Author: Owen Gray

As the Harper Conservatives peddle the myth that the Old Age Security program is unsustainable, we should be prepared for the next assault. It comes in the form of Charles Murray’s latest book, Coming Apart.  Murray, who has been criticizing the welfare state for decades, advances the thesis that our

Some commentators looked at this week’s census numbers and saw blue skies and sunshine for Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. As Jeffrey Simpson notes in today’s Globe and Mail, the term “conservative” is a misnomer. Today’s conservative governments are anything but conservative. Consider Alberta: But successive Alberta governments – not real but

Today, on his road trip through China, Stephen Harper took another swipe at those “radical” environmentalists: Our government is committed to ensuring that Canada hasthe infrastructure necessary to move our energy resources tothose diversified markets,” Harper said. “We will uphold ourresponsibility to put the interests of Canadians ahead offoreign money

Tom Walkom writes that, as things stand, not much could have been done to keep the doomed Electro-Motive plant in London. He points out that Bombardier no longer manufactures locomotives in Canada. It buys them from a Catapillar plant in Mexico. The problem lies not so much with Caterpillar or

Stephen Harper likes to claim, as he did in Davos, that his government is a shining example of prudent financial management. That boast, Lawrence Martin writes is the Globe and Mail, in as believable as Sun TV’s recent citizen reaffirmation ceremony. From 2007 to 2011, Canada’s economic performance put us

“A gaffe,” Michael Kingsley wrote, “is when a politician tells the truth.” Americans have been treated to several examples of this phenomenon as Mitt Romney seeks the presidency. Last week, Vic Toews treated Canadians to a homegrown version of the same. “I don’t know if statistics demonstrate if crime is

Jeffrey Simpson wrote in yesterday’s Globe and Mail that: Under the Harper government, Canada lost its bid for a Security Council seat – the first time it had ever been defeated. Were a vote held today, chances are Canada would get even fewer votes. Consider Canada’s performance on the world

It’s been quite a week. It began with Mitt Romney declaring, “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there.” It ended with Caterpillar shutting down its locomotive plant in London, Ontario and moving operations to Indiana — two days after Governor Mitch Daniels signed legislation

We have nurtured an old curmudgeon.  He or she has been with us for a long time. However, we have never had so many of them at the same time. Carol Goar writes in this morning’s Toronto Star: Across jurisdictions, political leaders seem to have forgotten their authority comes from

The Harper government is willing to spend money — on prisons and F35 jets. The simple truth is that it’s not willing to spend money on pensions. Therefore, its “improvement” to the pension system is to be voluntary and administered by private financial interests. For Stephen Harper, a strong public

In the last six years, the Harper Conservatives have been very good at defining the terms of debate. That is, they have set the premises of those debates, and the opposition parties have accepted those premises. Their first — and  overriding — premise was that trickle down economics works. They

Richard Cohen writes this morning that Herman Cain’s endorsement of Newt Gingrich is proof positive that the Grand Old Party is brain dead:  It’s hard to know who is the more ridiculous figure — the grandiloquent, bombastic and compulsively dishonest Gingrich, or the beguilingly ignorant Cain, a man who has

Susan Delacourt writes this morning that when the Liberals made budget cuts in 1995, they sold their program by using fear — fear that we were about to hit a debt wall, fear that our children would be left to clean up the mess we had made. Now, she writes,

The cuts Stephen Harper wants to make to Old Age Security are driven by ideology, not necessity. Consider the Public Appointments Commission and the Employment Insurance Financing Board. Both departments were set up by the Conservatives. And, although both agencies are on record as having nothing to do, the government

Susan Riley wrote in the Ottawa Citizen yesterday that  federal politics these days is truly baffling: It is hard to decide what is more astonishing: Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s inconsistencies and course corrections, or the fact they have done no serious damage to his standing in the polls. For a

On the same day that the Globe and Mail reported on Stephen Harper’s “grand plan to reshape Canada,” and on Tony Clement’s announcement that the “budget axe could cut deeper, sooner,” Jeffrey Simpson wrote that,  “In the first five years of the Harper government, the number of information officers in

This week’s summit between First Nations chiefs and the Prime Minister played out according to Stephen Harper tightly scripted wishes. It was all pictures, good wishes and no substance. Harper works very hard to stage manage his appearances; and this summit was supremely stage managed. There was no mention of

In this morning’s Globe and Mail, Gerry Nicholls takes on critics of the recent National Citizens Coalition ad attacking Bob Rae. He complains that our laws: impose severe legal restrictions on how much money citizens or independent groups can spend on “political advertising” during federal elections. According to the law,

As Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich tear away at each other — claiming that each benefited mightily from the government they both claim to despise  — Lawrence Martin reminds his readers that there used to be a Republican president who consciously sought a middle way: Dwight Eisenhower, Martin writes, didn’t