Conservative MPs, Senators echo Scheer’s condemnation of The Rebel, but many stay silent

Conservative MPs and Senators have mostly echoed their party leader’s disavowal of The Rebel, but many have stayed silent in response to calls for Conservatives to publicly distance themselves from the far-right Canadian media company criticized most recently for its coverage of a deadly white supremacist rally south of the border. After Andrew Scheer (Regina-Qu’Appelle, […]
Brian Mulroney was no Donald Trump
Re: “Was Mulroney Trump before there was Trump?” (The Hill Times, Aug. 14, p. 10). Like most people, I watched in horror the violence of the white supremacist movement in Charlottesville, Va., in defence of a message of hate. I was even more shocked to listen to the president of the United States create a […]
Is the alt-right movement dead in Canada, or merely sleeping?

OTTAWA—The northward drift of the American alt-right may have been stopped in its tracks in the aftermath of Charlottesville last week. Or it may actually be energized by the post-Charlottesville fallout. Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer announced Thursday that he would no longer give interviews to self-stylized right-wing online presence, Rebel Media, after it provided positive […]
Conservatives were right to step back from The Rebel
It’s been a troublesome couple of years for many Conservatives, particularly moderates. Besides losing government to the Liberals in 2015, there’s been a flirtation by some in the party, and among those aligned with it, with intolerance. In the 2015 election, the party campaigned for things like preventing Muslim women from wearing full head scarves […]
Time to eliminate gender discrimination in Indian registration, First Nation women deserve equality

PARLIAMENT HILL—I have been following with great interest the government’s decision to award Omar Khadr $10.5-million in compensation and in particular Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s statements defending the decision. I invite the prime minister to use the same reasoning, principles, and values with regard to First Nations women and their rights in Bill S-3: An […]
A few staffers leave PMO and Liberal Research Bureau

PARLIAMENT HILL—Prime Minister’s Justin Trudeau’s office is down one aide after Tim Krupa, special assistant for policy, left the PMO about three weeks ago. Mr. Krupa had been with the PMO since the Liberals won a majority government in 2015 and previously worked on operations and outreach work in Mr. Trudeau’s office when he was leader […]
Women in business: let’s go beyond tokenism and the status quo

In 1996, my first formal speech on women in business described the “female model of leadership,” and here we are still debating the same topic in 2017. Canada was one of the first signatories to the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in the early 1980s, and gender equality is […]
The creation of Canada was at core of diversity
OTTAWA—In Canada, the 150th birthday bash seems to have taken on a double meaning. Bash connotes a happy time when everyone joins together in an unforgettable party. Bash can also mean a chance to take a dump on the very birthday celebration that drew hundreds of thousands of Canadians to Parliament Hill. Some of the […]
We need more working moms in federal politics

OTTAWA—Like it or not, the medium is always the message—and a young political woman with a baby bump on a campaign trail is bound to make noise. NDP MP Niki Ashton, 34, is the only woman in the race to replace Tom Mulcair as leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada. On May 29, […]
Liberals’ black caucus members visit Casey’s Nova Scotia riding after his constituency staffer faces racism

The federal Liberal black caucus and an Independent Nova Scotia, African-Canadian Senator visited Liberal MP Bill Casey’s riding in late April to talk with people about racism after a black constituency office staffer there received some “nasty” racist remarks from constituents. In an interview The Hill Times, Mr. Casey, (Cumberland-Colchester, N.S.), a seven-term MP who was […]