Issues, ethics, memory
Those of you who follow my blog will wonder why I have not been posting for the past number of weeks. In fact, several of you have contacted me to ask about it. The truth is that I have been taken up with the final edits of a book that I will publish in October.... Continue Reading →
By Dennis Gruending Stephen Harper won his long-coveted majority government in the 2011 federal election, receiving just under 40 per cent of the votes cast by the approximately 60 per cent of eligible Canadians who bothered to show up. An exit poll of 36,000 voters conducted by the Ipsos Reid company on May 2 yielded... Continue Reading →
Allan Blakeney, Saskatchewan premier 1971-82 My friend Allan Blakeney, the former premier of Saskatchewan, died in April 2011 at age 85. I describe him as a friend and he was, although I am aware that he had many friends of longer duration and also many admirers. As a CBC Radio host, I interviewed him on... Continue Reading →
By Dennis Gruending On day 12 of the federal election campaign Stephen Harper was in Markham, Ontario wooing immigrant voters. That same evening in Ottawa several hundred people gathered at a church called the Peace Tower on Bronson Avenue not far from Parliament Hill. There they pledged fealty to the state of Israel and praised... Continue Reading →
By Dennis Gruending I was in an Ottawa church basement along with about 80 other people a few days after the election call listening to three church leaders on a panel called Environment & Climate in Peril. The frustration was palpable. "Climate change is the key moral and ethical dilemma of our time and we... Continue Reading →
By Dennis Gruending Stephen Harper announced on April 4 that a re-elected Conservative government would scrap Canada's long gun registry. That hardly comes as a surprise.  The Conservatives hate the registry. They tried in the last parliament to do away with it and have all of its records destroyed but they lost the vote narrowly in the House... Continue Reading →
By Dennis Gruending Stephen Harper used the first days of the 2011 election campaign to demonize the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Quebecois as plotting a coalition to replace him following an election in which he might win the most seats but form a minority government. It was both a scare and a smear tactic meant... Continue Reading →
The Conservative government has thrown us into the 2011 election campaign. This is perhaps a good time to take stock of who the Harperites have spent their time attacking in the past several years. (They have also lavished favour on their own, appointing them to be judges, to the Immigration Review Board, the CRTC or... Continue Reading →
By Dennis Gruending Note: This writing is drawn from a chapter that I contributed to a recently-published book called Bush Dweller: essays in memory of Father James Gray, OSB. Long after I had finished with my years at university, I made a list of the five teachers and professors who had been my best. Two... Continue Reading →
By Dennis Gruending I have posted several pieces over the past year about the Harper government's decision to deny project money to the ecumenical social justice group KAIROS. I have also written about CIDA Minister Bev Oda's deceitful behaviour in the whole matter. For months this story was in the back pages of the newspapers... Continue Reading →
Pulpit and Politics 