Northern Reflections: The End Of Kent?

Peter Kent signaled this week that he expects to be demoted or dismissed by Stephen Harper. Rick Smith, the Executive Director of the Broadbent Institute, suggests that Kent’s tenure as Minister of the Environment can’t come to an end soon enough: Since the advent of Canada’s first federal Environment Minister

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Northern Reflections: Healthcare Is Next

In today’s Toronto Star, Natalie Mehra and Michael McBane warn that the Harper government is taking aim at Medicare. For the system to work, the prime minister needs to meet with his provincial counterparts. However, This summer’s gathering of the premiers marks the final Council of the Federation meeting before

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Northern Reflections: Austerity Kills

In their book, The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills, David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu demonstrate that, around the world, austerity has had devastating consequences on public health. Consider what economic shock therapy accomplished in the Soviet Union: The Soviet economy collapsed in the early 1990s, erasing countless jobs. Ironically, those

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Northern Reflections: Running Scared

The Harper Government, Michael Harris writes, is running scared. It’s now patently obvious that its claim to fame — competent management — is unadulterated flap doodle: The PM and his government are not good managers. The nauseating repetition of the claim that the Tories know what they’re doing with the

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Northern Reflections: He’s Losing His Grip

Lawrence Martin writes that the cracks are spreading at Fortress Harper. First it was those ornery backbenchers who refused to shut up. Then one of them, Brent Rathgeber, resigned. And, last week, sixteen Conservative senators joined with their Liberal colleagues to gut a Harper supported private member’s bill which would 

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Northern Reflections: Blatant Hypocrisy

Martin Regg Cohn calls Rob Ford’s bluster, after his meeting with Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa, exactly what  it is — blatant hypocrisy.  And Cohn provides a little historical context: Once upon a government, when the Mike Harris Tories downloaded social services upon Toronto (with Rob Ford’s father, Douglas, serving

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