Our Fragile Democracy.
A new index released this week offers a sobering look at how democracy is faring in the United States. According to the 2018 edition of The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy…
democracy
Pro Rep: Infinity War; or, In Defence of Endless Referendums
Winston Churchill (apocryphally, as it turns out) is believed to have said, “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” In light of British Columbia’s…
Pro Rep: Infinity War; or, In Defence of Endless Referendums
Winston Churchill (apocryphally, as it turns out) is believed to have said, “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” In light of British Columbia’s…
Orwellian Musings
As we end the year that could perhaps be called ‘annus horribilis’ to use the Queens description of 1992 I find it hard to be optimistic about our future here…
Democracy in decline?
As my small cadre of regular readers will know I have been writing about our Canadian democracy for nearly 10 years much of that time spent documenting the Harper Regimes…
Jagmeet Singh’s Reply to the Monarchist League of Canada
Photo Credit: Yvonne Bambrick Recently, while doing an interview on the topic of the spending of theformer Governor General AdrienneClarkson, Mr. Singh stated that hedid not see the relevancy of…
Who is running Ontario?
Dean French was Mr. Ford’s campaign chair. The day after the PCs won power in June, Mr. Ford named him his chief of staff. Since then, he has emerged as…
Amalgamation raises it ugly head again?
‘Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Steve Clark sent a correspondence to Association of Municipalities Ontario members communicating the province is undergoing a regional review to take a broad look at…
Enough said…
In a longish op-ed published in iPolitics Michael Harris says the next election is Trudeau’s to loose, I cannot help but agree for the other choices are bleak. “By insisting…
Vancouver Sun Letter
I have a letter in today’s Vancouver Sun, not so much supporting proportional representation (although I do support proportional representation) as addressing what I consider to be baseless objections to…
Vancouver Sun Letter
I have a letter in today’s Vancouver Sun, not so much supporting proportional representation (although I do support proportional representation) as addressing what I consider to be baseless objections to…
Political and Rhetorical Privilege
“It’s perfectly possible for a man to lead a comfortable, indeed enviable life by any objective standard, yet be consumed with bitterness driven by status anxiety.” Dr. Paul Krugman in…
THE FIFTH COLUMN 2018-10-13 19:17:00
On Democracy What a better way to restart The Fifth Column than by a treatise on how to make our democracy actually democratic. Hopefully this will be the first posting…
Our Unsung Hero.
Now that much of the initial commentary on the US – Canada – Mexico trade deal has run its course and the usual right wing suspects continue to nit pick…
Municipal Government Vulnerability
Lost among the back-and-forth political battles between Ford and Toronto city council is that municipalities are not constitutionally protected as sovereign levels of government in Canada. As a federal state,…
Less Open Debates for a More Open Democracy
The last few years of this bizarre decade have witnessed the resurgence of hate groups. Some of these hate groups are just nicer sounding Nazis and that’s a really bad…
Fordocracy in Action
“Democracy is going every four years to elect a government…without worrying about your mandate being overturned,” said Mr. Ford. No Mr Premier that’s Fordocracy or if you prefer Dougocracy our…
The People’s Party and the Monarchy
Maxime Bernier On September 14th former ConservativeParty leadership hopeful Maxime Bernierannounced the founding of a new party. This ‘People’s Party‘ still has not fullydefined its party policy. Mr. Bernier doesn’tgive…
Democracy’s Fragility
To be sure, the elevation of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario to government redounds to everyone’s shame. Led by a buffoonish thug, Doug Ford, it is a party that…
Leadership, Democracy & Twitter
Recently I read an opinion piece in The Hill Times decrying the ‘Lack of Leadership’ in both the U.S. and GB given the current Cluster Fk in both countries. It…