Collecting Air Canada anecdotes: it’s a hobby
OTTAWA—Air Canada tomorrow begins charging passengers $30 to check a second bag on economy flights to the U.S. We expect no less. “Travel hell,” Sun Media’s Greg Weston once described the airline experience. Air Canada is perhaps the most loathed corporation on Parliament Hill, if only because people who work here know it so well. […]
Canadian libel law has been a longstanding disgrace
OTTAWA—A new year, a new libel law. “Top Court Backs Honest Reporting,” as The Vancouver Province put it. Journalists will not ponder it for long. Media don’t dwell on defamation rulings any more than farmers like chatting about locusts. Yet libel law remains a fascinating workplace irritant with its own tragi-comic history. Defamation is an […]
Mark 2009 as the year pogey went uptown
Once it provoked wails of shame and moist-eyed laments of cultural defeatism. Now they call it stimulus. Mark 2009 as the year pogey went uptown. MPs and pundits used to foam over the corrupting influence of government handouts. This cannot be overstated. Aid was not merely expensive; it was deemed pathologically evil, a kind of […]
Chrétien is like Liberals’ little light on their dashboard these days
At 75, Jean Chrétien finally found a legacy. He has become a dashboard Jesus for despondent Liberals who now spend their evenings driving around in circles. Party fixers and newsroom amnesiacs speak warmly of The Days of Chrétien. “Under Jean Chrétien, the Liberal fortress looked impregnable,” sighed The Globe and Mail columnist Lawrence Martin. Chrétien […]
Caution: pundits are beavering away on economic forecasts
OTTAWA—I’m getting you a book for Christmas, The Cooper Files by Sherry Cooper, 1999 edition. Copies are so rare they’re only occasionally spotted in dumpsters and flea markets. Yet the book has never been timelier. As the decade draws to a close, pundits are beavering away on economic forecasts. The Cooper Files is a masterpiece […]
If anyone could slap a mall next to a World Heritage Site, it’s Ottawa City Council
OTTAWA—It was a little municipal tragedy, scarcely worth a mention in the out-of-town dailies. All at stake was 37 acres and 140 years of history. But it provoked sadness and anger—less than a fifth of people surveyed supported it—and reminded everyone how government runs when there is no official opposition, no wide-awake Parliamentary Press Gallery, […]
C-68 was a shotgun bill inspired by a shotgun crime
OTTAWA—Moments of passion are thrilling, but no substitute for sober thought. It was passion that gave us C-68, An Act Respecting Firearms. It is passion that defends the bill though it failed to achieve its stated aim. “Registration will reduce crime,” then-justice minister Allan Rock said in 1995. In 14 years no proponent has produced […]
Defence Department won’t release combat and non-combat numbers in Afghanistan
Casualties in Afghanistan almost certainly number more than 1,000. No reporter has confirmed the figure. I tried and was told it is a state secret. The human cost of the war is likely 10 times what the government says, yet the number is confidential. On Sept. 4, I contacted the office of Defence Minister Peter […]
Tories’ bill to increase prisons draws little media
OTTAWA—Can a prison binge lower the crime rate? And can we afford it? Those questions provoke passionate debate in media outside Canada yet barely a murmur here. The latest Conservative bill to increase the prison population last week drew only passing mention in newscasts and daily newspapers. The Winnipeg Free Press ran the story a […]
Parliament Hill ripe for haunting ghost stories
No reporter has documented a good ghost story on Parliament Hill. I put this down to lack of journalistic enterprise. The place is ripe for haunting. Parts of the building are 150 years old and witnessed numerous untimely deaths due to fires, electrocution, heart attacks, bad liquor, knife fighting, etcetera. Paranormal events have been witnessed […]
