Jun 25 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — First, the bad news: the big social media companies are not going to be able to keep stupid stuff and fake facts out of the fall election. The good news, however, is that voters already have a mechanism to sort between real and ridiculous reports in the heat of the campaign. It’s called the brain, […]
Jun 19 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — Joyce Murray and Jody Wilson-Raybould have now completely traded places in Justin Trudeau’s government. When this year began, one of these Vancouver MPs was in cabinet; one was not. One was on board with the government’s support for the Trans Mountain pipeline; the other, well, not so much. It says an awful lot about politics […]
Jun 12 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — If you liked Justin Trudeau’s promises to make pot legal in the 2015 election, wait until you see the free-drugs pledge in the 2019 campaign. Eric Hoskins, Ontario’s former health minister, has handed Trudeau and his Liberal team an unexpected flourish of ambition to insert into this fall’s election platform — a national, universal pharmacare […]
Jun 7 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — Bill Nye, The Science Guy, as he’s known from his popular children’s TV show in the 1990s, has gone right over the top in his warnings about climate change over the past month. First it was a little video segment on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, in which Nye explained the urgency of climate […]
Jun 4 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — Justin Trudeau has done a lot this past week to demonstrate his commitment to feminism. He turned abortion into a full-fledged Canada-U.S. issue when he met with Vice-President Mike Pence last Thursday. On Monday, the prime minister divided his day between two huge events devoted to women: the delivery of the final report on missing […]
May 29 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — Losing friends on Facebook can be a perplexing experience: what prompts a person to press the “unfollow” button? Seeing Facebook losing friends among Canadian politicians these days is equally baffling, especially in light of how passionately the politicos in this country have embraced this large-scale collector of support and voter data. There’s a lot of […]
May 23 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — It’s not yet known what kind of a gift Canada will be giving U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence when he pays a visit to Ottawa at the end of next week. We do know what Pence won’t be getting — a fully passed, brand-new law to implement the Canada-U.S.-Mexico free trade deal reached last fall. Though […]
May 17 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — Justin Trudeau and Conrad Black don’t have much in common, but both of them have had a pretty good week with President Donald Trump. While Black got a presidential pardon, Trudeau won what he and his government were boasting was a “full lift” of steel and aluminum tariffs. On both counts, the good news came […]
May 15 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — Doug Ford’s new wave of TV and radio ads attacking the federal carbon pricing scheme are exposing a hole in the laws covering political advertising in this country — a hole the size of a large, gas-guzzling vehicle. Provincial governments are not factored in as players in any rules governing spending on political ads at […]
May 14 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — Justin Trudeau is adding two new advisers to his inner circle — both with B.C. experience — as the Prime Minister’s Office shores up its ranks in advance of the fall election. Ben Chin, who has been serving as chief of staff to Finance Minister Bill Morneau, is being pulled in to serve as senior […]
May 11 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — Justin Trudeau will not be announcing a sweeping handgun ban when he appears next month at the big Women Deliver conference in Vancouver. The Prime Minister’s Office dispelled any such speculation after the prospect of such an announcement was floated in the Commons this week by Tony Clement, the former Conservative and now independent MP.
May 8 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — So much for the Trudeau government’s plans to get past the SNC-Lavalin saga. Just in case anyone failed to make the connection between that long-running story and the strange case of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, superstar defence lawyer Marie Henein was only too happy to draw some clear lines on Wednesday.
May 7 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — It takes a certain amount of nerve to rail against elites and privilege when your minimum salary hovers around $180,000 a year. Yet this is now the daily spectacle in Canada’s House of Commons, with MPs on all sides shaking their fists against millionaires, large corporations and pretty much anything that takes a few more […]
May 2 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — Conservatives gave Justin Trudeau a demotion this week — a nominal one, at least. On Wednesday, one Conservative critic after another stood up and addressed their questions to the “Liberal leader” — not the prime minister, as is conventional practice in the House.
Apr 30 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — The SNC-Lavalin saga appears to have been a real money-maker for the Conservatives. Fundraising totals released Tuesday by the federal political parties show the Conservatives pulled in about $8 million in the first three months of 2019 — more than double the $3.8 million raised by the governing Liberals.