Author: Harris Berton

This article, “Ethical Killing,” popped up on my Facebook news feed today. The sub-headline is “hipsters, hippies and women are taking up hunting.” Hunting, apparently, is part of the sustainable food movement. Intriguing, as you don’t normally envision hunters as environmental crusaders. However, I’m not convinced by the suggestion that hunting is more “sustainable,” especially since greenhouse

I voted for Justin Trudeau yesterday, despite my enthusiasm for Martha Hall Findlay’s supply management proposal. I wrote a blog about Justin Trudeau a few months ago, where my main argument was that while there is nothing technically wrong with a policy agenda focused on the middle class, simply championing policies such as openness to trade,

Comparisons of the internet and economic globalization is pretty obvious, both involve the path-enforcing evolution of global social networks, triggered by technological development. This exponential evolution, and the profound impact this has had on society, has naturally promoted concerns about the effects of both (network dependency and therefore systemic vulnerability). If I’m dependent on food from

This sort of thing, I cannot stand. The Globe argues the NDP should remove the clauses from the preamble of their constitution stating the basic tenets of socialism: goods and services should be directed to meet the needs of the population, and state ownership. Paragraphs like this one do a serious disservice

This is going to be a rather brief post, but I think this warrants attention. Google obviously is aware I am interested in climate and energy issues, so an ad for this report showed up on my Gmail. This report basically outlines the case against a carbon tax based on the negative

Doug Saunders, reporting on a German family policy study, concludes his article with a couple very strange claims: This (debate about the ineffectiveness of family policy) is all a tortured way of evading the real issue: economic health, which not only makes population shrinkage more affordable, but causes people to have more babies. Working

The most interesting thing I find out about debates concerning electoral reform is that they are often premised on the assumption that the goal of democracy is to eliminate marginalization. But in reality, this is the opposite of what the goal of any democratic system is. Marginalization, so to speak, is at the heart of

It seems the Conservatives are prepared to ease up on supply management, according to this report from the Globe. In order to secure new markets for Canada’s pork and beef industries, they are going to marginally increase the amount of European dairy products we allow into Canada free of taxes.

It’s no secret that a university degree is no longer a guarantee of a high income. There are lots of very plausible explanations for this, and these are well documented. These reasons include labour market saturation, slow developed world growth, kids are just lazier etc. Most of these factors probably have some impact, though I generally

The Globe has again proven to politicians how easy it is to fool journalists into thinking that they are actually saying something. The Globe and Mail’s endorsement of Sandra Pupatello is on the basis of mainly the two words she has managed to say marginally more than her competition. Based

This article in the Guardian and similar articles seem to be getting a fair bit of traction on social media. While they focus on quinoa specifically, they discuss more broadly the environmental and social (they really mean economic) impact of vegetarian diets. It is well established that animal meat is environmentally and

John Ibbitson has an article today suggesting that the Ontario Chamber of Commerce’s report on Ontario’s fiscal relationship with the federal government is evidence for seceding from the country. While being very clear that this report does not suggest anything of the sort, let alone even address the possibility, Ibbitson says the “sentiment