Oct 21 2017 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — Over the course of three days this week, the prime minister was poked and prodded for a position on Bill 62. The Quebec law, passed by the provincial legislature on Tuesday, prohibits anyone delivering or receiving public services from covering their face. That again makes an issue of the niqab. On Wednesday, in the House […]
Oct 19 2017 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — Just before question period, the finance minister summoned reporters to a small media room in Centre Block’s basement to explain that he would be divesting himself of a million shares in his family business. In the House of Commons, the opposition would attempt to divest from Bill Morneau its pound of flesh. “The finance minister […]
Oct 19 2017 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — As Justin Trudeau stood on a riser in a Montreal hotel ballroom on the night of Oct. 19, 2015, basking in the glow of victory, there was nothing to be said about the taxation of passive investment income, no questions about Bill Morneau’s stock portfolio or a villa in France. “Sunny ways, my friends,” the […]
Oct 17 2017 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — When the prepared statements were finished and the floor was opened for questions, the first reporter in line wanted to question Bill Morneau, about not just the government’s tax changes, but also whether the finance minister’s personal wealth was being ethically managed. But Justin Trudeau, standing at the lectern, declined to give way and let […]
Oct 7 2017 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — The Energy East pipeline was mourned this week as a “nation-building project” that could have been, with the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, the premier of Alberta and the mayor of Saint John, N.B., all applying that patriotic stamp on Thursday. Those are rather lofty words for a single capital project proposed by a private […]
Oct 3 2017 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — Except for a card she referred to for the customary words of greeting that are required at these sorts of events, Julie Payette addressed her installation as the 29th Governor General of Canada without a prepared text. Perhaps being strapped to a 45-metre-long rocket and blasted into space changes one’s understanding of risk. But to […]
Oct 2 2017 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — As the NDP was coming together between 1958 and 1961, it loosely existed as the New Party. Two candidates ran under the name in a pair of byelections in October 1960. Walter Pitman, victorious in Peterborough, Ont., became Parliament’s first and last New Party MP. The following summer, at the party’s founding convention, the word […]
Sep 27 2017 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — Andrew Scheer has now been leader of the Conservative party for a full four months. By this point in the life of the previous three leaders of Her Majesty’s opposition, disparaging video ads were already in circulation. Stéphane Dion was “not a leader.” Michael Ignatieff was “just visiting.” And Tom Mulcair was a man of […]
Sep 25 2017 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — In the kerfuffle surrounding the Liberal government’s deeply contested proposals to reform the tax system, possibly no number has loomed larger than 73 per cent. It is a figure that perhaps reached its political zenith last week when Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative finance critic, used a pizza to explain that an Ottawa pizza shop owner […]
Sep 21 2017 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — Speaking to a crowd of 150 or so — a JagMeet and Greet — inside an art gallery in one of Ottawa’s trendier neighbourhoods on Tuesday night, Jagmeet Singh suggested unnamed strategists had cautioned him against running for the NDP leadership under the banner of “Love & Courage.” “They said to us, ‘You can’t talk […]
Sep 18 2017 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — This being the first day back at school, Andrew Scheer was obliged to stand and tell the class what he’d done with his summer. “Mr. Speaker, this summer I spent my time crossing the country talking to hard-working Canadians, job creators and entrepreneurs,” Scheer reported. “And I can tell the prime minister one very simple […]
Sep 16 2017 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — In the final debate of the campaign to finally replace Tom Mulcair as leader of the NDP there were, perhaps predictably, attempts to quibble with the presumed front-runner. Niki Ashton suggested the 47,000 party members that Jagmeet Singh claims to have signed up — a figure that would account for more than a third of […]
Sep 15 2017 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — Near the end of his time in the Senate — capping a parliamentary career that spanned 38 years, eight months and nine days — Allan MacEachen was looking to hire researchers to go through his collected papers in preparation for a memoir. Peggy Butts, a Liberal senator from Nova Scotia, forwarded the name of her […]
Sep 9 2017 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — The fury surrounding the Liberal government’s proposals to change the tax rules for incorporated small businesses is already such that Andrew Scheer and his fellow Conservatives probably needn’t do much more than nod in agreement. But on Friday, speaking to reporters about the Liberal proposals after the Conservative caucus meetings in Winnipeg, Scheer decided to […]
Sep 8 2017 — Aaron Wherry — CBC — Justin Trudeau embraced “fairness” as a guiding principle on the afternoon of Feb. 22, 2014. “In 1968, when my father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, said that Canada must be a just society,” he told a Liberal Party convention in Montreal, “fairness was at the heart of that argument.” By that reading, one might trace a line […]