Now that both the English and French TV leaders’ debates are over, some two and a half weeks remain in the 2011 Canadian federal election campaign. And according to Chantal Hébert in the Toronto Star: “Debates keep Harper on road to majority.” At the same time, a Postmedia News report in the Vancouver Sun offers […]
The first great TV leaders’s debate is over. The second, tonight, is in French, and will have even fewer attentive viewers. And at this juncture, by almost all the conventional measures, it would seem that a Harper Conservative majority of seats in the Parliament at Ottawa is closer than ever. (See, eg: “Harper stays his […]
[UPDATED APRIL 12]. On January 2, 2006 an article on this site wondered whether the Mounties’ strange announcement of a “criminal investigation into the possibility that Ottawa’s plans for income trusts were leaked” would finally be “the straw that breaks the Liberals’ back?” And it quite arguably was, more or less – close enough for […]
We are looking out on the third or middle week of the 2011 Canadian federal election campaign, with the English language leaders’ debate coming on Tuesday, April 12, and the French language debate on Thursday, April 14 (UPDATE: er, make that Wednesday, April 13 now: it turns out Montreal has an important hockey game on […]
Almost exactly three years ago now, it was reported that: “Former RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli’s decision to name then-Liberal finance minister Ralph Goodale in a criminal investigation likely influenced the 2006 federal election, the chair of the RCMP public complaints commission says.” Mr. Zaccardelli’s action did seem to correlate remarkably closely with the ultimate shift […]
Many years ago now, an American political philosopher teaching at the University of Toronto claimed that Vancouver was the only other city in the world in which an authentic Torontonian could feel at home. I am not at all sure that this ever was altogether true, and it certainly no longer is, if it ever […]
At our regular Monday morning editorial meeting today one of the most senior editors drearily opined that bumping into the latest daily Nanos poll on the Canadian federal election of 2011 (“Tories enter second week with commanding 14-point lead”) called forth this distressing (and depressing) thought: “If this poll is to be believed, the Harper […]
Springtime has always brought with it an inherent calling to taking stock and to cleaning up. Both looking back on the damage wrought by the long harsh winter, and looking forward determining what is needed for the growing season. This important short interval sets the tone for what follows. For the second straight year Blue […]
Today marks the first-week anniversary of the defeat of the second Stephen Harper minority government in Ottawa, on a first-ever “contempt of Parliament” non-confidence vote – and more or less the end of the official first week of campaigning for the Canadian federal election of 2011, which will reach some kind of (maybe?) dramatic climax […]
[UPDATED MAY 3]. There was a time when people interested in politics in at least English-speaking Canada also paid attention to politics in the United Kingdom (which used to be better covered in Canadian newspapers than it is today). And in the back-to-the-future 21st century age of Stephen Harper there are a few reasons why […]
