I enthusiastically support Stephen Harper’s decision to prorogue parliament… Here’s why. Proponents of more open, participatory, and directly accountable government have just been handed the best opportunity we could ask for. It’s a turning point in the narrative of centralized power that began with Jean Chrétien’s run in the 90s and has built up ever since. [...]
canada
I feel obligated to write about this because it squats squarely in my basket of interests, touching on politics, belief, science, ethics, media… If I didn’t post something about this I’d be signaling gross indifference to the enterprise of blogging. Concern in the science community shouldn’t be surprising. By comparison, while we don’t expect the agriculture [...]
Before I even get to Canada I want to make sure it’s understood how critical the next year or two will be. I consider myself fairly well informed and I regularly find myself having to be reminded of the seriousness of things on the global stage. Foreign policy has been pushed a bit to the side [...]
I wasn’t comfortable with it until I heard a constitutional expert explain on CBC Newsworld that prorogation is normally used when parliament has an especially large, complex set of legislation to consider, and it’s deemed best for MPs to return to their ridings, meet with their constituents, and look at matters from that perspective. Before [...]
I’ve finally quieted my mind and collected my thoughts about the events in Ottawa this weekend — just enough to make sense of things by way of juxtaposing an older post on the meaning of integrity in politics. In that post I held up Barack Obama as a paradigm of integrity, arguing that: Having established a [...]
Continued… but I don’t even want to think about the political aspect of this – this disgrace — which seems to be a race to the bottom… Below the fold are some more very rough remarks about economic stimulus, carrying on from my previous discussion about economics-as-being-about-more-than-money.
It really pisses me off. In many ways I favour the Conservatives’ apparent pragmatism and restraint, but all of their statements have a peculiar, pungent aroma that I can’t quite identify, that makes me distrustful. The other parties are no better; in some ways they’re worse. Paul Wells expressed all this again yesterday in his characteristic way: The immediate post-election period is [...]
In an interesting position. This article in the Washington Post says what we already know about ourselves: The main reason for optimism here is the banking system. Experts here note that Canadian banks are more tightly regulated, more liquid and less highly leveraged. Instead of being highflying investment banks, they tend to operate in a [...]
Ed Broadbent doesn’t like it: If seats represented the proportion of actual votes, the Liberals, New Democrats and Greens would have a majority of seats (161) and, following the European pattern, would combine to form a government, with each party having seats in the cabinet and a program that actually reflects how a majority of [...]
I wasn’t planning on it but it feels like I’m going to get sucked into the election coverage.
Here’s some thinly veiled self-promotion for the Manning Centre, which happens to make some good points: Americans invest more time, energy and money than Canadians do in preparing the politicians and supporting casts for their roles and responsibilities on the political stage. In the United States, there are scores of think tanks, covering the entire [...]
The Best Disinfectant
by OpenConceptual on 07-14-2009
in commentary
This morning I realized I was a little unfair to Glen Pearson in my last post at BrianFrank.ca. I excerpted a bit of his blog as a jumping-off point, but the rest of my post didn’t really have much to do with what he wrote. I kind of left it hanging there as if he didn’t [...]
Tagged as: articulation, blogging, canada, generativity, glen pearson, london, media, non-partisanship, openness, politicians, politics, relevance, snark, social media, the parallel parliament