The ongoing trial of suspended Canadian Senator Mike Duffy has reminded some of us that back in the late spring of 2013 Randall White posted a note on this site about Harold Innis’s “more or less random observations on the Senate, and the related issue of Canadian regionalism” — which, taken together, “add up to […]
The April 25, 2014 Supreme Court of Canada response to the Harper government’s queries on Senate reform includes some poignant passages. This is one of them: “The Constitution Act, 1867 contemplates a specific structure for the federal Parliament, ‘similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom’ … The Act creates both a lower elected […]
So much is going on north of the Great Lakes these days that it’s hard to focus on any one thing. So here are quick notes on five things animating the late-afternoon water-cooler debates among we counterweights editors on Wednesday, April 23, 2014 : (1) On Monday Susanna Kelley, empress of the excellent ontarionewswatch.com, posted […]
Late last spring Kathleen Wynne got into some trouble in some parts of her most populous province for such headlines as “Ontario’s Wynne wants to see Senate reformed” and/or “Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne wants to reform Senate, not abolish it.” At least on some accounts of the mind of Ontario, this does seem like what […]
Justin “Trudeau’s Senate purge” — of all appointed Liberal senators from the Liberal parliamentary caucus — has been called “a tactical masterstroke,” a “bold move,” “a smart branding strategy,” and a “ push for a non-partisan Red Chamber.” My own assessment is that even the Globe and Mail editorial’s “One cheer for Mr. Trudeau’s Senate […]
Who really knows just what the current chapter of the Senate expense scandal in Ottawa means right now? I would not in any way pretend that I do. At the same time, it is clear enough that the protests of Brazeau, Duffy, and Wallin in the Red Chamber over the past week of October 21–25 […]
The news that “the Harper government’s most recent attempt at Senate reform has been declared unconstitutional” by the Quebec Court of Appeal ought to remind us that our Canadian history goes so much deeper than PM Harper’s beloved British monarchy. (Which is a good thing. According to a recent poll, “younger citizens — those aged […]
The “About” section at the top of the page explains that this site “was launched in the summer of 2004, in response to a dockside debate in the northern woods. The current counterweights editors are committed to carrying on for at least a full decade (until the summer of 2014, that is) — and possibly […]
What a week! As we write the proroguing Harper government is scheduled to present an allegedly six-point throne speech at 5 PM ET. And it finally seems that there is serious hope for an at least temporary deal to end the almost unbelievable dysfunctional deadlock in Washington. Meanwhile, others at street level are working to […]
It sometimes seems that little of real interest would happen in Canada without the first people who called themselves Canadians in Quebec. (This is also a good argument against real Quebec “separation,” for those Canadians outside Quebec who value interesting things.) To take just one current case in point, the first meeting of provincial premiers […]
