Two more months, you say, before Canadians can finally put an end to this longest federal election campaign in more than a century. Well, a few days shy of two months. But who’s counting? Who, for that matter, is paying attention?

A recent poll found most people haven’t made up their mind how they will vote, and fully a third said they likely won’t decide until election day, October 19.

October 19, it still seems unreal, incredible. Perhaps only Stephen Harper knows why he chose to go to Governor-General David Johnston Sunday, August 2, to formally ask him to dissolve Parliament and call an election.

That was a formality. In the Prime Minister’s Office they call him “the boss” for a reason. He has the power, and he likes it that way, the more the better, to remake this country as he sees fit.

How’s that working so far? Continue reading →

The Harper government may have thought it killed the Long Gun Registry more than three years ago. But it’s back in the news again, and likely to stay there long enough to show up like an unwelcome ghost just in time to cast a shadow over Conservative chances of re-election.

One can only hope. It certainly should give voters pause to reflect on the state of Canadian democracy when the issue now before the courts is whether or not the government pressured the RCMP to break the law by destroying Long Gun Registry data while it was still the subject of an Access to Information request.

That’s a serious offence under the Access to Information Act, punishable by up to two years in prison or a fine of up to $10,000, or both. Continue reading →

Oh, Larry.

Larry, Larry, Larry, what have you done?

You certainly haven’t done Canada’s reputation as a peace-loving, tolerant and inclusive country any favours; that’s if it ever really had such a reputation, except in the mind and imagination of Liberal leader Justin Trudeau and his ilk.

I confess I, for example, have indulged myself right here in this space often enough in such possibly wishful thinking. I’ve said Canada is still a work in progress, but it works: it has become in just the past 50 years or so perhaps this troubled world’s best example of a country where people of every different racial, religious, and cultural background can live together in peace.

And, like Trudeau said just last week in a speech in Toronto, that’s important for the world, as well as Canada. It proves there’s hope at this critical time in world history when the extremes of religious, cultural and racial intolerance are threatening to tear the world apart as never before.

I read the transcript of Trudeau’s speech about how he believes the tolerant, inclusive nature of Canadian society and its democracy has become an integral part of our identity as a country. And that’s despite terrible mistakes that were made when the country was far less tolerant and inclusive, when people of certain races and cultures were treated badly by the dominant white culture.

But as I read a nagging worry kept coming to mind: maybe it’s an illusion, maybe Canada isn’t anywhere near as tolerant even now as some of us would like to think. Maybe an undercurrent of racial and cultural intolerance that has long run through “traditional” Canadian society culture persists.

Then Tuesday just after noon, a little later than usual, I Googled my daily check of news headlines.

I was certainly surprised, to say the least, to see Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound MP Larry Miller’s name right at the top, in the space normally reserved for the biggest, national or international breaking news of the day.

It just took a moment to find out what it was about: all the coverage from the various news media sources from across the country understandably focused on the most inflammatory and controversial of Miller’s comments on last Monday morning’s CFOS phone-in show. Continue reading →

Playing the war card is the lowest, most cynically opportunistic political manoeuver in the book. Is Stephen Harper playing that card?

Has he found the election platform that’s going to win him a majority in the next federal election, in October, or sooner?

Might Canadian voters have started asking questions about the Harper government’s ability to manage the internal economy in the wake of the collapse in crude oil prices and its impact on the Canadian economy and the government’s balanced-budget plans?

Is it convenient then to able to tell Canadians they have something much more serious to worry about, that being the threat of “violent Jihadism,” as Harper called it time and time again, at a well-staged recent political event in Richmond Hill? Continue reading →