Last Tuesday, June 21, 2011, the new Harper majority government’s Bill C7, the Senate Reform Act, had its first reading – not all that long, as it turned out, before the new 41st Parliament of Canada (following “the longest filibuster in Canadian history over back-to-work legislation”) – ran for the exits and the annual summer […]

[UPDATED JUNE 20]. More than two weeks ago, the lovely Althia Raj warned that trouble for the latest Stephen Harper step by step Senate reform adventures was brewing among the new Tory majority in the unreformed Senate of Canada itself (“Conservative senators balking at Senate reform agenda: sources”). Now a fresh wave of similar reports […]

Michael Ignatieff himself may have the best explanation of why he failed to connect with voters in the Canadian federal election of 2011. In the preface to his CBC Massey lectures on The Rights Revolution in Canada, written in September 2000, he worried that “I am writing about the rights talk of a country of […]

[UPDATED MARCH 7, 9, 11, 16, 25, 30, APRIL 5, 8, 11, 13, 22, MAY 1, 3]. Le Devoir, in the most politically sophisticated region of  Canada’s wonderland, may have already pronounced the simplest truth (or dare) on the Canadian federal election of 2011: “Flaherty ferme la porte au compromis sur le budget … Le […]

This past Tuesday, January 11, was John A. Macdonald’s birthday (and, intriguingly enough, also Jean Chrétien’s). Macdonald, in case you’ve forgotten (as almost half those Canadians consulted in a 2001 survey had) was the first prime minister of the present confederation in Canada – and remains “the only Canadian Prime Minister to win six majority […]

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.”Â  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 […]