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,...

27 March, 2012

Remember the Ottawa Press Gallery's rending of garments over the "despicable" violation of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews's privacy when Vikileaks30 revealed seamy details from the public record of his divorce proceedings—details that called into question the minister's personal adherence to the family values he used to denigrate gay Canadians and oppose their exercise of equal rights under the law? The view that embarrassing details from a cabinet minister's private life are off-limits, even when they conflict with his sanctimonious public pronouncements, has suddenly acquired unanimous support among Canada's major media organizations. Why, suppressing such details is practically a sacred duty. Parliamentary reporters...

05 March, 2012

Parliamentary scribe Stephen Maher, formerly of the Herald and now with PostMedia, offers a different view on why the Press Gallery all but ignored Vic Toews’s infidelity prior to #vikileaks30. (Previous views here, here, and here.) Maher's blog post is the more refreshing for its inclusion of updates from people who disagree with him. It rewards  reading in full. I actually agree with most of what he says. Generally, I have little stomach for exposing the private lives of public figures, let alone their sex lives. But unlike Maher and his colleagues, I think there are clear grounds for an exception in Toews's case. Maher wrote: If [a] secretly...

21 February, 2012

CBC Sunday Edition guest host Robert Harris chided Elly Alboim this morning for the national press corps's failure to pick up on the NDP surge until the polls made it obvious. [caption id="attachment_7960" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Alboim"][/caption] Alboim responded, reasonably, that reporters couldn't be expected to pick up on a phenomenon before it existed. (He did credit Chantel Henert for noticing it a week before her colleagues.) Alboim went on to speculate that the NDP's dramatic rise in the polls reflected, not a sudden blooming of love for Layton, but widespread anti-Harper sentiment that coalesced around Layton following his good performance in the debates. If...

01 May, 2011

On the morning after the English Language leader's debate, CBC Radio's James Cudmore ended his reaction piece from Brixton's British Pub in Ottawa with an audible smirk: "One blessing: the campaign just has three weeks left to go." [audio:http://contrarian.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/debate_react2.mp3|titles=debate_react] This is one Harper meme (among several) that many press gallery reporters have embraced with alacrity: the May 2 election is an unnecessary, money-wasting, irritating, imposition on voters who have better things to do than contemplate national issues and chose among those who want to do them. It is scarcely an original observation that, as we trudge begrudgingly to the polls, citizens of Tunisia,...

24 April, 2011

Contrarian is baffled by the reaction of Ottawa-based press pundits to tonight's debate. Most said Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff failed to score against Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, who, they averred, held his own. I think this is a major misreading, and the polls will quickly show it to be off base. Try the old silent test: watch any portion of the debate with the sound turned down. Harper looked miserable, especially when forced to listen to anyone direct criticism at him. I am not comfortable commenting on politicians' physical traits, but Harper's expression did not serve him well, and likely reinforced...

12 April, 2011