What are the consequences when elected governments make policy based on faith and imperial hubris instead of science and expertise? It’s a question that is forcing itself on the world as we watch the United States, Britain, NATO and the Harper government continue to up the ante in the confrontation with Russia over the Ukraine.

Anyone who really wants to get the country back from the grim reaper now in charge of Canada – and who knows our political history – would look to the NDP as their best hope. They are the only party that is not completely in the pocket of big business and the political elite and that also has a chance of making a difference in Parliament.

Two weeks after the senseless murder of a soldier on Parliament Hill (and another earlier in Montreal) there are several things we know and many we don’t. Obvious questions have been asked and inconvenient ones have been left aside.

It’s getting difficult to remember a time when the Canadian Parliament actually tried to make principled decisions regarding foreign policy and our place in the community of nations. But we should try. Perhaps a first step in returning to such a time was the decision of the NDP and Liberal Party to oppose Stephen Harper’s most recent ill-considered and cynical march to war with his decision of join the bombing of Iraq.

By sheer coincidence the media has recently been filled with stories that reflect the parallel universes we seem to be living in. The first were the stories about the international climate summit and the huge climate march (and hundreds of smaller ones) that preceded it – punctuated by the launch of Naomi Klein’s powerful call-to-action book This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. the Climate adding to the power of the moment.

The NDP’s announcement that it will push for a national minimum wage if elected is good news and suggests that the party may finally be overcoming its decades-long aversion to engaging its Liberal and Conservative adversaries on the question of the economy.

For years Stephen Harper often seemed at war with his own government, so consistently critical were reviews by its various independent oversight agencies. It seems that at least one “independent” body, the Parliamentary Budget Office, is now a little more PMO-friendly.

Stephen Harper hates losing, maybe even more than he likes winning. If that’s the case he may well resign rather than face the humiliation of defeat on his single most important commitment.

Stephen Harper’s embarrassing behaviour regarding the crisis in Ukraine misses the bigger picture: a Russia-driven shift in global currency allegiance that could devastate the economies of the U.S. and Canada. It’s a shift that Harper is helping with his rhetoric and actions.

With the introduction of the "Fair Elections Act," the 2015 election could be purely about democracy itself, argues Murray Dobbin.