Senate bagmen should not review Bill C-2: democracy group says fundraising senators should not review election bill
The Senate, a place dominated by party bagmen and bagwomen, should not review the government’s sweeping election bill, says a vocal advocacy group lobbying against the legislation. And a Liberal MP, who is one of the government’s biggest defenders of Parliamentary power, says senators who review the bill should disclose what they do for the […]
Prime Minister’s office took lead on closing generic drug patent: memo says government obligated to protect patents, concerned about risks to government and followed treaty
The Prime Minister’s Office appears to have thrown its weight behind recent drug regulations in an effort to help pharmaceutical giant Merck Frosst beat back competition from the generic drug manufacturers, The Hill Times has learned. Earlier this fall, the government passed drug regulations which closed a loophole used by generic drug manufacturers to get […]
Miles says “you bring all information to bear to decision-makers” [Winner of the Head of Public Service Award]
With an aura that suggests a seemingly effortless competence, it appears that Christine Miles is in her element as acting director of planning, policy and partnerships at Elections Canada. But Ms. Miles credits the success she’s had in her career to her exposure to a number of mentors in the public service. She was recently […]
Only National Post digs up dirt on Insider and Rock “adviser”
Late last month, about the time the anti-tobacco movie The Insider was making a splash on movie screens across the nation. Health Minister Allan Rock was posing with his new “special adviser,” a man named Jeffrey Wigand. This is the same man, of course, whose whistle-blowing against his former employers, cigarette manufacturers Brown & Williamson, […]
A list of some of the Canadian political books of 1999
– A Scattering Of Seeds: The Creation Of Canada, They Came On Dreams, The Immigrants To Build A Nation, by Lindalee Tracey, McArthur & Company, $19.95. – @Stake: “As Prime Minister I Would” Featuring Provocative And Innovative Solutions For A More Prosperous Canada, foreword by Frank Stronach, Magna for Canada Scholarship Fund, $14.95. – As […]
[Smallwood: the unlikely revolutionary. Rev ed]
Richard Gwyn’s revised and re-released biography of Joseph Roberts Smallwood, Smallwood: The Unlikely Revolutionary, is a wonderful, gracefully written book about one of Canada’s most colourful politicians who fought tooth, nail and bloody fist to get Newfoundland into Confederation in 1949. Mr. Gwyn, a seasoned Toronto Star columnist, who first wrote the authorized biography in […]
[Egotists & autocrats: the prime ministers of Canada]
Those who like their political biographies in condensed Readers’ Digest format will appreciate the latest offering from George Bowering. The poet has turned his pen to the list of illustrious and not so illustrious political leaders of Canada. The result, Egotists and Autocrats; the Prime Ministers of Canada, is an entertaining and enjoyable look at […]
[Canada’s founding debates]
Anti-confederates and confederates ‘deeply and vitally concerned with issues of high and enduring political importance’ As the country heads into the millennium, a group of academics has decided to return to the nation’s first principles and look at the word’s of Canada’s fathers of Confederation. Constitutional scholar Janet Ajzenstat, historian Paul Romney, history professor Ian […]
[Taking stock of 150 years of responsible government in Canada]
Abundance of central management and control in Chretien’s government means PCO and PMO micro-manage Democracy and governments in Canada are in trouble, at least that’s the thesis put forward by a growing number of people. Read their books, listen to them talk and you might conclude that there is plenty wrong or rotten in the […]
[Governing from the centre: the concentration of power in Canadian politics]
Abundance of central management and control in Chretien’s government means PCO and PMO micro-manage Democracy and governments in Canada are in trouble, at least that’s the thesis put forward by a growing number of people. Read their books, listen to them talk and you might conclude that there is plenty wrong or rotten in the […]
