Tag Archives: Justin Trudeau

Check Your Facts

“A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian. And you devalue the citizenship of every Canadian in this place and in this country when you break down and make it conditional for anyone.” – Justin Trudeau, 2015. Back then he was talking about whether convicted terrorists should be stripped of their citizenship. Times seem to […]

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 Matter of Perception

“I can go back to my constituency and tell people, first of all, I’m white, I’m of Dutch descent…Obviously I am not working for China.”  She doesn’t get it. Which is probably part of the problem. Liberal MP Anita Vandenbeld told a House of Commons committee that she is safe from people thinking she has […]

Dealing With The Issue

The prime minister was outraged and has ordered officials to get to the bottom of this. News reports, based on leaked security documents, allege the government of the People’s Republic of China actively interfered in recent Canadian elections, with the aim of defeating Conservative Party candidates and electing Liberals. The prime minister finds this very […]

Where’s Katie?

For eleven hours Tuesday the Liberals pretended she didn’t exist. At least not for the purpose of answering questions on what she knew and when she knew it. The government is desperately filibustering a House of Commons committee that wants the Prime Minister’s chief of staff to answer questions about foreign interference in Canada’s electoral […]

Taking Off – Maybe

The timing was fortuitous. When Canada’s Minister of National Defence announced that the government is buying 88 F-35 fighter jets, the announcement was timed for when the Prime Minister would be out the country.  That way he didn’t have to take any questions. For him this is an especially embarrassing purchase, which explains why the […]

True Leadership?

Now the real work begins. For Pierre Poilievre, winning the Conservative Party of Canada leadership on Saturday night is only the beginning. Now he has to unify a divided group, healing wounds of division – many of which he created. The past two Conservative leaders have been undermined by factions within the party. Some objected to […]

Decision Day

The announcement will be made this evening, naming a new leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and presumably the next Prime Minister, given that Justin Trudeau has supposedly told his caucus he will stay and fight another election. After six months of campaigning and almost 700,000 party memberships sold, all that is left is […]

Overturning Roe

Imagine the outcry if it was the other way arouund. Imagine the reaction if the American president and vice president had referred to a Supreme Court of Canada decision in such a fashion, Canada’s government would have made a formal protest. It would have been a major diplomatic incident.  Feelings run high on all sides of […]

Are These Thoughts Dated?

In June 2016, right after the UK voted to leave the EU, I shared some thoughts about what the Brexit vote would mean for US politics and the upcoming presidential election. Seemed obvious to me, but apparently it wasn’t to the Democrats. Re-reading, I see some Canadian parallels as well. One paragraph in particular struck […]