The News Rundown

Just how bad was this deal?

In a game of deal or no deal with the United States, there is no deal. No deal probably because the original deal presented and mostly agreed upon until late Friday was too bad to sell to Canadians.
In a Friday evening statement Mark Carney detailed just why there is no deal with the United States. He starts by framing the negotiation failure as a success of Canadian strength, independence, and moral high ground.
He leans into Canadian identity using phases like “building the Canada we want”, an aim to “maintain our flexibility, independence, and sovereignty”, and says that “we will not allow any nation to determine our future. We will set our own course to keep building Canada strong for all.”
The plan is to impose a 50% counter-tariff on up to $28b in Canadian goods. He said, “the government will introduce additional measures to support Canadian workers and businesses, building on the nearly $25 billion in support provided over the past 18 months. These actions complement Canada’s core economic strategy. From day one, we have been focused on building our strength at home and diversifying our partnerships abroad. That strategy is working.”
As read, the core economic strategy is to pour massive amounts of stimulus into the economy in the name of economic sovereignty and diversification while using tariffs in response - a strategy he says is working.
The statement again pivots to the idea that America has changed and that even if Canada had been able to have the best deal in the world with the US there were other things that were simply non-negotiable.
Many Canadians, in fact, most, see Canada as playing a role where there’s a principled stand for Canadian sovereignty while the US sees what was going on as a case of transactional leverage.
We don’t have any words aside from vague responses at a Saturday press conference as to what the actual cause of the deal breaking down was. Until then most of what anyone hears but more importantly feels is going to be based on conjecture.
That’s the plank that Canadian media and the Prime Minister have been operating on for the last 18 months.
Domestic Canadian identity and the need to respond is better politically. It is better for the government to say “we stood up to the bully and protected our sovereignty” than to say “we accepted imperfect access so the auto plants and lumber mills could keep working.”
Taking a deal that looks coerced opens Carney and the Liberals up to a huge line of attack.
The other option is a clear enemy and a clear story of an American bully that matches the mental model of most Canadians.
The reality is that we likely won’t ever know what the final deal looked like because it doesn’t matter to the political purposes at home.
As much as we may want to see it or know how close we were, it never mattered.
Optics are everything with the Trump administration. Carney was in Italy on vacation until a few days ago, the Manitoba Premier was doing Trump impersonations and saying he had ties to Epstein, and reluctance telegraphed from the likes of David Eby and Doug Ford to progress forward would’ve been on display too.
The Trump administration is very focused on what the media is saying about whatever they are presently engaged with, they would have seen this and known.
Finally, appointing a woman as chief negotiator next to an administration that has misogynistic tendencies may not have been a good idea no matter what her credentials were. If you want to play ball with the Trump administration you have to act how they would.
Now that the dust has fallen we have to ask how bad the original deal was. We won’t know.
But on Saturday, Carney said 3 very interesting things.
The auto sector was looking at having its tariffs reduced from 25% to 15% but it is said that the US wanted to limit the level of tariffs to cars only and exclude medium and heavy autos and light trucks - this would have made Canadian production uneconomic.
It’s also said that the last minute demand from the US was that Canada would have been restricted in making trade deals with other countries.
And the final example given in the press conference was that the US “made efforts to restrict our protections of our language, our culture, and in effect, our sovereignty.”
The removal of French labels on products?
