Trudeau has many options to include Alberta and Saskatchewan in his government
OTTAWA—There are just so many options for the Trudeau government to reach out and involve the citizens of Alberta and Saskatchewan, but there is no single silver bullet. The conundrum is this: on the one hand, the two provinces just declined to elect a single Liberal MP from either province, in part, because they felt […]
Our dishonest election could have been prevented
OTTAWA—Upset at the rampant dishonesty during the recent election by politicians, and interest groups in their Facebook and Twitter posts? You should be—but you shouldn’t be surprised because changes the Liberals made to the election law encouraged that flood of false claims and made our election much more like the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In […]
The problem with Scheer’s passive conservatism
OAKVILLE, ONT.—Ever since he came up short in the 2019 federal election, Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer has been taking an awful lot of heat, which is too bad because, after all, he’s really such a nice guy. But then again, it’s his amiability which likely cost the Conservatives a victory. Indeed, I’d argue his […]
From the new NAFTA to winning a seat on the UN Security Council: the key foreign policy priorities in the next Parliament
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s minority government will face both lingering and new foreign policy puzzles when the new cabinet is sworn in on Nov. 20. The Canada-U.S. relationship could come under the spotlight once again as Americans head to the ballot box in just under a year. Implementing the new NAFTA, addressing the rocky relationship […]
ISSUE: 11-04-2019
Dull campaign makes for ‘easy’ election call, says Léger, as most firms capture little shift in voting intentions
A somewhat “boring” 41-day campaign helped make this election easy for the industry to forecast a minority government, says one pollster, as others remained more cautious in saying so, but agree there was little shift in voters’ intentions nationally in the lead-up to the vote. With the majority of polls reflecting a close race between […]
The last of the ‘McGill Four’: outgoing MP Dubé on losing to Bloc leader Blanchet
When he noticed the Bloc Québécois surging in the polls, the NDP’s Matthew Dubé says he knew that he faced an “uphill battle” in holding onto his riding. “I arrived in a wave. I survived one, but two is a bit too much,” said the outgoing Quebec MP in for Beloeil-Chambly who lost to Bloc […]
Singh challenges Trudeau to co-operate in minority government
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says he’s ready to work with a Liberal minority government as his party makes its push for a single-payer pharmacare plan, but has yet to hear from the prime minister since he conceded the election. Speaking to reporters in Ottawa on Wednesday, Mr. Singh (Burnaby South, B.C.) faced questions about what […]
From staffer to MP: five former Hill staffers among newly elected
The post-election push to get the class of 2019 settled in is underway, and among the MPs-elect are five former federal staffers, who have a leg up when it comes to the, at times, daunting task of learning the ropes of life on Parliament Hill. Thirty-eight former full-time political staffers ran as non-incumbent candidates this […]
Trudeau’s real job now: sparking national action on a post-carbon future
OTTAWA—Apparently Doug Ford didn’t really mean it when he said in the summer that he would let voters in the federal election decide whether he would continue with Ontario’s costly, and likely futile, legal offensive against Ottawa’s carbon levy. Ford, who was shut out of the less-than-stellar federal Conservative campaign, sounded a bit more co-operative […]
