Oct 18 2021 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — “Are there really Canadians out there who want to see more MPs added to the House of Commons?” This is not an original question, nor even a recent one. Almost exactly 10 years ago, a Liberal backbencher named Justin Trudeau posed it during a Commons debate about adding 30 new seats to the chamber. A […]
Oct 17 2021 — Eric Blais — Toronto Star — The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), the party founded by Quebec Premier François Legault, will celebrate its tenth anniversary next month. The Caquistes have much to celebrate. They’ll also be running for re-election in a year. While that’s an eternity in politics, the odds are clearly in the CAQ’s favour as the main opposition parties, the […]
Oct 17 2021 — Robin V. Sears — Toronto Star — Each of the three national political parties is a hollow shell at the local level in many parts of Canada. Each party has ridings where the flag is kept flying by a handful of — usually — aging activists. This exposes them to takeover by determined outside groups. No one is more vulnerable to this […]
Oct 17 2021 — Jaime Watt — Toronto Star — Yup, that was me. They guy in the big black car casually blocking southbound traffic on the Allen Expressway last Sunday evening at about 9:30 p.m. The guy who was such a jerk and so inconsiderate that he simply refused to move his car out of a live traffic lane and on to the shoulder. […]
Oct 16 2021 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — They came to the campaign trail, they saw Justin Trudeau — and they were conquered. It’s a fascinating footnote to all those ugly protests that dogged Trudeau throughout the election. In all but a couple of the ridings where the angriest demonstrations took place, voters sent Trudeau’s Liberals to Parliament. Liberals won in London North […]
Oct 16 2021 — Toronto Star — Julianna Peter-Paul says it’s “just one more thing” the government of New Brunswick has done to her people “that will have to be reconciled later.” The 27-year-old from the Metepenagiag Miꞌkmaq Nation, who works part-time for the provincial archives, was stunned this week when the province ordered all government employees to stop giving land acknowledgments […]
Oct 14 2021 — Althia Raj — Toronto Star — The federal election may be over but a new fight over ridings is about to start. On Friday, the Star has learned, Elections Canada will announce the number of new seats each province will be allocated in the House of Commons. It’s not quite the gerrymandering that occurs in the United States — where politicians […]
Oct 14 2021 — Toronto Star — A standardized vaccine passport that would pave Canadians’ way for easier domestic and international travel could be coming in a matter of weeks, with recent delays less about buy-in from provinces and more about the technology behind the system. Ottawa first began working on a national vaccine passport this spring. Days before the federal election […]
Oct 14 2021 — Heather Scoffield — Toronto Star — It’s convoluted, it’s taken years of give and take, and it could have been a lot stronger, but the world has finally come to a basic understanding on how to clip the wings of the web giants — and Canada could become a beneficiary if it plays its cards right. Last week, 136 countries signed […]
Oct 13 2021 — Alex Ballingall — Toronto Star — A Conservative MP and former Tory whip says parliamentarians should be allowed to work in the House of Commons even if they choose not to get vaccinated against COVID-19, a position he believes is consistent with his party leader’s opposition to vaccination mandates during the recent election campaign. Mark Strahl, the Conservative MP for the […]
Oct 10 2021 — Jacques Gallant — Toronto Star — When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said military leaders “still don’t get it” when it comes to fighting sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces, his comment prompted a pointed response: So what are you going to do about it? After all, critics noted, the long-running crisis is as much the government’s problem as it is […]
Oct 10 2021 — Chantal Hébert — Toronto Star — With one exception, the final federal election results in Quebec are in and what they add up to is an unchanged post-election map. With one last recount still underway, not a single seat has changed hands. In this instance, an absence of change is not synonymous with a non-event. The 2021 federal election results come […]
Oct 10 2021 — Toronto Star — Erin O’Toole dodged a bullet last week in getting safely through his first post-election caucus. If history is any guide, the Conservative leader will soon need to duck many more. Since the dawn of Confederation, Canadian conservatives can point to only three periods of undisputed political success, in government.: Sir John A. Macdonald, 18 years; […]
Oct 10 2021 — Jaime Watt — Toronto Star — Enough is enough. After six years in office, the pattern has become painfully familiar. First, the prime minister makes a decision so blatantly problematic that the term hubris does not begin to do it justice. After some initial acrobatics from the PMO (in this case, claiming on his official itinerary that he was in Ottawa), […]
Oct 9 2021 — Althia Raj — Toronto Star — To attack or not to attack? Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau sat staring at his friend Tom Pitfield’s laptop computer. “It’s time,” Pitfield, the party’s chief digital strategist and chief executive of the digital marketing and data analytics firm Data Sciences, told him. They were huddled on one side of a horseshoe-shaped table in a large […]