‘Making Canada a meaningful contributor in the world’

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, February 6, 2012 at 1:41 PM - 0 Comments

Given the Harper government’s eagerness to celebrate international recognition, there will no doubt be congratulations offered in the House this week for Pierre Trudeau on the occasion of a new study heralding the global influence of the Charter.

Mr. Barak, for his part, identified a new constitutional superpower: “Canadian law,” he wrote, “serves as a source of inspiration for many countries around the world.” The new study also suggests that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, adopted in 1982, may now be more influential than its American counterpart.

The Canadian Charter is both more expansive and less absolute. It guarantees equal rights for women and disabled people, allows affirmative action and requires that those arrested be informed of their rights. On the other hand, it balances those rights against “such reasonable limits” as “can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

(Headline taken from the Prime Minister’s speech to last year’s Conservative convention.)

Hockey and the prime ministers: Harper vs. Trudeau

By John Geddes - Tuesday, January 3, 2012 at 1:41 PM - 0 Comments

Over at the Globe and Mail, Lawrence Martin writes today that Stephen Harper is the first prime minister to use his passion for hockey to political advantage. Certainly Harper’s plan to finally publish his much-discussed book on early professional hockey history should allow him to stake a claim to being our most hockey-wonkish PM.

But I think Martin went off side in dismissing Pierre Trudeau’s shinny credentials, asserting that Trudeau preferred individual to team sports, and “could barely tell a hockey stick from a tennis racket.”

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REVIEW: Trudeau Transformed: The Shaping of a Statesman

By John Geddes - Monday, November 28, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

An enduring element of his myth has it that Pierre Trudeau was a dilettante well into adult life. The image of the future prime minister indulging in a motorcycle-riding, beard-growing, job-hopping arrested adolescence has been cultivated both by admirers—it makes him more fun—and detractors—it confirms his lack of seriousness. The Nemnis, a husband-and-wife writing team devoted to burnishing their subject’s memory, set out to demolish the image of an aimless Trudeau.

And they largely succeed. In a previous volume, 2006’s Young Trudeau, they revealed the narrowness of his early thinking, which shockingly featured pro-Fascist sympathies. Now they trace his 1944-47 postgraduate education from Harvard to Paris’s Sciences Po to the London School of Economics. Their painstaking study of his notes, letters and journals shows how Trudeau systematically acquired democratic ideas centred on individual rights and absorbed economic theory.

Previous biographers have viewed his celebrated travels through Asia after his university years as evidence of rootlessness. The Nemnis cite a letter to his mother in which Trudeau writes of setting out “to understand the world’s politics,” and argue that his itinerary shows he followed through. They pounce on evidence that Trudeau later sought out, rather than stumbled into, his key first experience in Ottawa as a junior bureaucrat.

In their telling, Trudeau’s rise in the 1950s as a public intellectual in Quebec—a blur of writing, editing, lecturing and organizing—flows naturally out of what came before. So does his 1965 jump into federal politics, which closes this instalment of their multi-volume project. Of course, the anti-Trudeau camp now ascendant in Canada needn’t buy this laudatory version. But to go on dismissing him as gifted but undisciplined, charismatic but shallow, has just gotten that much less plausible.

Talking shop

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 at 12:01 PM - 0 Comments

On the occasion of his winning the prize for parliamentarian of the year, I sat down last Thursday with Bob Rae in his corner office on the fifth floor of Centre Block. Here’s a transcript of our conversation (only slightly abridged).

How do you now look back on the parliamentarian you were at that point when you first showed up?

I had a kind of a very lucky start because I was elected in a by-election and it was sort of the last six months of the Trudeau government and the NDP caucus was very small, it was like 15 or 16 people, and there were lots of opportunities for me to speak, to kind of get in and do stuff. I got to ask a question my first day and I did a late night debate.

The House was a much more congenial place. There were a number of Conservatives who were there who were very friendly—Ray Hnatyshyn, Lincoln Alexander and Steve Paproski. They all stayed for my maiden speech and they all heckled during the speech. You could tell it was a kind of very modest kind of hazing process—Well, we’ll see how this kid does.

