The second volume of John English’s biography of Pierre Trudeau – Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau 1968—2000– hits the bookstores today. All of us who enjoyed the first volume – Citizen of the World: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau 1919—1968 – will want to read the new book, which deals […]
On Thursday, October 22 Ontario finance minister Dwight Duncan officially informed the provincial legislature that Canada’s most populous province will be running a deficit of some $24.7 billion for the current 2009-2010 fiscal year. It has been noted that “while high by historic standards” this provincial Liberal number “is roughly proportional to Conservative Ottawa’s $55 […]
Manitoba New Democratic Party leadership conventions are not always as poignant as the one that took up the better part of a Saturday afternoon on CBC Newsworld yesterday. But in this case Canada’s alleged social democratic party was also choosing a provincial premier – to replace the retiring Gary Doer, who is going to Washington […]
One of the more intriguing sidebars to current Canadian federal politics is the relationship between Conservative minority Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Governor General Michaelle Jean, who was (rather brilliantly, some say) appointed by Liberal minority Prime Minister Paul Martin, not too long before he was turfed from office, by a gang of conservatives, socialists, […]
Just last week, on October 5, 2009, the Governor General of Canada, Michaelle Jean, gave a speech to a United Nations cultural group in Paris, in which she called herself – and not just once but twice – the Canadian “head of state.” This soon enough brought a surge of protest from the diminishing forces […]
[UPDATED OCTOBER 6, 9]. Does history repeat itself? Well, probably not. Or at least not exactly. But it is still sometimes interesting in any case. Yesterday Stephen Harper’s Conservative minority government officially called four Canadian federal by-elections for November 9 – for two ridings in Quebec (Hochelaga and Montmagny—L’Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup), and one each in British Columbia […]
Today is the 60th anniversary of the official founding of the modern Chinese state, when Mao Zedong (1893—1976) made the now historic declaration: “China has stood up!” Memories of Mao in the 20th century don’t have a lot to do with what is going on in China in the early 21st century. But just who […]
[UPDATED OCTOBER 1, 3, 20]. Yesterday Canada’s so-called Prince of Pot, Marc Emery, surrendered to authorities at the BC Supreme Court. He is now in a Canadian jail awaiting extradition to the United States, on a 2005 charge of selling marijuana seeds to US customers through the mail. The “US Attorney’s Office is pressing for […]
TORONTO. SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2009. [UPDATED SEPTEMBER 28]. Both Lawrence Martin of the Globe and Mail and Ralph Surette of the Halifax Chronicle Herald have shown some special sympathy for Jack Layton and his New Democrats lately – in the midst of their new marriage of convenience with the definitely non-progressive Harper Conservatives. But who […]
PITTSBURGH, PA. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2009. [UPDATED SEPTEMBER 25 and SEPTEMBER 26].What is the G20 that is meeting today and tomorrow in this reviving old US rust-belt city on the site of the mid 18th century French Fort Duquesne, at the junction of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio rivers? Well … to start with it […]