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said, “Despite the U.S. offer to Canada to receive the best treatment of any major exporter to our market, new demands and walk backs of other commitments by Canada have upended the careful balance reached in the past days… Canada has enjoyed the most favorable access to the U.S. market of any country. And from the beginning of President Trump’s trade program, Canada has continued to enjoy the best treatment in the world, even after – like China – retaliating against the United States. The U.S. offer was also forward looking, and included a historic economic and national security partnership to cooperate on export controls, combat transshipment, enhance digital trade, and align certain external tariffs.“
Oddly the statement from Greer tells us more than any Canadian media source has told us. If you are willing to believe for a moment what Greer said, it would have been the lowest tariff deal out of any country. It would have seen new work on defence and critical minerals. It also would have paved the way for formal USMCA negotiations.
The mention of digital trade means that the digital services tax as removed would be codified and there was also discussion of maybe Canada’s online news act going away as well - an act that prevents websites like Facebook and Google from showing Canadian news stories because they don’t compensate Canadian media companies.
When you get to the details you see why this statement from Greer is conspicuously absent and today is all about the fight.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre was on Carney’s said today. He said, “Canadians must stand united to defend our country against these unfair attacks on our jobs and businesses. Canada cannot accept one-sided tariffs that will deindustrialize our country. Nor can we accept a bad deal.”
He also plans to discuss with the Prime Minister what can be done to fight for workers, businesses, and the Canadian economy.
BC Premier David Eby issued a statement saying the “British Columbians will always stand with Canada [and] We didn’t ask for this, but we’ll keep fighting for as long as it takes.”
Danielle Smith was more measured in her response saying that she’s “deeply disappointed that Canada and the United States have not been able to reach a trade agreement. Alberta has always advocated for a tariff free relationship, and will continue to do so. No one benefits from a trade war. Tariffs and counter-tariffs hurt businesses, workers and families on both sides of the border, while weakening one of the most important economic and security relationships in the world. My first concern today is for the Albertans and Canadians whose livelihoods are at risk from these new tariffs and counter-tariffs.”
She is going to urge the federal government to restart negotiations as soon as possible.
On her Saturday radio show she expanded on her thoughts saying, “with the retaliatory tariffs, I know emotionally it feels good to retaliate. I get that, but let's remember what happens when we retaliate. When retaliation happens, it means that everybody who is buying products from the United States are now going to face upwards to 50% tariffs, and they're talking about that being on steel, on dairy, on appliances, on agriculture equipment. That one worries me a lot because when you think about agriculture equipment, we shouldn't be cheering if our farmers have to pay 50% more for all the equipment that they need to produce our food. That's not a success for us. It's not something we should be cheering on. It's something we should be lamenting”
Just how bad will it get?
Analysis done in The Hub by University of Alberta economist Trevor Tombe suggests that up to 90,000 Canadian jobs could be lost costing a few tenths of a percent of GDP growth but ripples into the labour market being much bigger.
Job losses between 11,000 in BC and 36,000 in Ontario could be expected with Alberta and Saskatchewan fairing reasonably well with the tariffs barely touching industries in those provinces.
As an alternate perspective, let’s just suspend all elbows up rhetoric from the elbownians for a moment. If we had an alternate media, they would be going straight to Conservative MP Jamil Jivani who is said to have been helpful in this last week.
Jivani said, “This is a solemn moment for hundreds of thousands families across Canada… Since the beginning, in their public communications, Liberal politicians like Mark Carney and Doug Ford have put their political self-interests ahead of Canadian workers. I believe it's incumbent on us to be servants for the people who elected us, and the families who are relying on us to bring home the dignity that comes with a paycheque.”
This statement does not criticize the US administration but states a cold hard fact: the deal would’ve been too hard to sell and politically no deal is better than a bad deal.
Canadians are onboard with this because they do not like Donald Trump, his administration, or the US. Because of that fact any level of nuance in this trade story is wiped away.
Supplementals:

