[UPDATED OCTOBER 15]. Coming home on the airplane from a recent trip to Europe, I read an article by an eminent Cambridge academic in a British political magazine. And I was almost shocked when it proclaimed that the “two most successful leaders in contemporary western politics are Angela Merkel and Stephen Harper.” This international point […]

We’ve just gone through a major computer renovation at head office here. And even between the cracks we’ve been getting queries on the results of the travelling conference from which most of us have just returned. The work of reporting on all this has been assigned to X. He says it is challenging, because much […]

At the end of the 1864 Quebec conference that forged the constitutional beginnings of the  confederation of 1867 George Brown, founder of the old Toronto Globe and early Canadian Grit/Liberal/Reform political leader, wrote a hasty letter to his wife. He reported : “You will say our constitution is dreadfully Tory –  and it is – […]

There’s suddenly quite a lot on the local political (and economic) scene, here on the northwest shore of Lake Ontario – and it isn’t even quite Labour Day yet. To start with, so Tim Horton’s selling out to Burger King isn’t enough? (See : “Tim Horton’s merger talks not a big concern for Toronto customers” […]

[UPDATED JULY 27, 28]. Maybe it’s just the summer heat going to my head (tho it hasn’t been all that hot where I am). But lately I’ve been thinking about how we are now just over a week away from the 100th birthday of The Guns of August that started the First World War. On […]

The genius of the traditional “Westminster” or British-style cabinet system is or at least was supposed to be that it is an authentically collegial or team-management approach to the increasingly complicated adventures of government by popularly elected officials. Any modern parliamentary democracy is far too complicated to be navigated by the mind of just one […]

In one way or another history will no doubt record that the Ontario general election of June 12, 2014 was a highly nuanced phenomenon. To start with, Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals have won a six-seat majority in the Legislative Assembly with a mere 39% of the province-wide popular vote [UPDATE JUNE 14 : a recount in […]

The editors tell me this is the last posting on the (first?) Ontario election of 2014 that counterweights will publish before the actual vote tomorrow. So I have one or two housekeeping matters to attend to, before getting into my main subject of declining voter turnout in Ontario (and elsewhere in the free and democratic […]

UPDATED JUNE 5. I just drew the short straw here at the office. I have to stay late and do a quick report on the Ontario election 2014 leader’s debate on TV : Tuesday, June 3, 6:30—8:00 PM ET. There is, as best I can tell, something of an early consensus somewhere that Liberal leader […]

I remember an eminent authority on such matters saying, just before the Mike Harris Tories in Ontario won their second majority government, almost exactly 15 years ago now : “The pollsters usually get it right.” And in that case they did. They may still get things more or less right in 2014, just before the […]