Oct 27 2020 — Percy Downe — Policy Magazine — The notion of a global village has been driven home this year, as a worldwide pandemic has had an impact unprecedented in the living memory of Canadians. Through lockdown, gradual reopening and further setbacks, and as concerns mount over what comes next, we have watched as countries the world over continue to deal with this […]
Oct 18 2020 — Don Newman — Policy Magazine — While it may be weeks after the polls close on November 3 before all the absentee and mail-in ballots have been counted, the court challenges exhausted and the winner of the US presidential election declared, one thing is already clear: We know who has lost. Whatever the final outcome of the vote, the Republican Party […]
Oct 14 2020 — Lisa Van Dusen — Policy Magazine — It hasn’t come up yet in this presidential election cycle, possibly because the answer seems so overwhelmingly self-evident, but it’s status as a quadrennial ritual is so baked into US political culture that, in the West Wing episode in which it figures prominently, it enters the action as simply, “The Question”. The Question is, “Why […]
Oct 9 2020 — L. Ian MacDonald — Policy Magazine — Watching John Turner’s funeral service the other day, there was a striking Canadian quality to it. In a sense, it was his bequest to the nation. It was also impossible not to compare it, for dignity and decency, with the chaotic presidential campaign in the United States, where those qualities are conspicuously missing in action. […]
Oct 7 2020 — Elizabeth May — Policy Magazine — It took me by surprise last weekend that it was the election of the Green Party’s new leader, Annamie Paul, that prompted a surge in my direction of kind comments and farewells. It felt a bit baffling. After 13 years, I stepped down as leader of the Green Party of Canada almost a year ago, […]
Sep 30 2020 — Lisa Van Dusen — Policy Magazine — In classic narrative warfare fashion, Donald Trump treated Tuesday night’s presidential debate in Cleveland not as a debate, but as an odious psychological warfare assault on his own country. By refusing to engage in anything other than lies, insults and bullying, Trump was expressing his contempt for not only the forum in which he was […]
Sep 29 2020 — Kevin Page — Policy Magazine — Ten years ago, a business book was published titled Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most. It was a New York Times business best seller. One of the authors, Douglas Stone, said “difficult conversations are almost never about getting the facts right. They are about conflicting perceptions, interpretations, and values.” In reading the latest […]
Sep 24 2020 — L. Ian MacDonald — Policy Magazine — A Speech from the Throne and a Prime Minister’s Address to the Nation are two completely different animals of the rhetorical species. An SFT sets a government’s political agenda for a coming session of Parliament. But it is not a partisan event, rather it is state occasion in the sense that all actors on the […]
Sep 24 2020 — Kevin Page — Policy Magazine — The ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras said “Numbers rule the universe.” Typically, you do not see a lot of numbers in a Speech from the Throne (SFT). Who would want to listen to a Governor General talk numbers (besides me)? Still, it is possible to deconstruct what was in the speech — and not in the […]
Sep 20 2020 — L. Ian MacDonald — Policy Magazine — As the country looks back on the career and legacy of John Napier Turner, who passed away Saturday at 91, it’s impossible not to consider the fact that the most important bilateral dynamic of his life that didn’t involve a family member may have been his political dance with Brian Mulroney. Over the years from […]
Sep 20 2020 — Lisa Van Dusen — Policy Magazine — There are few testaments to the Shakespearean reversals of political life more eloquent than the fact that, if someone had told you in 1984 that by 2000, Brian Mulroney would be on good terms with his erstwhile political opponent John Turner and no longer speaking to his old friend Lucien Bouchard, you’d have said they […]
Sep 18 2020 — Eddie Goldenberg and Peter Donolo — Policy Magazine — Canada mourned the passing this week of a great lady. Jean Chrétien once said that without Aline he never would have become prime minister of Canada; we heartily agree. Both of us came to know Aline Chrétien (née Chaîné) well, one of us for almost 50 years, one for 30 years. Getting to know Aline […]
Sep 14 2020 — Lloyd Axworthy and Ratna Omidvar — Policy Magazine — In their thoughtful Policy Magazine essay titled The Case for a New and Improved MagnitskyLaw, Irwin Cotler and Brandon Silver suggest ways to strengthen the Justice for Corrupt Foreign Officials Act. Some of the steps that Cotler and Silver propose are welcome, including a Canada-led effort to achieve greater international coordination of Magnitsky sanctions. We […]
Sep 12 2020 — Irwin Cotler and Brandon Silver — Policy Magazine — At a time when democratic norms are under attack elsewhere, Canada has a unique opportunity to set the global standard for human rights practice and policy by reforming and refining Canada’s human rights sanctions framework, which can serve as an example to the world. Amid a global resurgence of authoritarianism — underpinned by an assault […]
Sep 8 2020 — Lisa Van Dusen — Policy Magazine — We’ve all seen governance and human rights norms incrementally weakened or obliterated recently to meet totalitarian standards rationalized by China’s geopolitical ascendancy but benefiting quite a few other interests. The latest instrument of this trend is “coercive diplomacy”, the diplomatic version of “illiberal democracy” — also oxymoronic, contagious and euphemistically designed to cover a multitude […]