RANDALL WHITE, CANADIAN PROVINCES NOTEBOOK, TORONTO. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2024. The final count on the October 19 BC election results is now complete.. In round numbers : David Eby’s BC NDP has 45% of the popular vote and 47 seats in the BC Legislative Assembly (where a bare majority is also 47 seats) ; John […]

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS. GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2024. What to say in the midst of assorted disturbing numbers for the great cause of the free and democratic society in the USA today? Even if Michael Moore now (or still?) believes the Harris-Walz Democrats will win in the end on November 5. And more to the […]

RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK,TORONTO. SUNDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2024. It still seems hard to know just where Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet is going with the “Bloc’s demand to increase old age security (supported by the CPC and the NDP so far).” According to our local (Liberal) MP here it “is too expensive and poorly targeted.” […]

The public policy proposals discussed below reflect just one ordinary voter’s opinions, many of which may never see any practical light of day in the darker real world of Canadian politics. The proposals try to pay some attention to what has gone before — in the spirit of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s “Only a person who knows the past […]

RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO . TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2024. [UPDATED SEP 26]. The October 2024 just waiting in the wings could be called provincial election month in Canada. Voters in three provinces will choose new (or re-elect old) provincial governments : BC (5.6 million people) on Saturday, October 19 ; New Brunswick (846,000) […]

RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK,TORONTO. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2024. You can read about Ben Rhodes as one of three “young hotshots” appointed “as assistant deputies” at the Obama administration’s National Security Council (NSC), on page 218 of Barack Obama’s A Promised Land (2020). There are as well more than a dozen additional references to Mr. Rhodes’s […]

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS. GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2024. The theoretical big news in Canadian politics right now is (to cite the CBC) :”The NDP is ending its governance agreement with the Liberals … Deal that ensured Liberal minority government’s survival was the first such agreement at the federal level.” CBC News (in the person of […]

RANDALL WHITE, ONTARIO TONITE, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 21, 2024. The impressively independent Ottawa journalist Dale Smith has argued for “resisting the sense of fatalism that [Conservative leader Pierre] Poilievre has already won the next election when it’s a year away and there is plenty of time for progressive voters to fight.” In at least […]

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON, CANADA. MONDAY, JULY 1, 2024. This is the 157th anniversary of the Canadian confederation of 1867 — and the 77th anniversary of the first Canadian Citizenship Act that took effect in 1947. (During the 80 years from 1867 to 1947 residents of the confederation of the old British North American provinces […]

RANDALL WHITE, NORTH AMERICAN NOTEBOOK, TORONTO . SATURDAY, JUNE 22, 2024. When I first heard about the new Léger poll “Official bilingualism in Canada a ‘myth‘” on TV last night, I was suitably outraged. I was 24 years old when the concept was “enshrined into law in 1969, making English and French Canada’s official languages.” […]