As the almost always interesting Chantal  Hébert is reporting today, Ottawa insiders are currently agog over: “the expulsion of ex-minister of state Helena Guergis from the benches of the government;” the unhappy fate of “Rémy Beauregard … late president of Rights and Democracy” who had some kind of trouble with “the government’s preferred pro-Israel line;” […]

TORONTO. MONDAY, APRIL 12, 2010. Just in time for the Blue Jays’ home opener against the Chicago White Sox tonight, pretty close to what Walt Whitman once called “the blue foreground” of Lake Ontario, our resident sporting life authority Rob Sparrow has filed his 2010 report on the prospects for the MLB team that actually […]

Back in the 1930s the historian Percy Robinson called Toronto “the citadel of British sentiment in America,” and Ontario “the most British of all the provinces.” He had not spent enough time in Victoria, BC or Halifax, NS – to say nothing of (parts of) Alberta (or Newfoundland, which was not a Canadian province in […]

The Canadian Press reports that the “Harper government is trying, for the fourth time in four years, to impose eight-year term limits on the Senate … Legislation introduced Monday [March 29, 2010] would limit senators to a single, non-renewable term and would apply to all senators appointed since October 2008.” On an earlier theory, this […]

MACKINAW CITY, MI. FRIDAY MARCH 19, 2010. This may or may not prove to be a historic week in the history of democracy in America. According to the Washington Post: “Pushing toward a Sunday vote that could transform the nation’s health-insurance system, House leaders announced a $940 billion compromise Thursday that would extend coverage to […]

The vital last words on the McGuinty government’s new “Open Ontario” throne speech won’t be heard until the provincial budget a few weeks hence. Some think Premier Dalton just “wants to change the channel … to forget eHealth and the HST.” Others believe that while “his path converged with Harper’s during tough times, [the] Ontario […]

OTTAWA. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 3, 2010. [UPDATED MARCH 4]. The Canadian federal parliament is back in the business of democracy, after its controversial prorogation late last year. There will be a throne speech from the Harper minority government, read by Governor General Jean in the Senate Chamber, at 2 PM today, and then a federal budget […]

In the midst of all the deep excitement about the Vancouver Olympics 2010, who cares about the fate of some obscure arrangements for dealing with an obscure branch of the global financial crisis of fall 2008, in the upcoming March 6, 2010 referendum in the very small if also rather ancient northern nation of Iceland? […]

GANATSEKWYAGON, ONTARIO. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2010. Today – the third Monday in February – is a statutory holiday in five Canadian provinces. It’s called Family Day in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario; Islanders Day in Prince Edward Island; and Louis Riel Day in Manitoba. Louis Riel, in case you’ve forgotten, was a Canadian  Métis (ie mixed […]

So … it could be that minority Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s late winter 2010 Con game is working at last. The death of the Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was tragic. And the failure of the fourth indoor torch arm to rise was vaguely unfortunate. But otherwise the official opening of the Vancouver Winter Olympics was […]