If Canada already were the country of the future it could be – and should eventually become – the news that federal NDP interim leader Nycole Turmel was until  recently also a member of the Bloc Québécois (and is apparently still on the books of the vaguely sovereigntist provincial party, Québec Solidaire) would not be […]

TORONTO. MONDAY, JULY 25, 2011. 3:40 PM ET. The photo that appeared on the Toronto Star website less than an hour ago says a great deal, if not quite everything. As federal New Democrat leader Jack Layton has explained to his fellow New Democrats (in a statement subsequently made public in Toronto this afternoon): “In […]

You might wonder why today’s Toronto Sun includes “an edited version of a column that originally appeared in the Calgary Sun in 2001” –  by a Stephen Harper who was then merely the  president of the National Citizens’ Coalition. (For the record, it should be noted that the same  “edited version of a column” etc […]

As the Ottawa Citizen has just noted, “opinion surveys have long uncovered a strong republican streak among Canadians.” So what are those of us who do not at all care for the British monarchy in Canada to make of the great flood of commentary on the monarchy’s Canadian future, induced by the current North American […]

Shortly before 1 PM ET today it was announced that the “proposed merger of the TMX Group Inc. with the London Stock Exchange Group PLC is dead.” As explained by the official TMX statement: “TMX Group Inc. has agreed with London Stock Exchange Group plc (LSEG) to terminate their merger agreement … A majority of […]

Last Tuesday, June 21, 2011, the new Harper majority government’s Bill C7, the Senate Reform Act, had its first reading – not all that long, as it turned out, before the new 41st Parliament of Canada (following “the longest filibuster in Canadian history over back-to-work legislation”) – ran for the exits and the annual summer […]

According to  Daryl Bruce, a self-confessed “avid royal watcher since the wedding of Prince Andrew to Sarah,” a “source in the Prime Minister’s Office” has “told the Canadian media” that the upcoming local tour of William and Catherine “could go a long way to cementing the monarchy in Canada for a new generation in the […]

According to back-of-the-envelope calculations I have just made, I cast my first democratic ballot in the Ontario provincial election of October 17, 1967. I did not know where my local polling station was, but I did know the NDP candidate’s campaign office. I went there to ask where to go to lose my electoral virginity […]

According to Martin Regg Cohn, in “Ontario’s political air war – the battle of the campaign ads … launched during the final game of the hockey season” last night, the Tim Hudak Conservatives’ mindless “anti-tax commercial” (part of  “a wave of new commercials blasting [Ontario Premier Dalton] McGuinty as ‘The Tax Man’”) won first prize. […]

[UPDATED JUNE 20]. More than two weeks ago, the lovely Althia Raj warned that trouble for the latest Stephen Harper step by step Senate reform adventures was brewing among the new Tory majority in the unreformed Senate of Canada itself (“Conservative senators balking at Senate reform agenda: sources”). Now a fresh wave of similar reports […]