As I stood in a crowded ballroom at the Westin Hotel in Ottawa last Sunday and watched Justin Trudeau become the 14th leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, I had only one worry about this party that had been declared dead by the media less than two years earlier. It was the fear …
Watching the Liberal Leadership Debate yesterday, I was struck by the response to the announcement that the Green Party of Canada would not be fielding a candidate in an upcoming by-election in Labrador. Reactions varied, generally along the lines of whether one supported the concept of so-called electoral cooperation or didn’t, and also where a …
On October 4th, 2012, the separatist party won a minority mandate in the province of Quebec. Twice before the separatist Parti Québécois held government, elected first in 1976 and again in 1981, and then during a second wave in the 1990s with election in 1994 and 1998. Within four years of the 1976 victory under René Lévesque, …
Tonight the unthinkable happened in Canada: a Canadian was murdered at the scene of a political rally in Quebec. As Pauline Marois took the stage in Montreal to thank members of her Party for their victory in the Quebec provincial election, shots rang out leaving at least one dead as I write this. Canada is …
The following is a list of what Ontario Liberals have done for me and other students since 2003: They created a permanent 30% off tuition grant for students in a university or college degree program saving $1,600 per student annually and $730 annually for students in college diploma and certificate programs. The grant is calculated …
Ready to Move on to Other Things Last weekend I had some fun with some images of Liberal Prime Ministers that listed their impressive accomplishments in office, adding a sarcastic hashtag of ‘#nbd’ or ‘no big deal’ to each of them. The hashtag worked on two levels. The first was the obvious level which was …
Through Fire, New Growth For much of the history of forest management, it was thought that the devastating impact of a forest fire must be avoided at all cost. Whether man-made or naturally caused, forest fires destroyed years of growth that would take decades to replace, if at all. More recently, forest fires have been …
Theresa Lubowitz on the Death of Substantive Policy Canada is teetering dangerously close to the death of substantive policy as we know it, with the rise of a populist Conservative Government, a populist NDP Official Opposition, and a struggling Liberal Party so afraid of irrelevancy it has spent the last four years taking the safe …
Very recently I had a conversation with some thoughtful members of the Liberal Party of Canada about the concept of rebuilding and how we could know as a Party we had been rebuilt, that a destination had been arrived at after this long process of renewal. I suggested that rebuilding, though possible to measure, was a continual process and not a destination. It became clear to me from this discussion that rather than call efforts we make to improve and revamp the Liberal Party ‘rebuilding’ we should simply call it ‘building’. That rather than simply act in a way that prepares us for the immediate next election, we should continually strive for a stronger, improved Liberal Party that can deliver the kind of Canada we want now and in the future.
Extraordinary Convention – Signs of Life A year ago from next Monday, the Liberal Party of Canada embarked on a period of renewal and grassroots engagement beginning with a well-attended telephone town hall called the ‘Extraordinary Convention’. This meeting of Liberals from across the country by telephone was the first major event the Party held …