Friday Focus: Canada enters a ‘new world order’ and Trump threatens to invoke the Insurrection Act

January 16, 2026
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Friday Focus: Canada enters a ‘new world order’ and Trump threatens to invoke the Insurrection Act

Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to full length editions of the Friday Focus podcast with Janice Stein. Your donor membership comes with other great perks like a livestream pass to our mainstage debates and advanced access to full length episodes of our other weekly podcast with Globe and Mail columnist Andrew Coyne.

Rudyard and Janice react to Mark Carney’s trip to China this week and a dramatic shift away from Trudeau’s hawkish doctrine which viewed China as an adversary. Carney understands that we are moving into a world where we will not be able to trade only with countries that share our values. Janice says this reset will allow Western Canada to resume their exports – mainly lobster, canola, and pork – to the Chinese market. But after years of being treated badly by China, should Canadians welcome this about face? In the second half of the show Rudyard and Janice turn to the U.S. and internal unrest over the killing of an American citizen by an ICE agent this week in Minnesota. Trump is threatening to enact the Insurrection Act which will give the government emergency powers and allow them to deploy the military to crush the protests without the consent of the governor or local police. This has been both a terrible week for the President and a frightening one for Americans who are concerned about their fundamental rights. What happens next will have huge implications for this fall’s U.S. midterm elections.

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