Stephen Kimber

Signs of the times by Stephen Kimber On Tuesday, a beaming federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and his Treasury Board President colleague John Baird stood proudly in front of an oversized $13.2-billion stage-prop cheque made out to Canadians. While the cameras rolled and the flashes popped, Flaherty declared: "We are trimming the fat and refocusing […]

The Arar case is not the end Reaction to Mr. Justice Dennis O’Connor’s $15-million report into the wrongful arrest, deportation and torture of Maher Arar has been fascinating. And instructive. Consider the Harper government. When the then-Liberal government began belatedly, timidly asking for Arar’s release from his Syrian torture chamber in the fall of 2002, […]

Horne case isn’t over Last week’s decision in the Gabrielle Horne case has clarified a couple of key issues in the ongoing dispute at the province’s largest hospital. For starters, we now know the Capital District Health Authority had no legitimate reason to vary Dr. Horne’s hospital privileges on a supposed “emergency” basis four years […]

Why are we there? Jack Layton may not be right, but he is not wrong either. The NDP leader’s call for Canada to immediately pull our troops out of Afghanistan and press for multilateral negotiations — including with the Taliban — has roused righteous and predictable furies. His political opponents, thankful that Layton had put […]

Press, politicians and private lives In last week’s letters-to-the-editor section, reader Chris Chisholm took me to task for writing a “pile of sanctimonious crap.” Which was how Chisholm ever-so-gently characterized my column from the week before in which I’d argued the public doesn’t need, or have the right to know the salacious details — if […]

The price of speaking the truth So let me get this straight. Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj is forced to resign as his party’s deputy foreign affairs critic for the crime of telling the truth about the situation in the Middle East — which is that the only way to achieve any lasting peace in that […]

The limits of gossip… the possibilities of statistics The news that Premier Rodney MacDonald and his wife of 12 years are splitting up is one of those sad, icky stories where, as a journalist, you can’t win. By commenting on it, even to suggest it is a private matter, you help keep it alive in […]

When in doubt, call a professional I confess I had occasionally pictured this scene in my head — the climactic movie-moment when the world-weary paterfamilias — who would, of course, be played by me — passes on his lifetime’s worth of hard-won wisdom to the next generation. In the image that played in my head, […]

Past time for debating Afghanistan mission “He was a professional…” “He died doing what he loved to do…” “He wanted to make the world a better place…” “We must support our soldiers…” “We should not cut and run…” At some level, I agree with those heartfelt sentiments, which inevitably get trotted out each time another […]