Mar 28 2023 — Andrew Coyne — Globe and Mail — The most arresting chart in last year’s budget was the one showing projected economic growth rates in the member countries of the OECD over the next forty years. In last place: Canada. At last, we all thought: the Trudeau government had belatedly recognized Canada has a growth problem. Having fixated almost exclusively throughout its first […]
Mar 23 2023 — Andrew Coyne — Global News — Leafing through the Ontario government’s latest fiscal plan, the thought occurs: What distinguishes this as a conservative, or at least Conservative, or even a Doug Ford budget? How is this different from anything, say, a Kathleen Wynne government might have produced? Answer: it isn’t, except for maybe spending more than she would have. It’s true. […]
Mar 16 2023 — Andrew Coyne — Globe and Mail — David Johnston is a remarkable Canadian, a model of integrity and decency throughout a lifetime of personal accomplishment and public service – as professor of law, as principal of McGill and as one of our finest Governors-General. He is also a wildly inappropriate choice as independent special rapporteur, in the matter of China’s attempts to […]
Mar 14 2023 — Andrew Coyne — Globe and Mail — You may have missed it in all the hubbub over foreign election interference, but last week a court struck down Ontario’s law restricting spending by unions and other “third party” advocacy groups in election campaigns: “foreign” election interference of another kind. This is an issue that has bedevilled Canadian politics for decades. Governments have wobbled […]
Mar 9 2023 — Andrew Coyne — Globe and Mail — Wednesday was a gruesome day for the Prime Minister. It began with a report by Global News citing two high-level memos to the Prime Minister’s Office warning, in highly specific terms, not just about foreign interference in our elections generally, but about infiltration and funding of Liberal campaigns by the government of China. The first, […]
Mar 7 2023 — Andrew Coyne — Globe and Mail — That was a neat trick the Prime Minister pulled off Monday evening. I don’t mean just the breathtaking change in communications strategy, on the issue that threatens to devour his government: foreign (specifically Chinese) interference in our elections. The sullen stonewalling of the last several weeks was instantly transformed into a dazzling pinwheel of apparent […]
Mar 3 2023 — Andrew Coyne — Globe and Mail — An independent public inquiry about … what, exactly? The answer may seem obvious: Why, about “foreign interference” in Canadian elections, of course. That is how the issue is most commonly framed, though the allegations that have given rise to the demands for a public inquiry are not concerned with foreign interference in our elections generally, […]
Feb 28 2023 — Andrew Coyne — Globe and Mail — By now it will have dawned on many people that we have a full-blown, five-alarm national security crisis on our hands. Two possibilities are open to us; each would be a crisis of a different kind. Either 1: rogue officers within the Canadian Security Intelligence Service have been making a series of sensational and wholly […]
Feb 16 2023 — Andrew Coyne — Globe and Mail — When it was reported that New York City was providing migrants with bus fare to upstate Plattsburgh, near the infamous Roxham Road border crossing into Canada, Canadians were properly shocked at the cynicism. This sort of opportunistic human-shuffling was supposed to be the stuff of troglodyte Republican governors in the South, not enlightened Democratic mayors […]
Feb 14 2023 — Andrew Coyne — Globe and Mail — Even by the standards of Israel’s fractious democracy, things are getting pretty cataclysmic. On Monday, tens of thousands of protesters besieged the Israeli parliament in defence of a democracy they fear is in jeopardy; inside, legislators accused each other of “fascism” and “anarchy.” Earlier, Israeli President Isaac Herzog had warned the country was on the […]
Feb 10 2023 — Andrew Coyne — Globe and Mail — So we have a deal. Hallelujah! No wonder the newspapers cleared their front pages. There we read that the Prime Minister and the premiers have reached an agreement to save health care, in which the federal government will send the provinces another $46-billion or is it $196-billion or maybe $21-billion, in return for which the […]
Feb 8 2023 — Andrew Coyne — Globe and Mail — The Senate has sent Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act, back to the House of Commons with a raft of amendments. Bad news: the unelected Senate has no democratic mandate to amend anything. But it’s potentially good news, if the government seizes the opportunity for a little “sober second thought” of its own, and pulls […]
Feb 3 2023 — Andrew Coyne — Globe and Mail — One by one the lines have all been crossed. Patriot missile-defence systems. Bradley armoured fighting vehicles. Leopard and Abrams tanks. Weapons that NATO had previously balked at providing Ukraine, for fear of “provoking” Russia, are now being supplied in abundance, if not in haste. The latest Ukrainian request to give NATO pause is for F-16 […]
Feb 2 2023 — Andrew Coyne — Globe and Mail — Oh God they’re back. As the ritual shaking of jowls resumes in Ottawa, we are reminded again of how much the government and opposition are agreed: notably, in the belief that the government is responsible for every sparrow that falls, in the economy in particular. They have, indeed, a mutual interest in maintaining this fiction: […]
Jan 27 2023 — Andrew Coyne — Globe and Mail — The early 2000s were a fertile period for health care reform. The deficit reduction battles of the previous decade had left their mark. Federal transfers to the provinces had fallen to just over 2 per cent of GDP, half what they were at their peak. Provinces had in turn been forced to curb spending across […]