Apr 21 2018 — Colby Cosh — National Post — On Sunday morning, Jason Kenney — who would certainly be at the top of the board if there were betting on the next premier of Alberta — tweeted a link about the Trans Mountain pipeline crisis with the comment: “Canada is broken.” This seemingly flippant remark made a lot of people angry, and most everybody […]

Apr 21 2018 — Graham Thomson — Edmonton Journal — As if the pipeline dispute between Alberta and British Columbia couldn’t get more muddled. Now, we’re throwing beer into the equation. I am talking about the “Free the Beer” Supreme Court of Canada ruling this week dealing with a New Brunswick man, Gerard Comeau, who in 2012 was stopped by an RCMP officer and fined […]

Apr 21 2018 — Toronto Star — Earlier this week, Ontario PC leader Doug Ford made an announcement that sent a shock wave through the canyons of Bay Street. His first act, should he be elected premier, said Ford, would be to fire Mayo Schmidt, the president and CEO of Hydro One, and the company’s entire board of directors.

Apr 21 2018 — Adam Radwanski — Globe and Mail — Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals are desperate. So it wasn’t much surprise this week when they seized on the slightest chance to compare Doug Ford with Donald Trump – Ms. Wynne delivering an overwrought statement to the effect that a comment by the Progressive Conservative Leader about how more Liberals would be in jail for their accounting […]

Apr 20 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — What is the worst part of the Supreme Court’s decision in R v Comeau? Is it the shoddy reasoning, the tendentious reading of simple declarative statements, the selective approach to history, the willful naivete? Perhaps it’s the grating hypocrisy: the lectures on the sanctity of precedent, from a court famous for discarding precedent when it […]

Apr 20 2018 — Chantal Hébert — Toronto Star — At a time when federal-provincial tensions are on the rise, two court rulings this week offer a timely reminder that the Constitution does not cast the provinces as junior partners of a unitary federation. In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court found that New Brunswick is within its rights to forbid its citizens to bring […]

Apr 20 2018 — Susan Delacourt — Toronto Star — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hauled out not one, but three of his 2015 election slogans last weekend when he held his pipeline-crisis meeting with the premiers of Alberta and British Columbia. He talked of “hope and hard work” and declared that “better is always possible.” Trudeau even urged the warring provinces to see their rivals […]

Apr 20 2018 — Sheila Copps — Hill Times — Thousands of Liberals from across the country will descend on Halifax this weekend to plan their path to a potential electoral victory. It will be the final national meeting in advance of the next election and, in keeping with conventions of a party in government, will likely be non-controversial and inclusive. Most raucous conventions, where […]

Apr 19 2018 — Don Martin — CTV Power Play — It was never just about the beer — although, as an occasional cross-border suds shopper, there may be a conflict of personal interest here. The case of Gerard Comeau was a crucial legal fight aimed at ending protectionism for a myriad of goods and services controlled by provincial monopolies or regulations which impose higher prices […]

Apr 19 2018 — John Ivison — National Post — Francis Urquhart, the fictional chief whip in the original (and the best) House of Cards, described his role thus: “A pat on the head and a biscuit here; a short, sharp shock there – and a good boot up the backside where indicated.” In recent days, both the Conservative and Liberal whips’ offices have been […]

Apr 19 2018 — Paul Wells — Maclean's — This is not a small thing that has happened to Maxime Bernier. It’s a brutal humiliation of a major figure in a national party. The man who led the federal Conservatives’ leadership voting last year for 12 consecutive ballots (using the party’s novel preferential voting system) before losing, narrowly, to Andrew Scheer on the 13th […]

Apr 19 2018 — Tasha Kheiriddin — iPolitics — With the Ontario election 50 days away, and the provincial Liberals trailing badly in the polls, Premier Kathleen Wynne did the inevitable: she played the Trump card. While making a health care announcement at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, the Liberal Premier compared PC leader Doug Ford to the US President. “Doug Ford sounds like Donald […]

Apr 19 2018 — Andrew Coyne — National Post — One feature of the debate about the idea of a guaranteed annual income — minimum income, basic income, call it what you will — is wide disagreement about what it means, even amongst its supporters. How high or low would the maximum benefit, paid to those with no other income, be? How sharply or gradually […]

Apr 18 2018 — Chantal Hébert — Toronto Star — It is rare that a single issue costs a federal ruling party its re-election. Based on the latest poll to measure the impact of the ongoing pipeline crisis on the political fortunes of its various protagonists, the fate of the Trans Mountain expansion is unlikely to alone determine that of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in next […]

Apr 18 2018 — Andrew Jackson — National Newswatch — New data on tax expenditures released by the federal Department of Finance on April 16 show that one of Canada’s most generous tax breaks for the very affluent continues to swallow more and more tax revenues and to increase the income gap between the top 1% and the rest of us. Income from capital gains, […]