Stop the election! Take care of business!

Submitted by Geoffrey Stevens on Mon, 07/26/2021 - 10:10

Is it too late to pull the country back from the brink of a late summer or early fall federal election?

Yes, I know the polls have spoken. They have told the prime minister that a majority Liberal government is within his reach now, but that the window of opportunity may not be open for long. If he waits, then falls short of a majority – or worse – his delay will go down as one of the great gaffes of contemporary Canadian elections.

Political opportunism says damn the torpedoes! Go now, go hard, go fast!

If there is to be a summer election, no one has told the prime minister

Submitted by Geoffrey Stevens on Mon, 07/19/2021 - 09:55

Election? What election? If there were an election, you would think the prime minister would know.

But no.

“In an election campaign, you make promises about what you might do once you’re elected. Right now, we’re continuing the work that we got elected for in 2015 and in 2019,” Justin Trudeau assured reporters in Montreal on Thursday. The Liberal government, he explained, is simply doing this summer what is has been doing since it was elected six years ago – growing the economy, creating good jobs, and protecting the environment.

Catherine McKenna’s Ottawa Centre is Mark Carney’s brass ring

Submitted by Geoffrey Stevens on Mon, 07/05/2021 - 10:27

Catherine McKenna, the infrastructure minister in the Liberal cabinet and champion of the party’s green wing, offered her friend Mark Carney, the former central banker – governor of both the Bank of Canada and Bank of England – the brass ring when she announced she will not be seeking re-election.

If he grabs it, Carney will be virtually assured of a place at or near the head of the queue of candidates for the Liberal leadership, post Justin Trudeau.

The brass ring is McKenna’s riding of Ottawa Centre.

Getting it right: Choosing Supreme Court judges in Canada

Submitted by Geoffrey Stevens on Mon, 06/28/2021 - 13:32

There have not been very many feel-good moments in Ottawa of late. There was one last week, although it was thoroughly overshadowed by the horror that gripped the capital, like the rest of the country, at the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves at former residential schools in British Columbia and Saskatchewan, and by the stampede to close Parliament for the summer – a summer most MPs expect will end in a fall election.

The Canadian military is struggling, uphill, to change its culture

Submitted by Geoffrey Stevens on Mon, 06/07/2021 - 09:53

If the decades-long scandal over sexual abuse and misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces has accomplished nothing else, it has created a cottage industry for retired justices of the Supreme Court of Canada – three of them so far.

Former justice Louise Deschamps was the first.  In 2015, Deschamps delivered a report that urged the government to transfer the responsibility for the investigation of misconduct complaints and the prosecution of offenders from the CAF chain of command to an independent civilian agency.

Would you believe Harjit Sajjan for Governor General?

Submitted by Geoffrey Stevens on Mon, 05/31/2021 - 09:38

Rt. Hon. Justin Trudeau,
Rideau Cottage,
Ottawa, ON 

My Dear Prime Minister,

So, tomorrow is the first of June, the month you have been waiting for. I bet you have the big date written on the wall of the PMO: Wednesday, June 23. That’s the day Parliament shuts down for the summer and its members go wherever MPs go when they aren’t on the Hill whining at you about one fool thing or another. They would try the patience of Job, wouldn’t they, Sir?

Is no one in control at the Canadian Armed Forces?

Submitted by Geoffrey Stevens on Mon, 05/24/2021 - 09:13

The email from an acquaintance in England the other day was short and to the point: “What the Sam Hill is going on in the Canadian military? Just one senior officer or chief of staff after another under investigation and resigned. Is anyone in control there?”

These are fair questions. What indeed is going on?

The Canadian Armed Forces is losing generals faster that it can make them. By my count, the body count stands at five. Allegations of sexual misconduct are the common denominator in four of the five cases.

The perils of throwing stones in (political) glass houses

Submitted by Geoffrey Stevens on Mon, 05/17/2021 - 10:06

Ontario Progressive Conservatives fired the opening salvo of their June 2, 2022 re-election campaign a couple of weeks ago when they put a paid ad on social media attacking Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the federal Liberals. The ad accused the feds of letting COVID-19 into the country by failing to close airports to international flights quickly enough in early 2020. And that failure, the ad insinuated, is why today we have variants from all over the world flying freely into Canada.

The ever-popular parliamentary “blame game” demands victims

Submitted by Geoffrey Stevens on Mon, 05/10/2021 - 11:21

They are playing the good old blame game again on Parliament Hill. This time, the game involves two familiar elements: sexual misconduct in Canadian Armed Forces and a breakdown in the chain of accountability for a reported scandal – this one a high-profile affair involving Jonathan Vance, the former chief of the defence staff.

Opinion-Policy Nexus is a forum of opinion and commentary on topics related to public opinion and public policy. Views expressed in any blog entry are those of the author and do not reflect LISPOP's positions.

Authors

  • Ailsa Henderson
  • Andre Perrella
  • Anna Esselment
  • Anthony Piscitelli
  • Barry Kay
  • Ben Margulies
  • Christopher Alcantara
  • Christopher Cochrane
  • Geoffrey Stevens
  • Jason Roy
  • Jorg Broschek
  • Loren King
  • Manuel Riemer
  • Matthew Arp
  • Nikolaos Liodakis
  • Robert Williams
  • Simon Kiss
  • Timothy Gravelle
  • Zachary Spicer

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