[UPDATED MARCH 5]. Late last year I wrote that “the Angus Reid approval and disapproval ratings for late November 2009 have at last convinced me that the McGuinty Liberal regime in Ontario today could be in more longer-term trouble than I have thought so far.” And I noted that the Toronto Centre by-election, February 4, […]
Just after noon yesterday I set out with a few of the hardier counterweights editors to join our local area demonstration against minority Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s prorogation (or “suspension” or even just “shutdown”) of the Parliament of Canada until March 3. Our local area happens to be the most hated city in the country, […]
Public debate on minority Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s decision to “prorogue” the Parliament of Canada, until March 3, 2010, at least seems to have grown to a greater degree more quickly than many who follow such obscure events at first imagined. And I am among those who have been pleasantly enough surprised. At the […]
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 […]
