Designating Canada’s monarch

Parliament’s new act opens a potential assortment of problems. A better tack might have been for the Prime Minister to tell the British that their BNA Act of 1867 offers a sufficient basis for Canada’s compliance with whatever new act the British adopt with respect to the office of the Queen.

Comparing Harper and Diefenbaker

Both John Diefenbaker and Stephen Harper were born in Ontario. Both moved to the Prairies and became prime ministers.

The PM and the challenge of Senate reform

The mystique and the promise of Trudeau

The danger to the Liberals is that if they fail to break through in the next election and at least form the official opposition, the consequences may be fatal. It could be game over.

Ontario: Region-state? Dependant-State? Kingmaker

Ontario will gain 15 seats in the next federal election; together, Alberta and British Columbia will gain 12. The key to 24 Sussex Drive in 2011 was in Ontario. It will continue to be so for a while.

How prorogation may be leading to coalition governments

The new practice of political prorogation, therefore, may lead to increased receptivity to coalition governments. Much of the democratic world has them, but Canada has been a laggard on this score. Catch-up may be coming.

To my Godfather Preston

What has happened to our promised free votes in Parliament, the loosening of party discipline, the plans for citizen-initiated referenda, and the ability to recall MPs?

Undoing the Prime Minister

The greatest danger to the PM is therefore from within, not without. Paradoxically, it is from those MPs who have the least enviable jobs in Parliament: muzzled government backbenchers, those who must shut up and cannot publicly rail or criticize as opposition MPs are free to do.

Democratizing Senate not in Harper’s interest

The federal government’s Senate reform bill will likely be buried because the Conservatives are behaving like their Liberal predecessors—touting reform but doing very little.

Canada’s bilingual regime

The two solitudes have grown further apart as more French Canadians outside of Quebec have intermarried, assimilated, and lost their facility in French.

Atlantic Canada could be a leading political indicator

As the welfare state has embedded itself ever more firmly in Atlantic Canadians’ lives, the NDP has implanted itself in Atlantic Canada’s traditional conservative political culture. The NDP can no longer be easily dismissed as outsiders ‘from away’ who preach alien doctrines and pursue utopian sorties.

Left, right, and centre in Canadian politics

Few politicians call themselves leftist or rightist, although NDP leader Thomas Mulcair has come close by denying he is a centrist: ‘We want to move the centre to us, not move to centre.’

Connecting the dots among Canada’s Conservative parties

The shifting winds of Canada’s multicultural story

Today, Harper’s Conservatives seek to boost immigration levels to unprecedented levels and Jason Kenney, as minister of Immigration, has become a grandmaster at wooing ethnic fraternal organizations and the ethnic media.

Canadian policy, Canadian attitudes, and the Middle East

For decades, Canada’s politicians, diplomats, and the media have considered the Israel-Palestine conflict as the core issue in the Middle East; solving that conflict, it has been assumed, would bring regional peace, security, and stability. The so-called Arab Spring has exploded this assumption.

Why increase the number of MPs?

Canada’s Parliament would benefit from having a fixed number of seats, as does the United States House of Representatives.

Handicapping the NDP leadership race

On identifying with Quebecers, Tom Mulcair is better positioned to prevail than Brian Topp or Peggy Nash.

Five decades, five changes, and their implications for Parliament

Five transformational changes have reverberated on Parliament Hill since the 1960s: globalization, the heightened status of women, bilingualism and Quebec’s assertiveness, the growth of provincial capacities, and technological innovations.

The withering of the Liberal Party?

Today, the Liberals are a dilapidated annex of the Canadian party system. Their prospects are bleak. In this respect, Stephen Harper and the NDP pursue a common strategic objective, the marginalization of their common foe.

Are Canada and Canadians more conservative?

The Prime Minister says his thinking has evolved. So be it. It has evolved in a liberal direction with an old-fashioned Tory touch.