Tributes to Jack Layton
With the passing of Jack Layton, here are some of the tributes being paid. Olivia Chow, Sarah and Michael Layton: We deeply regret to inform you that The Honourable Jack…
Dale Smith
Northern tragedy vs Harper’s ego
Stephen Harper has curtailed his trip to Resolute for the Operation Nanook arctic exercises in the wake of the First Air plane crash that happened over the weekend. That exercise…
Informing on your neighbours
Determined to continue their “tough on crime” posturing summer tour, Vic Toews and Jason Kenney unveiled 32 new “most wanted” names and faces, this time people who were convicted of…
A basic math problem
It seems that NDP interim leader Nycole Turmel has an issue with representation by population. Speaking about the upcoming legislation to give more seats to BC, Alberta and Ontario, Turmel…
The meaning of the "Royal" restoration
All anyone could talk about yesterday was the fact that we’ve restored the word “Royal” to both the Navy and the Air Force, and predictably, there was backlash from the…
Talking economy without economists
The Commons finance committee met briefly yesterday at the behest of Liberal Scott Brison, and eventually the NDP’s committee members, in order to establish the parameters of a study on…
Gay-baiting and impolitic suggestions
The Sun chain has shown their gay-baiting ways once again, this time putting the NDP’s associate queer issues critic Dany Morin in their crosshairs. The report was that Morin felt…
A process of window dressing
The government has put chief apple polisher Candace Hoeppner in charge of the ad hoc panel to look at Supreme Court justice nominees. Predictably, people cry foul and that it…
No credit where credit is due
Stephen Harper was in Colombia yesterday to tout the coming into force of the Canada-Colombia Free Trade agreement, as well as to denounce its detractors. You know, the agreement that…
Ministerial tantrums
Last week, Amnesty International wrote Jason Kenney and Vic Toews an open letter about their “suspected war criminal” hunt, and listed a number of concerns about the process and the…
Libya, Australia, Brazil
The Foreign Affairs committee met yesterday afternoon to discuss the situation in Libya. The progress is largely halting, with mere incremental progress, and small surprise, the NDP don’t want to…
Harper’s travelling cabinet
Stephen Harper and several members of his cabinet have left for a six-day trip to Latin America to “bolster trade” with countries there, particularly Brazil, and sign a bunch of…
Shared Services and unanswered questions
We all suspected this was coming, but perhaps not in this particular form. Tony Clement and Rona Ambrose held a press conference yesterday to announce that they were creating Shared…
Scott Brison talks about the committee hearing that wasn’t
Seeing as we never had a chance to chat at the end of the abbreviated spring session, I caught up with Liberal MP Scott Brison yesterday by phone. Q: How…
A little love-in
Oh yes, Canada – this hot mess happened. A YouTube clip surfaced yesterday (which has since been removed) which showed Harper at a Rob Ford barbecue, gushing over Ford helping…
An "interim" sovereigntist as well
Oh, NDP. It seems your interim leader, Nycole Turmel, held a Bloc Quebecois membership while she was also a member of the Federal NDP. And she’s a current member of…
More crumbling infrastructure
A section of a tunnel in Montreal collapsed over the weekend, which I’m sure will reignite the debate over the Champlain Bridge and other crumbling infrastructure in that city. In…
A long weekend without a release to bury
The Friday afternoon of a long weekend in the middle of summer came and went, and the government didn’t release something that they wanted buried. Weird, I know. It completely…
Begin the infighting
Well, that didn’t take long – anonymous New Democrats are going to the media, slagging off Nycole Turmel saying she lacks “fire” and will be overshadowed by Bob Rae, while…
Totally avoiding the Liberals’ mistakes – really!
The NDP say that they’re not going to suffer from leadership infighting the way the Liberals did. Really! Why does this sound like famous last words? Speaking of the Liberals,…