To the Point for the Week of January 11, 2026
To the Point for the Week of January 11, 2026
Crombie’s curtain call, or something like that, puts pressure on the Ontario Liberal Party to speed up their leadership race as Ford Nation fatigue looms. The Prime Minister commits the country to a new strategic partnership.
ONTARIO
Bye Bye Bonnie
In what could be described as one of the most low key, underwhelming, and uneventful political party leader resignations, Bonnie Crombie officially punched the clock and resigned as Ontario Liberal Leader this week. A party leader typically gets a decent curtain call. Sitting members, party executives, and organizers will post on social media or issue statements lionizing the departing leader for their tenure, skills, and accomplishments as they bid adieu. Tributes to Crombie were more muted, though, indicative of the minimal impact she had on the party’s electoral fortunes. All signs suggest the party is already ready to move on.
We forgive you if you completely forgot she was still party leader. You will recall that in September, Crombie committed to stepping down after a new leader was chosen, yet the party has experienced a failure to launch its leadership contest, with no clear sightline as to when it will officially begin. Our reading of the situation is that Crombie made a rational political calculation and determined that remaining in a virtually powerless position hindered her ability to begin assembling her rumoured campaign to retake the Mississauga mayor’s seat. John Fraser is expected to assume the interim leadership.
The Ontario Liberals now need to get their leadership race off the ground. Yes, there is still time before the next provincial election in 2029, but leadership races are massive logistical exercises for both the party and the campaigns themselves. They require sufficient runway to socialize a new leader with the public post-race, especially if that leader is not already a recognizable figure. With the Liberals languishing in third place for three consecutive election cycles, they are going to need a much longer runway than most.
The longer a leadership race drags on, the less time there is to sell a leader’s style, vision, and policy agenda to the public. Leadership contests are also fraught with finger pointing and internal infighting. The party will need a meaningful post leadership period to allow campaigns to bury the hatchets and focus on mobilizing for the next election. Fundraising will also be critical. The Ontario PC fundraising juggernaut is not slowing down. The leadership at the PC Ontario Fund is pedal to the metal on fundraising all day, every day.
Bonnie Crombie was a very experienced fundraiser. She knew who had deep pockets and how to ask for money. Elections Ontario financial filings indicate the Ontario Liberals raised a record $5.4 million in her first year as leader and came less than half a million dollars short of breaking that record again in 2025. None of the current perceived front runners in the pending contest are seen as heavy hitters on fundraising, with the possible exception of Nathaniel Erskine Smith, who will need to quickly familiarize himself with the Ontario Liberal bagmen and women, or bagpeople, if he hopes to mount a formidable campaign against the PCs.
What makes the urgency to organize, execute, and conclude a leadership race more acute are the emerging signals of creeping Ford fatigue among voters. A recent Abacus Data provincial poll conducted just days ago found that while the PCs continue to dominate the horse race, the underlying numbers suggest voters are increasingly open to alternatives and frustrated with the government’s progress on key files. Abacus found that 51 percent of voters are open to voting Liberal, while 48 percent would be open to voting PC. The government’s standing with the electorate appears stable, but with little room to grow. Forty percent of voters approve of the Premier’s job performance, while dissatisfaction with the government has steadily increased by five points since August.
More worrying signals for the PCs are the policy areas where voters believe the government is actively making things worse. On housing availability and affordability, cost of living, homelessness, and health care, roughly half of respondents said the government is failing. A significant share of PC voters share these same perceptions. This is where the real risk exists for Ford. As Abacus CEO David Coletto describes it, “These are issues that can erode support slowly and then suddenly, not because voters switch to an alternative enthusiastically, but because they become open to change when circumstances give them a credible reason to move.”
When Pablo Rodriguez resigned as leader of the Quebec Liberal Party following revelations that his leadership campaign had allegedly, and quite literally, paid for supporters’ votes, the party took less than a month to formalize its leadership race and set March 14 as the announcement date. The Quebec Liberals needed urgency, with a provincial election scheduled for October. The most recent Pallas poll had the party in second place behind the Parti Québécois and projected to increase its seat count to between 39 and 47.
Ontario Liberals are not facing an imminent general election, but the lesson from Quebec is clear. A leadership race can be organized and executed with limited lead time when the political will exists.
It is time they get moving if they want to have a strong, competitive leader in place with enough time to limit Doug Ford to three majorities.
