A small but interesting item appeared in both Maclean’s and the Toronto Star in the past few days. It concerned the move of Kevin Chan, the executive assistant to Privy Council Clerk Kevin Lynch, to a senior advisor post for Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff. Lynch is, of course, the main link between the prime minister’s […]
An outpouring of potpourri – OttawaWatch
WE ARE starting off 2009 with best wishes for a Happy New Year — and a potpourri of stories that all point to the need for good communication of the listening kind around Parliament Hill.
Act of random kindness
“Today I will commit one random act of senseless kindness — will you?” Have you ever seen that bumper sticker? Better yet have you ever been the recipient of a random act of senseless kindness? Last week I was at the IGA picking up a couple of things. When I got to the cashier, my […]
Free speech and diversified mosquitos
Some discussion on a list serve of which I recently became a part has concerned freedom of speech and of the press. The focal point was a complaint which has been laid with several Canadian human rights commissions, against Maclean’s magazine, for a Mark Steyn excerpt they ran from his recent book, America Alone: The […]
OttawaWatch: Foodgrains vs. the cabinet shuffle
What does the Canadian Foodgrains Bank (CFB) have to do with this week’s cabinet shuffle? Not too much, on the surface at least, as it turns out. But let’s deal with the comparison, first, before getting into some interesting nitty gritty about the CFB. * * * In church, this past Sunday, I learned a […]
Breaking up the old gang
Some of our older readers will remember a song entitled ‘Those Wedding Bells Are Breaking Up That Old Gang of Mine.’ The cheerful dirge points out, in a rather plaintive way, how group relationships can change when a marriage takes place and the parties to the merger become committed to each other more than to […]
OttawaWatch: Of budgets, books and balance
The federal budget passed, this week, not unexpectedly, with the Conservatives and Bloc Quebecois voting in favor and the Liberals and NDP, against. It was difficult to escape the irony posed by many of the pundits who suggested that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s plans for the use of taxpayers’ money seemed pretty much to be […]
OttawaWatch: That ‘humdinger’ of a speech
It is always encouraging to learn that some recipients of OttawaWatch read all the way through each week’s missive — or at least read the last paragraph, not just the first. In last week’s piece, I promised to make some references, today, to Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl’s January 18 speech — the 2007 Mel Smith […]
OttawaWatch: Wilberforce and friends
Two Order of Canada appointments caught my attention this week, as I perused the list released Tuesday morning, February 20, by Governor-General Michaelle Jean’s office. The two are Norgrove Penny and the late Harry Lehotsky. Penny, a Victoria medical doctor, is well-known in British Columbia and some parts of Uganda for both his vibrant Christian […]
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