Gordon Gibson had a column in the Vancouver Sun earlier this week, urging that British Columbia should stop re-negotiating its contract for provincial police services with the RCMP – and re-establish the old BC Provincial Police, disbanded back in 1950. (As matters stand, only Ontario and Quebec now have their own police forces. All eight […]
OTTAWA, FEBRUARY 20, 2009. Many years ago now the long since departed Canadian historian Frank Underhill declared: “Canadians always vote Democratic in American elections.” Opinion polls have subsequently borne out the wisdom of this remark – through various shifts in demography, etc, etc. That may be because US Democratic politicians have at least sometimes shown […]
OTTAWA. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2009. 8 PM ET. The dubiously prorogued Parliament of Canada has been back in business some two and a half weeks. It now has a more or less big economic stimulus budget to its credit - though is it big enough, etc, etc? And it is time to wrap up our already […]
It was not easy to be cheerful when we saw headlines like: “Think 2008 was bad? Just wait, economists say” ; “Economists grim in their forecasts for 2009” ; and “2009 to be ‘weakest year’ since World War II.”On the other hand, on the second-last day of the fateful old year we heard as well that […]
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2008. 11:30 PM ET. [UPDATED DECEMBER 1 BELOW]. All day today CTV Newsnet has been breathlessly broadcasting that, on the basis of a tape of a “telephone-conference meeting” that Jack Layton held “with his caucus Saturday morning” (surreptitiously recorded by the Conservatives), the “New Democrats and Bloc Quebecois held talks to form […]
The term “Speech from the Throne” itself reminds us that the present confederation began as the mere first self-governing dominion of the British empire – back in “the era of Queen Victoria,” and so forth (as the excellent Governor General Michaelle Jean put it on the afternoon of Wednesday, February 19, 2008). And the peculiar […]
“Who among us is not at a loss for words?” That’s how Michael Moore began his reflections on the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States last Tuesday. That has been our first reaction too. And it may explain why it’s taken us five days to say anything at all. Mr. Moore […]
The actual US election is now less than a dozen days away. And if you’re wondering how an Associated Press-GfK poll can show Barack Obama at 44% nationally, and John McCain at 43%, while at least “two other surveys put Obama ahead by 10 points or more,” you are not alone. Polling guru John Zogby […]
[UPDATED OCTOBER 5, 6].With a mere matter of days left in the still rather obscure Canadian federal election campaign, desperation is setting in on various fronts. And why not join the party? Many progressive voters up here in the true north strong and free do not want a Conservative majority in the 40th Parliament whose exact […]
Barbara Yaffe at the Vancouver Sun writes: “We should have known an election was in the cards. Conservatives lately have been mailing a blizzard of political flyers across the country.” But back here on the old east-end Toronto waterfront we seem to have escaped this particular storm. No doubt, no one in Stephen Harper’s party imagines […]