FEDERAL
The Subtext
During the 2025 federal election debate in Montreal, Prime Minister Mark Carney made a clear statement: “I think the biggest security threat to Canada is China.” The statement was not a stretch. It did not mince words. It was not politically massaged. It was an accurate description of the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party, considering the various ways China has threatened Canada’s sovereignty and infiltrated its institutions. These include highly credible foreign interference allegations, the operation of secret Chinese police stations in major Canadian cities for the purpose of intimidating members of the Chinese diaspora, and intelligence gathering and espionage operations.
What a difference eight months makes.
The Prime Minister’s tone during this week’s highly anticipated diplomatic meetings with Chinese officials was significantly, and some would argue shockingly, divergent from his position in April 2025. Carney described the Chinese Communist Party as a reliable partner and committed Canada to a new Canada China Strategic Partnership “in the spirit of mutual respect, equality, and mutual benefit.”
The new Strategic Partnership has been framed as a pragmatic next step in the government’s objective of diversifying trade away from the United States. Specifically, Carney has set a goal of doubling non-U.S. exports by 2035 to $600 billion, including a 50 percent increase in trade with China. In the first five years, Canada aims to increase non-U.S. trade by $100 billion.
To be clear, diversification itself is not the problem.
This is an appropriate and strategically important objective. Even if Canada and the United States were not embroiled in a tariff dispute, diversifying Canada’s trade beyond the roughly 70 percent that flows to the U.S. makes sense. That diversification should, pragmatically speaking, include China. We are not naïve to the reality that Canada trades with regimes whose values it does not share, including China. It is reasonable to question why the world’s second-largest market receives less than four percent of Canada’s exports.
However, and this is critical to understanding China’s place in the global trading system, the worst excesses of the Trump administration’s trade policies pale in comparison to the range of illegal and coercive trade practices China routinely engages in. These include, but are not limited to, forced technology transfers from Western firms to Chinese entities, intellectual property theft, market access restrictions, and dumping.
Recognizing this, we must ask whether the deal the Prime Minister struck with the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing adequately accounts for those realities. Or whether the Prime Minister hastened a deal with Beijing to demonstrate to his domestic audience that he is beating Trump at his own game.
The headline achievement touted by the Prime Minister is the reduction of canola seed tariffs from approximately 85 percent to roughly 15 percent by March 1, 2026. This would be a significant relief for prairie canola farmers. However, the deal is anticipatory. Canada expects China to reduce tariffs to approximately 15 percent by March 1, but this is not guaranteed.
The outcome hinges on China’s anti-dumping investigation into Canadian canola seed, set to conclude on March 9, 2026. That investigation was initiated in response to Canada imposing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles in 2024. It was originally scheduled to conclude in September 2025 but was extended to March 2026.
Analysts suggest the proposed 15 percent tariff rate effectively pre-negotiates the outcome of that investigation. When Beijing announces its final determination on March 9, it can simply rubber-stamp the rate Carney has already accepted, locking in Canada’s compliance with Chinese demands. In effect, this becomes a leverage trap disguised as a trade victory. Beijing can repeatedly threaten tariff re-imposition to extract concessions, while Canada has little room to manoeuvre because farmers’ livelihoods depend on continued access.
The government also touted breakthroughs on tariffs affecting canola meal, lobster, crab, and peas. Relief on these products is not immediate. The agreement provides that tariff relief would begin March 1, 2026, but last only ten months, expiring on December 31, 2026.
China’s posture here is explicit. Relief is temporary, and extension will require renewed negotiations. Farmers gain short-term predictability, but face renewed uncertainty heading into the 2027 planting cycle. If this becomes a recurring pattern, Beijing retains the ability to reopen talks repeatedly and demand additional concessions to maintain relief.
In exchange for these temporary measures, China gained permanent access to the Canadian auto market, beginning with 49,000 vehicles at a 6.1 percent duty and growing over five years to 70,000 vehicles annually. This effectively lays the groundwork for a long-term Chinese EV presence in Canada. In addition, Canada anticipates “considerable new Chinese joint-venture investment” over the next three years, opening the door to potential Chinese control over strategic manufacturing, access to Canadian supply chains and CUSMA benefits, and backdoor entry into the U.S. market through Canadian-labelled production.
Put plainly, Canada secured temporary and conditional relief for select agricultural sectors, while China locked in permanent market access, deeper supply-chain integration, and sustained leverage over Canadian farmers. That imbalance matters.
Trade diversification is a legitimate objective. But diversification that trades long-term leverage for short-term relief is not strategy. It is exposure. And exposure, once built into the system, is difficult to unwind, especially in regards to economic relations with the Chinese Communists.
If China was Canada’s greatest security threat eight months ago, Ottawa owes Canadians a clear explanation for why it is now being treated as a reliable strategic partner, and why the terms of that partnership tilt so decisively in Beijing’s favour.
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