The 41st Parliament of Canada has not even held its first meeting quite yet. But already Jack Layton’s new Quebec-majority NDP official opposition is showing just how different it is from anything the federal New Democrats have ever known before. Former Ontario NDP leader Stephen Lewis, son of former federal leader David Lewis (silent partner […]

You sound more elegant when you speak French, Pierre Trudeau told his children. Those of us who don’t really speak French will never quite know what this means. But we can catch a glimmer of it when we read in Le Devoir that “Le Torontois Bob Rae est devenu le chef intérimaire du Parti libéral […]

Considering that we admire and support the Middle Eastern rebels fighting to oust corrupt, undemocratic governments, it’s odd that we don’t give greater recognition to the Canadian popular uprisings which tried to achieve the same thing. In the 1830s the governments of Upper and Lower Canada – what are now Ontario and Quebec, respectively –  […]

On this May 24 holiday weekend there can be no doubt that the early 21st century has launched some kind of new Canada. Or, more aptly perhaps, in the wake of the May 2, 2011 Canadian federal election the “next Canada” that John Ibbitson was saying “will not be denied forever,” in the wake of […]

[UPDATED MAY 19, 20]. There is at least a strong perception that Senate reform will be one of the key issues on the early agenda of the new Harper majority government in Ottawa. (See, eg: “New momentum for Senate reform” and “Then it will be on to Senate reform.”) In speculating about today’s much-touted federal […]

Late in January 2009 I posted an article headlined “Whatever happened to Merella Fernandez?” on this excellent website. It started out with “‘Who cares about local media personalities in Toronto, Canada?’ is a good question.” And it finally answered this question with: “The local Toronto media personality Merella Fernandez is so cute and multiculturally interesting, […]

Several years ago I was at a conference on Canadian disaster management, where provincial representatives agreed that flooding was a recurrent problem shared by everyone – and quite arguably the first priority for any joint cross-Canada disaster mitigation policy. It never makes business sense to offer insurance against something almost bound to happen. And in […]

Late last week Grant LaFleche at the St. Catharines Standard reported that “Tories, NDP hope to repeat federal win in Ontario.” According to Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath, the federal Liberal massacre on May 2, 2011 “shows that people are tired of the same old thing, the same old parties … People are fed up […]

Michael Ignatieff himself may have the best explanation of why he failed to connect with voters in the Canadian federal election of 2011. In the preface to his CBC Massey lectures on The Rights Revolution in Canada, written in September 2000, he worried that “I am writing about the rights talk of a country of […]

Anyone who has been paying even a little attention to this site over the past five weeks will know that we are disappointed by the final results of the Canadian federal election of 2011. Our opinion of Mr. Harper and his abilities and liabilities remains the same. And we think it is still worth noting […]