Canada

A grey-haired man wearing a navy blue suit and red tie stands unsmiling behind another grey-haired man, with a wide smile, who is seated on a brown upholstery chair and signing a large red book. In the foreground on the desk are bouquets with orange, blue, and yellow flowers. On the wall behind the standing man is a painting of a landscape in a gilt frame, and on either side, an array of drooping flags, including the American stars and stripes on teh far left.

Prime Minister Mark Carney signs the White House guest book as President Donald J. Trump stands behind him in the White House on May 6, 2025. Photo by Lars Hagberg, provided by the Office of the Prime Minister © His Majesty the King in Right of Canada, 2025 (non-commercial use).

This article was first published by the Halifax Examiner on Dec. 18, 2025. Since then, the situation hasn’t improved, and Prime Minister Carney has stepped up the assault on the public service. Thousands of notices have gone out to federal public employees across government departments, slashing key climate and environmental research and policy programs. Those whose main source of information is National Post publications and other incurious, corporate and right-leaning media, tend to defend the cuts, parroting those media and social media messaging that glibly disparage the federal civil service as “bloated.”

Few would argue that there is always room for improving effectiveness and efficiency of large organizations – be they government departments or corporate bureaucracies. The Liberal government’s deep cuts to the public service is not that. It is a blunt force assault on crucial federal research and policy work, especially on anything involving environment, climate and sustainability, which looks more ideological than strategic. It is anything but well thought-out planning for an increasingly precarious future in a climate and biodiversity crisis, with a former neighbour and friend turned threatening foe.

In his much-touted and acclaimed speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in Jan. 2026, Carney didn’t breathe the word “climate,” and referred only tangentially to the U.N. Conference of Parties (COP) that meets annually to hammer out policies to tackle the climate crisis, which he said was another of the multilateral institutions that is now “under threat.” Yet Canada’s prime minister didn’t bother attending the 2025 COP in Brazil. 

Carney’s Liberals are doing the work of Conservatives, pleasing moneyed moguls and their cheerleaders by making deep cuts in Environment and Climate Change Canada, Infrastructure, Housing and Communities Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Agri-food and Agriculture Canada, Global Affairs Canada, and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency that reports to the Minister of Health, among others. Carney’s government is cutting seven key agricultural research facilities, cuts the National Farmers’ Union calls “disastrous.” This includes  Nova Scotia’s Nappan Research Farm in Cumberland County, established in 1887, which does important forage and climate research.

By weakening the public service and Canada’s own research and scientific capacity that leads to strong federal policies and protections for Canadians, Carney is doing the opposite of nation-building, and making this country stronger in the face of continued threats from our increasingly hostile neighbour to the south, led by a volatile and unhinged bully.

It’s a long read, because it’s a long and complex story … 

The Carney way

It’s beyond terrifying watching U.S. President Donald Trump and his bullying, brash, and crass coterie of odious hatemongers destroying decency, building autocracy, and dismantling democracy to Canada’s south.

The trouble is that it can be all-consuming watching the gilded, gold-plated shitshow in the U.S. That means it’s easy to miss what’s happening closer to home.

Liberal democracy is a fragile thing that can be undermined in many ways. Not all star a malignant narcissist spewing non-stop lies and insults, working with a tyrannical cabal of billionaires, tech bros and bigots and sycophants, to unleash non-stop “Truth Social” turmoil on a country – and the planet.

Democracy and genuine human progress on social, environmental, and climate issues can be weakened much more quietly, subtly, and methodically, and with much less media scrutiny than is being accorded the autocratic blowhard to the south.

These can also be undermined by sophisticated and polite people wearing pleasant smiles using polite words, charmers who post videos of themselves patting adorable kitties.

The damage can be done in an understated, toned-down way, without a lot of fanfare, with policies that increase economic disparity, channel money and power upwards, put people and their futures at risk, harm the environment, and torch the climate.

And so far, that seems to be the Carney way.

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This article was first published by the Halifax Examiner.

It’s March 19, 2025, and The Bay in the large mall in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, is busy, busier than it’s been in a long time, according to staff members, because – belatedly, they say – people are showing up to support the department store now that they’ve heard it is in deep trouble and may have to close its stores across Canada.

But inside The Bay store, long-time employees continue to provide their usual impeccable service, despite the possibility that they may soon be out of a job.

