The News Rundown

Federal ministers announce support for Canadians, counter-tariffs against U.S.

The federal government in a statement by Minister of Finance Francois Philipe Champagne and other ministers announced upwards of $7.5b in new supports to help Canadian workers in light of counter tariffs.
To get a full idea of what is actually being counter tariffed you need to work. Global News posted an exhaustive list of items but you still need to sort through it.
The best summary though came from the BBC. The list includes a 50% tariff on steel aluminum products that were previously at 25%.
A 50% tariff on other goods including honey, furniture, cloth, apparel, makeup, and perfume.
A 25% tariff on appliances, dairy products, cheese and certain steel and aluminum derivative products. Initially fish and seafood were to be included in this category but was interestingly walked back.
A 15% tariff on certain types of tools and machinery including forklifts and air conditioners.
Employers will get up to $1000 per employee to cover training and administration costs related to implementing EI work sharing and retention programs.
This will enable an employer to reduce the employee’s work schedule from 5 days a week to 2 while allowing the employee to collect EI for the other 3 days at 70% of their income.
The government is also investing $2 billion to create the Canada Strong Diversification Fund, which will "support tariff-impacted companies with shovel-ready projects that support ongoing capital maintenance, including medium-sized firms."
Large Enterprise Tariff Loan facility provides eligible companies with 24 months of financial liquidity. In addition to all this medium sized businesses will be able to access $1.5b in additional funding that will be delivered through regional development agencies. The additional funding lifts the cap on non-repayable grants to $3 million from $1 million.
This is a money machine that has come online. A money machine that will take from what taxpayers pay the government in order to offset tariffs, both the American tariffs but also our retaliatory tariffs.
As a reminder, a tariff is a tax on the import of a specific good. The Americans are not paying us the counter tariffs that the government of Canada applies. Canadians are paying when we buy an American good. Americans are (supposed to be) paying when they buy a Canadian good.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and his MPs have had two sharp messages this week.
The first, how much will the counter tariffs cost Canadians?
Second, what was in the agreement that the government rejected?
As such he and his caucus are calling for Parliament to be recalled. He said, “reconvene Parliament so we can introduce, debate and pass an Economic Action Plan that cuts taxes, creates jobs, unleashes growth and restores affordability to our country.”
He also used Mark Carney’s words in the letter: “’tariffs are taxes which are ultimately paid by… consumers’… Canadians are entitled to know what your tax will cost them.”
There has also been a huge amount of discussion about whether or not Alberta energy should be used as a weapon in this fight.
Premier Danielle Smith is one of the few in Canada suggesting an alternate path and a return to the negotiating table. She has highlighted that retaliatory tariffs only increase the pain to Canadian businesses.
She also outlined what could happen if energy exports were cut off to the United States.
First she said, “Doing so would absolutely devastate the Canadian economy — it would not only extinguish the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Albertans, it would economically hobble our friends and neighbours in other provinces.”
In the print and digital and broadcast versions of the clips taken, they gloss over exactly what Smith said. But it effectively boils down to the Enbridge pipeline that crosses Michigan to deliver gas to the east being shut down. Doing so would shut down every airport in eastern Canada and make the price of gas so unaffordable that before it ran out people would not be able to afford it.
She also said that US refineries that refine Alberta heavy oil would start to look to Venezuela for replacement and Canada would lose the US as a customer, forever.
On this note, it appears as though that the US government has reached an agreement with the interim government in Venezuela for a favourable deal on oil exports to the United States. We’ll check back on this story for next week to see if it appears in Canadian news.
When politicians start suggesting Alberta energy be used in a retaliation we cannot win, we need to ask more questions.
Specifically, what in Canada is no one talking about? What dog isn’t barking?
Let’s look at the Canadian political calendar over the next 6-weeks.
There are 3 by-elections on Monday where Carney and the Liberals have the potential to come out +1 net seat.
The Quebec provincial election is October 5th. The Parti Quebecois has been leading and is a sovereigntist voice. Ottawa would much rather work with a federalist party or Quebec nationalist party as they have been with the CAQ.
And on October 19th the Alberta referendum where Alberta could choose to start the process of leaving Canada.
The politics of a spectacle focused around elbows up, buy Canadian, and anti-American sentiment is a remarkable coincidence of timing.
But this was said, by the media. In the CBC At Issue Panel, contributor Althia Raj said, “The politics could not be better… it’s fantastic politics”. In the interview she was glowing about the opportunities this raised and then host Rosemary Barton reigned the discussion back in.
This video of the discussion was posted in the CBC News article discussing the counter tariffs. We’ve also included the direct link in our supplementals.
As for the actual reality of where Canadian retaliatory tariffs land. The most impacted state is Michigan with tariffs impacting 0.34% of Michigan GDP. With the least being Florida at 0.01%.
University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe put together a map with percentages showing most impact landing on Michigan, Kentucky, Indiana, Alabama, and Missouri.
Lets keep this picture in mind as the government, media, and most Canadians run into a massive tariff war with the United States.
Supplementals:

The press gallery in Victoria is currently transfixed by what political commentator Mo Amir describes as "an absolute carnival". In the span of roughly two weeks, the Official Opposition has suffered a catastrophic structural implosion. Six MLAs have walked out on newly minted BC Conservative Leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay, leaving a trail of explosive public recriminations, a damaging leaked audio recording, and a party in a state of unmitigated freefall.
Since the 2024 election, the BC Conservatives have dropped from 44 seats to 31, mostly due to MLAs leaving the party and becoming independent. The latest batch has been probably the most damaging to the party, with 7 MLAs leaving the party in just the last 2 weeks, starting with Finance Critic and leadership contender Peter Milobar on August 14th, Teresa Wat and Bennan Day left caucus on Wednesday, Rosalyn Bird on Tuesday, and Ian Paton on Monday. The latest as of recording being Bruce Banman, the MLA who originally moved from the BC Liberals to the BC Conservatives upon John Rustad's election as leader, bringing them to official party status.
Mainstream accounts have focused on the departing MLA's criticisms of newly elected leader Kerry Lynne Findlay. Banman said many have told him Conservative Leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay is “unelectable” and a win by Premier David Eby’s NDP is becoming increasingly likely.
In a statement announcing his caucus exit Thursday.“For the sake of the future of this province we must defeat this NDP government. Person after person has informed me they have decided that our new leader is unelectable. So, with a heavy heart, I am announcing today I am joining the ever-increasing number of MLAs to sit as an Independent MLA in the B.C. legislature."
That's certainly a contradiction - weakening the opposition is not going to help the stated goal of defeating the NDP. Paton and Milobar plan to form a party, and Stewart Prest, political science lecturer at the University of B.C., said a viable third-party option could pull votes away from Findlay.
After Delta South MLA Ian Paton stepped down, he alleged that Findlay’s team was offering jobs and salaries equivalent to MLA pay to step down so that Findlay could run in a byelection.
Now, an anonymous X (formerly Twitter) account known as The Findlay Files has posted audio from inside a July Conservative caucus meeting that appears to back up that claim.
“…my thought is whoever did, if someone was willing to step aside, I could give them a role as senior advisor in their same portfolio so that they’re very much involved and around. But, you know, it would allow for a byelection in six months, which now we’re in July, means could be as late as January. I really would like to see this happen before the Leg goes back in February.” Findlay allegedly said in the leaked audio.
CHEK News political reporter Rob Shaw says MLAs he has spoken with have confirmed the audio is authentic.
Amidst the MLA turmoil, Findlay announced Wednesday that she has fired caucus operations director Apollo Chung. Chung formerly worked for the Republican Party of Alberta, which advocates for the province to separate from Canada.
Findlay did not reveal any details of the firing, posting only a brief written statement online: “As of this morning, I have directed my chief of staff to terminate the director of operations for the B.C. Conservative caucus, effective immediately,” Findlay wrote.
The termination followed a jaw-dropping leaked audio recording where Chung, a former campaign advisor, was caught plotting to siphon donor money. “I don’t walk away from money,” Chung said in the tape, openly boasting about “stealing” everything he could and musing about how to further “monetize” his proximity to power because “we have the leader in our hands.”