The BC NDP government has systematically dismantled public service transparency while quietly rewarding its inner circle amidst a cratering provincial budget. In a span of just a few days, the David Eby administration achieved a trifecta of institutional failure: they cloaked the bureaucracy in unprecedented secrecy, presided over plummeted workplace morale caused by their own austerity measures, and handed out millions in executive raises while everyday British Columbians absorb the shock of service cuts. Together, these stories expose a government deeply uncoupled from the realities of the people it serves and the workforce it relies upon.
It started on Wednesday this week. On August 18th, the Ministry of Citizens’ Services abruptly axed public access to the BC Government Directory—a critical foundational resource that has connected citizens, journalists, and researchers to public servants since the 1930s. The government's official rationale, shielding workers from "cybersecurity threats and phishing", has been widely panned by experts as a convenient shield against accountability.
Ryan Stuart, community engagement lead with the Outdoor Recreation Council of B.C., said the directory restriction will make finding the right officials even more difficult than it already can be.
"It was really valuable to be able to go online and be able to find … an actual person I can call or email and say, 'Here's my problem, are you the right person?'"
Many of the charity's members are small, volunteer-run groups trying to create outdoor opportunities in their communities — which often comes with a great deal of co-ordinating government approvals and permissions.
Without a direct contact, people have to reach out to a general email mailbox or phone number, which Stuart described as feeling like a "black hole." "That just makes their job even harder," Stuart said.
As noted by B.C.’s Information and Privacy Commissioner Michael Harvey, while security threats are real, targeted redacting of sensitive positions is standard practice. Shutting down the entire directory is an extreme outlier; B.C. is now the only province or territory in Canada to operate without a transparent employee directory. He said taking away access to the directory is also a "very serious transparency issue."
"Our public bodies, they're paid for by public funds and they are accountable to the public and they must remain so. [The directory removal] leads people to be less trusting. It is a vital resource for people in the system and for people outside the system." Harvey said.
He added that he recognizes some public servants have been targeted and faced threats, which is unacceptable.
"This decline in civility is arising from a trust problem. We're not going to make it better by further exacerbating the trust problem. Ultimately, we can't be going backward when it comes to transparency. Going backward will only lead to diminished trust."
Mainstream news outlets have reported on the "loss of transparency." What they consistently fail to highlight is the timing. The NDP chose to wipe the directory precisely as they are executing a brutal structural overhaul of the public service. By removing organizational structures and lists, the public can no longer track exactly which departments are being hollowed out, how many positions are sitting vacant, or how many high-priced government "spin doctors" are being kept on the payroll while essential services dry up.
While the public was blinded to the internal architecture of the state, a leaked internal Work Environment Survey released the very next day on Thursday, painted a devastating portrait of life inside the machine. Capturing responses from 62% of the workforce of the BC Public Service, the data revealed a "moderate but consistent decline" in workplace satisfaction, trust, respect, and managerial communication across every single category measured from 2024 to 2026.
This erosion of morale is the direct byproduct of the NDP's fiscal mismanagement under David Eby. To curb the financial bleeding of record-breaking deficits, the NDP instituted a sweeping public service hiring freeze and rolled out a multi-year plan to eliminate 15,000 full-time equivalent positions.
Paul Finch, president of the BC General Employees Union, which represents many public workers in the province said: “Obviously there’s a huge challenge here in front of the BC Public Service.”
In the report, executives say the results are a reflection of a bad budget.
“These results suggest employees may be experiencing challenges and pressures associated with fiscal constraints, significant organizational change within the BC Public Service and broader global uncertainty,” reads the report.
Last year B.C. rounded out a record breaking $7.7 billion fiscal deficit that resulted in service and job cuts in attempts to control costs.
