Could this year’s Charlevoix talkfest be the last of the G7 summits?
OTTAWA—Conceived as a kind of fireside chat among the leaders of the biggest industrial democracies, the first high-level international “summit” was hosted by French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing at the Chateau de Rambouillet outside Paris in 1975. While the need to deal with the economic crisis set off by the 1973-74 oil shock was urgent […]
Municipal elections a turning point in Tunisia’s democracy, says envoy
Tunisia’s “historic” May 6 municipal elections show the country has been able to become more democratic since the ousting of former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s 23-year autocratic regime during the Arab Spring in 2011, says the country’s new ambassador to Canada. For the first time in seven years, the municipal election gave typically underrepresented […]
Tory Senators fed alternative facts in U.S. cannabis field trip
The Liberal government’s Cannabis Act recently survived the unanimous opposition of 29 current and former Conservative Senators and is now in committee. This appears to have prompted three Conservative Senators to travel south to meet with United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Trump administration officials, and the anti-cannabis organization Smart Approaches to Marijuana. The stated […]
Penny wise and pound foolish: a cautionary tale about hearing refugee claims
OTTAWA—Last week, the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) announced that it would resume hearing refugee claims in Ottawa. Why is this a cautionary tale? Surely, selecting a regional office to decide refugee claims is a minor administrative matter. In the refugee business, policy decisions based on administrative priorities can often have dire consequences. In 2014, […]
PMO, PCO should stay out of appointing parliamentary watchdogs: think-tank report
Staff in the Prime Minister’s Office and its non-partisan support branch shouldn’t control the appointment of parliamentary watchdogs. The decision ought to rest with Parliament, according to a think-tank report released last month with input from former watchdogs, top bureaucrats, and politicians. Over a series of interviews and roundtable discussions, those who participated in the […]
Minister Carr tops lobbying list as groups ramp up on environmental assessment, fisheries bills
Energy and environment groups focused their April lobbying efforts on Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr, as they pushed the pros and cons of environmental assessment and fisheries bills, and continued to press the government on getting construction started on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. A May 17 search of the lobbyists’ registry showed groups logged […]
Conservative leader’s office adds new stakeholder adviser
Conservative leader Andrew Scheer recently added a new stakeholder relations adviser, Karina Rolland-Sardana, to the staff team working to support the official opposition party’s caucus on the Hill. Up until earlier this month, Ms. Rolland-Sardana had been vice president of administration for the Hockey Eastern Ontario Minor AA/A league board and director of the Gloucester […]
B.C. reporter Richard Zussman in Ottawa to launch book on province’s historic 2017 election
Global News journalist Richard Zussman is going to be in Ottawa tomorrow evening to launch his new book A Matter of Confidence: The Inside Story of the Political Battle for B.C., which was co-authored by Vancouver Sun reporter Rob Shaw. The free event is put on by think-tank Public Policy Forum and will be hosted May […]
Opposition MPs demand minister testify to explain ‘odd’ chief electoral officer nomination switch-up
Opposition MPs want a cabinet minister to appear before the Procedure and House Affairs Committee to explain why the prospective nomination of Saskatchewan elections chief Michael Boda as Canada’s new chief electoral officer was replaced by one for acting CEO Stéphane Perrault, a switch-up one Conservative MP calls “odd.” In Mr. Perrault’s first public appearance since […]
At a wedding in Windsor, a more hopeful reality soars
By the time you read this, the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle may seem like a million miles and a thousand headlines ago. In the handful of intervening days, Donald Trump could have threatened to bomb North Korea over Kim Jong-un’s fickleness, or Canada over the NAFTA sunset clause, and our cognitive bandwidth […]