But while the media feasts on the soap opera, they are completely missing the macro-political tragedy. This isn't just a right-wing family feud; it is a systemic failure of democratic accountability that hands Premier David Eby's New Democratic Party (NDP) a political get-out-of-jail-free card.
Shadow cabinet portfolios, public accounts committees, and legislative review panels require cohesive institutional knowledge. By shedding multiple veteran MLAs—with rumours of up to eight more ready to jump ship—the Conservatives have erased their own capability to mount serious, clause-by-clause challenges to government bills.
In ridings across BC, local constituency associations are fracturing. Local campaign funds, donor lists, and volunteer networks are being split in half as riding executives choose between party brand loyalty and their defecting local MLAs.
A political party’s budget inside the legislature is tied directly to its seat count. The loss of these members strips the opposition of vital research, communications, and staffing resources, hobbling their ability to unearth government waste.
Not letting the Conservatives off the hook, B.C. Premier David Eby has called a byelection for next month in the riding of Abbotsford-Mission, where embattled Conservative Leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay is set to run.
Eby's New Democrats said Saturday that former agriculture minister Pam Alexis, who lost the seat in the 2024 provincial election by fewer than 3,000 votes, will be back on the ballot in the Sept. 26 vote.
The seat became vacant when Conservative MLA Reann Gasper resigned earlier this month to give Findlay a chance to get a seat in the legislature. She has since taken a paid position as Findlay's deputy chief of staff.
In the midst of the Conservative mess, we have to consider what the NDP is quietly getting away with while the public is distracted by the Conservative circus.
British Columbia is grappling with deep economic structural vulnerabilities, marked by ballooning provincial deficits, multiple credit downgrades, and stagnant private-sector investment. Rather than defending their fiscal record, the NDP can simply point across the aisle to a party that can't even govern its own caucus room.
The high-stakes, highly complex work of implementing the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA) requires nuanced, rigorous legislative debate. Instead, land-use disputes and resource-sharing negotiations are proceeding with a complete lack of balanced legislative counterweight, leaving rural and industrial sectors without a functional voice in Victoria.
In a bid to whip up domestic populism, the Eby government has increasingly tied its political fortunes to an aggressive, retaliatory trade posture against the United States. For a resource-dependent, export-driven province like British Columbia, provoking our largest trading partner is a massive economic risk. But with Findlay pushing the Conservatives into a hard-right corner, the NDP successfully frames their risky international posturing as a moderate, unifying defence of BC interests.
As the Conservatives self-destruct and the NDP coast along without scrutiny, the citizens of British Columbia are left completely unrepresented. When a democracy lacks a cohesive opposition, the government of the day stops listening.
We face pressing crises in healthcare wait times, an acute housing affordability crunch, and decaying public safety in our urban centres. Yet, the upcoming legislative session will not be defined by a robust debate on these issues. Instead, it will be thoroughly derailed by procedural squabbling over seating arrangements, by-election logistics, and the birth of splinter factions trying to form new centrist parties.
The BC public voted for a balanced legislature to keep the government honest. What they have been left with is an unchecked ruling party, a fragmented opposition, and a political process that values internal ambition over the basic duties of governance. That is the real scandal—and it's one that won't be resolved at Monday's emergency caucus meeting.
Supplementals:

