COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. MARCH 1, 2023. This morning’s editorial meeting tabled a two-page pdf file headlined “London Declaration, United Kingdom, 1949.” The suggestion was that this is a document not much remembered in the 2020s. But it is nonetheless of serious interest in the current post-Elizabeth II debate on practical alternatives to the increasingly […]

COUNTERWEIGHTS EDITORS, GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. OCTOBER 27, 2022. “History has many cunning passages” (T.S. Eliot). And in one of them, in the Canadian House of Commons, yesterday’s very clear defeat of a Bloc Québécois motion to sever ties with the “British monarchy” could somewhat ironically prove the effective first step on a long inevitable journey to […]

ONTARIO TONITE. RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO, 30 MARCH 2022. Strictly by accident, I was in Richmond, Virginia at the time of the wedding of the mother and father of the William who just recently completed “an eight-day tour of Belize, Jamaica and the Bahamas during which he and wife Kate were celebrated but also […]

The grandfather of one of we (various and intermittent) counterweights editors used to say that it was “A Great Day for Canada” on his own birthday. And it has long seemed to us that there is something quite admirably as well as agonizingly Canadian about this kind of practice. In any case, with July 1, […]

No partisan of the Canadian future can fail to admire the practical political judgment of the people of Quebec in their April 7, 2014 provincial election, for seats in the Assemblée nationale in Quebec City. Strictly in terms of seats the current results, just after midnight on the Globe and Mail site, are :  LIBERAL […]

At least some people are talking about how interesting the Quebec provincial election campaign has suddenly become. See, eg : “Marois says rest of Canada would be welcome to visit independent Quebec” ; “Independent Quebec would keep Canadian dollar, Marois says” ; “Marois tells Canada not to be afraid of Quebec election outcome” ; “Naked […]

I want to hang in for a moment longer with my colleague Frank Bunting’s allusion to Hugh Segal’s wisdom on Quebec last week. The Quebec provincial election campaign of 2014 has only just begun. But already I feel I have to keep trying hard to remember what Senator Segal said early in 2012 : “If, […]

The Liberal Party of Canada has some reasons for feeling good  at its Montreal convention this weekend.  (Eg : “Majority says it’s ‘time for another federal party to take over’: poll” ; “More Canadians share Justin Trudeau’s values: poll” ; and “Liberals open wider lead over Conservatives: poll.”) Two members of CBC TV’s most widely […]

Just over a week ago we heard that “Proroguing Parliament till October buys Harper and Tories time … The restart effectively gives Mr. Harper two high-profile opportunities … to sell Canadian voters on the notion he is still the person to lead the country.” The first opportunity is “a Speech from the Throne that will […]

Dr. Dave Town from Orillia, Ontario offered an intriguing comment on my recent post about Senate reform,  “Is doing anything sensible with the Senate of Canada just a vain fantasy?” (And I believe he is the same person I have now intriguingly discovered on the “gossip-stew of the internet” : successful chiropractor by day, public-spirited  […]