[UPDATED MARCH 22,  30]. A piece in the Vancouver Sun (and other Postmedia News outlets) that began March 21 under the headline “Report finds Tories in contempt of Parliament” ended the same day under the quite different “As Harper government faces dissolution, Layton holds most of the cards.” And it was almost entirely re-written to […]

[UPDATED MARCH 21, 22, 25]. At the edge of what promises to be one of the most dramatic weeks in recent Canadian political history (in both official languages), I am surprised that two excellent Globe and Mail pundits are still raising doubts about the need for the Canadian federal election almost everyone else seems to […]

[UPDATED MARCH 21, 1 PM ET, MARCH 22, 9 AM ET, MARCH 23, 25, 30]. Well, well, well  … it now seems all but official. According to CTV’s Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife : “We’re into an election period without a doubt and it’ll probably be for May 2nd.” According to another source (Maclean’s, copying […]

As Stephen Harper and his party acolytes traipse across the country delivering pre-election goodies to worthy causes and places (see, eg: “PM announces support for Jean-Lesage International Airport,” “Ottawa provides $10 million for health network and hospital planning in Vaughan,” and “PM renews anti-gang funds … Will get $37.5M over five years”), he is also […]

As the week of March 7—11 that maybe was or was not in Canadian federal politics closes, two new polls on party standings have thrown some almost abrupt cold water on the more or less enthused speculation about such themes as “can opposition get Harper on abuse of power instead of budget?” – that I […]

[UPDATED MARCH 9, 8 PM ET]. Yesterday the two oldest Toronto newspapers threw a little red meat to those who long for the demise of the “Harper government” in Ottawa (with some milder parallel reporting in the rest of the country). In the Globe and Mail Lawrence Martin’s column, “On the road to the Harper […]

[UPDATED MARCH 7, 9, 11, 16, 25, 30, APRIL 5, 8, 11, 13, 22, MAY 1, 3]. Le Devoir, in the most politically sophisticated region of  Canada’s wonderland, may have already pronounced the simplest truth (or dare) on the Canadian federal election of 2011: “Flaherty ferme la porte au compromis sur le budget … Le […]

In today’s Toronto Star Angelo Persichilli alludes once again to the prospects of Bob Rae as a future leader of the still much beleaguered Liberal Party of Canada: “I’m not saying Rae wants his party to defeat the government and force an election to accelerate the departure of his friend Michael Ignatieff.”Â  But … Mr. […]

[UPDATED FEBRUARY 18, 20]. Those of us who have not been happy about Stephen Harper’s (technically minority) stewardship of the Canadian experiment over the past five years will not be happy about the three latest opinion polls on Canadian federal politics either. The Canada-wide results from EKOS, Ipsos Reid, and Harris Decima are (in that […]

Anyone who has perused the primary sources for the Canada-US trade agreements of the past quarter century will not be surprised to discover that the separate documents released by the “Prime Minister of Canada” and the “White House” this past Friday, February 4, 2011 are identical, with one recurrent exception. The Canadian version of “Beyond […]