The deployment vote trap

My column this week on Loonie Politics looks at the demands by the official opposition for a vote on military deployments, and why that is not only bad from the perspective of our system of Responsible Government, but why it's even worse for the Opposition itself. In fact, it's nothing less than a trap set by the government, that the leader of the opposition is running headlong into.

An abiding belief in the system

I have a profile piece in the October issue of Canadian Lawyer magazine, my first piece for said publication, and I profiled Senator Mike Duffy's criminal defence lawyer, Donald Bayne, as part of their monthly "Cross Examined" feature. It was a fun and interesting piece to write, and I had great interviews with Bayne and his associates. The only regret was that I wasn't able to get a quote from former premier Dalton McGuinty, who had articled under Bayne. It almost happened, but the timing didn't end up working out until it was too late.

For want of an activist Speaker

I have a bonus column this week on Loonie Politics, which looks at the dispute that erupted this week between Thomas Mulcair and the Speaker, and some of the punditry that has arisen in the wake of it. Of course the problem isn't the Speaker himself – it's a much bigger issue, and we can't simply pretend that we can give him additional powers without addressing those broader problems as well.

The ethics of crowd-sourcing your re-election

My column this week on Loonie Politics looks at the incident of MP Charmaine Borg trying to use a crowd-source fundraising page to start funding her re-election, and all of the associated problems that came up not only with her initial reward offers, but with the concept in general, and why it's a problem for our democratic system in general. It may have been an attempt at trying something new, but it certainly fell flat on its face.

Mandatory voting won't solve anything

I have an op-ed in today's Ottawa Citizen, which looks at the recent discussion on mandatory voting, and as I like to do so often with these kinds of pieces is, I work to debunk some of the arguments being made in support of such a proposal. In particular, the argument is that mandatory voting doesn't actually solve the problems that it proposes to, and I lay out why. It's a pleasure writing for the Citizen once again, and once again the story made it onto National Newswatch, which is always a treat.

Some e-voting lessons from Alberta

My column this week on Loonie Politics looks at the disaster that was the e-voting system in the Alberta Progressive Conservative leadership contest this past weekend, and takes the broader look at why electronic voting – and in particular online voting – remains a bad idea for a great many reasons that are fundamental to our liberal democratic system, and why we should be sticking with paper ballots for as long as possible.