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Month: February 2026

Alberta’s Tough Choices: Confronting the Challenges Ahead ​

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If Budget 2025 was focused on confronting emerging challenges head-on, Budget 2026 is centred on managing their consequences. Danielle Smith’s UCP government has been consistent with its messaging: persistently low oil prices, continued trade tensions, and sustained population growth have exerted pressure on provincial revenues, public services and infrastructure.

Finance Minister Nate Horner had two options to deal with the hand he’d been dealt – find deep cuts to shrink spending or bet big to reinforce services and stimulate the economy. Minister Horner chose the latter. ​

The consequence of that decision is consecutive deficits: $9.4 billion, $7.6 billion and $6.9 billion over the next three years; a violation of the fiscal framework introduced by the UCP in 2023. ​

Against this backdrop, Budget 2026 identifies two key priorities: Maintaining Alberta’s economic advantage and supporting Albertans. ​

Priority one commits to responsible fiscal management and the ongoing assessment of what “additional measures” could be leveraged to address the province’s fiscal challenges. Priority two focuses on maintaining or expanding core services, including large investments in health care and education.​

Budget 2026 may not be the financial picture the government was hoping to present; however, as stated by Finance Minister Nate Horner, “The road ahead will be challenging to navigate, but Albertans have never needed easy to succeed.” ​

You can find our full analysis of the budget below. For more analysis, or support engaging government on any of the budget announcements, contact your Navigator team or reach out at info@navltd.com.

To have any chance of becoming prime minister, Pierre Poilievre needs to say Donald Trump’s name

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Silence is a decision.

And this is, effectively, where Pierre Poilievre now finds himself on the issue of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Among some Conservative party faithful, there has been a quiet hope, wishful thinking actually, that this issue would cease to be the dominant one. That crime and affordability would re-emerge as ballot-box drivers. That the Trump circus would recede to the periphery.

But as the orange menace’s latest actions, from absurd demands over ownership of the Gordie Howe International Bridge (despite Canada’s $6.4-billion investment and existing joint arrangements with Michigan) to fresh threats on tearing up CUSMA, Trump’s hold over our politics is not going anywhere, anytime soon.

Poilievre has done a lot right in recent months. He’s worked hard to consolidate his leadership. He has started to adjust his tone. But he has not yet found the right approach to communicating about Trump.

Then again, you will never find the right approach if you start from the wrong premise. That premise is this: What is the least conceivable amount that can be said, directly, about Trump?

This kind of restraint has been lurking in the background at least since the last federal campaign and was certainly present at the Conservative party Convention last month in Calgary, where Trump’s name was scarcely uttered.

The logic is understandable. The idea is that saying too much, or saying anything too critical, risks alienating a slice of the conservative base that views Trump sympathetically.

But two things can be true. Yes, a sharper tone on Trump could irritate some loyalists. But it is also an inescapable fact that you cannot win a general election in Canada while tiptoeing around the single biggest external force shaping Canadians’ sense of economic and security risk.

That is the crossroads.

And silence, at this stage, is not strategic ambiguity or even, in my view, a remotely viable option for Poilievre. You cannot credibly speak to the consequences of a problem if you do not name its source.

The good news for Poilievre is this: he has the political capital to say what needs to be said. He has just secured an overwhelming mandate at his party’s convention. No small feat, especially for an opposition leader who lost an election many believed would or could be won. But the numbers don’t lie. He won a decisive victory (almost 90 per cent) at his leadership review. His base is consolidated. His authority is established.

He now has political capital which exists to be spent.

And the most valuable way to spend it now is not by soothing those already committed, but by persuading those still unconvinced. That means saying things that may unsettle parts of your coalition in order to signal seriousness to the broader electorate.

Is that a risk? Sure.

But it is a far greater risk to remain largely silent while Trump continues to dominate Canada’s economic and geopolitical horizon.

More importantly, this is not just about positioning for the next election. It is about demonstrating governing readiness. Canadians are not merely asking who can criticize the government; they are asking who can manage volatility south of the border without flinching.

Leadership in this moment requires more than oblique references to “uncertainty” or “external pressures.” It requires acknowledging that Trump is not a peripheral irritant but a structural factor in Canada’s future, on trade, security, energy and beyond. It demands saying his name.

As long as Trump remains central to Canada’s anxiety, Poilievre must show that he understands the scale of the challenge and that he is prepared to confront it plainly.

Silence, after all, is not neutrality. It is a choice.

How Canada should operate in a TACO world

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In politics, you can rarely put your faith in absolutes. Especially maxims coined by Wall Street traders. But this one has merit. After an extensive analysis, Bloomberg Economics recently showed that U.S. President Donald Trump only follows through on his tariff threats a mere quarter of the time.

So. Make that almost always chickens out.

No surprise, we’ve seen a market correction. The bluster has been priced in. Unlike this time last year, Trump’s outlandish pronouncements no longer carry the same power to send markets into freefall or plunge nation-states into panic.

And Trump’s Truth Social tantrum against Canada last weekend was a case in point. He threatened to slap a 100 per cent tariff on Canadian goods coming into the United States if Canada “makes a deal with China.”

National crisis? Emergency press conference? Hardly. Prime Minister Mark Carney barely gave the threat the time of day. Instead, Canada–U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc calmly issued a statement, did some quiet behind-the-scenes work to clarify that no free trade agreement with China was in the works, and, almost on cue, the threat appeared to evaporate.

In the subsequent days, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is about as mediagenic as a Madame Tussauds wax figure, has issued similar declarations, warning Carney not to “pick a fight” with Trump. But such behaviour is now table stakes.

So, the question then becomes: how does Canada operate in a TACO world? Crucially, how do we leverage what we know about Trump into the upcoming CUSMA negotiations?

Answering those questions requires a clarification. The critical point about TACO isn’t that Trump never follows through. He didn’t chicken out of his mass deportation strategy. He didn’t chicken out of steel and aluminum tariffs against Canada, nor from the Venezuela raid.

The point is that at least half of what he says is pure, unmitigated spectacle. And deliberately so.

He weaponizes that spectacle as a negotiating strategy. As CBC’s Andrew Chang explains, it begins with “maximalist threat — like, 100 per cent tariffs — then, he lets the threat simmer to create negotiating leverage. He then pulls the tariff threat back — with delays or decreases.”

The path forward, therefore, rests on (to steal a line from the prime minister’s excellent Davos speech) our ability to “name reality.” Especially reality that is eminently predictable.

It’s not a question of if Trump will threaten to tear up CUSMA for leverage in the coming weeks and months; it is when. And this isn’t just a problem for the PM. Every premier, every union leader, every CEO needs to be prepared. If the next threat triggers a collective sky-is-falling mentality, we will all suffer. This is coming. We may not like it. But this is the reality we’re in.

Overreacting to Trump’s provocations, especially in the media and political commentary, only amplifies his perceived influence. Canada’s task is not to stop them, but to ensure they no longer dictate our behaviour.

Amid the daily churn and chaos of the Trump administration, there are few moments that invite a pat on the back. These are, by any measure, grave times. But if you don’t acknowledge progress where it appears, you risk forgetting what worked.

There may have been some predictable noise in the media, but as a country, Canada did not overreact to these latest threats.

That is something worth noting and celebrating. More importantly, it offers a template for what comes next.

The coming CUSMA negotiations will be long and bruising. Trump may posture like a bully, but Canada has shown that when his threats are met without panic, they often retreat.

If that makes him a chicken, it’s only because we’ve learned not to run.