Category: Justin Trudeau
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Canada needs to respond to Trump with an emergency Safe Harbour immigration law
Given the turbulent times in the United States, Canada needs an emergency safe harbour law to protect vulnerable populations in the short term. The law would serve as an addition to our normal immigration laws and would serve as a test case for future global emergencies. It would grant a temporary version of permanent residency,…
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After Brexit and Trump, electoral reform is more important now than it was in 2015
Photo credit: FutUndBeidl via Visualhunt / CC BY Fortunately, despite skepticism by many, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says that electoral reform is still on the table. When Trudeau was elected just over a year ago, his promise that 2015 was the last election to be fought under the “first past the post” system. Since that…
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Trudeau’s pipeline decisions were bad optics but good politics
Photo via Unsplash via Visualhunt.com As I type this, activists in BC are preparing to protest the Kinder Morgan pipeline. Everyone, including the Liberal government, knew that was coming. It may very well even be part of Trudeau’s plan. Burnaby, BC and the “line 3” pipeline which runs from Alberta to Wisconsin. Trudeau rejected the…
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Justin Trudeau and the progress of democratic reform
Photo credit: World Bank Photo Collection via VisualHunt.com / CC BY-NC-ND A few days ago, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said something true about electoral reform and people freaked out. Ok, most people didn’t freak out and the ones who did are primarily opposition partisans who want electoral reform because they believe it will improve their…
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Progress is made issue by issue, not by partisan politics
Last night’s historic election of Justin Trudeau and a Liberal majority government was met with mixed reactions, as all elections are. Liberals are elated about the results, Conservatives, New Democrats and Greens are disappointed. It seems to me though that partisan politics are frequently toxic and do not have the impact that people think they…
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Anything But Conservative is good enough for now
For the last 10 years, Stephen Harper has been the government of Canada. I do not mean the Prime Minister of Canada or the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, I mean that he has been the government. Anyone in his party that got in his way was out of the caucus, shuffled to…
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It looks like Canada is headed for a Liberal minority government
There are still two weeks remaining until the election. That means that any and all predictions and polls are subject to change. But, at the moment, it looks like Justin Trudeau will be the next Prime Minister of Canada. Éric Grenier’s CBC Poll Tracker still shows a slight seat advantage for the Conservatives. As of…
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Government Transparency: So far Justin Trudeau has my vote
I tend to be very ‘left leaning’ and haven’t always been a big fan of the Liberals, but for the last year or so Justin Trudeau has continued to shine while Thomas Mulcair seems primarily interested in Thomas Mulcair. I have been apprehensive about Mulcair from the start and his recent actions haven’t eased my…
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My ideal electoral system and how the current one could be vastly improved tomorrow.
This is going to be divided into two sections. First I will describe what, I think would be, an ideal electoral system and then I will describe one thing that could be done right now, by Parliament, that would vastly improve the system, without the need for constitutional change, voting reform or a referendum. So if…
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Sober Second Thought: Fixing the Canadian Senate
No one likes the Senate, but no one has a plan to fix it either. Justin Trudeau grabbed headlines this week by booting all of the Liberal members of the senate out of his caucus. NDP leader Tom Mulcair wants to abolish the Senate outright but under the parliamentary system, such a move would make…