Craig Wallace writes that you can’t run a country on outrage and insults. But that, apparently, is what Pierre Poilievre intends to do. Wallace writes: If recent polls remain the same, sometime between now and October 2025 Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) Leader Pierre Poilievre will become Canada’s next prime
Continue readingAuthor: Owen Gray
Northern Reflections: Today’s The Day
Today’s the day Donald Trump goes to criminal court. Jennifer Rubin writes: The day has finally arrived for the historic trial in Manhattan of Donald Trump on charges of falsifying business documents. The case concerns Trump’s scheme to conceal embarrassing information from voters in the 2016 election. Derided as a
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Idiocy — Pure In Simple
Arizona women are now living with an anti-abortion law that was passed in 1864 before they had the right to vote. Dana Milbank writes: Trump accurately boasts that “I was able to kill Roe v. Wade” and “I was proudly the person responsible.” As a result of his achievement, conservatives
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: The Dumbest
Max Fawcett writes that Doug Ford is dumbing down Ontario: At an announcement for a new medical school at York University, Ford suggested that he wanted to get rid of all the province’s international post-secondary students. It does not appear to have occurred to Ford that those students currently make
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: A Weird, Weird World
Fifty years ago, Louis Armstrong had a big hit singing “What A Wonderful World.” That song doesn’t characterize the world we live in. Susan Riley writes: Anyone looking for evidence that we live in a post-policy, post-fact, increasingly incoherent political moment only needs to look at the war against the
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Here Come The Nutbars
InfoWars nutbar Alex Jones has endorsed Pierre Poilievre. Emily Leedham writes: Pierre Poilievre has earned a new admirer — conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Jones, who regularly promotes conspiracy theories and hateful rhetoric through his website InfoWars, took time during a recent broadcast to heap praise on Canada’s newly elected Conservative
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Climate Fools
Max Fawcett writes that Conservative climate policy is a joke: There’s a growing irony in the carbon tax increase falling on April Fools’ Day every year, since it now offers an annual reminder of just what a joke the Conservative Party of Canada’s approach to climate change has become. As
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Holy, Holy, Holy
Donald Trump is hawking Bibles. Michael Harris writes: It wasn’t cologne. It wasn’t those $399 Never Surrender gold high-top running shoes. It wasn’t a T-shirt featuring Teflon Don’s mugshot. It wasn’t even dubious steaks, or third-rate wine. It was the Bible. And Pastor Trump was making it available in
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Lies Can Get You A Long Way
Pierre Poilievre keeps repeating a lie. Bruce Arthur writes: The top issue facing Canadians right now, if you ask Canadians, is affordability. Inflation rose, and is falling to a new, higher floor. Housing costs are the end of the fuse on a time bomb. It’s tough out there for a
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: A Contrary View
If the polls are to be believed, we are headed for a Conservative juggernaut. Susan Riley isn’t so sure: Lurking somewhere between despair and denial, you can spot tiny glimmers of hope for non-Conservative voters in this country—in what is, admittedly, an otherwise dire and discouraging political landscape. These glimmers
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Wisdom That Will Be Missed
On the day of Brian Mulroney’s state funeral, Catherine McKenna writes that Brian Mulroney was wise in a way that today’s Conservatives aren’t: In 1987, U.S. president Ronald Reagan and prime minister Brian Mulroney stood side by side to announce the Montreal Protocol, one of the world’s most successful treaties,
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: The Carbon Tax: In Memorium
Max Fawcett writes that the carbon tax is dead: How did the Trudeau government’s signature climate policy turn into a political albatross? As Ernest Hemingway might say: gradually, then suddenly. Pierre Poilievre’s pledge to “axe the tax” has helped him open up an increasingly massive lead in the polls, while
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: No Bosom Buddies
You might think that, if Pierre Poilievre becomes prime minister, Doug Ford would be ecstatic. Martin Regg Cohn writes that such is not the case: By rights, these two right-wingers should be soul mates. Yet they are anything but. Premier Doug Ford and federal Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre barely know
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: The Bond Is Breaking
David Ignatius writes that the relationship between Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu is pretty tense: As the war in Gaza grinds on, President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are locked in a public quarrel about military strategy, political leadership and even casualty numbers. Like past disputes in the
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: The War In Gaza
Protests against the war in Gaza are growing. Michael Harris writes: Political leaders who can no longer hear the people are usually on their way to defeat. That is one of the takeaways from the recently cancelled event featuring Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and visiting Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Caveat Emptor
Groucho Marx used to quip, “Who you gonna believe — me or your own eyes?” These days, believing what you see with your own eyes can be problematic. Consider this story from The Associated Press: WASHINGTON (AP) — At first glance, images circulating online showing former President Donald Trump surrounded
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Easy Marks
Millennials, we’re told, are shifting their votes to Pierre Poilievre. Max Fawcett writes that Poilievre is playing them for fools: Credit where it’s due: Pierre Poilievre has talked a good game about housing ever since he was elected leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. Sure, he keeps fibbing about
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Brian Mulroney
I never voted for Brian Mulroney. The Neo-Conservative Era — which he ushered in with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan — to me always seemed wrong-headed. I agreed with John Kenneth Galbraith. “Trickle Down,” he said, “is what comes out of the back end of a cow.” That said,
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: The Question
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear Donald Trump’s claim for complete immunity. What’s important, Jennifer Rubin writes, is how the court has framed the question: The court determined that the only question to be addressed is whether a former president enjoys absolute “immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Time For A Walk In The Snow?
Michael Harris has supported Justin Trudeau pretty consistently. Now, he writes, it’s time for Trudeau to go: Nothing is clearer in Canadian politics than that the next federal election is Pierre Poilievre’s to lose. According to the latest Nanos poll, the Conservative Party of Canada has a 13-point lead over
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