The Power List – 50 Canadians who are breaking ground, leading the debate and shaping how we think and live
Few moments have challenged our understanding of power as profoundly as the one we’re in. Remember the two or three years before “COVID-19” entered the global lexicon? Root-and-branch change was all around. Social movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter were on the march. Technology had overthrown mainstays of business and the media, and new […]
Canada to wait longer than Europe for Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine
The European Union will have a much shorter interruption in deliveries of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine than Canada, despite commitments last week that countries would share equally in a temporary drop in doses. On Friday, the federal government announced vaccine deliveries to Canada would be cut by half for a four-week period starting Jan. 25. […]
Conservative Party of Canada Confirms Conservative MP Derek Sloan Accepted Donation From Neo-Nazi
The Conservative Party of Canada says party leader Erin O’Toole is “outraged” after discovering one of his MPs accepted money from a notorious neo-Nazi. The Conservative leader was reacting to a request for comment from PressProgress inquiring about Elections Canada records that show neo-Nazi Paul Fromm donated $131 to the Conservative Party of Canada in […]
Multiple Conservatives, including party leader Erin O’Toole, have publicly condemned the violent insurrection that overtook the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and left five dead. But Canadian strategists, pollsters, and experts say the party still has work to do to address some of the Trump-style, divisive politics within its ranks and that it has to […]
Read MoreBoeing’s 737 Max has been approved to fly again in Canadian skies starting Wednesday, ending a 22-month grounding following a pair of fatal overseas crashes that cost 346 people their lives and did serious damage to the company’s reputation. Transport Canada announced today it has completed its nearly two year review of the aircraft and […]
Read MoreA dedicated pandemic hospital will be opening just north of Toronto in a matter of weeks, as health care centres in the region struggle to cope with surging COVID-19 infections. In what appears to be the first of its kind in Canada, the Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital will be devoted to treating COVID-19 patients when it […]
Read MoreFederal Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole says there is “no place for the far right” in the party. O’Toole made the declaration in a statement today in which he lists the numerous ways that he has sought to make the Tories more inclusive and moderate since becoming leader in August. The comments come as O’Toole has […]
Read MoreCanada’s Liberals wasted no time after the Capitol Hill riot trying to tar the Conservatives with the brush of Trumpism. The governing party dug up Parler accounts supposedly belonging to Conservative members of Parliament, reminded everyone of Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole’s “Take Back Canada” slogan, and passed around photos of deputy leader Candice Bergen wearing […]
Read MoreDuring his only supper on Canadian soil, Donald Trump told Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and their fellow G7 leaders that their table was incomplete. Come 2020, the American president promised to fix that by inviting Russia’s Vladimir Putin to his G7 dinner. It was June 2018, four years since Russia had been expelled from what […]
Read MoreFeatured Ink
Why Justin Trudeau is No. 1 on the 2021 Maclean’s Power List
Dismiss the Prime Minister if you like, but the fact is that in the past year he had (and used) power on a scale nobody in the country could match. Who had more power in Canada in 2020, and was less inhibited about wielding it, than Justin Trudeau? Nobody. Nobody else comes close. Dismiss the […]
O’Toole lays groundwork for a more mainstream, pragmatic Conservative Party
From a timing point of view, Erin O’Toole’s disavowal of Trumpism has its critics. His 600-word statement poured gasoline on an issue that was an obsession for Liberals on Twitter, and few others, it is claimed.
Pretending that energy jobs will come back is only making things worse
Like most industries in Canada, fossil-fuel businesses have suffered painful job losses during the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting recession. Plunging global prices and steep reductions in capital spending have led to major job cuts. Fossil-fuel industries (including oil, natural gas, coal, and related activities) lost 17,500 jobs in the 12 months up to September.
