Robert G. Kaiser clearly wrote his current piece in the November 6, 2014 issue of the New York Review of Books – on “Our Conservative, Criminal Politicians” – before the November 4 US midterm elections. But I read it just after. And it helped me do something with my private thoughts about the future of […]
[UPDATED NOV 5]. Those of us who believe that history and the future will judge Barack Obama a much more seminal and successful US president than the present is doing can only look at the midterm elections this Tuesday, November 4, 2014 and weep. The prospects for sitting administrations in such contests are almost never […]
People who don’t live in or even vaguely like Toronto, and are fed up with both Rob and Doug Ford and  the 2014 Toronto mayoral race, may take comfort from the fact that the race has effectively ended even before election day tomorrow, Monday, October 27. Or as John Wright, senior vice president of the […]
[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 […]
