Aug 13 2020 — Robert Asselin — Globe and Mail — As Joe Biden is set to be formally nominated by his party at the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 20, Canadian policy makers would be wise to start thinking through the implications of a Biden presidency on Canada’s economic policy. What will happen in November is still anybody’s guess. This is an unprecedented moment in […]

Aug 13 2020 — Justin Ling — National Post — Shortly after noon in June 2016, a man approached Joe Cox, his local member of Parliament, as she readied to meet her constituents in the quaint English town of Birstall. The man, enraged with her Labour politics, policies and maybe just her audacity to enter politics as a woman, shot her three times and stabbed […]

Aug 13 2020 — Lisa Van Dusen — Hill Times — Years ago, when I first lived in Washington, D.C., the city was so paralyzed by snow one January Saturday that friends who came for lunch stayed five days. I wrote a column about how a hostile power could simply wait for what, in Canada, would be a good ski day to invade and hang an […]

Aug 13 2020 — Kaitlyn Kuryk — The Conversation — COVID-19 has placed a spotlight on the inequities of Canada’s current “curative” health-care system and the problems associated with viewing health policy in isolation from social factors. Post-COVID, we should not “go back to normal.” Instead, we should push for a health-care system that values prevention and acknowledges that all policy is health policy. We […]

Aug 13 2020 — Lorrie Goldstein — Sun Media — Thirty-one years ago, then-police superintendent Julian Fantino released statistics suggesting Black people in a troubled Toronto community were disproportionately involved in crime. Fantino, who later became Toronto police chief and a cabinet minister in the Stephen Harper government, said he did it to counter allegations Toronto police were racist.

Aug 13 2020 — Heather Mallick — St. Catharines Standard — Wed., Aug. 12, 2020timer3 min. read “Can I speak with Catherine?” The man asking that question then began shouting obscenities at the office of Infrastructure and Communities Minister Catherine McKenna. It was a blizzard of violent and foul language. At one point, the man, filming himself, called her a “c—t.” One of the eeriest things? […]

Aug 13 2020 — Emma Teitel — Toronto Star — It’s not a secret that Canadians love to identify other Canadians who made it big in America, as in “Did you know that Ryan Reynolds is Canadian? Keanu Reeves? Kim Cattrall? Pamela Anderson? Michael J. Fox? Drake? Etc.”　　 However, what is perhaps less known about this national pastime of Canadian-spotting is that its focus extends […]

Aug 13 2020 — Kory Teneycke — CBC — I have a terrible confession to make. I am, and have been, a lobbyist. I understand for many Canadians that is like admitting you are something between a divorce lawyer and a serial killer. There are lots of stereotypes in my industry. We are all pigs smoking cigars and slapping the backs of politicians for […]

Aug 12 2020 — Mark Goldberg — National Newswatch — The past 6 months have witnessed an unprecedented shift in the consumption of digital connectivity by Canadians whose lives and livelihoods have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Communications services providers have rapidly reconfigured their networks to accommodate the shifts in daytime traffic patterns from business centres to residential neighbourhoods; telecom carriers have extended the […]

Aug 12 2020 — Shachi Kurl — If the WE Charity scandal demonstrates — yet again — the ways in which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is utterly incapable of avoiding political landmines related to ethics and conflicts of interest, it has also shown that he is more adroit at another manoeuvre: the pivot.

Aug 11 2020 — John Ivison — Postmedia — A story in the Taipei Times earlier this year detailed how a senior official in Taiwan’s airport security police was convicted of taking kickbacks related to a multimillion dollar contract to supply X-ray scanners to the Taiwanese government. Investigators alleged that the Chinese company supplying the scanners had sent a 30-something female sales manager to […]

Aug 11 2020 — Andrew Coyne — Globe and Mail — It began with a story in Saturday’s Toronto Star. The Prime Minister, it said, was thinking of ways to seize the “once in a century opportunity” of the COVID-19 pandemic to radically expand the scope and reach of government. “Now is the time,” the story said, summarizing the views of those close to him, to […]

Aug 11 2020 — Michael Coren — Toronto Star — Derek Sloan won’t win this month’s Conservative Party leadership, but the MP for Hastings—Lennox and Addington will be influential in deciding who does become the new leader of the opposition. The darling of social conservatives and the Christian right, he’s positioned himself as an almost Trump-like figure and was rightly criticized when he questioned the […]

Aug 11 2020 — The Conversation — The Canadian Museum for Human Rights has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. It has joined the ranks of several prominent institutions, from Rideau Hall to the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, that have been rocked by allegations of discrimination and harassment.

Aug 11 2020 — Glen Pearson — National Newswatch — Communities across Canada are holding their collective breath awaiting the expiration of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB).  The reason is simple: what comes next is unclear. For significant periods during the pandemic CERB was both a life-saver and an emotional boost in a time of deep concern.  It successfully rounded off the harsh edges […]