Flipping through the rather slender electronic file on the federal NDP motion for “a national referendum on abolishing the Senate” – slated for debate in the Canadian House of Commons today, after some procedural wrangling yesterday – forces you to dwell on just how beleaguered the cause of progress in Ottawa has become lately. The […]

[UPDATED FEBRUARY 26, 6:50 PM PT]: For many in many parts of the world the Oscars this Sunday are the big event this weekend. But for hard-core Canadian political junkies it’s the BC Liberal leadership contest tomorrow. An internal poll “conducted by Ontario-based Praxicus Public Strategies” gives Christy Clark, the one lady in the race, […]

One of world history’s future cunning passages might marvel at how the “fourth wave of democratization” in North Africa and the Middle East was ironically accompanied by a North American wave in the opposite direction. So you might think, at any rate, when you set the news that “Canadians fleeing strife-torn Libya …” (or more […]

[UPDATED FEBRUARY 18, 20]. Those of us who have not been happy about Stephen Harper’s (technically minority) stewardship of the Canadian experiment over the past five years will not be happy about the three latest opinion polls on Canadian federal politics either. The Canada-wide results from EKOS, Ipsos Reid, and Harris Decima are (in that […]

Anyone who has perused the primary sources for the Canada-US trade agreements of the past quarter century will not be surprised to discover that the separate documents released by the “Prime Minister of Canada” and the “White House” this past Friday, February 4, 2011 are identical, with one recurrent exception. The Canadian version of “Beyond […]

Is there really going to be a 2011 Canadian federal election that changes the  present arrangement of the musical chairs in Ottawa, in any significant way? Who knows? But if there is, it will probably be the result of a few wonky issues that, somewhat unexpectedly (in at least some quarters), hit we the Canadian […]

[UPDATED JANUARY 31]. Given all the growing turmoil and fixed-date electioneering in Canada’s provinces this year, Chantal Hébert has just suggested: “It may after all be the perfect time to get a federal election over with.” And then just yesterday we heard as well that “Tory tax cuts could trigger election,” and (the day before): […]

I just want to (more or less) quickly  express my deep regret at the disappearance of Keith Olbermann and his path-breaking “Countdown” show on MSNBC – announced quite suddenly and unexpectedly Friday night in the penultimate moments of what will apparently be the last installment of one of the few genuinely interesting political programs on […]

This past Tuesday, January 11, was John A. Macdonald’s birthday (and, intriguingly enough, also Jean Chrétien’s). Macdonald, in case you’ve forgotten (as almost half those Canadians consulted in a 2001 survey had) was the first prime minister of the present confederation in Canada – and remains “the only Canadian Prime Minister to win six majority […]

Apparently George W. Bush’s presidential memoir, Decision Points, only released this past November 9, 2010, has already “sold almost a million and a half copies.” According to one wise observer, it is nonetheless “unlikely that many will ever read Decision Points, and even fewer will finish it … Conservative groups buy these things in bulk […]