Oct 14 2021 — Don Martin — CTV News — At 24 post-election days and counting, the federal government is still in limbo. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s can’t-delay campaign for historic change has produced a sloth-speed government with a cabinet yet to be named, an idled bureaucracy waiting for orders and no date for Parliament’s return in sight. And so political animals are left to […]
Oct 4 2021 — Don Martin — CTV News — The way a government pilot tells it, there’s always a complication when Justin Trudeau is flying to Tofino aboard the government Challenger jet. His surfboard is a very difficult fit into a tight luggage compartment already crammed with the family’s special food supply, the pilot confided. But the prime minister was carrying far heavier and […]
Sep 24 2021 — Don Martin — CTV News — All that was missing were pitchforks and torches when the United Conservative government MLAs gathered this week to decide the fate of their dead-premier-walking. The caucus was seething – and fearing for their political lives – as fourth-wave case counts went tsunami, forcing the province to go bended-knee to the feds to help with ICUs […]
Sep 21 2021 — Don Martin — CTV News — It might take a year or longer before it becomes clear to him, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will eventually realize he’s finished. The freeze-framed results of last night’s pandemic election are just too much of a stain on his mediocre record to allow him to fight the next one. Political leaders only get a […]
Sep 16 2021 — Don Martin — CTV News — The thrill is clearly gone in having Justin Trudeau as Canada’s 23rd prime minister. Now, at best, there is passive enthusiasm for Trudeau to remain in power and that is tainted by widespread fury-driven loathing of the Liberal leader on this campaign, which is hard to fathom given his two difficult years in the pandemic […]
Sep 10 2021 — Don Martin — CTV News — Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau lost, but didn’t face the sort of devastating smackdown which would end his prime ministerial prospects. Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole didn’t lose, but failed to unleash high-calibre firepower to generate enough buzz to enhance his prime ministerial prospects. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh doled out his predictable everything-for-everyone lines well, which likely […]
Sep 1 2021 — Don Martin — CTV News — Forgotten is 2015’s Trudeaumania, when it was all about him as the anti-Harper. Six years later, it’s still all about him as the Liberal leader launched the campaign as a Trudeauerendum on his pandemic performance. But three weeks after Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau started the victory lap for his vaccination procurement success, the Liberal party […]
Aug 24 2021 — Don Martin — CTV News — Now, now Conservatives. Don’t go getting all giddy about governing again this fall. True, Justin Trudeau’s bid for a majority is in a meltdown as the Liberal leader’s scare tactics miss their mark on Conservative leader Erin O’Toole’s forehead, his policies fall far short of wow-worthy and his bad luck gets worse on the Afghanistan […]
Aug 15 2021 — Don Martin — CTV News — Let’s get the obvious rant out of the way – the Sept. 20 federal election is not necessary, has no coherent rationale to justify Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s $500-million bid for a majority mandate and, worst of all, puts the federal government on hold at the precise moment when a fourth COVID-19 wave will hit […]
Jun 17 2021 — Don Martin — CTV News — From the hospital bed where she is having a knee replacement, former leader Elizabeth May must be requiring extra medication to keep her blood pressure down as she watches her beloved Green Party implode. The threatened reign of successor Annamie Paul is the most bizarre, messy and unfortunate political drama among many raging on Parliament […]
Jun 10 2021 — Don Martin — CTV News — Faced with a scathing headline-grabbing committee report into Justin Trudeau’s biggest second-term scandal, a gift floated down from the political heavens where, as a wag noted long ago, God is clearly a Liberal. An all-opposition savage but salient analysis of the WE controversy — that the prime minister and his finance minister tried to give […]
Jun 5 2021 — Don Martin — CTV News — There’s a pandemic twist to the 1992 Bill Clinton campaign’s famous view of the economy as key to election victory: In Canada today, it’s the reopening, stupid. Many Canadian politicians are oh-so-deserving of an electoral spanking for actions that introduced, spread, slowed and then revived COVID-19 across the country. But with the third wave becoming […]
May 27 2021 — Don Martin — CTV News — I’m sorry, but enough with the apologies Justin Trudeau. The sorriest prime minister (as in apologetic quantity not leadership quality) in our history was at it again Thursday, ignoring his father’s political advice to ‘live in our time’ as he dredged up some more sad Canadian history for his signature retroactive reckoning. In his eighth […]
May 20 2021 — Don Martin — CTV News — – For far too long in this pandemic, the light at the end of the tunnel was an oncoming train wreck. Today, there’s reason to hope that the light is actually a way out of the darkness. When vaccination clinics swung into arm-jabbing action this morning, they reached the milestone of Canada inching ahead of […]
May 13 2021 — Don Martin — CTV News — The original public health message from just five or six weeks ago was short, simple and effective. Vaccines are the gateway to a near-normal summer and the best vaccine is the first one available. But like everything else about COVID-19 in Canada, the only constant is inconsistency and the only consistency is confusion. So now, […]