Graham Steele quits. And the most intriguing question is…

Last week’s surprise cabinet shuffle raises are all sorts of intriguing questions. For starters, did Finance Minister Graham Steele jump, or was he pushed? If he jumped, was it because of a tiff with Premier Darrell Dexter over the province’s fiscal future? Does Steele want Dexter’s job? If so, is quitting just a John-Turner/Jean-Chretien/Paul-Martin/Harry-Houdini return-to-win-another-day […]

Nova Scotia budget: the cost of cutting v the value of investing

In the all-too-brief interregnum between Thursday’s bad-news federal budget and tomorrow’s more-bad-news provincial budget, it’s worth noting the across-the-board, cost-cutting Kool Aid fiscal policy makers in Ottawa and Halifax have swallowed is not the only—or necessarily best—way to slay the deficit dragon. The Nova Scotia branch of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, for example, […]

Shipbuilding contract: the good, the better but not the best

The good news is we won. The better news is that we won fair and square. The best news would be for the process by which Halifax’s Irving shipyard last week won a $25-billion federal shipbuilding contract-for-a-generation become the new norm. But that last, of course, is least likely. That’s because the shipbuilding contract was […]

Is this any way to run a country?

One last—I promise—look back in befuddlement to the results of last week’s federal election. If we are to believe the pundits—and who are we not to—Canada has just gone through a dramatic, head-shaking, concussion-making electoral re-alignment in which our national consensus has become far more conservative and the political centre has disappeared, leaving us with […]

Election 2011: a strange sweet trip that may not be over

What a short, strange, sweet trip it’s been—made all the sweeter because not a single politician, party insider, pollster, pundit or person predicted it. Including me. My first post-election-call column was a lament that—in a campaign focused so tightly on just 50 swing ridings—the votes of the rest of us wouldn’t count. Uh, right… What […]

It's don't-blame-me-I-voted-for time

Rick Howe was interviewing the organizer of an upcoming all-candidates’ debate on poverty issues. Three of the four major parties, the man told the News 95.7 talk show host, would be sending a representative. “Let me guess which one won’t,” Howe cut in. He didn’t have to guess. Neither do you. An hour before what […]

Stephen Harper meets the Facebook election

Is it just me and my Facebook friends or is Stephen Harper in deeper doo doo than we know? I will acknowledge—before someone else does—that I am of the artsy, progressive-left-when-it-suits-my-personal-interests persuasion, so it’s no surprise many of my friends are fellow travelers. I live in a federal NDP riding in a province governed, for […]

When elections are fought by the numbers most of us don't count

And they’re off… to another election in which most of us won’t count. No one will admit it, of course, but take it from me. This won’t be an election about ideas. Ideas don’t win elections. Can you say carbon tax? Or Kim Campbell? Forget meaningful debate about corporate tax cuts, budget deficits, debt, wars […]

Entitled to their entitlements, aboriginal edition

The Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation is right. There, I’ve said it. And it only hurt a little. While I can—and do, and will—dispute the larger goals of this never-met-a-public-expenditure-it-can-stomach crowd, the CTF did discover real slime under its latest freedom-of-information rock. Though there are only a million aboriginals in Canada, 82 reserve politicians “earned” more than […]

Our new governor general and the greasy Airbus affair

David Lloyd Johnston, our soon-to-be governor general of all we survey, is, I’m sure, a fine fellow. Even if he does fit—right up to his blue button-down—every stereotype known to boring, old white guy governors general of the pre-Adrienne Clarkson, pre-Michaelle Jean era. But hey, I’m a boring old white guy too, and it’s nice […]