In Brief

Mr. and Mrs. Huronia .. have Liberals found their ticket .. apparently not?

Apr 22nd, 2010 | By | Category: In Brief

OTTAWA. APRIL 22, 2010. Rahim Jaffer, loving husband of former Conservative junior cabinet minister (and Miss Huronia) Helena Guergis, appeared before the government operations committee of the Canadian House of Commons yesterday. The early reviews are in, and they are not good. See, eg, Don Martin, poet laureate of Stephen Harper’s Ottawa (well, sort of: […]



Misadventures of Miss Huronia .. have Canadian Liberals found their ticket?

Apr 19th, 2010 | By | Category: In Brief

[UPDATED APRIL 20]. Ordinarily I don’t like to discuss political scandals. I over-value the illusion that I am higher-minded than all that. Serious public policy debate is at least what ought to count in the real world of democratic politics, etc, etc. (And if we the people don’t take this high-minded view, who will? Certainly […]



Remember when Mike Pearson said “I hope Canada will become a republic” ..

Apr 14th, 2010 | By | Category: In Brief

As the almost always interesting Chantal  Hébert is reporting today, Ottawa insiders are currently agog over: “the expulsion of ex-minister of state Helena Guergis from the benches of the government;” the unhappy fate of “Rémy Beauregard … late president of Rights and Democracy” who had some kind of trouble with “the government’s preferred pro-Israel line;” […]



The Sparrow’s guide to baseball Blue Jays 2010

Apr 12th, 2010 | By | Category: In Brief

TORONTO. MONDAY, APRIL 12, 2010. Just in time for the Blue Jays’ home opener against the Chicago White Sox tonight, pretty close to what Walt Whitman once called “the blue foreground” of Lake Ontario, our resident sporting life authority Rob Sparrow has filed his 2010 report on the prospects for the MLB team that actually […]



In the strange spring of Stephen Harper new voices of region are rising in the east .. true or false?

Apr 8th, 2010 | By | Category: In Brief

Ever since the 1980s the modern quest to at last reform The Unreformed Senate of Canada has had its main base in Western Canada (with a brief variation on the theme from Clyde Wells in Newfoundland, in the last days of the Meech Lake Accord). Now in minority PM  Harper’s strange spring of 2010, there […]



Why are some North Americans so interested in the British election?

Apr 7th, 2010 | By | Category: In Brief

Back in the 1930s the historian Percy Robinson called Toronto “the citadel of British sentiment in America,” and Ontario “the most British of all the provinces.” He had not spent enough time in Victoria, BC or Halifax, NS – to say nothing of (parts of) Alberta (or Newfoundland, which was not a Canadian province in […]



Iggy observed: do old UK, US careers hint at arduous destiny in Canada?

Apr 2nd, 2010 | By | Category: In Brief

Geoffrey Stevens is a former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail who, now comfortably into his senior-citizen-hood (born 1942), teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph. He also writes for StraightGoods.ca – “Canada’s leading independent online newsmagazine.” Stevens’s latest StraightGoods column is entitled “Elections are lost, […]



Whatever happens with Senate reform in Canada, Washington is no model

Mar 30th, 2010 | By | Category: In Brief

The Canadian Press reports that the “Harper government is trying, for the fourth time in four years, to impose eight-year term limits on the Senate … Legislation introduced Monday [March 29, 2010] would limit senators to a single, non-renewable term and would apply to all senators appointed since October 2008.” On an earlier theory, this […]



Can McGuinty government’s public finance in troubled times work?

Mar 26th, 2010 | By | Category: In Brief

It is not easy to know just what to make of the world of public finance these days. And the 2010 Ontario Budget introduced on March 25 doesn’t help all that much. On March 23 one of the deans of the Ottawa press corps, Jeffrey Simpson, published an article in the Globe and Mail, provocatively […]



On a Sunday afternoon: cliffhanger in Washington .. Thailand .. niqab, Senate reform in Canada and Quebec

Mar 21st, 2010 | By | Category: In Brief

GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. SUNDAY, MARCH 21, 2010. As of just after 12 Noon today, the Washington Post online is reporting “House leaders express confidence they will secure enough votes to pass health bill.”Â  But it still seems no one knows for sure (well, maybe?). Up here north of the Great Lakes, we watch with some amazement. […]