Editorials

Almost a year after the New Democrats made history of a kind by showing Thomas Mulcair the door, the party has finally corralled enough candidates to hold a proper leadership debate next month.

Only 39 light-years away, astronomers have found seven planets circling a very small “red dwarf” star called Trappist-1. All seven are in or near what we call the “Goldilocks zone:” not too hot, not too cold, but just right for water to remain liquid on the planet. So we all speculate once again, but a little more bravely this time, about whether some of these planets might be home to life.

Under the guise of the first large set of byelections since Justin Trudeau became prime minister, voters are about to turn a definitive corner on generational change on Parliament Hill.

The St. Matthew’s Day Banquet in Hamburg has been a big date on the German city’s social calendar for more than six centuries. Everyone who’s anyone in Hamburg attends. Under the gilded roof of the historic town hall’s palatial banquet room, keynote speakers discuss the great matters of the day before hundreds of revelers.

For the first time in six years, there is famine in the world: a real, United Nations-declared famine, with more than 30 per cent of the affected population suffering acute malnutrition and more than a thousand people dying of hunger each day. And there are three more countries where famine may be declared any day now.

OK. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Donald Trump have met. They did not get into a slanging match. They did agree that Canada and the U.S. are the best of pals. They issued a bland but not unimportant joint communiqué.

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, Donald Trump handed Justin Trudeau the rose he coveted on Monday in Washington. Like all roses, it comes with thorns. Only time will tell whether those thorns matter more than the flower itself.

“This guy, he’s like a maniac, OK? He wiped out the uncle. He wiped out this one, that one. I mean, this guy doesn’t play games. And we can’t play games with him. Because he really does have missiles. And he really does have nukes.”

There is at least one prediction that is bulletproof about Monday’s first face-to-face meeting between Donald Trump and Justin Trudeau.

Trudeau’s Trump meeting may not be Canadian disaster