If you’re wondering just how bad the true north could be in any hypothetical new Conservative majority age of Stephen Harper, check out Paul Jackson’s column in the June 13 Calgary Sun. It’s called “Nation of sheep: If Harper can’t turn it around there’s little hope for Canada.” It seems a good guess that the […]

TORONTO, SUNDAY, JUNE 11. US historian Richard Hofstadter’s article on “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” first appeared in Harper’s magazine in November 1964. Canadians who live in the alleged new “hotbed of Islamic extremism“ can be excused for remembering this 1960s landmark, at the end of the first full week of the “Canada terror plot” […]

The classic two solitudes in Canada are French and English. But today’s blogosphere is full of the other great schism between East and West. And, as crowds in Kabul, Afghanistan shout “Death to America,” the supermarket tabloids say George W. Bush has taken up drinking again. Meanwhile, this week the Western Canadian premiers are talking […]

There have been more than a few big surprises in Canadian federal politics over the past year. And, as unlikely as it may seem at the moment, the current Liberal leadership race could prove surprising too. Just how bad the Ontario-dominated crop of 11 “B-team” contenders looks depends on how you see the main objective […]

UPDATE. WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 11 PM ET. The duly elected federal Parliament did not get around to voting on the Harper minority government’s sudden surprise motion to extend Canada’s current mission in Afghanistan for another two years until shortly after 10 PM Ottawa time this evening. But in the end, as the Globe and Mail […]

It turns out that there’s not much to say about the first budget of Stephen Harper’s new Conservative minority government in Canada. Except that it does seem to definitively betray the clear but limited extent of the 2006 right-wing coup north of the unfortified border. For the intricate details of who gets what, and not, consult such reliable sources […]

UPDATE. MONDAY, APRIL 10, 11:30 PM EST. Debates on foreign policy in the parliamentary  democratic tradition, the British historian A.J.P. Taylor said long ago, conventionally pit “the stupid party” on the right against “the silly party” on the left. And there were more than a few moments when this evening’s debate on Afghanistan in the Canadian […]

UPDATE: Monday, March 6, 2006, 2 AM EST. Some people are already searching “jon stewart oscar disappointment.” Just for the record, we didn’t think he was. Politically there was no rough assault on the Bush administration. But it’s not democratically sporting to hit someone too hard when they’re already down. And there was a quiet […]

No doubt the strange vibrations coming out of Ottawa over the past two weeks could not have gone on too much longer. They were almost starting to eat away at what section 91 of the Constitution Act 1867 prescribes as “the Peace, Order, and good Government of Canada.” The trouble started on February 6, when the […]

At least many Canadians have to find it a bit odd that their new Conservative minority federal government is laying plans to ease up restrictions on long guns, just when the big news that won’t go away stateside is all about how Vice President Dick Cheney has accidentally shot one of his good friends with […]