A casual encounter with the Business News Network (BNN) the other day suddenly brought some of us face to face with what could be a looming issue of some importance for the mid to longer term economic development of what, say whatever else you like, remains Canada’s most populous province, by some considerable distance. But […]

This coming week the campaign for what might be one of the biggest Ontario provincial elections in years gets underway. Not much more than three weeks ago  John Michael McGrath at Toronto Life was opining on how Ontario Premier Dalton “McGuinty’s personality (or lack thereof) is a huge part of the Liberal brand–borrowing Tory Bill […]

According to today’s Globe and Mail: “The push for a merger between the [federal] Liberal Party and the NDP has quickly become a major issue among the growing field of candidates to replace Jack Layton … The top contenders for the NDP leadership – party president Brian Topp and House Leader Thomas Mulcair – are […]

Back in the late 1940s, “Canada’s first and perhaps only genuine intellectual” Harold Innis reported that: “When Oliver Mowat was introduced to a prominent statesman in England with a comment on the length of time he had been Premier of Ontario he was greeted with the comment, ‘Have you no public opinion in that Province?’” […]

“Tell me why this coming Ontario election isn’t going to bore me to death,” a friend  who pays only a respectable citizen’s dutiful attention to politics asked a few weeks ago. And I’ve been trying to come up with a suitable response ever since. Right now, with the headline “Northern Ontario battles 92 wildfires as […]

They don’t take up much space in the 41st Parliament of Canada, which has just begun a very short housekeeping session, before fleeing for the traditional summer break. The future of the once high and mighty federal Liberals after their massacre this past May 2 nonetheless continues to attract attention. Among key current written texts […]

It was not that long ago that even seasoned observers of Ontario politics who did not like Dalton McGuinty were agreeing he was probably close enough for jazz to a “three peat.” He was the likely winner of three straight provincial elections – the Premier Dad who was looking more and more like the very […]

Late last week Grant LaFleche at the St. Catharines Standard reported that “Tories, NDP hope to repeat federal win in Ontario.” According to Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath, the federal Liberal massacre on May 2, 2011 “shows that people are tired of the same old thing, the same old parties … People are fed up […]

Two and a half weeks ago our resident Ontario historian had yet another stab at the question that still looms over Queen’s Park – ancestral homeland of the provincial government of Canada’s most populous province. (Which is currently in the midst of some economic difficulty – as it has been since, mmmm, would you believe […]