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Ottawa won't be working with U.K. on building warships The Canadian Press Updated: Sun. Mar. 6 2011 6:33 PM ET OTTAWA — The Conservative government is slamming the door shut on a British proposal that wants the two countries to work together in building new warships. "Canada will not be pursuing collaboration with the United Kingdom on our new surface combatant fleet," Jay Paxton, a spokesman for Defence Minister Peter MacKay, said Sunday. Paxton was reacting to comments made by London's top diplomat in Ottawa, who told The Canadian Press that Canada and Britain could make better use of scarce...

OTTAWA – Defence Minister Peter MacKay's long-shot bid to become the next NATO secretary general may have received a powerful boost from Washington. Reports that MacKay has the backing of U.S. President Barack Obama's administration, and that Vice-President Joe Biden will be touting Canada's candidacy when he heads to Brussels today, have sparked fresh interest in the secretive selection process that NATO uses to pick its leaders. The deliberations over who will lead the western military alliance in Afghanistan, manage relations with Russia and improve ties between Europe and North America are in their final stages. A decision on who...

Belinda Stronach has slid while former boyfriend Peter MacKay has soared. Their failures and successes speak to the shifts in political mood.There was a moment in May 2005 when it appeared as though Belinda Stronach had managed, with a little help from her friends, to catapult herself over the entire Canadian political landscape, coming down, to considerable fanfare, among the top decision-makers in government. Without a shred of real political experience, without ever having held a job she was not appointed to by her father, without even a university degree, Stronach had claimed credit for uniting the right, placed second...

STELLARTON, N.S.—The world's most influential diplomat and Ottawa's most eligible bachelor seem to be hitting it off. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay enjoyed a chummy — and unusual — visit to MacKay's Nova Scotia riding yesterday. In stark contrast to the usual government visits where diplomats do business on the fly, Rice spent 23 hours in Canada, many of them in MacKay's riding of Central Nova, a languid locale that couldn't be further from the diplomatic hell holes to which she's usually dispatched. "Peter, your foreign minister and your MP, invited me here....

The president had no public appearances scheduled for today. The vice president and WH Chief of Staff Josh Bolten went to Capitol Hill for a Republican Policy lunch. The Secretary of State was in Canada to thank our northern neighbors for their help on September 11, 2001, when so many planes were diverted to that country. She also met with French Minister of the Interior Nicholas Sarkozy at the State Department. On other issues, Rice said it is too early to say who might have been behind the attack on our embassy in Syria; and it is possible the US...

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Halifax today to thank Canadians for helping the United States on Sept. 11. She's escorted by Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay. (Andrew Vaughan/Canadian Press)

OTTAWA (CP) - Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay struck back at critics Tuesday, calling Hezbollah a cancer-like group of "cold-blooded killers" that provoked the chaos and carnage in the Middle East. There can be no peace in the region until the militant group and Israel agree to uphold a lasting ceasefire with clear conditions, he told a packed special meeting of the Commons foreign affairs committee. "This has to be a lasting peace," he said. "It cannot be simply a temporary solution to allow for the rearmament of the terrorist body and simply begin the violence again." It was the...

WASHINGTON - Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay took a swipe at the former Liberal government for not moving more quickly on a controversial border ID issue after meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday, but failed to convince her to back down from a congressional plan to have a form of secure identification in effect by 2008. "I believe we have established a much better line of communication," MacKay said in a joint press conference at the U.S. State Department. "The previous government could have done much more to engage in this at an earlier stage." But...

Last night the President and First Lady held a retirement dinner in honor of Justice O Connor at the White House. Today the President delivered remarks to the Small Business Week Conference at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington. Today was Andy Card's last day at the White House. Later in the day the Presdent departed from the White House to spend the Easter weekend with his family at Camp David. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay at the State Department Enjoy your visit to Sanity Island

OTTAWA (CP) - Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay says that despite mounting casualties in Afghanistan, Canadians should be standing behind their troops rather than questioning their deployment. "This is the type of mission that is demanded in this day and age," MacKay said. "Terrorism, which has its roots in Afghanistan, is something that we have committed to fight with our allies." MacKay said it would have been preferable if the former Liberal government had held a parliamentary vote before dispatching the first Canadian soldiers to Afghanistan in 2002, as part of a U.S.-led coalition sent to root out al-Qaida operatives...

The legacy of Prime Minister Paul Martin lives on in ivory towered Ottawa. Sadly, the Martin legacy lives on perhaps because of--and not in spite of--the fledgling minority Conservative government that replaced the Liberal one.