Aug 21 2019 — Chantal Hébert — Toronto Star — Even before the Liberals used their majority on a parliamentary committee on Wednesday to shut down future inquiries into the federal ethics commissioner’s scathing report about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s handling of the SNC-Lavalin file, there were signs that Mario Dion’s findings were not destined to become a turning point of the pre-election season. By […]
Aug 21 2019 — Tonda MacCharles — Toronto Star — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is taking aim at conservative politicians in Canada, the U.S. and around the world on the eve of a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and in advance of the G7 Summit in France. In what aides billed as the major foreign policy speech Trudeau will make in advance […]
Aug 21 2019 — Toronto Star — Peterborough-Kawartha NDP candidate Candace Shaw has wiped her Twitter history, which included tweets using explicit language and insults. Shaw says the social media purge was requested by her party and, although she does have some regrets about some prior postings, “It’s not an attempt to hide who I am at all. “I’m still myself.”
Aug 20 2019 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — The People’s Party of Canada is really big on freedom of expression. A whole section of its platform, laid out over the party website, is devoted to the rights of people to say whatever the heck they want. “What some people find politically incorrect, offensive or even hateful cannot serve as the legal basis for […]
Aug 20 2019 — Heather Scoffield — Toronto Star — There’s a short but jarring paragraph in Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion’s report last week on what went wrong in the SNC-Lavalin controversy. When the commissioner asked Finance Minister Bill Morneau what kind of analyses his department had done on the economic damage that could flow from SNC-Lavalin having to go to trial, Morneau replied that […]
Aug 19 2019 — Chantal Hébert — Toronto Star — Keeping track of Quebec and Alberta’s premiers these days is like watching two runaway trains on a pipeline-driven collision course. Neither Jason Kenney nor François Legault seems inclined to put his foot on the brake. It is not clear that either of them can alter course without derailing his agenda. By all indications, Canada’s s […]
Aug 19 2019 — Chantal Hébert — Toronto Star — In the lead-up to its first national campaign this fall, Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party had the opportunity to test the waters in four byelections. The sample was not scientific by any measure but the ridings in play featured a wide range of political dynamics. To wit, over the first half of 2019 the Liberals, the […]
Aug 19 2019 — Robert Benzie — Toronto Star — Premier Doug Ford’s ties to lobbyists have “alarmed” a Progressive Conservative riding association president, according to an internal party email obtained by the Star. In a letter to Ford, Tory executive director Mike Crase, and other PC officials, Lillo Ognibene complained about the premier’s appointment of a dozen lobbyists to his 17-member re-election committee. “These […]
Aug 18 2019 — Alex Boutilier — Toronto Star — Kelly Day was warming up the crowd with a theme song she wrote for the People’s Party of Canada. The song was heavy on the patriotism and libertarianism that Maxime Bernier’s upstart party says it stands for. PPC candidates and volunteers, purple lanyards around their necks and buttons on their chests, clapped and shouted encouragement. […]
Aug 18 2019 — Rosie DiManno — Toronto Star — Justin Trudeau wears apologia like a rose in his lapel. Sometimes accessorized with tears. The prime minister has either apologized or promised to apologize for: the harm caused to Aboriginal people by Canada’s residential schools policy and the decades-long abuse of Indigenous children; the Chinese head tax; refusal to let the Komagata Maru, a steamship […]
Aug 16 2019 — Alex Ballingall — Toronto Star — A federal Green Party candidate was forced to drop out of the upcoming election campaign as he continues to call on the leader of the Quebec City mosque that was site of a 2017 massacre to denounce a man who allegedly lit his ex-wife on fire. Luc Saint-Hilaire, the Green candidate for the Quebec riding […]
Aug 16 2019 — Alex Boutilier — Toronto Star — A senior member of Andrew Scheer’s team put his chances at 50 per cent. It was the night before the Conservative leadership vote, and Mike MacDonell was pacing the halls at the Etobicoke convention centre where the federal party’s grassroots were selecting Stephen Harper’s successor. MacDonell shared his assessment of Scheer’s chances with an incredulous […]
Aug 16 2019 — Alex Ballingall — Toronto Star — Trumpeting the need for men and boys to enlist in the fight for gender equality, the federal government is awarding $562,000 to four organizations in a bid to lay the foundation for its promised national strategy. Women and Gender Equality Minister Maryam Monsef is set to announce the funding Friday in Calgary, where she will […]
Aug 14 2019 — Chantal Hébert — Toronto Star — Where to start? The ethics commissioner report on the SNC-Lavalin affair contains the most damning findings ever rendered by an officer of Parliament against a sitting prime minister. Yes, Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin were splattered by the sponsorship scandal. And Stephen Harper spent his last year in office embroiled in a senate scandal that […]
Aug 13 2019 — Robert Benzie — Toronto Star — The stickers are in the mail. Ontario’s controversial new gas-pump decals that warn against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s carbon-pricing measures will be in place well before the official launch of the Oct. 21 federal election campaign. They are being sent to thousands of gas stations in time for the Progressive Conservative government’s self-imposed Aug. 30 […]