The Decibel - What you need to know as Parliament resumes

Episode Date: January 26, 2026

It’s been a busy month abroad for Prime Minister Mark Carney, but now, he’ll have to turn his focus back to domestic issues as Parliament returns on Monday. There’s a lot to catch up on — later this week, the Conservatives will have their leadership review of Pierre Poilievre during their convention in Calgary, and the NDP are in the midst of their leadership race. The issue of national unity remains top of mind as both Alberta and Quebec look towards possible referendums in the coming months.Bill Curry is the Globe’s Deputy Ottawa Bureau Chief. He’ll catch us up on where things left off in Parliament, what legislation is coming down the pike, and what to expect from USMCA negotiations.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Prime Minister Mark Carney spent a lot of January on foreign affairs. From his trip to China, Cotter, and then Davos. But as Parliament resumes today, he'll have to turn his focus back to domestic issues. And it's not just about the Prime Minister. Conservative leader Pierre Polihev is up for leadership review later this week. And the race to head the NDP is underway. So today, we're speaking to Bill Curry, the Globe's Deputy Ottawa Bureau Chief. He'll give us the rundown of where things sit in Parliament right now,

what some of the coming legislation looks like, and how the brewing sovereignty movements in Alberta and Quebec could affect federal politics. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail. Bill, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thanks, La Cheryl. So, Bill, a lot has happened since Parliament rose back in December, and we're going to do our best to catch everyone up

in the midst of the chaos of the last few weeks. can you kind of set the stage here? What's at stake for Canada as Parliament resumes? Well, we're set up for yet another wild year in Canadian politics, I think. We're heading into, you know, by March, that'll be one year since Mark Carney became Prime Minister and he's been making a lot of big promises throughout that year. I think what we're heading into is a parliament where Mark Carney is facing a lot of criticism from the opposition party saying you're making big promises, but where is the action?

And I think Carney was trying to get a lot of. ahead of that a little bit in his second of two big speeches this week, the one he gave in Quebec City where he talked about it's now time to move to implementing a lot of the things that he's been talking about. So I think we'll be watching for that, you know, all of his efforts to travel around the world and attracting institutional investment into big projects. You know, does that happen? Does that materialize what happens with his promises to Alberta about a pipeline, that kind of thing? So we'll be watching for that for sure. And then, of course, just as last year was the Canada-U.S. relations dominated, we're going to see that again.

And perhaps even more so because we've got Canada's trade deal with the United States, Kuzma, set for expiry or renewal come July 1. So there's going to be a lot going on as we head close to that date. So there's a lot of pressure on Carney to deliver. And as you mentioned, he's been prime minister for almost a year now. From a legislative perspective, what has the government, actually accomplished so far? Not a whole lot. There's been two kind of sittings.

There was a real quick four-week period in June last year where the main thing they passed was the legislation that sets up the major projects office that's supposed to fast-track infrastructure, and it's aimed at clearing up some federal hurdles to internal trade. So that was their main accomplishment then. Then they came back in September and sat through to December, and then, only passed one bill then. That was a citizenship update that had been introduced previously. So, you know, they have managed to pass some some routine spending bills to keep the government going. But in terms of other legislation, a lot of it is really getting bogged down in committee.

And so really not a whole lot to show for in terms of actual legislation getting passed when they rose in December. So when they come back, does that change? You know, the liberals are still minority parliament. It's close to a majority, but being close to a majority is very different than having a majority. So we'll see what happens. Okay, let's talk about what we should be looking out for this session. What are the bills that we should keep an eye on? I think there's a few things to watch for.

The budget bill was a huge bill that tabled shortly after the November for a budget that implements a lot of that. and that was debated at second reading in the House for a long time, but right before the House rose in December, it finally went to committee. So that's when we're going to start to hear all kinds of interest groups and advocates weigh in on what they think. And when a bill is that large, sometimes you really learn a lot from those hearings because these kind of bills might just change a wording in a piece of legislation that seems minimal at first, but groups might raise red flags.

and there could be debates about that. So I think watching for that will be interesting. Similarly, there was a really large criminal reform bill that was tabled right before the House rose, and that also hasn't had committee hearings. And then I think one file to watch on several fronts will be this whole idea of internet regulation, social media regulation, sexploitation online, that kind of thing.

