Barry Campbell
-
Gladiator II: Canada Confronts a Re-Elected Donald Trump. Let the Games Begin.
When he enters the arena on January 20th, 2025, an emboldened President Trump won’t need a net. The rest of us will. He is spoiling for a fight and suiting up. The challenges which have become evident in very short order will test us and test us again. We in Canada must urgently think through…
-
Sometimes It’s Not Just a By-election…
We Won, They Lost No one was more surprised by last night’s victory than my fellow Conservatives. When St. Paul’s boundaries were redrawn 1996 the riding went from a bellwether riding to a safe Liberal seat that meant little to the ebb and flow of national politics — until yesterday when the electors of St.…
-
Perspectives on Federal Budget 2024
Budget 2024: Lots of Everything all at Once Barry Campbell There is always a political calculus behind a Budget. Where a government is in the electoral cycle is a factor in a budget’s themes and measures. With a Federal election required by the Fall of 2025, a budget now would not normally be the one…
-
An Open Letter To Canada’s Political Leaders
On April 2, the Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper, published a letter written by Barry Campbell and signed by 50 prominent Canadians calling on all political leaders to acknowledge and take steps to address the growing in-civility of our interactions with each other. There will always be strongly divergent views about events abroad or…
-
The Cognitive Dissonance of the 2023 Fiscal Update
Not so very long ago when “Fall Economic Updates’” were added to the Parliamentary calendar, these short “Updates” on the fiscal situation heralded a new transparency around the nation’s finances. “Updates” then morphed into “mini-budgets”, providing the Government of the day an opportunity to pat itself on the back and to offer up pre-holiday goodies. At…
-
Cabinet Jenga on The Rideau
Refashioning a Cabinet mid-way through a Government’s mandate is not unlike a game of Jenga. Something’s gotta give to get things moving: a retirement, a demise (physical or political) or expanding the size of the Cabinet to add new Cabinet-level leadership around a pressing issue. Inevitably, Ministers are ditched (deservedly or not) so that someone…
-
Crypto Won’t Stay Dead: A Conundrum for Regulators and Central Bankers. An Opportunity for Canada.
The demise of “crypto exchange” FTX (only a short time ago), and the resulting collapse in the value of crypto, may have been greeted by central banks and financial services regulators with relief. Some pronounced private digital currencies like bitcoin officially dead. Others believed there would be time to figure out what to do about…
-
Budget 2023: Big Spending To Placate The NDP and Confront A Competitive And Dangerous World
The NDP are the big winners in Budget 2023. The Liberals have delivered what the NDP needs to continue to shore up the Minority Liberals: a national dental care plan, a prohibition on the use of replacement workers during strikes and the requirement that recipients of investment tax credits pay a fair wage (whatever that…
-
Budget 2022: Why We Spend
Some Budgets are introduced with Speeches that are written in poetry, others in prose. It is either clarion call or laundry list. This one was somewhere in between. The Speech, and the Budget it introduced, had many masters: a global pandemic; a war featuring a nuclear power and autocrat brutally attacking a neighbour; and a national…
-
Cabinetry in Our Time: Everything and the Kitchen Sink
Choosing a cabinet is one of the hardest tasks that faces any Prime Minister. One early Canadian Prime Minister facing the inevitable second guessing about (his) choices lamented: “Give me better wood and I will make you a better cabinet.” (Source: parli.ca) The point in dredging up this old saw is not to criticize any particular…