“And Barbara it’s starting to rain, very gently.” So a youthful Peter Mansbridge told David Frum’s mother – and TV viewers across Canada –  as Elizabeth II approached  the table to sign the proclamation of the Constitution Act, 1982, 30 years ago, on Saturday, April 17, 1982. The ceremony was held outdoors on Parliament Hill […]

Watching Ronald Reagan’s former budget director David Stockman on Bill Maher’s excellent US TV show last night reminded some of us that Clyde Prestowitz, another former Reagan Administration apparatchik (counselor to the Secretary of Commerce), has also been saying some remarkably sensible and even “progressive” things about economic policy lately. The latest  Prestowitz literary soundbite […]

Larry Zolf’s 117-page opus Dance of the Dialectic – on “How Pierre Elliot Trudeau went from Philosopher-King to the Incorruptible Robespierre to Philosopher-Queen Marie Antoinette to Canada’s Generalissimo and then to Mackenzie King and Even Better” – was published 39 long years ago now. In the strange spring of 2012, however, its title has taken […]

For those who reside in the vicinity of what is still (for the moment) Canada’s largest metropolis, we’re pleased to note that a morning vigil will be held in downtown Toronto this coming Thursday, April 12, 2012, in commemoration of the public hangings of Samuel Lount and Peter Matthews 174 years ago, on the morning […]

I seldom agree with what Margaret Wente writes in her Globe and Mail column. She is speaking from and for a different universe than the one I inhabit. But there are exceptions to every rule. And I think Ms. Wente is at least half right today, in “Justin Trudeau for leader! Okay, maybe not.” She […]

We at least think we understand what federal NDP MP Charlie Angus means when he says: “The Twitterati, I mean, I don’t even know who these people are. I don’t think it’s a positive move in the political realm that we’re dealing with because of the dumbed-down nature of the conversation.”Â  But … (1) We […]

There is something to be said for the argument that sowing confusion among his enemies has become one of the mature Stephen Harper’s most skilfully wielded political weapons. And, whatever else,  yesterday’s 2012 federal budget succeeds brilliantly at the task. As a case in point see “Ministers tout ‘modest’ Tory plan to slash spending, shrink […]

[UPDATED MARCH 27, 5 PM ET]. The Ontario budget that finance minister Dwight Duncan is unveiling later today will be “a uniquely Liberal” document. “We are taking a balanced approach. We will be asking everyone to do their share,” the minister told “a large media throng in his office” yesterday. He’s also hoping his “spending […]

TORONTO. SATURDAY, MARCH 24, 2012. One thing I’ve remembered this weekend is watching the convention that founded today’s New Democratic Party on TV, as A Teenager in North Toronto, so to speak (humourously, ironically, sarcastically, satirically, or whatever), in the middle of the summer of 1961. Inevitably, I am not as enthused and hopeful as […]

PM Harper has now “left for a weeklong, three-country tour of Asia,” and will not be around for the NDP leadership convention in Toronto this coming Friday and Saturday. The Toronto newspapers – here in the city where our own global head office is located – have nonetheless been full of razzle dazzle about the […]