The News Rundown

Carney appoints Conservative MP from Quebec to Senate, along with principal secretary

The Carney Liberal government faces growing backlash this week over a series of highly strategic policy reversals, controversial partisan patronage appointments, and massive spending commitments that critics argue independent media is failing to aggressively scrutinize.
Mainstream coverage has largely treated Prime Minister Mark Carney’s legislative shifts as a "pragmatic reset" to distance his administration from the unpopularity of the previous Trudeau era. However, independent and critical analyses reveal a more calculated attempt to protect corporate interests, consolidate power, and pacify international critics while side-stepping public accountability.
The biggest news is that Carney is appointing Quebec Conservative MP Richard Martel to the Senate, as well as his own principal secretary and major Liberal power player, as he announced he was reversing the Trudeau-era appointment criteria of requiring that prospective senators demonstrate non-partisanship.
Martel, now a former MP, has been serving as the Conservative MP for the riding of Chicoutimi—Le Fjord since 2018. A spokesperson in the Prime Minister’s Office confirmed that Martel will sit as an Independent.
Carney announced on Tuesday that Martel, a former Quebec Major Junior League hockey coach, was among four names he was elevating to the upper chamber, with another one being his principal secretary, Tom Pitfield.
Pitfield, a digital strategist who worked on Carney’s 2025 election campaign before following him into the Prime Minister’s Office, is a longtime Liberal and friend of former prime minister justin trudeau.
Carney also appointed to the Senate physician and cancer researcher Dr. Rodney Oulette from Moncton, N.B. and Geeta Tucker, a Winnipeg consultant and former president of the Chartered Professional Accountants of Manitoba.
Martel said in French on Facebook that “becoming a senator is just another way to keep working for our region, Quebec and Canada. My role changes but my commitment remains the same.”
Martel’s departure from the House of Commons means there will need to be a byelection held in Chicoutimi—Le Fjord which, before Martel’s byelection win in 2018, was won by the Liberals in 2015. During the 2025 election, a three-way race emerged between the Conservatives, Bloc Québécois and Liberals to capture the riding, which has been represented by all federal parties, including the NDP, at some point over the past two decades.
In a statement posted to X, Senator Leo Housakos, who serves as the leader of the Opposition in the Senate, welcomed the new appointees, calling Martel a “longtime friend and colleague. I look forward to continuing our collaboration and working with all our new colleagues in service to Canadian women and men.”
The Prime Minister’s Office announced that Carney was also changing the criteria for Senate appointments, removing the “non-partisanship criterion” for picks and emphasizing that prospective candidates would be judged on “expertise in key Canadian strategic industries, regulatory frameworks, and emerging social and economic affairs.” His office promised to establish a new independent advisory board for Senate appointments in the “coming days.”
During his time in office, Trudeau ushered in a new appointment criteria for the Senate with the expressed intent of trying to remove partisanship from the upper chamber, and went so far as to kick Liberal senators out of the party’s caucus back in 2014.
Trudeau later ushered in a process that saw an independent board created to provide him with advice on who ought to be appointed to the Senate using a set of standard criteria.
