Category: Sun News Network

Ideas – and plenty of 'em — from Liberal leadership hopeful Deborah Coyne

Deborah Coyne launched her campaign for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada today with a barrage of ideas. You can go through them on her Web site. We only got to a couple of them today — mandatory voting,  reforming the way we elect MPs, and eliminating supply management —  when she joined me earlier today on the Daily Brief: Continue reading Ideas – and plenty of 'em — from Liberal leadership hopeful Deborah Coyne

Pollster Coletto, Liberal partisan Kinsella on Trudeau as saviour of the Liberal Party

The CEO of polling firm Abacus Data, David Coletto, reports that the Liberal Party of Canada would be tied in popularity (this week at least) with the Conservatives and the NDP would be well back in third place if Justin Trudeau were the party’s leader. I put it to Trudeau fan Warren Kinsella that this may be the last thing Liberals should be told, that somewhere out there there is a messiah who can lead Liberals back to the promised land after a decade of decline at the polls:

Continue reading Pollster Coletto, Liberal partisan Kinsella on Trudeau as saviour of the Liberal Party

Is it personal between Joe Oliver and Megan Leslie? Leslie says: "Yeah."

The NDP’s Megan Leslie reviews the spring sitting in Parliament while the National Citizens Coalition’s Stephen Taylor gets asked: Is it time the Conservatives took the New Democrats — ahead or tied with the Tories in several recent polls — more seriously? Continue reading Is it personal between Joe Oliver and Megan Leslie? Leslie says: "Yeah."

Khadr's no threat, his U.S. army lawyer says

U.S. Army Lt. Col Jon Jackson is the court-appointed defender for convicted Canadian terrorist Omar Khadr. Jackson was in Ottawa Thursday and we asked him about Khadr, his state of mind, and Jackson’s assessment of how Canadians should think about him.

Continue reading Khadr's no threat, his U.S. army lawyer says

Key Alberta cabinet posts go to Redford think-a-likes

Duane Bratt of Calgary’s Mount Royal University and I take our first blush of the smaller cabinet named by Alberta Premier Alison Redford today. I was particularly interested to hear Prof. Bratt’s observation about the new transportation minister — Ric McIver — and the relationship he’s soon going to have to have very soon with the man who beat him last year in the race for Calgary’s mayor, Naheed Nenshi.

More from colleague Jackie Larson at the Edmonton Sun on the new cabinet.

'Dutch Disease' metaphor wrong for Canada

Mike Moffatt, an economist and assistant professor at Western University in London, Ont., and I assess NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair’s claim that Canadian resource development, particularly in the oilsands, have given Canada’s economy “Dutch Disease”:

 

Poll: Should government cut the civil service? Are you prepared to do without?

Abacus Data went into the field to sound out Canadians about some of the choices the government is facing with this spring’s federal budget. Tonight on the Daily Brief, Abacus CEO David Coletto gave us the numbers on what he found. Turns out, Canadians want the government to fight the deficit. But we’re not unanimous about how to go about that. You can bet the government itself is in the field with focus groups and polls testing out their ideas on the same issue. Continue reading Poll: Should government cut the civil service? Are you prepared to do without?

Akin and gang are all terrorists, says former Star editor!

Good “tabloid” headline for this blog post — don’t you think? — and it’ good cuz it’s true! Let me explain:

Later this month, I and several of my Sun News Network colleagues will participate in an event called Freedom Weekend that Ezra Levant, host of The Source on Sun News Network, has organized. Here’s the nub of the idea: Most of the on-air talent you see on Sun News Network will hang out at a nice spot in Ontario’s Muskoka cottage country for a weekend and we’ll talk politics or whatever with those who want to join us.

Other news organizations have done stuff like this.  The Globe and Mail, for example, did a 10-day luxury trip in 2008 with 500 paying guests. It sold out!

Hosted by Globe and Mail Publisher Phillip Crawley and Editor-in-Chief Edward Greenspon, the  cruise features a custom itinerary designed specifically for the interests of Globe and Mail readers including: gourmet classes and demonstrations with Food Network celebrity chefs and  The Globe and Mail‘s own Lucy Waverman; wine tastings hosted by Globe wine expert Beppi  Crosariol; special shopping excursions led by Globe Life’s Amy Verner; and “behind the news”  events with Globe and Mail columnists and editors including Margaret Wente, [Andrew] Willis, [current editorial board chair John Geiger, [current Ottawa bureau chief] John Ibbitson, and [after years reporting from Ottawa and just moving to Halifax] Jane Taber.

“The cruise is the ultimate brand extension,” commented Globe and Mail Publisher Phillip  Crawley.

No wonder it sold out. Great food with Lucy, wine with Beppi, shopping with Amy all capped off with politics with John and Jane! (I kid here but in fact that sounded to me like a lot of fun for I quite enjoyed yakking with Beppi about booze when I worked at 444 Front and John and Jane do, in fact, know a lot about politics. Mind you: I couldn’t afford the freight … sigh)

So Ezra organized something similar for our network — great “brand extension.” I’ll be there. I’ll do what I do 7 days a a week no matter who’s listening – talk about politics, not from the perspective of any partisan viewpoint but from the perspective of “an independent.”

But — get this — John Miller, who is a “professor of journalism at Ryerson for 23 years… That followed a 20-year career as an editor and reporter..  at the Toronto Star, where he was foreign editor, founding editor of the Sunday Star, weekend editor, deputy managing editor, and acting managing editor.
He came to Ryerson as chair of the School of Journalism, and served in that position for 10 year..” says in a post at his blog that that I and my colleagues participating in Ezra’s “Freedom Weekend” are terrorists.  Now I’ve been called names before  but this one takes the friggin’ cake!

“… the last time a group of ideological warriors went north to train in the backwoods and plot to storm Parliament, blow up the CBC, seize the airwaves and spread terror across the land. Oh yeah, the Toronto 18 did that. Didn’t police arrest the lot of them and call them the gravest threat to our democracy?

I think a weekend with Ezra and friends could be something just like that.

The only thing that sets them apart from the Muslim extremists is that Sun Media will be charging you admission.

[read the whole post: Blog: Fun with Ezra]

And remember: The Star itself [in this excellent long-form series by Isabel Teotonio and elsewhere] agreess that it is accurate and appropriate to identify the Toronto 18 that Miller compares us to as “terrorists.”

C’mon professor Miller! Ain’t you jumping the shark a bit with that one?