There's a few bills that could touch on that. There was the criminal bill that I just mentioned has some elements of that. There's expectations that the government's going to come back with a bill on online harms, which they had moved in the previous parliament and didn't get it through. And also an update to Canada's privacy laws would touch on some of these issues. So, you know, broader context, that's been a hot topic in European governments, where they've come more aggressively with legislation in these areas. And a lot of the companies involved are U.S.

U.S. companies, obviously the tech giants are mostly based in the U.S. So action on these fronts can potentially create trade tensions with the United States at the time when Canada's trying to get a new trade deal. And the budget it outlines internal savings, right, which means pretty significant cuts to the federal public service. What do we know about those cuts at this point? Yeah, we didn't know a whole lot at the time of the budget, but now it's starting to be a little bit more concrete. There's a lot happening right now behind the scenes. and federal departments. Just pretty much every day now, we're getting word

that a deputy minister has sent a letter to their staff, informing them about job cuts. So we're getting those details. There's still not a whole lot of information in terms of at the program level, what might be reduced or eliminated. So at the moment, the kind of details that we're getting are what departments are identifying

in terms of their targeted job reductions. And then this process of sending letters to public service letting them know that they could be affected. So that's a process that's in the collective bargaining agreements, but it creates a lot of unease because they're sending out that's called workforce adjustment. And the number of letters going out is a lot higher than the number of job cuts that they're aiming for. So it creates a lot of unease because a lot of people are getting these letters, even though their jobs are not necessarily at risk.

They might be at risk. And it kind of creates this whole process that can go on for months. where they kind of see, you know, do people take early retirement? Do they take various incentives to leave? And as that goes through the process, the government hopes it'll lessen demand for actual layoffs. But it's going to take some time for that to work out. And it creates a lot of uncertainty in unease in a public service that is also being asked to implement a lot of these new changes that the government has identified.

Let's talk about some liberal math here. So the liberals were elected as a minority government. government, but so far two conservatives have crossed the floor. And now the liberals have had one high-profile resignation in the form of Christia Freeland. What kind of calculations do the liberals have to make in order to get their agenda through? Yeah, at the moment, there's still a couple votes shy. And it's not crystal clear because there's the speaker is a factor and the speaker is liberal, and he votes in the event of a tie. And then there's often people who are away for illness or various things. We saw that in the last throughout the fall.

So as you mentioned, Christopher Freeland is gone, so there's now one vacancy in the chamber. They haven't set a by-election date for that. We also have Matt Jennerus, a bit of a mystery, conservative MP from Medmonton, who announced that he was planning to resign but hasn't actually resigned. And throughout the confidence votes towards the end of the last year, he just wasn't voting at all. So at some point, presumably he's going to officially resign, and then there will be a by-election in that riding, which he won with 50% of the vote last time, but the liberals were 45% in second place,

so relatively close. So that would be pretty interesting if we get, I assume we'll get a by-election at some point early in the year. So at least two there. And there's persistent rumors that some of the veteran liberal MPs who had been in cabinet and are no longer in cabinet might leave politics or get appointment somewhere. So people like Bill Blair or Jonathan Wilkinson are,

commonly rumored to be thinking about leaving politics. So, you know, in theory, we could have several by-elections this year, early in the first half of this year, that would have the impact or potential impact on whether or not the liberals have a majority or not. Okay, yeah, a lot of moving pieces there. Let's move on to talk about the conservatives. Later this week, Pierre Poliyev will face a leadership review. What can we expect to come out of this review? The conservatives are certainly dampening expectations of any drama. We haven't seen any any people really come out to challenge Polyev's leadership or there's no strong public campaign to vote against his leadership.

It's kind of like a show of support of leadership. That's not a leadership race, obviously. Everybody's expecting that it'll be a fairly high percentage of support. And then there's also going to be some policy resolutions. We'll see what plays out there. But overall, not a whole lot of buzz about this particular vote because it seems like if that's accompli. Interesting when you talk to conservatives, a lot of them are actually more excited about there's going to be event a few days later in Ottawa, marking the 20th anniversary of the Conservatives' 2006 election win under Stephen Harper.

And the official portrait of Stephen Harper is going to be going up. So especially for the conservatives who are close enough to Ottawa to get there, it's a lot cheaper than flying to Alberta for the leadership vote. So a lot of factors playing in into why there's not a, probably not going to be huge crowds at the leadership vote for Pahliav. Okay, let's talk about the NDP. So the NDP lost official party status in the last election. And they are currently without a leader. A new leader will be selected at the end of March at the parties convention in Winnipeg. Can you give us a quick rundown of who's in the race?

