Contrarian reader Michael Colborne points out that NDP leader Tom Mulcair's boycott of CBC Radio's English service, if that's what it was, ended tonight with an interview on As It Happens. He sounds like a guy who can take on Harper successfully. To do that, he'd be wise to avoid peevish boycotts in future (and that's advice from someone who'd love to see him succeed)....
I'm glad Thomas Mulcair won the leadership of the NDP Saturday. He has the best shot at retaining at least some of the party's beachhead in Quebec. He's said to be tough and politically shrewd, both of which he'll need to be when dealing with the wily Stephen Harper. He clearly plans to edge the party toward the centre, ala Darrell Dexter and other successful NDP premiers, and that's a good tactic when facing a government of right wing ideologues. But I'm not without a few qualms, including Mulcair's reputation for carrying grudges, and his occasional bone-headed statements on foreign policy,...
I'm a little late with this, but it's worth noting for the record the contrast between the way the Liberal Party of Canada and the governing Harper Conservatives reacted to Thomas Mulcair's election as leader of the New Democratic Party and Leader of the Opposition Saturday night. Rae issued the following statement: I want to offer my warm congratulations to Thomas Mulcair on winning the leadership contest in the New Democratic Party. I know Mr. Mulcair well and look forward to working with him to ensure Parliament acts on behalf of all Canadians. I also want to congratulate the NDP for a successful...
The Strait-Richmond Regional School Board cancelled classes in all schools today. Apparently there's a wicked storm underway. Thank God the children are safe. Not to mention the teachers and board administrators, union members all, right up to the superintendent. To be fair, there is snow visible in half of these highway cam images from the school board's catchment area, just none on the actual roads beings monitored. In case you missed Jim Meek's column on this subject in Saturday's Herald, you can find it here. Said Meek: My idea of hell is [CBC weather dude Peter] Coade broadcasting the weather forecast in an...
I'm going to vote for Nathan Cullen on the first ballot in the NDP leadership race. In fact, I joined the national NDP, minutes before the February 18 deadline, for the sole purpose of doing so. But I'm starting to feel a nagging doubt, for the odd reason that Cullen might just be the only dark horse who could defeat frontrunner Tom Mulcair. Cullen was far and away the strongest performer at the leadership debate Halifax, a fact lost on the national press corps but not on the audience. He has raised eyebrows by proposing joint nominating meetings with the Liberals...
Citing the latest of several Corporate Research Associates polls showing Darrell Dexter's New Democrats with a comfortable lead, longtime Progressive Conservative Rob Smith has a piece in today's AllNovaScotia.com [subscription required] proposing some form of Liberal-Tory co-operation to prevent what the news service alarmingly headlines, "Socialists forever." [caption id="attachment_9599" align="alignright" width="250" caption="Beware of blue Bolsheviks!"][/caption] This argument would be more persuasive if the Dexter Government had shown any sign of being either permanent or socialist. Dexter won office less than three years ago, and he did so by turning quietly away from the strident leftist approach of previous NDP leaders, and toward centrist policies...
The Citizen's Glen McGregor sends three points of rebuttal to my post this morning about his story (co-written with Stephen Maher) on rule-breaking election-eve Liberal robocalls in the Guelph riding that has been the eye of the storm over Conservative vote suppression efforts in May's federal election: The Valeriote calls did give the Conservatives a new line of defence and did further muddy the water, as evidenced in any Hansard from this week. We didn't pass on judgment on whether the defence was valid. We never equated the Valeriote calls with the faux Elections Canada calls. Both were parts of the narrative of key...
Steve Maher and Glen McGregor, the two Ottawa reporters who broke the Robocall scandal, have a long story in yesterday's Ottawa Citizen that warrants a close read. The story leads with an account of Liberal robocalls in the Guelph riding on the eve of the May 2, 2011, federal election—calls that expressed dismay at CPC candidate Marty Burke's opposition to abortion "in all circumstances." In a glaring escalation of false equivalence, Maher and McGregor say "revelations" about the automated calls "are giving the Conservatives a new line of defence against allegations of vote suppression and further muddying the events leading up to...
I am one of what I think must be a small number of people who met both of these guys, which may be why I was struck by the resemblance when I saw the photo on the left in the Ottawa Citizen. They weren't separated at birth, because the man on the left was born 26 years after the man on the right. I wonder if they ever met. Mr. Manning?...
The bow section of the Titanic resting on the Atlantic Ocean bottom. A pair of self-propelled, undersea robots scoured the 3-by-5-mile debris field, snapping more than 100,000 hi-resolution side-scan sonar images that a computer lated stitched together to create the most comprehensive map yet of the disaster's remains. The bow section roughly corresponds to the highlighted portion of the photo below. The stern section, which suffered far more damage during the two-and-a-half-mile plunge to the ocean bottom, lies in pieces scattered half a mile away from the bow. Researchers from RMS Titanic Inc., the wreck's legal custodian, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in...