Finch doesn’t agree with that analysis. For roughly the past year, Finch says a new policy meant B.C. government workers couldn’t bid on a job that paid them more money.
“I don’t think it’s directly linked to budget cuts, I think it’s a governance issue. That [policy] meant some of the most driven and ambitious members of the public service were either driven out or could not apply for a promotion,” said Finch.
The head of BC’s Public Service, Shannon Salter, is having a change of heart. As the new workplace environment survey results dropped, Salter, who just received a 4.7 per cent performance based pay raise, announced they’d be ditching that policy, acknowledging that limiting career mobility is having an impact on morale.
In an email to provincial staff, Salter said: “These results point to areas where we need to do better, and I take that seriously. I am committed to working alongside your executive and leadership teams to coordinate a response with clear actions to help us address the challenges and support you better.”
Frontline staff have been subjected to an intense workload crunch, a rigid "lateral-only" hiring policy that stifled career advancement, and a frozen compensation structure. Mainstream accounts treat this decline as a generic byproduct of bureaucratic friction. In reality, it represents a deep institutional betrayal. Rank-and-file workers are being forced to do double the work with fewer resources to cover for a government that mismanaged provincial coffers—leaving frontline staff burned out, unsupported, and explicitly telling surveyors they no longer trust their leadership.
Then, we got the Friday news dump, a classic move for a government who doesn't want the public to know about what's going on.
Buried deep within year-end budget sub-sections, the disclosures revealed that top bureaucrats received retroactive pay bumps of up to 4.7%. The head of the public service, Shannon Salter, saw her total compensation climb to a staggering $434,073.
Nothing solidifies the "us versus them" dichotomy of the Eby administration quite like the quiet disclosure of $23 million in "performance-based" raises awarded to senior executives, excluded managers, and partisan political staff.
Everyday public servants had to endure a historic, grueling eight-week strike by the BCGEU to secure a modest 3% wage increase, losing pay on the picket lines while trying to keep up with inflation. Meanwhile, the very executives who authorized those rigid bargaining mandates and oversaw the slashing of housing and long-term care programs were cut large checks from the taxpayer dime.
The pay bumps ranged from two to 2.5 per cent, depending on the position. They were authorized by the NDP government in February and made retroactive to July 1, 2025.
They were also accompanied by new maximum salary ranges set at $356,100 for deputy ministers and $415,900 for the deputy minister to Premier David Eby. That includes an annual car allowance of up to $14,400.
Again, the raises came during a 2025-26 fiscal year in which the government recorded the largest deficit in B.C. history: $7.7 billion. The government has cut housing programs, cancelled long-term care homes and trimmed funding for programs and services, in a bid to control costs.
Independent MLA Peter Milobar, who had been the Conservative finance critic until he quit the party last week, criticized the move.
“The public should be questioning performance bonuses when health care is in a situation that’s never been worse, you have officials in the Ministry of Finance presiding over the worst fiscal situation in B.C. history, you have people working in the Ministry of Solicitor General and Public Safety where public safety has never been a bigger concern for the public. The list goes on and on. The average person might be justified in asking what performances are we actually giving a bonus for?”
When pressed on what "performance" justifies these bonuses, the government has offered zero measurable metrics. Healthcare wait times are ballooning, infrastructure projects are stalled, and the deficit is surging—yet the upper echelon of the NDP's political apparatus continues to receive premium corporate-style payouts.
The narrative tying these three stories together is clear: the BC NDP is managing an economic crisis by squeezing its frontline workers and blinding the public to the fallout. By taking down the employee directory, they have successfully impeded the public's ability to scrutinize who is left to manage our crumbling services. It is a classic display of an insular administration protecting its senior political class at the expense of transparency, fiscal reality, and the everyday workers who keep British Columbia moving.
Supplementals:

