The Hatchet

This is starting to get ridiculous. One day we’re being tariffed to all hell, and the next day, the Trump administration says that they’re putting the trade war on pause for another month. But what we have to understand is that, from the American perspective, this is an effective strategy. Tarrifs are a tax that consumers end up paying for. So by continually pushing off the date that they come int...

There’s been a surge of Canadian nationalism over the last month, and understandably so. I’ve been feeling it too, I think it’d be hard not to. You really couldn’t grow a better villain in a lab than Donald Trump to actually rally Canadians in this way. And with that has come a good amount of talk of both Canadian history and the need for modern-day nation-building. That’s a good impulse. This is...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit hatchetmedia.ca We all knew that if Donald Trump got reelected, things would get chaotic pretty fast. But what I don’t think anyone anticipated was just how much Canada would be in the new administration’s cross-hairs. And there’s been one question no one really seems to be able to give a definitive answer to — why us? During the electi...

It’s been a weird month. When we first launched The Hatchet , we spent a lot of time talking about the kinds of stories that we wanted to cover and the kind of work that we wanted to do here. Something we did not anticipate was having to seriously entertain the notion of American annexation. But here we are. And so on today’s episode of The Hatchet , we’re going to talk about the tarrifs, the hist...

In 1969, Quebec and Newfoundland worked together to build a hydroelectric generating station in Labrador at a place called Churchill Falls. It would go on to produce an enormous amount of energy. But the deal they struck has haunted Newfoundland ever since. Because Quebec gets to buy electricity at an absolutely rock bottom price, which hasn’t changed in more than fifty years. And they then turn a...

When Paul Watson was arrested in July of last year, it made headlines around the world. The presidents of France and Brazil called for his immediate release. But here in Canada — Watson’s birthplace and where much of his activism has centred — the reaction was strangely muted. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau never said a word about his case. While there was some news coverage of his case, it was not...

You’ve probably heard some of the controversy swirling around ArriveCan; how one of the contracts to help build it went to a company owned by a federal government employee. And especially how the whole thing cost $60 million to make, even though, you know, it was a pretty basic app. But ArriveCan was also the beneficiary of a specific strategy that the federal government has been implementing for...

So everyone seems pretty worried about a potential trade war with the United States. And for good reason — the US is our biggest trading partner by far.  And I bet that over the next couple of days and weeks, a lot of journalists are going to head over to the StatsCan website to look up numbers of just how much money flows between the two countries. If they do, they might find themselves looking a...

Support us at hatchetmedia.substack.com I think we all know that the Canadian economy isn’t doing great. In the years after the pandemic, inflation surged and everyday people had to deal with ever-rising prices on all kinds of staple goods. The former governor of the Bank of Canada Stephen Poloz said recently that it’s likely that Canada’s already in a recession, and we just don’t know it yet. And...

An open secret among Canadian Sikhs is only now being spoken about publicly. For years, Indian officials have used visa approvals to extort and blackmail their critics in Canada. They’ve coerced Canadians to spy on their fellow citizens or denounce their political beliefs in writing, in exchange for the privilege of being able to visit loved ones in India. It’s just a small part of the foreign int...

The price of food keeps rising. And for the last few years, we’ve had a national debate about whether or not that’s the fault of the mega grocery chains. But the CEOs of Loblaws, Metro and Sobeys claim that it’s not their fault. We should be looking further up the food chain for the real culprits. They might have a point. Everywhere you look in the food industry, you’ll find rapacious corporate ol...

TD Bank has over a hundred thousand employees, almost two trillion dollars in assets and it’s a foundational part of the Canadian economy. It’s also a criminal enterprise. TD Bank has now admitted that for years, they helped launder hundreds of millions of dollars in drug money in the United States. But TD’s bad behaviour goes much further back. And leads us a lot closer to home. Featured in this...