Author: Rod McQueen

Dear Prime Minister: You and your staff may have seen the story in the Globe and Mail Wednesday morning about a number of Liberal MPs and others who have their eye on your job. Now you know how Erin O’Toole feels. The list of your hopeful successors is lengthy and is said to include Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly, Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne, man-of-the-world and my personal favourite Mark Carney, former Quebec MP Frank Bayliss and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland. The piece, written by Robert Fife, who usually gets things right, is careful to keep most of his sources...

Don’t you just love Quebecers and their views on language? Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau gave a speech recently that was almost entirely in English. He admitted that he couldn’t speak French and allowed as how he’d got along just fine in Montreal for more than a decade without speaking French. He even congratulated Montrealers, saying, “I think that’s a testament to the city.”  Rousseau might as well have admitted to committing sexual harassment so noisy were the complaints that ensued. “Anglophone privilege,” said one, “with a touch of contempt on the side.” Rousseau has since undertaken to learn French....

Last summer when the federal election was called, I assumed that Mark Carney would run for office. Everything looked to be in place for the former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England who had previously declared that he was a Liberal. He had just published a book, Value(s), that The Guardian called “magnificent” and a “landmark achievement,” high praise not usually given by the British newspaper. He was living in Ottawa and the safe Liberal seat of Ottawa Centre beckoned. But the man with a doctorate from Oxford did not run. At the time, I thought he’d...

Back in the day, the 1960s to be exact, when I showed up for first year at the University of Western Ontario, there was an organized frosh week. Purple Spur, a group of senior students, kept us busy all day, doing their bidding. I don’t remember all the indignities we were put through but picking up trash, barking like a dog, and generally feeling degraded were among them. The purpose, of course, was to create a community among the new arrivals. Western had only 5,000 students in those days, compared to 28,000 today, so it seemed easy to make friends....

If I ran the world, here’s what I’d do: * make vaccinations mandatory for all, even the anti-vaxxers and religious pull-backers; the rest of us have constitutional rights, too; * ban any and all tattoos on women; they’re reprehensible; * while we’re at it, lets’s ban those stretch Lululemon-style yoga leggings when they’re worn on the streets as the only body covering below the waist. Some women might be able to carry off such attire, but not many; * send Justin Trudeau to a voice coach to get rid of his annoying habit of pausing to draw a breath on...

Erin O’Toole is a dead duck. Despite the fact that the Conservatives won the popular vote in this week’s election, they did not win the seat count. That’s why the Liberals will never bring in election reform as they said they would. First-past-the-post works fine for them. Just as Andrew Scheer became a former leader after the last election, so too will O’Toole. If he doesn’t resign on his own, he will be pushed by the party and it will be as messy as it will be humiliating. The party will follow Oscar Wilde’s dictum, “A good friend will always stab...

Whatever the outcome of this election, the status of the Bloc Quebecois as a federal political party should be rescinded. The Bloc is little more than a bunch of hypocrites who take federal paycheques as well as federal funds for parliamentary staff and constituency offices all the while trying to create a sovereign Quebec. The party has had some electoral success in Quebec under a variety of leaders since its founding in 1991. Led by Lucien Bouchard and Gilles Duceppe, among others, the Bloc won fifty-four seats in 1993 and 2004 while hitting a low of two seats in 2014. At...

Keith Davey, Pierre Trudeau’s campaign manager, also known as “The Rainmaker,” used to say that every election required a move to the “radical middle.” By that he meant a political party shifted to the left to capture votes but then turned back to the right to govern. That radical middle was where Erin O’Toole was headed until he got rudely interrupted by reality. A week ago, according to the Nanos poll, he was a “political freight train” in the lead ahead of Justin Trudeau. Now, O’Toole is beginning to look more like a train wreck.  After all, can a Conservative...

This is the first federal election I can remember when coverage of leaders and issues is often well down in the TV newscasts. There are no dulcet tones of politicians until after Afghanistan, forest fires, Haiti and other catastrophes. This subterfuge may be regarded as helpful by the Liberals who have been hurt by the unpopularity of the early election call, the resurgence of Covid and the so-so performance of Justin Trudeau. By contrast, the chipper appearances and fully fleshed-out campaign commitments of Conservative leader Erin O’Toole have surprised everybody.  But what if, as appears likely, the outcome is another...

The first book I ever wrote was called The Moneyspinners: An Intimate Portrait of the Men Who Run Canada’s Banks. Published in 1983, it had chapters on each of the Big Five Bank Chairmen and Chief Executive Officers: Rowland Frazee of the Royal, Bill Mulholland of Bank of Montreal, Richard Thomson at TD, CIBC’s Russell Harrison and Cedric Ritchie of the Bank of Nova Scotia. Writing about businesspeople was so novel at the time that there were individuals who were shocked to find themselves quoted, even though I came to their offices, explained what I was doing and turned on...

If you were sitting in an audience that Bill Davis was addressing, you knew that no matter his topic, you were in for some fun first. As a native son of Brampton, Ont., there would be more than a few complimentary remarks about his home town, what a great place it was to live and how investors were always welcome. Next, Davis – who spoke with the speed and agility of an auctioneer – would begin to pick out people that he knew and take a few pokes at the expense of each in turn. As Davis worked his way...

During the last two years, the average price for a detached house in Canada has risen 25 percent, even more in Toronto. As a result, many hopeful first-time home buyers have been priced out of the market. This go-go period is all so reminiscent of the run-up in the 1980s that was followed by a 50 percent drop in values during the recession of the 1990s. It took until the early 2000s for values to get back to where they had been. I’m not predicting a repeat performance. This economy is stronger … at the moment. But I do think...

For Joyce McKeough, politics was a precious part of her life. Her father, David Walker, was a member of the House of Commons, a cabinet minister in the John Diefenbaker government, and later, a senator. Her husband, Darcy, served in the Ontario Legislature for fifteen years and was Treasurer in the Bill Davis government. Educated at Branksome Hall and Trinity College at the University of Toronto, Joyce had been presented at court to Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip and came away with a vivid remembrance of “the devastating eyes of the Prince.” Joyce was working at an advertising agency, Ronalds-Reynolds,...

At first glance, Google appears to be doing what it should have done long ago, making global product and licensing arrangements that will pay billions of dollars for reproducing other peoples’ articles. Until now, the originating organization received no payment for what clearly has been nothing less than copyright infringement. Around the world Google has signed with the Murdoch-owned News Corp. as well as media organizations in Germany and Australia. This week, Google announced deals with eight Canadian participants, including the Winnipeg Free Press, the Globe and Mail and Métro Média. That’s only a fraction of the organizations that exist,...