The classic two solitudes in Canada are French and English. But today’s blogosphere is full of the other great schism between East and West. And, as crowds in Kabul, Afghanistan shout “Death to America,” the supermarket tabloids say George W. Bush has taken up drinking again. Meanwhile, this week the Western Canadian premiers are talking […]

Observers of the new Western quiet revolution in Canadian federal politics have now had time to catch a little breath. And it seems increasingly apparent that, yet again, the most surprisingly ironic things are happening in Quebec. It shouldn’t be surprising that Stephen Harper’s first Conservative minority budget will be sailing through Parliament this evening, compliments of […]

The present Canadian Senate, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has aptly said, is “a relic of the 19th century.” And there are some enlightened voters in Canada’s most populous province who do believe in the confused cause of Senate reform – as a long-term nation-building solution to the increasingly acute problems of regionalism in the diverse […]

How many of what the 2001 Census called the 20 fastest-growing “census subdivisions” in Canada’s most populous province of Ontario can you name? If you guess the City of Vaughan, just north of Toronto, you are not doing too badly. That was number 20. If you go on to guess the Town of Wasaga Beach on Georgian Bay, you deserve a small […]

Sunday, October 30 will mark the 10th anniversary of the 1995 Quebec sovereignty referendum. And the Globe and Mail and CTV News have commissioned the Strategic Counsel to conduct a poll on how Quebeckers and other Canadians see the issue today. The results? “Ten years after the referendum that almost broke Canada in two, Quebeckers say […]

VANCOUVER, Wednesday, August 3, 2005 [UPDATED TO MONDAY, AUGUST 8]. Canada’s so-called “Prince of Pot” Marc Emery, who just might be extradited to the US on drug and money-laundering charges, has now been granted bail (at $50,000) by a BC Supreme Court judge.Emery and his BC Marijuana Party colleagues, Michelle Rainey-Fenkarek and Gregory Williams, have […]

George W. Bush has just been off trying to sell his own new-old gospel of freedom and liberty in the global village to the old world in Europe.Down several notches in the intergovernmental hierarchy, Paul Martin’s Liberals have just brought in a budget that tries to spread love all across Canada, by giving everyone something, and no one […]

From inside the assorted urban, suburban, and exurban walls of Canada’s current largest metropolis it is hard to know just what to make of Newfoundland premier Danny Williams’s holiday season “flag war over equalization payments.” To review the background quickly, under Part III, Section 36 of the Constitution Act 1982, tax dollars from more fortunate […]

Democracy, according to much hyperbole in the air these days, is or ought to be the one thing we can all agree on. (As in the “Democracy Plaza” established by NBC at Rockefeller Center in New York, to help report on the perhaps somewhat historic US election of 2004.) In Canada especially we have assorted […]

Someone at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation thought it would be useful for Neil Macdonald to interview US neo-con author Ann Coulter on his new “Face to Face” TV show recently. He did not seem to dent her conviction that she is right about everything. But he did annoy her visibly a few times. Finally Ms. […]