governor generals faced criticisms in that Mary Simon did not speak French until recently and Julie Payette was embroiled in scandal.
With that Arbour is fully bilingual and from Montreal. By all accounts she has been promoted as a good choice by those who advocate from a perspective for central Canada.
But for a country recovering after a decade plus of western alienation and a budding independence movement out west, was Arbour the right choice?
Is she non partisan and able to represent all Canadians?
Looking back at her court cases there is a history of activism.
Highlighted in the Toronto Sun by Brian Lilley, he cites Gosselin v Quebec, a case about welfare rates, Arbour went against traditional jurisprudence and argued in favour of positive rights requiring the state to act.
At the UN her time saw excessive criticism of Israel and comparative silence on countries such as Iran. She was criticized in her post for “an alarming willingness to cater to the world’s more repressive regimes.”
With regards to the military sexual misconduct review in an interview with Maclean’s she said, “if you just recruit white boys who like guns but don’t like women or anyone who doesn’t look like them, you’ll perpetuate that culture.”
In her first press conference after it was announced she’d be assuming the role she had trouble answering a question about the monarchy.
She was asked a simple question, “do you consider yourself to be a monarchist?”
This is a valid and important question because in other commonwealth countries there’ve been questions of abandoning the monarchy. That question could come to Canada.
She said, “I don’t really know what that term is supposed to mean… This term is unfortunately very often used in a pejorative way. What I can say is that I will accede to a function in which I will be the representative of the Crown, in a constitutional arrangement that I think has served Canada extremely well throughout our history, but even more in recent decades.”
Arbour is the King’s representative in Canada. These representatives were targeted in World War I and World War II and protected as if they were royalty. The idea being to ensure the survival of the monarchy if the worst happened to the UK or royal family.
For somebody who is representing the monarchy they should see it as more than a constitutional arrangement, should not see the word as a pejorative, and be able to give a deeper endorsement than Arbour did.
Like it or not, Arbour is the King’s representative for the next 5 years. We must hope at this point that her role will be largely ceremonial and if she needs to discharge her Constitutional powers she should do so in a traditional sense rather than with a political or activist angle.
Supplementals:

