Ontario election will be a test on how upset Canadians are with incumbents and affordability issues, say some MPs and Nanos
The June 2 Ontario provincial election will be a case study for how upset Canadians are with incumbent politicians about inflation and affordability issues, like soaring food prices, gas prices, and skyrocketing housing prices, say some MPs and a veteran pollster. “We’re in the heat of a provincial election in Canada’s largest province,” said Nik […]
Groups return to ‘invaluable’ in-person advocacy on the Hill after years lobbying behind screens
The return of in-person lobby days in Ottawa continued in May, with representatives of organizations glad to be back on Parliament Hill to pursue dialogue with MPs face-to-face for the first time in years. Among those organizations was the Direct Sellers Association of Canada (DSA), a trade association representing companies that market and distribute products […]
How COVID won the political battle
OTTAWA—Anyone watching the first Conservative leadership debate on May 5 may have thought they were watching a satire or some kind of theatre-of-the-absurd take-off on nasty populist politics. What came across as the debaters’ main concern was how supportive each would-be Conservative standard bearer was of the right-wing agitators who used trucks to turn downtown […]
The wait for pharmacare has gone on long enough
When the NDP and the Liberals signed their confidence-and-supply agreement in March, one element that generated a lot of excitement was a pharmacare plan. This is something that has been promised for more than 50 years, since the Hall Royal Commission report established medicare in the 1960s. Then came the April budget. Where was pharmacare? […]
COVID-19 paused a lot of things, but not cyberbullying
COVID-19 has been the top global story since 2020. When the pandemic began, people quickly moved to working online from home. School-aged and university students also moved to virtual learning through a variety of software and applications. For the past two years, nearly everyone has been spending more time online. Personally, I had to get […]
‘A first step’: $2B health-care top up welcomed, but better collaboration needed to tackle challenges, say experts
Health industry experts are largely welcoming Bill C-17, which would see a $2-billion infusion of federal cash shared between every province and territory meant to address troubling backlogs in health-care systems created throughout COVID-19. But they also say the money is not nearly enough after so many months of a system stretched to the limit, […]
Overturning Roe v. Wade just the beginning of Trump’s legacy, warns Heyman
In the wake of what appears to be the undoing of the right to choose to have an abortion in the United States, former American ambassador to Canada Bruce Heyman, who served under Democrat president Barack Obama, says he’s worries this is just the beginning. “I think that if we think it’s just Roe v. […]
Large-scale national data approach key to unlocking power of genomics
Genomic data is increasingly supporting new research across many sectors. To continue to maintain its scientific excellence in the new era of large-scale genomics, Canada needs a plan to translate the power of “big” genomic data into positive impacts for Canadians and the Canadian economy. Genomic data is the information coded in DNA—the chemical sequence […]
Beneath all the vague talk, the causes of populist chaos are clear enough
OTTAWA—The idea of motorcyclists rolling into town and sort of taking over is a unique North American postwar cultural phenomenon. The whole outlaw biker concept, which took shape after a raucous “invasion” by an unexpectedly large crowd of bikers during the July 4 weekend in Hollister, Calif., in 1947, was immortalized by Marlon Brando’s comment […]
Continued dawdling on vaccine waiver position leaves NDP and advocates ‘extremely frustrated’
Nineteen months after India and South Africa put forward an intellectual property waiver on COVID-19 vaccines, Canada’s continued delay to signal an opinion on the matter has left many with a bitter taste in their mouths. The waiver was submitted at the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Council in […]
