Good piece by Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek this week about why Canada’s financial sector has weathered this financial crisis so well: Guess which country, alone in the industrialized world, has not faced a single bank failure, calls for bailouts or government intervention in the financial or mortgage sectors. Yup, it’s Canada. In 2008, the World [...]
Ignatieff
Although I think many of us feel that the recent Canadian budget is seriously flawed and that a coalition government could have worked out well for Canada, I also think that Michael Ignatieff’s move to support the budget was a savvy one that will better position him to win an election when the time is [...]
The Daily Show takes on the Canadian parliamentary crisis
In case you didn’t see this last night… .cc_box a:hover .cc_home{background:url(‘http://www.comedycentral.com/comedycentral/video/assets/syndicated-logo-over.png’) !important;}.cc_links a{color:#b9b9b9;text-decoration:none;}.cc_show a{color:#707070;text-decoration:none;}.cc_title a{color:#868686;text-decoration:none;}.cc_links a:hover{color:#67bee2;text-decoration:underline;} The Daily Show With Jon StewartM – Th 11p / 10c Provinces in Peril – Indecision Oh-Eh? Barack Obama InterviewJohn McCain Interview Sarah Palin VideoFunny Election Video Part two: .cc_box a:hover .cc_home{background:url(‘http://www.comedycentral.com/comedycentral/video/assets/syndicated-logo-over.png’) !important;}.cc_links a{color:#b9b9b9;text-decoration:none;}.cc_show a{color:#707070;text-decoration:none;}.cc_title a{color:#868686;text-decoration:none;}.cc_links a:hover{color:#67bee2;text-decoration:underline;} The Daily [...]
Just in case you have not been paying attention to Canada over the last couple of days
There seems to be a real chance that Harper’s government could fall over the move by the Conservatives to eliminate public subsidies for political parties, a move which could bankrupt every party but his own. This could mean either another Canadian election or the possibility that the other parties could join together to form a [...]
The Palin prank
The prank call to Sarah Palin by two Montreal radio hosts last week has had lots of coverage in the American media. Just this morning the two were on CBS’ “The Early Show” (click here for the video of their appearance on CBS). The Globe and Mail has a more accurate transcript of the call [...]
Canadians for Obama
So, I can’t recall if this usually happens in Canada or not, but The Globe and Mail just published its own endorsement for Obama Isn’t the aim of an endorsement to help drive one’s readers to vote in a particular direction? At any rate, the vast majority of Canadians (this one included) would love to [...]
What Canada’s parliament would look like today under a system of proportional representation
Thanks to wmtc for pointing me to these rather stunning stats published today by Fair Vote Canada, an organization whose mandate is to promote voting reform in Canada: Conservatives – 38% of the popular vote: 117 seats (not 143) Liberals – 26% of the popular vote: 81 seats (not 76) NDP – 18% of the [...]
Election day
It’s election day in Canada and tonight I’ll be glued to the television and computer to keep track of what’s going on. I’ll be twittering as well, but I was reminded last night of the law in Canada against publishing information about results in one part of the country before polls close in other parts [...]
Candidates I’d love to see win seats in the House of Commons
It was a nice surprise this weekend to discover in the NY Times a story on Tom King running for the NDP in Ontario. It was equally great to find that they included online a 20 minute excerpt from The Dead Dog Café Comedy Hour. My students here are about to read his The Truth [...]
The debate(s)
I had a great time last night watching the Canadian leaders debate and twittering about it in real time. Connected to a few other people twittering about it, and got a few reactions to my posts from some of my Facebook friends. It was interesting, too, to discover that CBC was monitoring Twitter and reported [...]