Another approach to Canada’s bitumen quagmire
There will be both a significant financial and political cost no matter what decision is taken to resolve the current impasse on the Kinder Morgan pipeline project. Why not investigate an alternative? What if governments helped finance a refinery in Alberta to refine the bitumen to a state that it is less hazardous for transport? […]
After 36 years, it’s time Quebec sign the Constitution
The call from the Prime Minister’s Office in March 1982 came as things were not going well for the Liberal opposition in Newfoundland and Labrador. Premier Brian Peckford had called a snap “referendum” election for April 6, seeking to wrest management of offshore oil from Pierre Trudeau’s government in Ottawa. The caller enthusiastically told me […]
Kinder Morgan project a test of Trudeau’s competency, puts his 18 B.C. seats at risk, say pollsters
Whether Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gets the Kinder Morgan pipeline project built, as he says he will, voters will judge as a test of his competency, say pollsters. And the stakes are high, with the Liberals’ 18 seats in British Columbia at risk. Much of his credibility is bound up in his ability keep the project his […]
Author Ted Rowe on how ex-Newfoundland PM Robert Bond became ‘the greatest’ Islander
The banking crisis of 1894 had been building for years. Newfoundland’s two commercial banks were unregulated, and they had been allowed to deplete their cash reserves and borrow, from the government Savings Bank and lenders in England, to fund their loans. St. John’s fish merchants appointed as bank directors (including Augustus Goodridge) were approving outsize […]
Experts warn of ‘long-term political consequences’ for Liberals if Trans Mountain pipeline fails, but Trudeau says pipeline will happen
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who met with B.C. Premier John Horgan and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley for more than two hours on the Hill on Sunday, says the government will start negotiating with Kinder Morgan to “remove the uncertainty” over the fate of the $7.4-billion Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project and promised the pipeline will happen, […]
Saskatchewan MPs with ties to Humboldt crash victims ‘stunned,’ focused on community support
News that 15 Humboldt Broncos Saskatchewan junior hockey team members and personnel had been killed in an April 6 bus crash made it all the way to Pakistan, where Conservative MP Robert Kitchen heard what happened. “I saw it and I was stunned,” said the Saskatchewan MP in an April 12 phone interview. Sitting in a hotel […]
Humboldt tragedy hits home for MPs
Speaking through tears, Conservative MP Kevin Waugh recalled bumping into Brody Hinz, a statistician for the Humboldt Broncos Saskatchewan junior hockey team, last November in Ottawa. The 18-year-old was one of the 15 people killed in a Friday evening bus crash carrying the hockey team. “Here’s a kid that was probably me 37 years ago. […]
Hockey brings Canadians together, in triumph and tragedy
OTTAWA—Far from Parliament Hill, partisan debates, and briefing notes, the real Canada works, plays, and lives in small cities, towns, villages, and neighbourhoods; and, for many, hockey is an integral part of their life as Canadians. Its speed, intensity, complexity, and excitement can arouse emotions even the least aggressive among us never knew we had. […]
When disaster strikes, real leaders set aside political opportunity, partisanship
OTTAWA—The terrible bus crash in northeast Saskatchewan involving the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team has broken a nation’s heart. Fifteen souls, most of them 20 years of age or younger, were taken from their loved ones in the blink of an eye on a journey to compete in a playoff hockey game. It’s a familiar […]
Time to stop funding Catholic school boards
OTTAWA—The passage of Easter and Passover, the most important days on the Christian and Jewish calendars, has led me to contemplate the role of religion in Canadian public life. While Canadian politics has not been infected with the sort of right-wing evangelism experienced in the United States, we remain a country where church and state […]
