Category Leadership
On Strike
There are no winners today as 155,000 Canadian civil servants walk off the job in the largest strike actions in years. I’ve been there before. . More than thirty years ago I walked the picket line in a similar job action. I was an enthusiastic union supporter and believed in the cause to the point where […]
Nothing To See Here…
…or is there? After months of hiding, Katie Telford will appear before a House of Commons committee today. Don’t expect to learn anything. Telford, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, will do her best to not answer questions about foreign interference in Canada’s electoral system. She has a problem though. If she was briefed by […]
The Arraignment
Why shouldn’t a former president face criminal charges?. Or even a sitting president? Isn’t equality under the law one of the central tenets of American justice? Donald Trump in turns himself in at a New York courthouse today to face charges – exactly what he doesn’t know yet – and his appearance will be the […]
Thoughts for a Sunday
Looking for something from the archives that would fit my mood today, I can across this one from April 2015. I’ve spent most of my weekend reading and writing about ethics in political life, or perhaps the lack of it. This was a reminder that there are still principled people in public life. Canadian politician James […]
Only In Canada…
…would a government that has had several ethical challenges, led by a Prime Minister who has twice been found to have violated Parliament’s ethics rules, appoint as Ethics Commissioner the sister-in-law of a cabinet minister who himself has been cited for ethics violations. If I was a fiction writer, I would reject that idea as […]
A Canadian Tradition
For his first Christmas I bought my grandson some Mini -sticks. He was too young for miniature hockey sticks of course, but I was looking to the future. And it isn’t as if his parents could buy them in Africa. For his second Christmas I bought him another stick, figuring he needed one to go […]
The Button
Sometimes what you find surprises you. Look what turned up in my basement! Decluttering my basement has been a multi-year task, but necessary, as at some point we will downsize. I hate the thought, but realize the inevitability – at some point my arthritic knees may reject the stairs. Which means, on a regular basis, […]
This Time Last Year…
In 2022 at this time the trucks were on their way across Canada to Ottawa. Over the next little while I’m going to repost some of my thoughts on the Freedom Convoy. It is going to be very interesting to see what happens when the Rouleau Commission inquiry report is released next month. Was the […]
The Red Chamber
The ongoing renovations in Canada’s parliamentary precinct means there has been a certainly amount of shuffling as buildings close and reopen Canada’s Senate, for example, is now located in the government conference centre, moving there in 2018. The building was a railway station when I first was in it, about 1966. Then it sat empty […]
random thoughts from lorne 
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