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A novice bureaucrat (and future PM) on supply management

By John Geddes - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 at 1:11 PM - 0 Comments

Here’s a stray bit of commentary from the distant past to mull over along with the news that the Harper government just might be willing to consider reforming Canada’s politically sacrosanct, economically dubious protection of poultry and dairy farmers:

“Price support is only a means; the end we seek should be a livable income for every citizen. And as a means, price support cannot be used systematically; for it naturally tends to prevent equilibrium of demand and supply.”

That’s from the six-page memo “On Price Support for Commodity Surpluses,” written by very junior civil servant named Pierre Trudeau in 1949, when he was briefly assistant to Gordon Robertson, the head of the Privy Council Office’s economics division. His sensible advice on the economics of agricultural and fisheries is quoted in the new biography Trudeau Transformed: The Shaping of a Statesman, 1944-1965 by Max and Monique Nemni.

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The Commons: A salute to cognitive dissonance

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 5:52 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. Shortly before the start of Question Period this afternoon, Conservative backbencher Patrick Brown rose to repeat his side’s line that the NDP is too “disunited” to govern. A moment later, Conservative backbencher Greg Rickford rose to lament that the NDP, in punishing two MPs who defied the party’s decision to whip a vote on the gun registry, was also too committed to enforcing unity.

Presumably this was Mr. Rickford’s way of protesting his own government’s decision to whip this week’s vote on asbestos exports. Hopefully his caucus leadership won’t too severely punish him for so bravely asserting the independence of individual MPs.

Immediately thereafter, the Speaker then called for oral questions and the official opposition sent up Joe Comartin, Mr. Comartin having apparently discovered an example of irony that he was eager to share with everyone. Continue…

From Trudeau’s woman troubles to Reform MPs’ moral missteps

By Nicholas Köhler - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 4 Comments

Photograph by Peter Bregg

When not distracted by their métier—bearing witness, asking questions, conveying facts—journalists do what comes most naturally to them: they drone on, drop names and deliver glib pronouncements on those they cover. Reporters who write memoirs risk bronzing that same tripe. How lucky we are that Craig Oliver, best known for his political reporting for CTV, often opposite Lloyd Robertson, saw the dangers and dove in anyway, writing a book at once human and sharp.

The Dickensian allusion in its title, Oliver’s Twist: The Life and Times of an Unapologetic Newshound, is earned: he grew up in tough Prince Rupert, B.C., both his parents alcoholics; his father made a job of his hobby, becoming a bootlegger. When his mother vanished, turning to taxi driving and another man, Oliver’s father shopped him around to various paid foster homes, an unhappy experience. One surrogate, Mabel, was particularly tormenting. “I forgot myself and called her ‘Mommy,’ ” he writes. “I had a real mother, Mabel told me, but she was an immoral woman who had left me behind.”

Oliver otherwise fended for himself, growing up among prostitutes, gamblers and other modern-day pirates—a one-legged steam-bath owner and Ricardo the Hook, who lost a hand in the war. “I felt no loneliness and in fact revelled in the novelty of my circumstances,” he writes. Billeted with a Christian family, he briefly became a target for conversion, a failed project: “Too much untried temptation lay ahead, and I was willing also to give the devil a chance to convert me.”

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Bush, Castro and human rights

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 12:32 PM - 38 Comments

A few weeks after NDP MP Don Davies suggested Dick Cheney should be barred from entering Canada, Amnesty International says Canadian authorities should arrest George W. Bush when he visits next week. It’s not clear that we have the power to do so. Jason Kenney is unimpressed.

“Amnesty International cherrypicks cases to publicize based on ideology. This kind of stunt helps explain why so many respected human rights advocates have abandoned Amnesty International,” Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said.

Kenney noted in an email that in the past, Amnesty had not asked for Canada to bar former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, even though the rights organization itself said he had presided over “arbitrary arrests, detention, and criminal prosecution.”

Castro’s last visit to Canada would seem to have been for Pierre Trudeau’s funeral in October 2000.

Human Rights Watch also wants Canada to take action. Noting Amnesty’s call, Andrew Sullivan lays down a straightforward standard: “Either the Geneva Conventions are the law or they are not.”

The case against Trudeau: that’s it? (UPDATED)

By John Geddes - Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 10:57 AM - 119 Comments

Reading David Frum’s assault on Pierre Elliott Trudeau in this morning’s Ottawa Citizen, I kept waiting to feel hurt. I admit it: Trudeau was a boyhood hero of mine. Although I’ve long since come to recognize his serious shortcomings, it’s like the hockey player you idolized as a 10-year-old—you never entirely get over it.

