FRIDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2008. 10:00 PM ET. The great Canadian political crisis of 2008, that started with the Conservative minority government’s financial update on November 27, is at last disappearing into the year-end holiday season. And already obituaries are being written for the alternative Liberal-New Democrat governing coalition, backed by the Bloc Quebecois – which […]
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2008. 11:30 PM ET. [UPDATED DECEMBER 1 BELOW]. All day today CTV Newsnet has been breathlessly broadcasting that, on the basis of a tape of a “telephone-conference meeting” that Jack Layton held “with his caucus Saturday morning” (surreptitiously recorded by the Conservatives), the “New Democrats and Bloc Quebecois held talks to form […]
The term “Speech from the Throne” itself reminds us that the present confederation began as the mere first self-governing dominion of the British empire – back in “the era of Queen Victoria,” and so forth (as the excellent Governor General Michaelle Jean put it on the afternoon of Wednesday, February 19, 2008). And the peculiar […]
It’s hard to keep your mind focused on just what Stephen Harper’s new cabinet in Ottawa may mean, with the biggest US general election in your lifetime just a day away. As the Calgary Herald reported this morning, in Canada’s current most economically prosperous province, even up here the duel in the sun between Senators […]
OCTOBER 14, 11:20 PM. [UPDATED OCTOBER 15 BELOW]. Some will say it`s a little too close to a Conservative majority for comfort. The exact results of Canada’s 40th federal election remain uncertain at this still comparatively early hour. But it is quite clear that Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have done considerably better than some of us […]
[UPDATED OCTOBER 5, 6].With a mere matter of days left in the still rather obscure Canadian federal election campaign, desperation is setting in on various fronts. And why not join the party? Many progressive voters up here in the true north strong and free do not want a Conservative majority in the 40th Parliament whose exact […]
Barbara Yaffe at the Vancouver Sun writes: “We should have known an election was in the cards. Conservatives lately have been mailing a blizzard of political flyers across the country.” But back here on the old east-end Toronto waterfront we seem to have escaped this particular storm. No doubt, no one in Stephen Harper’s party imagines […]
OTTAWA. AUGUST 15, 2008. [UPDATED AUGUST 18]. So now Canada’s Conservative minority Prime Minister Stephen Harper “hints he may force election,” “threatens election to end ‘dysfunction’,” and/or “hints he will engineer his government’s defeat, trigger fall election.” At the same time, a new poll suggests the Conservatives “could have difficulty maintaining their minority government, much […]
On Saturday, June 7 it was reported that “ranking members of the Liberal caucus this week repeatedly pushed Stephane Dion to trigger a federal election campaign next week, but the Liberal Leader rebuffed their pleas.” By the following Monday, June 9 a “Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey compared attitudes toward the Tories and Liberals in a […]
UPDATED MAY 28. People sometimes ask why Quebec is so important for Canada’s past, present, and future. And every now and then someone like Julie Couillard – who, she has just stressed on TV, is “definitely not a bikers’ chick” – comes along to make the answer clear. Until her dynamic intervention on the evening […]