Yeah, it's been going on for several months now. So coming to ahead in March, and we're going to have a, candidates debate in February, so that'll be a pretty key moment for the campaign. But there's five people running in the race, and the main names are Heather McPherson, who's the only sitting MP. She's from Alberta. So she's getting a lot of support from people who have been traditionally involved with the NDP. There's Avi Lewis, son of Stephen Lewis, so a longtime associate of the party, who's now running for leader. He's getting a lot of attention. former broadcaster, so he's very smooth in interviews and videos, that kind of thing.

So he's getting a lot of attention. And Rob Ashton from the Labor Movement is also running. He's seen as kind of among the top three. And the other two running are Tony McQuail and Toneal Johnston. We'll be right back. The leaders changing Canadian business don't always make the headlines. But you can change that by voting in the Report on Business Best Executive Awards. For the past five years, the Report on Business Best Executive Awards have celebrated Canadian

non-CEO leaders helping innovate and push Canada's economy forward. If you know a leader in finance, human resources, tech, operations, sales, and marketing, then share their story and nominate them today. They could be one of 50 winners of this year's Report on Business Best Executive Awards. Nominate at Best Executive at tgam.ca.ca. The nomination deadline is January 31st. Bill, National Unity is top of mind for Mark Carney, and National Unity is going to be tested in the form of debates

around Alberta and Quebec sovereignty. Let's start with Alberta. What do we know about the support for Alberta separation? Like, how popular of an idea is it? Well, at the moment, it's not that popular. If you look at an opinion poll, maybe one in five of Albertans support it, but it's certainly shaping up to be a pretty significant, political issue this year, and a lot of it is going to depend on how the Alberta legislature

handles this file because some new policies that they brought in that allow citizens-initiated referendums. And there's still some uncertainty about how exactly this could play out, but it's at least possible that Alberta could have a referendum in the fall on whether to stay in Canada or not. And obviously it would be significant this year at a time when you've got all this talk of you know, the American government talking about Canada becoming the 51st state and some speakers in the United States talking about how Alberta could be potentially the first shoot a drop. And that's certainly a concern that you're seeing from some voices in Alberta that such a referendum in this current environment would be a target for foreign interference,

whether that comes from American voices in government or outside government or, you know, foreign bots. Like, who knows what could happen on? line during such a campaign. So it could be pretty stressful time for the country if Alberta has a referendum this year. How strong is the opposition movement? Yeah, there is an organized opposition movement that's put together a petition in favor of Alberta staying within Canada. And I think those who are behind that movement are kind of hoping that the legislature just takes that as an indication that there's no need to even move ahead with a referendum. there's definitely competing factions at play here about what should happen next and what kind of wording should be used if there is in fact a referendum.

But it's still kind of unclear what's going to happen. Okay. And so let's just connect this to the national conversation here. So how is this going to factor into how things play out in Parliament? You know, one of the core promises of Mark Carney has been to get big things built. And he had this deal with Daniel Smith, the Premier of Alberta, to work with her. on getting a pipeline to the Pacific. So that is a key issue that is, you know, one of the top requests of Alberta. So Alberta has made this an important issue as kind of a sign that for

Canada, the federal government, to prove that Canada can work well with Alberta and meet Alberta's needs. So I think you've got that policy issue playing out at a time when there's this sovereignty issue playing out in the background. So, and it's really not clear at the moment, you know, how or where such a pipeline could materialize because there's still no private sector proponent and there's still no clear team of First Nations communities who would want to be involved. There's certainly some First Nations resistance in northern BC. So we'll see how that plays out. The BC Premier has suggested perhaps an alternative would be to expand the existing TMX pipeline, which runs further south. So that's an option. But, you know, it was, you know,

happy enough to satisfy what Alberta is looking for. So a lot of that is going to play out, not necessarily directly in Parliament in terms of legislation, but at a government-to-government level between Ottawa and Alberta. And, you know, that'll play out in terms of debates in Parliament. Okay, Bill, let's talk about Quebec. Quebec will have an election later this year, and both the CAQ, the Coalition Avenir Quebec, and the Quebec Liberals need new party leaders. And the Parti-Chequequeque is leading in the polls, and that's the Sovereignty. So how likely is Quebec to get into referendum territory? Lots of things to play out over the next few months here.

