The counterweights editors count themselves among those who do not vigorously oppose former Liberal cabinet minister David Emerson’s decision to cross the floor and join Stephen Harper’s new Conservative cabinet. But by the end of the new Harper government’s first week in office it seems clear enough that many others do. The diverse critics include […]

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2006. What a difference half-a-day makes. By noon yesterday Canada’s new Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper seemed to have made a surprisingly strong start. His new cabinet was controversial in some respects but also quite clever. Then, by the early evening his so-called new “parliamentary strategy” became clear. And it started to […]

TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2006. TORONTO. 12:30 AM (EST). The people of Canada, as John Ibbitson observed in his Globe and Mail column yesterday, are a shrewd and cagey lot. And they are just now completing a cleverly thought-out set of judgments on the questions their assorted wayward politicians have put before them, in the 2006 […]

To help kick off the new year, the BC Prince of Pot Marc Emery has just been voted one of Frank magazine’s Top 100 Canadian Wankers to Watch in 2006. And this seems a good opportunity to update the counterweights editors’ last report on their own surveillance of the Emery political career, early this past […]

However you look at it, 2005 is ending with a variety of news confirming how Canadian Liberal leader Paul Martin was right enough when he urged that the Boxing day shootings in Toronto show the “challenge” of the near future. It is at least one kind of progress that this now applies to Canada as […]

Quick notes on … TORONTO SHOOTINGS AND CANADIAN VOTERS … CANADIAN ELECTION CAMPAIGN AT THE HALFWAY POINT … TROUBLE ON THE BORDERS IN NAFTA … CANADIAN ELECTION DEBATES … KARLA HOMOLKA MOVIE … BC AND THE CANADIAN ELECTION … IRAQ ELECTION … MARK CRISPIN MILLER ON DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA TODAY … TORONTO SHOOTINGS AND CANADIAN VOTERS. After a […]

According to the People’s Daily Online in China, a “fierce battle” is “foreseen” in the Canadian federal election campaign now underway. A week into the contest, you can get the latest on all the party leaders’ travels and rapidly accumulating policy promises, nicely laid out in cyberspace by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Canadian Television […]

On his way to the Asia-Pacific economic summit in South Korea this week, Canadian prime minister Paul Martin “expressed relief at being out of the country.” And he told the reporters on the plane with him: “I think it is nice to get away from politics. I think there just has been too much tactics and […]

As of just after 6 PM, Saturday, November 12, journalist Sue Bailey is reporting that Canadian federal Conservative leader Stephen Harper, Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe, and New Democrat leader Jack Layton are to meet in Ottawa on Sunday, November 13, “to discuss the next moves in their bid to disrupt, if not topple” Paul […]

If you aren’t confused by the recent polls on Canadian federal politics – with the first Gomery report on the Liberal sponsorship scandal due this coming Tuesday, November 1 – you haven’t been paying attention.  On our current rough count of surveys noted in the media, since about mid-September the Liberals have been successively reported as […]