Canadians watching the beginnings of what the hyperbolic right is calling World War III (or IV) on US TV have a right to be a bit puzzled by the news that there are only an “estimated 25,000 Americans … in Lebanon.” According to the local media in Canada, “officials estimate that at least 50,000 Canadians” […]
HONEY HARBOUR, ON. Nothing is supposed to happen up here in the summer. But of course it does. This can even be a good time to sneak through somewhat strange messages in the news. So Canadian federal finance minister Jim Flaherty has announced that a mysterious international financial watchdog called the Egmont Group will be […]
The news from Mexico that some have been waiting for since the evening of this past Sunday, July 2 finally arrived in the late afternoon of Thursday, July 6. With all 41 million votes apparently now properly counted, Felipe Calderon of the conservative National Action Party has 35.88%. Lopez Obrador of the left-wing Democratic Revolution […]
The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) is slyly asking people to grade new minority Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s first five months in office, on what passes in English-speaking Canada for national TV. In our book Mr. Harper himself could be graded as high as C+. Whatever else, he has at least tried to gain ground […]
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“Â 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 […]