Trump’s assault on truth will continue to trouble American democracy
It’s said you can’t reason a person out of a thing she or he was never reasoned into, which explains the dilemma America faces with its many millions of voters who believe Donald Trump won the 2020 election and should be kept in office by force if necessary. Storming the US Capitol was the culmination […]
On This Day in Canada’s Political History: Yellowknife Named Capital of the Northwest Territories
Very pleased today to mark an anniversary important to everyone in old stomping grounds as a reporter in the Northwest Territories. So, it was on this date in 1967 that Yellowknife was named the NWT’s capital city. I first experienced Yellowknife on a four-month contract for Northern News Services during the spring-summer of 1995 (where […]
This is a bad time for attack politics
Sun., Jan. 17, 2021timer3 min. read Erin O’Toole is no fool — though you would be forgiven for wondering, given his performance in recent days. Having carefully plotted and executed a shift to the centre, and the beginnings of an appeal to working-class urban voters, he appears to be at risk of backsliding into the […]
Oblivious to norms, Trump has fundamentally weakened the presidency and the United States
The first two weeks of 2021 feel like they have been fifty-two. In those opening days, the world bore witness to an attack on the seat of American democracy — an attack without parallel, in times of peace or conflict, since the War of 1812. A crazed mob of citizens was instigated, cajoled and sanctioned […]
The Bloc’s sneaky slur against a mild-mannered Muslim MP
It was slipped into the last paragraphs of a press release issued by Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet. I’m not accusing anyone, Mr. Blanchet said, before questioning whether new Transport Minister Omar Alghabra was too close to Islamic extremists to sit in the federal cabinet. Whoa. That’s a heck of a thing to just sneak […]
We can’t beat back climate change without nuclear energy
Reduction of greenhouse gases is essential if we are to prevent an irreversible climate disaster. At the same time, demand for electricity is increasing across the world. In developing countries, electricity is required to raise the basic standard of living for billions of people. In order to tackle these issues, we need to use all […]
What can Canada do for Joe Biden?
The United States embarked on a presidential transition like no other, with the outgoing president dangerously sowing the seeds of disruption, distrust and even insurrection, and the incoming president seeking to restore democratic order and traditional norms of decency and respect. President-elect Joe Biden needs allies during this extraordinary transition, and not just in the […]
When I entered the media it was after a devastating personal failure in politics and I feared no one would ever hire me again after such a public routing. The year was 1999 and I’d just been fired from the Calgary Board of Education when then Alberta Education Minister Lyle Oberg determined that our group […]
Read MoreIt ended without either one of them saying goodbye. Barring some kind of contact within the next week, the fraught relationship between Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump is over. Unlike so many other endings in Trump’s world these days, this conclusion was a fade out, not a blow-up. The last conversation between the two men […]
Read MoreHow do we explain what’s going on south of the border? We know the basics: Left vs. Right, white vs. black, rich vs. poor, Wall St. vs. Main St., social vs. traditional media. I have spent some time in the U.S. over the years, especially in Washington, and it only takes one minute of conversation […]
Read MoreOn Oct. 22, 2014, a lone gunman attacked Canada’s democratic heart. Murder and terror were the intent. Canadians were shocked, but for those who had watched the hidden online world of conspiracy and hate, there was a grim sense of inevitability. Corporal Nathan Cirillo, 24, paid with his life that day as the attacker made […]
Read MoreAn MLA named Pat Rehn is now ejected from the UCP fold, a deserving sacrifice to Premier Jason Kenney’s new clampdown on caucus discipline. Kenney was surely looking for somebody to symbolically sack following the travel scandal that showed, as Kenney himself admits, a very lax caucus attitude toward the government’s reputation.
Read MoreOn this date in 1993, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was in the midst of one of the most remarkable visits ever made to the U.S. by a sitting PM of Canada. George H. W. Bush, who had been defeated by Bill Clinton in November of 1992, spent the last weekend of his Presidency at Camp […]
Read MoreIt’s well understood in Canadian politics that Ontario and Quebec are the parts of the country that matter. This is immensely frustrating, and understandably so, for the Atlantic provinces, the West and the territories. But it’s just math. If the Liberals can win big in Ontario and Quebec, they win. If the Tories hold their […]
Read MoreMarc Garneau has only been in his new job for a couple of days but he has already been on the receiving end of diplomatic correspondence with Chinese characteristics. These broadsides generally consist of an admonishment for Canada to mind its own business when China wants to mistreat political opponents at home and abroad.
Read MoreYesterday we marked an anniversary that makes all Conservatives proud, so today I have one of equal pride for my Liberal readers. It was, of course, on this date in 1958 that Lester Pearson was elected leader of the national Liberal Party, becoming Leader of the Opposition facing off against Prime Minister John Diefenbaker.
Read MoreThe retired top general of Canada’s military, who guided the combat mission in Afghanistan and ran disaster deployments against floods and fires, now faces the most important mission of his career: getting almost 15 million Ontarians vaccinated against COVID-19 in 250 days or less. His first shots in confronting an enemy that never appeared in […]
Read MoreEntertainment Plus
‘Schitt’s Creek’ up for five Critics Choice Awards, including best comedy series
TORONTO — "Schitt's Creek" continues to flood the awards circuit.The Canadian CBC series, which swept the Emmys' comedy categories with seven trophies last September, is now up for five Critics Choice Awards. The story of the riches-to-rags Rose family is nominated for best comedy series and in acting categories for stars Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, […]
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