| NDP leadership hopefuls
Mulcair and Saganash have given no money to
their party since 2004 |
 McGregor: Financial reports filed with Elections Canada
show no
sign that front-running leadership contender
Thomas Mulcair has given any money to the federal
New Democratic Party over the past eight years. MORE... |
    
FEATURED INK
Harper wins when voters snooze
 Riley: It is hard to decide
what is more astonishing: Prime Minister Stephen
Harper's inconsistencies
and course corrections, or the fact they
have done no serious damage to his standing
in the polls. His original appeal - even
to those who don't share his vision - rested
on his image as a solid, personally incorruptible,
straight shooter. Said what he meant, meant
what he said. |
Time for a public-sector pension
wake-up call
Yaffe: Canadians grappling
with slim pickings can't afford rich payouts
to MPs, bureaucrats.
It's getting mighty tough for Ottawa to keep
justifying plummy pensions that are exclusively
reserved for public servants and MPs. Ordinary
Canadians footing most of the bill for those
pay-outs increasingly are having to postpone
their own retirements for lack of financial
resources. |
More
information officers, less information
J. Simpson: Here’s a
simple statistic from which two tales flow:
In the first five years of the Harper government,
the number of information officers in the federal
government grew by 16 per cent, to 4,459 from
3,855. The two tales are these: that the increase
in information officers reflects the abiding,
daily preoccupation of the Harper government... |
Mulcair
knows NDP Quebec support is no “long-term
lease.’’
Tim Harper: The NDP leadership
candidates have all heard it. They have
been too polite, too agreeable, irritating
the national media by all but joining hands
and singing the company song at what passes
for debates. But that doesn’t mean
that shots haven’t been taken away
from the debate podiums and a lot of the
whispers have taken aim at Thomas Mulcair. |
Abortion hypocrisy
Selley: No flareup in Canada's
abortion debate can safely burn itself out
until someone
conducts a poll. Things caught fire last
week, when an editorial in the Canadian Medical
Association Journal recommended withholding
gender information from pregnant women until
30 weeks, to prevent the problem (which the
Journal claims is growing) of sexselective
abortion.
|
Demand for constitutional reform
only builds
Spector: Last week, in the
lead-up to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s
meeting with first nations, Derek Nepinak,
Grand Chief of
the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, told The Globe
and Mail he’d be asking Mr. Harper to
schedule a conference of first ministers to
explicitly spell out the constitutional rights
of indigenous peoples. However, at their meeting
on Tuesday... |
Canada: Our home and UN land
Lilley: Earlier this week
Canada kicked out a Rwandan man accused of
helping instigate
the genocide in his homeland almost 20
years ago, but if were up to the mandarins
at the
United Nations, Leon Mugesera would still
be on Canadian soil. Despite being found inadmissible
to Canada in 1995 by a Liberal cabinet minister...
|
You
can’t kill Canadian
nationalism
Salutin: Consider this a delayed
obituary for McClelland & Stewart, “The
Canadian Publishers,” which effectively
expired this month after a lengthy decline
in the care
of several owners and convoluted arrangements.
They waited till the firm’s 100th anniversary
had passed — a full week. Our question
is: does this also... |
How Mark might be like Ike
Gardner: You must be exhausted, Mark. Being
the governor of the Bank of Canada during
a worldwide financial crisis isn't a small
job. And now you're moon-lighting at the
Financial Stability Board in Switzerland.
The chair-man, no less. I read that you're
going to rescue Europe. Reconfigure the banking
system. Prevent global financial meltdown.
Save the world. |
Hudak ready for a mulligan
Blizzard: The Flying Wallendas aren’t
the only ones looking at performing a high-wire
act over Niagara Falls. Next month, Tim Hudak
takes on a tough balancing act at a PC convention
in that city. Hudak faces a leadership review,
mandatory under party rules after a losing
election. He knows he has to be on his game — and
send a message to the core of Tory supporters... |
Obama headed for four more years
L. Martin: Watching the Newt
and Mitt show these days, you can picture a
big grin on
the guy in Oval Office. Just when it looked
like Mitt Romney was about to wrap things
up and rally the Republican Party around
him, the surge of Newt Gingrich has set the
GOP on a long road of self-incrimination.
Unlike what we see in our polite NDP leadership
race, the two top Republican... |
Classic
diversion: Obama’s
Robin Hood gestures deflect attention from
his failures
Adler: Eat the rich. Folks,
the Occupy movement has infiltrated the White
House. President
Barack Obama wants the rich to pay the government’s
tab with the American people. To stop the 1%
from choking the life out of the American dream.
To help eliminate the deficit and pay down
those stimulus debts. To fix all that’s
gone wrong with America. To overhaul the tax... |
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- De-coding
the Liberals’ so-called
bounce
 Silver: I am hardly the first person to comment
that the number of public opinion polls that
have flooded the Canadian political landscape
in the last five years has created a noise
that is often deafening to political discourse
in this country.
|
- Harper and the U.S. are wrong on the Iran
threat
 Caplan: It’s unlikely that Stephen
Harper, John Baird, Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich
have ever heard of Tamir Pardo, Meir Dagan,
Amos Yadlin, Gabi Ashkenazi or Yuval Diskin.
But it would probably make no difference
if they had. After all, Benjamin Netanyahu
certainly knows them well and ignores them
completely.
|
- Costly secretariat lives on with little
to do
 Weston: Bureaucracy was set up to support
an appointments commission since scrapped.
