Aug 13 2020 — Lisa Van Dusen — Hill Times — Years ago, when I first lived in Washington, D.C., the city was so paralyzed by snow one January Saturday that friends who came for lunch stayed five days. I wrote a column about how a hostile power could simply wait for what, in Canada, would be a good ski day to invade and hang an […]
Aug 12 2020 — Neil Moss — Hill Times — With no progress towards reopening the Canada-U.S. border as the United States continues to be overwhelmed by COVID-19, experts say easing restrictions to allow non-U.S. foreign nationals to travel to Canada could be the first step in a phased reopening of the 49th parallel. Despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s forceful defence of his handling of […]
Aug 12 2020 — Samantha Wright Allen — Hill Times — The latest fundraising figures suggest one Green Party leadership candidate is pulling ahead, doubling the next nearest contender in total raised to date despite what she called an “incredibly difficult” climate for fundraising amid the pandemic. Ontario lawyer and leadership contender Annamie Paul’s $84,735 represented 38 per cent of all of the hopeful’s hauls in […]
Aug 10 2020 — Peter Mazereeuw — Hill Times — The Senate’s staff harassment problems run deeper than Don Meredith, say two of his former employees, and the Red Chamber has not done enough to confront its own failures to protect staff from their bosses. “I would say it’s more widespread,” said Jane, one of Mr. Meredith’s former staffers said in an interview last week. […]
Aug 10 2020 — Mike Lapointe — Hill Times — Nearly seven weeks after the federal government first addressed how and when Canada’s federal public servants will return to physical worksites, the Treasury Board Secretariat says the government’s approach will be “prudent, gradual, and phased-in,” with “no single date for a return to worksites across the government.” The government’s approach will follow guidance on workplace […]
Aug 10 2020 — Peter Mazereeuw — Hill Times — The three leading candidates in the Conservative leadership race have all reached out to Quebec’s dairy farmers with promises to protect the supply management system, in a bid to win support from a group that may have swung the last contest in favour of now outgoing Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer. However, the organizer of a […]
Aug 6 2020 — Lisa Van Dusen — Hill Times — If Godwin’s law has been among the many casualties of reality-show fascism, it is quickly being replaced by the rule that, in any debate about China, the spectre of McCarthyism will be deployed—invariably by China—to chill criticism. “Current U.S. policy toward China is based on strategic misjudgments that lack factual evidence, and is full of […]
Aug 5 2020 — Hill Times — Addressing anti-Black racism in the ranks of the Canadian military is a matter of national security, with recent bad press likely to dampen recruitment, says the head of the Federal Black Employee Caucus. “For a long time this work has been piecemeal and people kind of do it at the corner of their desk, but […]
Aug 5 2020 — Neil Moss — Hill Times — As Nova Scotia Liberal MPs were hearing backlash from their constituents on the decision to have an independent review into Canada’s worst-ever mass shooting, they continued to push party leadership on the need for a public inquiry, including through letters and calls to Public Safety Minister Bill Blair and a meeting with a Prime Minister’s […]
Aug 3 2020 — Peter Mazereeuw — Hill Times — Two experts in Canadian politics and constitutional law say Gov. Gen. Julie Payette should resign over the allegations of staff harassment at Rideau Hall, but another leading academic and the chair of Canada’s League of Monarchists both say they aren’t ready to call for her resignation. “It’s got to the point, I think, with this […]
Aug 3 2020 — Abbas Rana — Hill Times — The PMO should hire a senior staffer to vet all major political initiatives for ethical problems before they are rolled out, to avoid more of the ethical lapses that have plagued Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government since it won power in 2015, say two veteran political pollsters. “It’s really critical that they up their […]
Aug 1 2020 — Hill Times — Despite its Canadian launch, Google says it still doesn’t have a fix ready for a national COVID-19 exposure notification app that could force some Android phone users to reveal their location data to the company and other third-party apps. However, the company says its updated Android 11 operating system, set for release sometime before the […]
Jul 29 2020 — Samantha Wright Allen — Hill Times — Next fall, the Alberta government plans to hold Senate nominee elections in the first contest since a 2014 Supreme Court decision on the subject. However, an election is likely a “wasted” and expensive exercise, said one constitutional expert, and would almost certainly face legal challenge—an assessment that has divided some of Alberta’s Red Chamber representatives. […]
Jul 29 2020 — Laura Ryckewaert — Hill Times — Plans are still being finalized, but thanks to COVID-19, the next leader of the federal Conservative Party will likely be announced in a virtual event, a forced reality strategists say creates the risk of a “lost opportunity” for the party and more impetus for the race winner to hit the ground running. “The concern is […]
Jul 27 2020 — Mike Lapointe — Hill Times — “Glaring” under-representation of visible minorities in the upper echelons of the federal public service—Canada’s largest employer with more than 280,000 employees—continues to be something the Liberal government is looking to address, according to Liberal MP and parliamentary secretary for public service renewal Omar Alghabra, with Canada’s first African Canadian appointed to the Senate calling for […]