election campaign

Each party leader has picked their favourite speech. Read the full text here.

With an election all but inevitable, the NDP leader’s health is a legitimate issue

Peter C. Newman on the Liberal leader’s summer solace

Stakes in a Canadian election have seldom been this low

Big City Jack Layton was out talking up mass transit funding this morning, his podium set up hard by the streetcar track at Bathurst Street station in Toronto, the lights of Honest Ed’s beloved urban-kitsch sign twinkling just down the block.

Turning to check out my own story (naturally) in the issue of Maclean’s that appeared today, I was struck by the vintage black-and-white shots of Pierre Trudeau used to illustrate it. It’s appropriate: I touch on the classic 1974 Liberal campaign, which vaulted Trudeau from minority back to majority, as an entry point for a discussion of the current state of the party.

He ignored my pleas to grow a moustache. Now it’s too late for the fallback: Plan Afro.

If no coherent debate about climate change is generated during this campaign, we will look back years from now and feel deeply ashamed. It’s too alarming to ignore. (Or is it so alarming that ignoring it is the easiest out?) At the very least, if we’re not going to seriously consider policies to fight global warming, can we join the adult conversation about how to best cope with it?

The most depressing thing about this campaign is the way the climate change debate has gone. Any hope that it might rise to the level of an informed argument about which strategy for cutting greenhouse gas emissions is better—the Tories’ suspiciously complicated cap-and-trade plan, or the Liberals’ more straightforward carbon tax—is all but dead.