Nov 30 2018 — Stephen Maher — Maclean's — You can make a reasonable-sounding political argument that Liberals in Ottawa and Toronto are to blame for General Motors’ announcement on Monday that it is closing its plant in Oshawa. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau talks about the middle class at every opportunity, but what did he do to save that plant? Nothing. He has ignored […]
Nov 29 2018 — Paul Wells — Maclean's — Rachel Notley doesn’t much like to go around the country complaining that Alberta’s neighbours are treating it unfairly, but she says it helps move public opinion. Alberta’s premier visited Ottawa and Toronto this week to talk about the crisis in her province’s energy industry, with prices collapsing and pipeline projects blocked or abandoned. She said […]
Nov 28 2018 — David Moscrop — Maclean's — Independent senators now make up the majority in a newly relevant upper chamber—and, yes, they have the power to kill bills. Talk about reforming the Senate, the den of what our first Prime Minister called “sober second thought,” even if that wasn’t a capacity he himself had, is as old as the body itself. Throughout […]
Nov 13 2018 — Maclean's — The Great One was awarded Canada’s greatest civilian honour in 2009. But he hasn’t found time in his schedule to make the trip to Ottawa. He’s the Great One, perhaps the best hockey player the world has known. Every few years, his name is bandied around as a possible governor general. His 2002 induction into […]
Nov 12 2018 — Stephen Maher — Maclean's — The MP was privy to Canada’s national security secrets, and his scandal has exposed a failure by all parties to take risks seriously. A couple of weeks ago, when I was out with friends at a Thai restaurant in Ottawa, two of the women at the table started sharing stories about Tony Clement’s very online […]
Nov 7 2018 — Paul Wells — Maclean's — Scott Moe had been the premier of Saskatchewan for all of a week when he ran into Jason Kenney at the Manning Networking Conference in February of this year, at a downtown Ottawa convention centre. The Manning conferences have lost some of their cachet as annual gatherings of the Canadian conservative clan. Turns out it […]
Nov 7 2018 — Andrew MacDougall — Maclean's — Attention prospective People Partiers of Canada: “Mad Max” Bernier is officially dialling down the crazy. That’s right. Mad Max’s new People’s Party of Canada (PPC) is dedicated to weeding out the weird because it doesn’t want any embarrassment as it attempts to forge a path to fourth place in next year’s federal election.
Nov 6 2018 — Shannon Proudfoot — Maclean's — Once in a while, in the home stretch of a speech in the House of Commons, Nathan Cullen will start to feel the themes from the beginning of his remarks effortlessly circle back to him. It feels less like he’s making that happen than simply witnessing it. “You’re sort of becoming an observer, watching the […]
Nov 2 2018 — Stephen Maher — Maclean's — The biggest problem with Friday’s Munk Debate isn’t Steve Bannon. It’s David Frum. If you accept, for the sake of argument, that it is wise to invite onto the beautiful stage at the Roy Thomson Hall a racist rabble rouser who can’t fill a conference room at the Topeka Holiday Inn Express, you ought to […]
Oct 31 2018 — Tom Parkin — Maclean's — NAFTA may not be completely over—the problem of steel and aluminum tariffs are still outstanding—but the main drama of David versus Goliath is done. Of course, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was the underdog in the NAFTA story, facing off against the despotic bully U.S. President Donald Trump, for whom, everyday, every decent Canadian has more […]
Oct 29 2018 — John Geddes — Maclean's — With less than a year to go before the next federal election, a short, harsh word is in the air around Canadian politics. “We are now looking,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Liberals recently at a fundraiser in Toronto, “at perhaps what will be the most divisive and negative and nasty political campaign in Canada’s […]
Oct 28 2018 — Stephen Maher — Maclean's — The sickening murder mystery that has been unspooling ever since Jamal Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul is an excellent proof of Joseph Stalin’s maxim: One death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic. Since 2015, when Shia rebels in Yemen revolted against the Saudi-backed government, thousands of civilians have been killed, […]
Oct 23 2018 — Paul Wells — Maclean's — It was the kind of day where everyone was so nervous that if you stood too close to a politician, they’d start to recite talking points. I said hello to a Liberal staffer and he started comparing the 10 years since Stéphane Dion lost the 2008 election to the 12 years we are all, as […]
Oct 23 2018 — Jason Markusoff — Maclean's — A few weeks after the Trudeau Liberals’ victory lap on North American trade, cheers from the audience seem to have evolved into boos and groans, a new poll suggests. As a result, securing a new NAFTA may not be the clear winning issue the governing party hopes—but rather a source of fresh political ammo for […]
Oct 19 2018 — Jason Kirby — Maclean's — The early results are in from the trade war the U.S. and Canada are waging against each other, and so far, it’s more or less a draw: each country is punching itself in the face with the same relative dunderheaded force. On Friday Statistics Canada released a study looking at the duties Canada has applied […]