Jim Standford has an interesting piece in today’s Globe and Mail. He notes that the Harper government justified its imposed settlement on Canada Post by claiming that the economy was at risk. Apparently, a government which believes in free markets has …
Continue readingAuthor: Owen Gray
Northern Reflections: Socializing Losses
For the last thirty years, conservatives have maintained that government must be run like a business, adhere to market principles, be lean and mean. But it is always instructive to compare what conservatives say to what they do.Consider the sale last w…
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Canada Day 2011
This has been a difficult year. In Alberta, a forest fire ravaged the town of Slave Lake. In Saskatchewan and Manitoba, the Souris, the Assiniboine and the Red Rivers have inundated huge swaths of prairie farm land. In Quebec, the Richeleau River has t…
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: An Eye On The Future
In today’s Globe and Mail, Micheal Ignatieff offers a response to those despicable attack ads that Conservatives ran from the day he became Liberal leader until the day he resigned that post — the ones that ended with the tagline, “he didn’t come back…
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Reach For the Top?
In Macleans recent survey of Canadian Prime Ministers, Stephen Harper occupies the middle ground. He is rated 11th out of 22. Wilfred Laurier comes in first; hapless Kim Campbell occupies the last spot. The top four prime ministers — Laurier, Ma…
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Defining The Government
The outcome was inevitable. The mail will be delivered on Tuesday. But the parliamentary filibuster was worth it. What we finally had in this country was a genuine debate. And the “Harper Government” — remember that’s the phrase they themselves chose&…
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: The New War On Crime
In his latest blog post, Alex Himelfarb warns that — after the Canada Post filibuster is over — the opposition should turn its attention to the government’s omnibus crime bill. That bill takes its inspiration from the four decade old American war on …
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Facing Facts
My wife and I used to live a half hour away from the Jeffrey Mine in Asbestos, Quebec. My grandmother grew up on a farm just outside Thetford Mines. So asbestos is part of the family history. The problem is that the history of asbestos is fraught with …
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Leaving Afghanistan
America has reached a crossroads. And Barack Obama has a difficult road ahead, because it is his task to lead the nation into a world of limits. From the very beginning, Americans have seen their country as a land of infinite opportunity. And, as…
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: A Post Mortem
In the latest edition of The Walrus, Warren Kinsella analyzes the reasons for The Liberals’ disastrous election outcome. It’s clear that he has little patience for Michael Ignatieff’s strategic skills. More importantly, he claims that when Ignatieff ha…
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: And So It Begins
True to its prime directive — that the private sector can do anything better than government — the Harper regime announced yesterday that it will close down Audit Services Canada, which — according to The Globe and Mail –“bills itself as having ‘a …
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: The Press Is The Enemy?
Two weeks ago, Conservative Party President John Walsh sent a missive to party supporters: “During this election campaign, we faced an onslaught of negative attacks like never before from the media, from pundits and from anti-Conservative lobby groups …
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: The Future Is In The Hands Of The Young
Frank Graves has sifted through the entrails of the last election, trying to figure out why he and all the other pollsters didn’t see Stephen Harper’s majority coming. His conclusions merit careful attention: In a nutshell, what went wrong is that…
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: The Importance of Undergraduates
Jeffrey Simpson raises an important and controversial issue this morning. At Canadian universities, he writes, undergraduates are at the bottom of the totem pole:They arrive at many campuses – this doesn’t apply at smaller schools – and spend the…
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Passion Over Reason
Rick Salutin — who fortunately has landed at the Toronto Star, after being dumped by the Globe and Mail — has an interesting take on the Vancouver riot:Humans are emotional beings, but you can also think of us as symbolic. We invest our lives with me…
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Does He Have An Enemies List?
Lawrence Martin took the measure of Stephen Harper long ago. And, while the parallels aren’t exact — history rhymes, it doesn’t repeat itself — Martin has documented the similarities between Richard Nixon and Stephen Harper. The title of Martin’s la…
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Stephen Hoover?
The Hill Times reports this morning that the axe has begun to fall. Tony Clement, the Minister of Austerity, has declared that the government plans to chop $10.4 billion from federal spending — $720 million this fiscal year. It’s interesting to note…
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: The Pension Problem
Pensions are at the heart of both the Canada Post and the Air Canada strikes. Both companies argue that changes in the market and technology have made defined benefit pension plans unaffordable. Canada Post argues that drops in mail volume spell less p…
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: The Harper Doctrine
Perhaps the starkest development from The Conservative convention was the enunciation of what John Ibbitson, in The Globe and Mail, calls the “Harper Doctrine.” It is a radical departure from traditional Canadian foreign policy:The Harper Doctrine perm…
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: The Tail Now Wags The Dog
Angelo Perischelli writes in today’s Toronto Star that Stephen Harper has led a ” ten year revolution.” It has been, Perischelli claims, a quiet revolution:Harper’s changes are like the hands of a clock — if you watch them you don’t see any move…
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