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 […]

What the Canadian Press had earlier called “a small knot of demonstrators,” who “plan to show up, calling for an end to what they see as an undemocratic vestige of the colonial past,” actually did appear among the protesters at the otherwise radiant official “installation” of Canada’s new Governor General Michaelle Jean, on the sunny […]

The counterweights editors have their own reasons to appreciate the rising power in the name of Sophie Gregoire. According to the always interesting user statistics, our very slight references to her elsewhere on this site have won more attention than many other more weighty probes. Ms. Gregorie’s potential has of course been noted in other […]

A new Leger marketing survey of Canadian federal party standings has shown the first signs of real movement in the complex mind of the cross-Canada democratic electorate since the start of the summer that is just ending. Using an Ipsos-Reid poll from less than a month ago as the benchmark, the Liberals are up four […]

UPDATED Monday, September 12, 2005. 11:00 PM. Chinese president Hu Jintao arrived in Ottawa last Thursday, on a trip that also includes visits to Toronto and Vancouver, various parts of Mexico, and the United Nations in New York. The Washington Post noted how the “United States relies on Canada for some 17 percent of its oil and energy and is […]

The lovely Sophie Gregoire, aka Mme Justin Trudeau, has now joined the CTV entertainment program ETalk Daily. She will serve as Quebec correspondent for the show, which is about to begin its fourth season. And she will work alongside host Ben Mulroney.No word so far on whether Sophie Gregoire will also be keeping her job […]

In the September 2005 issue of The Walrus James Laxer says that “this was the summer when global realities … intruded on Canadian introspection.” And here’s hoping he is at least partly right. Yet with the return of the fractious federal Parliament in Ottawa now just over a month away (and the traditional Labour Day […]