The “very, very good, and very, very young” American progressive blogger Ezra Klein has increased his audience since he joined the Washington Post earlier this year. A Post online exchange with a Connecticut reader this past Thursday illustrates why he is so good, and why the current US health care debate is so bizarre: “New […]
The annual summer meeting of Canada’s 10 premiers and three territorial leaders – aka the Council of the Federation – starts today in Regina. It’s hosted this year by Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall. Ordinarily, this would not stir many Canadians from their fibreglass canoes. But this summer no less a centralizing force than the Toronto […]
As the Canadian newspapers report, “the Canadian health-care system is coming under increased scrutiny south of the border,” as President Barack Obama and the US Congress struggle to “reform the US system.” A recent letter to the editor of the suburban Chicago Daily Herald, from a US resident, does a nice job of summarizing what […]
It is now more than three years and three months since we first reported on what is still being described as “the largest mass murder in Ontario history.” It involved the assassination of eight Bandidos biker gang members and associates from the Toronto region, on a farm in the same old agrarian democratic heartland of […]
The Japanese official summary is just called “Statement by the Chief Cabinet Secretary on the Visit to Canada and the United States of America by Their Majesties the Emperor and Empress of Japan.” But in Canada their majesties visited the capital city of Ottawa July 3 to part of July 8. Then they were in […]
According to Ontario politics columnist Jim Coyle, in the Toronto Star this past Monday, today is (more or less officially, it seems) Lake Superior Day. (“A few months back … Algoma-Manitoulin MPP Mike Brown won unanimous support in the Legislature for his resolution to establish the third Sunday in July …Â as Lake Superior Day.”) […]
No one will be too surprised to hear that among the American people who are pleased Sarah Palin will soon be resigning as Governor of Alaska are many Alaskan Native Americans (or aboriginal peoples, as we officially say in Canada’s Constitution Act 1982). Take, e.g., Myron Naneng, “president of the Association of Village Council Presidents, […]
Just in case you had any doubts, two current events in the USA today confirm that the increasingly “tighter border” between the United States and Canada, in vain pursuit of US anti-terrorism policy over the past eight years, “hurts [the] economy” on both sides of the line. To start with, about “500 officials, experts and […]
It’s hard to know just what to make of the sometimes intense concern about “the fifth annual summit of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, now operating under the title of the North American Leaders’ Summit, scheduled on the [US] State Department calendar to occur in Mexico,” this coming August 8—11. Critics of […]
Headlines like “Harper and family meet with Pope” or “Harper, Pope discuss economy, values” have prompted the (Catholic) girl who answers the phones here to ask: “Did he also apologize to the Pope for putting the communion wafer in his pocket at Romeo LeBlanc’s funeral?” The answer is almost certainly not. Mr. Harper has already […]