Among that criteria is the requirement that “individuals must demonstrate to the advisory board that they have the ability to bring a perspective and contribution to the work of the Senate that is independent and non-partisan,” adding that past political activities would have to be disclosed but “would not disqualify an applicant.” However, some of Trudeau’s later appointments were ultimately criticized for being just as partisan as appointments under previous prime ministers, with some now former Liberal senators voting with the government's plan up to 94% of the time, shattering the myth of the independent and non partisan Senate.
Much of the mainstream coverage talked about the appointment of Martel, and what it could mean for Opposition Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre in the context of losing another MP, painting it as a bipartisan gesture or a symptom of internal Conservative friction. But the media glossed over the real issue. Commentators at places like ⁠The Hill Times warn that using the Senate to plant political "quarterbacks" represents a slippery slide back into unchecked executive overreach. Independent media points out that Carney is quietly packing the Senate with loyalists to fast-track incoming legislation without robust, independent sober second thought, as the Senate is supposed to provide.
Legacy media highlighted Tom Pitfield's tech and philanthropic background, focusing on Carney's defense that Pitfield brings expertise in artificial intelligence and Canada's digital economy. Independent media focuses instead on his role as a ultimate party insider.
Pitfield is a childhood friend of Justin Trudeau, the husband of sitting Liberal MP Anna Gainey, and crucially, has been literally serving as Carney’s own Principal Secretary and chief strategist.
Pitfield is now being positioned to emerge as ⁠Carney’s explicit "right hand" in the Senate. This not as an achievement of expertise, but as a deliberate executive power grab. Bypassing independent filters to plant his own sitting chief-of-staff into an unelected chamber gives Carney a dedicated political quarterback to crush dissent and fast-track controversial legislation.
This is just a further example of the partisan nature that Trudeau tried to claim the Senate was avoiding. Investigations by independent journalists and databases revealed that the PMO subjected shortlisted candidates to intense political screening, utilizing Liberalist—the Liberal Party's private donor and organizing database—to vet nominees. Over time, up to one-third of all "independent" senators appointed by Trudeau were exposed as direct donors to the Liberal Party, former Liberal candidates, or members of the Trudeau Foundation.
A striking example occurred with Bill C-234 in 2024, a bill designed to exempt farmers from the carbon tax on natural gas and propane. It passed the House of Commons with multi-party support from the Conservatives, NDP, and Bloc Québécois. Once the bill reached the Senate, supposedly "independent" Trudeau appointees aggressively filibustered, gutted, and neutralized the legislation to protect the government's signature climate policy from embarrassing rollback.
For years, mainstream political analysts treated the non-partisan Senate structure as a permanent, systemic shift in Canadian democracy that future prime ministers would be forced to respect. This vulnerability was fully exposed this week when Prime Minister Mark Carney simply modified the PMO mandate to drop the non-partisanship rule entirely so he could appoint his own Principal Secretary, Tom Pitfield, to the chamber. Carney's open return to old-school patronage proved what watchdogs like ⁠Democracy Watch had warned for a decade: the "independent Senate" was a partisan charade that could be discarded the moment it no longer served the executive branch's survival.
The media reporting on this story did not cover exactly why this momentum shift is such a big deal, instead focusing on the reaction of the Conservatives. It's something that the media continually ignores, that the Liberal decisions on 'partisanship' routinely defy what the media writes favourably on the topic, and in doing so, they aren't exposing the Liberals for what they really are.
Supplementals:

