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Canada’s magazine

Tag Archives: ethical oil

Welcome to Canada! Home of glorious workers’ revolution!

You could pretty much set your clock by it: Two weeks of disdainful coverage about how Tom Mulcair just doesn’t understand how much he’s blundering into a powderkeg are followed by today’s National Post poll, featuring the largest NDP margin over other parties that I have seen since things got weird for a minute in 1988, or maybe the best poll ever for the NDP.

On the existence of an NDP base

This column, a couple of weeks ago, posed a question about Thomas Mulcair’s ability to appeal to a broad segment of the population with an environmentalist, oil-sands-skeptical, protectionist-on-trade message. “To beat Harper, he needs issues that can rally active and broad support,” I wrote at the end. “I’ll offer no predictions, but whatever happens in Montreal on April 22 will tell much of the tale.”

Hey look: Hewers of wood, drawers of power

In Ottawa a few weeks ago, I ran into an old friend who used to work for the Chrétien Liberals. He’s in the private sector now. I was fresh back from China and I said one of the big surprises was the heavy resource orientation of the business delegation accompanying Stephen Harper — Oil, diamonds, gold, pork and lentils, not boutique software firms.