May 30 2020 — Tonda MacCharles — Toronto Star — In the children’s street game of war, you stand in your corner of the world, declare what turf you want to occupy, hit its fleeing leader with a stick, and lean in to redraw your desired boundaries. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau insists he’s not playing that game. He says he respects provincial jurisdiction and the […]
May 29 2020 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — The whole idea of “distressed regions” in Canada has been shaken up by the pandemic — economic despair has headed downtown. With COVID-19 rampaging through high-density areas of the country such as the GTA and Montreal, the federal government’s attention to regional development has become a lot more urban in the past couple of months. […]
May 28 2020 — Heather Scoffield — Toronto Star — Bill Morneau is calling it the “safe restart.” The finance minister says he has moved past the emergency response to the pandemic’s effect on the economy and is now fully engaged in how to switch from dousing the inferno with billions of dollars to sweeping up the ashes. But in an interview with The Star […]
May 28 2020 — Alex Boutilier — Toronto Star — If you’re a Conservative voter who believes in balancing the budget above all else, you might want to avert your eyes for the next few years. Leadership front-runners Peter MacKay and Erin O’Toole both released their ideas for Canada’s post-pandemic economic recovery this week. And while both candidates stressed the need to stabilize federal finances, […]
May 28 2020 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — There’s a long-term-care crisis in Canada that is crying out for short-term, very practical action. Unfortunately, until this pandemic gripped the country, short-term fixes were not the federal government’s area of expertise. Nor is on-the-ground service delivery, as many of Canada’s Indigenous communities can attest. It is now abundantly clear that what’s needed to repair […]
May 26 2020 — Heather Scoffield — Toronto Star — Maybe the most disturbing element of Leonard Rodriques’s heartbreaking story was his reluctance to seek help at the local hospital for fear of being mistreated the way Blacks are in the United States. Rodriques, a Black personal support worker in Toronto’s long-term-care system, was eventually persuaded to go to the emergency room. But then he […]
May 25 2020 — Alex Boutilier — Toronto Star — The Liberals upcoming gun control legislation will allow municipalities to effectively ban handguns within their boundaries while setting national standards on how the weapons can be stored and used. While stopping short of a national handgun ban, Public Safety Minister Bill Blair told the Star that new rules will allow municipalities to rule that handguns […]
May 25 2020 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — The least essential service throughout the pandemic has been politics — which is why political parties should expect all the outrage they’re getting for their bid to get the federal wage subsidy. Even diehard believers in politics are having trouble with the news that Liberals, Conservatives, New Democrats and Greens, as well as Alberta’s United […]
May 24 2020 — Tiffany Gooch — Toronto Star — The first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic were a blurred frenzy, as each of us tried to keep pace with evolving circumstances while ensuring that the safety of our loved ones was secured. Government leaders moved on impossible timelines to deliver solutions and adapted in real time to fill in gaps where needed.
May 24 2020 — Jaime Watt — Toronto Star — Of all the inequalities laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic, there is none more glaring than the profoundly unequal effect it has had on the lives of women. The impacts are felt everywhere. Primary caregivers have been forced to balance their professional and personal lives like never before, as children stay home from school and […]
May 24 2020 — Robin V. Sears — Toronto Star — First, it must be said the Canadian federation performed far better in crisis management than many other federal states — especially our neighbours to the south. This in spite of the prior sullen adolescent behaviour of some of the major players in the perennial soap opera called Canadian federal-provincial relations. Second, some unlikely leaders rose […]
May 24 2020 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — The “new normal” that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau warned Canadians about back in April is now upon the nation, as the gradual reopening begins. The picture of that condition got clearer this week. The new normal keeps its distance from neighbours, even U.S. neighbours. It works at home when it can and wears a mask […]
May 23 2020 — Chantal Hébert — Toronto Star — By the time Andrew Scheer hands over the Conservative party to a successor in late August, he will have been at the helm for a mere 39 months. As it turns out, that will have been more than long enough to squander the key pieces of Stephen Harper’s legacy. That starts with the status of […]
May 22 2020 — Tom Walkom — Toronto Star — Thu., May 21, 2020timer3 min. read Pity Andrew Scheer. First, the Conservative leader lost the last federal election. Then his own party told him it was time to go. Now, as the Conservatives engage in a contest to pick a new leader to replace him, Scheer is left temporarily holding the fort. You’d think he […]
May 21 2020 — Heather Scoffield — Toronto Star — Evan Siddall has dared to go where his fellow regulators won’t. The head of the national housing agency is talking publicly — and with numbers — about his forecast. He is warning of a deep plunge in housing prices, a spike in mortgage defaults and a strain on his own agency’s balance sheet. The mountain […]