Trudeau might alienate left-leaning supporters
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau won a landslide victory in the last election with the massive support of left-leaning voters because of his pledges to reform our first-past-the-post electoral system and combat climate change. Without these pledges, he could not have won left-leaning voters and the NDP would have won the last election. Now by approving […]
Hot issues to watch in 2017
A highly anticipated federal budget. The legalization of recreational marijuana. Lingering debate over electoral reform. A controversial new American president. The end of several major reviews and consultations, including on defence policy and foreign aid. The year of the 150th anniversary of Confederation is expected to produce some tantalizing political story lines in Ottawa and across Canada. […]
Feds to release data from electoral reform town halls: Monsef
The federal government plans to release to the public data collected from town hall meetings on electoral reform, says Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef. Ms. Monsef (Peterborough-Kawartha, Ont.) and her parliamentary secretary, Liberal MP Mark Holland, (Ajax, Ont.), collected “qualitative and quantitative” data on what participants had to say during a series of meetings on the topic held in cities […]
Electoral reform will not happen in this Parliament
OTTAWA—I took the MyDemocracy.ca voting test and discovered what I already knew. According to the online government survey, managed by Vox Pop, I am a pragmatist. The pragmatist in me says electoral reform is dead. Its public interment by the minister responsible for democratic reform was not a pretty sight. Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef […]
Liberal government’s electoral reform survey mocked
The Liberal government’s new survey website, MyDemocracy.ca, was roundly mocked in the MSM and social media, under the Twitter hashtag #rejectedERQs, after being launched last week as a tool to gauge the public’s attitudes on electoral reform. Thousands made fun of the survey. Conservative MP Scott Reid said it felt like “being on a dating […]
Feds aim to get electoral reform bill tabled by May, despite ‘incredibly cynical’ response to committee report
PARLIAMENT HILL—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is still “working towards” tabling legislation to change Canada’s federal voting system by May next year, Liberal MP Mark Holland, parliamentary secretary to the Democratic Institutions minister, told The Hill Times last week. The government’s online survey on democratic values is set to close at the end of this month, at […]
Our democracy belongs to the people, not to the self-interested, egomaniac MPs
TORONTO—To whom does democracy belong? Its parentage is uncertain. As with “values”—which the Lilliputian Kellie Leitch arrogantly claims to be the final arbiter—“democracy” gets invoked by politicians all the time. They insinuate that democracy, and the values that make up a democracy, are known to them and them alone. But democracy, as clichéd as it […]
“Is the Liberal government’s commitment to change Canada’s voting system dead? Why or why not?”
Kate Purchase Liberal strategist “In recent months, the all-party Special House Committee on Electoral Reform travelled across the country and sat down with Canadians from Iqaluit to Victoria. They heard a range of opinions and saw firsthand the fundamental questions about our electoral system that divide many Canadians on the issue of electoral reform. We […]
Electoral reform has become that dog turd in the park no one picks up
OTTAWA—When it comes to political communications, as in life, you win some and you lose some. Last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government won for the way it messaged its pipeline decisions and flamed out miserably when it came to its stick-handling of electoral reform. In announcing that he was conditionally approving two pipelines, rejecting […]
Barack Obama: nice guy in a nasty world
OTTAWA—It’s hard now to remember the sense of global excitement and hope that accompanied Barack Obama, the first black United States president, when he arrived in London in early 2009 for a G20 summit that marked his first major appearance on the world stage. His election was celebrated by many in those days as a […]