A new project was unveiled this week between Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Ontario Premier Doug Ford. The Northern Shield Energy Corridor.
This is a pipeline that will run for Hardisty Alberta to Sarnia Ontario. This is a 3,300km route that runs from where the oil flows to Ontario’s refinery belt.
Doug Ford and Danielle Smith made the announcement at the Calgary Stampede.
On the potential new pipeline Danielle Smith said, “Eastern Canadian refineries should be powered by Western Canadian energy - not from overseas. Premier Doug Ford and I are advancing a new West-East pipeline called the Northern Shield Energy Corridor connecting Alberta oil to Ontario refineries, and eventually, European markets. This nation building project would initially move 500,000 to 800,000 barrels per day, create tens of thousands of jobs, strengthen our economy, and help Canada receive full value for our world class resources.”
Ford said of the plan, “Folks, we are an economic powerhouse around the world, and now we have to unleash that powerhouse.”
The project being pitched is also very timely because it needs to show that Canada works before the October referendum.
Both Smith and Ford echoed the idea that “pipelines have gone from impossible to a national imperative.”
More importantly though the project is angled to support Canadian sovereignty and specifically Canadian energy sovereignty.
The project will be built entirely using Canadian steel.
Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer has tried to have the Enbridge Line 5 oil pipeline that traverses the Straits of Mackinac shut down.
She has cited environmental risks going as far as to revoke the pipeline’s 1953 easement over the Strait.
She’s also gone as far as taking the issue to the courts with the idea that there could be spills and the pipeline is a “ticking time bomb”.
A US District Court ruled that pipeline safety is a federal responsibility and Michigan did not have the authority to order its closure.
The US Supreme Court also ruled that Michigan’s separate lawsuit to shut down the line could proceed in state court.
This is important because this pipeline sends energy from western Canada to eastern Canada. What energy eastern Canada does not import via tanker on the east coast flows through this pipeline.
Without Line 5 Toronto and Montreal would run out of gas as would their major airports.
The pipeline is earmarked to carry 500,000 barrels a day and industry watchers are questioning if the production exists to fill this pipeline and the new Trans Mountain pipeline.
John Jeffrey, chief executive of Saturn Oil & Gas Inc., said the industry could see a major switch from having too much oil and not enough shipping capacity in the late 2010s, to potentially having too many options.
Jeffrey said, “I don’t see the demand for this line. don’t think there’s enough supply even coming online in the next 10 years to fill all this.”
Andrew Leach, a professor of economics at The University of Alberta said, “There’s no refineries in Sarnia that are sitting there saying we’d love more oil but we can’t get it.” Leach also pointed out the pipeline running to Sarnia known as Enbridge Line 5 through the US and he said, “Who’s going to pay for having redundant infrastructure to Sarnia?”
What about elbows up and Canadian sovereignty? This is a question that seemingly mattered last year but can be partly overlooked for this project.
Are we defending Canadian sovereignty or not? Does a question of demand prevent the project from going forward?
The media puts these obstacles in place but also kindly reminds us that Saskatchewan, Manitoba, indigenous groups, and industry must also be onboard.
This project shares goals similar to that of the cancelled Energy East pipeline. That project was proposed initially by TransCanada but they canceled the project.
That cancellation came amidst regulatory uncertainty presented by the federal government and roadblocks put in place by Quebec.
Just like the pipeline to the west, the modern state of affairs shows that it was regulatory burden that killed energy projects and almost killed the industry.
While this is not something we are happy to be right about, it’s the truth and could do with some light in the media.
Supplementals:

