Blog
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Time for big ideas: Imagine Canada after Harper
Stephen Harper, too, shall pass into history, recorded as one of the most destructive, personally malignant personalities ever to have soiled the Canadian political landscape.But in the meantime, Canadians are so distracted by his political blitzkrieg through the agencies, policies, programs and institutions that make Canada what it became over five decades, that we are in danger of losing our imagination regarding what is truly possible in this country. While it may seem counter-intuitive, now is the time for Canadians who actually believe in government and nation-building to be contemplating big ideas - the ones that will take us the next step to equality, economic stability and environmental sustainability.
Why? Because if we don’t try to get what we want we won’t even get what we need.
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Review: Imagined Communities
A review of Benedict Anderson’s classic book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism.
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The Hunger Games
A long political dissection of The Hunger Games movie.
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Youth, austerity, and the changing meaning of opportunity
The Conservatives’ attempt to shift the meaning of opportunity for youth is evident through almost every major initiative they’ve taken since gaining power: Massive cuts to Canada’s creative industries; the raising of the OAS from age 65-67; tightening EI benefits; cutting funding to humanities and social science research – all the while doing everything in their power to gut RED TAPE for corporations. There is to be no safety net, except for Canada’s wealthiest.
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Review: Science Fiction and Empire
A review of Patricia Kerslake’s Science Fiction and Empire, a postcolonial examination of science fiction.
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Expect more from your government
Something is happening in Canada that seems, in the context of a majority Harper government, counter-intuitive. Harper continues implementing his right-wing revolution by fiat, and Preston Manning’s “democracy” institute says Canadians actually want “less” government and more individual responsibility. Yet a flurry of polls in the past few weeks and months suggest two dramatic counterpoints to this self-serving narrative.
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Review: Bodies and Pleasures
My review of Ladelle McWhorter’s book Bodies and Pleasures: Foucault and the Politics of Sexual Normalization.
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Mourning Mulcair’s Win
There will be lots of soul searching and head scratching going on this week about what happened with the NDP leadership race. The mechanics of the convention, the interesting lack of deal-making, and how the balloting progressed are all fodder for those who enjoy going through the entrails of leadership conventions. Others will be analyzing the various campaigns of the frontrunners, looking for weaknesses to explain how they could collectively have let Thomas Mulcair, the right-wing Liberal, pro-Israel, political bully become head of their party.
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Mulcair’s victory: A new direction for the NDP?
There is a lot of speculation going the rounds about whether or to what degree Thomas Mulcair will change the direction of the federal New Democratic Party. Mulcair, as everyone who pays attention to Canadian politics knows by now, emerged the winner in the NDP’s contest to replace deceased leader Jack Layton. In the fourth and final vote at the March 24 convention in Toronto, Mulcair scored 57% against runner-up Brian Topp’s 43 percent. The election of the party’s most prominent Quebec MP was no big surprise, especially in Quebec where it was widely considered the logical outcome to the NDP’s upset gains in last year’s federal election when the party won 59 of the province’s 75 MPs — 60% of the NDP’s parliamentary caucus, making the party the Official Opposition and thus a credible contender for government for the first time in its history. But what does the election of this former Liberal mean for the future of the NDP? The answer is not entirely clear, although clues abound.
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Understanding the Victory of Thomas Mulcair
Most of the mainstream media, with the help of the Mulcair and Topp campaigns, constructed the leadership battle at the NDP convention as a battle between those who wanted to move to the centre to win government and those who wanted to win maintaining the “traditional” social democratic values of the NDP.
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