‘I wrote it because Canadians have forgotten Flora MacDonald’: Geoffrey Stevens
Following the 1979 election, what I needed most was to get out of Ottawa and away from the crazy, swirling rumour mill during the government transition. While Joe Clark worked on his cabinet, I returned to “my” convent in St Georges Ouest, telling people I wanted to work on my French. I was not worried. […]
‘We should never underestimate China,’ say authors of The Two Michaels, Blanchfield and Hampson
TEN DAYS AFTER BEING detained by Canadian authorities in Vancouver, and one day after Michael Kovrig was detained, Trump said publicly he “would certainly intervene” in the Justice Department’s case against Meng if it helped him win a favourable trade deal with China. Trump’s Dec. 11, 2018, interview with Reuters made it clear that in […]
‘Growing political polarization will make it increasingly difficult to reach political consensus on our best paths forward’: Poloz
A particularly interesting situation occurs when two tectonic plates are grinding past each other. Much of the time, the plates drift in this way without major incident. Perhaps the most famous of these boundaries is the San Andreas fault that runs through California, heading inland from the Pacific Ocean at San Francisco and angling south […]
The threat picture Canada faces has seldom been so challenging
Being an intelligence analyst can sometimes feel like dipping in and out of an endless stream of information. You arrive at work, placing your electronics in a secure lockbox, pass through security, and, after inputting a series of passwords, you open a portal to a number of databases to be combed through, looking to find […]
Innovation is not invention
A key to understanding innovation-based growth is to understand that innovation is not invention, nor is it only high-tech and the creation of new technology and gadgets. Innovation is the whole progression of taking new ideas and devising new or improved products and services. It comes in all stages of the production of goods and […]
Some interesting reads about Canadian politics in 2021
Political scientists authored many interesting books about Canadian politics in 2021. Here’s a sample published by three of Canada’s largest academic publishers: University of British Columbia Press (UBC Press), University of Toronto Press (UTP), and McGill-Queen’s University Press (MQUP). I am going to begin and conclude this synthesis with women and Canadian political books, for […]
Michael Wernick on governing, political journalism, and his Machiavellian inspiration
Michael Wernick spent 38 years working in Canada’s non-partisan public service. For the last three of those years, from 2016 to 2019, he served as the clerk of the Privy Council and secretary to the cabinet, a role in which he was the most senior civil servant in the government, and one of the prime […]
The Hill Times’ 100 Best Books in 2021
1. Across Boundaries: Essays in Honour of Robert A. Young, edited by André Blais, Cristine de Clercy, Anna Lennox Esselment and Ronald Wintrobe, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 232 pp., $34.95. 2. A Liberal-Labour Lady: The Times and Life of Mary Ellen Spear Smith, by Veronica Strong-Boag, UBC Press, 288 pp., $89.95. 3. A Long Way to […]
Don Oliver, on his life as Canada’s first Black man appointed to the Senate
Former Conservative Senator Donald Oliver, 82, who was the first Black man appointed to the Upper Chamber in 1990, grew up in the only Black family in Wolfville, N.S. His great grandparents fled slavery in the U.S., and he was raised to “work hard, be humble, love the Lord, and do all you can to help […]
‘I did not stop and I did not die’: Rwandan recounts surviving the genocide in his book Die Walking: A Child’s Journey Through Genocide
Messengers moved quickly and quietly between tents: a band of rebel scouts had been apprehended near the camp, and they had confessed that an attack was imminent. We must be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. By now we had sold or lost most of our possessions, so there was not much packing to […]