But definitely, as you mentioned, the Peltzkebecuas, leading in the polls. And their leader, Paul Saint-Piel Plymonde, has promised a referendum in a first mandate of a PQ government. So lots of twists and turns in Quebec policy takes the last few weeks with both the Liberal Party and the CAQ now are planning to have choose. new leaders before that takes place. So we'll see if that makes any difference, but there will be an election in Quebec this fall, and sovereignty will be part of that debate. That is for sure, whether the PQ wins, and we do have a referendum, obviously that'll be up to Quebec voters. USMCA negotiations are also going to be on the table here. So what are the possibilities with that? Yeah, this is also going to be fascinating because this is, I mean, it's the deal that used to be

Nafton is now called QSMA in Canada and it was agreed to under Donald Trump's first term and so this is the renewal clause that has never been used before so there's you know a fair bit of uncertainty is exactly how the next few months are going to play out the deal references July 1 as a key date and essentially there's there's three options there the parties can extend the treaty for another 16 years. They can start a process of annual reviews. Then the deal could expire in 2036 or they can withdraw from it with six months notice. So there's three options there, but really anything can happen. Canada is hoping to at least preserve the status quo and deal with the bigger irritants around the auto sector and steel and softwood lumber. But we've seen how Donald

Trump negotiates and and I think Canadians should brace themselves for some pretty wild proclamations between now and whether or not there's going to be a deal. So last week, Donald Trump threatened new tariffs on multiple European countries that opposed the idea of him acquiring Greenland, which he then backed down from. What does that mean for Canada? Like, can we just continue on as normal with the negotiations? Well, I think there's a few lessons to be learned there. So one is that, you know, Donald Trump was threatened.

new tariffs on countries like the EU that have already signed a deal or reached an agreement on trade with Donald Trump. So I think the lesson there is that even if you get a deal, he could threaten new tariffs again if something happens that he doesn't like. So I think that's important information for Canada to have as they're going into these negotiations. Carney got a lot of international attention for his speech, which while it didn't name Donald Trump by name was certainly seen as kind of a call to push back. Trump and some of his approaches to geopolitics. So that was certainly did not go unnoticed by Donald Trump.

And he pointed that out in his own speech. And there's been some suggestions from the American side that that would have consequences for Canada. So we'll see that's a risk Canada takes by taking that kind of a position rhetorically. And then Trump also disinvited Carney from his Board of Peace. Yes, so there's that. And then you had the California governor governor, Gavin Newsom, it was interesting. He was at Davos essentially telling world leaders that the way

to deal with Donald Trump is you have to stand up to him and saying that he, you know, he has done that in California and ultimately Trump backs down. So his advice to other world leaders is to take a more adversarial tone with Trump and that might work in your favor. So really, I mean, nobody really knows what the best approach is for Canada to take in this, but it's going to be definitely a challenging free of months. As you said, anything can hurt. happen. Yeah. So, Bill, as you've laid out, there's a lot at stake here.

So what does success look like for Carney this session? Well, it's interesting because, you know, does he actually want to get through this parliament or not? Certainly people have watched these last few speeches from him and there's some people watching the Canadian political scene and saying this looks a lot like campaign speeches. You know, does he actually want this parliament to succeed or is he setting himself up for a spring election? So we don't know that, but it's certainly interesting to watch.

He is certainly going back, you know, the more aggressive tone with Donald Trump is similar to the tone that he took during the election campaign, which got him to the verge of a majority of government, but not quite there. So, you know, is he setting the stage for an election sooner rather than later? We'll see. I don't know what's in his mind. Is he pushing for an election? Or does he want to get through this parliament? If he does want to get through this parliament, obviously success would be actually getting action on some of these big projects that he's been talking about getting some foreign investment. He and some of his advisors have been talking for years about the potential.

So many, there's these sovereign wealth funds and pension funds that sit on billions of dollars that are looking for places to invest. That's been his message as he's going through Gulf states and other places that he can. can get these organizations to start investing in Canada. Let's see if that happens. I think if we see a few concrete examples of that, I think he'd consider that success this year. Bill, great talking with you. Thank you so much.

Thanks, Cheryl. That was Bill Curry, the Globe's Deputy Ottawa Bureau Chief. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Our producers are Madeline White, Mikhail Stein, and Ali Graham. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer

and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening.