Six recent articles, mostly but not entirely from the Globe and Mail, raise some provocative prospects about Ontario’s changing role in the Canadian confederation: “Ontario Liberals brace for a tumultuous year” (Adam Radwanski) ; “Flaherty’s corporate-tax plan hits stumbling block in Ontario” (Bill Curry) ; “Saving John McCallum’s seat will be true measure of Liberal […]

On various scores 2011 seems to at least most of us here to have been one of those years that actually can be seriously described as a hinge of fate (well … more or less). And so over the past few weeks everyone in the office or otherwise attached to this somewhat crazed but still […]

I see from an article in yesterday’s Toronto Star that Mitt Romney, current contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination among the Yankees to the south of us, “made the 12-hour drive from Boston to Grand Bend [Ontario] with the family dog strapped to the roof of his car,” in the summer of 1983. This […]

Strictly speaking, counterweights turned seven years old this past summer. Our very first full-length article, “John Ibbitson’s next Canada” (by Randall White) appeared on August 19, 2004. We very quietly marked our seventh birthday, as it were, with “Just what was PM Harper thinking .. how about ‘Canadian Navy, Air Force Name Change Divides NDP […]

There’s a lot of talk about the troubled Ontario regional economy lately, that tries to paint government “big spenders” as the crucial problem.  (See, eg, Terence Corcoran’s somewhat alarmist National Post article on “Ontario gets closer to EU-style crisis.”) A few recent reports in the Globe and Mail, however, point to some crucial trends in […]

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF ONTARIO, QUEEN’S PARK, TORONTO. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2011. Ontario throne speeches are seldom inspiring – or, some cynics might say, even interesting. The test of a good speech of this sort (others have already long ago explained) is that you can drop its unbound pages on the floor, pick them up in […]

[UPDATED 4 PM]. Here is the new “Ontario Liberal Cabinet” that will be sworn in today, in the wake of the October 6, 2011 provincial election. It has a lean 22 members, down by six from its immediate predecessor’s 28: * Dalton McGuinty: Premier, Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs * Jim Bradley: Minister of the Environment […]

On TV last night someone (Robin Sears?) called the Ontario provincial election of 2011 bittersweet for all contenders, and that seems a good summary to me. There is a chance of last-minute ups and downs as I write just short of 1 AM on the morning of October 7, but apparently not too much. As […]

GANATSEKWYAGON, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2011, 1:30 AM [UPDATED 12 NOON, 4:40 PM] . The Robert Ghiz Liberals have held on handsomely enough in in Canada’s least populous and geographically smallest province of Prince Edward Island (aka Abegweit and then ÃŽle Saint-Jean in earlier eras).  And Greg Selinger’s New Democrats have now done the same in […]

Prince Edward Island and the Northwest Territories are voting today. The people of Ontario have to wait until Thursday. But according to the Toronto Star yesterday: “Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty is ruling out any possible arrangement with another party to remain in power after Thursday’s election … With polls suggesting Ontarians are poised to vote […]