One hundred years ago today, more or less, was apparently also a historic time in the United Kingdom. On May 6, 1910 (100 years from the date of the British election last week) George V had become King on the death of his father, Edward VII. Meanwhile an election that took place from 15 January […]
According to Marc Emery’s wife Jodie, the Canadian Conservative minority government’s “Justice Minister Rob Nicholson has approved the extradition of her husband” to the United States, where he faces jail time “for selling marijuana seeds over the Internet.” Emery “surrendered himself to authorities this morning at court in Vancouver.” His “lawyer, Kirk Tousaw, said as […]
British election: I can’t remember a British election that has won so much attention this side of the Atlantic, in both Canada and the United States. The national results show Conservatives with 36.1% of the popular vote and 306 seats, Labour with 29.0% and 258 seats, Liberal Democrats 23.0% and only 57 seats, and Others […]
UPDATED MAY 8: As obscure as it may otherwise seem, the Greek financial crisis (“New protests as Greece approves austerity bill”)Â has now reached inside our still deeper obscurity in the true north of North America, etc, etc (“Canada’s Dollar Touches Lowest Since March on Greece’s Crisis”; “Loonie sinks as gold swims”). One further consequence […]
If you support some workable version of Senate reform in Canada – as I have for many years myself – you are bound to in some degree support the Harper minority government’s latest stab in the dark at step-by-step advance on a democratically elected “upper house” of parliament in Ottawa. Whatever else, you have to […]
Canada, the late Robertson Davies used to say, is the kind of country you worry about. And even though the present Canadian confederation has now been in business for 143 years (or at least will be this coming July 1), it is still all too easy to imagine that soon enough it will disappear off […]
Some will view today’s EKOS poll on Canadian federal politics, for the CBC, as just further evidence that a snap spring election in the true north remains somewhat less than probable – even if Conservative minority Prime Minister Stephen Harper is still “refusing to cower before the new clout of his parliamentary [majority] opposition.” (In […]
One thing that’s always been a bit hard to understand about the Harper minority government’s reluctance to release the now fabled “Afghan detainee documents” in Canada is why the prime minister should be quite so worried? It wasn’t his minority government that started the current Canadian adventure in Afghanistan. And, as Tasha Kheiriddin at the […]
The polling evidence for the impact of the so-called Guergis-Jaffer scandal on party standings in Canadian federal politics is … well, volatile at best, it would seem. For the moment, in any case. Who knows just what the next half-hour may bring? For the deep background note the two counterweights items below: “Misadventures of Miss […]
So if Canadians are rightly “turned off by the ‘prurient obsession with the private lives of a couple who are encountering serious difficulties’” [best wishes Helena and Rahim], what else is going on that properly begs more serious attention? Well, for one thing: “A former CSIS director has panned the Conservative [minority] government’s plan to […]
