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Sep 26 2023 — Andrew Potter — The Line — Up until the fiasco of Parliament giving a standing ovation to a 98-year-old Ukrainian-Canadian named Yaroslav Hunka, who, it turned out, had fought with the Waffen SS against the Soviets in the Second World War, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s North American tour had gone reasonably well.
Dec 15 2021 — Andrew Potter — The Line — In 1982, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and the provincial premiers inserted a time bomb into the Canadian constitution. It finally went off last week, when an elementary school teacher in West Quebec was removed from the classroom for wearing a hijab, in violation of Bill 21, the province’s secularism law. The case has generated no […]
Aug 30 2021 — Andrew Potter — Policy Options — The collapse of the government of Afghanistan and the rapid takeover of the country by the Taliban in the immediate aftermath of the pullout of U.S. forces has stunned the international community. Among the stunned we can count the Americans themselves, who had assumed it could take two to three years, and not a matter […]
May 30 2020 — Andrew Potter — National Post — One thing we’ve learned from the COVID-19 pandemic is the depths of the contempt that Canada’s professional class has for the practice of politics, our political parties and even Parliament itself. In the early days of the pandemic, this contempt largely emanated from journalists, but it appears to have now spread to members of the […]
May 18 2020 — Andrew Potter — National Post — It is hard to remember what it was like before time froze, but 2020 was already shaping up to be a very bad year on the national unity front. The post-election anger and alienation in the West was still on a slow boil, while the biggest story in February was the #ShutCanadaDown movement, the series […]
Apr 15 2020 — Andrew Potter — National Post — One of the more disturbing features of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic is the absence of contrarian strategic thinking combined with outright hostility towards anyone who questions how public health officials are handling the situation. When it comes to the coronavirus, contrarianism comes in two forms. One group simply denies the virus is that […]
Oct 25 2019 — Andrew Potter — Maclean's — Which side of history does Andrew Scheer want to be on? The answer depends on what sort of conservative he wants to be. There’s an old quote from William F Buckley that’s enjoying new life these days, to the effect that: “A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when […]
Jul 18 2019 — Andrew Potter — Globe and Mail — Ever since Donald Trump won the American presidency in 2016 with a toxic combination of sexism, vulgarity and the brazen courting of white nationalists, Canadian academics, pundits and pollsters have been obsessed with the question: “Could it happen here?” By “it,” they mean the rumblings of discontent that have propelled right-wing populists to power across […]
May 24 2019 — Andrew Potter — CBC — The news release put out Wednesday by Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez begins well: “The Government of Canada understands that for a democracy to function properly, it needs to have solid, independent news media.” If only he had stopped there. But instead, the release goes on for another 700 words to outline a plan whose principal […]
Nov 3 2017 — Andrew Potter — Globe and Mail — It’s not spelled out in her office’s mandate, but federal Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson knows that a big part of her job is to serve as Parliament’s ethical laundromat. The government drops its dirty clothes off at her door, and when the opposition complains about how filthy the Cabinet looks, everyone […]
Feb 6 2017 — Andrew Potter — Policy Options — In order to restore credibility and integrity to online news, we need a mechanism for attaching value to quality journalism. As far as mainstream media is concerned, 2016 will be remembered as the year that print media ran out of runway, as the transition-to-digital bluff was called. It’s clear there is no reliable digital business […]
Jan 10 2017 — Andrew Potter — National Post — A cabinet shuffle is an occasion to take stock of the prime minister and his government, judge its successes and failures and evaluate its priorities. On occasion, it can also serve as a chance to write a public servant’s political obituary. And so it is with Stéphane Dion, the foreign affairs minister who is leaving […]
Aug 12 2016 — Andrew Potter — NBC News — Back in 2005, the historian, political commentator, and all-around scourge of Islam Daniel Pipes started something he called the “stupid terrorists club” — a periodically updated catalogue of the idiotic things wannabe terrorists got up to. From Mohammed Salameh, who tried to get back the $400 deposit on the truck rental he used to try […]
May 13 2016 — Andrew Potter — National Post — In his classic book The Parliament of Canada, C.E.S. Franks suggests that the crisis facing Canada’s democracy is not that its institutions need to be reformed, but rather that they need to be understood. Perhaps no one is more in need of taking this advice to heart than Canada’s Minister for Democratic Reform, Maryam Monsef. […]
Apr 6 2016 — Andrew Potter — Montreal Gazette — Have you heard about the hottest dance craze of the season, the Responsible Conviction Shuffle? Invented by Global Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion and first performed at the University of Ottawa, it is a heroic attempt at reconciling the desire by the Liberals to be seen as both more principled than their predecessors and yet less […]