Oct 16 2019 — Andrew Coyne — Postmedia — After the loathing, the fear. For five weeks the Liberals and Conservatives have taken turns attacking each other’s leaders as, variously, a compulsive liar, an anti-woman American, a racist, a fool, etc. But with the campaign limping to its inconclusive end, party strategies have turned, as expected, to fear of what lies beyond. Gone is […]
Oct 12 2019 — Andrew Coyne — Postmedia — First, some comparisons, for perspective. The Liberal platform promises roughly $30 billion in net new spending over the next four years, and $94 billion in borrowing, $32 billion more than projected in the Parliamentary Budget Office’s “baseline.” The NDP, which released its platform costing Friday, would increase both spending and taxes by $130 billion over […]
Oct 10 2019 — Andrew Coyne — Postmedia — Who won Monday night’s debate? The short answer: no one knows. The longer answer: it doesn’t matter, or at any rate it doesn’t matter who I or anyone else thinks won. Yet that is the substance of most post-debate commentary — who “won,” as if that were the issue, as if anyone even knew what […]
Oct 8 2019 — Andrew Coyne — Postmedia — There are still two weeks to go, so perhaps they’ll surprise us yet, but on present form the election of 2019 will go down as the most miserable, dishonest, venomous, pandering and altogether trivial exercise in multi-partisan misdirection since the last one. I don’t think this is really contestable. The platforms the parties have seen […]
Oct 4 2019 — Andrew Coyne — Postmedia — If hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, virtue must be feeling awfully flattered of late. Hardly had we digested the news that Justin Trudeau, for all his attempts to tar opponents as racially insensitive troglodytes — certainly next to his own exquisitely sensitive self — had made something of a hobby of dressing […]
Oct 3 2019 — Andrew Coyne — Postmedia — Halfway through, the takeaway from this campaign, if the polls are any guide, is: nothing. Nothing has changed. Nothing is working. No one’s support has moved, much, up or down. For all the media hyperventilating about this or that poll — Tories up a point! Libs rebound by two! The Bloc is on the march!— […]
Oct 1 2019 — Andrew Coyne — Postmedia — Do deficits matter? To read the Liberal election platform, you’d have to say no. The party proposes $57-billion in new spending over the next four years, most of it borrowed; the deficit would hit $27-billion next year, and remain in excess of $20-billion throughout — and, presumably, beyond. This, mind, is from the party that […]
Sep 28 2019 — Andrew Coyne — Postmedia — By some cosmic coincidence, the United States and the United Kingdom have both arrived at a political crisis at the same moment. In each, a reckless, polarizing leader, emboldened by his uncritical followers, has pushed the limits of his power and taken liberties with the law: conspiring with foreign leaders to dig up dirt on […]
Sep 25 2019 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — Two weeks into the campaign, the differences between the two major parties’ platforms are starting to emerge. In brief, the Conservatives’ promises are specific, costed and mostly stupid, while the Liberals’ are vague, uncosted and mostly meaningless. Where the Tories seem intent on bribing voters, one absurdly microtargeted tax credit after another, the Grits prefer […]
Sep 24 2019 — Andrew Coyne — Postmedia — Once upon a time there were two political parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives, who had a Fundamental Philosophical Disagreement over something called universality: the notion that social benefits should be equally available to all, regardless of income. At the time, back in the 1980s, Liberals supported universality and Conservatives opposed it. The government of […]
Sep 20 2019 — Andrew Coyne — Postmedia — By now it should be clear there is something wrong with Justin Trudeau. We are not unfamiliar with the public figure who, at some point in his past, did something remarkably stupid or offensive like black up his face for a party. We have no experience with a leader, a prime minister no less, who […]
Sep 19 2019 — Andrew Coyne — Postmedia — I believe I was the first to propose the creation of an Economists Party, a political movement that would advocate for the sorts of policies favoured by people who study economics for a living, based on the principles at its core. It could not happen, of course, any more than the existing parties are likely […]
Sep 16 2019 — Andrew Coyne — Postmedia — Elections are defining moments for a nation: in deciding what it stands for, it also decides who and what it is. In the present election the issue on which we are being asked, most directly, to decide where we stand is Quebec’s Bill 21: the provincial law banning public servants “in positions of authority” from […]
Sep 13 2019 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — The safest thing to say about this election is that it’s “too close to call.” After all, aren’t the Liberals and Conservatives virtually tied in the opinion surveys? A weighted average of the major national polls, as calculated by the CBC’s Poll Tracker website, puts the Conservatives at 34.0 per cent, the Liberals at 33.7. […]
Sep 11 2019 — Andrew Coyne — Postmedia — Another campaign begun in the shadow of scandal. The first weeks of the 2015 election campaign were dominated by the trial of Sen. Mike Duffy, at much subsequent cost to Stephen Harper’s re-election chances. Whether or not the latest revelations in the SNC-Lavalin affair prove to be as consequential to the current campaign, the implications […]