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 ;  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, […]

In Drummondville, Québec over the past weekend “Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois … drew a parallel between her party’s goal of making Québec a sovereign country and the Montréal Canadiens’ quest for the Stanley Cup. ‘The whole nation is vibrating in tune with a team of players who were called too small, not talented enough, […]

It is no surprise that what you make of the deal on Afghan detainee documents finally cooked up by MPs from all four federal political parties in Canada (at the last minute, this past Friday) depends on who you are and where you sit … According to John Ibbitson at the Globe and Mail – […]

Le Devoir may have said it best, in Canada’s other official language: “Qui l’eût cru? … Le Canadien achève les Penguins, une première demi-finale depuis 1993.”Â  In any event, it used to be said that hockey and politics are what keeps Canada going. And the sudden surprise of Montreal’s cinderella tail end of yet another […]

If you support some workable version of Senate reform in Canada – as I have for many years  myself – you are bound to in some degree support the Harper minority government’s latest stab in the dark at step-by-step advance on a democratically elected “upper house” of parliament in Ottawa. Whatever else, you have to […]

One thing that’s always been a bit hard to understand about the Harper minority government’s reluctance to release the now fabled “Afghan detainee documents” in Canada is why the prime minister should be quite so worried? It wasn’t his minority government that started the current Canadian adventure in Afghanistan. And, as Tasha Kheiriddin at the […]