Yet that sick feeling I feared never came. Frum’s indictment boils down to two familiar charges: Trudeau mishandled the October Crisis and generally inflamed serparatism; he mismanaged the economy and left his successors a deficit problem.

That’s it? I won’t be tearing up my signed Trudeau rookie card on that basis.

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Prime Minister of the last 43 years

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 3:11 PM - 26 Comments

Angus-Reid asks a thousand Canadians to identify the best and worst prime ministers since 1968. The results below (with changes from four years ago in parentheses).

Best
Trudeau 36% (+3)
Harper 19% (+5)
Chretien 12% (+4)
Mulroney 6% (-8)

Worst
Mulroney 19% (-1)
Harper 19% (+4)
Trudeau 13% (-)
Chretien 10% (-3) 

Mr. Trudeau tops 36% in British Columbia, the Prairies, Ontario and Atlantic Canada and bests Mr. Harper in every region except Alberta. Quebec is the only jurisdiction that ranks Mr. Harper less than second.

Trudeau muscle and why Elizabeth May is feeling guilty

By Mitchel Raphael - Tuesday, August 9, 2011 at 9:14 AM - 2 Comments

Photograph by Mitchel Raphael

How tough is Justin Trudeau?

When Montreal Liberal MP Justin Trudeau was in Toronto recently he attended a Scotia­bank Caribbean Carnival event, which was held at CTV’s downtown studio parking lot. He was introduced by CTV anchor Andria Case, who noted that the MP’s late father, Pierre Trudeau, had been instrumental in opening the doors to immigrants from the Caribbean. Justin Trudeau also lent his support the same day to Rugby Canada, which was holding a fundraiser and awareness campaign for Prostate Cancer Canada. In the middle of Toronto’s Yonge-Dundas Square under a scorching sun, organizers had set up a ScrumMaster machine with several cushioned pads so people could simulate a scrum and measure the force they delivered when they ran into it. When Trudeau took a stab at it (in bare feet, after removing his sandals), organizers moved two of the cushions closer together. “Sure, emphasize my small frame,” joked the MP, who ultimately scored 1,095. Even one of the beefy rugby players only got a score of 1,105. Steve Jones, president and CEO of Prostate Cancer Canada, was on hand. He noted that Jack Layton was the person who really helped propel the issue of prostate cancer into the political spotlight. Prostate Cancer had MPs wear striped blue ties and scarves after Layton first announced he had the disease. (Layton recently took a leave of absence as leader of the NDP to battle a new cancer.) “Jack’s situation made it a real issue,” says Jones. Since then, Jones says, his organization has been able to take the blue tie and scarf awareness campaign across the country; several provincial legislatures have adopted it for a day. Layton also appeared in a print awareness campaign dubbed “It’s our time,” which encouraged people to get tested.

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Let there be television

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 10:55 AM - 6 Comments

A clip from the first televised Question Period on October 17, 1977, back when desk thumping seemed like a good idea.

Pierre Trudeau and the campaign of 2011

By John Geddes - Monday, May 2, 2011 at 4:11 PM - 37 Comments

Today’s voting marks the end of what might just be the last federal campaign in which it will still be possible to detect Pierre Trudeau’s astonishingly durable influence as among the most powerful shaping forces.

You don’t see it? Well, consider the campaign’s biggest surprise—Jack Layton’s Quebec breakthrough. The fact that Layton is a New Democrat to begin with is directly traceable to Trudeau, and in particular to his handling of the October Crisis. Here’s what Layton has written about it:

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The campaign-trail contrast: will Harper adjust?

By John Geddes - Friday, April 1, 2011 at 9:42 AM - 66 Comments

Stephen Harper’s tightly controlled election run of 2011 will inevitably be compared and contrasted with Pierre Trudeau’s so-called “peekaboo” campaign of 1980, the classic of the genre.

John English wrote in Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Vol. II: 1968-2000, about how Trudeau toyed with the frustrated press, who petitioned him late in that campaign for reasonable opportunities to ask questions. During one stretch, Trudeau’s main way of interacting with the media was apparently to drop parody references to famous poems into his statements and see if one of the reporters could identify the original.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that the tension building between Stephen Harper and the media he holds at bay these days won’t find release in a similar form of intellectual sparring.

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The rules of our democracy

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, March 26, 2011 at 9:07 AM - 52 Comments

The Prime Minister will momentarily arrive at Rideau Hall to ask that Parliament be dissolved. Meanwhile this morning, Michael Ignatieff has released a statement on how he would handle a minority government.

This election is not just an exercise in democracy, it’s about democracy.  So as we begin the campaign, let’s be clear about the rules.

Whoever leads the party that wins the most seats on election day should be called on to form the government.

If that is the Liberal Party, then I will be required to rapidly seek the confidence of the newly-elected Parliament.   If our government cannot win the support of the House, then Mr. Harper will be called on to form a government and face the same challenge.  That is our Constitution.  It is the law of the land.

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The female MP Michael Moore is championing

By Mitchel Raphael - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 10:06 AM - 26 Comments

Photograph By Mitchel Raphael

The youngest woman in the House

When Vale, the world’s second-largest mining company, decided to close a nickel smelter and refiner in Thompson, Man.—which the Brazilian giant took over as part of its 2006 purchase of Inco—months after receiving a $1-billion loan from Export Development Canada, local NDP MP Niki Ashton mobilized her constituents. “This is an example of a foreign takeover gone wrong,” says Ashton. Aiming to bring attention to the cause, she helped produce a video and then suggested to her supporters they show it to maverick filmmaker Michael Moore. Four days after they sent it, Moore’s people got back to her. They asked Ashton for more information and then the video and the story went up on michaelmoore.com, prefaced with a message from Moore himself titled “Why I support the people of Thompson, Canada—and you should too.” Moore added: “Don’t be embarrassed if you need a map to find Thompson, though—blame the U.S. media, which will only tell you about Canadians if they have some connection to Justin Bieber.” As of early this week, the video had over 21,000 hits on YouTube—a number way higher than the entire population of Thompson. Moore was so impressed by Ashton that his people asked her to be a regular contributor to his website. Notes the MP, “One of the things that really excited them was that I am currently the youngest woman in the House of Commons.” Ashton, who is 28, is in fact the second-youngest woman ever to be elected as an MP. She says Moore’s people told her they are very interested in tackling youth apathy when it comes to politics.

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The godfather

By macleans.ca - Monday, January 24, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 4 Comments

FRED CHARTRAND/CP

If Canada’s natural governing party in its heyday had a godfather, it was Keith Davey, the former Toronto advertising executive who died this week at 84, after an extended battle with Alzheimer’s.

The ultimate backroom functionary whose strategic advice and organizational skills fuelled the reigns of two prime ministers—Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau—Davey virtually invented the modern Liberal party. He pioneered the creative applications of polling and the uses of electronic techniques to reinforce his intuitive wisdom that perception had become reality—a shift that signalled a fundamental reworking of the rules of engagement.

A big, hunched Eagle Scout in politics, Davey was the most widely liked presence in the cold capital city of Ottawa and bounced his enthusiasms off its icicled back. As the long-time national director of the Liberal party, he supplied the Rotarian energy that kept the political machine functioning at its best, under Trudeau, and its most useful, under Pearson. Pearson’s legislative achievements were unparallelled, but his hesitant electoral approach barely managed to eke out two slim minorities from the barely coherent John Diefenbaker.

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Those who do not remember history (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 1, 2010 at 1:14 PM - 42 Comments

From the Prime Minister’s remarks to the Conservative caucus this morning, a slight adjustment to yesterday’s line.

As you all know, at the best of times, it is rare for governing parties to pick up seats in by-elections…

Indeed. While governments of the last 40 years have retained about 60% of their own seats in by-elections and won about 40% of by-elections overall, I count only a dozen pick-ups for the governing party of the day (four each for the governments of Trudeau, Chretien and Harper).

Those who do not remember history

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 30, 2010 at 12:42 PM - 138 Comments

From the Prime Minister’s statement today on last night’s by-election results.

“Though it is rare for a governing party to win by-elections, we are buoyed by the fact that the Conservative Caucus in the House of Commons has increased.”

As noted previously, and according to Wikipedia’s records, heading into last night 31 seats last held by the incumbent government have been contested in by-elections over the last 30 years, 22 of those—71%—remaining with the government.

