tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-109556892010-05-13T07:26:31.074-04:00Recent columnsAChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09302388531043102285noreply@blogger.comBlogger296125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10955689.post-65590672503454524302008-05-15T17:02:00.001-04:002008-05-15T17:02:12.572-04:00

Elections are rarely fought over big issues; even more rarely are they won that way. Though the public dutifully tell the pollsters that this or that big issue, as defined by the media, is important to them, they are usually lying -- telling the pollster what they think they should say -- and even where they are not, will as often as not decide their vote on some other basis.... Big issues, after

AChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09302388531043102285noreply@blogger.com38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10955689.post-74131822320929834902008-05-09T00:46:00.001-04:002008-05-09T00:46:15.158-04:00

I’ve tried to get excited about this “in-and-out” business, really I have. But I am hampered by two things. One, nothing about the Conservatives’ shuffling of funds back and forth between the national and local campaigns in the last election appears to have been against the law. And two, the law in question is an ass....To recap: It is not illegal to transfer funds from the national party to a

AChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09302388531043102285noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10955689.post-48373895138104517882008-05-01T21:21:00.000-04:002008-05-05T21:22:27.405-04:00

“Two of Canada's largest television broadcasters set aside their fierce rivalry yesterday ... imploring the federal regulator to put consumers first ...” “Cable and satellite carriers say consumer choice and market forces should dictate which channels are carried...” “Rogers Communications Inc. has warned the CRTC that fee-for-carriage would inflate cable bills by as much as $10 a month,

AChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09302388531043102285noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10955689.post-27203806633718339522008-04-23T16:13:00.000-04:002008-05-05T21:04:04.592-04:00

The so-called “in and out” affair has been bubbling away just below the surface of public consciousness since about last August. For most of that time, the media has paid it little attention, aside from the occasional puzzled yawn. That it is all over the media now, since the RCMP’s heavily publicized raid of Conservative headquarters, is because a) we now have pictures, b) we have a piece of

AChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09302388531043102285noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10955689.post-84947244000648277012008-04-16T16:12:00.000-04:002008-05-05T21:07:36.798-04:00

So there is nothing left. It is important to accept this. It is important to understand that there is no prospect of this changing. It is not going to get any better. If anything it is going to get worse....Perhaps, after each of the Harper government’s previous capitulations, each dizzying reversal of field, each casual laying aside of the convictions of a lifetime, conservatives could still

AChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09302388531043102285noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10955689.post-82252842211544785242008-04-09T16:11:00.000-04:002008-05-05T21:10:26.037-04:00

The Mulroney-Schreiber affair long ago ceased to be about Mulroney, or Schreiber -- or Airbus, for that matter. As the years passed -- years of RCMP bungling, journalistic indifference, and abortive legal proceedings; years, even after it was known that the former prime minister of Canada was taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash from a man who boasts of his success at bribing

AChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09302388531043102285noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10955689.post-16795735836252416082008-04-02T16:08:00.000-04:002008-05-05T21:13:04.185-04:00

The motto of the Order of Canada is “they desire a better country.” This is not, obviously,  a rejection of Canada -- they do not desire another country -- but neither does it imply complacent satisfaction with things as they are. It is, rather, that highest expression of loyalty, patriotic dissatisfaction....If the eyes roll at yet another discussion of “the Canadian question,” then, it is not

AChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09302388531043102285noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10955689.post-81843006414241624122008-03-26T16:07:00.000-04:002008-04-30T16:07:53.524-04:00

“He said the economy would be more of a political lightning rod if it weren't that unemployment remains at a relatively low 5.8 per cent, inflation is under control and borrowing costs are subdued.” -- The Toronto Star, March 25 The economy would be more of an issue, in other words, if it weren’t for the economy. Economists say we’re in a crisis, aside from the fact that we aren’t. Nuts: here we

AChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09302388531043102285noreply@blogger.com38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10955689.post-57957103785831958102008-03-19T16:06:00.000-04:002008-04-30T16:06:15.528-04:00

