The Canadian Returnee Podcast

On July 1st, the U.S. officially said “not so fast” to a 16-year extension of CUSMA (that’s the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade deal, formerly NAFTA). Instead, we’re now locked into a decade of annual reviews. Every single year, all three countries have to sit down and hash things out. Just a rolling ten-year countdown to 2036, when the whole deal could expire if nobody agrees on something more permanent...

Prime Minister Mark Carney and B.C. Premier David Eby unveiled a 10-year, $5-billion deal on June 18th covering transit, health care, wastewater, and housing . The headline-grabber? A plan to buy up over 2,200 unsold condo units sitting empty across Metro Vancouver and convert them into “attainable” housing for middle-income British Columbians. The federal government says it’s the fastest way to g...

Remember Bill C-3? That’s the law that came into effect back in December that finally let “Lost Canadians” people born abroad to a Canadian parent , no matter how many generations back, claim citizenship. Big win for a lot of families who’d been shut out for years. Well, IRCC just sent out letters demanding that some of these brand-new citizens hand their certificates back. We’re talking anywhere...

On June 8, 2026, Louise Arbour was officially sworn in as Canada’s 31st Governor General in a ceremony at the Senate. The 79-year-old Montreal-born lawyer and former Supreme Court justice takes over from Mary Simon, who made history as the first Indigenous person to hold the role. Arbour prosecuted war criminals at the international tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, including being t...

Toronto police have made a series of arrests in two separate hate crime investigations, and both are deeply troubling. The first involves a group of people who drove around North York in a blue Lexus SUV, shooting gel-blaster guns at Jewish residents once near Bathurst and Lawrence, and again outside a synagogue near the 401. Seven people have been charged so far, including two teens, with two mor...

The 2025 U.S. News Best Countries ranking dropped Canada from 2nd place all the way down to 19th, sitting one spot behind the United States. Now, part of that is a big change in how they’re measuring things. They ditched the old reputation-based surveys and switched to 100 hard data points across eight categories. So it’s less about how the world feels about us, and more about what’s actually happ...

The US just hit pause on one of the longest-running defence partnerships in North American history, and it’s a pretty big deal. On May 18th, the Pentagon announced it’s suspending its participation in the Permanent Joint Board on Defence, a body that’s been running since 1940 . That’s 86 years of continuous Canada-U.S. military cooperation gone quiet overnight. U.S. Undersecretary Elbridge Colby p...

A judge just pulled the plug on Alberta’s separation petition. On May 13, 2026, Alberta Court of King’s Bench Justice Shaina Leonard quashed the petition that would’ve triggered a referendum on Alberta leaving Canada. The separatist group “Stay Free Alberta” had gathered over 300,000 signatures way past the threshold needed to trigger a referendum. However, Justice Leonard ruled that the provincia...

Prime Minister Mark Carney attended the 8th European Political Community summit in Yerevan, Armenia, making Canada the first non-European nation to ever attend. That’s not a small thing. It’s basically Carney planting a flag and saying: Canada is looking for new friends and fast. With Trump’s trade war cranking up tariffs, the U.S. pulling troops out of Europe, and American support for Ukraine get...

Finance Minister Champagne rolled out “Canada Strong For All” on April 28th. The deficit actually shrank from a projected $78.3 billion down to $66.9 billion. The government took that $11.4 billion windfall and basically spent it. We’re talking $37.5 billion in net new spending. Here’s what you need to know: Canada Strong Fund is a brand-new $25 billion sovereign wealth fund to invest in homegrown...

The Ford government just passed a massive $244.2-billion budget bill (Bill 97), and tucked inside it are some pretty sketchy changes to Ontario’s Freedom of Information laws. We’re talking full exemptions for the Premier, cabinet ministers, and their staff emails, texts, phone logs, all of it. Gone from public access. Also, it’s retroactive back to 1988, which conveniently kills a Global News requ...

Prime Minister Mark Carney and Finnish President Alexander Stubb sat down in Ottawa fresh off Carney’s Liberals locking in a majority government, and the two leaders hit it off big time. They’re calling it “values-based realism” meets “principled pragmatism,” which is just a way of saying middle powers like Canada and Finland need to stick together in a chaotic world. Here are the highlights: Big...