Chinese state foreign interference is alive in BC, and consular officials have now been confirmed to have attempted to pressure a Vancouver City Hall official to cancel an event critical of Chinese Communist rule.
At the meeting, representatives of China’s consulate told a staff member of the city’s civic theatres branch that they wanted a series of performances by the Shen Yun dance group to be stopped. Shen Yun is a mostly dance celebration of Chinese cultural traditions lost under Communist rule, and is associated with the new religious movement Falun Gong. The Vancouver performances also received bomb threats, but went ahead anyway April 8-12 at the city-owned Queen Elizabeth Theatre.
Beijing has long targeted Shen Yun, a New York-based performing arts group that has toured the world for the past two decades, and uses the banner “China before Communism. Through its consulates, Beijing has decried the Shen Yun shows as “anti-China propaganda” that are spreading the ideology of Falun Gong, a movement persecuted by Beijing along with other religious and spiritual groups.
Mayor Ken Sim’s office confirmed on Tuesday that the meeting had occurred and that the Shen Yun event was discussed, but denied the Vancouver Civic Theatres (VCT) employee in question was pressured.
The mayor’s chief of staff, Trevor Ford said: “After investigating this allegation, city staff have confirmed that a meeting between VCT staff and Chinese consulate officials did indeed happen. However, this was not a breach of protocol, nor was there any pressure by counselor officials to cancel the event.”
The Chinese consulate requested the meeting, and it was attended by the consul and vice-consul, said Ford, who described it as “cordial” and touching on “a range of cultural topics.”
Ford added: “Staff discussed the meeting with Global Affairs Canada and confirmed that the meeting falls within the bounds of a normal diplomatic interaction with China.”
Shen Yun may be known to most Canadians for the colourful flyers dropped in their mailboxes promoting their events, and blitz campaign ads on TV, if not for the performances themselves. But for the Chinese government, the show has become a preoccupation. As far back as 2011, the Chinese consul general in Vancouver urged then-mayor Gregor Robertson to boycott Shen Yun.
During the foreign interference inquiry that delivered its report in 2025, members of the Canadian Falun Gong community testified about efforts to interfere in Shen Yun performances. They spoke about bomb threats to venues and said Chinese consular officials had warned Shen Yun’s sponsors that their business with China would be impacted, and they would not be able to obtain travel visas.
Before landing in Vancouver, Shen Yun performed in Toronto on March 28 without incident, but a threat on March 29 prompted the evacuation of the theatre. Sent by email, it said explosives had been placed inside the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, as well as on Parliament Hill. The same email account sent another message the following day, warning that gunmen would enter the theatre disguised as audience members, shoot the performers and set fire to the venue.
Toronto police told Global News the threats “were determined to be unfounded,” but the Canadian Opera Company, which owns the Four Seasons Centre, cancelled the remaining performances. Organizers announced on Monday that they had rescheduled the Toronto performances for June 26-28.
In February, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was evacuated from his official residence after receiving a threat to blow it up unless he cancelled the Shen Yun shows in the country.
Former Vancouver mayor Kennedy Stewart, who used to be a MP for the NDP, now an associate professor at the Simon Fraser University School of Public Policy said: “The mayor and council need to take this very seriously. What’s worrying to me is the level of interference. Taking pot shots at politicians is one thing, but starting to infiltrate within the civil service and directly intimidating civil servants, I haven’t heard of that before. So this is perhaps an emboldened move by the consulate, if they are actively going in and trying to change city operations, bypassing politicians, bypassing political avenues and doing this internally. That’s deeply worrying to me.”
Stewart also dropped another bombshell this week. He said in a broadcast interview Monday that British Columbia Premier David Eby is aware of an active RCMP investigation into a sitting cabinet minister suspected of collaborating with the Chinese government — and that senior NDP officials have been alerted to the matter with no apparent action taken.
He said: “It’s come to my attention and I’ve reported it and in fact was interviewed for about four hours by lawyers working for the federal government about a B.C. cabinet minister under investigation for collaborating with the Chinese government.”
Stewart did not identify the B.C. NDP minister in question, and no charges have been laid. But he did confirm that the individual remains in the B.C. government today. He said he was taking a risk in talking about the investigation, because he signed a non-disclosure agreement, although he didn't say with whom.
The remarks from Stewart came as Prime Minister Mark Carney pursues a diplomatic and trade realignment with Beijing and as British Columbia remains a hotspot for suspected Chinese foreign interference operations in Canada.
After hearing Stewart's remarks, Eby says neither the RCMP nor Canada's spy agency have ever raised concerns about his cabinet or caucus. Eby said Tuesday that he has "had multiple briefings with CSIS, with the RCMP" and none pointed to any concerns about any member of the government, and if there were, he would have removed that person from cabinet.
Regardless of the validity of Stewart's claims, it's clear that there's something happening in Vancouver, that the current mayor and council seem to be quick to deny. And the provincial government of David Eby seems quick to deny any sort of interference within the BC NDP cabinet as well. Until we know more about what's going on, it will be tough for the public to determine if our political leaders are aware of the problem, fixing the problem, ignoring the problem, or are even part of the problem.
Supplementals:

Elections Alberta alerted to improper use of voters’ information in late March, journalist says

