Playbook Canada

Canada's premiers gather in Charlottetown just as President Trump threatens new 50 per cent tariffs. They say they're united, but Doug Ford is pushing for retaliation, and Danielle Smith and Scott Moe are not interested. Our summer series on Alberta separatism continues with long-time Conservative strategist Jenni Byrne, who says the referendum vote could clear 30 per cent at the ballot box and calls Danielle Smith the politician who's done the most for national unity. Her advice for Carney and the Liberals on Alberta: drop the condescension, or sit this one out.

Playbook Canada launches a special summer series on Alberta’s fight with Ottawa. First up, Martha Hall Findlay. The Alberta government has asked the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy to produce a study on the economic and fiscal consequences of separation. Hall Findlay is leading the project, and she had lots to say about the October referendum and the turnout problem hiding inside it, the pipeline announcements that landed during Stampede, and why “We gave you TMX!” is the worst thing Central Canadians can say to an Albertan.

Cowboy hats, cowboy boots and big buckles: Nick Taylor-Vaisey and Mickey Djuric record on location at the Calgary Stampede, where this year’s celebrations are politically charged amid sharp grievances. One test to be decided: Can a pipeline soothe a separatist mood? Plus, Calgary Liberal MP Corey Hogan sits down for a 200-second interview.

A new POLITICO international poll finds voters everywhere fed up with their incumbents. Not in Canada. Nick Taylor-Vaisey and Mickey Djuric talk to Seb Wride of Public First about why Mark Carney is bucking the trend, why Canadians are loving the flag again after years of treating it as a loaded symbol, and why Albertans rank among the proudest Canadians in the poll, separatism aside. Plus: listeners' picks for Playbook Canada's summer interview list, and the politicians worth watching as Stampede and the USMCA review both kick off.

A special summer edition of Playbook Canada: Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, fresh off flying around the moon on Artemis II, joins Nick Taylor-Vaisey and Mickey Djuric for a five-chapter conversation. He talks about why a first pitch at the Rogers Centre rattled him more than a rocket launch, the triple play he wants Canada chasing in the next era of space exploration, whether he’d ever run for office, his read on the grounded Snowbirds, and what traveling around the moon taught him about how we can create together rather than cancel each other.

Mark Carney went from the candidate nobody thought could win to majority prime minister in little more than a year. A new POLITICO Magazine feature co-authored by our own Nick Taylor-Vaisey traces how he pulled it off. Nick and Mickey Djuric run through Carney’s unlikely rise to power, while guest host Alex Burns explains how Washington reads, and misreads, his rise. Plus: Bill C-22, the Liberals’ lawful access bill, exposes a split in the Conservative caucus, the World Cup arrives in North America with a trail of messy politics, and Conservative deputy leader Melissa Lantsman sits down for a 200-second interview.

Pierre Poilievre skips the governor general's installation and heads to Calgary with a new pitch: project hope, not project fear. Nick Taylor-Vaisey and Mickey Djuric break down his bid to talk Alberta separatists out of leaving, and what it means for a Conservative leader who spent years calling Canada broken. Plus, Justin Trudeau works a red carpet with Katy Perry, and Mark Carney heads to his ancestral home of County Mayo ahead of next week’s G7 summit.

The recession debate has taken over Parliament Hill, and Pierre Poilievre wants Mark Carney to wear it. Nick Taylor-Vaisey and Mickey Djuric dissect the fight over the exact meaning of two quarters of negative growth. The Liberals move to reverse a rule forcing US streaming giants to fund Canadian content, one day after Dominic LeBlanc met Trump's trade rep in Washington. Plus a look inside the Senate before a tsunami of June bills rolls in. And a 200-second interview with Liberal operative and legendary Hill tour guide Kevin Bosch.

A special edition of Playbook Canada: Google chief economist Fabien Curto Millet was in Toronto for Tech Week, and he sat down for a conversation that ran well past our usual 200 seconds. He makes the economic case for AI as the one force that could pull Canada out of two decades of sluggish productivity and offset the drag of an aging population. But he warns that Canada and the U.S. sit at the back of the global queue on the ratio of anxiety to enthusiasm. He argues AI is barely a factor in youth unemployment when the real driver is a soft labour market, why encouragement from employers is what moves hesitant workers to start using AI, and reveals that for all the overlap in their training, he has never met fellow economist Mark Carney. And finally, the chess game he wants with Mark Carney.

Steven Guilbeault resigns from the Liberal caucus over the government's diluted climate plans — and he's not alone, with 14 Liberal MPs signing an anonymous letter criticizing the Alberta pipeline deal. Mark Carney lands in New York City to pitch Wall Street investors on Canada, and CANSEC is back in Ottawa, bigger and thirstier than ever, as the defense industry descends on the capital.