Jun 13 2019 — Robyn Urback — CBC — Behind the scenes, Conservative operatives were buzzing after Jody Wilson-Raybould, then still a member of the Liberal caucus, testified before the House of Commons justice committee back in February. Keep watching. Something BIG is coming. Wilson-Raybould’s allegations were explosive: the prime minister himself had pressured her to interfere in the criminal case of engineering firm […]
Jun 6 2019 — Robyn Urback — CBC — The report produced by the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) is a tome of failures. Of stomach-churning analysis of child welfare agencies tearing children away from families (which goes well beyond the Sixties Scoop, with Indigenous children still, on average, 12 times as likely to be taken from their […]
May 27 2019 — Robyn Urback — CBC — Stephen Harper must have found the greatest hiding spot in the world for his secret agenda. So great, in fact, that he forgot where it was. Canada’s near-decade under Prime Minister Harper did not bring about new abortion laws or a repeal of gay marriage — despite a free vote in 2006 over a motion […]
May 16 2019 — Robyn Urback — CBC — It takes a unique combination of dumb and evil to call 911 because an alert about a missing child roused you from your sleep. I don’t know who these people are, or why they seem to be confused about the nature of emergency services, but I hope no trauma should befall them before the next […]
May 6 2019 — Robyn Urback — CBC — It feels heinously unjust that Nicholas Baig will serve a “life” sentence in prison, with no chance of parole for 17 years, for murdering one person — not two. The Pickering, Ont., man killed his pregnant wife, Arianna Goberdhan, in April 2017. Baig was physically and verbally abusive, a pathetic little man who said he […]
Apr 26 2019 — Robyn Urback — CBC — Soon, there will be no female premiers in Canada. Back in 2013, there were six. The lazy way to explain this is that voters have failed to suppress their philistine prejudices. It is indeed one of the most facile, overused arguments in politics: that a woman’s gender plays a more-than-nominal role in her electoral defeat. […]
Apr 11 2019 — Robyn Urback — CBC — The Liberal caucus would have had a collective aneurysm just few months ago if a senior political opponent had talked about “asylum-shopping” when referring to refugees who cross illegally into Canada. The implication, they’d cry, is that those risking their lives to seek refuge in Canada are simply economic migrants — not families desperate to […]
Apr 1 2019 — Robyn Urback — CBC — Let’s assume for a moment, since many have already, that Jody Wilson-Raybould’s actions as they relate to the SNC-Lavalin saga have indeed been driven by a toxic combination of malevolence and self-importance. Take the position that she — either spurned by the Prime Minister’s Office or motivated by her own pursuit of power and notoriety […]
Mar 22 2019 — Robyn Urback — CBC — October 2018 was less than two years after a madman named Alexandre Bissonnette opened fire in a Quebec mosque, killing six people. And October 2018 was the same month a gunman walked into a Pittsburgh synagogue and opened fire, killing 11. By that time, reported hate crimes in Canada had reached an all-time high, with […]
Mar 15 2019 — Robyn Urback — CBC — Doug Ford’s government is a government of grifters. It claims to be a truck-stop government: “For The People,” and other nonsense. That’s while holding $1,600-per-plate fundraisers — known as “cash-for-access” fundraisers back when the Liberals were doing it — after gutting the law that the previous administration put in place to stop wealthy stakeholders from […]
Mar 5 2019 — Robyn Urback — CBC — If your stomach can handle it, spend a few minutes listening to the interview Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland gave to CBC’s Ottawa Morning last week, the day after Jody Wilson-Raybould testified before the House of Commons justice committee. Wilson-Raybould, you’ll recall, spent the previous afternoon meticulously filleting the prime minister’s credibility on the SNC-Lavalin […]
Feb 22 2019 — Robyn Urback — CBC — The Liberal government, according to the Liberal government, absolutely wants to get to the bottom of the SNC-Lavalin affair. The problem is the Liberal government is standing in the way. What’s a government to do? The question at the centre of this saga is whether former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould was pressured by anyone in […]
Feb 13 2019 — Robyn Urback — CBC — The destructive power of the SNC-Lavalin scandal — of which we appear to still be in the early stages — lies in its sheer comprehensiveness. It is not simply an indictment of the Liberals’ professed commitment to transparency. Or of the illusion of a shift away from Harper-era “self-serving” partisanship. Or of the Trudeau government’s […]
Feb 1 2019 — Robyn Urback — CBC — It is possible, theoretically, that the cryptic, confusing, rather odiously smelling Raj Grewal affair is, still, somehow, a kosher one. That the now-independent MP for Brampton East managed to both fuel and pay off millions of dollars in gambling debts only through loans from friends and family. That he has repaid what he owed and […]
Jan 22 2019 — Robyn Urback — CBC — The viral video of the standoff between Covington Catholic High School students and Indigenous Americans ought to be one hell of a wake-up call. It should rattle every journalist. Many of the people who are supposed to be fact-finders — skeptical investigators — accepted the narrative that a group of teen boys in MAGA hats […]