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Beating our Ploughshares into Swords
I was surprised to see that NATO so readily embraced the target of member nations spending 5 percent of GDP on defence and defence infrastructure and that Canada was part of this consensus. And there does not appear to be much public debate here as to whether this is an appropriate goal. By inverting the…
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Populism with an Ontarian Face
When someone recently asked about how I’m spending my retirement, I replied that I write a blog that espouses quixotic causes. Perhaps my most quixotic cause has been trying to defeat Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government in Ontario, which was initially elected in 2018 and has been returned with legislative majorities in 2022 and 2025.…
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Ambassador Pete Hoekstra: Do You Trust his Message?
In what was billed as his first “major” address to the Canadian business community, U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra spoke extemporaneously for ten minutes and answered a moderator’s questions for another twenty at Toronto’s Empire Club (full text). By way of background, Hoekstra served in Congress as a Republican representing Michigan’s second district from 1993 to…
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Will I Be Deported?
I graduated from Harvard College in 1971, a member of what Harvard’s then-President Nathan Pusey called the “worst class ever,” because so many of us were radical in our politics. As an international student from Canada, it took me some time to find my place in this political world. I was radicalized by the Johnson…
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The Ford Government’s New Budget Doesn’t Add Up
The Ford Government presented its 2025 budget, entitled “A Plan to Protect Ontario,” last week. I don’t have the capacity to analyze the entire document. Rather, I will focus on three aspects of the budget that illustrate my point that it doesn’t “add up.” I don’t mean that in an arithmetical sense, but rather that…
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He Wants to Break Us So They Can Own Us
Canadians watched Donald Trump’s Oval Office media availability with Prime Minister Mark Carney in a state of high anxiety. Would Trump and his lieutenants attempt to humiliate Carney as they had Volodymyr Zelenskyy? We were relieved when Trump began by making nice to Carney [all quotes taken from the transcript]: “Canada chose a very talented…
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“A Better Canada”?: Guest Post by Beth Herst
I am typically the first reader and editor of this blog. In that role, I have been having what diplomats euphemistically call “a lively exchange of views” with my husband, Sandford Borins, regarding his series of posts analyzing Jewish Canadian voting patterns, strategic choices, and issues of concern in the recent Canadian federal election. While…
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Jewish Voters: What Happened, What’s Next
For Canadian Jews, this has been a perplexing election. I took my own advice, registering a protest vote against the Trudeau Government in a constituency the Liberals would win by a landslide, but felt very conflicted. A friend of mine, living in a constituency that was a Liberal-Conservative tossup, was changing their mind daily. Other…
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The Case for Jews to Vote Conservative
In my post two weeks ago, I suggested that perplexed Jewish voters wait to vote on election day, after having heard the national debates and after having seen the latest public opinion polls. My wait-and-see approach has yielded considerable new information. Though this blog is, in the first instance, addressed to Jewish voters, there are…
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Tyranny: An Innovation in American Government
In the post World War II period, the United States has generally conducted itself as a rule-of-law democracy that has expanded political rights for all its citizens, welcomed large numbers of immigrants, and run an economy that has fostered innovation and entrepreneurship. In its foreign policy, it has built alliances and encouraged democratic reform and…
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Should Jews Vote Liberal or Conservative?
This is an existential election for Canadian Jews. For us, it is about Canada’s support for the existence of the State of Israel, about the existence of a Jewish community in Canada, and about Canada’s existence as a tolerant multi-ethnic society. The Trudeau Government’s words and actions since the start of the war in Gaza…
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Another Free Trade Election
In the party leaders’ debate in the 1988 Canadian federal election – a single-issue election about whether to accept the Free Trade Agreement the Mulroney Government negotiated with the Reagan Administration – Liberal leader John Turner hurled an accusation at Mulroney that now seems prophetic: “With the signature of a pen, you’ve thrown us into…
- I am Professor of Public Management Emeritus at the University of Toronto, having retired in July 2020 after a 45-year academic career.
- My latest book, Public Representations: Screen Stories, Narrative, and the Public Sphere, co-authored with Beth Herst, was published in April 2026 by University of Toronto Press (open access).
- On this website I post blogs about politics, narrative, and my life experiences.
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