Alberta Premier acknowledges foreign influence campaigns are targeting separatist referendum

A referendum under false pretences dilutes the water and provides a path to question the validity of any vote. This week Premier Danielle Smith acknowledged that the referendum campaign is being targeted by foreign influence campaigns.
The headlines used in the discussion of this lead one too believe that somebody is outright going to change the votes of one to many Albertans.
The reality though is a bit more complex.
First, Pravda Network as known by western governments seeks to target political debates, foment division, and stoke discord in political circles around campaigns of interest.
Dr. Brian McQuinn who is the co-director of the University of Regina’s Centre for Artificial Intelligence, Data, and Conflict partnered with the University of Alberta to develop software to track influence campaigns from foreign countries.
The technology called Cipher AI has been providing analysis to the federal and provincial government.
In an interview with OMNI Television Smith said that nothing has elevated to a level of criminal involvement but there are influence campaigns happening.
She said, “There [are] various shares of information online that appear to be amplified by different bot farms that may have a link to Russia, which is something that does leave us concerned.”
According to information from Cipher AI, 80% of the influence campaigns are Russian that is more covert in nature while the other 20% is mostly American influencers.
In general they say the narratives that are being laid out are…
That the counting of the referendum votes can’t be trusted.
That the province is economically punished within Canada.
And, from the US, that Canada is a failed state leaving the province no choice but to leave.
From mid-July to mid-August, 296 different examples of Russian originating material was found that attempted to shape or twist debate covertly amongst people.
This story ran widely this week on Alberta’s news stations but Dr. McQuinn provided a point of nuance that was generally glossed over: Foreign interference, under Canadian law, is any covert or deceptive action that poses a threat to citizens, including espionage, hacking and attacks on individuals by a foreign entity. Meanwhile, foreign influence is much more nebulous; often involving propaganda or disinformation spread online, or content that is designed to shift beliefs, stoke discord or change minds.
Foreign interference is often what Canadians think of when any kind of meddling in the election happens.
But foreign influence is something that while defined as propaganda or disinformation, happens regularly through the media people consume.
It can involve disinformation which initially has a point that somebody will agree with where the bigger picture influences, people will generally share this kind of news article.
The broad strokes used in media coverage from here leads people to believe that anybody who is a reasonable Albertan and Canadian should see through the noise and not be influenced by Russian or American foreign influence.
But the reality is that through story reporting such as happened this week, a lot of radicalized pro-Canadian online accounts, will start treating any pro-independence discussion as being peddled by Russia.
The through line though is that while there’s probably no stopping foreign influence in any election campaign going forward, we do need to ensure that foreign interference in the actual votes does not happen.
That’s an issue the federal government has been trying to deal with for many years now.
The interesting bit about all this is that while discussion points have been raised about what a Republic of Alberta could look like, now there’s going to be a lot of people who are just going write the discussion off as “Russian bots.”
The Alberta Prosperity project proposed a draft for an Alberta constitution built around individual rights, popular sovereignty, and a government that only possesses powers granted to it.
It would replace Alberta's current Westminster system with a presidential republic featuring a directly elected President, bicameral legislature, elected judiciary and a powerful fourth "Oversight Branch" responsible for investigating and policing government.
The constitution would strongly protect property, firearms, privacy, parental and healthcare autonomy, economic liberty and other individual rights while imposing unusually strict constitutional limits on taxation, debt, spending and government regulation.
Citizens would exercise substantial direct control through referenda, recalls, fixed elections and term limits, making the proposal as much a fundamental redesign of Alberta's political system as a constitutional framework for independence.
The immediate discussion by so-called experts was to write these ideas off as people not knowing what they’d do on day-1 after a successful vote or that they’re not feasible.
However, with the spectre of foreign influence hanging over the referendum process, there is a real risk that any discussion on what an independent Alberta would look like is now reduced to the possibility of being fomented by Russian bots.
This serves a rather unfortunate purpose: no matter what side you’re on, you’re now more likely to see the results in October as illegitimate.
And that and the idea of a referendum is exactly what people have been saying, that the province’s referendum is illegitimate and an election should just be called.
While the risk of Russian or other foreign influence is real, the entire discussion has been harmed this week which in reality helps nobody.
Supplementals:

