May 7 2023 — Geoffrey Stevens — The Record — Every year, tens of thousands of visitors come to Ottawa, and for many the highlight is the daily question period in the House of Commons — a 45-minute demonstration of democracy in action, or so they are led to anticipate. They are misled. There was a time when question period could be instructive and even […]
Mar 19 2023 — Geoffrey Stevens — The Record — No one in their right mind would have volunteered for the job of the “special rapporteur” to chart a path through the tangled web of accusations, leaked intelligence reports, public controversy and political partisanship that surrounds allegations that agents of the Chinese state interfered in the two most recent federal elections. Only a rare individual, […]
Jan 8 2023 — Geoffrey Stevens — The Record — Pierre Poilievre says one of his first acts when (not if) he becomes prime minister will be to shut down the CBC. There’s nothing surprising about his commitment. Fear and loathing of the public broadcaster has been baked into the identity of the federal Conservatives. To them, the CBC — its management, producers, reporters, program […]
Jul 4 2022 — Geoffrey Stevens — Hamilton Spectator — The hardest thing a political party has to do is to choose the right leader at the right time. If it were simple, the federal Liberals would not have burned through two “permanent” leaders, Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff, and one interim leader, Bob Rae, before settling on Justin Trudeau. If it were easy, the […]
Jun 19 2022 — Geoffrey Stevens — The Record — Rt. Hon. Pierre Poilievre, Prime Minister of Canada. Dear Prime Minister Poilievre, This may be presumptuous, but I want to be among the first to congratulate you on becoming the 24th prime minister of Canada. As your website, pierre4pm.ca, made clear from the get-go, you did not run just for the leadership of the Conservative […]
Nov 29 2021 — Geoffrey Stevens — Hamilton Spectator — Although Justin Trudeau’s Liberals may have the thinnest public support of any federal government in Canadian history, a shade less than one-third of the two-thirds of the eligible voters who cast ballots on Sept. 20 — or roughly 20 per cent of the entire electorate — we should probably stop calling them a minority government. […]
Jan 25 2021 — Geoffrey Stevens — Welland Tribune — Do not expect either leader to say so publicly, but Joe Biden did Justin Trudeau a favour when he cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline last week. Everyone knew this second cancellation was coming; Barack Obama killed Keystone on his watch, only to have Donald Trump revive it. Biden promised to kill Keystone on day one […]
Oct 27 2019 — Geoffrey Stevens — The Record — Justin Trudeau meet Joe Clark. You prime ministers have a few things in common, starting with your election outcomes. Conservative Clark became prime minister in 1979, following an election in which he, like Trudeau a week ago, failed to win the national popular vote, yet took enough seats to form a strong minority government — […]
Sep 23 2019 — Geoffrey Stevens — The Spectator — Have last week’s disclosures via social media that Justin Trudeau appeared in blackface and brownface at costume gatherings 18 or so years ago irreparably damaged the Liberal party’s re-election prospects? Political insiders — and not just Liberal ones — are still trying the gauge the fallout. Opinion polls in the first couple of days showed […]
Jul 29 2019 — Geoffrey Stevens — St. Catharines Standard — Does it matter what the polls say in late July about a general election that will not happen until late October? For most folks, the answer is a resounding No. Just about anything that occurs today, barring some ghastly gaffe, will be long forgotten before voters bring their minds to bear on their Oct. 21 […]
Jul 2 2019 — Geoffrey Stevens — The Spectator — It is time that climate change deniers, doubters and skeptics — along with the provincial and federal politicians who seek to advance partisan agendas by playing bootless legal and constitutional games with the carbon tax issue — folded their tents. It is time they stopped wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on court challenges to the […]
Oct 8 2018 — Geoffrey Stevens — The Record — Doug Ford and Jason Kenney had a grand old time in Alberta the other night. Appearing together before an overflow crowd of 1,500 true believers in Calgary, the two provincial leaders — one in power, the other in waiting — pledged their mutual, undying opposition to carbon taxes, and they took turns swatting enthusiastically at […]
Sep 10 2018 — Geoffrey Stevens — Hamilton Spectator — Summer is usually the best of times for the party in power in Ottawa. With Parliament in recess, ministers have the stage largely to themselves, free to announce whatever they wish with as much spin — and as little explanation — as they choose. The opposition parties are left to whine about high-handed government while […]
Sep 3 2018 — Geoffrey Stevens — The Record — Justin Trudeau and his government were handed two painful and costly lessons last week. One lesson was not to take the courts for granted. Trudeau and his people were read that lesson in a Federal Court of Appeal decision that froze construction on the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion. The second lesson was never, ever again, […]
Jul 30 2018 — Geoffrey Stevens — The Record — The next noise you hear from Ottawa will be the sound of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals rebooting. It is all but certain that they will prorogue Parliament when MPs return from vacation in September and present a new Speech from the Throne with an agenda designed to carry them through to the election in October 2019. […]