Politics

Canada’s soft-power flex

Published

2 months ago

June 20, 2026

OTTAWA — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s rousing Davos speech, where he called on middle powers to not become losers to the world’s “hegemons,” delivered a message that positioned Canada as an influential convening power.

Now, with billions watching — including during this afternoon’s match between Germany and Côte d’Ivoire in Toronto — the World Cup is giving Canada an unprecedented opportunity to thirst-trap a global audience to take America’s neighbor a little more seriously.

“The international brand of Canada is important for our economy, for our place in the world, diplomatically, but also commercially,” Canada’s Secretary of State for Sport and Olympic gold medalist Adam van Koeverden told Blue Light News.

“We just want to emphasize that Canada is open for business,” he said. “We’re taking advantage of the reality that all eyes will be on Canada for the next couple of weeks throughout the FIFA tournament … and we want to continue to reinforce relationships, make new friends [and] meet new corporate partners.”

Canada needs foreign investors to get the Carney government’s dreams of building oil pipelines, new rail and port expansions to unlock new wealth for a country that continues to be the target of tariffs and casual annexation threats from its closest ally. And a bellicose U.S. President Donald Trump has only helped Carney in his trips around the world to lure more foreign investment, selling Canada as a reliable destination to an unreliable United States.

A goal for senior Canadian government officials is to use the World Cup to bait deep-pocketed viewers to attend the inaugural Canada Investment Summit that Carney is organizing in September. The idea is to attract “the world’s largest investors” to raise C$1 trillion over the next five years to charge the economy — Carney’s message of adapting to the global “rupture” by wresting economic control of the future put into practice.

That could mean more cash to expand sport infrastructure, such as stadiums, to host more global sporting events. The Toronto Stadium is notably the World Cup’s smallest among the 16 host cities with a 43,000-seat capacity. But organizers don’t want people to fixate on that.

Sharon Bollenbach, executive director of the FIFA World Cup 2026 Toronto Secretariat, told Forecast the city is leaning in hard on its “world in a city” theme — a nod to a city widely recognized as the most multicultural in the world.

“We speak 250 languages in our city,” she said. “Our cultural diversity is very extensive and vibrant … in all of our neighborhoods, in food, in the culture.” Asked what’s different about Toronto compared to Los Angeles, another city that could claim the same characteristics, Bollenbach suggested it’s the general optimism in the air that sets the Canadian city apart. “I think we just live that every day in such a positive and energetic way that that’s something we really want to showcase,” she said.

There’s hope the waterfront images of Toronto’s CN Tower and Vancouver’s North Shore mountains in the backdrop of World Cup stadium shots will generate an eventual tourism boom that hasn’t yet happened for the tournament itself.

Sara Anghel, president and CEO of the Greater Toronto Hotel Association, said one factor in lower-than-expected demand is that half the game tickets sold in Toronto are “local-ish” from the city area and province. The trend isn’t unique to Toronto after FIFA canceled blocks of thousands of hotel rooms in host cities this spring in response to fizzled out expectations.

“June is already a really, really busy month for Toronto, and so when we’re bringing this World Cup that’s never happened in our city ever, we’ve displaced all of the meetings and conferences that would usually come into the city,” Anghel said.

“They’re staying away because of the FIFA games.”

Politics

These mayors live along Lake America’s shores. But they won’t be calling it that.

Published

2 hours ago

September 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Robert Corradino has never lived anywhere but Oswego, New York. As the only commercial port city on the southeastern shore of Lake Ontario, everything bears the lake’s name — the streets, the convention center, the historic fort.

And in his first term as mayor, Corradino — a Republican who said he previously voted for President Donald Trump — said he worries that a distant political feud is threatening to erase part of his city’s history.

In the days following Trump’s executive order renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America, Corradino and other mayors in upstate New York said Trump’s decision is “regrettable” and could upset voters in the region — and even further impact an economy so closely tied to the U.S.’s relationship with Canada.

“The water is part of our identity,” Corradino said. “Not only our identity, but the economy and the history of the lake is tied to the city.”

Oswego, a city of 17,000, is split between Democrats and Republicans, Corradino said. However, the larger Oswego County is one of the reddest in the state and 61 percent of its voters went for Trump in the 2024 election.

Yet on Monday, several Oswego County legislators from both parties approved a resolution rejecting the new name, out of concern for the cost of the rebrand on taxpayers and businesses. The resolution said it does not intend to diminish the authority of the federal government, rather it aims to “recognize the longstanding historical and regional significance of the name Lake Ontario.”

Last Thursday night, at Oswego’s weekly summer concert series, Corradino said everyone he interacted with said they didn’t support the name change and they weren’t sure why it was happening. The general sentiment, he said, was frustration.

Asked about the issues Oswego residents actually care about, Corradino said his constituents are concerned about less immigration enforcement and the war with Iran.

