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Christmas Letters: Jack Layton
After a look at Harper and Ignatieff’s Christmas letters, we move on today to Jack Layton’s. Dear working families, It’s been a great year for progressives across North America, with Barack Obama entering the White House, and the NDP winning the New Westminster-Coquitlam by election. All together now – Yes We Can! Yes We Can! […]
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One Year Ago
Flaherty to axe subsidies to political parties in fiscal update: sources The Conservatives are poised to eliminate the public subsidies that Canada’s five major political parties receive, a move that would save $30 million a year but could cripple the opposition. Sources told CBC News and other media outlets Wednesday that the subsidy cut is […]
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"Pro-life feminists have also come to see abortion as part of a male agenda to have women more sexually available"
I’m willing to bet someone at the PMO has a google news alert for “Maurice Vellacott AND abortion” wired to a giant siren…because that’s a very dangerous combination for the Tories. The latest: Maurice Vellacott, the MP for Saskatoon-Wanuskewin and a former pastor, faced criticisms for a news release lashing out against the “devastating emotional, […]
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Christmas Letters: Michael Ignatief
Yesterday I posted an exclusive copy of Stephen Harper’s Christmas letter. Today, a draft of Michael Ignatieff’s, obtained from my OLO contacts. I publish it here so that those of you not on Michael’s Christmas card list can get a look. Salutations my Canadian friends, Isaiah Berlin once proclaimed “philosophers are adults who persist in […]
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Culture of Defeat
Too lazy in Halifax to work? OTTAWA – If anyone ever stops Nova Scotia farmers from hiring migrant labourers to harvest their crops, they would destroy a lot of businesses because unemployed Nova Scotians don’t want those jobs, says Gerald Keddy, the Conservative MP for South Shore-St. Margarets. “Nova Scotians won’t do it — all […]
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Christmas Letters: Stephen Harper
It’s that time of the year again, when Christmas cards and year-end letters start arriving in the mail. I’ve managed to get my hands on the letters being sent out by all party leaders and will be posting them here over the next week. First off, the Prime Minister. Greetings friends! It’s been another great […]
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In Case You Missed It…
Some things in the news today… 1. There’s been a big hullabaloo recently over ten percenters and a movement appears on foot to set guidelines, or to outright ban them. Good. For the record, I think the parties would be crazy not to use them so long as they’re allowed to, but if they’re not […]
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Party Like It’s 2009
Everyone went list-crazy in 1999, but the end of the aughts is fast approaching with little fanfare or retrospective. So, since this December figures to be a lot less interesting than the last, this is the perfect time for a Calgary Grit mini-contest. So, what I want from everyone are suggestions for the “top Canadian […]
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Asleep at the switch
Stephen Taylor poses the following, regarding the Ruby Dhalla nanny thing (which I absolutely refuse to “gate”): Just a few minutes ago, the House of Commons unanimously endorsed a report produced by the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration which included the following recommendation, [snip] The Liberals had a chance to amend the motion in […]
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Yet he who is without sin cast the first tweet
Now: Charlie Angus wants MPs banned from Twitter just “to save politicians from looking like idiots.” The Northern Ontario New Democrat is serious: “I have nothing against the technology, nothing,” he said this morning. “But it really exposes the absolute banality of this place. … There is something about it that turns otherwise intelligent professionals […]