Dec 5 2019 — Robyn Urback — Globe and Mail — We might never know the name of the brave person who, I think it is fair to assume, must have talked U.S. President Donald Trump out of ordering U.S. Army Reserve troops to storm the Canadian border Tuesday evening. By that time, the President would have seen the clip of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appearing […]
Nov 28 2019 — Robyn Urback — Globe and Mail — In a way, it doesn’t seem fair that Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, whose party won 26 more seats and a greater share of the popular vote in 2019 than in 2015, is the target of such a pile-on from within his own party. Moderate conservatives are publicly urging him to get it together. Social conservatives […]
Nov 26 2019 — Robyn Urback — Globe and Mail — If the Trudeau government wanted to convince Canadians that its new “Ministry of Middle Class Prosperity” was a real thing – that is, conceived out of genuine need and not a surplus of already printed bumper stickers – it would have equipped its minister with a response to pretty much the only question she was […]
Nov 22 2019 — Robyn Urback — Globe and Mail — A warm welcome back to the conservative government of Alberta’s past. It’s been four years and change. We’ve missed you. Hopefully, absence has made the heart grow fonder for the traditional comforts of a conservative dynasty in Alberta: Cozy sole-sourced contracts, politicians who preach austerity and spend lavishly on themselves, that general aura of shamelessness […]
Nov 19 2019 — Robyn Urback — Globe and Mail — It was just two years ago that the Trudeau government returned from Beijing empty-handed and rather sheepish. The trip, which came after a year of exploratory talks, had been widely expected to launch formal free-trade negotiations between Canada and China. Instead, the Prime Minister returned to Canada with the impotence of his “progressive trade agenda” […]
Nov 11 2019 — Robyn Urback — Globe and Mail — Woe is poor Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, who keeps being presented with traps and choosing to walk straight into them. Perhaps we should cut the guy – who has been a politician the majority of his adult life – a break. He has only had about a dozen opportunities to find a satisfactory line about […]
Oct 18 2019 — Robyn Urback — CBC — This federal election has been characterized as one of the nastiest in recent memory, but I don’t think that’s quite right. There’s been no mocking of facial paralysis, robocalls to suppress votes, puking on stage or warning of soldiers with guns in our cities. To be sure, there’s been plenty of nonsense, even beyond the […]
Oct 4 2019 — Robyn Urback — CBC — No doubt the Conservatives are frustrated that leader Andrew Scheer keeps getting the same question over and over on the campaign trail: Can you explain how your personal views on same-sex marriage have evolved since 2005? Yet it apparently has not occurred to the party — or else, they prefer not to acknowledge — that […]
Sep 27 2019 — Robyn Urback — CBC — If you hacked the websites of the two parties jostling for the lead so far in this election and swapped one platform for another, would anyone know the difference? I should be more precise: would any real people know the difference? I’m not talking about Ottawa-obsessed political wonks and media types who are required to […]
Sep 19 2019 — Robyn Urback — CBC — It is almost too obvious now to point out the rank hypocrisy of the Trudeau brand: one that has zero tolerance for inappropriate touching, except for his own; one that preaches respect for Indigenous Canadians, except when you can get a cheap laugh at a Liberal fundraiser. One that claims to run government differently, but […]
Sep 12 2019 — Robyn Urback — CBC — Jagmeet Singh’s leadership got off on the wrong foot, and it still hasn’t found the other. If this was a different NDP — a better funded, better focused, better led NDP — the 2019 federal election would present a real opportunity to regain ground lost over the past several years as the party tried to […]
Aug 28 2019 — Robyn Urback — CBC — What’s happening in Quebec is a national disgrace. It’s the type of thing for which a future government will apologize, much in the same way the prime minister of present has taken to apologizing for policy wrongs of the past. Indeed, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has shown no reservation in apologizing to the LGBT community […]
Aug 15 2019 — Robyn Urback — CBC — It’s hard to fathom what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was thinking on the morning of February 7, when he stood before reporters and categorically declared, “The allegations in the Globe story are false.” The Globe and Mail was the first to report that Trudeau’s office attempted to pressure his justice minister and attorney general, Jody […]
Jul 18 2019 — Robyn Urback — CBC — To quote the inimitable Sen. Mitch McConnell: The president is not a racist. McConnell should know. He has spent years now working closely with the U.S. president — carrying his glass of Diet Coke from room to room, pressing his pyjamas, enduring his scathing public humiliations. And he knows that Donald Trump is telling the […]
Jun 22 2019 — Robyn Urback — CBC — I can’t decide which scenario I prefer: either Doug Ford’s team is so hopelessly incompetent it couldn’t have foreseen the problem with, for example, granting a $165,000 patronage appointment to a 26-year-old family friend of then-Ford chief of staff Dean French, or the premier’s office is brimming with Ontario Liberal sleeper agents who are quietly […]