Frenemies for Canada: Notley, Kenney join forces to prevent Alberta separation

Frenemies for Canada the media calls the new partnership between Jason Kenney and Rachel Notley. Jason Kenney ended Rachel Notley’s premiership and shifted government back to what most Albertans were used to.
Now Kenney himself calls him and Notley, frenemies.
Jason Kenney in an interview said, “I would say we’re frenemies. We’ve had frank and sometimes funny exchanges at a couple of events. But I’ve always respected her … as a very competent woman, a very committed Albertan.”
The goal will see both Kenney and Notley speaking at Canadian Chamber of Commerce events making the case that Alberta should remain in Canada.
Since the initial piece in the media Kenney and Notley appeared together on CBC News and Kenney said that he and Notley had been exchanging emails.
In speaking with Post Media, Rachel Notley said, We need to be focused on building this province, growing job opportunities across the board, strengthening our health-care system and vital programs that keep Alberta strong. Any distraction that takes us away from that focus is a missed opportunity for all of us.”
Media in general has been showcasing Kenney’s push against separatist sentiment. This included highlighting the “weird AI” videos that Kenney pushed back against, Kenney’s pushback against Donald Trump, and Kenney pointing out how Quebec has faired over the last 50 years.
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce who is the actual push behind the campaign plans to unveil the campaign over the coming week. In general it will focus on business and protecting the economy from US attacks.
In general the chamber said, “Business does not have time or patience for constitutional debates right now. In this spirit, let us settle this question once and for all. We know Canada without Alberta is no Canada at all.”
The highlighting of the Kenney and Notley combination also seems to strike a spark in the eyes of the so-called political experts in that they see this as a “vital dynamic in strengthening Canadian unity.”
Kenney numerous times has said that he disagrees with Rachel Notley’s policy agenda, he has also commented that he disagrees heavily with current NDP leader Naheed Nenshi, the idea is to reach Albertans that otherwise might not be reached.
He said, “People who are right-of-centre are typically not going to be persuaded by Rachel Notley, and people who are generally left-of-centre are not going to be persuaded by me. But between us, we can cover a pretty broad spectrum of Alberta.”
This is all fine and well and marks the plumbing of a good campaign. However, the two options on the ballot have not been fully explored.
The options are to stay in Canada or start the process that may result in Alberta leaving Canada.
For those who are not in the stay or leave camp, there’s room for somebody to be convinced.
The issue though is that there has been no real discourse about what remaining in Canada looks like aside from the status quo.
To convince somebody who is on the fence or wants to vote for option 2 to exert leverage against the federal government, a picture needs to be presented of what Alberta can be and who the elected (not fictional) leaders are that can bring that idea forward if there is anybody.
Kenney himself has said that there are legitimate concerns but these concerns do not get re-iterated in mainstream media coverage.
When the referendum was announced the first criticism of mainstream media coverage of the day was that the status quo was framed as acceptable and there was no addressing of whether or not grievances were legitimate and those deemed legitimate were not debated.
We are now still at this point less than 2 months out from the referendum.
The remain in Canada side believes they will win and they likely will. But complacency, remain as status quo, and stigmatization are the biggest factors from the mainstream media that can help the independence movement.
Right now, depending on the day, they are engaged in any one of these 3 or more. Media coverage must relefect the reality of the campaign.
Supplementals:

https://calgaryherald.com/news/jason-kenney-rachel-notley-campaign-opposing-alberta-separatism

