Jun 7 2022 — Kady O'Malley — iPolitics — The Conservatives may have dropped their omnibus pitch to draft an off-season assignment list for committees, but the question of how to keep those Liberal feet to the fire until the fall is still a live one.
Jun 1 2022 — Kady O'Malley — iPolitics — Is it time to pull the plug on virtual House proceedings? With the time-limited protocols that, for the last two-years-and-counting of pandemic-imposed restrictions, have allowed MPs to take part in Commons debates and committee meetings via video — and, as of last fall, vote remotely from anywhere in Canada using a custom-built mobile app — […]
May 23 2022 — Michael Coren — iPolitics — Political conservatism has come a long way, but, in the spirit of the word and the ideology, that doesn’t signify progress. In fact, the decline and decay of the organized conservative movement in the democratic world is one of the most worrying phenomena of contemporary politics. Worrying because, unlike the extremes of right and left, […]
May 17 2022 — iPolitics — Before we start digging into the question posed in this week’s headline, let’s pause for a brief opening tangent on just why picking a supply motion can be a more high-stakes call for the New Democrats than their Conservative or Bloc Québécois colleagues. In a nutshell: The parliamentary calendar allocates a certain number of supply […]
Apr 26 2022 — Kady O'Malley — iPolitics — First off, a jurisdictional twist to the standard caveat: In general, Process Nerd’s self-proclaimed purview does not include provincial or territorial legislatures — or local councils, or the United States Congress, or any other legislative body outside the perimeter of parliamentary precinct. It does, however, cover fixed election dates — and specifically, the built-in limitations […]
Mar 29 2022 — Kady O'Malley — iPolitics — Well, it was fun — at least for Process Nerds — while it lasted. But after a week of sporadic back-and-forth across the aisle over whether the confidence-and-supply agreement between the Liberals and the New Democrats constitutes a de facto coalition government, Deputy Speaker Chris d’Entremont has rejected a Conservative bid to remove the New […]
Mar 23 2022 — Kady O'Malley — iPolitics — In the wake of the non-aggression pact between the Liberals and the New Democrats, there’s no shortage of speculation of how it could play out in the next election. From a purely Process Nerdly perspective, however, the more immediate — and no less intriguing — question is how it could change the power dynamics across […]
Mar 11 2022 — Michael Coren — iPolitics — Politicians can be sensitive souls. That, surely, was why Conservative leadership candidate Leslyn Lewis blocked me on Twitter last year after I’d written a column questioning some of her views of LGBTQ2 equality and women’s reproductive rights. I’ve never met the new MP for Haldimand—Norfolk, and the article was courteous — even flattering — but, […]
Mar 8 2022 — Kady O'Malley — iPolitics — As of Tuesday morning, there was still no word on when the newly struck Special Joint Committee on the Declaration of Emergency (DEDC) — which, as its name makes clear, has been tasked with reviewing the government’s unprecedented decision to invoke the Emergencies Act in response to then-ongoing anti-COVID mandate protests in Ottawa and across […]
Feb 28 2022 — Michael Coren — iPolitics — Suddenly, everybody’s an authority on Russia and Ukraine. Problem is, even genuine experts are baffled by the situation most of the time. My father’s family left Odessa more than a century ago, but some of the clan remained. They were Jewish, with all the ambiguity that meant in the region. They lost people in the […]
Feb 22 2022 — Andrew Perez — iPolitics — Three weeks ago, Conservative party leader Erin O’Toole was ousted in an unprecedented vote triggered by his own caucus, according to the terms of the Reform Act. Since then, much has been written about all that ails the Conservative party and the future of the Canadian conservative movement more broadly. Since forming more than 18 […]
Feb 17 2022 — Michael Coren — iPolitics — Well, that didn’t take long. Even before all of the candidates have declared, the leading anti-abortion organizations in Canada are announcing whom they can’t support for the leadership of the Conservative party. It won’t, it seems, be frontrunner Pierre Poilievre, because, while he’s extremely right wing regarding any number of issues, he fails the anti-abortion […]
Feb 16 2022 — Kady O'Malley — iPolitics — We’re still waiting for the government to give the House of Commons the opportunity to debate — and, ultimately, vote on — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s unprecedented decision to invoke the Emergencies Act, but MPs now have a better idea on just how he intends to use those sweeping, if time-limited powers to end to […]
Feb 15 2022 — Bruce MacLellan — iPolitics — Events in Ottawa yesterday triggered a lot of memories for me. Thirty-four years ago, in 1988, I was in my second year as chief of staff to Perrin Beatty, then minister of National Defence in Brian Mulroney’s government. My boss, Beatty, was acting on a promise by the Mulroney government to repeal the 1917 War […]
Feb 14 2022 — Kady O'Malley — iPolitics — It hasn’t officially happened just yet, but with multiple news outlets reporting that Justin Trudeau may finally be ready to become the first prime minister to invoke the Emergencies Act to deal with the rolling cross-country anti-vaccine mandate protests, here’s a quick overview of exactly how that might play out in the parliamentary arena. For […]