michael adams

Toronto Mayor David Miller might be the only prominent figure in history to leave a high-powered job claiming he wants to spend more time with his family - and actually mean it.

By now, you may have made the acquaintance of Shona Holmes, a woman from Waterdown, Ont., who says her life was almost cut short by the plodding, government-run health care system of her native Canada.

I grew up during a time when it was said that everything that happened in the United States would eventually come to Canada. For me, the most evocative annual illustration of this was the auto show at Toronto's Exhibition Place, where Detroit's latest contributions to mobility and status were put on display for aspirational Ontarians to drool over.

Like many people around the world, Canadians have been suffering for several months with a nagging chronic condition. The affliction is likely to flare up painfully in the coming weeks. The condition is Obama-envy, and the flare-up will be induced by the visit of the new President on Feb. 19.

Most countries accept immigrants, but when it comes to the scale of its immigration inflow and the diversity of its foreign-born, Canada stands alone in the world.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his team have expressed the desire to move Canada in an incrementally more conservative direction through successive Conservative governments.

In 1991, Tom Lukiwski stood in a campaign office in Saskatchewan, looked into a video camera and made some very derogatory remarks about gay men, to the giggling delight of whoever was filming.

It's the start of 2008. Do you know where Canada's international priorities are? When the Harper government took office in 2006, although its famous "five priorities" were all domestic, one of the goals that hovered around the edges of the Conservative agenda was to beef up Canada's role in the world.

'I have often regretted my speech, never my silence," the Greek philosopher Xenocrates said. One wonders whether, when the Bouchard-Taylor commission on reasonable accommodation has aired the thoughts of every Quebecer who chooses to take the microphone, the province (and indeed the rest of Canada) will feel satisfaction or regret.

It's been nearly a year since Earthlings everywhere were informed that if they wished to stone women, imprison girls, and ruin Christmas, they had better not try any of this in Herouxville, Que.