MPs don hip waders, grab sandbags to help amid historic flooding
Along every swollen waterway, every eroded riverbank, every washed out road, the plot lines remained identical: hundreds of neighbours, friends, and even strangers to lend a hand to beleaguered residents confronted with surging water levels. Unprecedented flooding along the Ottawa River watershed, and elsewhere in Eastern Canada, has caused untold property damage and heartache, but […]
Potential for extremism in military can’t be ignored
OTTAWA—Every time you attend an Ottawa Senators home game there is a moment, usually during the second period, when a member of the Canadian military is honoured in a commemoration called “Heroes’ Ridge.” Fans stand and give the soldier a standing ovation—even the players on the ice tap their sticks—and I am pretty sure that […]
Liberals should be congratulated for keeping this particular promise
Good for the Liberals for following through on their 2015 election campaign promise to legalize recreational marijuana. The Liberals promised to legalize, regulate, and restrict access to marijuana, and according to legislation tabled earlier this month, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. Considering what’s going on with deficits that are way beyond $10-billion a year […]
Border security: what the U.S. wants, Canada gives—to its peril
OTTAWA—It’s been 15 years since that fateful day on Sept. 11, 2001 when the centres of American society and government were attacked. And like July 28, 1914 and Sept. 1, 1939, the world changed. The government and people of the United States in a fit more of anger than sound policy embarked on a series […]
New heads of Liberals’ rural caucus vow to force ‘rural lens’ upon ‘all policies’
With the national electoral landscape dominated by urban ridings, the new executives of the 54-member Liberal rural caucus are vowing to use “all the tools at our disposal” to make sure rural issues are on the national agenda and considered in all decisions. “We’ll use all the tools at our disposal to champion the issues […]
Do immigrants and asylum-seekers pose a terrorist threat?
The news coming out of Stockholm is all too familiar these days. A man stole a beer truck and drove it down a popular pedestrian mall in the centre of town, mowing down people before crashing into a storefront. The use of a vehicle to cause terror has become a trend of late and attacks […]
Trains, plane and automobiles, and terrorism
OTTAWA—Terrorism is sure getting complicated. The good old days, if I may call them that, were easy by comparison. Terrorists were easy to spot because they tended to chuck bombs or fire weapons at people, the larger the crowd the better. Then we got to the airline hijacking phase in which most incidents ended relatively […]
‘Couch jihadis’ aren’t always terrorists in waiting
Some potentially disturbing news on the terrorism front came out the other day in Canada. According to reports, employees at Pierre Elliot Trudeau airport in Montreal (it used to be called Dorval) had their security clearances revoked over concerns that they had become “radicalized”. The men had access to restricted areas, one had talked about […]
Give the RCMP the resources it needs
PARLIAMENT HILL—Last year, Public Safety Minister Goodale signed off on an annual bonus package for top RCMP brass totalling more than $1.7-million. The bonuses were doled out among 96 senior officers and included $295,514 for six deputy commissioners—a nine per cent increase over their 2015 bonuses. The six deputies have difficult jobs and between them […]
Leitch’s campaign says mass email to supporters while pictured firing a handgun intended to communicate directly to gun owners, ‘very important’ community
OTTAWA—Conservative Party leadership candidate Kellie Leitch’s email to supporters about her proposed firearm policies, which included a photo of her firing a 1972 Walther P1 handgun at a shooting range while discussing the “tradition of using firearms for hunting and for recreational purposes,” was intended to communicate to lawful gun owners who are important to the party, […]
