First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. This is the last First Reading before an extended break. Canadian political news, at least under normal circumstances, usually gets a little slow over the summer, and we need time to go camping and work on a bunch of exciting podcast and video projects. So, for the next two months, please turn to nationalpost.com and the Posted newsletter for all your political updates, or feel free to email Tristin Hopper directly if you’d like some bespoke political gossip. You should also check out the Post’s other newsletters, including Right? and NP Platformed. We will return after Labour Day.
TOP STORY
As Prime Minister Mark Carney continues to enjoy sky-high approval ratings more than one year into his term, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre called it the result of a temporary “illusion” that will eventually collide with reality.
“I think we’re in a funny phase where people are judging Carney on his announcements and his promises and his perceived intentions, not on his actual results,” Poilievre said in a one-hour interview with podcaster Aaron Pete released this week.
“The Liberals and the media created a false delusion around Carney about the things he will do somewhere down the road, and he’s being judged on that illusion rather than on people’s real life experience,” said the Tory leader.
Poilievre said he sees his job as forcing a “collision between reality and the illusion,” and that he sees a future where the Canadian electorate will ultimately feel “justifiably disappointed” at the Carney record.
It was one of two parts in the interview where Poilievre referred to Carney’s appeal as illusory. In the interview’s opening minutes, he called the prime minister someone who had “failed at everything he’s done” and “been wrong about every single major economic issue of the last decade.”
The release of the interview just happened to coincide with a Conservative cabinet shuffle that saw veteran MP Michael Chong bumped to the position of finance critic, in an apparent effort to better highlight Liberal economic performance. In an interview with the National Post, Chong mirrored Poilievre’s claim that Carney’s honeymoon period may have already peaked.
“I think Canadians are a fair-minded and generous people,” Chong said. “With the appointment of a new prime minister 15 months ago, I think they were willing to give him some time to present an economic plan that would turn things around, but I now think that Canadians are looking for results.”
Although Carney’s approval has been in steady decline since February, he still retains majority support among the Canadian electorate, a situation that is rare for any prime minister over a sustained period.
A mid-June poll from the Angus Reid Institute, for instance, found 55 per cent approval for Carney. An Abacus Data poll from around the same time found Carney’s approval at 51 per cent against 37 per cent for Poilievre.
Every single Canadian pollster, meanwhile, is currently tracking a massive Liberal lead over the Conservatives.
Poilievre is not the first to note that this has all occurred despite lagging Canadian performance on several key economic indicators, including on some where Carney had specifically promised better outcomes.
One frequent Conservative criticism, for instance, has been to contrast rising food inflation with Carney’s statement, shortly after his election, to “judge me by the prices at grocery store shelves.”
Carney also promised multiple times throughout 2025 to secure an end to trade disruptions with the United States, although no such deal has materialized.
In his interview with Pete, Poilievre also addressed the four Conservative floor-crossers who have joined the Liberals since October, thus giving Carney a parliamentary majority.
“It’s going to be very hard to find out exactly what motivated it,” Poilievre said, although he did not call for an end to floor-crossings outright, as has been suggested in the NDP.
Rather, he said voters should be able to petition for the resignation of members of Parliament who cross the floor.
IN OTHER NEWS
In a development that most people saw coming, Ottawa’s Canada Day gift from the United States is likely to be an official notification that Washington is not renewing the terms of CUSMA, its free trade agreement with Canada. It’s not a termination of the agreement; rather, CUSMA now enters a kind of 10-year limbo until it ultimately expires for good on July 1, 2036.
Over the last two years, Jewish sites across Canada have been subjected to an unprecedented onslaught of attempted arsons, antisemitic graffiti, shattered windows and nighttime shootings.
In Toronto, host to at least a dozen such shootings, this has prompted the creation of a dedicated counterterror unit as well as a visible increase in heavily armed tactical officers stationed outside major Jewish sites. In March, it also spurred a state visit to Toronto from Israeli president Isaac Herzog, who called out the city’s “unprecedented wave of Jew hatred.”
In just the last month, evidence has emerged that the arson and shooting attacks may not be so much an organic surge of anti-Jewish hatred, but the result of an elaborate paid terror campaign.
In mid-June, Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw said that “criminals for hire” were behind many of the city’s anti-Jewish attacks, with arsonists or gunmen being paid between $600 and $800 per crime.
“What we are dealing with in this case and in other unrelated incidences, including shootings at synagogues and Jewish schools, is a reoccurring and similar modus operandi,” he said, adding “it is clear that some of these individuals want to create a sense of fear in our communities, including in the Jewish community.”
It was in a June 11 raid connected to such attacks that Toronto Police Constable Marc Pinizzotto was shot and killed.
And then, this week in Quebec, accused synagogue arsonist Mohamed Ilyess Akodad told a judge that he set fire to three Montreal-area Jewish sites in late 2024 purely to collect a $3,000 reward.
Akodad testified that he was high on drugs when a roommate recruited him for the attacks, calling them the “mission” – and that he subsequently used the proceeds to buy codeine and cannabis.
Since we’re on the subject of Canada Day gifts from abroad, the People’s Republic of China just slapped a punitive 73.5 per cent tariff on Canadian pea starch, starting July 1. As exports go, pea starch is particularly exposed to the Chinese market, which might explain why Beijing did it. A similarly punitive tariff on canola imposed last year ended only after Canada agreed to drop its import ban on Chinese-made EVs.
First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.