It’s not Question Period in China. Too bad no one told John Baird. Our new foreign minister, promoted for political adeptness in difficult portfolios, just turned in a staggeringly inept performance on his first major foreign trip. It wasn’t a problem that on Monday in Beijing he called his conversations with the Chinese government “warm, cordial and productive”. That’s the sort of bumph bureaucrats draft before and politicians sign off on after meetings even if they erupt into yelling or are so dull someone important falls asleep.
Britain's army is now smaller than at any time since the Boer War, its air force at 1914 levels and the Royal Navy as small as Henry VIII's. It's presented as sound strategic policy but, Canadians and Americans take note, it really came from the welfare state's intellectual, moral and fiscal bankruptcy. Click here to read the rest.
We can’t ignore the spectacle of a Muslim prayer service in a Canadian public school that segregates girls and subjects those having their period to public rejection and humiliation. We have to deal with it here and now. It’s not happening somewhere else and it’s not happening in some other era. Click here to read the rest.
The CBC supposedly exists to tell Canadians their story in ways for-profit networks would not. But the state broadcaster is anything but an old-style, non-commercial public radio and television company. Its tentacles now extend everywhere in the media universe except perhaps print, and it uses its huge public subsidy to compete unfairly in countless areas where the government has no excuse for intruding. Click here to read the rest.
Ottawa politicians are really determined to get a train set to play with. They’re now saying light rail can go ahead on schedule, on budget ... and if not, the people who promised otherwise will be long gone when taxpayers get the bill. Click here to read the rest.