Strictly speaking, counterweights turned seven years old this past summer. Our very first full-length article, “John Ibbitson’s next Canada” (by Randall White) appeared on August 19, 2004. We very quietly marked our seventh birthday, as it were, with “Just what was PM Harper thinking .. how about ‘Canadian Navy, Air Force Name Change Divides NDP […]

Susan Bonner on CBC TV, reporting from Washington, had just said that the new Canada-US border deal (aka US-Canada border deal ) just wasn’t on anyone’s radar in the USA. No one there was paying attention. So I was a little surprised when, flipping to my favourite US political TV channel, MSNBC, I saw the […]

[UPDATE DECEMBER 4 : Initial impressions of first NDP/NPD leadership debate – SEE BELOW]. Tomorrow, Sunday 4 December 2011, at 2PM ET / 11AM PT, the nine (count em) contenders for the leadership of the New Democratic Party of Canada / Nouveau Parti démocratique du Canada will be holding their first debate in Ottawa – […]

No one expects Nathan Cullen to win.  As a recent Barbara Yaffe column in the Vancouver Sun notes, he has been labelled “a long shot and an underdog in the [federal] NDP leadership race.”Â  And: “With nine candidates – nearly 10 per cent of the caucus” – vying “to replace Jack Layton, the Skeena-Bulkley Valley […]

We need to be experimenting more these days, throughout the global village it seems. We can’t do anything of consequence about that ourselves, no doubt. (And look what has happened lately to Yes We Can among the broader community of Yankees to the south of us, who must south of us remain.) But we can […]

For those who still think the Central Canadian mind is worth pondering, two somewhat contradictory recent Globe and Mail opinion columns on the current state of Canadian federal politics are probably worth a bit of further attention : John Ibbitson’s  “Harper’s moment to entrench Conservative politics has arrived,” in yesterday’s print edition, followed promptly today […]

Not that anyone is paying much attention (right now). But we’d just like to add our voices of support (or at least special interest) for the federal NDP leadership candidacy of Nathan Cullen – MP for the vast northern BC riding of Skeena-Bulkley Valley. A few weeks ago, Barbara Yaffe noted in the Vancouver Sun […]

One of the things keeping democracy in Canada alive – in the face of recurrent improbable odds, in Ottawa and elsewhere – has been a steady supply of very good people who watch over and write on the Canadian political scene (in all its vast diversity and both official languages). A historical list could go […]

“Can Lloyd George Do It?” is the title of a 1929 tract by John Maynard Keynes and Hubert Douglas Henderson on the economic policy of the fading British Liberal Party of the day. (As the Duke University economist E. Roy Weintraub put it a few years ago, in commenting on a New York Times column […]

Sometimes two headlines in the same newspaper on the same day can seem to explain each other. I had that feeling about two headlines in yesterday’s Toronto Star: “Lack of innovation holding Canada back: report” and “Tories order diplomats to hang portraits of the Queen by week’s end.” The first article explained how: “Canada has […]