When thinking outside the box just isn't enough
Last month’s 2017 Federal Budget contains some good news for fans of housing rights. Despite this, the the new pan-Canadian National Housing Strategy (as yet unreleased) may risk excluding our most vulnerable citizens (women, racialized communities, seniors, etc.) by refusing to recognize that housing is a basic human right and needs to be part any […]
It that time of year again, folks! That time of year when lazy scribes get busy putting together their top stories of the year for their retrospective end-of-year piece. In this case, it’s the stories, people, laws, scandals, senatorial or otherwise (with the retirement of former Conservative Minister Vic “Vickie-Leaks” Toews, sex scandals are in short […]
When you read about the egregious case of Ellen Richardson, a Canadian woman recently denied entry to the US for a vacation, it’s hard to believe that we’re making any progress as a society when it comes to defending those who are the most vulnerable. For all its talk about fighting mental illness and removing the […]
Most of you probably don’t remember Michael Chong from his last flirtation with the national media in 2006. He courageously stood up, on a matter of conscience, to his own Prime Minister and the vast majority of his colleagues in the House of Commons and voted against Harper’s Quebec Motion. Chong apparently learned a few […]
Monday’s by-election results in four ridings (or mini-election) were not particularly memorable. But, as a federal political wonk, I have no choice but to scrutinize them to see if they have any augurs, good or bad, for the three major political players (please note that I am deliberately excluding the Green Party and Bloc from […]
Last week’s RCMP bombshell dump revealed a few things about the private e-mails of PMO staff and their counterparts in the Senate. For the dozen or so Harper administration staffers, lawyers and spin doctors, the documents give the Canadian public a rare glimpse of the way that the ultra-secretive Harper government operates in a major […]
Never a dull moment in Toronto’s City Hall these days, is there? By now everyone knows that Rob Ford’s career is quite possibly the worst train wreck in Canadian political history. What is perhaps less understood by the general public are the ties between the Harper gang running the country and the Ford brothers in […]
Last week Justin Ling, host of he podcast Some Honourable Members (Canada’s version of the Young Turks) reported in the National Post that the Federal NDP had discreetly registered itself with Quebec’s Elections Office. Hence, giving itself the power to fundraise and put forward candidates in the next provincial election. This will come as a […]
Those who read my blog posts on the federal government will know that there is a certain theme that seems to re-occur in many of them. This theme can basically be summed up as the sad history of American meddling in what is regarded by any self-respecting country as their internal business. In the same […]
To say that Harper has a Senate problem is rather like saying that Walter White, from the hugely popular TV show Breaking Bad, has a crystal-meth problem. That is to say, that it understates the severity of the situation to a ridiculous degree. The Federal Conservatives and the Prime Minister, in particular, have been in […]
Mohamed Harkat’s hearing last week at the Supreme Court of Canada wasn’t just held behind closed doors, but was, for the first time in the 138 year history of the Court, held in a secret location known only to those directly involved to the proceedings. The reason given for this unprecedented, undemocratic and arguably unconstitutional […]
This past Saturday, Greenpeace Canada held vigils in Toronto and Montreal in order to draw attention to the fact that two Canadians, Alexandre Paul and Paul Ruzycki, are rotting in a Russian jail cell awaiting their show trial for protesting against drilling for oil in the Arctic by Gazprom, Russia’s massive transnational energy corporation. The charges […]
The case of the Calgary Freeman on the land Andreas Pirelli, who declared his rented property a sovereign embassy, is both hilarious and sad. Funny in that it involves a comically delusional dickhead whose bizarre understanding of contract law and massively misinformed personal philosophy led him to violate his lease with the owner of the […]
Off all the asinine comments made by Mme Marois in defense of her fatally flawed ‘Québec charte des valeurs’ (daycare workers wearing hijabs are threatening our children, comparing it to Bill 101, etc.) I think the one I want to discuss here is her rather unfortunate using of the French model of “laiçité” as an […]
Reading about President Obama’s war-mongering campaign with regards to his proposed military strikes against the Syrian government, I was shocked to see his administration make the disturbing claim that POTUS (President of the United States) reserves the right to push the button with or without a formal declaration of War by Congress. I’m shocked, because […]
Remember Canada’s mission in Afghanistan? It wasn’t long ago that Canada mothballed its forward operating base (complete with Tim Horton’s) outside the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar City in order to enable the Karzai government to assume responsibility for the security of the one of the toughest neighbourhoods in Afghanistan. How’s that transition going, you ask? […]
