News
Chutzpah
Blog | Wednesday, 12 May 2010The new global chutzpah award should go to Sarah Palin. (If there were such an award. I will translate the Yiddish word “Chutzpah” as an “amazing, stunning amount of gall,” and await a correction...
Decorum in the House
Blog | Friday, 30 Apr 2010Further to my last blog, I want to share an effort to improve the behaviour in the House moved by none-other than Michael Chong, whom I mentioned favourably in my last blog, and jointly seconded by...
Culture Wars
Blog | Thursday, 29 Apr 2010Parliament is not a happy place. If anything, it has gotten worse since when I wrote Losing Confidence. This week I have been in Ottawa, for the Speaker’s ruling and other events. Going to...
Investigations
Blog | Thursday, 15 Apr 2010While reporters scratch their heads and keep digging to unravel the mystery of why the Prime Minister called the RCMP on his former minister for the Status of Women, they seem so obsessed that other...
Scientists at East Anglia vindicated by U.K. House of Commons
Blog | Sunday, 04 Apr 2010After months of having allegations of fraudulent behaviour trumpeted in the media (huge spread in the Globe and Mail, and Margaret Wente erroneously claiming the emails were “leaked”, similar...
Budget as Bulldozer: Take two
Blog | Thursday, 01 Apr 2010Last year, I wrote a blog with this title. I was shocked to find the 2009 Budget Implementation Bill was being used to gut the Navigable Water Protection Act (NWPA). The NWPA had been cornerstone...
The tar ponds “clean-up” will not work
Blog | Wednesday, 24 Mar 2010CBC News announced today that the clean up of the tar ponds has begun. The country’s worst toxic waste site will be completely remediated by the mid-1990s. Sorry. Wrong press release. That was the...
POP Quiz for Democracy fans!
Blog | Saturday, 20 Mar 2010OK, everyone really committed to regaining democracy in Canada; can you spot the whopper in the following statement from the Prime Minister? “Do I realistically expect that everybody who works for me...
Airport Tantrums
Blog | Friday, 19 Mar 2010I am writing a blog about this because I think I am the only person in political life who remembers Alan Redway. Alan Redway was a Progressive Conservative MP in the Mulroney government. If memory...
Getting corporate concentrated media to cover the problem of media concentration
Blog | Wednesday, 17 Mar 2010Earlier this week, we issued a news release on the enormous opportunity presented by the upcoming sale of the Asper empire of newspapers, CanWest Limited Partnership (LP). That conglomerate now...