Oct 8 2018 — Geoffrey Stevens — The Record — Doug Ford and Jason Kenney had a grand old time in Alberta the other night. Appearing together before an overflow crowd of 1,500 true believers in Calgary, the two provincial leaders — one in power, the other in waiting — pledged their mutual, undying opposition to carbon taxes, and they took turns swatting enthusiastically at […]
Oct 1 2018 — John Milloy — The Record — I can’t decide whether recent events at Queen’s Park remind me more of childhood trips to the circus or that feeling I get watching the babysitter investigate a noise in the basement in one of those teenage horror flicks. Whether you want to laugh or turn away in fear, there is no question that it’s […]
Sep 4 2018 — John Milloy — The Record — Einstein apparently never defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Someone else did. Regardless of who said it, the sentiment applies nicely to the Ford government’s approach to poverty reduction. Their plan is simple: Kill the basic income pilot, halve expected increases and take 100 days to […]
Sep 3 2018 — Geoffrey Stevens — The Record — Justin Trudeau and his government were handed two painful and costly lessons last week. One lesson was not to take the courts for granted. Trudeau and his people were read that lesson in a Federal Court of Appeal decision that froze construction on the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion. The second lesson was never, ever again, […]
Jul 30 2018 — Geoffrey Stevens — The Record — The next noise you hear from Ottawa will be the sound of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals rebooting. It is all but certain that they will prorogue Parliament when MPs return from vacation in September and present a new Speech from the Throne with an agenda designed to carry them through to the election in October 2019. […]
Apr 10 2018 — The Record — In the hours after MPP Michael Harris’ political career was sunk by a sexting scandal, the race to replace him in Kitchener-Conestoga was already heating up. The PC Party of Ontario sees Kitchener-Conestoga as a seat it expects to win again, and potential Tory candidates are quietly lining up supporters behind the scenes. Don Kilimnik, […]
Mar 3 2018 — The Record — Ontario PC leadership contender Tanya Granic Allen wants the party to throw out more than 2,000 memberships signed up in Cambridge by a controversial, out-of-province candidate. Granic Allen, who plans to run as a candidate in Cambridge, made an urgent appeal to reject 2,078 memberships signed up by Calgary dentist Tanya Khattra. Those memberships are […]
Feb 26 2018 — Geoffrey Stevens — The Record — Social media is a faithless lover, as Justin Trudeau learned to his pain in India last week. From the moment he was elected in October 2015, the prime minister was the darling of the web. With a few churlish (and generally right-wing) exceptions, social media loved him. He was so handsome, so virile, so articulate, […]
Feb 19 2018 — Geoffrey Stevens — The Record — Words fail me,” a longtime Ontario Tory insider. This veteran of many campaigns is not alone. Many of his fellows — organizers, workers, candidates and rank-and-file members — are aghast at what is going on in the party they have supported through good times and not-so-good times. Remember, the Progressive Conservatives were the political dynasty […]
Feb 10 2018 — Luisa D'Amato — The Record — Sexual harassment is not just about sex. It’s part of something bigger. John Milloy, former Kitchener Centre MPP who held several cabinet positions for the Ontario Liberal government, described it this week in a column about workplace harassment. The flood of stories about sexual misconduct is only part of the story, he says in the […]
Dec 26 2017 — Geoffrey Stevens — The Record — John Diefenbaker waggled his finger sternly across the aisle as he instructed the Liberal government of the day in 1968: “It is a long road that has no ash cans.” While the provenance of Dief’s metaphor is obscure, his warning was clear. You think know what you are doing, but don’t get so full of […]
Dec 18 2017 — Geoffrey Stevens — The Record — “Good grief, Charlie Brown!” How else can one react to the news that has set the blogosphere aflutter — or, should we say, atwitter? The news: Justin Trudeau, our very own prime minister, has been named the Second Most Influential Person in the World. Wow! The honour was bestowed last week by LinkedIn, a Microsoft-owned […]
Dec 11 2017 — Geoffrey Stevens — The Record — The most frustrated politician in Ottawa these days has to be Andrew Scheer. He has been leader of the opposition for six months, long enough to have moved out of the shadow of his predecessor, Stephen Harper, and long enough to put his own stamp on the Conservative party. It’s also been long enough to […]
Jul 10 2017 — Geoffrey Stevens — The Record — “We have a great neighbour in Canada and Justin is doing a spectacular job in Canada. Everybody loves him and they love him for a reason. So congratulations on the job you are doing.”— Donald Trump at the G20 summit in Hamburg , Germany, on Saturday. So there you have it — a ringing endorsement […]
Jan 23 2017 — Geoffrey Stevens — The Record — Arlene Dickinson, former star of CBC’s “Dragons’ Den,” wasted little time putting her former co-star in his place when she was asked what she thought of Kevin O’Leary’s entry into the Conservative leadership race last week. “For seven years, I sat shoulder-to-shoulder with Kevin,” she said. “We’d spend long hours together, listening to hardworking Canadian […]