Graham Fraser, Canada’s commissioner of official languages, has kicked off a bit of a kerfuffle in the nation’s capital over a recently announced plan to investigate the state of bilingualism in the national capital region, a research study which would…
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Pample the Moose: Federalism – It’s not just for Centralizers any more!
As an addendum to yesterday’s post, I see that Nycole Turmel has re-stated her commitment to federalism, and plans to end her membership in the sovereignist Quebec Solidaire. But here’s the central issue for me, as someone who teaches courses on Canad…
Continue readingPample the Moose: Nycole Turmel, meet Jean Lapierre
Gosh, the Twitterverse is atweet today with spin and counter-spin on Daniel Leblanc’s article in the Globe and Mail about interim NDP leader Nycole Turmel’s very recent membership in the Bloc Quebecois. Some partisans are crying foul and alleging that…
Continue readingPample the Moose: Canada Day 144
As long-time readers of this blog may know, I spent many years researching the history of Canada Day celebrations, especially the ones funded by the federal government and those hosted in Ottawa. The project is pretty much wrapped up now, having yield…
Continue readingPample the Moose: Rating the Prime Ministers
Just a quick post to link to this Maclean’s article by Stephen Azzi and Norman Hillmer in which they discuss the results of a poll rating Canada’s Prime Ministers, past and present. Interesting to see Wilfrid Laurier topping the results this time arou…
Continue readingPample the Moose: Bryan Hayday (1952-2011)
I’m going to be away from blogging, probably for a while. My Dad, Bryan Hayday, passed away suddenly on Thursday night, at the age of 59.His obituaries are in the Globe and the Toronto Star. At some point in the future, I’m hoping to be able to write…
Continue readingPample the Moose: Cabinet and Senate: Ongoing bad behaviour is stability, of a sort
I don’t have much to observe about today’s developments in federal politics, except to say that I am profoundly unsurprised, unlike the madly twittering press corps. Harper’s favorite cabinet ministers, such as Baird and Clement, got prime posts. Har…
Continue readingPample the Moose: Quebec NDP: The Kids [Could Be] All Right
Monday was an exciting night for Quebec university NDP clubs, as a number of members of their executives were elected to the House of Commons, amidst a wave that elected NDP members in almost 80% of Quebec’s ridings (on the strength of about 43% of the…
Continue readingPample the Moose: Don’t blame Guelph. We voted for Kodos!
Bah! Our electoral system has given a party that won 40% of the vote from the 61% of eligible voters who cast ballots a majority of seats in the House of Commons, and they’ve got control of the Senate as well. And as far as I can tell, electoral refo…
Continue readingPample the Moose: Election-day shenanigans in Guelph
Like a good citizen, I headed out bright and early this morning to my local polling station to vote this morning. There was no line-up, but a steady flow of people in and out to the various booths. My partner reported the array of Conservative signs …
Continue readingPample the Moose: Election Prediction? Beats Me!
Well, this election has turned into quite the roller-coaster ride, hasn’t it? Depending on your pollster of choice, we’re either headed for an historic NDP breakthrough or a Conservative majority. Confused? Me too. As in past years, I’m participati…
Continue readingPample the Moose: In Memoriam: John T. (Jack) Saywell, 1929-2011
I was saddened this morning to learn that Jack Saywell, the widely-acknowledged founder of York University’s history department and an emininent legal and constitutional historian, passed away last week. Saywell has been a hugely influential presence …
Continue readingPample the Moose: NDP in Quebec: Who are these prospective MPs?
With all the excitement/panic/drama surrounding the apparent NDP wave in Quebec, it’s fair to wonder who might suddenly become the new crop of MPs from Quebec if polling data translates into seats in the House of Commons. I, for one, am very curious. Here in Guelph, the NDP ran fourth in the 2008 election, and even today, a week before the election, there is still no candidate bio on the website for the local candidate, Bobbi Stewart. I have no idea from the website who she is, other than the election preparedness chair for the local riding association.If that’s the case in Ontario, it’s no surprise that speculation is rampant about the Quebec crop of candidates for the party. The Globe and Mail has started digging, and has turned up at least a handful of university students. I’m not surprised at all. When I volunteered for the local NDP candidate in Outremont in the 2004 election, I was rather surprised to discover that the entire provincial campaign was being run out of a single office on St. Laurent Blvd, and that most of the candidates for the province were in fact the campaign management team, based almost entirely out of Montreal, many of them university students, and most of them under thirty years of age. A quick glance through the list of candidates seems to indicate that this is again the case in at least a sizeable number of ridings.As a person who genuinely would love to see the NDP replace the Bloc as the choice of Quebec voters, I’m hoping that some of the blue seats in that province will turn orange, and that the newly elected MPs will do a good job. It’s just that nagging memory of the ADQ surge to become the official opposition in Quebec in 2007 that has me a little concerned of what could happen when a series of placeholder candidates suddenly become MPs. Let’s just say that I’m hopeful, yet concerned…
Continue readingPample the Moose: An Orange Revolution in Quebec: The NDP in la belle province
I’m somewhat surprised by the latest CROP and Ekos polls coming out of Quebec, showing the NDP cruising into first place, and the Bloc vote steadily falling. But as I’ll get to later in this post, there are good historical reasons to explain this tren…
Continue readingPample the Moose: Election 2011: Thoughts on "Truthiness" and Evidence-Based Policy
Just a quick post today to link to a blogpost I was invited to contribute to canada.com’s Decision Canada election website. In it, I reflect on recent Conservative changes to programs such as the long-form census and the court challenges program which…
Continue readingPample the Moose: James Moore: How far back is going too far back?
In the interests of a bit of non-partisanship, I’m going to call out the Liberals today for a tactic I find distasteful that was used in BC. Liberals in the riding of heritage minister James Moore have released a column that he wrote in a student nesp…
Continue readingPample the Moose: U of Guelph votes will count!
Elections Canada has released a Solomonesque public statement on the University of Guelph voting controversy. Of greatest interest is the fact that the student votes will be counted, and are considered to have been cast in a manner that respects the C…
Continue readingPample the Moose: Guelph Conservatives continue to try to exclude youth voters
It’s really quite mind-boggling to think what must be going through the thinking processes of Guelph Conservative candidate Marty Burke’s campaign team. First, they make a point of keeping members of the U of Guelph vote mob away from Harper’s rally. …
Continue readingPample the Moose: Post-debate musings
One of the nice perks of being bilingual is that you can watch Canada’s political leaders debate in both languages without having to listen to their interpreters. I watched both Tuesday’s English-language debate and Wednesday’s French-language debate….
Continue readingPample the Moose: Voter engagement. (or Week 2 wrap-up)
Last week, just before the beginning of my second- and third-year Canadian history courses, I played the following Rick Mercer clip: Youth voting has plummetted over the past couple of decades, and falls well below the national average. Indeed, Canadi…
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