Oct 28 2020 — Andrew Coyne — Globe and Mail — Throughout the past week of parliamentary manoeuvring, it was hard not to detect in the government’s reactions a note of astonishment, even shock. The notion that a committee of Parliament might have the temerity to demand that ministers appear before it or that government papers be released to it – or worse yet, that the […]
Oct 28 2020 — Globe and Mail — A Progressive Conservative MPP who serves as an aide to Ontario’s Education Minister is facing increasing calls to step down from the portfolio after he failed to wear a mask or practise physical distancing at a large gathering. Niagara West MPP Sam Oosterhoff, parliamentary assistant to Education Minister Stephen Lecce, has apologized for not wearing […]
Oct 26 2020 — Steven Chase — Globe and Mail — One of Hong Kong’s most prominent dissidents is urging Canada to organize a boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing with other liberal democracies to show China that its oppression of Hong Kongers and Uyghurs has real consequences. Nathan Law is a Hong Kong activist living in self-imposed exile in Britain. He fled Hong […]
Oct 26 2020 — Robert Fife and Steven Chase — Globe and Mail — Conservative Party Leader Erin O’Toole is calling on the Canadian government to urgently adopt special measures that provide a safe haven for Hong Kong residents facing persecution under a harsh national security law imposed by China on the former British colony. Mr. O’Toole said Canada must also be prepared to support the 300,000 Canadians living […]
Oct 26 2020 — Globe and Mail — Ottawa must address systemic racism in prisons, which is being perpetuated by risk assessments that are biased against Black and Indigenous inmates, opposition and legal critics say. The unfavourable risk scores contribute to the overrepresentation of Black and Indigenous men in prison, they say, something the Liberal government has vowed to address at a time […]
Oct 24 2020 — Roland Paris — Globe and Mail — After four years of President Donald Trump’s insults, threats and sanctions against Canada and other close allies of the United States, the prospect that American voters might replace him with Joe Biden, who has promised to repair relations with America’s traditional partners, seems tantalizingly close. But Canada will be tested no matter which candidate wins […]
Oct 23 2020 — Andrew Coyne — Globe and Mail — So the government lives, whether it likes it or not. By voting against a Conservative motion to set up a committee of inquiry into the WE Charity scandal, the NDP has helped the Liberals win a vote they might have preferred to lose. The Liberals, that is, had earlier declared the vote a matter of […]
Oct 23 2020 — Globe and Mail — The Trump administration is lauding Canadian MPs for condemning China’s brutal persecution of largely Muslim minorities as “genocide,” and is encouraging Ottawa to join Washington in imposing sanctions on Chinese officials responsible for the repression. A senior official in Washington, who is deeply involved in the U.S. government’s China file, welcomed a statement by a […]
Oct 22 2020 — Steven Chase — Globe and Mail — A senior Canadian bureaucrat testifying before MPs Thursday declined to answer questions regarding whether the Prime Minister’s Office or the Foreign Affairs Minister’s office influenced a decision to allow the export of airstrike-targeting gear to Turkey this May, equipment now allegedly being used by Azerbaijan to attack Armenians.
Oct 22 2020 — Campbell Clark — Globe and Mail — Even 20 years ago, some of Erin O’Toole’s habits stuck out as old school. He was a Dalhousie law student still in his 20s, but when his new wife, Rebecca, left the table, he stood. The Nova Scotia Tories he was meeting often noticed that after lunch or breakfast with him, he’d send them a […]
Oct 21 2020 — Steven Chase and Robert Fife — Globe and Mail — MPs on a Parliamentary committee dominated by the ruling Liberal Party have issued a report and a statement saying China’s conduct in Xinjian amounts to genocide, and is urging the Canadian government to adopt Magnitsky-style sanctions against Chinese officials. This comes less than a week after China’s ambassador to Canada warned Canadian Parliamentarians against taking […]
Oct 21 2020 — Andrew Coyne — Globe and Mail — “Do we really want a committee,” an incredulous Pablo Rodriguez, Government House Leader, asked reporters on Tuesday, “that has the power to force the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, all ministers, to drop their work, the important work they’re doing and come testify?” There you have the nub of the question, at least as […]
Oct 21 2020 — Kristy Kirkup — Globe and Mail — The Liberal government and governments before it have gone from addressing crisis to crisis but a long-term plan is required to recognize treaty rights of the Mi’kmaq people affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada more than two decades ago, says former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould. Ms. Wilson-Raybould, the first Indigenous person to hold the […]
Oct 20 2020 — Globe and Mail — The Liberal government’s expansive spending plans would push the federal debt burden back to the dangerous levels of the 1990s over the next decade, according to a report from one of the architects of Ottawa’s successful effort to defuse Canada’s debt crisis a quarter century ago. Don Drummond, now a Stauffer-Dunning Fellow at Queen’s University […]
Oct 20 2020 — Globe and Mail — A coalition of more than 90 Canadian charities and international development agencies says it is concerned about a pattern of opaque behaviour at WE Charity, including the charity’s unwillingness to sign the coalition’s code of ethics. Cooperation Canada, formerly known as the Canadian Council for International Cooperation, which represents almost all major Canadian aid organizations, […]