Someone or something in Ottawa (or somewhere?) almost seems determined that Canada is going to have a fresh federal general election very soon – less than a year after the last one. Speculation about how the opposition will unite to defeat Paul Martin’s Liberal minority government over its neo-Machiavellian linking of the Kyoto Accord with […]
With one eye on the upcoming March 23 meeting of George W. Bush, Vicente Fox, and Paul Martin in Texas, a tri-national task force has just recommended an assortment of aggressive steps toward a bold new kind of North America. If the press reports are to be believed, there is little real appetite for such […]
Canadian history may ultimately judge that the sharpest point former prime minister Jean Chretien made in his aggressive February 8, 2005 testimony at the Gomery inquiry into the so-called Quebec sponsorship scandal was “I have the impression that there was less money stolen than this commission will cost.” Whatever the history books finally do say, the […]
According to recent press reports, the Martin minority government’s imminent foreign policy review document will be mapping out a plan for greater North American integration. And U.S., Canadian, and Mexican officials are talking about a possible trilateral summit as early as late March, at which a so-called “NAFTA-plus” agenda would be moved ahead. With all […]
“You shall love your crooked neighbour/With your crooked heart.” That is what the dead poet W.H. Auden wrote in “As I walked out one Evening.” And whatever exact private moments inspired these two especially memorable lines, they also seem to be describing something about how democracy works in Canada today. That at least is what […]
From inside the assorted urban, suburban, and exurban walls of Canada’s current largest metropolis it is hard to know just what to make of Newfoundland premier Danny Williams’s holiday season “flag war over equalization payments.” To review the background quickly, under Part III, Section 36 of the Constitution Act 1982, tax dollars from more fortunate […]
The text of Paul Martin’s December 6 speech to the Canada-China Business Council in Toronto has given Canadians some initial glimpse of their federal government’s emerging thinking on the new Chinese role in Canadian development. And with the US magazine Business Week‘s recent talk about the “massive shift in economic power” towards China now underway, […]
Belinda Stronach, the new and still cute Canadian Conservative MP from Magna International (who has also had lunch with Bill Clinton, or some such thing)Â may have made the most sensible point about George W. Bush’s low-key official visit to Canada, November 30/December 1, 2004. It was not so much a first act of the second […]
The still quite recent news that the state-owned China Minmetals Corp. (in effect the government of China) wants to buy the venerable Canadian resource sector firm Noranda Inc. has signaled a bold and even somewhat unsettling new phase in the apparently never-ending debate about Canadian national economic development. To help move things along, the November […]
The most authentic comic relief for the losing side on the long evening of November 2, 2004 came with Jon Stewart’s Daily Show – starting at 10 PM EST to 7 PM PST, and all points in between. The deepest humour arrived just towards the end of the one-hour program, from the suitably French-surnamed Stephen […]