They tell reporter Jennifer Henderson that they have no inside information about the fate of The Hudson’s Bay company, and know only what they’ve read in the news. They asked Henderson not to name them for fear of losing their jobs prematurely. All have worked at The Bay for a long time, one of them for 35 years. They have no idea if the Dartmouth store has a chance of staying open, or if they will get any benefits if it doesn’t.

On March 7, 2025, the Hudson’s Bay Company, the iconic Canadian retailer that can trace its roots (albeit shameful colonial ones) back to 1670, filed for creditor protection in the Ontario Supreme Court under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA). It owes creditors nearly $1 billion.

The Bay is facing possible liquidation, depending on the outcome of that creditor protection case, which in turn depends on whether a buyer or interim financing can be found.

So for now, employees just do their work, wait and see.

Only one of the employees Henderson spoke with knows who owns The Bay. She’s worked for the company for more than 15 years, and taken an interest in the corporate history. But that doesn’t mean she knows if or how the ownership is linked to the trouble that has sunk the company.

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A historic-looking, three-storey stone building with tall, elegant windows,framed by a few tree branches, and fronted by green lawn and garden, with a winding path leading towards the building. Credit: Communications Nova Scotia

This article originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner in January 2021, but it is more relevant than ever. The provincial government may have changed, but media relations policies and lack of government openness have not. Meanwhile, media outlets and the number of journalists in Canada have continued to shrink, while the number of communications people and the onslaught of PR and propaganda have continued to grow. In his important 2023 book, Manipulating the message: how powerful forces shape the news, Cecil Rosner notes, “There are fewer than 12,000 reporters in Canada compared to nearly 160,000 employees in the advertising, public relations, and communications industry.” And those are Statistics Canada figures from 2023. Since then, several Canadian media outlets have made even more cuts to their news rooms and numbers of journalists. Because Meta is blocking all media on its platforms in Canada, I have decided to post more of my Halifax Examiner articles on this website, which – so far – Facebook and Instagram are not blocking. 

Unbeknownst to many people — and definitely unbeknownst to me before I returned to Nova Scotia after many years of working overseas and resumed reporting here in 2016 — journalists do not have quite the same rights that other citizens do in this province.

Apparently we journalists are not supposed to try to get into direct contact with government experts or scientists or officials, as other citizens can do. Rather, all journalists’ inquiries to the Nova Scotia government are supposed to go through media relations people.

At least this is what I was told in May 2018.

This is how I learned that lesson.

Someone had sent me an online notice from the provincial government about an upcoming meeting in Halifax. The meeting was to discuss the Canadian Minerals and Metals Plan that promotes the mining industry, so that Canada can “remain a global mining leader” (which is one way of depicting the tarnished reputation that Canadian mining companies have given Canada, causing environmental harm and human rights violations in countries all around the world).

I emailed the provincial government contact provided on the notice, Tracey Medynski, asking what opportunities there would be for media to interact with participants at the meeting, which was, after all, open to other citizens who registered in advance.

A reply came back from Don James, Executive Director of the Geoscience and Mines Branch, which had not yet been moved to the Department of Energy and Mines and was still part of the erstwhile Department of Natural Resources. James said there would be no opportunities for media at the meeting.

I wrote back to ask James why, if the meeting were a government-sponsored event as it clearly was, and if government employees were involved as they clearly were, the media would not have an opportunity to interact with them, so they could inform the public about the way their money was being spent on the Canadian Minerals and Metals Plan.

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A man with a black jacket pulling a silver carry-on suitcase walks along a paved platform with his back to the camera, apparently heading to board the rather decrepit grey passenger train parked on his left, under a pale grey sky.

This article was first published by the Halifax Examiner, as the introduction to a series of three articles about passenger rail in Canada.

Just after Christmas 2023, my spouse and I boarded a VIA Rail train in Truro, Nova Scotia, bound for Montreal, with a connection to Ottawa for a family gathering. I hadn’t been on the Ocean – the train linking Halifax with Montreal – since 1998, when my family and I needed to get to Montreal for a flight to West Africa during some vicious winter weather, when highways were closed and flights cancelled.

Apart from that rail journey to Montreal a quarter century ago, and a few train trips in Cameroon, Indonesia, Kenya and Germany over the years, I have to dig way back into childhood memories to recall train travels.

The memories that surface are fond ones.

