OTTAWA. FEBRUARY 14, 2008. Local party activists, worried about whether or not to rent campaign offices, are having a tough time. Here yesterday, in the depths of what the late 19th century called “the last lumber village before the North Pole,” it seemed a near certainty that there will be a federal election soon. Today […]
UPDATED JANUARY 22. Like others up here in the land of ice and snow, we were mostly waiting for the (somewhat disappointing?) next installment of the US Democratic primaries at the Nevada caucuses on Saturday, January 19. But back home there’s also John Manley’s report on Canada’s future role in the NATO Afghanistan mission on January […]
The Canadian House of Commons Ethics Committee delivered the best possible holiday gift to the people of Canada as it closed down for the House’s seasonal vacation at the end of this past week. For the moment at least, our peace and goodwill will not be further distracted by any more sordid revelations about Brian […]
Some would say it is hard to think of another time in living memory when the fortunes of the once mighty Liberal Party of Canada looked bleaker than they do in the summer of 2007. The party’s late 20th century godfather Pierre Trudeau has just “topped an Internet poll as the worst Canadian.” And the […]
When something called the Anaheim Ducks beats the Ottawa Senators for the Stanley Cup in five games, you know that NHL hockey has definitively lost its luster as the great Canadian distinction. It may be that Canada will have to start relying instead on its more recent status as the home and native land of […]
“Your country as much as this country,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper told Canada’s brave soldiers, during his latest surprise visit to Afghanistan, “owes you a debt of gratitude and its unwavering support.” And with these words he summarized for some Canadians why he does not deserve to win a majority government in the next federal […]
Two new polls on federal party standings have confirmed recent instincts about the essential dead-calm in the cross-Canada political mood. Another election soon would probably just put the same people back in the same seats as last year’s election. And that may definitively banish all further fevered election speculation at least until the fall. What […]
As February 2007 heads into its last wintry days, Stephen Harper has been the new Conservative minority prime minister of Canada for just over a year. And for at least the past few weeks he has seemed to be doing almost alarmingly well. Then, very recently, he has also been reminding many Canadian people yet […]
In the continuing strange universe of Canadian federal politics a Leger poll of 1,500 voters from January 30 to February 4 has now shown 38% Conservatives and 31% Liberals. A “Leger poll two weeks earlier had put the Conservatives at 35% and the Liberals at 32%.” If this kind of trend settles in, Stephane Dion’s […]
Barack Obama, it was claimed somewhere on TV during the past few weeks, has aptly bemoaned that the problems of America today are so big, and its politics so small. In Canada we sometimes imagine that we are at least accidentally immune to the worst troubles of this sort. (Nothing up here, beyond the raw […]
