I sometimes think stiffening Canadian sovereignty in those parts of the Arctic north customarily marked as Canadian territory on Canadian maps is one of the three almost impressive things that Stephen’s Harper’s Conservative minority government has done, since it first came to office on February 6, 2006. The other two are the parliamentary recognition of […]
Our very first counterweights article, “John Ibbitson’s next Canada,” appeared on August 19, 2004 – exactly six years ago today. Since then the “next Canada” Mr. Ibbitson was talking about has actually arrived, with the accession of the Stephen Harper minority government in Ottawa, in February 2006. Our own assessment in August 2010 (like that […]
This past Friday marked the 20th anniversary of Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe’s August 13, 1990 by-election victory in the eastern downtown Montreal riding of Laurier–Sainte-Marie. Even with a maternal grandfather from the United Kingdom, M. Duceppe was, so to speak, the first Canadian federal MP to be elected as an ostensibly “sovereigntist” BQ partisan. […]
“We know,” PM Harper told his Conservative summer caucus last week: “there are some in the opposition coalition again threatening an election, but colleagues, that is not what Canadians want.” And just today the sweetheart of Sparks Street Jane Taber is reporting that “Michael Ignatieff is under attack from Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, who are accusing […]
Two days ago NDP guru Brian Topp opined that there was only a 40% chance of a Canadian federal election this fall. Do the somewhat intriguing results of the latest EKOS poll, released today, suggest anything that might change this opinion? The immediate shortest answer is probably no. Today’s EKOS results are not all that […]
[UPDATED AUGUST 6]. Does it make any difference to the rest of Canada (to say nothing of the still wider global village) just who will be elected mayor of Canada’s current biggest city this coming October 25, 2010? The obvious answer is no, of course not. “Let’s All Hate Toronto,” and all that. But then […]
I rarely agree with Peter Worthington, the right-wing militarist journalist who has done so much for the Toronto Sun. But I think he is onto something in the case of Captain Robert Semrau. A native of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Captain Semrau was granted an “exemplary discharge” from the British army before joining the Canadian forces. […]
UPDATED JULY 21 [see below]. My first reaction to the evolving long-form census issue in Canadian federal politics was stark disbelief. Noting how it has progressed hand in hand with the rising heat in this apparently hotter-than-ever-before summer, however, I have come to see it as a rational phenomenon among people suffering from increasing degrees […]
The impossible dream of a single national securities regulator for Canada summarizes many intractable problems of our congenitally elusive Canadian national unity in the early 21st century. And as the Reuters agency has just explained: “Canada’s current minority Conservative government has come closer than any of its predecessors to launching” such an organization. But “it […]
“Why are you keeping these things if you’re never going to look at them again?” It’s a good question. So I recently re-read Jonathan Raban’s review of The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime by the estimable William Langewiesche, in the August 12, 2004 issue of the New York Review of Books. […]
