NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has said he won’t end his party’s deal with the Liberals and potentially trigger an election, until confidence in the electoral process is restored. Don’t hold your breath. A new Léger poll for the National Post suggests Singh’s hope is analogous to the old trope that the beatings will continue until […]

Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower held lengthy talks at the White House on this date in 1960. Foreign and defence matters took up the majority of the discussions. Of course, Dief being Dief, he also complained about the lack of interest in Canada demonstrated by the American media. “The President then […]

We are warned daily that Canada is a nest of spies, a den of Chinese espionage undermining our democracy. But who is the enemy, exactly? And who is the casualty, precisely? First, we were cautioned that certain Chinese-Canadian politicians were the villains ― with supposed spies or collaborators named and shamed in the media. Later, […]

There’s sure a lot of sound and fury going on, but is the Chinese-meddling-in-our-elections scandal really worth all the airtime it’s devouring? Going out on a limb, I’d argue that we have plenty of channels for spotlighting any wrongdoing (including public hearings, already announced) and for punishing any wrongdoers, including expelling foreign diplomats (already done). […]

It might be time to stop hoping and praying that America won’t elect Donald Trump again. Hopes and prayers might not matter much. While most Canadians don’t like him (he might get about 15% of the vote here in Canada) but he’d get at least three times that support if he wins the Republican nomination, […]

It looked like the NDP leader was in a political jam criticizing the government while at the same time propping it up. But someone, maybe Jagmeet Singh himself, came up with a great line to get himself to safe ground. Bruce does his SMT analysis on that plus the Alberta election and artificial intelligence too. […]

I was in Toronto last week at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities annual conference, which ran May 25-28. The meeting attracted thousands of municipal leaders from everywhere. As a councillor from a small Quebec village, it was gratifying to meet colleagues from across the country, most from much larger cities and towns, but some from […]

Sometimes Canadian politics feel less like a sophisticated game of chess and more like a round of checkers played at a backyard family gathering. Maxime Bernier, leader of the People’s Party of Canada (PPC), finds himself in the delicate situation of a checkers player on the losing side of a game against a particularly crafty […]

History was made on this date in 1943 when Agnes McClosky was appointed Canada’s Vice-Consul in New York City. This made her the very first Canadian woman posted to a foreign country on the nation’s behalf. Before her New York posting, McClosky was perhaps the most feared person in the Department of External Affairs. She […]

The latest Alberta election has rendered the map of that province into a highly polarized territory, riven between Danielle Smith’s re-elected, but weaker United Conservatives and the strongest opposition ever with Rachel Notley’s New Democrats. The obvious conclusion is that the centre has disappeared in Alberta and the next four years will be a tug […]