Since taking office in 2006, the Harper government has now picked up four seats that were held by opposition parties. The Chretien government won an equal number of opposition seats between 1988 1993 and 2004. The Mulroney government retained six two of its nine six seats and picked up two opposition seats.*

You have to go back to the The Trudeau government to find an incumbent administration that significantly struggled in by-elections—between 1968 and 1979 1984, 20 25 Liberal government seats were contested, 11 13 of those going to the opposition by my count. Over But over the same period, the Liberals picked up three four opposition ridings.

Going back to 1968 then, a total of 57 53 seats last held by an incumbent government have been contested, 34 32 of those retained by the incumbent. Over that same period, the governing party has picked up a dozen seats held by opposition parties.

*Wells checked my math and it seems I took a slightly wrong turn somewhere in the 80s. Larger trend still holds.

Margaret Trudeau's last breakdown

By Anne Kingston - Friday, October 8, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Peter Bregg/CP/ Reuters/ Photograph by Jane Heller

Margaret Trudeau is sitting in the living room of her Montreal apartment, chatting about the Prime Minister and marijuana. No, the former flower-child chatelaine of 24 Sussex isn’t time-travelling back to her days married to prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau in the ’70s, smoking spliffs under the noses of her Mountie detail. She’s vibrantly in the here and now as conversation veers to the government’s stance on medical marijuana. “I think Mr. Harper has told us we could grow four [plants],” she says. “I’m tempted to grow four.” She’s joking—or seems to be. Trudeau’s pot-smoking days are behind her—mostly.

Now a mental-health advocate, Trudeau is more interested in the role marijuana use played in her bipolar disorder, a condition she made public in 2006. A little grass gave her focus, she says: “some light and joy and delight.” Too much triggered manic episodes. She still indulges—occasionally. “I fall off now and then, but very, very seldom,” she says. “I’m too cautious now.”

“Cautious” was never a word used to describe Margaret Trudeau, who arrived on the national stage in 1971 as the ravishing 22-year-old bride of a debonair 51-year-old PM. Their unlikely union, which produced Justin, Alexandre (known as Sacha) and Michel, ended in 1977 amidst lurid headlines that the PM’s erratic wife had bolted to photograph the Rolling Stones. Margaret filled in the details in Beyond Reason, her 1979 tell-a-lot, which revealed her “long tunnel of darkness” during her marriage and her affair with an unnamed man later identified as senator Edward Kennedy. In 1982, a second memoir, Consequences, detailed dalliances with the likes of Jack Nicholson and Ryan O’Neal as she flitted between continents seeking her own fame.

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A fresh take on Trudeau's act

By Paul Wells - Friday, October 1, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Chuck Mitchell/CP

In October 1970, Terry Mosher, the wonderful Montreal cartoonist known as Aislin, published a cartoon in Maclean’s. The subject was the FLQ kidnapping crisis and Pierre Trudeau’s invocation of the War Measures Act. Terry drew Jean Marchand, Trudeau’s justice minister, smoking a pipe and announcing, “Nous avons maintenant des listes de suspects!” We now have lists of suspects. Marchand is clutching the telephone directories for Montreal, Quebec City, Hull and Sherbrooke.

Ha! I don’t need to explain the joke, but what the heck: Aislin was saying the arrests under the War Measures Act were arbitrary and sweeping. He published his critique in one of the country’s largest magazines. And no ill seems to have come to him for his cheek.

This meditation is occasioned by the arrival on my desk of Trudeau’s Darkest Hour: War Measures in Time of Peace, October 1970, a fascinating anthology edited by Guy Bouthillier and Édouard Cloutier. The two men are long-time Université de Montréal profs. Bouthillier ran Quebec’s nationalist St. Jean Baptiste Society from 1997 to 2003, although the jacket bio doesn’t mention that. The book is published by Baraka Books, whose president is Robin Philpot, a likeable U.S.-born (UPDATE: Ontario-born, actually — pw) anglophone convert to Quebec separatism.

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Better know a talking point

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, July 19, 2010 at 11:53 AM - 0 Comments

From the official government lines distributed over the weekend.

The Ignatieff Liberals promise to force all Canadians to answer personal and intrusive questions about their private lives under threat of jail, fine, or both.

Though the threat of imprisonment is included in the Statistics Act of 1970, no one has ever apparently been sent to prison for refusing to answer the census. The threat of a fine appears in both the Statistics Act and the Census Act of 1870. Until 1951, the census was conducted every 10 years, afterwards every five years.

