• Frost is definitely in air these days

  OTTAWA -- There's a cool wind blowing between Broadway and Parliament Hill these days. Some days it's positively icy.

  View Full Column | 05/14/2012 3:16 AM | 0

• MPs of all stripes need to tone down their language

  OTTAWA -- Every couple of months, someone on Parliament Hill throws out another call for MPs to be nicer to one another. Everyone nods their heads in agreement, "Oh yes, we must be nicer to each other," while secretly thinking "darn, we're pretty nice people. It's the other side that's not so nice. So yes, I agree, they should be nicer to me."

  View Full Column | 05/7/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• Riding changes could make Green blue

  OTTAWA -- Elizabeth May made history a year ago when she became the first Green party MP elected to Canada's Parliament. The Green leader even ousted a sitting cabinet minister to do it.

  View Full Column | 04/30/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• Another fine snow job from 'open' government

  OTTAWA -- Canadians love to talk about the weather. The federal government, however, doesn't share the gift of the weather gab.

  View Full Column | 04/23/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• Stop playing politics with people's lives

  OTTAWA -- There's really no good way to tell people they're losing their jobs. But there are ways to soften the blow.

  View Full Column | 04/16/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• No amount of talk can stop the budget

  OTTAWA -- More than 13 hours. That's how long NDP finance critic Peter Julian took to deliver a marathon budget speech in the last two weeks in an effort to shut out government MPs from delivering Prime Minister Stephen Harper's talking points over and over again.

  View Full Column | 04/9/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• Fletcher the fighter battles hard

  OTTAWA -- Manitoba junior cabinet minister Steven Fletcher sat in his 29th-floor office in downtown Ottawa last week and gazed at the stunning views of the Ottawa Valley that stretched out below. He is a little thinner than before, his black suit hanging loosely on his body. But he is no less feisty and he has a clear message for anyone who thinks his health problems will keep him from staying in politics.

  View Full Column | 03/26/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• Tweeting is tempting, but don't be a twit

  OTTAWA -- You'd think by now most people in the public eye would have figured out they can't just shoot off at the mouth like most of us plebeians. President George H.W. Bush learned the hard way when he said he didn't like broccoli and banned it from the White House in 1989. California broccoli farmers got cheesed off and sent truckloads of the vegetable to the president in protest.

  View Full Column | 03/19/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• Path to power tough for federal NDP

  OTTAWA -- If there was anything that stood out on the stage at the Pantages Playhouse Sunday during the NDP leadership debate, it was that the party born on the Prairies doesn't have much "prairie-ness" left to offer. It is sort of sad that more than half the debate appeared to focus on the fact that the NDP has been virtually shut out from the region that gave birth to it, and how to change that.

  View Full Column | 02/27/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• Just don't watch me, Ottawa's actions say

  OTTAWA -- The most commonly uttered word on Parliament Hill these days is "privacy." The second should be "ironic."

  View Full Column | 02/21/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• If you can't even sit together, how can you run the country?

  OTTAWA -- It has been a complaint for years that the partisanship in Ottawa is out of control. Last week, evidence of that came at a Senate committee meeting, which some likened more to a spat one would expect from six-year-olds than from people we're all supposed to call "honourable."

  View Full Column | 02/13/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• Head of the class

  Ninety-seven per cent attendance. Ninety per cent graduation rate. Close to zero staff turnover. It's a situation most schools in Manitoba can only dream of. And you simply can't be blamed for assuming this case exists only in the wealthiest of neighbourhoods.

  View Full Column | 02/11/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• What are immigrants supposed to think?

  OTTAWA — When Citizenship and Immigration Canada couldn’t pull together a citizenship ceremony for Sun TV last year, they opted to have bureaucrats pose as new Canadians instead.  Citizenship as reality television sullies journalists, bureaucrats and the solemnity of Canadian citizenship all at the same time.

  View Full Column | 02/6/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• What are immigrants supposed to think?

  OTTAWA -- When Citizenship and Immigration Canada couldn't pull together a citizenship ceremony for Sun TV last year, they opted to have bureaucrats pose as new Canadians instead. Citizenship as reality television sullies journalists, bureaucrats and the solemnity of Canadian citizenship all at the same time.

  View Full Column | 02/6/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• NDP leadership buzz still missing

  OTTAWA -- The NDP leadership hopefuls met in Halifax Sunday for another debate. It was the second party-sponsored debate. There will be four more before the race concludes at a convention March 24 in Toronto.

  View Full Column | 01/30/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• Austerity rules, but not all the time

  OTTAWA — Federal civil servants are walking around holding their breath these days, not knowing when their department is going to fall prey to the cost-cutting axe. In Ottawa, where one in five employees works for the federal government, the economy is already feeling the pinch with slower retail sales over Christmas and a cooling housing market. But Finance Minister Jim Flaherty needs to find $4 billion in savings within four years, and estimates suggest anywhere from 9,000 to 40,000 civil servants could be chopped to help Flaherty get there.

  View Full Column | 01/23/2012 8:14 AM | 0

• Liberals shouldn't rest in afterglow

  OTTAWA -- Canadian Liberals gathered in Ottawa over the weekend for the first time since being reduced to a rump party in Parliament last May. The biggest question on the table was whether the party has a future.

  View Full Column | 01/16/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• NDP leadership race is a real snoozefest, but...

  OTTAWA -- It's hard sometimes to keep one's eyes open while reading about the NDP leadership contest. With three months left in the campaign, thus far the race has been about as appealing as a cold cup of coffee.

  View Full Column | 01/9/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• Keeping house

  OTTAWA -- It was a pretty wild year in Canadian politics. From a government found to be in contempt, to an election that caused sweeping changes to Parliament, to the death of popular NDP leader Jack Layton.

  View Full Column | 12/26/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• Public scrutiny of Parliament imperilled

  OTTAWA -- Treasury Board Minister Tony Clement last week held a novel town hall meeting on Twitter. For 45 minutes in English and 45 minutes in French, he chatted about his department's Open Government initiative with anyone with a Twitter account and knowledge of how hashtags work.

  View Full Column | 12/19/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• 'Never too late to correct wrong'

  OTTAWA -- The government of Japan last week issued an apology for its treatment of prisoners of war during the Second World War. That included about 1,700 Canadians taken prisoner during the Battle of Hong Kong in 1941. They spent more than three years in forced-labour camps, where they were regularly beaten and nearly starved to death. More than 260 soldiers died in the camps.

  View Full Column | 12/12/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• Tories setting a bad example in bullying fight

  OTTAWA -- There is nothing but heartbreak in the suicide last week of Quebec teenager Marjorie Raymond. Nothing but sadness over the October suicide of 15-year-old Ottawa teenager Jamie Hubley.

  View Full Column | 12/5/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• What's the point of more MPs in the House?

  OTTAWA -- There is a bill before Parliament right now seeking to increase by 30 the number of MPs elected to the House of Commons. The goal is to even out the representation, so the faster-growing provinces of Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta aren't as underrepresented in the House.

  View Full Column | 11/28/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• Government privacy breaches alarming

  OTTAWA -- Most of us are apt to dismiss those who fear Big Brother is watching as conspiracy theorists in tinfoil hats. But for the executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, being an outspoken critic of the federal government seems to have landed her a starring role in her own version of George Orwell's 1984.

  View Full Column | 11/21/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• Access-to-info system still stinks, two years later

  OTTAWA -- Two years, three months, two weeks, and one day. That is how long it took for Health Canada to supply records related to an appearance by bureaucrats at a Senate committee in June 2009 on the H1N1 outbreak.

  View Full Column | 11/7/2011 1:00 AM | 0

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