Sajjan hires former Vancouver police partner
National Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan has hired his former partner at the Vancouver Police Department, recruiting officer Kevin Torvik, to work as a policy adviser in his new ministerial office. Mr. Torvik is on a leave of absence from the Vancouver Police Department. In 2007, Mr. Sajjan and Mr. Torvik, as undercover Vancouver police officers […]
Meet Liberal PMO’s de facto No. 2: Jeremy Broadhurst
PARLIAMENT HILL—In the Prime Minister’s Office, the two top dogs are chief of staff Katie Telford and principal secretary Gerald Butts. Jeremy Broadhurst is the No. 2 PMO player. Mr. Broadhurst, deputy chief of staff and deputy principal secretary, was a “key” architect of the Liberal Party’s modernization and majority government election win. He’s described by […]
Liberal Cabinet, PMO continue to staff up as Parliament returns
Infrastructure Minister Amarjeet Sohi recently hired a press secretary to soon join his ministerial office, scooping up Brook Simpson from Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson’s office, as the new Liberal government continues to staff up. Mr. Simpson has been serving as Mr. Watson’s press secretary since the summer of 2014, and before that was a special assistant in […]
Key promises enacted, in motion in a strong Parliament, get ready for a wild ride
OTTAWA—As the House returns and the Trudeau Liberals have been in office for less than three months, the pressure is getting more intense to deliver on their promises: whether it’s to fund infrastructure projects, bring in refugees, change anti-terror laws, end all unemployment, boost the dollar, raise oil prices, build instant pipelines, and wipe out […]
Barber briefs Liberals on how to implement ambitious government agenda
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has an ambitious agenda ahead, but it got a run-down from world-renowned management consultancy expert Sir Michael Barber on how to run a government and how to deliver on its promises at its recent Cabinet retreat in St. Andrews-by-the-Sea, N.B., his ‘deliverology philosophy.’ Michael Fullan, a former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty adviser […]
Electoral reform? Don’t count on it
TORONTO—There has been much talk and little action in recent years about changing the method by which Canadians elect their MPs. The Liberals have vowed to do away with the first-past-the-post system: “We are committed,” reads their winning platform, “to ensuring that 2015 will be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system.” […]
Liberal government’s position to withdraw CF-18s from Middle East is defensible, legitimate and correct
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: It isn’t obvious that Canada should be participating in the aerial campaign against the Islamic State. The Liberal government’s position that Canada should withdraw its CF-18s from combat operations in the Middle East is defensible, legitimate and—in my view—correct. Unfortunately, most of the country’s leading columnists appear to […]
Trudeau holds Cabinet meeting in New Brunswick as reward for electoral victory, looking to future
It wasn’t just the stunning view that took Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his inside circle to St. Andrew’s by the Sea, N.B., this week for the first Liberal Cabinet retreat outside the National Capital Region in more than a decade—it was a thought to the political future. Of nine electoral districts the Liberals won […]
Sinking oil prices, low dollar, growing deficit put heat on Finance Minister Morneau
With sinking oil prices, a historically low dollar and federal coffers drying up before Finance Minister Bill Morneau presents his first budget, a majority of Canadians believe the economy is in weak shape and the government should do more to stimulate it. “We knew when we were campaigning we were facing a slow-growth environment,” Mr. […]
I’m not too excited about Trudeau’s much-ballyhooed plan to scrap our voting system
OAKVILLE, ONT.—Please forgive me, but I just can’t get too excited about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s much ballyhooed plan to scrap our voting system. And yeah, I know all the arguments about how our current “first-past-the-post” voting method, whereby citizens simply scratch an “X” next to the name of their preferred candidate, is unfair or […]
