Dec 7 2021 — Tasha Kheiriddin — National Post — With the Beijing Winter Olympics a mere two months away, the United States has planted its flag. Or rather, it has withdrawn it, by announcing a diplomatic boycott of the Games. On Monday White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced that Washington would not contribute to the “fanfare” of the Olympics. “U.S. diplomatic or official […]
Nov 30 2021 — Tasha Kheiriddin — National Post — Have you always wanted to be an MP, but dread the thought of commuting to Ottawa? Well, you can go ahead and expand your career horizons now that the House of Commons has approved yet another session of a hybrid Parliament. Last week, MPs voted along party lines, with 180 Liberal and NDP members versus […]
Nov 23 2021 — Tasha Kheiriddin — National Post — It’s official: David Suzuki has jumped the shark. At a protest by the extremist anti-fossil fuels group Extinction Rebellion and a subsequent interview with CHEK News, Suzuki said “We’re in deep, deep doo-doo … This is what we’re come to. The next stage after this, there are going to be pipelines blown up if our […]
Nov 9 2021 — Tasha Kheiriddin — National Post — Christmas is six weeks away, but the season of giving has already started in Ottawa. This week, the NDP handed Erin O’Toole a giant present when MP Charlie Angus confirmed Monday that “an initial conversation” had taken place between NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about Liberal-NDP co-operation in the new session […]
Nov 2 2021 — Tasha Kheiriddin — National Post — “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: Climate Leader.” That’s the headline Trudeau would no doubt like to see coming out of the latest Conference of the Parties, the international climate change conference in Glasgow known as COP26. After a bruising federal election that saw him fail to achieve his desired majority, the PM is pulling out all […]
Oct 26 2021 — Tasha Kheiriddin — National Post — Who’s in, who’s out, and what does it all mean? As the new Liberal cabinet assumes its portfolios in Canada’s 44th Parliament, one thing is clear: this government is about big government. It’s also about shoring up support in places the Liberals want to win more votes next time around, such as Quebec, while strengthening […]
Oct 19 2021 — Tasha Kheiriddin — National Post — Canada’s Parliament resumes Nov. 22, a full two months after the recent federal election. That’s a long wait, especially for a Liberal government that bears a striking resemblance to the one that just left office. The cabinet won’t even be announced until Oct. 26. While three ministers lost their seats, you would think that Prime […]
Oct 13 2021 — Tasha Kheiriddin — National Post — When Parliament returns to work in the coming weeks, one of the Liberal government’s first orders of business will be a fall economic statement. Expectations include such big-ticket items as national childcare, likely bankrolled by a proposed three per cent tax on financial institutions and insurance companies. But the biggest question for the new government […]
Oct 5 2021 — Tasha Kheiriddin — National Post — It’s shaping up to be a tough week for the leaders of both Canada’s new government and Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. Knives have been flying both inside and outside their parties, albeit over very different issues. After Prime Minister Justin Trudeau jetted off to Tofino last Thursday for a family holiday on Canada’s first National […]
Oct 2 2021 — Tasha Kheiriddin — National Post — In the aftermath of Canada’s 44th federal election, the Conservative party is at a crossroads. Under two successive leaders, Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole, it has attempted to rebuild its fabled “big tent,” and failed.
Sep 28 2021 — Tasha Kheiriddin — National Post — It’s a common trope that foreign policy is never a ballot question. As riled up as Canadians got about Afghanistan in our recent election, research showed it had little impact on the choices they ultimately made. Bread and butter issues like childcare or concerns about climate change mattered more than how well the prime minister […]
Sep 21 2021 — Tasha Kheiriddin — National Post — In 1993, Bill Murray starred in the film Groundhog Day, about a man who wakes up every morning to find that he is back at the start of the previous day, doomed to repeat the same events over and over. Groundhog Day cost $19 million to make 25 years ago, or $36 million in today’s […]
Sep 20 2021 — Tasha Kheiriddin — National Post — When author Hugh MacLennan penned his famous novel Two Solitudes in 1945, the term became synonymous with the social and cultural divide between French and English Canada. That divide has waxed and waned over the years, reaching its zenith during the 1995 Quebec referendum on separation, when the province came within a whisker of bidding […]
Sep 14 2021 — Tasha Kheiriddin — National Post — With less than a week to go, election 44 is coming down to the wire. Many are still dismissing the current campaign as nothing more than an attempted majority power grab by Justin Trudeau. In the fourth wave of a pandemic, with a Parliament passing pretty much anything he tossed in front of them, Trudeau […]
Sep 9 2021 — Tasha Kheiriddin — National Post — “Dangerous.” It’s a word not often bandied about in political discourse, unless something really serious is at stake: fundamental freedoms, human rights, or life and death situations. Yet it was the word that Quebec Premier Francois Legault reached for when weighing in on the current federal election — and he used it to describe three […]