Dec 6 2019 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — Two men in need of redemption stood across from each other in the House of Commons on Friday. The first man looked upon the other and declared himself disappointed to see that nothing had changed. The second man rose and made a point of showing that he would be taking a slightly altered approach, at […]
Dec 6 2019 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — Talk is cheap and everything is easier said than done — but a throne speech, by its very nature, can only be measured by its words. And the two most prominent words in the official remarks that opened the 43rd Parliament were “climate” and “change.” “Canada’s children and grandchildren will judge this generation by its […]
Nov 26 2019 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — Andrew Scheer and the Conservative Party are proceeding through the stages of post-election grief. Scheer can only hope the process stops before it reaches him personally. The first scapegoat in any case of political failure is always “communications”. A breakdown in communication was the culprit Scheer trotted out three weeks ago when he emerged from […]
Nov 23 2019 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — On paper, Jonathan Wilkinson is the ideal person to front the Trudeau government’s environmental agenda at this particular moment. In practice, he might find it nearly as hard as his predecessor did. “I think we have an opportunity in this minority Parliament to reset things,” Wilkinson said in an interview with CBC News this week. […]
Nov 21 2019 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland have been very good for each other. Not for the first time, the future of the Liberal government — and a lot else — seem to be riding on the two of them finding success together. “She is someone with whom I worked very, very closely, and with great success, […]
Nov 19 2019 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — So who is Justin Trudeau now? He is unlikely to emerge from the result of the October 21 election as a wholly different person. He’s surely still the same complicated figure he was before this fall’s campaign. He is also still the prime minister. But things have changed. His government’s situation, his public standing and […]
Nov 14 2019 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — The unsatisfying federal election campaign of 2019 didn’t really end on October 21. Instead, it has splintered into a half-dozen smaller campaigns — a tangle of pursuits that, individually and collectively, will define Canadian politics for the next while. Andrew Scheer is campaigning for his own leadership as his party tries to figure out what […]
Nov 9 2019 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — The problem is not that Andrew Scheer was asked a question this week about his religious faith. The problem is that he didn’t offer much of an answer. That’s been his problem for two and a half months now. In fairness to the Conservative leader, he and his advisers probably hadn’t talked after Wednesday’s caucus […]
Nov 7 2019 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — Emerging on Wednesday night after a long meeting of the Conservative caucus, Andrew Scheer did not sound like a changed man. He did not sound like a man who thought there was much of anything about himself that needed to change. He looked instead like a leader digging in, in hopes of fending off attacks […]
Nov 5 2019 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — Over the last decade, Elizabeth May became one of the strongest and most widely known personalities in Canadian politics. Under her leadership, the Green Party of Canada achieved the best results in its 35-year history. Also under May, the Greens peaked at less than seven per cent of the popular vote and three seats in […]
Oct 31 2019 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — In Northern Magus, his well-regarded account of Pierre Trudeau’s first decade in power, Richard Gwyn writes that the definitive account of the minority Parliament he navigated from 1972 to 1974 was authored by Vernon Harder, a graduate student at Queen’s University. Harder’s masters thesis in 1977 meticulously recounted the public and private machinations that produced […]
Oct 24 2019 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — If you were expecting a wholly different Justin Trudeau to appear on Wednesday, a day after Canadian voters returned 27 fewer Liberal MPs to the House of Commons than they elected in 2015, you were perhaps disappointed. He did not turn up to the National Press Theatre looking dishevelled and broken. He has not grown […]
Oct 23 2019 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — In October 2018, Stephen Harper published Right Here, Right Now, a treatise on the way forward for conservative leaders in uncertain times. The former prime minister’s commentary included a swipe at carbon taxes. “Carbon taxes are widely unpopular and become more so once people actually have to pay them,” Harper wrote. “Political parties, including mine, […]
Oct 20 2019 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — Winning re-election was always going to be hard for Justin Trudeau. History tells us that. But Trudeau has not made it easier for himself. And the partisan terrain Trudeau is contending with in 2019 is arguably trickier to traverse than anything his predecessors faced. Beyond the electoral math, there are the stakes — the hard […]
Oct 18 2019 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — In an email to supporters on Wednesday, the Conservative Party warned of a plot to subvert democracy in Canada. The Liberals, a Conservative official wrote, were “already planning a way to take power without winning the election.” It’s the sort of language typically reserved for describing military coups and authoritarian movements. In this case, the […]