COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS NOTE : One bright feature of the bubbling 21st century Canadian republican movement is the way it brings together many different sides of life in Canada today. On this site we are resolute Canadian republicans, but we don’t always agree with other equally resolute fellow republican friends. We believe Canada should be actively […]

It’s the early days of August — “for the people and their favourite islands.” Beyond the great but too often sad entertainment of current American history next door, no Canadian of any sense is thinking about anything at all serious. And that certainly goes double for the Canadian federal election this coming October 21. Photographs […]

(1) Opinion polls certainly do suggest that the Justin Trudeau Liberals in Canada have serious problems right now. It is also true that a late April 2015 Abacus poll shows vaguely comparable results to a 2019 Angus Reid poll for broadly the same time of year. In late April 2015 Abacus was reporting Cons 36%, […]

[UPDATED FEBRUARY 18. SEE BELOW]. On Valentine’s Day 2019 it is hard to know just what to make of the first prime minister of the 1867 confederation of British North American Provinces now known as Canada. (Well … my thoughts here are actually being posted just after Valentine’s Day, but that’s just because I’m a […]

One counterweights item from the year now ending that has seen fresh visits in the most recent past is Randall White’s “Can Justin Trudeau be defeated in the next Canadian federal election?,” first posted back on May 8, 2018. In the new age of fixed-date elections (sort of) the campaign for the 43rd Canadian federal […]

Has the prime minister of Canada reached rock bottom in his current troubles when no less than the UK-based Guardian complains : “Justin Trudeau is waging a phony war against inequality”? And, after some two months too long in the wilderness, does Prime Minister Trudeau (II) now have nowhere to go but up?  (Or is […]

GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. DECEMBER 4, 2017. [UPDATED DECEMBER 11]. Who can doubt that we are now living in challenging times — especially in those realms of fake and other news where “Canada’s top party school” also qualifies as one of the “10 Wildest Party Schools in North America”? (Even as “Sex assault allegations place NS university’s […]

Not too long before the November 4 swearing-in ceremony finally began at Rideau Hall, the CBC TV cameras came to rest briefly on Justin Trudeau’s younger brother Alexandre (aka Sacha), and his wife Zoe and their three children. They were quietly slipping into their seats, in the row just behind the row where the new […]

As we write in the early morning on Tuesday, October 20, 2015, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have won 184 seats in the Canadian House of Commons with 39.5% of the cross-Canada popular vote. (A mere 170 seats is required for a bare majority government : Mr. Trudeau is the new prime minister elect of Canada.) The […]

[UPDATED AUG 18TH]. The second week in the long official campaign for the Canadian federal election of 2015 is over. And the congenital regional diversity of it all is what sticks in my mind right now. I’m watching from the old East Toronto, close to the most easterly of the Great Lakes. Reading “Liberal leader […]