Harper Hangs On

Canada's Tory Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has won a suspension of parliament as he bids to hang on to his job. He's been up against it because of anger from opposition parties about his budget plans, which didn't feature a major package to help the country through the economic crisis, but did include proposals to cut funding for opposition parties. As a result, Mr Harper seemed certain to lose a vote of confidence in parliament next week. That vote now won't happen, because he was able to persuade Canada's Governor General to agree to his request to call the whole thing off until the end of January.

If you think this all sounds like something out of the old days of the British Empire, you're not entirely wrong. It really is up to the Governor General personally to agree to the request to suspend parliament. Just as it would have been up to her to agree to any suggestion from the opposition parties, who've been talking about forming a coalition government in place of Mr Harper's Tory administration. The Governor General is not elected, but is appointed by the Queen. And, er, that's it. The last time there was a vaguely similar crisis in the UK, back in 1963, the Queen herself appointed Alec Douglas-Home as Prime Minister. But that was 45 years ago.

But questions of changing the outdated system must wait for another day. The system that exists is the system the Canadians have got, and they're stuck with it for the duration of this crisis. And despite his political blunders, the odds must still be on Mr Harper's survival. The main opposition party, the Liberals (roughly equivalent to our Labour party) did poorly in the last general election just a couple of months ago, and its leader Stephane Dion said he was going to quit as a result. Any solution that ends up with him as Prime Minister (as the leader of a coalition of opposition parties) would potentially be difficult to stomach for an electorate that so recently rejected both him and his party. It may well come to pass that a new election needs to take place to get out of the crisis. But with polls already showing Mr Harper's Conservatives ahead of the rating they managed in the election, expect him to remain Prime Minister for the foreseeable future.

Advantage Black

Interesting times at the fraud trial of Lord Black, the ex-Canadian former head of media company Hollinger, one-time publisher of newspapers including the Daily Telegraph. He's accused of creaming off vast amounts of cash from his business interests to keep both himself and his big-spending wife in the manner to which they'd become accustomed. With high-profile prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald taking the case, many pundits predicted he'd have a tough time getting off at his trial in Chicago.

But last week was a pretty good one for Lord Black. Testifying against him, ex-Hollinger director Jim Thompson spent three days having large holes blown in his story by the defence team. It seems his memory of the various meetings and agreements isn't what it could be. Round one to Lord Black.

The potentially decisive part of the trial begins tomorrow. David Radler, who has admitted fraud in return for a light sentence in a soft Canadian jail, will take the stand as the prosecution's star witness. Radler's the man who worked with Lord Black for three decades, turning Hollinger into the world's third-largest newspaper group. But Lord Black will be hoping his former friend suffers the same fate in the witness box as Thompson did. If that happens, an acquittal that looked pretty unlikely when all this began starts to become a real possibility.

Risk And Reward

The city of Halifax in Canada has pulled out of the race to host the 2014 Commonwealth Games. While good news for Glasgow, now the clear favourite to beat the only other contender Abuja, the decision is a bit of a shame.

On one level it's understandable. Canada is still haunted by the spectacular financial failure of the 1976 Montreal Olympics, the debt for which was finally paid off just a few months ago. Despite more recent successes including the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Victoria, city leaders in Halifax could be forgiven for playing it safe unless they're sure they've got the cash in place.

But that's the coward's way out. Middling-sized cities like Halifax (population 385,000) around the world aspire to joining the big league of important places. Hosting a major sporting or cultural event is just about the most obvious way of making that happen. It can be expensive, and there's no guarantee of success, as Liverpool may discover with its Capital of Culture celebrations next year. But if city leaders have the confidence to put a big event on properly, the rewards can dwarf the risks. The decision to withdraw from a winnable contest is one the people of Halifax will have plenty of time to rue over the next few years. Nothing much else is going to be going on there.