Jul 4 2020 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — Residents of my neighbourhood in Ottawa, which sits right next door to Rideau Hall, are pretty casual about the RCMP and conspiracy theories. It’s not unusual to see members of the prime minister’s family passing through New Edinburgh, conspicuous only because of their constant RCMP accompaniment. Conspiracy theorists have been telling us for nearly 15 […]
Jun 30 2020 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — Canadian identity has long been carved out of two fundamental ideas: we’re not American and our health-care system is better. What a banner year that 2020 is shaping up to be then, for celebrating Canada’s birthday this July 1. A global pandemic is demonstrating every day how much it matters to have Canadian-style health care […]
Jun 29 2020 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — It’s not the end of the COVID-19 crisis in Canada, but it is the end of frenzied crisis management in Ottawa — or at least an important corner turned. Justin Trudeau and the country’s chief public health officers made it official on Monday: they no longer feel it’s necessary to give Canadians daily updates on […]
Jun 27 2020 — Susan Delacourt — Globe and Mail, Toronto Star — If China was setting out to sow political divisions in Canada in the case of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, it must have been frustrated by the political unity it has encountered in this 18-month saga — until this week. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is getting a remarkable degree of cross-partisan support for his firm decision […]
Jun 24 2020 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — Do Canadian conservatives watch more TV than other partisans? One would have to assume that is the case, given what the federal political parties have revealed about their spending patterns during last year’s election. Election-spending reports are always interesting as exercises in accountability, but they also tell some fascinating stories of political culture and where […]
Jun 22 2020 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — Donald Trump may be angry over secrets revealed in John Bolton’s new book, which officially hits the shelves on Tuesday. But he can’t be annoyed with the book’s revelations about his relationship with Justin Trudeau. The animosity described in “The Room Where it Happened” has been very public — the opposite of secret, in fact.
Jun 19 2020 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — JOIN THE CONVERSATION Justin Trudeau and Doug Ford haven’t broken their own rules often during this coronavirus pandemic, but when they did stray their transgressions were the same: they went to their cottages. Both leaders took some heat in the early days of the lockdown for slipping out of town — the prime minister to […]
Jun 15 2020 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — For months now, the federal Conservatives have been fixated on where they’re sitting. This week, they may finally start talking about where they stand. The welcome realignment in the posture of the Conservative party coincides with two major developments in the political calendar t
Jun 11 2020 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — It was exactly two years ago this week that Donald Trump stormed out of Canada in a tantrum, upset with Justin Trudeau and his brief visit to the G-7 summit in Quebec. Trump won’t be coming back into Canada anytime soon — nor will most other Americans — with reports that the borders between our […]
Jun 8 2020 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — A test of “first-rate intelligence,” wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald, is “the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” If this is true, then anti-racism protests in the midst of still-ongoing pandemic are an IQ test on a mass scale, in Canada and around […]
Jun 1 2020 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — While Donald Trump was lashing out over mass civil unrest in his country on Monday, Canadians were getting “practical protest advice” from top-level government officials in Ottawa. The political-culture divide between Canada and the U.S. has rarely seemed so sharp as during the COVID-19 lockdown. But the chasm has widened even further with the scenes […]
May 29 2020 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — The whole idea of “distressed regions” in Canada has been shaken up by the pandemic — economic despair has headed downtown. With COVID-19 rampaging through high-density areas of the country such as the GTA and Montreal, the federal government’s attention to regional development has become a lot more urban in the past couple of months. […]
May 28 2020 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — There’s a long-term-care crisis in Canada that is crying out for short-term, very practical action. Unfortunately, until this pandemic gripped the country, short-term fixes were not the federal government’s area of expertise. Nor is on-the-ground service delivery, as many of Canada’s Indigenous communities can attest. It is now abundantly clear that what’s needed to repair […]
May 25 2020 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — The least essential service throughout the pandemic has been politics — which is why political parties should expect all the outrage they’re getting for their bid to get the federal wage subsidy. Even diehard believers in politics are having trouble with the news that Liberals, Conservatives, New Democrats and Greens, as well as Alberta’s United […]
May 24 2020 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — The “new normal” that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau warned Canadians about back in April is now upon the nation, as the gradual reopening begins. The picture of that condition got clearer this week. The new normal keeps its distance from neighbours, even U.S. neighbours. It works at home when it can and wears a mask […]