Seriously, I now regard the duke and duchess with warm affection
Like you perhaps, I once found the monarchy tiresome—yet now regard dukes and duchesses with warm affection. They are good-humoured in the manner of self-confident people with nothing to prove. They express genuine interest in ordinary, homey, Canadian things. They never over-compensate since their qualifications are not in dispute. These real aristocrats are our salvation […]
A sad, but unconfirmed account of a human casualty of Canada Post lockout
It was a sad, even pitiful account of a human casualty of the Canada Post lockout. The Labour Department identified a kindergartener unable to attend class because her eyeglasses never arrived by mail. Conservative MP Kellie Leitch touchingly recounted the tale, embellishing it with intimate details. The victim was a little girl aged six who […]
Giorno’s take on ’38 days that shaped history’
The luncheon crowd gathered at the InterContinental Hotel in Toronto to hear a war roomer’s speech. Listeners were keen, even animated. This was going to be good. The guest that day was Guy Giorno, Conservative campaign chair and ex-chief of staff to the Prime Minister. War roomers dress like patent lawyers and talk like frat-boys, […]
Did vote mobs work?
It was the one new, interesting feature of the Election of 2011—”a flash phenomenon storming campuses,” CTV called it. It was the spectre of “vote mobs” fuelled by a media campaign to raise turnout by Canada’s youngest electors. But did it work? The question draws a good-hearted laugh from Vancouver’s Jamie Biggar, co-founder of Leadnow.ca. […]
Question Period’s all the people have, it should be passionate
Question Period was over and a Cabinet minister told a reporter, “Pretty quiet in there.” No heckling, no backtalk, no unruly protest. “A good start,” he called it. In the House the minister of labour spent much of Question Period filing her nails and chewing ice cubes. The country is in the grips of a […]
PM gains best chance to settle old scores with election of a new Speaker, candidate more to his liking
The tone of Parliament’s new term will be set in mere minutes. If Stephen Harper leans to ruthless advantage-seeking—a “sweaterless hardballer,” The Edmonton Journal once called him—it will show in the selection of a new Speaker of the House of Commons. A formality in the distant past, the June 2 vote by MPs is now […]
Prime Minister Harper and the Cabinet nobody knows
It is the Cabinet nobody knows. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty smokes cigars and once proposed criminalizing homelessness. Attorney General Rob Nicholson has complained to his wife he can’t stand CBC docudramas that denigrate “things all Canadians feel good about.” Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is so devout a Catholic he remained celibate at 31, prompting a […]
Years ago, I tried to trace the genesis of Conservative loathing for the CBC
It was a spring day much like today in Ottawa, 17 years ago, when a Commons backbencher took to his feet to flay public broadcasting. The Press Gallery emptied. CBC baiting was a tired theme. No reporter covered the speech, me included. The MP was Stephen Harper. This is what he said: “In our view […]
NDP: it was always a party of heartbreak
It was always a party of heartbreak. Margaret Carman, nurse and mother, waited her whole life for the NDP breakthrough—and missed it by that much. “She would have been overjoyed,” said her son Jim. “She lived through all the hard days.” Margaret’s 94-year old husband Douglas watched the votes roll in and agreed, “She would […]
Did Canada just see its last TV election?
Did Canada just see its last TV election? “Anybody watching that little box can detect a phoney pretty quickly,” then-Conservative leader Bob Stanfield said of television in 1969. Yet the TV campaign of 2011 saw Conservative managers paste a phoney image that distorted news past the breaking point. It was a hoax. They knew it, […]
