Welcome, back Peter

I’ve spent a good chunk of my columnist’s career mocking Peter MacKay without ever having spent time in his company. And then I did. He seemed generous, thoughtful, far more complex than I’d given him credit for. But then he got back into politics. And became ‘that’ Peter MacKay again. Is it the person or […]

So long, Peter, we knew you too well

Is Peter MacKay resigning from federal politics to spend time with his growing greeting-card-perfect family? Or to grease a personal private sector future filled with lucrative corporate board memberships and international consulting gigs, nicely anchored by a 20-year MP’s pension worth almost two-and-a-half times the average Canadian salary? Or to jump the listing Harper ship […]

What’s terror? Who’s a terrorist? And other aftermath questions…

It can’t happen here. It won’t happen here. It — almost — did. But what is “it”? And how do we protect ourselves against whatever it is? On Friday night, I was at Scotiabank Centre enjoying the Mooseheads-Shawinigan Cataractes Quebec Major Junior Hockey league game. During a commercial lull — the game was televised nationally as part […]

Selected dispatches from last week’s “whoopsie” file

How many Conservative cabinet ministers does it take to mislead Canadians? Last weekend, Stephen Harper trotted out his own trusty troika — Defence Minister Rob Nicholson, Veterans Affairs Minister (sic) Julian Fantino and Justice Minister Peter MacKay — for a $200 million photo op/announcement during the Halifax International Security Forum, a.k.a. Peter’s Playground (official cost: […]

Peter MacKay: the columnist’s gift that keeps on giving

Peter MacKay is the columnist’s gift that keeps on giving. Even on the edge-of-summer, eve of a national holiday when newsmakers worth their spin doctors know better than to do anything newsworthy… Peter MacKay never lets us down. You may remember Peter, he of the “I solemnly swear” never to merge the Progressive Conservative Party […]

06/30/2014
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Does anyone believe Peter MacKay wasn’t involved… and other questions

We begin June as we ended May. With more questions than answers. Item: Enterprise Cape Breton President John Lynn got fired after hiring four Tories with connections to federal Justice Minister Peter MacKay — without benefit of documentation or competition. The federal integrity watchdog uncovered a “pattern” that created an “appearance of patronage.” But he […]

06/02/2014
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Welcome to Peter's global kitchen party. You paid for it…

Even though federal Justice Minister Peter MacKay concedes “no concrete initiatives related to global peace and security” have resulted from his government’s $12 million grant to a Washington-based organization to stage two-day conferences on global security every year for the past four years in Halifax, he isn’t discouraged. “We have all the ingredients in place […]

Thanks for the apology, but it’s not enough

The federal justice department’s 19-page internal review into its role in the the Fenwick MacIntosh extradition process — Aug. 15, 1997 (“Nova Scotia Public Prosecution Service contacts the International Assistance Group to discuss potential extradition request”) to July 14, 2006 (“Canada formally requests extradition”) — has no named author. The review itself — which followed […]

Peter MacKay has never smoked dope. Pity

So Peter MacKay has never smoked dope. Perhaps that’s his problem. If, indeed, he’s telling the truth. Last week, the justice minister got his knickers in a knot when Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s matter-of-factly disclosed he had — like 39 per cent of Canadians — enjoyed the occasional puff from a joint, most recently at […]

Justin Trudeau, the mauler-mailers and the deafening silence of our Tory MPs

The good news is that Nova Scotia’s four Conservative MPs say they are not going to waste taxpayer dollars sending constituents their national party’s mudroom-generated, bottom-feeding Justin Trudeau mauler-mailers. The bad news is that not one of them — Peter MacKay, Gerald Keddy, Scott Armstrong, Greg Kerr — seems prepared to denounce either their bullying […]