dailynewsnblog
Ever been told to put your money where your mouth is?
Well, Prime Minister Mark Carney did a version of that for Pierre Poilievre on Wednesday.
Carney is dismissing criticism from his Conservative rival on the Liberal government’s handling of trade talks with the U.S. as a new report suggests that Americans are demanding concessions before restarting negotiations.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre told reporters on Tuesday the prime minister needs to stop “showboating” and outline his plan for a trade negotiations with the U.S., adding that the “only talks that Mark Carney is doing are YouTube videos.”
This is a reference to a video posted the prime minister on Sunday where he said that Canada’s reliance on the U.S. had become a weakness, and vowed not to sugarcoat the challenges facing Canadians.
iPolitics caught up to the PM as he left the Liberal caucus meeting on Wednesday and asked him about Poilievre’s comments.
“What’s he ever negotiated,” shot back Carney, making a mocking gesture with his hands to mirror the movement of someone talking. The gesture is usually used to make fun of someone for talking incessantly.
Marco Vigliotti has more.
Zooming out, Ontario’s push to restrict foreign ownership of farmland is being framed as a bid for “food independence,” but comments from federal Agriculture Minister Heath MacDonald suggest the policy may also reflect a political reality: it’s often easier for provinces to act on foreign buyers than to tackle the more complex forces actually reshaping farmland.
Agriculture Minister Trevor Jones tabled legislation this Wednesday that will give Ontario the power to limit foreign purchases of farmland, aligning the province with jurisdictions like Alberta and Quebec. The proposal is part of the government’s Protecting Ontario’s Food Independence Act, 2026, which positions farmland as a strategic asset tied to long-term food security.
Jones has cast the move as a way to keep farmland in productive use and out of the hands of “overseas companies,” saying it will help “ensure that Ontario has a strong, independent food supply for generations to come.”
But MacDonald told iPolitics that the approach has some limits.
Read more from Barbara Patrocinio.
Also, Liberal House leader Steven MacKinnon is defending the government’s move to seize control over the parliamentary agenda this morning.
MacKinnon said he will soon move a motion to change the rules governing the House of Commons to ensure the Liberals have the most votes on committees.
He said members of Parliament from the governing party should hold a majority of the seats on House of Commons committees and rejected the suggestion the government will use its new powers to rush legislation through Parliament.
“From the start, we’ve made it very clear we want to work collaboratively with parties in the House. We don’t want to play silly partisan games that wastes the time and the money of taxpayers,” MacKinnon told reporters in the House of Commons foyer.
“We want to work together to achieve big things for the Canadians we all represent.”
The Canadian Press has this one.
In Other Headlines
Internationally
Elsewhere, EU member states have reached agreement on unblocking an urgently needed €90bn (£78bn) loan for Kyiv and a new package of sanctions against Moscow after Ukraine resumed pumping Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia, prompting Budapest to lift its veto.
Cyprus, which holds the bloc’s rotating presidency, said member states’ ambassadors had agreed to launch “written procedures” for the final approval of the loan and the sanctions package, with formal signoff on both due by Thursday afternoon.
The EU agreed in December on the loan, vital to keep Ukraine afloat this year and next, but Hungary’s outgoing prime minister, Viktor Orbán, backed by Slovakia, vetoed it in March because of a dispute with Kyiv over a damaged oil pipeline.
Orbán, who lost to a centre-right challenger, Péter Magyar, in elections on 12 April, accused Ukraine of deliberately delaying repairs to the Druzhba pipeline which carries oil to Hungary and Slovakia, both of which are heavily dependent on Russian oil.
The Guardian reports.
Meanwhile, Spirit Airlines is close to getting a $500 million bailout from the federal government, according to a source familiar with the negotiations.
The deal is expected to include the federal government taking a stake in the troubled airline, which had struggled to make money ever since the Covid pandemic.
Spirit would also avoid becoming the first significant US airline in 25 years forced to completely halt operations because of financial problems. Jet fuel costs have roughly doubled since the start of the war in Iran, derailing Spirit’s plans to emerge from its second bankruptcy reorganization since 2024.
The source told CNN a deal could be announced as soon as late Wednesday night or Thursday. It is designed to give the airline a chance to complete its reorganization.
Read more from CNN.
In Other International Headlines
The Kicker
Sun is really out–hallelujah.
There’s some more good news to go with it: a rare jaguar has been spotted in Honduras for the first time in 10 years, offering a silver of hope for a species under pressure.
Find out more from Scientific American.
P.S. Happy Earth Day!
