Columns

National Column: Liberals give middle class cold shoulder

Wednesday’s budget will be about the middle class and innovation. Maybe it’ll even be helpful! That would be nice. Unfortunately, the Trudeau government’s handling of both files so far has left them in something close to a shambles. […]

Columns

National Column: Another display of smooth fluency

When travelling, it’s handy to show some fluency in local dialects. “We are of course very alert to the challenges posed by the Southern Resident killer whale pod,” Justin Trudeau said on Thursday, cool as a cucumber, as he stood on the dock at Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt, just outside Victoria. […]

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National Column: Hamburg speech hints at Ottawa shift

The St. Matthew’s Day Banquet in Hamburg has been a big date on the German city’s social calendar for more than six centuries. Everyone who’s anyone in Hamburg attends. Under the gilded roof of the historic town hall’s palatial banquet room, keynote speakers – each year, a German dignitary and a foreign guest – discuss the great matters of the day before hundreds of revelers. […]

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National Column: Liberals shore up their left flank

In the eternal balancing act of Canadian Liberalism, it’s a week for tilting left. One after another, cabinet ministers are lining up to resuscitate programs that please the Liberal base and that the Harper Conservatives fought tooth and nail. […]

Columns

Bringing the buzz kill to marijuana legalization

Reading the 106-page report of the Task Force on Cannabis Legalization and Regulation, with its determinedly bland cover design and its epically drab title, “A Framework For the Legalization and Regulation of Cannabis in Canada,” it’s hard to shake the urge to blow off a little steam by sparking up a great big bowl of […]

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National Column: Canada had a special relationship with dictator

He was probably Canada’s favourite dictator.

Canadians may not have approved of the methods Fidel Castro used to govern Cuba. His restrictions on press and political freedom, his insistence that trade unions be government-run and the arbitrary practices of his revolutionary courts would have grated here.
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Columns

National Column: Rising nationalism a test for Liberals

It’s way too early to guess how this will turn out, but it’s becoming clear that Justin Trudeau now leads a government in crisis.

It’s not a crisis Trudeau made, but heís stuck with it. How he responds will go far toward making or breaking his career as prime minister. […]

Columns

National Column: Trials and tribulations of negotiating CETA

Politics is often a mix of emotion and calculation. It’s impossible to eliminate either impulse. Perhaps it’s unwise to try. Take the moment when Chrystia Freeland walked out of talks on Canada-European Union trade in Brussels on Oct. 21.
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Columns

National Column: Amid economic gloom, a bet on infrastructure

That sea of troubles, it just keeps rising. The floodwaters of uncertainty turned the English Channel into a gulf between Britain and Europe. They may yet sink Hillary Clinton. The $6 billion a year that Bill Morneau set aside for – wait for it – a rainy day have already vanished beneath the waves. […]