Why young voters won’t make history today
May 2, 2011 | 1 Comment
Could young Canadians change the outcome of today’s federal election? It’s certainly a possibility, given that there are approximately 5.65 million people between the ages of 18 and 29 in this country. By way of comparison, in the 2008 federal election, Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party of Canada only received 5.2 million votes. If every young [...]
The Failure of Democracy
April 28, 2011 | 14 Comments
For most Canadians, there’s a lot riding on next Monday’s election results. But while they will watch the returns closely in the hopes of seeing a Conservative majority, an NDP opposition or some other partisan configuration, younger voters ought to save themselves the time and trouble. After all, for all the talk about engaging younger [...]
Why I’m rooting for another minority parliament
March 28, 2011 | 8 Comments
Canadians might be divided on who they’re going to vote for on May 2, but they’re apparently united in the belief that they’d be better of not voting at all. It’s still early days, but the coverage of this election already reveals one dominant theme: Canadians are sick and tired of democracy. The Globe and [...]
David Akin’s Dream World
January 21, 2011 | 2 Comments
I’m as much a fan of contrarian writing and thinking as the next guy – probably more so, even – but Sun Media National Bureau Chief David Akin’s column about the federal government’s new real-estate rules and regulations demonstrates that sometimes contrarianism is just a fancy synonym for being wrong. I’m sympathetic to his initial [...]
False alarm
December 1, 2010 | 6 Comments
Respecting your elders is always a good idea. Taking their word on faith when it comes to the issue of retirement might not be, though, given the lies that they’ve been spreading of late. Canada’s pension system, they tell us, is in a state of crisis, one that demands sudden and significant action. Whether that [...]
Iceberg, dead ahead
November 22, 2010 | 4 Comments
For more than a decade now demographers have been telling Canadians that there’s an iceberg in our collective path, one that could potentially sink the Canadian state as we know it. The Baby Boomers are getting older, and their golden years could end up bankrupting the rest of us. It’s a widely accepted fact that [...]
Open for Business
November 11, 2010 | 10 Comments
There’s the road less traveled, and then there’s the one that the Harper government decided to walk down last week. Only once in the preceding twenty-five years had a Canadian government blocked a foreign takeover, the proposed acquisition of geospatial business MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates by the American company Alliant Techsystems in 2008, and the [...]
The Idiot Hypothesis
November 1, 2010 | 7 Comments
by Max Fawcett For all of the eye-catching political developments of the last twelve months, from the rise of the Tea Party south of the border to the return of economic nationalism north of it, there aren’t many that have been more interesting – and perplexing – than Stephen Harper’s apparent devolution. After all, when [...]
The Trudeau Generation: Why Pierre Elliot Trudeau matters more than ever
September 29, 2010 | 10 Comments
by Max Fawcett Ten years ago, Pierre Trudeau, the 15th Prime Minister of Canada, died at the age of 80. Given his declining health at the time, his passing wasn’t really a surprise. But the national outpouring of grief and emotion that greeted his death was much more unexpected, given how conspicuously out of character [...]
The Big Takeover: Trudeau’s Legacy Gone to Pot(ash)
August 30, 2010 | 4 Comments
by Max Fawcett Some anniversary present. As we approach the 10th anniversary of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s death, it looks as though the Canadian government is set to let an Australian company scoop up one of Canada’s most valuable corporate entities without so much as a second thought. BHP Billiton Ltd., an Anglo-Australian mining [...]