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 […]

The polling evidence for the impact of the so-called  Guergis-Jaffer scandal on party standings in Canadian federal politics is … well, volatile at best, it would seem. For the moment, in any case. Who knows just what the next half-hour may bring? For the deep background note the two counterweights items below: “Misadventures of Miss […]

OTTAWA. APRIL 22, 2010. Rahim Jaffer, loving husband of former Conservative junior cabinet minister (and Miss Huronia) Helena Guergis, appeared before the government operations committee of the Canadian House of Commons yesterday. The early reviews are in, and they are not good. See, eg, Don Martin, poet laureate of Stephen Harper’s Ottawa (well, sort of: […]

[UPDATED APRIL 20]. Ordinarily I don’t like to discuss political scandals. I over-value the illusion that I am higher-minded than all that. Serious public policy debate is at least what ought to count in the real world of democratic politics, etc, etc. (And if we the people don’t take this high-minded view, who will? Certainly […]

UPDATED MAY 2. Three weeks ago it seemed clear that Stephen Harper would not be extending the excellent Michaelle Jean’s customary five-year term in office. He would instead appoint a new Governor General of Canada soon enough – at the latest before Mme Jean’s official best-before date expires at the end of September. Today we […]

Ever since the 1980s the modern quest to at last reform The Unreformed Senate of Canada has had its main base in Western Canada (with a brief variation on the theme from Clyde Wells in Newfoundland, in the last days of the Meech Lake Accord). Now in minority PM  Harper’s strange spring of 2010, there […]