I have heard, or read, some great speeches on race in America -- Bobby Kennedy’s impromptu plea for peace, delivered from the back of a flatbed truck in Indianapolis on the night Martin Luther King was killed; Bill Bradley taking the Senate to school the day after the Rodney King riots, slamming a bundle of pencils against the podium 56 times -- the number of blows from police truncheons King

AChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09302388531043102285noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10955689.post-18837043315807392122008-03-13T16:04:00.000-04:002008-04-30T16:17:36.914-04:00

While the rest of you were drinking in the salacious details of the Eliot Spitzer case, eyes irresistibly drawn to such sordid nuggets as the governor’s taste, as described in wiretapped conversations, for “things that, like, you might not think were safe”; hearts racing at the New York Times’s delicate, Edith Wharton-like description of the tryst (“Kristen, having already passed through the

AChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09302388531043102285noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10955689.post-1081793130775407822008-03-06T16:02:00.000-05:002008-04-30T16:02:53.123-04:00

If you were watching the Genies the other night -- and really, who would pass up that kind of excitement? -- you would have seen several of the honorees seize the moment, with a television audience numbering in the high four figures, to make one of those political statements that people do at awards shows, elevating what would otherwise be another endless night of air-kissing and and self-love to

AChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09302388531043102285noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10955689.post-75769673583846798602008-01-22T16:18:00.000-05:002008-04-30T16:18:50.284-04:00

One reads the report of the Independent Panel on Canada’s Future Role in Afghanistan, led by John Manley, with a mixture of pride and shame. Pride, for the role the Canadian forces are playing now in Afghanistan, and for the Manley commission’s measured advocacy that they continue to do so until their work is done: both in a great lost tradition of Canadian seriousness in foreign affairs. Shame,

AChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09302388531043102285noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10955689.post-22451010599337059812008-01-15T16:00:00.000-05:002008-04-30T16:00:25.768-04:00

At some point in the not too distant future, one or another of this country’s political leaders is going to campaign for office waving … a postcard. “This,” he or she will proclaim, “is what your tax return will look like under my tax plan. As you can see, it’s only got 10 lines on it. You can fill it out in about five minutes. No receipts to keep, no complicated forms to fill out, no need to

AChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09302388531043102285noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10955689.post-21166796121433670172008-01-08T15:56:00.000-05:002008-04-30T15:58:05.735-04:00

Somewhere between Christmas and New Year’s, as the Iowa caucuses approached, a remarkable “click” moment happened in American political life. A figure who had until then been vaguely present in most people’s consciousness, a pleasant but blurred face on the edge of their field of vision, suddenly came into focus. In that moment, the accumulated impressions of a thousand different exposures

AChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09302388531043102285noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10955689.post-32447994991146700252008-01-03T11:58:00.001-05:002008-01-03T16:48:00.284-05:00

If the Parliamentary Press Gallery had covered Watergate... “So there was a break-in at the Democratic National Committee. So they found Howard Hunt’s phone number in one of the burglars’ address books. So Hunt works for the White House. I don’t see a story here.” “It’s Nixon’s word against John Dean’s. I guess we’ll have to leave it at that.” “A special Senate committee? Do you know how much

AChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09302388531043102285noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10955689.post-27083566732832814172007-12-20T20:24:00.001-05:002007-12-22T18:29:21.077-05:00

On December 5, Robert Latimer, the Saskatchewan farmer who killed his disabled daughter to spare her suffering, had his application for day parole rejected by the National Parole Board. A critical factor in the board’s decision: Latimer’s dogged insistence, even after seven years in jail, that he had done nothing wrong by asphyxiating his 12-year-old daughter Tracy -- that, in fact, he had done

AChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09302388531043102285noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10955689.post-77561127274754804272007-12-07T17:23:00.001-05:002007-12-08T17:35:23.348-05:00

I should declare an interest off the top. In 2001, I was named in the Canadian Islamic Congress’s Fourth Annual Report on Anti-Islam in the Media. Under the heading “How the National Post is endangering the well-being of Canadian Muslims,” the CIC included a reference to my October 29, 2001 column. I reprint the offending passage in full, with a warning that sensitive readers may wish to, as they

AChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09302388531043102285noreply@blogger.com37tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10955689.post-63882804251642995202007-11-30T13:20:00.001-05:002007-12-01T18:31:26.489-05:00

Five years ago, the dollar was at 62 cents and everyone was sure the end was nigh. Today, the dollar is around $1.02, and the end is still nigh. Then, everybody knew that the dollar was too low. Now, everybody knows the dollar is too high.But readers should not fall into the trap of thinking this means there was some point in between where the dollar was just right. For it is an iron rule of

AChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09302388531043102285noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10955689.post-41538127974412729922007-11-22T23:22:00.001-05:002007-11-22T23:23:29.163-05:00

A spectre is haunting Ottawa, the spectre of … a public inquiry. At last, after nearly twenty years, we may finally start to get some answers in the Airbus affair, and the press gallery is properly horrified. A public inquiry? Are you mad? It will take forever. It will cost millions. It will quickly turn into a circus, dragging good names through the mud in a chaos of charge and counter-charge

AChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09302388531043102285noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10955689.post-73218788382620939332007-11-15T23:41:00.001-05:002007-11-15T23:49:16.830-05:00

My debut column appears in this week's Maclean's. Scandal time again. Once more the country is consumed with tales of politicians taking envelopes full of cash from shady businessmen. As pressure for a public inquiry grows, the air is thick with official denials. And of course the question on everyone’s lips is: What did the whole country know, and when did we all know it? ...Well, no. The script

AChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09302388531043102285noreply@blogger.com31tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10955689.post-40047640277506463482007-10-27T01:04:00.001-04:002007-10-27T01:04:16.395-04:00

How much money does the government of Alberta really need? The province has surpluses coming out its ears. It has $16-billion sitting in the Heritage Savings Trust Fund. It has no net debt. All this, even though it spends more per capita than most provinces. You would think it be looking for ways to cut taxes. Yet the only thing the province has on its mind is how to extract more, ever more from

AChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09302388531043102285noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10955689.post-75856264292912179972007-10-23T22:09:00.001-04:002007-10-24T00:10:50.478-04:00

How could they have missed it? In all the acres of coverage the Speech from the Throne received, the one item on the Conservative agenda hardly anyone saw fit to report was perhaps the most significant: the promise “to pursue the federal government’s rightful leadership in strengthening Canada’s economic union,” including use of “the federal trade and commerce power.” The Globe and Mail, for

AChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09302388531043102285noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10955689.post-81041925781236499302007-10-19T18:26:00.001-04:002007-10-20T13:05:36.439-04:00

This week’s Throne Speech occasioned more than the usual confusion among the commentariat. Was it “hard line” or “conciliatory”? Was this, as one columnist suggested, a speech that could have been written by a Liberal government, or was it, as another insisted, a brusque, in-your-face rejection of Liberal demands? The answer, of course, is: yes....The speech was in many ways less a guide to what

AChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09302388531043102285noreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10955689.post-45617511853825263372007-10-17T16:05:00.001-04:002007-10-17T16:05:29.448-04:00

Last Friday, while the Tories were busy putting the finishing touches on the Speech from the Throne, the Liberal leader, Stephane Dion, was delivering a Throne Speech of his own. Okay, it was only a speech to the Economic Club of Toronto, and it only had one real bit of news in it, and it didn’t get nearly the press that last night’s prime time extravaganza did (“tonight, on a very special Speech

AChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09302388531043102285noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10955689.post-84482135338740023352007-10-12T19:43:00.001-04:002007-10-12T19:46:54.491-04:00

Were I in charge of the Yes campaign in Ontario’s referendum on electoral reform, the morning after winning 37% of the vote, I would have issued a press release saying: “The people have spoken, and we accept their verdict with humility. Clearly, we have been given a sweeping mandate to implement our platform, and we pledge to put our majority to good use.” Well, why not? The 37% of Ontario voters

AChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09302388531043102285noreply@blogger.com31