Firing Line

9/11 wasn't a 'terrorist attack,' according to the CBC

CBC/Radio-Canada is changing its language policy to state that direct attribution will no longer be required when describing 9/11 as an act of “terrorism.”
The decision comes after CBC came under fire over its long-standing policy of not labelling specific attacks as terrorism, which it restated in a memo to staff ahead of the 25th anniversary of Sept. 11. It reminded staff to avoid calling the event a "terrorist attack" without direct attribution, suggesting they call them "hijackings that led to jet crashes" instead.
The director of the FBI, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, Republican members of Congress and the Conservative party all criticized the CBC following media reports about a memo that reminded journalists of its policy.
Basem Boshra, senior director of journalistic standards and public trust, said in a blog post late Friday afternoon clarifying the change that CBC would make the change. He said the “leaked excerpt” of its language policy raised questions for the CBC that the public broadcaster had to answer, which he attempted to do in his blog post.
Boshra’s post was published less than an hour after Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree issued a press release saying the Canadian government “has always recognized 9/11 as the deadliest terrorist attack in history, and we unequivocally condemn terrorism in all its forms.”
In the post, Boshra said CBC News “has never said what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, was not terrorism, as some commentators have stated in recent days. We have reported fully and accurately on the reasons and motivations for those attacks as determined by police, governments and an independent commission. We’ve just made sure to do it with attribution.”
Boshra admitted: "After reviewing our current language guidance, we have decided to adjust it to clarify that direct attribution is not required for describing the historic events of 9/11 as terrorism," He added that the change was made "to remove what has unfortunately (and unintentionally) become an impediment to clarity and public understanding." Critics immediately pounced on the intellectual dishonesty of the reversal. By codifying an exception exclusively for 9/11 under political duress, the CBC effectively admitted that its linguistic reality is dictated by public relations crises rather than objective truth.
Culture Minister Marc Miller praised the move on social media, calling it a “welcome change to what was a piece of pedantic and foolish guidance that caused legitimate anger.
Despite the backtrack, the leaked memo has set off a firestorm of criticism against the CBC for its journalistic double standards. Columnists like Lorne Gunter have pointed out that CBC does not apply this linguistic caution evenly across geopolitical spectrums. While CBC coverage has historically utilized the term "terrorism" without issue for events like the Air India bombing, it has strictly avoided applying it directly to modern groups like Hamas (as detailed in an internal directive leaked during the Israel-Hamas war), exposing a weaponization of the concept of "neutral language".
By asserting that the words "terrorist" and "terrorism" are too emotionally and politically loaded to use independently, the CBC elevates itself above the sovereign legal determinations of the Canadian Criminal Code, CSIS, and Public Safety Canada, all of whom formally designate Al-Qaeda, Hamas, and the 9/11 attacks as terrorism.
Independent outlets have flagged instances where the Canadian legal system and state-aligned media have quieted major domestic national security stories—such as sweeping publication bans on domestic terror plots, which independent commentators argue prevents the public from seeing the true scale of home-grown radicalization.
The CBC is also frequently criticized for downplaying extremist links within Canada. This includes underreported stories of institutional figures or political groups associating with organizations alleged to have ties to terror-designated financing networks, which critics claim the CBC minimizes to protect institutional alignment.
This of course is in line with Mark Carney's stated goal to have the CBC become the nation's 'fact checker' against misinformation. In this case, the call is coming from inside the house. Like his predecessor Trudeau, Carney has maintained robust financial support for the public broadcaster, which has always led to allegations of a conflict of interest.
When Mark Carney assumed office as Prime Minister, he cultivated a public brand centered on "value-based realism"—a supposedly pragmatic approach to governance and fiscal conservatism. Yet, under his administration, the broadcaster’s annual public funding has climbed to a record-breaking $1.6 billion.
The CBC’s humiliating 9/11 walkback has permanently damaged its institutional credibility. Trust in the broadcaster has already cratered, dropping 14 percentage points since 2018 across both official language demographics. By treating the defining atrocity of the 21st century as a semantic negotiation, the CBC has revealed that its "standards" are not built on journalistic integrity, but on narrative management. As long as the Carney government continues to bankroll this linguistic relativism with billions in taxpayer cash, the public broadcaster will remain less of a news agency and more of a state-protected sanctuary from reality.
Supplementals:

Quote of the Week

“’tariffs are taxes which are ultimately paid by… consumers’… Canadians are entitled to know what your tax will cost them.” - Pierre Poilievre using Mark Carney’s own words to ask how much in tariffs Canadians will pay.

Word of the Week

Carnival - a situation or event that is wildly disorganized, chaotic, undignified, or cheap

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Show Data

Episode Title: The Media Carnival
Teaser: The federal government announces counter-tariffs on the US, the BC Conservatives lose 6 MLAs in 2 weeks, and Jason Kenney and Rachel Notley join forces in the Alberta referendum. Also, the CBC reverses its policy on calling 9/11 terrorism.
Production Code: WC-483-2026-08-29
Recorded Date: August 29, 2026
Release Date: August 30, 2026
Duration: 1:11:16
Edit Notes: Pause AB response, pause BC close

Podcast Summary Notes

Duration: XX:XX