Justin Trudeau

Warning to Tories: It's not just Trudeau any more … it's open season on public speakers!

| June 16, 2013

Aspiring journalists and bloggers who secretly crave mainstream credibility are bound to soon be trolling the client lists of the Atlantic Speakers Bureau and other businesses of its ilk looking for charities they have done business with that have fallen on hard times.

I mention this in light of the bizarre campaign by the Harper Conservatives and their allies out here on the Great Plains to prove Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is Not Fit to Govern, or at least likely to be just as bad at it as they are, because he hasn't given his speaker's fee back to a charity that hired him and then ran into financial difficulties.

Journalists found guilty of ethical breaches really shouldn't lecture on journalistic ethics

David J. Climenhaga

| June 9, 2013

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S'cuse me! We ex-journalists are permitted to do whatever we like! And if Prime Minister Thomas Mulcair wants to appoint me to the Senate, I'm taking the job!

The same thing goes for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau if he makes the offer, if you must know.

But then, I haven't worked as a journalist in this century and, with a little luck and the intervention of a kindly and progressive prime minister, I'll never have to consider such a fate again.

Mulcair grills Harper in a Question Period for the ages

Karl Nerenberg

| May 28, 2013

The House of Commons became a court room on Tuesday, May 28.

Opposition and NDP leader Thomas Mulcair carefully and precisely questioned Prime Minister Harper on the Senate scandals (there are, in fact, more than one).

Mulcair eschewed the usual rhetoric. He did not preface his questions with florid denunciations.

He asked simple, open-ended questions to which there should be equally simple and clear answers.

The answers had the appearance of clarity, and for the most part Harper steered clear of the usual Conservative tactic of attacking when attacked.

However, he did not always candidly answer the questions.

Conservative attacks are nothing but bullying

Gerry Caplan

| May 27, 2013

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Last month, Prime Minister Stephen Harper met with parents of Rehtaeh Parsons, the 17-year-old Nova Scotia teenager who took her own life. She had been sexually assaulted and a digital photograph of the incident was shared around her school. Mr. Harper promised to create a new law against cyberbullying. That's good news.

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory: Lessons from B.C. for NDPers everywhere

David J. Climenhaga

| May 16, 2013

No one can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory quite like the New Democrats in my native British Columbia.

Still, while Tuesday's upset B.C. election victory by Premier Christy Clark and her un-liberal Liberals is inevitably going to be, well, upsetting to a lot of New Democrats, it is not really bad news for Thomas Mulcair and the federal NDP.

This, we might say, is the social democratic truth that dare not speak its name: an NDP government in a large province like British Columbia would inevitably have enacted policies that upset voters elsewhere in Canada and would have provided excellent targets for attacks by the ever-negative Stephen Harper Tories on Mulcair and the NDP.

Ironies abound in Alberta's agitated politics as Alison Redford cranks up the postage meter

David J. Climenhaga

| May 8, 2013

Am I the only one who sees irony in the leader of Alberta's ultra-conservative Wildrose Party working up a full head of steam because the merely very conservative government of Premier Alison Redford plans to mail a colourful budget brochure to every household in the province -- at taxpayer expense, of course?

Tory Slime Machine is losing the fight it picked with Justin Trudeau -- for now

David J. Climenhaga

| April 25, 2013

Round One in the fight started with Justin Trudeau by the Tory Slime Machine pretty clearly went to Trudeau -- well, to Trudeau and the Canadian Liver Foundation.

Now, Round Two, Trudeau's riposte, a 30-second video ad released by the Liberal Party yesterday, seems to have gone his way too.

Canadian politics in the death zone

Christopher Majka

| April 24, 2013

Albert Einstein famously said that insanity was "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." On that basis, Canadian politics have now entered a realm of insanity. Like a demonically possessed hamster we race furiously on a circular treadmill while staying in exactly the same political place under a delusion that this will take us to a different destination.

The stark political landscape

Columnists

Justin Trudeau, the boy king

There is no accounting for political judgement when it gets caught up in irrational euphoria. The overwhelming victory of Justin Trudeau in the Liberal Party's leadership race demonstrates just how impoverished the state of our political culture has become.

Did the polls -- almost completely meaningless at this stage of the political process -- so addle people's judgement that they could not see what was in front of them? In a stunning failure of imagination 80 per cent of those casting ballots effectively declared: we think a pretty face and a famous name is all we need to win and more importantly, all the country needs to lead it.

Tags:

Canadian politics federal politics Liberal Party of Canada politics in Canada Justin Trudeau

Canada's heart will go on ... and on: Justin Trudeau's national vision

Michael Laxer

| April 20, 2013

When Justin Trudeau, back in October of last year, began his campaign to lead the once great, once natural governing party of Canada, the Liberal Party, he did so with a vision statement that is worth returning to, now that he is the party's leader, if we wish to really understand what he represents in our politics.

Easy to deride in parts, it began with some genuine groaners such as:

So I’m here to ask for your help, because this road will be one long, Canadian highway. We will have ups and downs. Breathtaking vistas and a few boring stretches. And with winter coming, icy patches.

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