On April 8th, 2026, Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu, who’s represented Sarnia-Lambton-Bkejwanong since 2015, crossed the floor to join PM Mark Carney’s Liberal government. Four-time Conservative winner, now a Liberal. This bumps the Liberals up to 171 seats, just one shy of a working majority. With three byelections happening on April 13 in Toronto and Quebec, the Liberals could be sitting pretty wi...

The February jobs report showed Canada shed a whopping 84,000 jobs last month, the worst single-month hit we’ve seen since the pandemic. Add that to the 25,000 lost in January, and we’re already down 109,000 jobs in 2026. The unemployment rate’s now sitting at 6.7%, and full-time work took the biggest beating, with over 100,000 full-time positions gone. Quebec got hit hardest with 57,000 jobs lost...

We’re diving into two big stories that are shaking up Canada right now, and if you’re under 40, this one hits close to home. First up, economists are calling it the “Milestone Recession”. We’re talking about a full-on generational squeeze where young Canadians can’t afford to buy a house, start a family, or even get ahead at work. The average first-time homebuyer in Ontario is now 40 years old. Al...

So, let’s talk about something that a lot of Canadians are starting to wake up to: racism in Canada. We’re talking deep, systemic, baked-into-the-institutions kind of stuff. Here’s a wild stat: 60% of Canadians now say racism is a serious problem. Back in 2019? That number was only 47%. We’re diving into Canada’s brand new Anti-Racism Strategy running from 2024 to 2028, a whole-of-government plan...

Today, we’re breaking down something that affects pretty much every working Canadian: the Canada Pension Plan, or CPP. The CPP fund just hit $780.7 billion as of December 2025. That’s your retirement money, managed by CPP Investments, and it’s been churning out an average return of 8.4% annually over the last decade.b Here’s what we’re digging into: Where your money’s invested, nearly half of it i...

On February 28, the United States and Israel launched a massive air campaign against Iran called Operation Epic Fury. The strikes targeted Iran’s nuclear program and top leadership, and Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, was killed. The attacks triggered immediate retaliation from Iran and Hezbollah, with missile strikes, regional tensions exploding, and threats to shut down the Strait of Hormuz...

Canada is in the middle of what some are calling a full-on defence renaissance. Under Prime Minister Mark Carney, Ottawa is rolling out a $6.6-billion Defence Industrial Strategy aimed at rebuilding sovereign military muscle and cutting back our long-standing dependence on the U.S. The goal? Hit 5% of GDP on defence by 2035 and bring more of the work and intellectual property home. A big piece of...

On February 10, 2026, the tiny town of Tumbler Ridge was shaken by one of the worst mass shootings in Canadian history. An 18-year-old former student, Jesse Van Rootselaar, first killed her mother and stepbrother at home, then drove to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School. Police got the call around 1:30 p.m. and were on scene in two minutes, likely stopping even more lives from being lost. In total, ni...

February 2026 kicked off Black History Month across Canada with a mix of symbolism, community pride, and politics. Cities like Barrie and Saint John raised the Pan-African flag outside city halls, giving Black communities visible recognition right where local decisions get made. These were emotional, meaningful, and rooted in representation. On the ground, the focus wasn’t just on the ceremony. In...

The Bank of Canada hit pause again in January, keeping interest rates at 2.25% . No hike, no cut, just a cautious wait-and-see move. Inflation is basically where the Bank wants it, growth is slowing, and jobs aren’t exactly booming. With a major CUSMA review coming this summer and fresh tariff threats flying around, the Bank says uncertainty is off the charts. Governor Tiff Macklem was pretty blun...

Today, we’re talking about one of the hardest truths Canada keeps dodging: the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people. For decades, families have been shouting into the void while police, courts, health systems, and governments looked away. This is the result of colonial policies, racism, broken institutions, and generations of trauma that Canada still hasn’...

The Trump administration is openly talking about taking over Greenland, not buying it, just taking it, claiming it’s about “national security.” Inuit leaders across Greenland and Canada aren’t buying that for a second. Instead, they see this as old-school colonialism dressed up in geopolitics, with Greenland’s minerals and resources as the real prize. Inuit activist Aaju Peter and others are calli...

Prime Minister Mark Carney, the first Canadian PM to visit Beijing in almost a decade, is trying to calm a relationship that’s been on ice since arrests, tariffs, and years of bad blood. With Trump’s “America First” tariffs squeezing Canada, Ottawa wants fewer eggs in the American basket and more non-U.S. trade. China, despite everything, is still our second-largest trading partner. Canada slapped...