It is not entirely clear that Europe ought to get most of the blame for the latest bout of international financial neurosis – all too reflected in such other places as the Toronto Stock Exchange this past week. But the once mighty continent is certainly playing that role in the eyes of the concerned global […]
One of the things keeping democracy in Canada alive – in the face of recurrent improbable odds, in Ottawa and elsewhere – has been a steady supply of very good people who watch over and write on the Canadian political scene (in all its vast diversity and both official languages). A historical list could go […]
Before non-Tory partisans get too excited about such headlines as “Ontario voters trending to McGuinty, poll suggests” (Globe and Mail) or “Liberals inch ahead of Tories in two new polls” (Toronto Star), they might want to at least consider “Tories leading the pack: Poll” (surprise, surprise – in the Toronto Sun). The poll in the […]
Like others, no doubt, I kept a few notes on my own remote experience of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. I won’t even try to say just why. And my especially marginal experience of the main events in New York and Washington took place in the current biggest city of […]
This coming week the campaign for what might be one of the biggest Ontario provincial elections in years gets underway. Not much more than three weeks ago John Michael McGrath at Toronto Life was opining on how Ontario Premier Dalton “McGuinty’s personality (or lack thereof) is a huge part of the Liberal brand–borrowing Tory Bill […]
The serious part of the 2011 Ontario provincial election campaign is now less than two weeks away. And the excitement is building ( for some of us at least). This past weekend Chantal Hébert was explaining just why “Ontario vote most important in recent history.” And yesterday Duff Conacher’s Democracy Watch in Ottawa was complaining […]
I agree that over the mid to long term future, Stephen Harper’s “abject colonial” restoration of the “‘royal’ designation to Canada’s air force and navy” last week is almost certainly going to work to the advantage of those of us who see a Canadian republic as our ultimate rational democratic destiny in the true north, […]
August, according to the English poet W.H. Auden in 1935, was supposed to be “for the people and their favourite islands.” Apparently times have changed. In the strange summer of 2011, August is for “UK riots: Sharing of police between cities ‘reviewed hourly’ … Theresa May orders police chiefs to cancel all police leave as […]
If Canada already were the country of the future it could be – and should eventually become – the news that federal NDP interim leader Nycole Turmel was until recently also a member of the Bloc Québécois (and is apparently still on the books of the vaguely sovereigntist provincial party, Québec Solidaire) would not be […]
To start with, it may seem ironic that the Vancouver Sun (no doubt like other Postmedia News outlets in Canada) has chosen one of “Britain’s leading business and economics commentators” (Jeremy Warner at the right-wing Daily Telegraph) to explain why “America cannot lead the world if it abandons principles.” On closer inspection it is quite […]
