'Bad humour' and short fuses: How politicians' texts played out at the Emergencies Act inquiry
CBC
The public inquiry investigating the federal government's unprecedented use of the Emergencies Act in February has seen a huge number of documents that otherwise would never see the light of day — including politicians' private texts exposing some embarrassing, and enlightening, conversations.
Politics is a profession prone to carefully crafted statements and rhetoric, so the text messages offered rare insights into the thought process of many key politicians — and a glimpse at tensions between governments.
Here are some of the stand-out text exchanges from the past few weeks.
According to text messages that Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc said Jason Kenney wrote, the then-premier of Alberta accused the federal government of not caring about the Canada-United States border closure in Coutts, Alta.
Around dawn on Feb. 14, the RCMP arrested more than a dozen Coutts protesters and seized a cache of weapons, body armour and ammunition — just hours before the Emergencies Act was invoked.
According to the messages LeBlanc shared with Transport Minister Omar Alghabra and Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino three days earlier, Kenney accused the federal government of leaving the provinces holding the bag on protest enforcement.
The texts were brought up during Mendicino's testimony and were in documents released by the inquiry this week.
In the texts attributed to Kenney, he also complained about the federal decision to decline Alberta's request for military equipment that could help remove protesters' vehicles.
One message said — in an apparent reference to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — that "your guy has really screwed the pooch."
"Speaking of bonkers," Alghabra wrote in his text exchange with LeBlanc and Mendicino, apparently in reference to some of Kenney's texts.
"Totally," LeBlanc replied.
The commission also got a glimpse of a testy call between Mendicino and Ontario's solicitor general at the time, Sylvia Jones, about how to handle last winter's convoy protests. Their conversation apparently included some colourful language.
Mendicino's chief of staff Mike Jones and Samantha Khalil, director of issues management at the Prime Minister's Office, discussed wanting Jones at the table during trilateral meetings.
"Can have my boss reach out again [to Sylvia Jones] but last call got pretty frosty at the end when [Mendicino] was saying we need the province to get back to us with their plan," wrote Jones.
For the first time in 111 years, items once belonging to the late Albert Mullins were back in the hands of his family members thanks to the detective work of one Montreal historian.
The year that saw the remains of two First Nations women brought home from a Manitoba landfill and a search get underway for the remains of a third showed how far reconciliation efforts have come — and how far they still need to go, the families say
The RCMP has just released a warning stating there are dangerous, armed individuals on Big Island Cree Nation, near Meadow Lake.
A new land-use plan that Alberta’s government has for the province’s Upper Smoky region is drawing criticism from environmentalists who say they believe it lacks sufficient environmental safeguards, which poses a significant threat to the endangered southern woodland caribou.
Canadian officials made pains to show they were cracking down on illicit drug production in the country in 2025.
A year after the City of Hamilton cancelled its overnight warming bus, it is funding a new all-night warming centre for men at St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church on James Street S.
This year has, without a doubt, been a turbulent one for the Canadian auto industry. Uncertainty dominated the sector — both for auto workers hit with job changes and companies trying to manage a mix of tariffs and changing market conditions.
A woman died at a ski resort in the Canadian Rockies over the weekend, after falling into deep snow.
Two pregnant women who would otherwise be living in a cold tent. A man whose leg wound was so bad it required intravenous medication. Two young people who no longer need to couch surf to get by.
The province has added 12 kilometres of designated trails for all-terrain vehicles in western Prince Edward Island that will connect existing routes in O’Leary and Tignish.
Every year, CBC North publishes hundreds of stories online — breaking news, investigative reporting, political coverage, community features, longform storytelling, and much more.
After a wild year in Canadian politics that began with Justin Trudeau's resignation and ended with Conservative MPs crossing the floor to join Prime Minister Mark Carney's Liberal government, 2026 is shaping up to be just as action-packed.
It became a rallying cry, a cultural touchstone, a marketing strategy and — our favourite — often described in international media as "a hockey term" or "a Canadian phrase."