This past Friday, December 11, 2009 the British Columbia government and the Haida First Nation signed a “broad-reaching land use and economic development agreement that included officially renaming the Queen Charlotte Islands with the traditional native name Haida Gwaii.” The deal will strengthen the Haida First Nation in the regional economy of Canada’s Pacific Coast. […]

You could say that current plots to “harmonize” the federal Goods and Services Tax (GST) with the Provincial Sales Tax (PST) into one more efficient HST (Harmonized Sales Tax) are only afoot in two of Canada’s 10 provinces – and thus of only slight interest Canada-wide. But the two provinces involved, Ontario and British Columbia, […]

TORONTO. SUNDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2009. Yesterday marked the 172nd anniversary of William Lyon Mackenzie’s ill-fated (and no doubt somewhat comic-operetta) march down Yonge Street in a much earlier incarnation of this city – the height, as it were, of the Upper Canadian Rebellion of 1837. On a perhaps vaguely related but much more recent wave […]

It seems that the great Tiger Woods is just getting in deeper and deeper. See, e.g., today’s Vancouver Sun: “Tiger Woods voicemail to alleged TV girlfriend released, third woman named as Tiger apologizes.”Â  Or the Yahoo Canada site: “Golfer who introduced Elin to Tiger tees off on Woods.” To save his reputation someone is going […]

[UPDATED OCTOBER 22]. Yesterday Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff told reporters that “we won’t support the government but, at the same time, we won’t try to defeat the government each time” the opportunity arises either. Or, the “Liberals will have at least three more opposition days before Christmas but … they won’t use those days to […]

BRITANNIA VILLAGE, ONTARIO. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2009. According to some imperfect plan apparently devised some months ago now, this was supposed to be the week when the Ignatieff Liberals led the majority opposition parties of the 40th Parliament of Canada in bringing down the Harper Conservative government. Instead: “The House of Commons voted 144-117 on […]

We still have [Dr.] Frank Bunting hard at work on a deep think-piece about the real prospects of yet another Canadian federal election this fall. But he has just told us that everything has been suddenly blurred by two conflicting opinion polls that came out at the start of this week. An Ipsos Reid survey, […]

The Vancouver Sun thinks “A Halloween election would be … frightening.” Prime Minister Harper himself has said “I can assure you that I do not intend to trigger an election.” (Whatever that means?) Another Canadian federal election may nonetheless be upon us before the end of 2009. We have commissioned a deeper report from our […]