Oct 16 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — Here’s a good-news, bad-news story from the 2019 federal election campaign — the Constitution has sneaked back into national political debate. It’s good news for the couple of hundred of us in Canada who really enjoyed the national-unity dramas of the late 1980s and early 1990s. It’s bad news, presumably, for the millions of other […]
Oct 13 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — Justin Trudeau and his Liberal team always knew that the 2019 campaign could never be a repeat of 2015. But the security scare at Trudeau’s Mississauga speech on Saturday night drives home just how much has changed in Canadian politics, the country and for the Liberal leader himself since he won the election four years […]
Oct 12 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — Election campaigns — especially this current one in Canada — are not the ideal training ground for political co-operation. They’re fiercely competitive, filled with all-or-nothing rhetoric and reward those who stand their ground in the face of criticism.
Oct 11 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — Everyone loves a winner, but as things now stand in the current federal election, the most fascinating stories will revolve around the political forces who are left out of government after the Oct. 21 vote. Minority parliaments make all the non-winners potentially important because anyone — sometimes just a single MP — can topple a […]
Oct 7 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — What would be the greatest political debate of all time? Or just this election? As part of the promotional efforts for Monday’s leaders debate, all five moderators were asked to answer some debate-themed questions — favourite moments from past faceoffs between Canadian leaders, for instance. One of the questions called upon us to pick any […]
Oct 1 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — One of the favourite ways for politicians to dodge a question they don’t want to answer is to dismiss it as “hypothetical.” It’s pure evasion — politicians talk all the time about hypothetical situations. All of their election campaign platforms are hypothetical documents, for instance: a list of things they will do, based on the […]
Sep 29 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — Elections divide the political world into friends and enemies. So does the newly released Liberal campaign platform. The enemies of forward progress in Canada, according to the raft of Liberal promises unveiled on Sunday, are clear: Conservatives of all kinds, from Andrew Scheer to Stephen Harper to premiers Doug Ford and Jason Kenney. Did you […]
Sep 27 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — Jagmeet Singh broke an unwritten rule of Campaign 2019 this week when he said that he hopes Donald Trump gets impeached. The New Democrat leader was replying to a question about what he would say to Trump if he got to meet him. Singh, with an eye to the momentous events now unfolding south of […]
Sep 22 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — Does anyone else find this odd? In an election campaign filled with party slogans about “forward” and “you,” there’s been an awful lot of talk about the past and “them” — the party leaders. At this still-early stage of the current federal election, the disconnect is huge between what the 2019 campaign is supposed to […]
Sep 18 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — The current election is being fought under some of the toughest laws that Canada has ever seen against lying in politics. But it’s far from clear that the toughened-up laws are having a deterrent effect. Canada’s 43rd federal election campaign is just over a week old and the battleground is already littered with lies, accusations […]
Sep 11 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — It’s arrived. That future Canadian election is now about to unfold in present tense. For the next 40 days until voting day on Oct. 21, think of the children — not the childish sorts filling social media with partisan taunts, or even the real children we will want to shield from the nasty, personal politics […]
Sep 9 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — Once you’ve watched Brexit: The Uncivil War, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, you may never enter a Facebook ad contest again. In the movie, based loosely on real events around Brexit, Facebook ads are an important tool in the hands of the dark artists who helped cyber-engineer the referendum victory for the Leave side in Britain’s 2016 […]
Sep 4 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — An ugly confrontation over Islamophobia; the prime minister forced out of a parade by heckling protesters; a party leader denouncing an activist with autism as “mentally unstable” and calling for her to be “attacked.” All this happened in one weekend in Canada — and the election hasn’t yet started. Is it any wonder that many […]
Sep 1 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — The school year is only just beginning and report cards are a long way off — unless you are a Canadian voter, currently being graded according to your likely political leaning as the election looms. Most Canadians assume that elections are an opportunity to assign pass-or-fail marks to the politicians. What voters may not know […]
Aug 28 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — One of the most successful slogans in the history of modern political marketing was the one that Margaret Thatcher pitched to U.K. voters in 1979: “Labour Isn’t Working.” The ad man behind that slogan, Tim Bell, died this week — the same week that one of Thatcher’s successors, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, decided that Parliament […]