The polling evidence for the impact of the so-called Guergis-Jaffer scandal on party standings in Canadian federal politics is … well, volatile at best, it would seem. For the moment, in any case. Who knows just what the next half-hour may bring? For the deep background note the two counterweights items below: “Misadventures of Miss […]
OTTAWA. APRIL 22, 2010. Rahim Jaffer, loving husband of former Conservative junior cabinet minister (and Miss Huronia) Helena Guergis, appeared before the government operations committee of the Canadian House of Commons yesterday. The early reviews are in, and they are not good. See, eg, Don Martin, poet laureate of Stephen Harper’s Ottawa (well, sort of: […]
[UPDATED APRIL 20]. Ordinarily I don’t like to discuss political scandals. I over-value the illusion that I am higher-minded than all that. Serious public policy debate is at least what ought to count in the real world of democratic politics, etc, etc. (And if we the people don’t take this high-minded view, who will? Certainly […]
Geoffrey Stevens is a former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail who, now comfortably into his senior-citizen-hood (born 1942), teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph. He also writes for StraightGoods.ca – “Canada’s leading independent online newsmagazine.” Stevens’s latest StraightGoods column is entitled “Elections are lost, […]
The theory that consultants of any description will always at least try to give their clients what they want is nicely stiffened by a new “Harris-Decima survey for the [unabashedly right-wing] Manning Centre” (named after Preston and his father, etc, etc). This work of applied social science “conducted through phone interviews with 1,000 adult Canadians […]
You of course hear nothing about Canadian politics via the ordinary media in Florida, where I spent the counterweights late January prorogue. And I didn’t take a laptop computer with me. On the theory that a week is a long time in politics, one of my first tasks on returning to the northern deep freeze […]
I don’t usually admire the Conservative guru Tim Powers. But his January 2 note of caution on recent Canadian federal election speculation – from no less than John Ibbitson, Don Newman, and Norman Spector – seems at least somewhat wise. (Even if he left Jim Travers off his list, probably because Travers published on January […]
This past Friday, December 11, 2009 the British Columbia government and the Haida First Nation signed a “broad-reaching land use and economic development agreement that included officially renaming the Queen Charlotte Islands with the traditional native name Haida Gwaii.” The deal will strengthen the Haida First Nation in the regional economy of Canada’s Pacific Coast. […]
It seems that the great Tiger Woods is just getting in deeper and deeper. See, e.g., today’s Vancouver Sun: “Tiger Woods voicemail to alleged TV girlfriend released, third woman named as Tiger apologizes.” Or the Yahoo Canada site: “Golfer who introduced Elin to Tiger tees off on Woods.” To save his reputation someone is going […]
So Stephane Dion’s wife, Janine Krieber, posted a “scathing message attacking Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff” on facebook this past Saturday. Shopping for groceries the same day, a little further west, I bumped into a similar scathing message face to face, urging that Iggy should resign, to make way for Ralph Goodale as head of the […]
