Toronto is not the only place with a garbage and civic workers strike this summer. Windsor’s has been going on for three months. (It’s not quite three weeks in Toronto so far.)Â A somewhat different paramedics strike in the public sector is now underway in BC too. And of course nobody outside Toronto cares about […]
In the midst of the still potentially tragic health care debate in the land of the elephant across the line, it’s interesting to notice occasional references to our current public health care system in the true north that are almost accurate. See, e.g., “How Does Canada’s Health System Actually Work?” by Ian Austen, in the […]
You can only see so much Canadian politics from my second-floor office window. But it’s a cool, crisp summer in these parts so far (so good). And it’s clear enough the big question is still will there be a federal election this fall? The short Ottawa-talk answer is of course maybe, maybe not. And maybe […]
SATURDAY, JUNE 20, 2009. On a day when politically obsessed people around the world are haunted by the latest tense reports about Fierce clashes on streets of Tehran, it may seem a bit quaint to pay brief homage to yesterday’s installation of Darrell Dexter’s first New Democratic government in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. […]
Pierre Trudeau’s essay “Some Obstacles to Democracy in Quebec” was first published in the old Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science in August 1958 – when Premier Maurice Duplessis was still shouting orders to the Speaker of the Quebec legislative assembly. French Canadians, Trudeau wrote at the time, “must begin to learn democracy from […]
WEDNESDAY, MAY 20, 2009. Yesterday Dr. Manmohan Singh, 76, was re-elected parliamentary leader of the Indian National Congress, following the May 16 election results that gave his party more seats in the Indian parliament than anyone expected. Today he was appointed prime minister for a second consecutive term, for which he will be sworn-in on […]
So says a lady from Saint John, New Brunswick, who calls herself “upset mom.” And she goes on: “could someone tell me how a family can sell drugs and guns, steal cars … do anything they want for so long? … you can say they are good people and dont break the law but WHY […]
Just when it seemed that the encouraging, moderate, and essentially rational new Islamic democracy in Turkey might be about to blow apart, wiser heads have prevailed. And there are at least some fresh grounds for hope about the future of the troubled global village today. Headlines from more or less around the world tell the […]
I once took a girl to the Georgian Room on the ninth floor of the old Eaton’s department store in Toronto. It must have been around 1970. I was in my 20s by that point. I had been going to the Georgian Room since before I could remember, with my mother and brother and aunts […]
“Toronto,” the local historian Percy Robinson wrote in 1933, is “the citadel of British sentiment in America, and Ontario, the most British of all the Provinces.” An even 75 years later things have changed. Early in 2008 Angus Reid Strategies asked Canadians: “Would you support or oppose Canada ending its formal ties to the British […]
