Need for national pharmacare plan just as urgent as it was in past elections
Another election is fast going by and still no pharmacare plan. The case for it has been well-documented in study after evidence-based study for nearly 25 years. So nearly a quarter of Canadian households will continue to be unable to afford to fill their prescriptions. Canada will remain the only country in the world with […]
Federal party positions: should new nuclear reactors be part of a climate action plan?
The nuclear industry lobby in Canada is conducting an intensive campaign for federal funding to build new nuclear reactors–so-called “small modular nuclear reactors” or SMNRs–claiming they are required for climate action. The federal government is boosting the industry campaign, with Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan famously revealing his unfamiliarity with the considerable research demonstrating that net zero carbon emissions can […]
This abominable scam of a climate election
GIBSONS, B.C.—The pollsters report that climate change is Canadians’ top election concern. The extreme weather—the heat dome, the wildfires, flooding, and even unseasonably cold summer weather—and the dire new IPCC report have galvanized attention. But concern is skin deep: all the parties’ climate platform policies are grossly insufficient, the climate villains are still in firm […]
Green Party targets Prince Edward Island seats in rare campaign trip by leader Annamie Paul
Green Party Leader Annamie Paul’s trip to Prince Edward Island is evidence that the party believes it can make inroads in the province, according to two political professors and a former party member, who say the party could make gains in at least one of the province’s four ridings after forming official opposition provincially in […]
Fixing post-secondary education key to fixing social inequities
This past February, Laurentian University—an important institution for francophone, Indigenous, and Northern Ontario students—declared insolvency and drastically reduced jobs and programs, cutting mathematics, midwifery, and more. The significance of this story has not been lost on the federal political parties during a federal election. In a tight race for votes in a city devastated by […]
Erin O’Toole, the Man of Rubber
KAMOURASKA, QUE.—“I will give Quebec the powers of a nation.” Quick: what Quebec nationalist said that? Was it premier Maurice Duplessis in the 1950s, PQ premier René Lévesque in the 1970s, or his successor premier Jacques Parizeau in the 1990s? Nope, none of the above. It was Conservative Party Leader Erin O’Toole, in his “contract” […]
Rising support for far-right People’s Party unlikely to trouble Tories, say strategists and experts, as O’Toole makes a pitch for the centre
With support for the far-right People’s Party growing according to some polls, the impact on the Conservatives is muted due to the party’s stronghold in regions in which the rising support is strongest, say analysts. Support for Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada (PPC) has grown over the course of the campaign to 6.2 per […]
Youth turnout may be stronger than expected this year and the NDP are reaching them the best: politicos
While the lack of on-campus polling stations this election cycle have caused some to question whether youth voter turnout will drop this year, some politicos and experts say that given the high stakes of this campaign, the opposite may be true. Elections Canada launched the Vote on Campus initiative in 2015 as a pilot program to help […]
What we’ve got here is failure to connect
OTTAWA—As we enter the last days of Election 2021, I suspect many of us are still struggling to figure out what this election is about and, in some cases, what it has achieved. To date, none of the major parties has managed to hook voters with their own compelling ballot question. Frustratingly, the only party […]
Canada isn’t ready for what comes next
OTTAWA—We’re coming down the homestretch of this god-awful election and evidently the PPC aren’t the only ones with white male rage; Erin O’Toole and Justin Trudeau have turned particularly nasty, as both the gloves and the masks come off. This election has been particularly silent on intersectional feminist issues. There has been little to no […]
