Inkless in review: the year in big comment-board fights

Six posts on this blog this year drew more than 300 comments.

In March I returned from Michael Ignatieff’s big Montreal thinkers’ conference to point out that he had eliminated the biggest policy differences between his party and the NDP, so now they could merge! Readers weren’t sure they agreed.

In April, when a lot of people still thought the government’s refusal to release documents pertaining to the possible abuse of prisoners in Afghanistan was a big deal (seems so long ago!), I tried to predict Stephen Harper’s reaction to the Speaker’s ruling against his government. I thought Harper would fight. I did not realize he wouldn’t have to because the Liberals didn’t care enough.

In early August when a lot of Americans thought the prospect of a "Ground Zero Mosque" was a present danger to the safety and dignity of the Republic (seems so long ago!), I quoted from Michael Bloomberg’s great speech defending American values.

Nine days later I suggested that Stephen Harper was pressing ahead with the abandonment of the mandatory long-form census because he believed he was doing something important and worth any political cost.

Related Posts

New federal budget will include up to $8 billion in defence spending

Politics Insider for Apr. 7: Foreigners to be temporarily barred from buying homes in Canada; Ottawa to summon the Russian ambassador for tough questions over Kyiv atrocities; an Atlantic oil megaproject gets approved

Jonathan Vance pleads guilty, gets conditional discharge

Politics Insider for Mar. 31: Beverly McLachlin keeps her Hong Kong job; CPC MPs land in hot water over Trudeau comments; Doug Ford moves to keep his mandate letters secret

At the end of August I endorsed John Geddes’ superb reporting on the government’s attempts to gin up fake research on the InSite safe-injection site in Vancouver.

In October I picked a fight with Chantal Hébert over our coverage of corruption in Quebec, and readers had a merry time debating whether I’d managed to beat myself up.

I’ll repeat the same exercise soon with my print columns and articles from the magazine.