Wealth gap—the greatest ever?

A couple of items I encountered recently demonstrated perfectly the extremes of the now much talked about wealth gap. First, was a report by Oxfam entitled “Working for the Few” which revealed that the world’s richest 85 people own as much wealth as the poorest 3.5-billion, a staggering statistic. At

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Inheritance—the ultimate free lunch

Watching Jon Stewart the other night brilliantly satirizing American right-wingers’ laments about the poor exploiting social justice programs for a “free lunch,” I was disappointed that he failed to mention the greatest free lunch of them all. Ironically, while “there’s no free lunch” is one of our favourite expressions, down

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The Conservatives turn on PR

It’s not that all Conservatives are opposed to proportional representation. Senator Hugh Segal is onside and Conservative MPs Peter Braid, Stephen Woodworth and Scott Reid have presented Fair Vote Canada petitions to the House of Commons on behalf of their constituents. Even Stephen Harper complained about our electoral system in

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The tar sands—our climate change nemesis

While Neil Young very publicly feuds with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and its ally the Canadian government, tar sands production continues to systematically advance Alberta’s position as the country’s pollution province. Already producing more greenhouse gasses than Ontario, despite having less than 30 per cent of its population,

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The Americans love us

Everyone likes to be liked and, boy, do our southern neighbours like us. A recent Pew Research Center survey reveals that of all the countries in the world, we are the Americans’ favourite. Eighty-one per cent have a favourable opinion of us. Oddly, Americans are not so well disposed toward

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My persons of 2013

If Time Magazine can choose a person of the year, I can choose two: a man and a woman. The woman, of course, is Malala Yousafzai, the courageous young Pakistani champion of education. Malala started speaking out—blogging actually—about education at the tender age of 11. In 2012, she paid a

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Christmas? I do Xmas

One of the traditions of the holiday season is lamenting about the corruption of Christmas by commercialization or by foreign cultures that have invaded our pristine Christian shores. I have always been amused by these complaints, first because in my family’s tradition, Christianity has never intruded on our celebration and

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Producing the wrong oil?

The Joint Review Panel has ruled on the viability of the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline and the result is as expected. The panel, established by the National Energy Board and the federal environment minister, has determined that the pipeline, which would carry bitumen from Alberta’s tar sands to the B.C.

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