It turns out that there’s not much to say about the first budget of Stephen Harper’s new Conservative minority government in Canada. Except that it does seem to definitively betray the clear but limited extent of the 2006 right-wing coup north of the unfortified border. For the intricate details of who gets what, and not, consult such reliable sources […]

It is interesting to compare the throne speech that Governor General Adrienne Clarkson read on behalf of Paul Martin’s new Liberal minority government, at the opening of the 38th Parliament of Canada on October 5, 2004, with the throne speech that Governor General Michaelle Jean has just read on behalf of Stephen Harper’s new Conservative […]

No doubt the strange vibrations coming out of Ottawa over the past two weeks could not have gone on too much longer. They were almost starting to eat away at what section 91 of the Constitution Act 1867 prescribes as “the Peace, Order, and good Government of Canada.” The trouble started on February 6, when the […]

At least many Canadians have to find it a bit odd that their new Conservative minority federal government is laying plans to ease up restrictions on long guns, just when the big news that won’t go away stateside is all about how Vice President Dick Cheney has accidentally shot one of his good friends with […]

The counterweights editors count themselves among those who do not vigorously oppose former Liberal cabinet minister David Emerson’s decision to cross the floor and join Stephen Harper’s new Conservative cabinet. But by the end of the new Harper government’s first week in office it seems clear enough that many others do. The diverse critics include […]

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2006. What a difference half-a-day makes. By noon yesterday Canada’s new Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper seemed to have made a surprisingly strong start. His new cabinet was controversial in some respects but also quite clever. Then, by the early evening his so-called new “parliamentary strategy” became clear. And it started to […]

TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2006. TORONTO. 12:30 AM (EST). The people of Canada, as John Ibbitson observed in his Globe and Mail column yesterday, are a shrewd and cagey lot. And they are just now completing a cleverly thought-out set of judgments on the questions their assorted wayward politicians have put before them, in the 2006 […]

One question raised by the new and surprising income-trust agonies of the “Team Martin” Liberals concerns the role of the RCMP in politics. Press sources have noted that it is highly unusual for the Mounties to announce a “criminal investigation into the possibility that Ottawa’s plans for income trusts were leaked,” at such a strategic […]

According to the People’s Daily Online in China, a “fierce battle” is “foreseen” in the Canadian federal election campaign now underway. A week into the contest, you can get the latest on all the party leaders’ travels and rapidly accumulating policy promises, nicely laid out in cyberspace by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Canadian Television […]

As of just after 6 PM, Saturday, November 12, journalist Sue Bailey is reporting that Canadian federal Conservative leader Stephen Harper, Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe, and New Democrat leader Jack Layton are to meet in Ottawa on Sunday, November 13, “to discuss the next moves in their bid to disrupt, if not topple” Paul […]