The signature collection phase of the Alberta independence movement’s referendum campaign has ended and the ending has proven to be nothing but controversial.
Late last week it was announced that the Republican Party of Alberta had given access to the electors list. This list includes the names and addresses of anyone who voted in the last election.
The list is given to political parties to enable them to find new members.
The Republican Party of Alberta is Alberta’s only registered separatist party presently.
The Republican Party allegedly gave the electors list over to the Centurion Project, another group advocating for Alberta independence.
It’s at this point we must highlight that the referendum push has been led primarily by another third party group, Stay Free Alberta. This subtle nuance and difference between the Republican Party of Alberta, the Centurion project, and Stay free Alberta has been mostly ignored and not discussed by the media.
The breach of data focuses on the Republican Party of Alberta and the Centurion Project. The reporting to this point alleges that data that the Republican Party had access to was given to the Centurion project to advocate for independence and find potential voters.
A journalist reportedly tipped off Elections Alberta in late March. That journalist was former mainstream media turned independent journalist Jen Gerson. Gerson used to commentate in publications like CBC and The Globe and Mail.
She says she contacted Elections Alberta “weeks ago” about the potential privacy breach. Following a lack of movement by Elections Alberta she went to the mainstream media.
Elections Alberta said that the RCMP was investigating and the reason for going bigger to the mainstream media was because Elections Alberta sat on the tip for a month.
Now interestingly enough the stories in the media present Gerson as an independent journalist but do not give any background of her past work in the mainstream media.
They also do not go into her political leanings on the matter of Alberta independence. This past week Gerson wrote on X, “Smith needs to tell the separatists that if they want to force a secession vote on the province, they need to start a party, stand up their own candidates, and win in a general election -- exactly as the PQ did.”
The reality behind this and anyone who knows how politics would work in Alberta means that this would split the right leaning vote allowing the NDP to win in Alberta. This post speaks volumes and should be considered in the story of these leaks as we move forward.
The delay in investigation by Elections Alberta has been hammered on by the NDP and their leader Naheed Nenshi.
The NDP feels that changes to legislation around elections limited what Elections Alberta could do.
Smith said that her and the government will wait for the thorough investigation by the RCMP and Elections Alberta to conclude before commenting further and determining if legislative changes needed.
The Alberta Privacy Commissioner also announced an investigation into the Centurion Project over the breach of the list of electors.
The government agencies are working and what’s been done must be investigated fully before any knee-jerk reactions are taken.
The NDP also aimed to score some political points with this. They say that the UCP president, Rob Smith was at one of these meetings. They shared screenshots from an online zoom meeting with the Centurion project. They had this information from two weeks prior.
The UCP confirmed this past week on Tuesday that staff did attend the meeting but they did so believing information presented would have been attained legally and that they were looking at a new voter engagement tool.
They also said that “staff” attended and that the Rob Smith in question was not the party president. Party president Rob Smith was at a fundraiser at the time.
With that we now get to the NDP’s shady dealings. Why did they sit on the information for weeks and use it to score political points?
The NDP also feel that as a result of this fiasco (and that’s what it is) that the petitions with the signatures should be thrown out.
Nenshi said, “to me the entire petition is invalid. [The separatists have] the ability to forge signatures because they have all the information to do that.”
According to whether or not this is something that is riling up Albertans as the media says, Sun News columnist Rick Bell wrote that “this isn’t the year-round daylight time story.” Meaning that the unveiling of daylight savings time caused more of a ripple in Alberta.
The UCP for their part is responding to the information that is available at present time. They aren’t visibly trying to quash the investigation.
Mike Ellis, Minister for Public Safety and Emergency Services has been in contact with the RCMP’s deputy commissioner about the independence movement.
The RCMP informed Eliis’ office that to date there has been no evidence that the independence movement has been subject to foreign interference.
The investigations are ongoing. The Alberta government is letting them run, so far. What we do witness though is a concerted push by the media to amplify this story.
It’s also worth noting that the Centurion Project also sees involvement with David Parker who previously founded Take Back Alberta. Take Back Alberta was largely responsible for organizing the UCP into removing Jason Kenney as Premier.
At the time the media treated this as an organic movement because Jason Kenney, at times, was at odds with the establishment in Alberta.
But now that a similar type of organization is organizing something the media doesn’t like, it’s being amped up and framed as such.
The moving parts between the Republican Party, the Centurion Project, independent journalist Jen Gerson, and Elections Alberta are all obfuscated. When things are obfuscated it becomes easier to craft and sell a narrative and that’s what the media has done.
Supplementals:

