Dec 7 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — What is the point of a First Ministers Conference? There is no actual necessity for them, you understand. The federal and provincial governments are quite able to function within their respective jurisdictions without their leaders dashing off across the country at regular intervals to quiver their jowls at each other. The first such meeting was […]
Dec 5 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — Since he became Conservative leader, it has been a matter of speculation: how far would Andrew Scheer go to pander to the populist-nationalist right, specifically on the matter of immigration? His predecessor had pulled in both directions at once, one minister building bridges to immigrant communities even as another was blowing them up. But candidates […]
Dec 4 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — Last week’s announcement by General Motors that it would close its vehicle assembly plant in Oshawa brought the usual flood of instant lessons and easy remedies. From the right, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer blamed the federal carbon tax, on the basis of precisely zero evidence. From the left, there were demands for governments to “get […]
Nov 24 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — In August, 1981, the Kent Commission — appointed to investigate the Canadian newspaper industry in the wake of the simultaneous closings of the Ottawa Journal and the Winnipeg Tribune — issued its report. Among other recommendations for government intervention in the news business, it called for tax credits to be given to newspapers with higher-than-average […]
Nov 21 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — The 2018 fall economic statement begins with a puzzle. Economic growth, it trumpets, is strong — the strongest in the G7 in, er, 2017. Unemployment is at a 40-year low; capacity utilization is back to pre-recession levels; profits are up; wages are growing faster than they have in eight years.
Nov 20 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — Thursday’s fall economic statement from the Doug Ford government may have been vague, windy and misleading about the issues it was supposed to address — trifling matters such as the size of the deficit, or what the government intends to do about it — but it had some very specific things to say about an […]
Nov 17 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — It would be hard to imagine a more hideous train wreck than the steaming pile of metal, flesh and bone Britain has made of its departure from the European Union. By the time all the bodies have been bagged and tagged, Brexit’s victims may include, not only the country’s membership in the EU, but also […]
Nov 14 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — Are Conservatives right to think the next federal election will be a referendum on carbon pricing? And are they likely to win if it is? There they all are on that now-notorious Maclean’s cover: the premiers of Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario, together with the Conservative leader and presumptive next premier of Alberta and the federal […]
Nov 12 2018 — Andrew Coyne — Postmedia — It was an unusually sombre group of world leaders that gathered in Paris this weekend to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War. Any November 11 is a solemn occasion, of course, in remembrance of the millions of dead, not only in that terrible war but in wars since. But […]
Nov 8 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — In a just world, in a country that still remembered what justice looked like, Americans would have seized the opportunity of the midterm elections to rise up against a president, and the party that sustains him, that have violated every norm, debased every standard, inflamed every prejudice, and corrupted (or attempted to) every institution of […]
Nov 5 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — For the past week, question period has been dominated by accusations from Conservative MPs that a government agency has been spying on Canadians — improperly gathering sensitive personal information, it is suggested, on behalf of the ruling party. That shadowy cabal? You guessed it: Statistics Canada. The Conservatives have invested much effort in recent years […]
Nov 2 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — The idea of entrusting the organization of election debates to an independent commission is a sound one, and long overdue. Televised leaders’ debates have been a part of Canadian elections for nearly fifty years. In most elections they are regarded as the single most important event on the campaign calendar; in some they have been […]
Oct 31 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — So is the war on the media off? Late last week, the national press were ablaze with stories about how the Conservatives were planning to target the media in the coming federal election. “The Conservative party appears to be gearing up for a fight with news outlets as part of its 2019 electoral strategy,” reported […]
Oct 29 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — There is a theory that B.C.’s NDP government would just as soon the province’s referendum on electoral reform failed. I doubt it, but the way the government has chosen to go about it lends the theory some credibility. Take the double-barreled question on the ballot, for starters. The first asks voters whether the province should […]
Oct 27 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — The news that Conrad Black was starting a new national newspaper, with Ken Whyte as its editor, was all anyone in the Canadian media could talk about. So when Whyte asked me to lunch that day, a few months before the launch, I had some expectation of what we might discuss. I was writing then […]