Jane Stannus

Mark Carney won’t change Canada for the better

Apparently Canada hasn’t taken enough punishment yet. After a close, hard-fought race that extended into the wee hours of the morning, Mark Carney and the Liberals came away with enough seats to form a minority government. They will form Canada’s fourth consecutive Liberal government since 2015. The Liberals maintained their edge, in part, thanks to the collapse

Canadians need saving from Mark Carney, not Donald Trump

Tomorrow’s election will be one of the most important in Canadian history. The results hang on one crucial question: what’s the biggest threat to Canada right now? The Liberals, under the guidance of Mark Carney, have used every tool at their disposal to frighten, persuade, and cajole voters into believing the biggest threat to Canada

Why have Canada’s conservatives backed euthanasia?

There’s two weeks left before Canada’s federal election, and we’re dying over here. Former Bank of England governor Mark Carney seems more and more likely to walk away with the top job, while Poilievre is busy bowing and scraping before the sacred cows of the left. This week, Poilievre decided, for some reason, to pledge

Trump is making showers great again

Sometimes it’s the little things. Get ready, world. America is back – with shiny, clean hair, glowing skin and a faint aura of L’Occitane Cherry Blossom. And all thanks to Donald Trump, who has just signed an executive order unleashing the power of the American showerhead. The order rescinds an Obama era rule which limited the

Canada is more conservative than politicians think

Finally, some good news for Canada’s Conservative party. For the first time since the federal election was announced, a poll last week showed them in the lead, and polls over the weekend show them closing in on the Liberal party. They’re not where they were, but it’s progress. In early January, the much-loathed Trudeau was stepping

Is Canada doing enough to stop the US trade war?

There’s such a thing as cutting off your nose to spite your face, and the tariff war between Canada and the US is beginning to look like a case in point. On Monday, the premier of Ontario, Doug Ford announced a 25 per cent surcharge on electricity exports to the US, with 1.5 million households

Mark Carney will be Canada’s Project Fear PM

Oh no, Canada. The maple smoke has floated up from the Liberal party’s headquarters, and the bad news is out: our new Prime Minister is Mark Carney, banker, Davos darling, and ruthless climate radical. It’s not even Canadians’ fault this time. Trudeau, admittedly, was. But Carney is a Liberal party pick, which sounds reasonable until

The dark legacy of Justin Trudeau 

He’s gone – but he’s not gone. As per his announcement in Ottawa on Monday, one of Canada’s most disliked prime ministers is finally set to exit the political stage. First sworn in on November 4, 2015, Justin Trudeau will resign once the Liberal party has chosen his successor. It is a process that may take

Prepare for the National Suicide Service

Tragically, British lawmakers voted on Friday in favour of a bill legalising medically assisted dying. Despite all the talk of ‘safeguards’ and determination to make it ‘the best bill it can be’, the horses are out of the stable now. Once assisted suicide is enshrined as a moral good for even the tiniest, most carefully screened subset

Why unorthodox thinkers are embracing Christianity

Russell Brand was baptised on Sunday, he says – in the River Thames, despite his tongue-in-cheek fear of catching a virus – and he’s thrilled about it. He thanked those who embraced his decision, while expressing understanding of those who are cynical. He’s not perfect, he explains; he knows he’s going to make mistakes, but

Avoid microplastics? Don’t bother

They’re everywhere, it seems: in the oceans, the fish, the soil, our drinking water, our vegetables, our grains and cereals, our meat – even in us. Microplastics and smaller nanoplastics are tiny particles of plastic flubbage measuring half a centimetre or less that result from the degradation of plastic refuse, and according to recent news coverage

Where’s the outrage over Trudeau’s trip to Britain?

As Justin Trudeau waltzed through the UK, visiting Boris Johnson and the Queen, did anyone spare a thought for Canadians struggling under Trudeau’s authoritarian Covid power moves? In 2016, the British parliament debated whether Donald Trump, then running for the US presidency, ought to be banned from the UK for inflammatory ‘hate speech’. When Trudeau

Canada’s Orwellian online harms Bill

There’s a way of getting children to eat something they dislike – medicine, for example – where you bury the goods in a spoonful of jam. Justin Trudeau’s Liberals are trying this method with their Online Harms Bill C-63. But it may not go down as well as they hoped. The stated intent of the Bill is

Did China influence the Canadian elections for Trudeau?

It’s been a sticky couple of weeks for Canada’s natural governing party, as the Liberals like to call themselves. Anonymous sources from CSIS, Canada’s intelligence agency, leaked information to two major Canadian media outlets, The Globe and Mail and Global News. The reports say China interfered in Canada’s two most recent federal elections, and that CSIS alerted the

Canada’s parents are taking to the streets

In the biggest demonstration since the Freedom Convoy, large numbers of Canadian families and supporters took to the streets across the country on 20 September to assert the rights of parents as primary educators and protectors of their children with the slogan, ‘Leave our kids alone!’  The ‘1 Million March 4 Children’ was spearheaded by Muslim Canadians

The all-American roots of the Moscow Mule

If called upon to declare the seven greatest cocktails of all time – a Magnificent Seven, as it were – what would be your line-up? The struggle is less in naming seven than in sticking to so few. The ubiquitous gin and tonic must be on the list, of course, along with the Old Fashioned.

What Lenten fasting has in common with Tough Mudder

Ash Wednesday is upon us, and it is once again time to meditate on the unusually self-aware admission of Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night: ‘I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit.’ It has until now been an exceptionally good season for beef. Grass-fed steak

How to make eggnog

Let Bing sing about a white Christmas, if he insists. My kind of Christmas is more eggnog-toned: yellowy, like old-fashioned incandescent string lights; rich, like real velvet ribbon on presents; topped with pale froth of the most non-utilitarian and fluffy kind; sweet, with a kick of rum or bourbon to redeem it from sentimentality; stippled with

Justin Trudeau’s strange defence of his protest crackdown 

On Friday, Justin Trudeau made his much-anticipated appearance before the Canadian Public Order Emergency Commission, where he gave testimony about his unprecedented decision to use the Emergencies Act last February to suspend civil liberties and suppress the trucker protests against vaccine mandates. Using the Act allowed Trudeau to freeze the personal and business accounts of the protestors

An ode to the potato

Potato, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. There are great buttery mountains of mashed Yukon Golds, and then there are oven-roasted wedges with lime, dill and black pepper, or baked russets with their innards extracted and mashed with sour cream and chives, stuffed back into their jackets, topped with a little grated