A Second Front to help the B.C. pipeline fight.
There are people in British Columbia ready and willing to go to jail in their fight against twining the Kinder Morgan pipeline to Burnaby, B.C. It is an abomination that…
new
Petticoats and pantsuits: The politics of gender.
There is a double standard in writing about the politics of gender. A man has to be oh-so careful not to offend while female writers can tramp so carelessly on…
Are they making America great again?
As much as there is an ongoing hullaballoo about President Elect Donald Trump as America runs up to his inauguration, we should never forget the people who elected him. It…
Queen advises: “Take a deep breath.”
We can all buy into that advice. It was directed mainly to Great Britain in Queen Elizabeth’s Christmas message to the Commonwealth. It was obviously related to the surprise Brexit…
Can O’Leary cow Canadian conservatism?
This is pathetic. This guy Kevin O’Leary thinks he is the Canadian hope for conservatism. Waving a kitchen scraper, he is asking people to endorse him as Canada’s answer to…
Reprising a year of bad bets.
The regrets of a political junky can be many. After years of easy political prognostications, to be a failure and ground under the heel of a person such as Donald…
Ottawa’s Ghost of Christmas Future.
When Marley’s Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come came to see Canada’s Prime Minister, the ghost looked a lot like American President Elect Donald Trump. Justin Trudeau had many questions…
Ottawa’s Ghosts of Christmas Past.
When Canada’s parliament shuts down for Christmas, the old grey halls along Ottawa’s Wellington Street welcome the respite. They have seen much since their construction for the Parliament of Upper…
Ontario: The little engine that could in 2017.
There are many versions of “The Little Engine That Could.” There are also various claimed origins of the inspirational children’s story from as far as more than a century past.…
The arrogance of Justin Trudeau.
Weighing the pluses and minuses of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s first year in office was a tough job. He got off to a good start. How many refugees can claim…
Lament for the CRTC’s Skinny Basic.
It was over three years ago that we last travelled to the nation’s capital to talk with the Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). When there, we faced the enemy and…
The rocky road to electoral reform.
It seems obvious at this stage that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has still not gained any conviction on electoral reform. He hardly understood what he was promising when he said…
You told a pollster the truth?
It seems that the privacy watchdog in Ottawa is investigating the Liberal government’s survey on electoral reform. The privacy commissioner’s office is concerned that the Liberals should not have included…
Who chose who?
It is grating when we read about Ontario politics and a careless reporter refers to Patrick Brown as ‘winning’ the leadership of Ontario’s Conservatives. He hardly won it. It would…
You only know what Donald Trump is not.
You can never accuse President-Elect Donald Trump of being a politician. He is the antithesis of that. He despises politicians. You saw how he treats both Democrats and Republicans. He…
The empty chair of Tom Mulcair.
In a much condemned political schtick by actor-director Clint Eastwood at the Republican National Convention in 2012, he talked to an empty chair. The chair was supposed to represent President…
Forecasting what President Trump will do.
It was Franklin Roosevelt who showed us how a politician can get around the news media. His fireside chats on radio were his direct connection with the American voters and…
Andrea Horwath, where are you?
We were starting to think of our naughty or nice list for the holiday and realized that we had written nothing about Andrea Horwath for many months. We are talking…
The impoverishment of Sir John, eh?
There is a very old saying that people who forget the past will probably screw up the future. It has always been very annoying to us that Canadians can be…
Joe Biden: Lame duck or solution?
Before the U.S. Vice President’s visit, Foreign Minister Stéphane Dion explained Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Ottawa last week as routine. While some people might see it as a…