Tausi Insider

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland testifies at the Public Order Emergency Commission at the Library and Archives building in Ottawa on Nov., 24. Spencer Colby/Tausi Insider David Moscrop is a writer and political commentator. He is the author of Too Dumb for Democracy and a new Substack newsletter . As the Public Order Emergency Commission moves on to its next phase – expert roundtable discussions ahead of tabling its findings in the House of Commons in February – observers are still working to make sense of the endless angles of the thing. But one has come into sharp relief during the hours of testimony before commissioner Paul Rouleau: It was at least partly about the economy. Of course it was. We can debate what “partly” means. But the answer will depend on whose perspective you’re interrogating. During his testimony on the last day of the commission, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said economic concerns contributed to the decision to invoke the Emerg...

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets with Prime Minister of Japan Kishida Fumio on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Jan. 12. Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida says Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has caused a global energy crisis and he pressed Justin Trudeau on Thursday to supply reliable liquefied natural gas to Tokyo to replace Russian oil and gas. Mr. Trudeau and his Japanese counterpart, who met for three hours of talks in Ottawa, also agreed that China’s growing economic and military belligerence is one of the “central challenges” in the Indo-Pacific region. Mr. Kishida told reporters that the two countries would vigorously object to any efforts by Beijing to shift the balance of power in Asian waterways through which significant amounts of global trade pass. “We agreed that we would strongly oppose unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force in the East China Sea and the South China Sea,” he said. Japan’s PM Kishida and Trudeau to discu...