Firing Line

U.S. tribes demand a say in key B.C. economic decisions

It's a new week in BC, and yet the biggest news story of the past year has remained DRIPA, and its effect on the province. Now we have a new wrinkle to the ramifications, where US-based First Nations are planning on citing B.C.’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People’s Act in challenging provincial approval of resource projects.
The Sinixt Confederacy, based in Washington state, and the Southeast Alaska Indigenous Transboundary Commission argue that they have historic rights to parts of B.C. They say lack of consultation and expedited environmental assessments for economic development contravenes their rights under the Canadian Constitution and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
DRIPA, passed in 2019, aimed to align B.C. laws with UNDRIP, but some experts have argued that the Gitxaała decision by the B.C. Court of Appeal in December effectively made UNDRIP the law in B.C. The court decision shot down the Mineral Tenure Act, ruling it did not allow for free prior and informed consent for First Nations.
The reason why DRIPA is so important is because the law has proved uniquely powerful at overriding B.C. laws. DRIPA states plainly that “Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired.” And it was Eby himself who, in 2021, wrote an amendment into B.C. law declaring that “Every Act and regulation must be construed as being consistent with the Declaration.”
Conservative Indigenous Relations critic Scott McInnis said U.S. tribes using DRIPA to block or delay resource projects amounts to a “sovereignty crisis.” He said Eby and Attorney General Niki Sharma need to come up with a solution quickly instead of waiting for the court cases to pile up.
McInnis said: “The premier has a lot of explaining to do as to why court cases are piling up, and he thinks that it’s a great idea to come up with some sort of durable solution, which is unknown sometime into the future.”
In northwestern B.C., the Southeast Alaska commission is challenging the approval of the Eskay Creek Mine revitalization project. They have also voiced concerns about the Red Chris Mine expansion and the Seabridge Gold Mine.
It represents 14 tribes, including the American members of the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian peoples, and argue that their traditional territory extends on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border and that their traditional territory includes the Unuk Watershed, where the Eskay Creek Mine is located and where Seabridge is proposed.
Guy Archibald, executive director of the commission, says the lawsuit was filed in November and the commission has still not heard back from the province. Instead, he says the province changed the Environmental Assessment Act to try to limit “participating Indigenous nation status” to Canadian First Nations.
Archibald said: “The Gitxaała decision showed that the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples act is law. It’s not aspirational. It is the law of the land, and that all of the regulations and guidance need to comply with the UN Declaration on Indigenous Peoples' rights. If you look at the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People’s Rights, it doesn’t talk about, well, you have some rights on this side of the border and other rights on that side of the border. B.C. cannot create two classes of rights for the same people.”
A similar case is playing out in Rossland, where the Sinixt Confederacy, which represents the Lakes Tribe of the Colville Confederated Tribes of Washington State and argues they are descendants of the Sinixt people based in southeastern B.C., is opposing a magnesium mine that is proposed by West High Yield Resources and the Osoyoos Indian Band.
An injunction was placed on the project in March by the B.C. Supreme Court until it could undergo a judicial review, which is scheduled to start Tuesday. In April, the Sinixt were informed that they would be allowed to participate in the judicial review alongside the Save Record Ridge Action Committee. The B.C. Court of Appeals shot down an application by West High Yield to have the injunction thrown out.
Premier David Eby argued these cases have little to do with DRIPA and much more to do with Section 35 of the Canadian Constitution and the 2021 Desautel decision by the Supreme Court of Canada that ruled U.S. tribes with traditional territory in Canada are “Aboriginal Peoples of Canada” and have traditional rights such as the right to hunt.
Eby also says that Alaskan tribes have for years opposed Canadian mining projects, as they believe it has impacts on the rivers in their area. He says that the province “[has] tested repeatedly and conclusively to demonstrate that there are not those impacts.”
Eby also faced tough questions this week for abandoning his changes to DRIPA in the face of strong opposition from First Nations. This led to Opposition Leader Trevor Halford asking "Are the New Democrats “now co-governing the province with First Nations leadership?”
Eby’s initial response was to accuse the Conservatives “of deliberately twisting this to spread fear.” But Halford pointed out that he was simply quoting Terry Teegee, B.C. regional chief of the Assembly of First Nations.
Teegee was asked point blank last week if “we are now in a position where roughly 200 First Nations are co-governing this province with the B.C. government.”
