It’s Thursday and the sun was shining just enough to spell out Spring is here. Now back to this evening’s brief:

Nearly 4,000 Liberal members will be gathering for the party convention in Montreal this weekend and for the first time in more than a decade, Justin Trudeau and his personal brand of politics won’t tower over the party’s proceedings.

Party faithful will gather as Mark Carney’s ever-expanding big tent of MPs stands on the cusp of achieving a majority government following a series of floor-crossings in Parliament.

The convention, which runs Thursday through Saturday, starts just ahead of three byelections set for Monday, and a day after a fifth opposition MP crossed the floor to join the Liberal caucus.

It comes at a high point for the Liberals, who a little more than a year ago felt like they were marching their way out of office. Polling aggregator 338 Canada has the Liberals at a staggering 45 per cent support nationally.

“There’s strong support across the country right now for the prime minister and for the party,” said Jonathan Kalles, a consultant with McMillan Vantage who formerly served as Quebec adviser to Trudeau.

The Canadian Press has more. 

A reminder — iPolitics will have a liveblog on day one of the convention that will start up later this evening!

Several political leaders accompanied Prime Minister Mark Carney to Contrecoeur Thursday to highlight progress in the Port of Montreal expansion project.

Although it was billed as a groundbreaking ceremony, site work actually began last fall, and the finished terminal expansion remains years away. It’s expected to open in 2030.

The Liberals credited their government for the progress made in Contrecoeur, with the Prime Minister’s Office saying the Major Projects Office (MPO) “streamlined approvals, developed an effective financing model, and helped secure permits faster.”

Carney also said his government “committed $1.16 billion in financing through the Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB).”

While the CIB is an arm’s-length, taxpayer-funded Crown corporation with an independent investment mandate, it frequently faces accusations of Liberal bias from opposition parties.

It was tasked, along with other taxpayer funded investment vehicles like the Canada Growth Fund and the Canadian Indigenous Loan Guarantee Program, to work the MPO in the last federal budget.

Aya Dufour has more. 

Also, Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree is lauding the close relationship between police forces in the country and the United States, after a man pleaded guilty in a planned mass shooting that was foiled in 2024.

Anandasangaree’s comments are in reaction to the plea entered on Wednesday in New York City by Muhammad Shahzeb Khan.

The 21-year-old had been arrested in 2024 in Quebec near the U.S. border for planning a mass shooting of Jewish people at a Brooklyn centre to coincide with the anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel.

U.S. officials say Khan had the explicit goal of killing as many Jews as possible.

RCMP in Quebec arrested Khan on Sept. 4, 2024, after their Ontario counterparts notified U.S. officials that he was planning to cross the border with the help of a human smuggler.

Anandasangaree says there is great collaboration between law enforcement in both countries, adding that the border is secured by Canadians but also by support from the Five Eyes alliance, which shares signals intelligence among its members, including Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and the United States.

CP’s also got this one. 

In Other Headlines

Internationally

Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu has called for negotiations with Lebanon after worldwide condemnation of Israel’s intense bombardment of Beirut and other Lebanese cities, which threatened to undo the US-Iran ceasefire before it was barely a day old.

The Israeli prime minister said the talks should focus on the disarmament of Hezbollah and the establishment of “peace relations” with Lebanon, but gave no undertaking that the bombardment would stop, and there was no immediate sign of a let up in Israeli strikes. The Lebanese government had requested a ceasefire before talks began.

More than 200 people were killed by Israeli bombing in the 24 hours after the announcement of a ceasefire in the Iran war on Tuesday night. The bombardment, ostensibly aimed at Hezbollah targets, included strikes with heavy munitions on densely populated areas, which drew outrage from the International Committee of the Red Cross and other international humanitarian organisations.

The ferocious attack on Lebanon had threatened to derail hopes of a negotiated end to the war in Iran, which began with a US-Israeli attack on 28 February. Despite claims by the US president, Donald Trump, that the Pakistani-brokered ceasefire had marked significant progress towards bringing a durable peace to the Middle East, the truce looked in danger of collapsing on its first day.

Happening a little farther from home, experts are saying for Artemis II, coming home may be the most dangerous part.

The Guardian has more. 

The Artemis II heat shield, NASA agrees, is flawed.

The heat shield is the critical layer at the bottom of a spacecraft that protects it — and the astronauts inside — from searing temperatures upon re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere. If the shield fails, the underlying metallic structure could melt, rupture and disintegrate.

And there is no backup, and no way for the astronauts to escape.

NASA officials, however, are confident that despite the known shortcomings of the heat shield, the four Artemis II astronauts will remain alive and comfortable as they arrive at Earth on Friday evening at a speed of nearly 24,000 miles per hour, concluding a 10-day trip to the moon and back.

Extensive analysis and testing of the heat shield material “got us comfortable that we can undertake this mission with lots of margin to spare,” Jared Isaacman, the NASA administrator, said in an interview in January.

However, Charlie Camarda, a former NASA astronaut and an expert on heat shields, says NASA should never have launched Artemis II. The agency does not understand well enough the chances that the heat shield might fail, he says, and the mission, a success so far, could end with the deaths of the astronauts.

Read more about it from The New York Times. 

In Other International Headlines

The Kicker

Not in the mood for speeches and party politics? Swap it for the big screen…

Gatineau’s Festival du film de l’Outaouais is serving up to 70 films, including some Oscars noms, just across the river. It will be showing at four venues including the Canadian Museum of History’s IMAX.

Otherwise, we’ll be on the ground at the Liberal Party Convention through Saturday with live updates coming along your way!