TORONTO. JUNE 30, 2010. 10:30 PM ET. Everything is clearer in retrospect. And only a few days after the latest G20 congregation has left this blandly civilized city with the secret heart of a loan shark, various fresh possibilities for judging the event a failure are blowing in the summer breeze. Two possibilities deserve particular […]
TORONTO. SUNDAY, JUNE 27, 2010. 11:15 PM ET. Customary Sunday dinner guests begged off this evening. They live just outside the G20 security zone downtown, and have to dig their car out of an alleyway. They did not want to confront the too many police on the streets near their house, who often seemed to […]
[UPDATED JANUARY 31, 2011, JULY 24, 2012]. I have been asked by the editors to jot down a few quick words of au revoir to the Canadian House of Commons, which is “preparing to rise today for its summer break”: (1) THE LATEST EKOS POLL also unveiled today shows, for cross-Canada popular vote (rounded to […]
[UPDATED BELOW – JUNE 16, 1:45 PM; JUNE 18, 2:40 PM]. So the crazed prospect that there just might be a snap Canadian federal election, triggered by some ultimate failure to agree on managing Afghan detainee documents, among the four political parties currently represented in Parliament, seems to have at least almost ended. We speculated […]
SUNDAY, JUNE 13, 2010. 1:15 AM. [UPDATED JUNE 14 BELOW.] A few of us came into the office on a Saturday night, to catch up on some World Cup TV, far from the madding crowds at home. One of us was also catching up on the latest Afghan detainee documents developments in the alleged nations’ […]
So the sudden rumour Warren Kinsella apparently started yesterday – that “serious people are involved in discussions at a serious level” about a Liberal-NDP merger – has now been officially squelched by both Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and New Democrat leader Jack Layton. We are, it would seem, back to Ignatieff’s “coalition if necessary but […]
Personally, I have always liked Michael Byers’s Liberal-NDP cease-fire proposal. But politics is the art of the possible. In Canada today the Liberals and the New Democrats are just not ready for even this limited form of vague alignment – and certainly not before the next federal election takes place, whenever that may be. In […]
[UPDATED APRIL 22, MAY 3, 2011]. In today’s Globe and Mail Brian Mulroney’s former chief of staff Norman Spector reports on an intriguing new Angus Reid Public Opinion poll, originally published in slightly more depth in today’s La Presse in Montreal. Among other things “the poll … asked Canadians how they would vote if the […]
The latest polls on Canadian federal politics clearly show the Harper Conservatives with the single largest share of the Canada-wide vote. (See, eg: Harris-Decima, May 18 ;Â EKOS, May 20 ; Harris-Decima, May 27 ; EKOS, May 27.) In all these same polls, however, the Harper Conservatives have a smaller share of the vote than […]
Jane Taber reports that “Conservatives are vigorously defending the appointment of CFL tycoon David Braley to the Senate against Liberal suggestions he basically bought his way into the Red Chamber through thousands of dollars of donations to Stephen Harper.” (Or, as The News from Pictou County, Nova Scotia has explained: “Braley, a businessman from Hamilton, […]