Our parents would put us kids on the train in Halifax, and we’d ride the rails to Oxford and Amherst, where our grandparents would pick us up. I am guessing our parents felt some relief as our train pulled away from the Halifax station, knowing we were safe on board, that they’d been spared the drive on what were then crowded and narrow two-lane highways, and they were in for a couple of weeks’ reprieve from loud, rambunctious children in the house.

As for us kids, we loved those train trips. They were adventures. We kept our noses to the windows, gazing at the province flashing by – as we skirted Bedford Basin, then one beautiful lake after another, and occasionally outpaced cars beside us on stretches where the tracks run parallel to Highway 2. We held our breaths (at least I did) on narrow rail bridges over deep gullies, as we moved towards and then through the magnificent Wentworth Valley.

All of which is to say, I was more than a little chuffed to be heading out on that same train track again at the end of 2023, this time as a much, much older person.

Several friends and family members asked why on earth we would opt for that long, 30.5-hour (at best) train trip to Ottawa when we could take a 1.5-hour flight from Halifax, or drive the distance in just over 13 hours, especially given that the train – with a sleeper – cost more than $1,000 per person.

I pondered that myself.

First, there’s this thing that Swedish speakers, inspired by climate champion Greta Thunberg, call “flygskam” – or “flight shame.” It’s the guilt one feels in an aircraft spewing greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere in the midst of the climate emergency. According to the European Union, “if global aviation were a country, it would rank in the top 10 emitters.”

In contrast, rail transport, is among “the most energy-efficient and lowest-emitting transport modes,” according to the International Energy Agency. So that appealed to me, even if I would learn later that this applies to modern and efficient trains carrying lots of passengers, and not necessarily to Canada’s antiquated long-distance diesel-powered trains.

In addition to the climate considerations, I also just don’t like flying any more. Maybe it’s my age, but for whatever reason I am increasingly fearful in the air, suspicious about the safety of the aircraft, ever more impatient with long security line-ups and body scanners and searches.

Third, I am wary – even terrified – of winter driving, especially in blizzards, and I’ve white-knuckled my way through too many of those. Nor do we have a car I really trust to get us to Ottawa without a problem.

So, for the first time in a very long time, I chose the train. I’m glad we did.

It was a back-to-the-future experience – in the same train cars I suspect I rode as a kid. I was bowled over by the courteous service from the VIA Rail crew on-board (and also the VIA reservation agents I spoke to on the phone when I booked the trip) that reminded me of a time – decades ago – before neo-liberalism took over. Back before so many public corporations and services were privatized, before passengers somehow became “customers,” and everything from support service to cleaning was outsourced to the lowest bidder, often the cheapest, most exploitive employer. The VIA Rail employees seemed genuinely happy to be looking after passengers, which they did as consummate and caring professionals.

But we hadn’t even boarded the Ocean in Truro when we started to hear horror tales about it. A security person on the platform decided that for some reason known only to him, it would be a good idea to tell a bunch of passengers that the train was always late, and had been known to back up all the way from New Brunswick when locomotives stopped working, and about a recent accident at a crossing that meant passengers had to take a bus. This didn’t sound promising at all.

And no amount of good food and good service from friendly VIA Rail staff could mask the reality that the Ocean is plagued by problems.

There were long delays on the rails, a long stretch of poor tracks in northern New Brunswick where the online VIA trip tracker informed us we were mostly going 23 kilometres an hour, and I wondered how sound those ancient train cars could really be. When I asked some of the VIA crew members about the state of the tracks and the trains themselves, which seemed not to have changed in half a century, they hinted at enormous risks facing passenger rail in our country.

Related: Federal transport plan fails to give VIA what it needs to succeed

This raised so many questions. How had we gone from a country that ostensibly existed only because of its transcontinental railway – at least that was the myth perpetuated in songs like Gordon Lightfoot’s “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” – to not having a single passenger train that crossed from one coast to another? Why was Canadian National sold off in 1995? And why was VIA Rail created in 1977 as a Crown corporation? Why did VIA Rail trains that transported people have to yield to Canadian National and Canadian Pacific freight trains? When and how had passenger train service in Canada become so diminished, and what are the prospects for VIA Rail and affordable public passenger rail transport in Canada? When other countries around the world are busy developing and expanding high-speed publicly-funded rail networks, why are Canada’s passenger trains so few, so old, and so damn slow?

