WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2009. [UPDATED DECEMBER 31]. So all the inside rumours about Canadian federal politics have now proved true. Today Canada’s minority Prime Minister Stephen Harper phoned Governor General Michaelle Jean and asked her to prorogue Parliament until March 3, 2010. And she has accepted the advice, as some would say she is bound […]

Only people like Hitler, George Orwell said (more or less), never change their minds. And I am  now changing my mind about Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s current political prospects. My immediate motivation is the new Angus Reid approval ratings for Canadian provincial premiers. Based on surveys in the nine most populous provinces from November 23—29, […]

You could say that current plots to “harmonize” the federal Goods and Services Tax (GST) with the Provincial Sales Tax (PST) into one more efficient HST (Harmonized Sales Tax) are only afoot in two of Canada’s 10 provinces – and thus of only slight interest Canada-wide. But the two provinces involved, Ontario and British Columbia, […]

[UPDATED DECEMBER 2, 2009]. How many sovereign people of Canada today are even aware that there was a 60th anniversary summit of the Commonwealth of Nations this past weekend in Trinidad and Tobago? A poll commissioned by something called the Royal Commonwealth Society this past  summer asked a representative sample of Canadians: “Which one of […]

TORONTO. NOVEMBER 11, 2009. It was inevitable that the quiet journey of the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall through four Canadian provinces during the first few weeks of  November this year would finally bump into some noisy protest when it reached la belle province du Quebec. (See “Flying eggs, riot police, pro-Quebec […]

QUEEN’S PARK, TORONTO. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2009. Believe it or not, at least for a few brief moments the Legislative Assembly in Canada’s most populous province of Ontario will be the centre of the Canadian Senate reform movement usually identified with Canada’s most oil-rich province of Alberta. After two earlier false starts, Ontario MLA Bob […]

The news that the Ontario provincial government will now be running a deficit of some $24.7 billion for the current 2009-2010 fiscal year has induced much hyperbolic, knee-jerk hand-wringing among certain observers, who rely more on ideology than on the tedious task of reading the actual public documents, with all their mind-numbing numbers and hard-to-digest […]

[UPDATED OCTOBER 22]. Charles and Camilla will arrive in Canada just two weeks this coming Monday. Even if you don’t think the British monarchy has any long future in 21st century Canada (and I share this opinion myself with what recent opinion polls report as a growing majority of Canadians), the visit of the Prince […]

Inevitably, the opposition parties at Queen’s Park are salivating over the auditor general’s special report on “Ontario’s Electronic Health Records Initiative,” released yesterday. And the report has already prompted the resignation of health minister David Caplan, and a slight cabinet shuffle. Yet initial reactions from opposition politicians do little to suggest that they seriously understand […]

OLD CHINATOWN, DUNDAS STREET, TORONTO. OCTOBER 1, 2009. Today is of course not the actual birthday of the late Mao Zedong (1893—1976). It is only the 60th anniversary of the official founding of the modern People’s Republic – when Mao made the now historic declaration: “China has stood up!” The new Chinese role in the […]