Oct 20 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — Monday may in time come to be seen as the day electoral reform came to Canada. A year from now the country that, alone among those still using “first past the post” system of casting and counting votes, does so at every level of government, could have very different systems in place in several jurisdictions, […]
Oct 17 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — Never mind whether we can strike a free trade deal with China: should we? Ever since the text of the renegotiated NAFTA was released, attention has focused on its notorious Article 32.10, and whether it precludes Canada from entering into a free trade agreement with an unnamed “non-market country.” Critics claim Canada has been pressed […]
Oct 16 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — Attempting to soften up public opinion for the fall economic update, the finance minister has been furiously signalling two contradictory messages. On the one hand, the government will address business concerns at the sudden deterioration of Canada’s position in the competition for international capital in the wake of sweeping U.S. tax reforms put into effect […]
Oct 12 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — When the revamped, Trumpified NAFTA was first announced, the general reaction here was relief. Disaster had been averted. The agreement had been saved. Maclean’s magazine featured Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland on its cover by the headine, “You’re Welcome, Canada.” This was probably overstated. The worst-case scenario for the talks was never that Donald Trump […]
Oct 11 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — That presumably settles that. Throughout his time as prime minister, theories abounded as to what philosophy of government, if any, could explain Stephen Harper’s apparently rudderless course. A few die-hards on the left persisted in describing his government as ideological or hard-right, even as it was borrowing billions, adding new regional development agencies and nationalizing […]
Oct 6 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — The climate farce continues. To recap: Canada is nowhere near to achieving the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions it agreed to three years ago in Paris, having blown through a series of more ambitious earlier commitments — Kyoto, Copenhagen etc — without so much as taking its foot off the gas pedal. Not only are […]
Oct 3 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — Be careful what you wish for. Quebec’s election may have signalled a turning away from separatism — the mad, doomed project to wrench apart the country on linguistic and ethnic lines that consumed so much of the province’s energy and wealth over the last 50-odd years. But it has been accompanied by a turning toward […]
Oct 2 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — As the song says, did I shave my legs for this? All that cross-border yelling, a solid year of bluster and petulance, dire rhetoric about “stabs in the back” and “special places in hell,” fake deadlines and all-night negotiations, and we end up with pretty much the agreement we started with? All that was required […]
Sep 29 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — At some point in the next 20 to 30 years, on current trends, one or more of the provinces is likely to default on its debts. That is the inescapable message in the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s latest annual “Fiscal Sustainability” report. It is by no means a certainty: these sorts of extrapolatory exercises necessarily involve […]
Sep 26 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — Say what you will about first past the post, its defenders argue, but at least it delivers stable majority governments. And once this was true. Whatever its other defects — the exaggerated or false majorities it confers; its tendency to disproportionately reward parties that can bunch their support geographically, at the expense of those whose […]
Sep 24 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — It all rather has the sense of a dam having burst. In recent days a spate of stories has appeared in the nation’s media, notably the National Post’s weekend magnum opus, describing the many ways in which the current Governor General of Canada, Julie Payette, is said to be failing to do her job. Official […]
Sep 21 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — What are members of Parliament? Are they mere standard-bearers for their party, obliged to vote the party line at all times? Or are they representatives in their own right, entitled to apply their own judgment to the issues of the day? On which understanding do voters elect them: party affiliation or individual merit?
Sep 19 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — Wednesday’s Ontario Court of Appeal decision staying a lower court ruling that struck down a provincial bill redrawing the map for elections to Toronto city council is being greeted as a victory for the government of Doug Ford. And indeed the decision means the city election will almost certainly proceed, six weeks from now, along […]
Sep 17 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — The current mess in Ontario is not just the work of one man. It is the product of all that has conspired to concentrate so much power in one man, that he could make such a mess. It is the predictable consequence of a number of deep structural flaws in our democracy, each one malign […]
Sep 14 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — In principle, there is room for a new party in Canadian politics; arguably, there is a need for one. That the established parties have tended to pander to narrow and particular interests, rather than the broader public interest, is well documented, as is the result: an ever-expanding state devoted almost wholly to redistributing income, not […]