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. Read More

The market-liberal economist/pundit Noah Smith has written a fun “stranger in a strange land” essay about his unusual fondness for the emerging species of “generative” artificial-intelligence bots. Smith points out that 100 years of science fiction has prepared us all to have convenient, convincingly intelligent, multilingual automaton life assistants; they are an accepted part of the background of almost all imagined futures, with exceptions like Frank Herbert’s Dune universe (wherein even basic mathematical computing is outlawed on religious principle). Read More

Politicians in Canada, like those in most countries, have had their moments of behaving badly in public. We’ve witnessed backbenchers all the way to prime ministers willing to either speak out, criticize, or occasionally swear at opponents. Many of these inappropriate comments were made in the hallowed halls of Parliament or provincial legislatures, which protected them from being sued in court. Read More

When the Carney government’s honeymoon is over, and its missteps on a variety of fronts become more evident, the search will begin in earnest for “alternatives.” Looking ahead, what might such alternatives be? Read More

The federal and Alberta governments recently released their much-anticipated Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) outlining what it will take to build a pipeline from Alberta, through British Columbia, to tidewater to get more of our oil to markets beyond the United States. Read More

OTTAWA — Alberta Health Minister Adriana LaGrange says it's only fitting for Canada's top cattle-producing province to tip over its most sacred cow. Read More

The United States has meddled for decades in elections around the world. But no modern president has done so as brazenly as Donald Trump. Read More

CHICAGO -- A son of the infamous Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman pleaded guilty Monday in Chicago to a narcotics trafficking charge and continuing criminal enterprise, U.S. media reported. Read More

Donald Trump received a “preventative” MRI of his heart and abdomen that showed “normal” organ functions, the White House said amid mounting questions about the 79-year-old U.S. president’s health. Read More

Prime Minister Mark Carney has just attempted the political equivalent of the great Charles Blondin crossing the Niagara Gorge on a tightrope. It would be fair to say he’s only halfway across, but so far, so good. Read More

Canada has reached a deal to join the European Union’s €150 billion ($244 billion Cdn.) military procurement fund, Defence Minister David McGuinty said, though the access fee has yet to be announced. Read More

A leading Conservative MP is calling for change after the accused rapist of a 13-year-old Ontario girl was given time to weigh how a guilty plea would affect his immigration status. Read More

While it's been acknowledged for some time that visceral fat — belly fat —that wraps around internal organs is a health hazard, new research suggests it's particularly dangerous to the male heart. Read More

OTTAWA — Opposition Conservatives say a deal between the governing Liberals and the Bloc Québécois to remove a religious exemption from Canada's hate-speech laws, in exchange for passing a bill targeting hate and terror symbols, is an "assault" on freedom of speech and religion. Read More

I was five years old when the doors began to close. Read More

LONDON — If Carl von Clausewitz was right that war is a continuation of politics by other means, then perhaps the reverse is also true: politics can become a form of war. By that logic, China has waged a "good war" in recent decades, precisely because so few in the West grasp that we are in the middle of one. Read More

In the early ’80s, I set out to find the best restaurant in Bangkok. Read More

OTTAWA — In a small cabinet shuffle on Monday, Prime Minister Mark Carney distributed Steven Guilbeault’s many roles to two existing ministers and a former Trudeau-era minister he is bringing back into cabinet. Read More

The Trump administration has been lambasted for its proposed peace plan to end the Russia-Ukraine war given its generosity to Moscow — yet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he’s willing to build from it. As Matthew Bondy discusses with Brian Lilley, Kyiv has few options but to encourage America to step in and end the brutal, nearly four-year-long war, despite the deal’s insulting terms and the White House’s apparent warmth toward Russia. That’s because Ukraine isn’t winning, and Europe, Canada and other purported supporters keep offering more lip service than meaningful help. Bondy, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, tells Lilley that if western countries won’t stop a barbarous but weak Russia, it raises the question of whether they care to defend western civilization at all. (Recorded Nov. 28, 2025) Read More

Sri Lanka and Indonesia deployed military personnel on Monday to help victims of devastating flooding that has killed nearly 1,000 people across four countries in Asia in recent days. Read More

Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, has already shown that when a city’s rules won’t bend to his will, he’ll create a new city and new rules. That’s how Starbase, the self-governing town built around SpaceX’s southern Texas launch site, came to be. Read More

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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. Read More

Canadian addiction experts say that Ontario needs to better regulate “safer supply” prescribing, because unscrupulous doctors have been cashing in by opening "electronic pill mills” — video terminals where addicts can receive enormous opioid prescriptions after only a few minutes of remote consultation. Read More