Sep 20 2023 — Paul Wells — Paul Wells Newsletter — When eating at Scout Café & Restaurant, across King Street from the historic site of the 1813 Battle of Stoney Creek, try the meat. In fact, good luck avoiding it. Featured dishes at the sprawling multi-level Croatian community hangout include Cevapi (meatballs), Ustipci (different meatballs), Karadjorjeva (rolled-up schnitzel stuffed with cheese, then breaded and deep-fried […]
Sep 15 2023 — Paul Wells — Paul Wells Newsletter — Here’s Tony Blair at the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool in 1996, a year before he was elected Prime Minister of Britain:
Sep 10 2023 — Paul Wells — Paul Wells Newsletter — I stopped by the Conservative Convention on Thursday night, just briefly. The mood (which I ascertained by asking several Conservative acquaintances “What’s the mood?”) was cautiously optimistic. The Conservatives I met — a random sample, skewed older because I haven’t met a new generation of Conservative activists — sounded pleased with Pierre Poilievre’s summer. But […]
Aug 28 2023 — Paul Wells — Paul Wells Newsletter — Perhaps the biggests surprise is that a government spending half a trillion dollars a year could seem so trapped. I used to tell myself that control over a federal government gives a prime minister immense political advantage against his opponents, because a government is a possibility machine. Outsiders can only demand; a prime minister can […]
Aug 14 2023 — Paul Wells — Paul Wells Newsletter — The word on the street is that Anita Anand was viewed by the boss — or by the boss’s friend the prime minister, it’s never clear which — as too ambitious. Anand became defence minister at the end of 2021 to address what Justin Trudeau called a “crisis” in the Canadian Armed Forces’ culture. Four […]
Aug 7 2023 — Paul Wells — Paul Wells Newsletter — How was your long weekend, for those celebrating? How was your blissful escape from thinking about the complexities of life? Cherish the memory, because we’re back. Today’s story seems at first to be about trees, but soon enough it becomes a story about our familiar national plight. Return with us now to the thrilling days […]
Jul 26 2023 — Paul Wells — Paul Wells Newsletter — I skipped almost the entire cabinet-shuffle business on Wednesday. I think I’ve mostly managed to avoid getting jaded in this job, but there are days, boy howdy. Welcome, Minister Blah Blah Blah to the crucial office of Provision, Preparedness, Children and Popular Song. Congratulations, hug your kids. Next. Then here was Rechie Valdez’s voice catching […]
Jul 25 2023 — Paul Wells — Paul Wells Newsletter — There’ve been news stories about it, but you really should see the extraordinary suite of articles and opinion pieces on Canada’s COVID-19 response in The BMJ, the leading British medical trade journal. It’s two editorials, an opinion piece, and four analyses of different elements of Canadian governments’ response to COVID. The common theme: Justin Trudeau’s […]
Jun 10 2023 — Paul Wells — Paul Wells Newsletter — “The protection of our democracy demands that we rise above partisanship,” Dominic LeBlanc told reporters Saturday morning in the lobby of the West Block’s backup House of Commons. “Canada isn’t the only country facing the threat of foreign interference. Many of our allies are, even now, having discussions on ways to protect their democracies against […]
Jun 8 2023 — Paul Wells — Paul Wells Newsletter — A health minister promised a “full investigation” at the “appropriate time.” Well… Here’s Patty Hajdu in April, 2021, after then-Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, who was heading toward a national election campaign, promised a national public inquiry into “every aspect of the government’s pandemic response.” Hajdu was the health minister. Reporters asked for her reaction. She […]
Jun 7 2023 — Paul Wells — Paul Wells Newsletter — I’m amazed by news that the new director of the National Gallery of Canada will be Jean-François Bélisle. In important ways the appointment of Bélisle, who had lately been running the art museum in Joliette, northeast of Montreal, is a repudiation of a management style that had rocked the Ottawa-based national art museum. Expect nobody […]
May 24 2023 — Paul Wells — Paul Wells Newsletter — You want David Johnston analysis, you’ve come to the wrong place, unless you needed me to tell you to read The Line. I’m supposed to be on vacation, and until I woke up this morning I was happy to stay that way. I’ll add, or reiterate, only this: Just because somebody is the wrong person […]
May 9 2023 — Paul Wells — Paul Wells Newsletter — On complementary investments and things left unsaid. The middle ground between “public” and “secret” is vast, and it’s where most of the fun is. The above photo appeared, I learned just now, on Chrystia Freeland’s Twitter account a week ago, on May 2. So it’s pretty public. It’s from the first meeting, in Washington, of […]
Apr 11 2023 — Paul Wells — The Line — My new book, An Emergency In Ottawa: The Story of the Convoy Commission, is an odd duck. First, while it inhabits the space between two covers and will be sold in bookstores, it’s not a freestanding book. It’s the second issue of Sutherland Quarterly, an ambitious new project in long-form journalism from Sutherland House Books […]
Apr 5 2023 — Paul Wells — Paul Wells Newsletter — Ottawa’s new police chief on the delicate work of handling big protests. I was grateful, and a little surprised, when the new Chief of the Ottawa Police Service, Eric Stubbs, agreed to talk to me about how the force has changed since 2022’s Freedom Convoy debacle. Stubbs’ hiring was announced in the middle of the […]