J.J. McCullough

Ah, the week of Victoria Day. That quintessentially Canadian time of year when the nation's news editors have all either split town or are too hungover to work, leaving hapless deputies across the land furrowing their brows and wondering how to fill a full editorial page when only half the...

Remember the days when the press was gleefully brimming with anticipation over how Stephen Harper's crack team of character assassins would choose to "define" Thomas Muclair? Would he target the new NDP leader's temper? Or maybe his party-swapping? His French citizenship? His beard?

Well, it seems at some point the punditocracy...

In seeking to fill this humble column space week after week (a space, incidentally, which has recently been christened with the sexy new name "Media Bites" and an equally sexy title card), one of my main goals has been raising awareness of trite media narratives, and the degree to which the modern Canadian...

To say there's a pronounced lack of support for the Quebec student strike among members of the Canadian pundit class is a bit like saying there was a pronounced lack of support for icebergs among the crew of the Titanic. In a rare instance of -- dare I say it? --...

It was an otherwise forgettable issue of Newsweek, containing only one real article of note.

"Liberalization is a ploy," declared George Will's column, in response to recent gossip from the Eastern Bloc."The wall will remain."

It hit newsstands November 9, 1989. The very day the wall came down.

Now, multiply Will's embarrassment by a factor of...

Thirty years later, how has the Charter of Rights and Freedoms changed Canada? Such was the Grade 12 civics question that gripped the nation's editorial pages this historic week, as pundits across the land churned out neat, double-spaced essays about the importance of codified constitutions in the era of human...

Now, I enjoy a good scandal as much as the next man, but as a general rule I find it's hard to get overly outraged when the scandalousness in question is the result of a) politicians lying, b) politicians wasting money, or c) politicians lying about wasting money. It's a bit...

Well, the Thrilla on the Hilla may be over, but in the eyes of Canada's journalists, the real game's just getting started.

The objective? Cobble together the most compelling narrative to explain why Justin Trudeau's unexpected smackdown of Patrick Brazeau actually represents something more consequential for the nation than a third-party, backbench...

The 2012 federal budget was the last silky adornment to be peeled off in Stephen Harper's long dance of seven veils with Canadian Conservatives. Turns out there's not much underneath.

For the last six years, anyone who's turned to the Conservative Party for a coherent agenda of smaller government, lower...

If you ever want to see photographic proof of the world revolving around Ontario, I highly advise checking out this charming video from the Toronto Star. "We're inside the Ontario budget lock-up," announces Queen's Park bureau chief Robert Benzie, as the camera pans to reveal an oak-lined holding pen...

If Thomas Mulcair doesn't become boss of the NDP this weekend the nation's pundits sure will have wasted a lot of time. For the last couple of days, Canada's editorial pages have basically been an all-Mulcair-all-the-time extravaganza, as writers and reporters furiously scramble to prove they hold brilliant insights into...

For anyone still in denial about the sad state of the Canadian conservative movement, may I present the Manning Networking Conference as exhibit A. Despite being billed as Canada's answer to CPAC -- the unapologetically brash and undeniably powerful U.S. Conservative Political Action Conference that recently concluded its February meeting -- the consistently bland,...

On Wednesday night, in one of those sparsely-attended gatherings synonymous with campus politics, just over 1,000 interested students at Concordia University (population 30,000) took it upon themselves to declare a student strike. Mad as hell at the prospect that their yearly tuition may skyrocket (by Quebec standards) as high...

Well, at least it's been a good week for the nation's cartoonists.

One of the lamest  things about making caricatures for the editorial page is all the time you spend drawing stupid boring junk like deficits and Nycole Turmel instead of cool, fun stuff like pirates and dinosaurs. So the...

As we all learned from my most recent column, the NDP leadership race is currently running neck-in-neck with Arctic Air in the contest to see who can produce the last compelling form of government-run entertainment. 

The reasons are basically two-fold: 1) there are way too many people trying to become NDP leader,...

Try to restrain your shock, but I'm finding it hard to care much about the NDP leadership race.
Regardless of what one thinks of the party itself (and for what it's worth, I don't think that much), it must be conceded that its uninspired quest to provide the nation with...

Assuming your city is anything like mine, you're no doubt aware that the CBC has recently produced a show called Arctic Air. A casual tourist to Vancouver, in fact, could be excused for thinking Canadians toil under the cruel tyranny of Adam Beach, so omnipresent are the enormous billboards bearing...

If you want to find fault with the monarchy in 21st century Canada, there are basically two ways to go about it. The first is to focus on the "big issues" -- you know, epic questions of democracy, equality, sovereignty and self-government, and the degree to which hereditary kingship is incompatible with...

Canada's left could not ask for a more perfect opponent: a far-right, socially-regressive prime minister hellbent on outlawing abortion, overturning gay marriage, selling off the CBC, and privatizing health care.

There's only one problem. His name isn't Stephen Harper. He doesn't exist at all, in fact.

But don't tell the...

Political parties are a lot like soft drinks: It's easy to stay loyal to one brand long after you've forgotten the original reason why. But when a new, more enticing flavour comes along switching loyalties can be just as easy.

The remarkable thing about the steady decline of the B.C. Liberals is...