NDP MP Erin Weir met with harassment investigator last week
NDP MP Erin Weir says he met with the person investigating harassment allegations against him for the first time last week, more than a month after the investigation started. The Saskatchewan MP said NDP caucus services had asked him not to disclose information about the investigation and he has respected the request. But he said […]
Mandatory anti-harassment training coming for MPs’ staffers on and off the Hill
This fall, anyone working in an MP’s office can expect to follow in their boss’s footsteps and be required to take in-person anti-harassment training, following a House of Commons Board of Internal Economy decision earlier this month. The group of seven MPs who oversee House finances and administration, chaired by House Speaker Geoff Regan (Halifax […]
U.K.’s Daily Mail takes a run at Trudeau
The U.K.’s trashy tabloid, the Daily Mail, skewered Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a March 8 story, calling him “the world’s most PC politician” and asserting he “has voters worrying if there is any real substance to their superstar premier.” “He banned the word mankind and cried when he met his wife…is Canada’s PM Justin […]
Recognition of Viola Desmond a positive step, but we need more than symbols to reach full equality
OTTAWA—Viola Desmond made history back in 1946 when she refused to sit in a segregated balcony at the cinema in New Glasgow, N.S. That was nine years before Rosa Parks became a symbol of the American civil rights movement by refusing to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus. So why […]
University professors call for more women in the sciences
Today, as we celebrate International Women’s Day, we wanted to reflect on what it meant to be a woman in 2018. We feel privileged to hold a professorship in a Canadian university, and today, we are reminded that this privilege cannot be taken for granted. We are privileged because historically, women could never aspire to […]
Trudeau made some rookie mistakes in India because feds lack diverse staff, says former Freeland staffer
Diversity among the political staffers who populate Parliament Hill has come far from days past, but more needs to be done to increase multiculturalism at the staffing level, and recent gaffes on Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s trip to India are a symptom of this problem, says former staffer Omer Aziz. “It’s not enough to […]
Liberal MP Khalid won’t back down after racists crash her town hall
A town hall meeting centred on how to remove systemic racism in Canada was derailed by a group of people yelling racist slurs, primarily directed at the host, Liberal MP Iqra Khalid who represents Mississauga-Erin Mills, Ont. The Toronto Sun reported on Feb. 23 that one man yelled “you’re a fraud,” another yelled “is this […]
Budget 2018 not an election-year spending plan, but Liberals ‘pre-staging’ some issues: stakeholders
The Trudeau government’s third federal budget is not an election-year spending plan crafted with an eye towards the campaign trail, though certain elements could hint at what issues the Liberals will run on in the 2019 vote, say stakeholders. Nearly 200 representatives from the private and non-profit sectors gathered in the Reading Room in Centre […]
Third-party harassment probes of current, former MPs ‘unprecedented,’ say observers
The fact four of the five federal parties with seats in the House of Commons are currently gripped with investigations into the conduct of current and former MPs is “unprecedented,” and speaks to a shift in how political parties weigh the optics of handling allegations, say strategists and a former senior PMO official. “It’s unprecedented in […]
How Canada can improve its STEM gender deficit
We recently celebrated the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, and there’s much to celebrate—but also, much work to do. It’s a day to celebrate just how far we’ve come since Elsie MacGill, aircraft designer and Canada’s first female engineer, was asked to leave the University of British Columbia in 1921 because of […]
