Jan 27 2020 — Stephen Maher — Maclean's — MacKay had lots of time to learn passable French. That he didn’t do the work should raise some questions about his candidacy. Peter MacKay made the front page of both Le Journal de Montreal and Le Journal de Quebec on Sunday morning. GOOD LUCK MISTER was the enormous headline, below a full-page photo of MacKay […]
Jan 27 2020 — Maclean's — Philippe J. Fournier: The PCs continue to fall further behind the Liberals, while a majority of Ontarians side with the teachers in the ongoing strike After last October’s federal election, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau went on a national tour to meet the country’s premiers in hope of mending fences. In late November, after a meeting […]
Jan 22 2020 — Michael Coren — Maclean's — It was largely inevitable that there would be a conflict between Doug Ford’s Ontario government and the province’s teachers. It happened under former Tory Premier Mike Harris, and it’s happened with various right-wing administrations in other provinces. Put simply, teachers are not popular with conservatives, and their unions have been used as scapegoats by conservative […]
Jan 21 2020 — Paul Wells — Maclean's — It was helpful last week of Jean Chrétien’s former right hand Eddie Goldenberg to make, in detail, a case several of his contemporaries have been making piecemeal for more than a year: that taking Canada’s extradition treaty with the United States won’t get Canadian prisoners in Beijing released, so we should just do what Beijing […]
Jan 21 2020 — Stephen Maher — Maclean's — When Volkswagen Canada pleads guilty on Wednesday to illegally importing cars that were rigged to beat emissions tests, investigators and prosecutors may be tempted to celebrate. This is expected to be the biggest environmental fine in Canadian history. Volkswagen is facing 60 charges and each charge carries a maximum penalty of $6 million, so the […]
Jan 17 2020 — Stephen Maher — Maclean's — If Western Canadian Conservatives don’t want Peter MacKay to lead the party that Stephen Harper built, they had better get a firmer grip on Rona Ambrose’s elbow, because otherwise MacKay is likely going to take over the party when Tories meet in Toronto in June. In-house polling from several other camps shows MacKay with a […]
Jan 16 2020 — Nick Taylor-Vaisey — Maclean's — One of the first internal evaluations of Governor General Julie Payette’s performance at Rideau Hall gave the former astronaut and rookie public servant a poor score. In 2018, the federal government’s annual Public Service Employee Survey—a probe of bureaucrats’ workplace experience, filled out by more than 160,000 federal workers—raised alarm bells about an apparent harassment […]
Jan 16 2020 — Tom Parkin — Maclean's — Again, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has shown his message discipline and empathic abilities when responding to events. Last week, Trudeau told Canadians that trusted intelligence reports showed Flight 752 had been shot down by Iranian anti-aircraft missiles. He stuck close to his script. He gave no words to those demanding Canada join Donald Trump’s sanctions […]
Jan 15 2020 — Paul Wells — Maclean's — Former prime minister Stephen Harper has suddenly resigned from the board of the Conservative Party of Canada’s fundraising arm, as the party descends into organizational chaos and bitter recrimination in the first week of its leadership campaign. Harper had been urged by friends and party officials to resign from the Conservative Fund Canada board after […]
Jan 15 2020 — Dale Smith — Maclean's — News that Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, plan to move to Canada, has been met with scorn in the U.K. and great enthusiasm on our shores. While the National Post published a poll that showed that 60 per cent of Canadians would like Harry to become the next Governor General, and others are […]
Jan 10 2020 — Paul Wells — Maclean's — Canada’s international development minister spoke about the prime minister’s father and why we should ‘enthusiastically’ embrace liberal internationalism. On Wednesday I noted that amid a general slow operating tempo for the re-elected Trudeau government in Ottawa, International Development Minister Karina Gould was preparing to speak to a conference at the University of Toronto on the […]
Jan 8 2020 — Paul Wells — Maclean's — Events, dear boy, events. We are promised a news conference later today with the prime minister, and it’s a good thing too, because the questions are starting to pile up. Ottawa woke Wednesday to two shocks. At home, news of a shooting in the capital’s residential downtown core. A domestic dispute, it seems; more of […]
Jan 8 2020 — Andrew MacDougall — Maclean's — In the end, the first shot in the Conservative leadership contest wasn’t fired by Rona Ambrose, Peter MacKay, Jean Charest, or any of the other media darlings. It was fired by wee Pierre Poilievre. Yes, the man they call “Skippy” on Parliament Hill has scored first, in the form of a well-informed exclusive in the […]
Jan 6 2020 — Paul Wells — Maclean's — Things will now start to happen quite quickly in the Conservative Party’s leadership campaign. Conservatives I talked to on Monday didn’t attach literal meaning to Lisa Raitt’s statement, on Friday, that potential candidates had only 10 days to make up their minds. (That figure would now be down to seven, if it were a real […]
Jan 3 2020 — Scott Gilmore — Maclean's — I have spent a significant part of my professional life working in places where things have gone wrong—in countries afflicted with war, poverty or corruption. In the early years, I found the work especially challenging. I was often flummoxed by circumstances, unable to solve basic problems because I simply did not understand the context. For […]