Sep 27 2023 — John Ivison — National Post — David Dodge was like the grown-up handing out black coffee and aspirins the morning after a night of teenage bacchanalian excess. The former Bank of Canada governor was testifying before the House of Commons finance committee on Monday and his message was unequivocal: The party’s over. Article content The Liberal government has rarely encountered a […]
Sep 19 2023 — John Ivison — National Post — So, there goes Canada’s Indo-Pacific strategy, the much-vaunted plan to counter an increasingly quarrelsome China by improving relations with democracies in the region like… India. Not much is clear after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s stunning speech in the House of Commons that linked agents of the government of India with the June murder in B.C. […]
Sep 18 2023 — John Ivison — National Post — To err is human; to blame someone else is politics. The House of Commons is back and the prime minister had barely cleared his throat before he turned the Opposition leader’s questions on housing and grocery affordability into a response about the Conservative party’s plan to “restrict access to abortion, deny the impact of climate […]
Sep 12 2023 — John Ivison — National Post — One of the arguments put forward by advocates of supply management is that its production and import controls result in price stability. Yet the costs of poultry, milk and eggs have soared, often beyond the rate of general food inflation.
Sep 8 2023 — John Ivison — National Post — The respect and a broad policy consensus that existed has been replaced by loathing and partisan hostility. Illiberalism is the dominant strain on both the left and the right.
Sep 6 2023 — John Ivison — National Post — It would be appropriate if Canada’s Got Talent winner Jeanick Fournier serenades the faithful at the close of the Conservative convention in Quebec City on Saturday afternoon with her barnstorming version of Queen’s The Show Must Go On. Party leader Pierre Poilievre will be hoping that by the time Fournier leaves the stage, his relentless […]
Sep 5 2023 — John Ivison — National Post — The comments made last week by activist-turned-politician Steven Guilbeault about the need for a cap on oil and gas emissions suggest the environment minister has embraced his new vocation with enthusiasm. Few things work as well for a Liberal MP as bashing Alberta, the equivalent of Mordor for many eastern progressives.
Jul 20 2023 — John Ivison — National Post — When David Cohen talks about Canada’s defence spending, it brings to mind Edmund Burke’s comments about prudence in diplomacy; that diplomats employ “an economy of truth … a sort of temperance by which a man can speak truth with measure that he may speak it longer.” Washington’s man in Ottawa speaks the truth but clearly […]
Jul 17 2023 — John Ivison — National Post — I have vivid memories of taking the oath of Canadian citizenship 18 years ago, a humbling, life-changing experience. The day after being welcomed to the Canadian family with a roomful of wide-eyed new arrivals, the sense of detachment was gone, replaced by a common purpose, summed up in the citizenship certificate that bound me to […]
Jul 14 2023 — John Ivison — National Post — It speaks to the culture of spending that pervades official Ottawa that nobody saw anything wrong with spending $71,000 on limousine services when the Governor General visited Iceland for four days last year, even though much of the program took place half a kilometre from Mary Simon’s hotel in Reykjavik. One of the main topics […]
Jul 12 2023 — John Ivison — National Post — There remains excess demand in the Canadian economy that contributed to the Bank of Canada’s decision to increase interest rates by another quarter point on Wednesday. But there are also continuing supply issues and they are being aggravated by the strike at West Coast ports over the past 12 days that has created a backlog […]
Jul 10 2023 — John Ivison — National Post — Tact, wrote Abraham Lincoln, is the ability to describe others as they see themselves. Justin Trudeau was in Latvia on Monday, ahead of this week’s important NATO summit in neighbouring Lithuania, patting himself and his government on the back for the contribution toward resisting Russia’s threat to “freedom, international law and a shared set of […]
Jul 5 2023 — John Ivison — National Post — In mid-May, Bloc Québecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet put his Conservative counterpart, Pierre Poilievre, in a ticklish spot. The Bloc introduced a motion denouncing the goal of an organization called the Century Initiative — co-founded by former ambassador to China Dominic Barton — to increase Canada’s population to 100 million by 2100. It is a goal […]
Jul 1 2023 — John Ivison — National Post — Singh said he has made it clear to Justin Trudeau that he can’t blame a lack of consensus among opposition leaders as an excuse to abandon a public inquiry, as he did in the past when he broke an election promise to introduce electoral reform. “I said, ‘that’s not going to fly.’ I want a […]
Jun 28 2023 — John Ivison — National Post — It’s been said that moving to the U.S. is part of Canada’s culture. But times change. Social media was humming this week with reaction in the U.S. to a new immigration policy launched by the Canadian government. American high-tech entrepreneur Srinivasan Balaji tweeted to his nearly one million followers that work visa holders in the […]