Ian Brodie

In his new book, Ian Brodie—Harper’s former chief of staff—gives a behind-the-scenes look at how the Tories outmaneuvered Stephane Dion on Afghanistan in 2008

Paul Wells asks why the PM failed to follow his own precedent

At least when it comes to website design

The prime minister is hardly trash-talking the constitution here

The Globe reports that phone records were leaked by unnamed Conservatives for the purpose of suggesting that calls received outside Guelph were mere mistakes. Ian Brodie still frets.

Ian Brodie quibbles with the suggestion that luck explains Stephen Harper’s success.

Rest assured, the Canadian news media isn’t nearly powerful enough for anything like the News International scandal to happen here.

Stephen Harper, September 2008. “My own belief is if we were going to have some kind of big crash or recession, we probably would have had it by now.”

WELLS on whether what Harper’s doing with the long-form census matters or not

Despite plenty of evidence their efforts will be futile, the people who study such things continue to insist on analyzing the actual usefulness of the Harper government’s crime policy.

I was to have spent part of this afternoon participating in the Public Policy Forum’s Back to School celebration (Kady’s there), specifically as part of an afternoon panel alongside Don Newman, Ian Brodie and Carleton’s Katherine Graham on the topic of how we might “improve the Canadian political system.” Suffice it to say I would’ve been the least insightful of the panelists and it’s largely for my own good that a scheduling conflict means I can’t be there.

“‘We resolved that the term `competitiveness,’ the term `productivity’ and the term `innovation’ was never going to appear in anything we said or did in the 2005-2006 election campaign.’”