I know this already too-long meditation on Canada’s new Conservative government (with special reference to its aboriginal policy failings) is supposed to have ended. But the Canada-US softwood lumber trade deal announced late on Thursday, April 27 begs for a final exception to the rule. You can find the details of the deal tidily  summarized in The New York Times, The […]

Would there be so much talk these days about “the economic capital of Canada rapidly moving west” (Thomas Courchene in the latest Inside Queen’s Park newsletter), if the 2006 election had delivered another Ontario-dominated Liberal minority government instead of a new Alberta-dominated Conservative minority government in Ottawa? Or, do Canadians have a new minority Conservative government because oil-rich Calgary and […]

Canada’s new federal health minister Tony Clement has rejected suggestions that the current surge of provincial government interest in public health care reform has been “emboldened by the election of a Tory government” in Ottawa.But provocative fresh talk about allowing “a mix of private and public health-care delivery, as long as health care remains publicly funded […]

Even if you agree that the Canadian people in their collective wisdom made a shrewd and possibly  even cunning decision on January 23, from one end of the ideological spectrum there was also an inevitable sadness. Say whatever else you like, Canada has now lost its quiet distinction as one North American place where some version of the progressive cause […]

To help kick off the new year, the BC Prince of Pot Marc Emery has just been voted one of Frank magazine’s Top 100 Canadian Wankers to Watch in 2006. And this seems a good opportunity to update the counterweights editors’ last report on their own surveillance of the Emery political career, early this past […]

However you look at it, 2005 is ending with a variety of news confirming how Canadian Liberal leader Paul Martin was right enough when he urged that the Boxing day shootings in Toronto show the “challenge” of the near future. It is at least one kind of progress that this now applies to Canada as […]

Quick notes on … TORONTO SHOOTINGS AND CANADIAN VOTERS … CANADIAN ELECTION CAMPAIGN AT THE HALFWAY POINT … TROUBLE ON THE BORDERS IN NAFTA … CANADIAN ELECTION DEBATES … KARLA HOMOLKA MOVIE … BC AND THE CANADIAN ELECTION … IRAQ ELECTION … MARK CRISPIN MILLER ON DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA TODAY … TORONTO SHOOTINGS AND CANADIAN VOTERS. After a […]

If you have been around since the late 1940s, you just might be prompted to reflect about the differences between what very definitely just used to be called Christmas, now and then. And this year the gap seems almost so wide that someone in some proper position of authority probably ought to call the whole […]

On his way to the Asia-Pacific economic summit in South Korea this week, Canadian prime minister Paul Martin “expressed relief at being out of the country.” And he told the reporters on the plane with him: “I think it is nice to get away from politics. I think there just has been too much tactics and […]

If you aren’t confused by the recent polls on Canadian federal politics – with the first Gomery report on the Liberal sponsorship scandal due this coming Tuesday, November 1 – you haven’t been paying attention.  On our current rough count of surveys noted in the media, since about mid-September the Liberals have been successively reported as […]