Just for starters, if there is not going to be a Canadian federal election this year at least one of the three opposition parties will have to vote with the Harper Conservative minority government on the budget “expected to be brought down in March.” Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff “says he wants to see the budget [...]
End-of-the-year assessments are already creeping into the news — and no doubt with good enough reason. (It is, after all, already December 22.) As I contemplate my own thoughts on one of the key subjects pursued in this space, I find myself wanting to say that, in my darker moments, I sometimes think 2010 may [...]
The news that “NL premier Danny Williams announces resignation” will bring different thoughts to different minds on the Canadian mainland. In Ontario, eg, the point that his “resignation comes before a provincial election scheduled for October” will prompt some to wonder yet again whether Dalton McGuinty, also facing a provincial election scheduled for October, and [...]
The Globe and Mail has just published some fresh but rather desultory seat projections for a next Canadian federal election, if it were held more or less right now. They “are based on a weighted average of three recent polls conducted by Angus-Reid, EKOS Research and Ipsos-Reid between Sept. 21 and Sept. 28, and including [...]
“Well, it’s a long, long time from May to December. But the days grow short when you reach September.” The Canadian House of Commons did not return from its leisurely summer vacation until Monday, September 20 (also the day when “Dancing With the Stars” started its new season in the USA). But even before the [...]
UPDATED JULY 21 [see below]. My first reaction to the evolving long-form census issue in Canadian federal politics was stark disbelief. Noting how it has progressed hand in hand with the rising heat in this apparently hotter-than-ever-before summer, however, I have come to see it as a rational phenomenon among people suffering from increasing degrees [...]
Public debate on minority Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s decision to “prorogue” the Parliament of Canada, until March 3, 2010, at least seems to have grown to a greater degree more quickly than many who follow such obscure events at first imagined. And I am among those who have been pleasantly enough surprised. At the [...]
These are not easy days for aspiring progressive voters in Canadian federal politics, at the edge of four by-elections that actually will happen on Monday, November 9. According to the October 29 EKOS poll, eg: “Stephen Harper’s federal Conservatives lead the second-place Liberals by a double-digit margin for the fourth week in a row, suggesting [...]
It is still not altogether clear that there will actually be a Canadian federal election this fall. But two contradictory trends have developed over the past few days, as all who are still interested await the return of Parliament on Monday, September 14. First, among those closest to the ground in Ottawa there appears to [...]
On the Calgary Herald website there is a photograph of “Prime Minister Stephen Harper at a news conference in Calgary Sept. 1, 2009” — just after Michael Ignatieff announced “Liberals will vote against government.” And it is at least arguable that the prime minister looks a little like a cat who has just swallowed the [...]
