We profile five legislative initiatives that died on the docket—and find out which of them will be re-attempted after the election Compiled by Dylan C. Robertson & Victoria Salvas This election means death. Not only have Ottawa scrums, filibusters, and drawn-out committees been killed, pieces of legislation making their way through parliament have all met […] More »
So there’s this scandal: Bruce Carson, a former adviser to Stephen Harper’s prime minister’s office, allegedly claimed ties to the PMO in order to move forward a deal with an Ottawa company that would provide water filtration systems to First Nations communities. This deal would mean a handsome payout to an employee of that company—who […] More »
The governing Conservatives are about to table a budget that spends many billions of dollars. It sets the agenda of virtually every government department and it means a lot to anyone who pays taxes in Canada. But when the budget is introduced by the finance minister tomorrow, the prevailing Ottawa groupthink says it’s not about […] More »
This week the Green Party launched an anti-attack ad criticizing other parties for their sensational advertisements. The meta attack ad aims to benefit from Canadians’ supposed distaste for ad hominem vilification and mudslinging. It’s commonly believed that the first attack ad was the iconic 1964 “Daisy Girl” commericial, which threatens American voters with the prospect of nuclear war […] More »
In Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, even Italy, citizens are rising up, risking their lives to protest their corrupt governments. Egyptians, in a historical event, have proven they can be successful in overthrowing years of dictatorial leadership. Canadians were mostly cheering along (though our government wasn’t), but’s hard to put ourselves in their place—Canada, flawed though it […] More »
As the world spent the last two weeks watching the pro-democracy movement swell in Egypt, occasional outbursts of violence prompted many governments to advise their citizens to avoid travelling there. Some are also arranging to get people out. Multiple governments of varying prosperity have organized charter flights to evacuate citizens. Even the Iraqi government has procured flights, despite the […] More »
Metis National Council president Clément Chartier Today we’ve got a new entry in the Verbatim series, the transcripts we provide of our Listen to This podcast. (Just a reminder that you can catch new, original interviews every other Monday—you can subscribe with any podcast listening program by grabbing the podcast rss feed, or easily subscribing […] More »
Today, David Johnston became the Governor General of Canada, and he’s got big shoes to fill — Michaëlle Jean’s time as the Queen’s representative in Canada was quite a trip, after all. On the occasion of her retirement, we decided to look back at some of the bumps along the way (and don’t worry, we only mention prorogation […] More »
Compiled by Kevin Philipupillai and Simon Wallace Parliament resumes today. Over the next few weeks we’re going to hear a lot about the gun registry and the census and the economy and the economy and the economy. Often overlooked are the small, less flashy, things that parliamentarians do. Like propose private member’s bills, legislation that individual MPs […] More »
I suspect you already know why I think scrapping the long-form census is a terrible idea. Good data is good for society. Done right, statistical research keeps us all honest, forcing us to interact with the world as it actually is, rather than imagining ourselves as part of a reality that is personally or politically […] More »
It’s time for a little refresher course in Canadian civil society: Canada’s formal political dependence on Britain came to an end in 1982 with Pierre Trudeau’s Canada Act. The Act led to the patriation of the Canadian Constitution–you know, that old document that outlines the vibrant democratic system of government we so proudly employ in […] More »