Jun 7 2022 — Shannon Proudfoot — Maclean's — Sexual misconduct in the military. A war in Ukraine. Canada’s global reputation at stake. It’s a good thing Anand knows how to solve problems. In press conferences, Anita Anand presents like the law professor she was for more than two decades: crisp, careful, occasionally prone to using obscure words that her staff are not above […]
Mar 16 2022 — Shannon Proudfoot — Maclean's — In a rare in-depth interview the Conservative leadership frontrunner talks to Shannon Proudfoot about his politics, parenting, and making Canada ‘the freest place in the world.’ In early February, Shannon Proudfoot interviewed Pierre Poilievre for our April cover story on the Conservative leadership candidate. It was a wide-ranging discussion with a politician who typically doesn’t […]
Mar 15 2022 — Shannon Proudfoot — Maclean's — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been the most compelling person on the planet for the last month, standing in the breach alongside his terrorized but indomitable people in the face of a Russian onslaught. The world has watched him grow paler and strained while his facial hair sketched itself into a beard. His spectacular ability […]
Mar 10 2022 — Shannon Proudfoot — Maclean's — He’s smart, savvy and he’s steering a new brand of Canadian conservatism. How Pierre Poilievre became the champion of the anti-Trudeau mob. The bellowing honks of freedom nearly drowned out Pierre Poilievre’s voice as he stood on a frigid overpass in late January, cheering the truck convoy on its way to lay siege to downtown […]
Nov 24 2021 — Shannon Proudfoot — Maclean's — A Speech from the Throne is a curious thing. It functions as a mission statement at the opening of a new session of Parliament, so it is effectively a government talking to itself and about itself to the public at once. In its modern incarnation at least, it carries an infomercial subtext in quietly extolling […]
Nov 17 2021 — Shannon Proudfoot — Maclean's — So, as I was flipping through the day’s news to write up this newsletter, I read my colleague Paul Wells’s column about how Erin O’Toole has gone extremely to ground, even with an attempted public knifing in the offing by Senator Denise Batters, who has publicly petitioned for a leadership review. Paul traces the similarities […]
Oct 26 2021 — Shannon Proudfoot — Maclean's — A CBC producer, soggy as a sponge like everyone else in the media gaggle, took it upon himself to be the warm-up act. “GOOD MORNING PRIME MINISTER IS THIS SUNNY WAYS?” he bellowed at Justin Trudeau in a goofily exaggerated yell as the PM strode up the driveway of Rideau Hall alongside his wife, Sophie […]
Oct 6 2021 — Shannon Proudfoot — Maclean's — Hyperbole and a Half is a slyly brilliant web comic in which author Allie Brosh uses manic, deliberately crude drawings to dismantle ordinary human experiences into shards of genius and madness. In one, she laid out the “sneaky hate spiral,” a toddler-level total meltdown that otherwise reasonable adults fall into from time to time. “Sneaky […]
Sep 21 2021 — Shannon Proudfoot — Maclean's — No one got what they wanted on Monday. Not Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, who set all of this into motion for the obvious reason that he wanted a majority government, no matter how many times he claimed it was really because the electorate deserved to have a say in how the country emerged from the […]
Sep 14 2021 — Shannon Proudfoot — Maclean's — Justin Trudeau’s former principal secretary talks to Shannon Proudfoot about the debate, why the election is all but over, and the ground game that will consume the final days. Two weeks into the federal election campaign, Maclean’s spoke to Gerald Butts, former principal secretary to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and a key architect of the […]
Sep 14 2021 — Shannon Proudfoot — Maclean's — How a once undervalued, ignored and politically silent group is fighting back. From Maggie’s vantage point behind the cash register at a chain grocery store in a small British Columbia city, the first several months of the pandemic were frantic oblivion; most customers rushing the picked-over shelves didn’t seem to notice the employees, unless it […]
Sep 10 2021 — Shannon Proudfoot — Maclean's — Every side always claims their guy won the debate, of course, but the fact that Liberal Twitter was frothing over the purportedly impertinent and nasty questions in Thursday night’s English-language leaders’ debate is a decent indication that things didn’t go so well for the red team. Early on, moderator Shachi Kurl teed up a one-on-one […]
Sep 3 2021 — Shannon Proudfoot — Maclean's — Shortly before the TVA leaders’ debate on Thursday evening, Maclean’s talked to Gerald Butts, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s former principal secretary and a key architect of the 2015 and 2019 Liberal campaigns. Now vice chairman and senior advisor to the Eurasia Group, Butts talked about whether he really is sitting on the sidelines, illusory public […]
May 20 2021 — Shannon Proudfoot — Maclean's — There’s a brilliantly intricate episode of Community, the cult-favourite TV show about a group of misfits attending a crummy local college, that hinges on the idea that if you swap out one person for another, everything changes. Pizza arrives during a party, and one character suggests tossing dice to decide who goes downstairs to get […]
Apr 14 2021 — Shannon Proudfoot — Maclean's — Last May, in what we now know was merely the opening chapter of the pandemic, Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) posted one of the high-level help wanted ads that regularly go up on the federal government’s procurement website. ISED was seeking someone to analyze “key strategic industrial sectors,” model the impacts of COVID-19 for […]