Tag: Democracy and Politics

It is, I think everyone now realizes, conclusively proven that Peter MacKay is a lying sack of shit. He lied inside and outside Parliament about the nature of the military helicopter trip he used to get home from his personal vacation last year at the lodge of Rob Crosbie (a

This is part 1 of a series of posts reflecting on current trends in Canadian politics. The transformation of the Reform movement in Canadian politics is nowhere more evident than in their unrelenting war on CBC (during which their years in minority rule should be considered a temporary ceasefire). Two

Conservative paranoia in this country is beginning to reach such absurd heights that I’m beginning to suspect the next government crime bill initiative will be to add wrecking charges to the Criminal Code. Actually we’re not as far away from that as you might think, what with the government outlawing

A few days ago, I suggested that the main achievement of the Harper regime was something few people had noticed yet: a new style of democracy, à la George Bush and Hugo Chavez, where only the election results matter: once you’re elected, the rule of law no longer applies. Now

Today the Globe & Mail opened its commentary on the American 2012 election with a column by Pittsburgh journalist David Shribman. Shribman presents a bizarre description of the American election as a stark choice between two extremes: democratic socialism (higher taxes, more public healthcare, prosecution of Wall Street criminals) or Republican corporatism (lower taxes, less […]

You can understand my surprise upon reading of your attempt to silence an elderly widow of an asbestos-linked cancer victim, Michaela Keyerslingk, using trademark law. The idea that a political party attempts to suppress free discussion of its policies by claiming it has protected status under commercial laws is bad enough. The fact that the […]

It’s been a while since I updated the Sixth Estate Pork Barrel, which I have now done. For those not familiar with the Pork Barrel, this is a list of government announcements of new funding projects to companies, cities, nonprofits, etc. It does not include development loans, “re-announcements” of existing grants, or normal government programs. […]

It’s impressive how much traffic drops off when you stop writing a political blog for a couple of weeks — and understandable, of course. I must apologize to the steadily growing readership for cutting you all off midstream. I was arranging a cross-country move and was then on vacation, all of which relegated blogging to […]

This week America’s last space shuttle landed for the last time. There will be no genuine replacement. NASA hoped to replace the shuttle with Orion, capable of traveling to the Moon and Mars. But the Orion program was first scrapped, then revived as a spacecraft supposedly useful for low orbit and Mars, but not the […]

So far only Postmedia seems to have noticed that Conservative York-Simcoe MP and Cabinet minister Peter Van Loan was caught by Elections Canada overspending his campaign finance limit in 2008. What they are downplaying so far, though, is Elections Canada’s absolutely inexcusable decision to postpone announcing his accounting irregularities until after the election, presumably so […]

Appallingly, all but CTV appears to have missed this week’s tabling of the annual report of the Information Commissioner, which makes for disturbing if characteristically dry reading. I’ll admit, I would have missed it myself but for the appearance of a fluff piece on the government newswire, claiming that the report highlighted “efforts to reverse […]