Jun 30 2022 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — There’s something crucial missing: an explanation from RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki. It can’t wait much longer. The allegation that the Liberal government pressured the RCMP to release information about the investigation into the Nova Scotia shootings of April 18 to 19, 2020, in order to advance their gun-control agenda is now boiling down to two […]
Jun 20 2022 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — The next election is supposed to be three years away, but we’re seeing a lot of predictions of Justin Trudeau’s political demise. But for his Liberal Party, there is no easy way to leave him behind. Predicting Mr. Trudeau’s next three years seems like a mug’s game when you consider the surprises of his first […]
Jun 13 2022 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — If politics is a reason for doing something in Ottawa, then the absence of politics is a reason for doing nothing. So when Justin Trudeau’s federal Liberals reached a point when it made sense to end the federal vaccine mandates for air and rail travel they did nothing, because they didn’t feel a political imperative […]
Jun 8 2022 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — After a weekend of Conservative leadership campaigns playing show-and-tell with their membership-recruitment figures, Jean Charest piped up to say he still has a clear path to victory. But that path is now much, much narrower, and it winds treacherously through improbable math.
May 6 2022 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — The early days of the Conservative leadership campaign have featured top-tier candidates declaring each other unfit to lead, exclusionary and untruthful, so you had to wonder what would happen when they were asked to debate face-to-face. Insults? Badgering? Accusations? Yes, yes and yes. Two things rang out through the 90-minute debate: posturing about truckers’ convoys […]
Apr 13 2022 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — Stephen Harper hasn’t personally jumped into the Conservative leadership race’s public stage, but there is a Harper who has emerged to pick sides: Ben Harper, son of the former prime minister. The younger Mr. Harper’s tweets appear to put him all-in for Pierre Poilievre – and dead against former Quebec premier Jean Charest. And the […]
Mar 15 2022 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — There are some people who say that Conservative politicians are liars who will say anything to get elected, govern unethically, or flirt with racial discrimination to win votes. But those are just the people running for the leadership of the Conservative Party. The things Tory leadership candidates are saying about each other are downright scathing. […]
Feb 4 2022 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — Don’t ask if Pierre Poilievre is running for the leadership. He has been standing around trying to look like the alternative since the fall election. He was building up a huge personal populist social-media brand before that. And when he said last week he was going to meet protesting truckers – before Erin O’Toole did […]
Dec 20 2021 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — Andrew Scheer didn’t get this far. Now Erin O’Toole faces the long cold winter of a losing Conservative leader. Making sure that the many Tory MPs who are still ambivalent about his leadership don’t turn cold on him in the next few months will be key to his survival. Already he has seen a handful […]
Dec 3 2021 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — Pierre Poilievre has sunk his teeth into a hot economic issue, inflation, and the Conservative Party’s shadow finance minister can point to a cost of living that is rising at a rate Canadians haven’t seen for years. But he still insists on stretching facts to push his point. There’s always a certain amount of spin […]
Nov 12 2021 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — Even before Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, 2017, Justin Trudeau’s most senior aides rushed to New York to forge relationships with Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon and the other emerging players of Trumpworld. They saw Mr. Trump and his political agenda as a potential danger, and set out to influence it. Four years later, when Joe […]
Nov 5 2021 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — Erin O’Toole is stuck up in a tree, and he can’t get down. His own party is at the bottom, waiting, and he doesn’t know what to do. His voters are waiting. His leadership-race supporters are there too and, well, that’s a bit awkward. He doesn’t dare go anywhere people might ask questions about politics, […]
Oct 11 2021 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — So far, there are two ministers named to Justin Trudeau’s postelection cabinet: the PM himself, and Chrystia Freeland. The rest are TBD. Mr. Trudeau took the unusual step of telling the country on Sept. 28 that Ms. Freeland will stay as Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, though the rest of the cabinet has to […]
Sep 28 2021 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — The job that outgoing Green Leader Annamie Paul described as worse than a thankless task is up for grabs now. It doesn’t look likely to be rewarding for the next leader, either. This is a party so deeply mired in dysfunction that it was intent on ripping itself to pieces, election or not. It was […]
Aug 23 2021 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — It is an amorphous mass, its shape undefined, its substance or sentience unknown. It is the Canadian federal election campaign so far: The Blob. It’s not a campaign about nothing, but a campaign about everything. National child-care programs, long-term care, income supports, green industry, climate change, boosting the economy and every party’s own plan for […]