Firing Line

Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau: global police protection at taxpayers' expense

Much has been written and said, positive or negative, about Justin Trudeau's relationship with superstar singer and one-time astronaut Katy Perry. He's been criticized for dancing in Instagram posts and for applying sunscreen on his girlfriend, among other things.
It seems his detractors have a new thing to be mad about, as an investigation from the Journal de Montréal published on Tuesday found that RCMP officers regularly accompany Trudeau, including during private travel with his children and Perry. ''He uses the RCMP like his own private security agency,'' one source reportedly told the publication.
The newspaper reported that some assignments can involve three or four federal police officers on the ground, with taxpayers covering their travel, accommodation and meals, along with salaries and overtime. This privilege is given to every single former Prime minister, but Trudeau's travel has spanned the globe since taking up with Perry. The reported trips have included vacations in Italy and Saint-Tropez, Perry's concerts in Japan and Germany, and other private excursions. Trudeau has also travelled internationally for professional engagements, including appearances at the World Economic Forum in Davos and speaking engagements abroad.
Exactly how much this costs the public remains unclear, as the RCMP declined to provide the Journal with figures for Trudeau's protection, the number of officers assigned to him or the operational details involved. The force cited security concerns, saying that revealing such information could expose details about protective arrangements.
The RCMP said in an email: “Given the evolving threat environment and operational and security considerations related to protective policing, the RCMP does not disclose costs, staffing levels, deployment details or other information that could reveal or facilitate inferences about the protective arrangements made for an individual. Protective decisions are based strictly on assessed security needs, not personal preferences or activities.”
However, the presence of Perry can create additional security considerations. A former RCMP deputy commissioner told the Journal that Perry's own security team operates under a different mandate and therefore cannot simply be responsible for protecting Trudeau. Security officials may also have to assess threats associated with Perry, who travels with a high public profile and has previously faced security incidents.
Former RCMP deputy commissioner Pierre-Yves Bourduas, now president of the Ottawa-based consulting firm P-Y Public Safety Management Inc., told the Journal that a “hectic love life can create headaches” for the officers tasked with Trudeau’s protection. Again, there’s no way of knowing for certain whether a security detail was nearby in any of those instances. But when they are, their salaries — along with any overtime — and all travel expenses come from the RCMP’s taxpayer-funded budget. “Katy Perry’s protection cannot be relied upon,” he said.“We must take full responsibility for the protection of the former prime minister.”
While in office, Trudeau's security costs rounded out to an annual average of about 30 million dollars, nearly three times more than former prime minister Jean Chrétien. As one source tells the Journal, though, Trudeau has been the victim of substantially more threats in the years since.
The financial opacity surrounding the Prime Minister's Protective Detail (PMPD) is not a post-2025 phenomenon; it was structurally integrated into Trudeau's entire decade in power. Alternative press and opposition critics have argued that the federal government engaged in deliberate accounting maneuvers to partition data and mislead the public. A classic blueprint for this obfuscation was Trudeau’s infamous $228,000 Easter family vacation to Montana. When Parliament requested an itemized breakdown of the trip, the government omitted a staggering $205,000 in RCMP logistical and operational support from the initial response.
Perhaps the most explosive narrative completely sidelined by mainstream outlets is the profound internal ideological friction that plagued the PMPD from within during the Covid lockdowns. While nightly news broadcasts focused almost exclusively on external threats from anti-mandate protesters, alternative press channels investigated the systemic breakdown of institutional trust between Trudeau and his elite guard, leading him to fundamentally change the RCMP's role in policing in his last week in office as Prime Minister.
Ultimately, the critical narrative surrounding Trudeau’s relationship with the RCMP challenges the core egalitarian myths of Canadian democracy. Historically, prime ministers walked open streets with minimal intervention. The Trudeau era, however, institutionalized a permanent, high-cost garrison state around the executive leader. The ongoing deployment of multi-agent security teams to shield a private citizen backstage at international music festivals suggests that this garrison was built not just to protect an office, but to insulate a celebrity lifestyle from both the economic realities and the political frustrations of the Canadian public.
Supplementals:

Quote of the Week

“The government will introduce additional measures to support Canadian workers and businesses, building on the nearly $25 billion in support provided over the past 18 months. These actions complement Canada’s core economic strategy. From day one, we have been focused on building our strength at home and diversifying our partnerships abroad. That strategy is working.” - Prime Minister Mark Carney on Canada’s economic plan.

Word of the Week

lament - to express sorrow, mourning, or regret

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Show Data

Episode Title: Lamenting the Future
Teaser: Mark Carney refuses a trade deal with the US, David Eby continues to gut the public service, and Danielle Smith warns of foreign influence in Alberta. Also, taxpayers still pay $30M a year for Trudeau’s security.
Production Code: WC-482-2026-08-22
Recorded Date: August 22, 2026
Release Date: August 23, 2026
Duration: 1:22:01
Edit Notes: Pause between Canada/BC, Patreon pause, WOTW clarifications

Podcast Summary Notes

Duration: XX:XX