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From 2014 to 2020, Erin wrote a series of blogs on issues impacting Canada and his riding of Durham. He also chronicled the changing geopolitical landscape during this time and the creeping influence of social media on politics and society. We invite you to explore these blogs that were often published in local, and occasionally national, papers. From 2020 onward, Erin focused on the Blue Skies podcast and eventually his Blue Skies Substack page, so you can explore his ongoing examination of issues on those sites.
In the military we used to assess the success or failure of a mission shortly after it was completed. The “After Action Report” was used to create a lessons learned summary from the mission to ensure that we could learn from it. Positive learnings can be reinforced with future training and negative outcomes can lead to […]
This week, Oshawa MP Colin Carrie and I are hosting a business development luncheon in Oshawa with leaders from across Durham. The topic of the luncheon is the resource industry in western Canada and the guest speaker is a leading executive from Alberta. Now, this might seem like a curious event for two Ontario MPs […]
The Trudeau government increasingly avoids debate on important national issues by demonizing people who disagree with them. This played out in real time this week when the federal Liberal Immigration Minister called the new provincial PC Minister “un-Canadian” for her criticism of the federal government’s record on asylum claimants. Is it “un-Canadian” to suggest that […]
Summer is upon us. The kids are on summer holidays. Farmers are busy in the fields. Members of Parliament are now back in the “real world” of their ridings to listen to the concerns of constituents, meet with organizations on the ground and hopefully get some much-needed time with family. I wanted my first summer […]
Next month, the United Nations Conference on Disarmament will meet to further collective efforts to limit or ban the use of chemical, nuclear and biological weapons and in an almost criminal irony Syria will chair these meetings. You read that correctly. The only country to have repeatedly used chemical weapons in the last few years will chair an international gathering aimed at their elimination. This mockery […]
The last few days have been sad ones for Canada. As I write this column a hockey stick and candle are sitting on our front porch just like on so many homes across our country. The Superman tape I used on Jack’s stick stands out for me. This week the seeming invincibility of youth came crashing down and it leads to […]
In politics there is an expression; “the cover-up is always worse than the crime”. A casual look at famous political scandals from history show this is the case. Efforts to cover-up a mistake are worse than the mistake. Think of the infamous Watergate scandal in the United States. It was not really the break in […]
As virtually everyone in the world knows by now, Prime Minister Trudeau was in India last week. After a week of sight-seeing and very little business, Trudeau clearly saw a lot of India, and by the end of the week it was clear that India had seen a little too much of Trudeau. As the […]
Two years into the Trudeau government’s term and the veneer of the “sunny ways” imagery has started to fade away to reveal a darker undercurrent of dangerous ideological division. We have seen how the steady tax increases by the Liberal government under the guise of taxing the so-called wealthiest 1% have stealthily evolved into attempts […]
For my first blog in 2018 I wanted to share my thoughts on two issues that I think will dominate political discussion over the early part of this new year. To begin with, however, I would like to wish you and your family a happy and prosperous new year. Like dawn in the early morning, […]