“Is that true?” Asked CKNW radio host Jill Bennett.
“Yes, that’s exactly right,” replied Teegee and went on to explain that co-governance was the essence of DRIPA.
“Ultimately we have to get into a room — and First Nations have to get in the room — and to the negotiations table to make decisions on these important matters. Really, it is putting the spotlight on how development occurs.”
Was the regional chief wrong when he said Indigenous leaders are now co-governing with the province, Halford asked the premier. Eby tried a second deflection. “This parliament remains supreme,” he replied. “But we are bounded by a Constitution that obliges us to do important work with First Nations.”
However, Halford was not to be turned. He pressed Eby a third time on whether he agreed with Teegee’s claim of co-governance: “It’s a yes or no, premier.”
Eby responded: “We’ve got parliamentary representatives that are elected from every part of the province. We have to vote on laws.”
Terry Teegee was a central figure in the adoption of DRIPA under premier John Horgan. In a posthumous memoir published last year, Horgan named Teegee as one of the Indigenous leaders who persuaded him to endorse the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
He indicated that Teegee was among the Indigenous leaders who oversaw the drafting of DRIPA itself. He further cited him as an authority on whether the UNDRIP guarantee of “free, prior and informed consent” for Indigenous people would amount to a veto.
Horgan quoted Teegee as follows: “We don’t have a veto but we need to know what you’re doing on our territory. If we disagree with what you are doing, we can make it very difficult for you.”
That sounds a little like the recent threat from Indigenous leaders to engage in “collective resistance” if the Eby government went ahead with changing DRIPA. Before Eby backed down, he said that the province could not delay amending or suspending DRIPA. He cited the “substantial legal threat” posed by a recent Court of Appeal finding that the province’s mineral claims legislation was inconsistent with the UN Declaration.
The parliamentary schedule calls for the two sides to try to sort things out before the Oct. 5 opening of the fall session of the legislature, leaving time to revive changes or amendments to DRIPA. The government seems optimistic that they can get these changes passed.
But contrast that against what Teegee said last week when he was asked about the likelihood of Indigenous leaders agreeing to change DRIPA. “Are you open to any changes to DRIPA?” asked radio host Bennett.
Teegee said: “At this point, no. Absolutely not. I think DRIPA is working. I think, ultimately, it gets us to the place where we want to be in terms of how decisions are made.”
DRIPA gets Indigenous leaders to the place where we want to be in terms of how decisions are made, says Teegee. Meaning, according to him, actual co-government. Against that, there’s the premier’s denial of co-government.
So who do we believe, an Indigenous leader who has consistently supported and shaped DRIPA for the better part of 10 years, or a premier who has changed his mind a half dozen times in the past few weeks alone?
An expert in Aboriginal law and treaty matters told Global News last month that, in his opinion, the NDP is now co-governing the province with First Nations.
Geoffrey Moyse was legal counsel in the B.C. Ministry of Attorney General’s Office and for more than 30 years he advised governments on Aboriginal law and treaty matters. He put it bluntly: “I have never seen anything like this… over six terms of governments, working for the provincial government. I have never seen this level of ineptitude and incompetence.”
Thomas Isaac with Cassels Aboriginal Law Group, is also a former chief treaty negotiator for the B.C. government and said that American tribes are applying the law as written. Isaac said that B.C. might be the only jurisdiction on the planet to allow non-citizens to assert constitutional-level rights within its borders.
“They’re applying the law that the B.C. government put in place and there’s nothing in UNDRIP that restricts it to Canadian aboriginal peoples. Yet in Canada, it seems like anything goes in this country and at what point do we say enough is enough,” he said.
Voter sentiment for the NDP and the popularity of David Eby is plummeting, both now lower than the leaderless BC Conservatives. It appears that BC is finally waking up to the level of ineptitude and incompetence of Eby's NDP government.
Supplementals:

Quote of the Week

“I have never seen anything like this… over six terms of governments, working for the provincial government. I have never seen this level of ineptitude and incompetence.” - Geoffrey Moyse former legal counsel in the B.C. Ministry of Attorney General’s Office, on Premier Eby’s troubles with DRIPA

Word of the Week

Pejorative - expressing contempt or disapproval

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Show Data

Episode Title: Ineptitude and Incompetence
Teaser: Louise Arbour will be Canada’s new governor general, Chinese officials wanted to stop Vancouver’s Shen Yun performances, and Alberta’s electors list sees a data breach. Also, US Indigenous tribes are using BC’s DRIPA legislation to halt resource projects.
Production Code: WC-467-2026-05-09
Recorded Date: May 9, 2026
Release Date: May 10, 2026
Duration: 1:14:17
Edit Notes: Pause between BC 1 and AB

Podcast Summary Notes

Duration: XX:XX