Ultra-modern white electric train locomotive with headlights on at modern train platform, and the silhouette of a man wearing train conductor uniform standing on the platform beside the train. Credit: Rikku Sama on Unsplash

Modern high-speed electric train at a station in Japan. Credit: Rikku Sama on Unsplash

Back home in Nova Scotia, I set out to find people who could answer some of those questions.

A series of articles that looks at the past, present and future of Atlantic Canada’s and national passenger rail service is the result of those conversations.

The first in the series looks at the state of passenger rail in Nova Scotia and VIA Rail’s train that runs between Montreal and Halifax.

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Grandiose facade of a concrete building, with pillars and empty place where a clock may once have been. The sign "VIA Rail Canada" with the yellow logo and red maple leaf is suspended between two columns, and construction is ongoing, as scaffolding is in place between the columns. Credit: Joan Baxter

This article, the first of a three-part series on passenger rail in Canada, was originally published by the Halifax Examiner. The introduction is here.

It’s a Friday morning, which means the Ocean – VIA Rail’s thrice-weekly passenger train to Montreal – is sitting on the tracks at the VIA station in Halifax, almost ready for boarding.

But I’m not here today to take the train; I’m here to talk trains with Tim Hayman.

Hayman is a board member of the citizen transportation advocacy group Transport Action Canada and president of its regional chapter, Transport Action Atlantic. He’s met me in the elegant and spacious VIA Rail station, a grandiose hall adjoining the once-grand Nova Scotian Hotel, now owned by Westin.

Both were built by Canadian National Railways in the late 1920s. CNR (now CN) was founded as a Crown corporation in 1919, bringing under one roof several railways previously owned by the government, and others the government acquired after they went bankrupt.

As Hayman and I speak, passengers trickle in with their luggage, ready to board the Ocean, scheduled to depart for Montreal at 1pm

A blue screen mounted in the upper corner of a building, flanked by a stylized old-fashioned lamp on the right, and upper casement doors windows on the left, showing Departures for VIA Rail trains from Halifax, namely a single train to Montreal at 13 hours, shown "on time"

At the Halifax VIA Rail station, three times a week the departure screen shows the Ocean train leaving for Montreal at 13h. Credit: Joan Baxter

Hayman tells me he wishes he were getting on the train, as he always does, no matter how many times he’s made the Ocean journey over the years.

And he’s made it a lot.

A smiling man with short dark hair, wearing a black thigh-length jacket and a red and white scarf, blue jeans and sneakers, stands with his hands in his jacket pockets in front of a wooden desk with the words "The Ocean" on it, and underneath an overhead sign saying "VIA Train 15, Montréal.

Tim Hayman at the Ocean departure gate in Halifax VIA Rail station. Credit: Joan Baxter

Hayman documents his many trips in a colourful and fascinating “Tim’s train travels” blog that tells tales – some of them harrowing – about the ups and downs, the joys and also the woes, the delays and major disruptions that are part of the experience of travelling a train as antiquated as the Ocean, and running on tracks where VIA trains have to cede priority to massive freight trains owned by CN, which owns the tracks.

Even with all the pitfalls Hayman details in his blog, he loves the Ocean.

And he is happy to count the ways.

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Large sign with dark blue background, and VIA in yellow letters, then a red maple leaf, and underneath the words "VIA Rail Canada" in white lettering. Behind the sign, a red brick building and a very blue sky. A white seagull sits atop the sign.

In this second article in a series about passenger train service in Canada – past, present and future – we look at just how dramatically passenger rail service has been diminished, the myriad problems VIA Rail faces, and at the efforts by some parliamentarians to support and protect the Crown corporation responsible for passenger rail service in the country. Part 1 is available here. This article was first published by the Halifax Examiner.

If Green Party leader Elizabeth May had her way, VIA Rail would have its very own legislation, something the Crown corporation has not had since its creation in 1977.

A VIA Rail Act, she says, would enable the Crown corporation to fulfil its mandate to provide modern safe, efficient, climate-friendly and reliable passenger rail service in Canada.

That’s why, in 2022, May tabled Bill C-326 – the VIA Rail Act – that she hoped would accomplish just that

Alas, as a private members’ bill, the VIA Rail Act didn’t go anywhere after first reading, and is still languishing on the table.

But May hasn’t given up hope for improved and expanded passenger rail in Canada, as she says in a phone interview from her home in British Columbia.

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