Apr 21 2018 — Meagan Campbell — Maclean's — On Friday night, at the Liberal Party national convention in Halifax, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau addressed a crowd of party members, following an introduction by MP Rodger Cuzner. For half an hour, speaking at times directly to her family seated before the stage, Grégoire Trudeau told personal stories and reinforced the importance of volunteers on the […]
Apr 19 2018 — Paul Wells — Maclean's — This is not a small thing that has happened to Maxime Bernier. It’s a brutal humiliation of a major figure in a national party. The man who led the federal Conservatives’ leadership voting last year for 12 consecutive ballots (using the party’s novel preferential voting system) before losing, narrowly, to Andrew Scheer on the 13th […]
Apr 13 2018 — Stephen Maher — Maclean's — As a practical matter, I don’t know whether it is good policy for Canada to invest billions of dollars in a bitumen pipeline, but as a political matter, I don’t see that we have much choice. The Alberta-British Columbia pipeline dispute is a Gordian knot, and there is no way to cut it, so Justin […]
Apr 11 2018 — Andrew MacDougall — Maclean's — For a libertarian conservative, Maxime Bernier sure is acting like a classic Liberal. No doubt hoping to send sales of his upcoming book, Doing Politics Differently: My Vision for Canada, skyrocketing into the tens, Bernier this week channelled his inner Paul Martin by teasing a subversive excerpt to the Globe and Mail in which he […]
Apr 10 2018 — Stephen Maher — Maclean's — Mark Zuckerberg is sorry again. The founder of Facebook—which had revenue of $40 billion last year based, thanks to its two billion regular monthly users—will humble himself, a giant on his knees, when he apologizes to a congressional committee today in his first ever appearance in front of lawmakers. Facebook, he will say, has allowed […]
Apr 9 2018 — Paul Wells — Maclean's — Jim Carr stood next to the Centennial Flame in front of Parliament’s Peace Tower and told a chilled knot of reporters and news cameras. An hour earlier Kinder Morgan had announced it was halting all non-essential spending on its Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project. If the company can’t find a way to proceed with the […]
Apr 8 2018 — John Geddes — Maclean's — Figuring out what was the most important part of Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s third federal budget, delivered at the end of February, started out as a multiple-choice test without an obvious right answer. Was it the new parental benefit, designed to nudge dads to become more involved in taking care of babies, and thus encourage […]
Apr 6 2018 — Paul Wells — Maclean's — Anyone wondering why Canadians sometimes lose faith in government’s ability to get anything done should read a report that the country’s auditors general released at the end of March. The report, Perspectives on Climate Change Action in Canada, is an extraordinary piece of work. Canada’s federal auditor general, Michael Ferguson, worked with his counterparts in […]
Apr 6 2018 — Maclean's — In October 2017, Facebook announced its Canadian Election Integrity Initiative, a set of public media literacy and politician cyber security programs, in an event streamed live on the site. Canada’s Minister of Democratic Institutions, Karina Gould, took the stage at the Economic Club of Canada-hosted event in Ottawa. In her introductory remarks, she suggested social […]
Apr 1 2018 — Stephen Maher — Maclean's — It was good to see NDP MP Charlie Angus up on his feet asking Justin Trudeau nasty questions this week and to watch the prime minister responding blandly to those questions, because it was good to see both teams with their best players on the ice. Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives have had a great winter, but […]
Mar 28 2018 — Paul Wells — Maclean's — The question before the court is: What kind of heathen are you, you’re not going to support Kathleen Wynne’s nice budget? It’s a plan for care and opportunity. That’s the title on the cover of the 300-page budget book: A Plan For Care and Opportunity. What, you don’t like care and opportunity? You’re going to […]
Mar 28 2018 — Maclean's — That was a really nasty crisis the NDP was headed into until the elements of a deal emerged on Tuesday evening. I’m not sure the party is out of the woods yet. Everyone would do well to consider the stakes. The story so far: David Christopherson, the party’s MP for Hamilton Centre, was the only […]
Mar 27 2018 — Ian Capstick — Maclean's — For eight years, I was a commentator on CBC News Network’s Power & Politics, speaking on issues ranging from the state of the economy to breaking-news stories. My job, in effect, was to think analytically about the political issues of the day, and predict where things would go. Yet something I couldn’t predict was just […]
Mar 20 2018 — Maclean's — Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne’s decision last week to prorogue the Ontario legislature and start a new session with a Speech from the Throne this Monday has been derided as a political stunt by her opponents. But did she abuse this rarely used power? So much of what the public knows about prorogation has been tainted […]
Mar 15 2018 — Maclean's — Here’s a funny Youtube video about Jagmeet Singh that came out during his first run for federal Parliament in 2011. It’s from JusReign, a YouTuber with a lot of subscribers who ended up working on Singh’s campaign. In the video, the two young men mostly goof around, wrestle, eat gulab jamun and goof some more.