From a Canadian point of view, it probably does make some kind of sense that, as the Queen has recently informed us, Harry and Meghan will be going through “a period of transition in which” they “will spend time in Canada and the UK.” As suggested by Philippe Lagassé, described in the New York Times […]
The middle of the summer of 1977 was not quite nine months after René Lévesque’s unsettling PQ victory in the November 1976 Quebec provincial election. And it was at this point that the Anglo-American economist and philosopher Kenneth Boulding told the 44th annual Couchiching Conference in Ontario : Canada is an “absurd country straight out […]
It is a kind of Rachel Maddow moment. The best beginning may just be to quote her : “This is really happening. This is your life. This is our country in our time … It is Wednesday, the 18th of December in the year 2019 and President Donald Trump is impeached.” Like my counterweights colleague […]
Just before the November 20, 2019 swearing-in of the new Trudeau Liberal minority cabinet – in the “Tent Room” at Rideau Hall in Ottawa – the counterweights editors brought a piece I did on the swearing-in of the first Justin Trudeau cabinet four years ago to my attention. It was posted on November 7, 2015, […]
Yesterday the media watching PM Justin Trudeau in the wake of the October 21 federal election reported that “Trudeau turns to two political veterans for advice on forming his minority government,” and “Trudeau taps French ambassador, Anne McLellan to aide in transition.” (Canada’s ambassador to France, in case you are wondering, is Isabelle Hudon, not […]
I want to quickly say something about why I will still be voting for the Justin Trudeau Liberals in the October 21, 2019 Canadian election, despite the prime minister’s latest self-inflicted wounds. The most apt summary of the background I’ve run across has come from Lauren O’Neil at blogTO : “Canada’s political sphere is reeling […]
Bruce Anderson and David Coletto at Abacus Data have come up with (I think) an especially helpful and interesting take on the October 21 Canadian federal election, in reporting on their latest “national survey of 4,549 Canadians, completed on August 28.” (The Anderson and Coletto report is dated September 5.) They start by noting that, […]
[UPDATED 12:10 AM ET, SEPTEMBER 11, 2019]. There was a time not too long ago (late September 2017?) when newly elected Manitoba NDP leader Wab Kinew seemed likely enough to become the first Indigenous premier of a modern Canadian province. And this milestone would fit nicely with the past of a democratic political community that […]
What to make of the latest political craziness in the USA today (at least from where I live, north of the Great Lakes)? Here are four clusters of mid-summer 2019 intelligence, gleaned from the World Wide Web – and beyond : I. THE WISDOM OF GEORGE WILL : My shrewdest insider source from the hard […]
[UPDATED JUNE 22]. The obvious first reaction to Premier Doug Ford’s big cabinet shuffle at the end of his first year in office is that it wasn’t his cabinet who was so visibly booed at the Toronto Raptors NBA championship celebration this past Monday. The point was not lost on CBC TV’s “This Hour Has […]