BC Nurses Escalate Strike by Picketing Major Hospitals

British Columbia’s 53,000 unionized nurses are escalating their job action and will start picketing hospitals on Vancouver Island over the weekend and into next week, as the nurses strike continues into a full blown crisis for the BC NDP government, as they strike for the first time since 1989.
The nurses have been striking since July 2. They started by refusing non-nursing duties and ceasing overtime work. The nurses have rejected what their employer, the Health Employers Association, has offered them. The nurses’ union said its job action will not impact urgent and emergency care or patient safety.
On Tuesday they further escalated their tactics by picketing Vancouver General Hospital. Today the nurses are picketing Surrey Memorial Hospital, with plans to picket Victoria General Hospital on Sunday; Nanaimo Regional General Hospital on July 13; and Royal Jubilee Hospital and South Island Surgical Centre on July 14.
There is “no indication” that the province is going to let the employer negotiate beyond its bargaining mandate, according to a press release the BC Nurses Union sent out earlier today.
The Health Employers Association said that it met with the Nurses Bargaining Association earlier this week. While some progress was made, the parties were unable to reach a new tentative agreement, the email said. The HEA added that it “remains available to return to the bargaining table at any time,” and that it is “committed to reaching a negotiated settlement that is fair, responsible, and supports a sustainable public health-care system.”
On Tuesday union president Adriane Gear told media that nurses’ employers were not respecting their legal right to strike. She said: “Since July 2 at 12:01, instead of respecting nurses’ lawful job action, we’re hearing reports from nurses across the province that they are being intimidated and bullied for exercising our rights.”
The nurses’ union has been trying to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement since its previous agreement expired in March 2025. In early May, the union’s 53,000 nurses voted overwhelmingly in support of the strike vote after six months of bargaining.
On May 21, the Health Employers Association of BC and Nurses Bargaining Association reached a tentative collective agreement. But on June 19 the agreement was rejected after 67 per cent of unionized nurses voted against it. The union issued a 72-hours strike notice on June 29, and started job action July 2.
Last week Gear said the union wants their employer to address benefits, general wages, retention, overtime and nurse-to-patient ratios, adding that the current mandate does not cover what nurses need. The province also needs to address violence against staff in health-care facilities.
Workplace injury rates, which include assault, have increased by 25 per cent since 2019, which translates to one nurse leaving on a WorkSafeBC claim every 16 hours, Gear said.
“One of the most notable acts of violence on a health-care worker” happened at Vancouver General Hospital, where a nurse was “strangled to the point of being unconscious,” Gear said, adding that “Violence is not part of any job description.”
In response to the strike, Labour Minister Jennifer Whiteside said in a statement on Friday that veteran mediator Vince Ready and his protege Amanda Rogers will act as special mediators to work with the parties for 10 days to help try to reach a settlement. If necessary, they will provide recommendations to the minister to end the dispute.
Ready has a long history in the province of troubleshooting some of the most fractious disputes in BC history, going back almost 60 years at this point, including the 2014 BC Teacher's Federation Strike, as well as the 2025 Cowichan Valley Transit Strike.
The mainstream media has completely miscovered the story of the BC nurses' strike as characterizing the BC NDP as a proactive government, willing to do what it takes to find a solution, and reporting favourably on Vince Ready's appointment as mediator. In reality, the actual structural outcomes, such as intimidating frontline nurses, tell a different story.
While the media frames the job action as peaceful picketing, the ⁠BC Nurses' Union (BCNU) as of Thursday, has quietly been flooded with a staggering 2,300+ formal complaints of employer intimidation, coercion, and threats within just one week of legal strike action.
Health authority managers—who report directly to the NDP's Ministry of Health—are actively threatening nurses. Frontline workers report being told that if they refuse to clean stretchers or stock supply closets (which are legally protected refusals under their work-to-rule mandate), they will be reported to the BC College of Nurses and Midwives. This weaponizes a nurse’s professional license and livelihood to break a legal strike.