“In general the consensus I see is it just seems like the country is heading in a direction that we’re not all happy about,” Corradino said.

The pushback is not isolated to Oswego. Hours after Trump signed the executive order, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat who runs the only state that borders Lake Ontario, said in a post to social media, “New York won’t be calling it that.”

And there’s been mixed adaptation nationally — similar to when Trump dictated that the Gulf of Mexico now go by Gulf of America.

Signs mark the entrance to the Lake Ontario State Parkway on Aug. 25, 2026, in Rochester, N.Y.

On Saturday, Google Maps, which uses the U.S. Geographic Names Information System that comes from official government sources, officially changed the name. Map users on the American side will see “Lake America” while users in Canada will see “Lake Ontario.” For users outside of both the U.S. and Canada, they will see both names. Apple Maps followed suit, using the same naming approach as Google.

But MapQuest — the once-dominant mapping service of the 1990s and early 2000s — rocketed up app stores after refusing to use Lake America.

Long before the lake was renamed, Alex Morgia — a Democrat and mayor of Sackets Harbor, N.Y. — said his community has been grappling with the deteriorating relations between the U.S. and Canada.

Sackets Harbor, located along the eastern shores of Lake Ontario, is home to a number of Canadian residents. A village of 1,400 people, it was a major military outpost and naval command center during the War of 1812, when the U.S. clashed with British and Canadian forces.

Since 1971, the village has hosted the Can-Am festival to commemorate the village’s Canadian-American heritage.

The festival “reminds everyone that it’s not very nice to be at odds with your neighbor,” Morgia said. “Having good relationships with your international neighbors is important, particularly for people that live along the border on either side.”

Last year’s festival was the first time residents began making floats of maple leaves and Canadian flags to protest the Trump administration’s calls to make Canada the “51st state” and to remind Sackets Harbor residents that there were Canadian citizens among them, Morgia said.

This year, as Trump has continued to roll out tariffs against Canadian products, and relations with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney continued to worsen, Morgia joked that the theme for this year’s parade should’ve been “we’re sorry.”

The overall atmosphere at this year’s parade in July was “somber,” Morgia said.

“I kind of hoped that the Canadian issue had gone by the wayside, but you know [Trump] seems to bring it up when he needs to,” Morgia said.

Sackets Harbor is split between Democrats and Republicans, Morgia said. Jefferson County, which encompasses Sackets Harbor, overwhelmingly supported Trump in the 2024 election with 61 percent of its vote.

“It’s a three-hour drive to Montreal, a two-hour drive to Toronto and a six-hour drive to New York City,” Morgia said. “The biggest metropolitan cities near us are Canadian, and a lot of North Country businesses and people rely on the southern part of Canada. … I’m hopeful that voters will think about that at the polls in November and in 2028.”

In the village of Sodus Point, N.Y. — which is located along the southern border of the Great Lake — Republican Mayor Pat Nolan said he’s disappointed by the name-change as “Ontario” is rooted in the Indigenous history of the region.

The name Ontario, is largely believed to come from Iroquoian roots, meaning “beautiful lake” or “sparkling water,” according to the Canadian government. The Canadian province of Ontario, is named after the lake.

A village of 1,000 people, Sodus Point is located in Wayne County, where Trump received 61 percent of the vote in 2024. Nolan was elected in a write-in campaign last year.

“My hope is that, rather than allowing this decision to become another wedge that further divides people,” Nolan wrote in an email, “it can encourage a broader discussion about the history of this great body of water, the Indigenous people who first gave it its name and the generations of communities that have grown along its shores.”

Politics

Trump invites battleground Republicans to Rose Garden dinner

Published

11 hours ago

September 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump has invited a group of GOP lawmakers including Republicans in competitive races to dine with him Wednesday night at the White House as many in the party press the president to unleash his massive war chest ahead of the November elections, according to four people with direct knowledge of the matter.

The White House plans to hold the dinner in the Rose Garden, according to two of the people who know about the invitation. The people were granted anonymity to discuss private planning. Some House Republicans in tough races were sent invitations, including Reps. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) and Tom Barrett (R-Mich.), who are planning to attend, along with a wider group of GOP lawmakers and senators.

“Of course,” Van Orden said when asked if he would go to the dinner.

The White House invited at least several dozen lawmakers, according to two people familiar with the invitation list. The dinner also comes ahead of next week’s GOP midterm convention in Dallas, though attendance from Republican lawmakers is expected to be mixed. Barrett, for example, said in an interview Tuesday he is not planning to attend the convention and will instead campaign and spend time with his family. A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s political operation, MAGA Inc., has spent little of its $400 million war chest to help GOP lawmakers. But he recently helped boost Sen. Darline Graham over the line in her heated primary.

Senate Republicans are eager for him to start spending for Ken Paxton in Texas as he has thus far been outspent on the airwaves by Democrat James Talarico and his allies.