Dark side of proportional representation.
It has been tiring over the years listening to people such as University of Toronto Professor Peter Russell selling proportional representation as the only voting system for Canada. The only…
Federal Politics
How Canadians vote.
There must be a better way to spend a hot summer than arguing about how we vote for our federal government in Canada. Reading the transcripts or watching recorded hearings…
Who owns this party anyway?
It has always seemed a Canute-like task of denying the tides to defend the Liberal Party. There just seem to be too many of the elements aligned against us. A…
Making sense on vote reform.
It was a delight the other day to sit and read a presentation to the special house of commons committee on electoral reform that made sense. The committee has been…
Remembering Mel Hurtig.
It might be the dog days of summer but we have some catching up to do. We were out of town recently and while you might think we write a…
China’s Economic Espionage Against Canada Refuses To Be Dealt With By Government
(China’s Artificially Created Housing Bubble In Canada Set To Burst Warnings Suggest) It’s been no surprise that Canada has long been in a housing bubble. Foreign investors from China have…
If it’s democracy, it must be a ghost.
It always seems strange to hear people talking about our democracy in Canada. You get the impression that our democracy is some sort of spectre. We talk about it but…
Brokering Political Power.
During one of the presentations to the special parliamentary committee on vote reform, there was an interesting remark on brokering power under different forms of voting. The speaker, an academic…
Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Explained Perfectly
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a trade agreement mostly negotiated in secret by quite a few governments bordering the pacific ocean. Canada has been a part of these negotiations and…
A ‘better way’ than what?
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is changing how we select candidates for Canada’s supreme court. The Toronto Star gave the official announcement sufficient column space to explain the idea and then…
Jason Kenney’s double duty summer.
Do super heroes ever rest? Not super heroes such as Calgary’s Honourable Jason Kenney MP. He is doing double duty this summer with the challenges to save Ottawa for democracy…
Vote reform is not everyone’s cup of tea.
The Canadian government’s special parliamentary committee on electoral reform has now had a number of hearings. You can see some of them on computer at the cpac.ca website. While these…
Betrayal by news media.
This is the “unkindest cut of all.” Luckily for William Shakespeare, he did not have to contend with the unkind vagaries of modern news media. Slipshod reporting and careless editing…
Mandatory voting is not in the cards.
It would be hard to think of anything sillier than for our Canadian politicians to make voting mandatory. They might just get more than they deserve. Anyone promoting the idea…
Going ‘All In’ on bitumen.
There were two stories in the Toronto Star the other day from Canada’s western oil patch. The major story was the one by business writer David Olive on Suncor’s gutsiest…
The Trudeau honeymoon carries on.
It has been noted—with some surprise by certain observers—that the honeymoon with Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government continues. Why would anyone expect it to have ended? The major opposition parties are…
Conservative contest continues contrarily.
It was another step backward towards the abyss. Ontario’s Tony Clement must have found a hat somewhere to throw into the ring of the Conservative leadership contest. It was a…
In the rush to reform.
It was amusing reading the editorial in the Toronto Star the other day that urged the Liberal government to “Go slow on election reform.” The ghost of Torstar founder Joseph…
When Referenda are Right.
It has to be more than 25 years since we last chatted with one of our favourite Conservatives. His name is Patrick Boyer and he is a gentleman of the…
Sending cannon fodder to Latvia.
In 1941 Canada came to the aid of the British Empire and sent troops to Hong Kong. The Royal Rifles of Canada and the Winnipeg Grenadiers were supposed to be…