The following prime ministers then—assuming the threat of a fine was not momentarily suspended between 1870 and 1970—would seem to have forced Canadians to answer personal and intrusive questions about their private lives under threat of jail or fine: John A. Macdonald (thrice), Wilfrid Laurier (twice), Arthur Meighen, RB Bennett, William Lyon Mackenzie King, Louis St. Laurent (twice), John Diefenbaker, Lester B. Pearson, Pierre Trudeau (thrice), Brian Mulroney (twice), Jean Chretien (twice) and Stephen Harper.

Dalton Trudeau

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, July 8, 2010 at 9:05 AM - 0 Comments

The Ontario Premier gets comparative.

In a closed-door meeting with MPPs on Wednesday, McGuinty deflected questions from members unhappy at the heavy-handedness of police in dealing with protesters—and the government’s complicity in failing to correct the mistaken impression officers had been given more powers.

“He told us, ‘Just remember, the same guy who gave us the Charter also gave us the War Measures Act,’” said one startled MPP, noting the premier also refuted calls from several members to strike a public inquiry into the G20 debacle.

In fairness to Pierre Trudeau, the War Measures Act was enacted in 1914, he merely invoked it in 1970.

For the sake of comparison though… Continue…

Mitchel Raphael on MPs reeling from wheelchairs and badly designed stationery

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Justin shocked by ‘lazy’ comments
Several MPs and senators took up the Canadian Paraplegic Association’s challenge to spend a day in a wheelchair. Montreal Liberal MP Justin Trudeau was participating in the event for a second time. This year, he was given an electric wheelchair and was taken aback by the number of times he was called “lazy.” Defence Minister Peter MacKay liked his special rugby wheelchair; Winnipeg Tory MP Shelly Glover said the chair wreaked havoc on her nails. Halifax NDP MP Megan Leslie, who has short nails, also was in pain. Her hands hurt so much she asked her assistant to get her gloves. They made for an interesting fashion accessory: the only ones the aide could find were orange with white skulls on them. Leslie said the experience really was transforming, forcing her to rethink simple things like getting a glass of water and then not being able to bring it back to her desk because of needing both hands for the chair. Her biggest dislike? Sitting in elevators at everyone’s butt level.

‘Our country’s greatest shame’
At an anti-asbestos rally on the Hill, Hassan Yussuff of the Canadian Labour Congress said it was outrageous that at the same time asbestos warning signs were posted on the Hill (where the substance is scheduled for eventual removal), Canada is still allowing asbestos to be exported. Winnipeg NDP MP Pat Martin called Canada’s asbestos industry “our country’s greatest shame.” Martin actually worked in an asbestos mine after high school in the Yukon. “I turned 18 in an asbestos mine,” says the MP. His father begged him to get out of the mine, even offering him money as an incentive. Martin is now part of an asbestos medical study taking place at Toronto’s Princess Margaret Hospital. Major working asbestos mines are located in Quebec in the riding of Natural Resources Minister Christian Paradis.

An ugly letter from Ottawa
When a letter from an MP is needed to mark a special occasion such as a birthday or wedding anniversary, it is done up on special stationery with light green maple leaves and the coat of arms of all the provinces around the border. Toronto Liberal Rob Oliphant has been inquiring about whether the design could be changed to something more modern and aesthetically pleasing. Oliphant says because people frame these letters and they can stay up on walls for years, they should look good. He has support in other parties—Toronto NDP MP Olivia Chow, for one, also thinks the design is horrible. Some, on the other hand, like Ontario Liberal MP Anthony Rota, like the look and think it’s ‘colourful.’ So far, Oliphant says, he hasn’t heard back from the parliamentary service people who produce the commemorative stationery.

Why she became an MP
The Rotary Club of Ottawa and the National Capital Commission recently held the 60th Rotary Adventure in Citizenship Program in Ottawa. Young people from across the country were brought to the capital to learn about Canada. At a reception, the youth met MPs from their home provinces. Newfoundland Liberal MP Siobhan Coady took part in the Adventure in Citizenship Program many years ago. Back then, when she was given a tour of the House of Commons, she sat in then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s seat. She decided then and there she wanted to become a politician, but not before making it as a successful businesswoman so she would have something to bring to the table. When Coady’s young visitors told the MP that people were making fun of their Newfoundland accents, she told them to tell their taunters to “go stick it.”

Photography by Mitchel Raphael