Opinion pollsters can take at least some pride in yesterday’s October 8 Nova Scotia election. Their polls had been suggesting a Liberal majority government for the past three weeks. And that’s what happened. (An Abacus Data survey with a last day of polling on October 6 even predicted the province-wide popular vote at 46% Liberal, […]
Those of us who vainly dream that the progressive mainstream in Canada is gearing up to reassert itself in the real world of politics have had a few bits of bad news lately. The brilliant Monty Python and Fawlty Towers graduate, John Cleese, keen to sell tickets to his “Last Chance to See Me Before […]
The Ontario legislature has returned to work this week. And already it seems clear enough that the biggest issue in Ontario politics this fall is whether there will be a fresh election before the December holiday season. See, eg, such recent headlines as : “Ontario’s Premier Wynne shaking up her campaign team in lead-up to […]
[UPDATED SEPTEMBER 8]. In some more ideal world Canada would take more of an interest in Australia, and vice-versa. The two places have a lot in common. They are both natural resource-dominated economies in geographically vast territories with modest but increasingly diverse populations. And they are both former self-governing dominions of the now declined and […]
Just over a week ago we heard that “Proroguing Parliament till October buys Harper and Tories time … The restart effectively gives Mr. Harper two high-profile opportunities … to sell Canadian voters on the notion he is still the person to lead the country.” The first opportunity is “a Speech from the Throne that will […]
Not long ago I overheard a local politician of more or less conservative bent answering a question about Kathleen Wynne’s performance as Ontario Liberal premier so far. Some people, he suggested, belong to a party because they know they couldn’t get elected if they belonged to the party of their heart. Premier Wynne is a […]
[FOR BYELECTION RESULTS SEE “August 1 Ontario byelections : a bit of a surprise – Libs 2, NDP 2, Cons 1.“] The headline for Adam Radwanski’s report in the Globe and Mail yesterday – “Ontario Liberals bracing for the end of Kathleen Wynne’s momentum” – captures the minority governing party’s worst prospects for the mini […]
It sometimes seems that little of real interest would happen in Canada without the first people who called themselves Canadians in Quebec. (This is also a good argument against real Quebec “separation,” for those Canadians outside Quebec who value interesting things.) To take just one current case in point, the first meeting of provincial premiers […]
[UPDATED JULY 6, 7, 13 – for byelection results see “August 1 Ontario byelections : a bit of a surprise – Libs 2, NDP 2, Cons 1.” ]. A mere four weeks from yesterday – on Thursday, August 1, 2013 – Canada’s most populous province of Ontario will be holding a kind of mini-election. As […]
[UPDATE JUNE 27 : On Margarethe von Trotta’s Hannah Arendt movie … scroll to bottom of page]. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not the only global political observer who has suggested similarities between the mass protests faced by his democratic government lately and those faced by the democratic government of President Dilma Roussef […]
