Ministers Duclos, Joly hire; McKenna loses senior aide
Families, Children, and Social Development Minister Jean-Yves Duclos recently scooped up Jessica Eritou to fill the role of information manager and special assistant to the minister’s chief of staff, Olivier Duchesneau. Ms. Eritou arrives straight from Veterans Affairs Minister Seamus O’Regan’s office where she’s spent the past year as executive assistant to the minister. Before […]
N.W.T., Canada can work together for sustainable northern development
A year ago this week, I was in Ottawa to call for a national discussion on the future of the Northwest Territories. My red alert was motivated by the continued stagnation of the Northwest Territories economy, compounded by concerns that federal decisions and policies could create roadblocks to meaningful economic development and cut our people […]
Midterms: a chance for Americans to pull back from the brink
OTTAWA—Ten days before Americans go to the polls in the midterm elections, a hate-spewing anti-Semite stormed into a synagogue in Pittsburgh and gunned down 11 worshippers, wounding an additional six people. It was the deadliest attack on Jews in United States history. The day before, police arrested an ardent fan of U.S. President Donald Trump […]
Memo from Referendlandia: Brexit needs a re-vote
As any journalist old enough to have worked during the era of rolling constitutional crises knows, referendums are Canada’s third national specialty after hockey and export-grade Ryans (see: Gosling, Reynolds). During the 15 years when the country lived through three significant referendums—the Quebec independence vote of 1980, the national vote on the Charlottetown Accord on the […]
Trudeau plays waiting game with Singh
By sitting on a byelection call for the B.C. riding of Burnaby South, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is deliberately stalling NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh’s bid to enter the House of Commons. In so doing, the prime minister is merely using his prerogative to wait up to six months after a vacancy occurs to set a […]
The right-wing roots of carbon pricing
Today’s fight over carbon pricing isn’t the ideological battle of the century. That would be a historic misunderstanding of our future by politicians fighting the last war. Despite Premier Doug Ford’s fulminations, this week’s embrace of pollution pricing by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau isn’t proof of a left-wing plot to pick the pockets of Canadians. […]
Politics used to be fun
OTTAWA—Politics used to be fun. The House of Commons was partly theatre where all were encouraged to make their point, often with props. Now-deceased New Democrat Member of Parliament Jim Fulton once slapped a stinking dead salmon on the desk of prime minister Brian Mulroney to highlight mismanagement of the Pacific fishery. After hours was […]
Hill media matter more now than ever before, says former Maclean’s editor Lewis
To say that former prime minister Stephen Harper made it difficult to get information on government policy is an understatement, says former Maclean’s magazine editor Robert Lewis, but on the bright side, it honed the investigative skills of the parliamentary press gallery reporters. With bureaucrats gagged and reporters unable to scrum ministers as they exited […]
Pondering Canada’s political future
OAKVILLE, ONT.—Lots of people are busily pontificating and speculating about the upcoming federal election of 2019. And that’s fine, but I’d like to try something a little more challenging; I’d like to try pontificating and speculating about the federal election beyond 2019, the one that might occur four years later in 2023. Sounds like fun, […]
A nasty, dishonest campaign? Blame the media
CHELSEA, QUE.—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is afraid the 2019 election campaign (which has already begun) is going to be “the most divisive and negative and nasty” in Canadian history. Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer shares the same fear: “It’s going to get worse, it’s going to get nasty,” he warned Conservatives at a pre-campaign, campaign launch […]
