Jul 19 2019 — Chris Selley — Postmedia — Part of the standard Liberal narrative about Conservative leader Andrew Scheer is that he’s beholden to social-conservative party members who supported Brad Trost for party leader but wound up picking Scheer over Maxime Bernier on the final ballot. This explains to many Canadians why Scheer is likely to legislate on abortion despite vowing not to, […]
May 17 2019 — Chris Selley — National Post — Whatever other adjectives might describe the 2019 federal election campaign, “novel” is unlikely to be one of them. Four years ago, Justin Trudeau asked us to look past a dozen positive economic indicators and instead interrogate our feelings: “Are you better off now than you were 10 years ago when Stephen Harper became prime minister?” […]
Apr 27 2019 — Chris Selley — National Post — Robert Kokonis, president of the aviation consultancy AirTrav, told the Financial Post this week that by 2030, a family of four could “easily” be paying $600 in carbon tax for a flight from Toronto to Vancouver. That’s based on predictions and best guesses as to where the tax rate goes and how it applies after […]
Apr 3 2019 — Chris Selley — National Post — Not surprisingly, Jody Wilson-Raybould’s two-page letter on Tuesday asking to remain part of the Liberal caucus proved unsuccessful. At 5:44 p.m. EST, she announced on Twitter that she had been turfed. Luckily, perhaps not accidentally, the letter works just as well as a giant middle finger aimed backwards. “We committed to break old and cynical […]
Mar 26 2019 — Chris Selley — National Post — In recent weeks, former deputy prime minister Sheila Copps’ Twitter account has operated as a sort of museum of partisan excess. On Monday evening, hours after Manitoba Chief Justice Glenn D. Joyal got dragged into the mess for no good reason — pending further excavations — she finally hit rock bottom. Joyal is a highly […]
Mar 19 2019 — Chris Selley — National Post — Ahoy there, relatively young and middle-class Canadian! Did you vote Liberal in 2015? And are you, shall we say, somewhat less enthused about that prospect four years later, for various reasons we needn’t go into here? Now, what if Justin Trudeau were to offer you a down payment on a shiny new condominium? Well, that’s […]
Mar 12 2019 — Chris Selley — National Post — The NDP is officially on the offensive in Quebec. On Monday in Montreal, newly minted deputy leader Alexandre Boulerice promised the party’s “environmental plan … will put an end to half-measures.” Brigitte Sansoucy, chair of the NDP’s Quebec Caucus, suggested they would offer “concrete solutions for Quebecers (on) issues like employment, agriculture and support for […]
Mar 4 2019 — Chris Selley — National Post — Recent Canadian political history has seen more than one person leave a very successful life for politics, only to stagger back out of it considerably poorer, thoroughly discredited and covered in egg. Perhaps most spectacularly, David Livingston left a 30-year career as an executive at TD Bank to become CEO of Infrastructure Ontario. Seven years […]
Feb 7 2019 — Chris Selley — National Post — In a Thursday press conference, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau denied that he or anyone from his office directed Justice Minister (as she then was) Jody Wilson-Raybould to abandon the prosecution of SNC Lavalin over some funny business in Libya, and instead pursue a friendlier so-called “remediation agreement.” Interestingly, no one had alleged what he denied. […]
Jan 16 2019 — Chris Selley — Postmedia — More and more New Democrats seem concerned that Jagmeet Singh mightn’t have been the best choice for leader, let alone deserving of a whopping 54 per cent first ballot victory. His various alleged crimes include rendering himself invisible for months, imposing draconian punishments on popular MPs, and going on TV to suggest we stop importing […]
Dec 28 2018 — Chris Selley — National Post — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s year-end press conference on Parliament Hill was dominated by questions about Sino-Canadian relations, in the wake of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou’s arrest in Vancouver. Asked why he wasn’t publicly demanding the release of Canadians detained in China, apparently in retaliation, he offered a fairly stunning bit of self-reflection.
Nov 25 2018 — Chris Selley — National Post — Well, here’s something curious. Last week the Liberal government announced it has commissioned research on “birth tourism” — that is, the practice of coming to Canada with the sole intent of giving birth, then returning home with a child who’s a Canadian citizen. “The government of Canada recognizes the need to better understand the extent […]
Nov 19 2018 — Chris Selley — National Post — Amidst the flurry of announcements accompanying Thursday’s Ontario fiscal update, by far the most surprising and least explicable was the elimination of the Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth, which advocates (hence the name) for children in care, wards of the youth justice system, First Nations children and other vulnerable groups. Irwin Elman, the province’s […]
Oct 23 2018 — Chris Selley — National Post — On Tuesday, at 10:15 a.m., Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was scheduled to unveil a carbon tax for provinces that hadn’t implemented sufficiently ambitious ones of their own. It was to occur in Room L-125 at Humber College, a polytechnic colossus in the northwest corner of Toronto, and that made sense. Room L-125 is all about […]
Oct 17 2018 — Chris Selley — National Post — An Abacus Data poll released this week suggests Canadians are ready for marijuana legalization even if their governments might not be: Strong majorities of respondents in every age group and in every region said they could support or at least “accept” the framework that goes into effect Oct. 17. Even 54 per cent of Conservative […]