2011‑2022, and is preserved here for archival purposes.
Cardus: I gather things went as well as could be hoped.
(Last week in a Montreal courtroom, Paula Celani won a three-year legal battle to quash a ticket she received in 2010 for hol...
John Ibbitson has been making this argument since the May 2011 election, arguing that election was among Canada's most significant in history. He has suggested that the twenty-first century may well belong to the Conservative Party in the same way as the twentieth belonged to the Liberals. . . . . .
The release of The Big Shift last week, in which National Post columnist John Ibbitson and pollster Darrell Bricker document the shift of power in Canada away from a "Lau...
(Cardus senior fellow Janet Epp Buckingham was among the guests in Vaughan, Ontario today for Prime Minister Harper's announcement naming Andrew Bennett as Canada's new ambassador for the Off...
Several months ago I asked, "Where is our ambassador of religious freedom?," and that day has now come. At an event tomorrow at the Ahmadiyya Muslim community facility in suburban Toronto, invited guests and media will welcome the new Ambassador-at-Large for Canada's newly-minted Office of Religious Freedom.
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I understand that Members of Parliament, who are not members of the executive, sometimes think of themselves as part of the government; we are not. Under our system of Responsible Government, the Executive is responsible and accountable to the Legislature. The latter holds the former to account. A disservice is provided to both when Parliament forgets to hold the Cabinet to account. Parliament was established in 1236 and King John had to submit his request for increased taxes to it. But the Budgetary process is much more complex almost 800 years later. As a Member of Parliament, I simply lack the resources and expertise to adequately fulfill the role of providing budgetary oversight. Accordingly, Members of Parliament need the expertise and resources of an office like the PBO to properly scrutinize how the executive spends the taxes Parliament provides it . . .
Conservative backbencher Brent Rathgeber made a very important, but usually overlooked point in his blog last week. In the context of a current debate r...
Cardus: Ambassador Leahy, were you as shocked as the rest of the world seems to be by today's announcement of Pope Benedict XVI resigning, or were there signs you saw that the rest of missed? Cardus: What would Benedict's motivation have been for taking such an unusual step? We're told this hasn't happened for almost 600 years.
[caption id="attachment_1789" align="alignright" width="199" caption="Ambassador Anne Leahy"] ...
But I think I've fallen for the villain. Here, I will play the role of devil's advocate and offer a few words in praise of Javert. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
According to our contemporary critical pantheon, I'm supposed to disdain Tom Hooper's film version of Les Misérables (though Stanley Fish has me feeling a little bett...
The newest food for fret is quinoa. The Guardian warns, "There is an unpalatable truth to face for those of us with a bag of quinoa in the larder." The article continues, "The appetite of countries such as ours for this grain has pushed up prices to such an extent that poorer people in Peru and Bolivia, for whom it was once a nourishing staple food, can no longer afford to eat it."
Fretting is the hot new side dish, but it's not healthy. I'm sure there are many in wealthy North America who eat their oatmeal every morning blissfully unaware of the controversies around whether their porridge is fair-trade, organic, local, steel cut or m...
— Jason Kenney (@kenneyjason) January 21, 2013 The prospect of having harboured terrorists can certainly take the wind out of your sails. With allegations from Algeria that Canadians were part of the band of Islamist militants who attacked a natural gas plant in Algeria, we find another welcome opportunity to check ourselves. But if the allegations by the Algerian prime minister prove true, these would not be the first Canadian terrorists. In fact, the first terrorist convicted in Canada lived in the seemingly placid suburb of Orleans, Ontario. I have friends that live very nearby. It was pretty alarming to find out that Momin Khawaja was constructing detonating devices in his bedroom and his family had a shooting range in the basement.
Can't begin to understand those who turn their backs on Canada to embrace the death cult of jihadi extremism,eg these 2 bit.ly/XswU8a
— Jason Kenney (@ken...
The historical significance of the moment should not be underestimated. Never before have the three largest Liberal organizations in the country held simultaneous leadership races. The Ontario race will be decided at a January 26-27th convention in Toronto and the winner becomes the Premier of Canada's largest province.
In the next few months, Liberal voters will elect Ontario's next Premier, Quebec's Opposition Leader, and the leader of the third party in Canada's Parliament. The impact of these races amount to more than the sum of their parts. One might argue that the de...
This is the one key question to be asked in the debates. Everything else is either an extension of, or distraction from, that central issue. The last hurdle to the legislation was yesterday's release of an "expert legal opinion" claiming that legalizing "medical aid to die" is within Quebec's constitutional jurisdiction and does not intrude on federal authority over criminal law prohibiting euthanasia and assisted suicide.
If the acts of euthansia or assisted suicide required using a pillow instead of a pill, would you favour legalization?
This is the one key question to be asked in the debates. Everything else is either an extension of, or distraction from, that centr...
The suburban Canada I grew up in contained people from many different backgrounds—German, Ukrainian, Italian, Scottish, Irish, Greek for instance—but was almost entirely white. In terms of belief, we were all either Roman Catholics (Habs fans) or Protestants (Leafs fans) although I was aware of a few Jewish kids here and there and couple of Chinese heritage families. Regardless, almost all of us came from a Judeo-Christian, European cultural context. The only major fracture in our country was that elsewhere in it, people spoke another language, which made Canada into an officially bilingual country founded by English-speaking people whose origins were in Britain and French-speaking people whose origins were in France.
Recent shifts in language use and demography make it clear that Christians will have to broaden their understanding of other faiths or risk being isolated in their own cultural catacombs.
The suburban Canada I grew up in contained people from many di...
You'll be hearing a lot of this type of doublespeak in the next while, so I thought it would be helpful to clarify a few things.
The Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario (ETFO) wants to strike this Friday. Wait, I'm sorry, they want to stage an "action" that "is a political protest unless the Ontario Labour Relations Board determines o...
Right. Is this not to be expected?
Paul Wells has an excellent little piece up on how Prime Minister Stephen Harper has changed during his time in office. He cites Harper's increased caution as evidence that the Harper we see today is not the same Harper we saw when he was in opposition or e...
It's hard not to feel cheated at Christmas, a supposed revolution of rest and revitalization, which in truth is often characterized as frenetic and feverish.
@igollert - viewing Earth is THE favourite astronaut hobby. I think the coolest things are lightning, the Bahamas, volcanoes and aurorae.— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) ...
That doesn't mean my loyalty is defined by a willingness to line the streets when the royals come to town to swoon at the passage of their limousine. Nor do I share the compulsion that seeks to stamp "royal" on everything as if that magically transforms it into something meaningful and of value. Thus, the official confirmation, brought about the Dutchess of Cambridge's hospitalization for morning sickness, of a royal pregnancy which, if all goes well, will alter the line of royal succession for the Windsor family is worthy of our attention.
I am a monarchist.
That doesn't mean my loyalty is defined by a willingness to line the streets when the royals come to town to swoon at the passage of their limousine. Nor do I share the compulsion that seeks to stamp "royal" on everything as if tha...
Before focusing on those consequences, it probably is worthwhile debunking a few narratives which seem to be making the rounds. Some suggest that because the Conservative vote share was reduced by 11.4% and the NDPs by 5.6% from their 2010 results in these ridings, these parties somehow lost the by-elections. Sorry, but this ignores the basic realities of our first-past-the-post system: politics is a blood sport, where winners get power and losers don't. The Conservatives won two seats; the NDP one seat; and the Liberals, NDP, and Greens lost on Monday. What is also overlooked in this narrative is that when only three ridings are in play, smaller parties are able to direct their resources in ways that they cannot in a general election. Both the Greens and Liberals used the "star power" of their leadership in these ridings to a degree they could never afford do in a general election. Thus while increases of 12.7% for the Greens and 3.5% for the Liberals may seem encouraging, measured as a return on the investment of inputs into these campaigns, there may be less here than first appears.
Monday was by-election day in Canada. Based on the media build-up you would be forgiven for thinking that the results are consequential to the future of Canadian politics. And they may be. But since none of those ridings changed hands from one party to anot...
All three branches have powerful ways of impacting us, yet the profile of the players on the judicial side of things is minimal. Part of this, of course, is due to the supposed objectiveness of legal process. "Better a good case than a good lawyer" goes the quip, where the weight of evidence, precedent, and argument are supposed to elevate the decisions beyond preferences of the decision-maker. Yet theory aside, most of us understand that the personal beliefs and values of our lawyers and judges do end up having an impact on the shape of our democracy.
Back in high school civics class we learned that government has three branches—executive, legislative and judicial. Our media help us pay no shortage of attention to our cabinet and our parliament. But do we study our judges enough?
All three branche...
The newspaper's tall foreheads have taken a licking after their weekend editorial spanked the Supreme Court (calmly and just once on the tuckus, of course) for "overstepping its authority" in a recent decision. The Globe perspicaciously saw the danger of a distant court dictating to a very local level of government how it should spend scarce tax dollars.
I normally reserve frosty Fridays for rushing to support the Globe and Mail's editorial writers, but sometimes a chilly November Tuesday must do.
The newspaper's tall foreheads have taken a licking after ...
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It takes more than a day for partisan emotion to adjust to reality. For the 49% of Americans who voted Republican yesterday, today is a combination of disappointment, anger, and fear. The divide in America is real and stark. Gender, ethnicity, and urbanizat...
In the October 2012 issue of Policy Options, NDP insider Anne McGrath and Conservative strategist Stephen Carter provide their assessment regarding the application of Haidt's thesis to the Canadian context. McGrath equivocates, suggesting that Haidt's appeal for civility is a bit of a "naïve distaste for acrimony," and doesn't adequately account for the mobilization that divisive momentums such as the Occupy Movement have created through history.
A recent book by American psychologist Jonathan Haidt (a self-described liberal) has provoked interesting conversation among the political intelligentsia. In ...
What does cause me deep concern, however, is the brush with subtle corruption I experienced when in a city police station when I went to fill out the report that is a pre-requisite to filing an insurance claim. I do not mean corruption in the current, misunderstood sense of nudge-nudge, wink-wink bribes. I mean the authentic corruption that begins at what might be called the genetic level of attitudes toward the rule of law itself.
When my car was broken into 10 days ago, I mentioned to a colleague that I feel no malice toward the perpetrator. Other than hoping for his horrible suffering, I wish him a smiley-face day. Seriously.
What does cause me deep concern, however, is the ...
In what promises to be the most bizarre and intriguing thing you will read this autumn, the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench recently set the record straight on the relationship between the justice system, and some constituents who seek to resist the authority of the court over them. Taking the "consent of the governed" and social contract theory to the extreme, various movements known as Freemen, Detaxers, and Sovereign Citizens (among other names) assert that statute law does not apply to them unless they specifically consent. As Justice Rooke said, "they will only honour state, regulatory, contractual, fiduciary, family, equitable and criminal obligations if they feel like it. And typically, they don't."
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This, sadly, was the picture that came to my mind as I read John McKay's excellent article this week on the state of parliament after the defeat of Motion C-312. McKay writes, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The most dangerous place to be in World War 1 was no-man's land. No-man's land was a treacherous place, filled with mud, mines, rotting bodies and limbs, craters, pits, and poison. Nobody wanted to go there, because if you did, you were likely to die. Canad...