• Michael Harris

No sense mincing words.For the last year, and with each passing day, it is getting clearer that Donald Trump is off his rocker, and GOP politics is off the rails.You can’t make up the stuff that is coming out of Trump’s mouth with zero pushback from the gaggle of sycophants trying to ride his crazy coattails to power. According to Trump: Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, are eating their neighbours’ cats and dogs; shoplifters would be shot in their tracks, as he advised the recent Republican convention; U.S. General Mark Milley, former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, should be executed for speaking with a Chinese general; illegal migrants are taking over whole American towns with weapons the U.S. military has never seen before; immigrants need to

• 2024-09-30
• — Hill Times

• Michael Harris

For a party trailing by a country kilometre in the polls for over a year, the recent Liberal cabinet retreat was a pretty self-satisfied affair.True, there was a laundry list of announcements: tariffs on EVs from China, a tweak of the temporary foreign workers program, a task force here, and more studies there. Not unimportant, to be sure.

• 2024-09-02
• — Hill Times

• Michael Harris

It is easy to see why Volodymyr Zelenskyy has become an international political superstar.When Russia invaded his country, observers in the West gave the embattled president of Ukraine virtually no chance of stopping the aggressors. The conventional wisdom at the time was that Russia would overrun the country in a matter of weeks.

• 2024-08-19
• — Hill Times

• Michael Harris

Once again, the world is holding its breath over events unfolding in the Middle East.With the assassination of the political leader of Hamas in Tehran, Iran is vowing revenge against Israel. No one knows what that will look like.Another missile and drone attack on Israel itself like the one last April, an assault on Israeli shipping, or an indirect strike at Israeli assets outside the country. It could get very personal—civilians, diplomats, politicians, no one knows.

• 2024-08-05
• — Hill Times

• Michael Harris

Politics has always had its share of self-interested fakers masquerading as public servants.But never before has a band of criminals, miscreants, and industrial-strength hypocrites captured a mainstream party, let alone one in the self-styled greatest democracy on earth.This is how the Republican Party—the so-called party of law-and-order—now looks. For starters, it has selected a convicted felon awaiting sentencing as its leader—a new low in any democracy.

• 2024-07-22
• — Hill Times

• Michael Harris

Former U.S. president Richard Nixon once said, 'Well, if the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.' Two weeks ago, in a decision split along ideological lines, six of the nine U.S. justices ruled that a president does have immunity when he is acting in his official capacity. In other words, he is indeed above the law, rising to the status of what many commentators are calling a king. The times are, indeed, out of joint. Call it the revenge of Tricky Dick.

• 2024-07-08
• — Hill Times

• Michael Harris

The more secretive a society gets, the less democratic it becomes.As The Washington Post’s motto puts it, “Democracy dies in darkness.” Canadian democracy has been weakened this past week by a signal failure of transparency, a dire error of priorities. On an issue of monumental importance, the public was informationally dealt out.

• 2024-06-10
• — Hill Times

• Michael Harris

Can an adult-film actress save the republic from King Donald?Given what is happening in the U.S. justice system these days, Stormy Daniels and her hush-money case may be the country’s best chance to deal out a dictator.When former U.S. president Donald Trump was slapped with multiple indictments and scores of felony charges, a lot of commentators crowed. They said it was proof positive that no one was above the law in the United States. That view now looks like second-rate stand-up comedy.

• 2024-05-13
• — Hill Times

• Michael Harris

There is a limit to how far Conservative politicians can carry the demonization of Justin Trudeau. Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe has reached it.Moe’s stand on the “carbon tax,” a fawning imitation of his party’s national leader, is indefensible. He says not collecting or remitting federal carbon pricing for natural gas and electricity is about “fairness.”

• 2024-04-29
• — Hill Times

• Michael Harris

Even the most pumped-for-Trump MAGA-fool must have had a queasy moment when they saw the king of grifters on TV hawking his latest product.It wasn’t cologne.It wasn’t those $399 Never Surrender gold high-top running shoes.It wasn’t a T-shirt featuring Teflon Don’s mugshot.

• 2024-04-01
• — Hill Times

• Michael Harris

Political leaders who can no longer hear the people are usually on their way to defeat.That is one of the takeaways from the recently cancelled event featuring Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and visiting Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni in Toronto.

• 2024-03-11
• — Hill Times

• Michael Harris

Living next to Russia requires watching very closely what happens in that country.As Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has found out, it can be a life-and-death proposition to misread Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions.It is no accident that both Sweden and Finland have joined NATO in the wake of Russia’s unprovoked and illegal invasion of Ukraine.

• 2024-03-04
• — Hill Times

• Michael Harris

Apart from the Canadian public, the obvious loser in the ArriveCan scandal is the Trudeau government.After all, it takes a special kind of incompetence to turn an $80,000 project into a $60-million boondoggle of epic proportions.Thanking the Auditor General for writing what could be your political epitaph isn’t fooling anyone. Neither is the promise to accept her recommendations. Or protestations that you are committed to handling taxpayers’ money responsibly. In the light of the AG’s findings, that is all nonsense.

• 2024-02-19
• — Hill Times

• Michael Harris

Could a good dictionary help Justin Trudeau refurbish his tarnished image?I think it could. Allow me to explain.Since 2003, the Merriam-Webster dictionary has been putting out a list of words that were of particular interest to people in that year. It then chooses the “Word of the Year” based on the public’s searches of its various websites. The word with the most hits shoots to the top of the list.

• 2024-02-05
• — Hill Times

• Michael Harris

Politics used to be a contest of ideas between parties with different visions of the country. At election time, that produced a winner and a good loser.Now it is a Texas death-match of ideologies. The other side is no longer just an opponent, but an enemy, a traitor, or worse. No victor is legitimate, and there are no good losers.

• 2024-01-22
• — Hill Times

• Michael Harris

Events unfolding in the Middle East are showing just how right Canada was to call for a ceasefire in the atrocious Gaza War.The nightmare scenario—an all-out regional conflict involving Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and potentially Iran on one side, with Israel and the United States on the other—is no longer a long shot.

• 2024-01-08
• — Hill Times

• Michael Harris

Is democracy becoming a form of hope in which people no longer believe?A hint of that has surfaced in a number of ways that could be described as declining citizen interest: apathy toward elections, political events, public meetings, and voting itself. Ontario offers a disquieting insight into the depth of that apathy.

• 2023-12-11
• — Hill Times

• Michael Harris

So the man who wants to be prime minister had his Pinocchio moment in front of the cameras last week.After jumping to the conclusion that the tragic accident at the Rainbow Bridge on Nov. 22 was a terrorist attack—a thesis which quickly proved to be patently false—Pierre Poilievre was asked by a CP reporter if it was responsible of him to make that public declaration before the facts were known.

• 2023-11-27
• — Hill Times

• Michael Harris

While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau grapples with the public request from 23 of his own MPs to advocate for a ceasefire in the Gaza War, he might want to read the following passage: “It was a fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.”

• 2023-10-30
• — Hill Times

• Michael Harris

I am one of those people hoping that justice will be done in the June assassination of Sikh activist and Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar.That said, the odds are against it. When the circumstances of a vicious murder collide with the geopolitical self-interest of several nation states, the individual victim gets lost in the shuffle. It seems that some heads of state—like certain banks—are too big to fall.

• 2023-10-09
• — Hill Times