The situation is so toxic that the BCNU bypassed standard grievance channels and filed an emergency unfair labour practice application with the BC Labour Relations Board. Mainstream media reports this as a generic legal step, rather than exposing it as systemic corporate bullying funded by tax dollars.
Gear said: “Nurses should not have to fear retaliation for standing up for safer workplaces and for better care. This is unacceptable.”
Mainstream coverage also consistently reports on the "risk to patient care" and lists the minimum baseline of essential services that nurses must legally maintain. What the public isn't being told is that the healthcare system is already so broken that "essential strike levels" are sometimes higher than normal daily staffing.
Under regular conditions, the NDP government has failed to fill over 4,500 vacant nursing positions, leaving wards critically short-staffed on a normal day. Union leadership has pointed out that nurses are frequently forced to work below safe, negotiated minimums during standard operations. The government's panic over "strike-level staffing" ironically highlights that they only guarantee basic ward safety when legally forced to by a labour dispute.
Also, in covering the appointment of Ready, the media glosses over his history and doesn't tell the full story. Gear publicly rebuked the government, revealing that the union learned about the mediator appointments through public media broadcasts rather than direct negotiation. By releasing the information to the press first, the Eby government successfully controlled the Friday news cycle to look proactive. In reality, they severely damaged the fragile trust required for negotiation, alienating union leadership before mediation even began.
Mainstream networks cover Ready as the "Wayne Gretzky of labour relations" who "works his magic" to save the day, a direct quote from the CBC. The Vancouver Sun labeled him as a "rock star of labour relations". Instead, Ready's primary function is not to deliver justice, safety, or fair wages to workers—it is to protect the status quo, grind down resistance, and provide the BC NDP government with political cover to end the strike without breaking their rigid fiscal mandates.
Ready’s career began in the mining unions in the 1960s, a credential the media loves to use to paint him as sympathetic to labour. However, Ready transitioned to corporate and government operations decades ago, establishing a highly lucrative private practice that relies entirely on being trusted by employers and governments.
A mediator's job is not to find a "fair" solution; it is simply to find a solution that both sides are exhausted enough to accept. Because governments hold the legislative hammer (like back-to-work legislation), Ready’s "compromises" historically lean toward squeezing concessions out of workers rather than forcing governments to fund systemic overhauls.
By waiting until workers are financially depleted and the public is angry, the mediator enters a room where the union's leverage has been severely eroded.
The most glaring example of Ready's tactics being used to suppress systemic public sector demands occurred during the massive 2014 British Columbia Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) strike. Instead of forcing the government to fund the system properly, Ready used his signature "lock-them-in-a-room" exhaustion strategy. He pressured the union into accepting a deal that sidelined the critical class-size language, leaving those systemic issues unresolved. The BCTF had to fight the government all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada years later to win back what Ready’s mediated framework failed to secure.
Gear has already hinted at why Ready’s appointment is a trap. She noted that she is unsure how mediation will succeed "without any ability for us to look at solutions outside of the [government] mandate.
The BC NDP also has a strict, unyielding wage mandate across the entire public sector. Ready cannot invent new money, nor can he force Health Minister Adrian Dix to suddenly find 4,500 new nurses to fix the systemic shortage.
Under Section 76 of the Labour Relations Code, if Ready’s 10-day window fails, he can issue formal "recommendations" directly to the Labour Minister. If the union rejects these recommendations because they don't fix workplace safety or benefits caps, the NDP government will use Ready’s "independent" report as immediate justification to pass back-to-work legislation.
In essence, Ready is the NDP's exit strategy. His appointment allows Premier David Eby to look proactive while setting a 10-day countdown clock. If the nurses do not bend to Ready's pressure to accept the government's financial constraints, the government will use Ready’s final report to vilify the union and legally strip them of their right to strike.
We will wait and see what happens with this strike, but we can see that despite favourable pro-government reporting from the mainstream media, the BC NDP are not the champions of healthcare that they profess to be.
Supplementals:

