Geoffrey Stevens is a former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail who, now comfortably into his senior-citizen-hood (born 1942), teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph. He also writes for StraightGoods.ca – “Canada’s leading independent online newsmagazine.” Stevens’s latest StraightGoods column is entitled “Elections are lost, […]

The Canadian Press reports that the “Harper government is trying, for the fourth time in four years, to impose eight-year term limits on the Senate … Legislation introduced Monday [March 29, 2010] would limit senators to a single, non-renewable term and would apply to all senators appointed since October 2008.” On an earlier theory, this […]

The theory that consultants of any description will always at least try to give their clients what they want is nicely stiffened by a new “Harris-Decima survey for the [unabashedly right-wing] Manning Centre” (named after Preston and his father, etc, etc). This work of applied social science “conducted through phone interviews with 1,000 adult Canadians […]

OTTAWA. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 3, 2010. [UPDATED MARCH 4]. The Canadian federal parliament is back in the business of democracy, after its controversial prorogation late last year. There will be a throne speech from the Harper minority government, read by Governor General Jean in the Senate Chamber, at 2 PM today, and then a federal budget […]

“The Conservatives,” John Ivison at the National Post wrote this past Friday, “think an election is probably at least a year away and are trusting in the public’s political amnesia … They believe the only question that will matter by then is: Who do you trust to lead the country through a period of fiscal […]

Public debate on minority Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s decision to “prorogue” the Parliament of Canada, until March 3, 2010, at least seems to have grown to a greater degree more quickly than many who follow such obscure events at first imagined. And I am among those who have been pleasantly enough surprised. At the […]

Dr. Randall White’s deep-background (and apparently appallingly detailed and lengthy) investigation of the current great Canadian prorogation debate is now said to be almost complete. It will be posted without fail at some point this coming weekend – probably just before midnight, Sunday, January 17. Meanwhile, others among us are starting to wonder whether the […]

Our resident Ontario historian Randall White had a first swing at the Stephen Harper minority government’s latest prorogation of the Parliament of Canada last week. Since then the issue has been gathering more steam (in at least some old transcontinental railway towns, across our vast treasure-chest of natural and human resources, etc, etc). And Dr. […]

I don’t usually admire the Conservative guru Tim Powers. But his January 2 note of caution on recent Canadian federal election speculation – from no less than John Ibbitson, Don Newman, and Norman Spector – seems at least somewhat wise. (Even if he left Jim Travers off his list, probably because Travers published on January […]

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2009. [UPDATED DECEMBER 31]. So all the inside rumours about Canadian federal politics have now proved true. Today Canada’s minority Prime Minister Stephen Harper phoned Governor General Michaelle Jean and asked her to prorogue Parliament until March 3, 2010. And she has accepted the advice, as some would say she is bound […]