In the six years since the Harper government
came to power, Canadian taxpayers have spent
millions of dollars on supporting a federal
appointments commission that doesn't exist.
|
- Gateway
panel urged to affirm it’s
impartial
 As the federal government prepares to make
major changes to the way Canada reviews industrial
projects, environmentalists are challenging
the panel assessing the Northern Gateway
pipeline to prove it’s not biased.
|
- Fighting has no place in hockey,
GG says
 The recent rash of injuries in professional
hockey has caught the attention of Gov. Gen.
David Johnston, who says that fighting — like
high-sticking and head-shots — shouldn't
be part of the game.
|
- Sun
TV attacks don’t faze CBC chief
Hubert Lacroix
 Despite an aggressive campaign against Canada’s
public broadcaster and mountains of freedom-of-information
data demanded by self-described right-wing
news network Sun TV, CBC president Hubert
Lacroix says he doesn’t believe there’s
a conspiracy between its Canadian owners,
Sun Media, and the Harper conservatives in
Ottawa.
|
- Does Harper really need to raise the retirement
age?
In his address to the Davos Economic Forum,
Prime Minister Harper raised the issue of
major reforms to Canada’s public retirement
income system. If a pension debate is upon
us, then let’s start with a look at
some facts about the federal system of public
pensions.
|
- Cullen offers glimpse at money
involved in NDP leadership race
 Only candidate to share list of donors. Nearly
four months since he officially entered the
race for leadership of the New Democratic Party,
Nathan Cullen has raised about $135,000 from
individual donors - a pretty good start for
an underdog, according to at least one party
insider.
|
- MPs expect raucous session of
Parliament
 Parliament resumes Monday for what could be
one of the most acrimonious sessions in years
with arguably the most important federal budget
in a political generation.
|
- Foreign aid gets down to business
 The Conservative government makes no apologies for involving companies - especially
mining firms - directly in aid to third-world nations. And as Elizabeth Payne
writes, aid agencies say that, done properly, it's an idea that benefits everyone
involved
|
- Harper government plays down oil sands
document
 The federal government disassociated itself
on Thursday from an embarrassing official
policy paper that said the country’s
independent energy regulator, now studying
a controversial oil pipeline, is in fact
a government ally.
|
- Conservatives Targeting Cleary
 The federal Conservative government is continuing
its assault on NDP MP Ryan Cleary for raising
questions on the viability of the commercial
seal fishery.
|
- Donations scandal is wake-up
call
A scandal over improper political donations
in Alberta has been brewing for months, and
new details dug up by the opposition Wildrose
Party are further evidence of a systemic problem.
It is alleged that the governing Progressive
Conservative party has been accepting donations,
largely through fund-raising events, from government
entities.
|
- ORNGE’s
mysterious $6.7 million payment
 The single binder of “marketing services” an
ORNGE for-profit company did for an Italian
helicopter firm is not worth the $6.7 million
the ORNGE firm was paid.
|
- Canada to France: keep your election to
yourself
Julien Balkany, an investment banker who
lives in New York, arrives in Vancouver Tuesday
as part of a campaign swing that has taken
him, in recent days, to San Diego, Los Angeles,
San Francisco and Seattle. Mr. Balkany, who
is a citizen of France, wants to win votes
in French elections set for June.
|
- Woman 'cooked to death': report
Quebec police officers have completed their
report into the bizarre death of Chantale
Lavigne, who was "cooked to death" at
a personal development seminar, and investigators
are expected to meet with the Quebec prosecutor
assigned to the case as early as next week.
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|
The 911 call placed on the night of Demi
Moore’s hospitalization was released
on Friday, and if her friend on the phone
is to be trusted, it appears the actress’ adverse
reaction came from smoking an unnamed substance.
Horgan: The holiday break
is over and the House of Commons is set
to return regular
operations
on Monday. So then what?
Canadian Forces emails cite positive coverage
of helicopter trip. A Sea King emergency
landing demonstration piloted by Prince William
led to positive coverage in the media — for
the helicopter.
Paul
Wells on why Harper works harder than any
prime minister in his lifetime to take himself
out of the picture
The federal government is reviewing Canada's
planned purchase of up to 65 F-35s after U.S.
Defence Secretary Leon Panetta confirmed Thursday
his country will be slowing production on the
troubled stealth fighters.
The manufacturer of the air force's new
maritime helicopter has told National Defence
it will
deliver only five test aircraft this year — opening
the door to tens of millions of dollars
in fines on a project the auditor general
has
said is late and over budget.
After five years of minority governments,
Stephen Harper finally has the freedom to
act.
The Conservative government has postponed
final Commons debate on a controversial bill
that would fulfill a longstanding promise
to scrap the federal long-gun registry.
Bloc Québécois officials said
Thursday the party reimbursed the House of
Commons the $12,000 paid to a retired reporter
to write a book on its
former leader, Gilles Duceppe.
It
has become a judicial tradition in
China. A holiday rolls around and – just
as Western journalists and diplomats
are heading for the airports – China’s
court system rapidly processes its
most sensitive cases.
The fur has been flying all week over Ryan
Cleary’s questioning of the seal hunt’s
future.
Finance Minister Dwight Duncan is demanding
Ottawa release a classified federal report
that reveals Ontario gets shortchanged by the
national equalization wealth-sharing scheme.