https://www.ctvnews.ca/vancouver/article/bcs-premier-eby-says-mediator-will-step-into-nurses-job-action/

Firing Line

Trucking companies deemed unsafe permitted to employ temporary foreign workers

100 companies with safety infractions, labour violations, and regulatory failures were granted approval to hire temporary foreign workers since 2019
Failing safety audits -> forged documents.
One company decertified in Manitoba over chronic safety issues set up a related carrier in Alberta that was linked to a fatal collision in Brandon, Manitoba.
Another company that was greenlit to hire temporary foreign workers had their safety permits revoked in Saskatchewan.
But after that suspension another company by the same name, Super Cat, was set up in Alberta.
The Globe and Mail published a year long investigation found weak enforcement and poor information sharing between jurisdictions have allowed some companies to escape scrutiny.
Mike Hennessy, director of Teamsters Canada’s freight and tankhaul division, which represents truck drivers across the country, said the findings show the government is “rubber-stamping permits for temporary foreign workers with little oversight or scrutiny of the companies that request them.”
The federal government for their part maintains that the temporary foreign worker program is a “last-resort measure.”
Over the last decade the number of temporary foreign worker truck driver positions increased from about 1,000 in 2016 to just north of 8,500 in 2024.
22 companies that were granted temporary foreign worker approvals by ESDC after the same ministry issued payment orders over successful wage theft complaints.
Alberta-based Amanat Transport was granted permission to hire 14 migrant truck drivers starting in 2023, even though the company had failed to comply with a ministry order issued two years earlier to pay an employee more than $33,000 in unpaid wages.
Amanat Transport’s director, Harjit Kaur Bhullar, said that the company had no record of the outstanding wages!
In another case out of Winnipeg, the provincial government revoked Conquer Transport’s safety fitness certificate in 2021 but a company with the same name and postal code was issued approval by the federal government to hire migrant workers in 2022 and 2024.
Conquer Transport is interesting because in late May this year he driver of a Conquer Transportation truck failed to stop at a stop sign in Brandon, colliding with an SUV at “highway speeds” and killing a 49-year-old woman who was its sole occupant. The driver, Brijpal Panwar, has been charged with dangerous driving causing death. He has been released on bail.
Neither company responded to questions and Conquer is suspended in Alberta.
This story being an exclusive Globe and Mail investigation garnered zero coverage elsewhere in the media.
The Canadian Trucking Alliance endorsed the investigation saying that it echoes many of the concerns raised over the last decade by the Canadian Trucking Alliance about the rapidly eroding oversight across Canada.
Safety issues, labour code gaps, and regulatory violations have become common place.
The CTA feels that allowing such companies to recruit vulnerable foreign workers undermines efforts to improve safety and labour standards across the trucking industry.
Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner called for the abolition of the temporary foreign worker program. She said, “Train underemployed and unemployed Canadian youth. Deploy better labour mobility incentives. Start a standalone program for legitimately hard to fill seasonal agrifood, agriculture and seafood work.”
Looking back at the investigation in the Globe and Mail, most of the companies facing safety concerns have been started by Canadians with ties to India using the temporary foreign worker program to bring in cheap labour.
Obviously this is abuse to the workers but it also dilutes the value of the Canadian job market.
It makes highways across this country more dangerous for everyone.
It also makes Canadians deeply skeptical of Indian migrants to Canada even if they are part of the good batch.
Overall nearly 100 companies have safety violations, failed audits, suspended certificates, wage theft complaints, or forged documents and are still receiving TFW approvals.
The cross-province chameleon operations are highlighted for one company and fatal accidents have already happened.
Overall the federal government has to come in and again take control or completely shutdown the temporary foreign worker program.
Provinces need to work together on road safety and trucking regulations.
And legitimate operators have said while they support ethical usage of the temporary foreign worker program they need to attract Canadian workers through better pay and conditions.
This is again an immigration issue. The immigration system has worked for the better part of the last century. But, mis-step by mis-step over the last decade is eroding trust.
Canadians have become less and less accepting of immigration. The consensus on Canadian immigration is shattering and this story further drives a wedge in the issue.
A good start would be waking up Canadians to the reality of the temporary foreign workers program but the media has not done that as of yet.
Supplementals:

Quote of the Week

“Eastern Canadian refineries should be powered by Western Canadian energy - not from overseas. Premier Doug Ford and I are advancing a new West-East pipeline called the Northern Shield Energy Corridor connecting Alberta oil to Ontario refineries, and eventually, European markets.” - Premier Danielle Smith on the newly proposed West-East Northern Shield Energy Corridor pipeline.

Word of the Week

Mediation - intervention in a dispute in order to resolve it

How to Find Us

Westerncontext.ca

westerncontext.ca/subscribe

westerncontext.ca/support

x.com/westerncontext

facebook.com/westerncontext

Show Data

Episode Title: Mediation Madness
Teaser: Carney officially removes non-partisanship from the Senate, Alberta and Ontario agree on a cross-Canada pipeline, and the BC Nurses strike escalates. Also, trucking companies facing safety violations were still permitted to use TFWs.
Production Code: WC-476-2026-07-11
Recorded Date: July 11, 2026
Release Date: July 12, 2026
Duration: 1:12:59
Edit Notes: Pause into FL

Podcast Summary Notes

Duration: XX:XX