Yesterday, the media fell all over a new report from Statistics Canada which found that since 1982 Canada’s wealthiest 1%, and especially Canada’s wealthiest 0.01%, have enjoyed massively disproportionate increases in their income. They pay the same percentage of their income in taxes now as they did then, but somehow
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The Sixth Estate: Things You Won’t Read in Mainstream Coverage of Statistics Canada’s Wealth Inequality Report
Well, at least they’ve come out and said it: income inequality is a growing problem in Canada. The Globe & Mail said it. The Toronto Star said it. CBC said it. Even the National Post managed to get it out, interspersed amongst gripes about how Canadian income inequality isn’t nearly
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Homeopathy Versus “Real” Science in the National Post
The National Post has given considerable space to a vicious attack on homeopathy which, in turn, gave rise to the publication of a spiel by a defender of homeopathy. I have to say, I’m disappointed. But the latter advocate makes her case just about as well as it can be
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Sixth Estate’s Patronage List V2 Launches with 600+ Names
As promised, the Sixth Estate Patronage List Project is coming back online, with 600 names up so far. Contrary to its name, this list is not intended as “proof” of any sort of sinister corruption on the part of the government. I’ve simply taken the term because it’s the one
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: The Globe & Mail: Canada’s Plagiarizing Tabloid of Record
The Globe & Mail’s evidently terminal decline has accelerated to the point where it can now practically be measured by the day. It’s not just that they’ve abandoned the integrity of the free press for unflinching support of the government, even to the point of printing editorials defending the Cabinet
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Anti-Welfare TV Network Asks for Government Bailout
I don’t think there’s really any need for a detailed analysis of the following: the right-wing, free-market, anti-government “news” channel set up by Quebecor and some former Harper staffers is losing money and wants the government to mandate a special tax on cable consumers to guarantee it a revenue source.
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Sixth Estate Patronage List Poised to Return
A couple of years ago now, I decided to start a list that tracked all the various times that people receiving government appointments were noted in the press as being Conservatives. These are usually referred to as “patronage appointments.”
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Globe & Mail: Ethics, Shmethics
It’s disappointing, depressing even, that the anonymous editorial board of Pravda West — excuse me, the Globe & Mail — felt the need to leap to the defence of unethical Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. It’s an extraordinary editorial, even by the generally low standards of Pravda West editorializing. I should
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: They Can’t Stop Spinning
Even when it doesn’t matter. Recently an Ottawa botany professor has suggested that the Bank of Canada erred by using a Norwegian species of maple tree as the basis for the leaf on the new $20 bill. This gave us, first of all, a glimpse into the competence of the
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Stephen Harper, Then And Now
As you may have heard by now, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is in a bit of trouble after attempting to intervene before the CRTC on behalf of a radio station based in his riding. Such interventions violate the rules laid down for ministerial activity under the Harper government. There is
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Let’s Have a War
I’m going to be honest: I know virtually nothing about Mali. I could find it on a map and I could find it on Wikipedia, and that’s pretty much it. I don’t think I’m the only person in this situation. Unlike most of the media, though, I’m going to be
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Sixth Estate Makes Available Julian Fantino’s Ministerial Missives
Canada’s most inept international aid minister ever, Julian Fantino, published two extraordinary partisan screeds on his agency’s website recently which have caused a bit of a kerfuffle in the news. As a result, they’ve been pulled from the government’s website. Nice try, Mr. Fantino. Documents don’t die easily on the
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Sixth Estate Will Return After These Messages
My posting rate has slowed over the past couple of months because of some work in, as they say, real life, which unfortunately takes precedence. I do hope to be back in the saddle properly soon, though. In the meantime, I thought a couple of lines from this country’s pathetic
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: If Theresa Spence was a White Politician, She Could Have Just Fired the Auditor
Some explanation is necessary, I feel, for my post of a couple of days ago, noting the media was displaying a striking degree of hypocrisy with respect to the apparently sorry state of the Attawapiskat First Nation’s finances, and using that as a way to discredit Theresa Spence’s hunger strike.
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: What to Expect from the Joint Support Ship Review: Another Military Procurement Travesty?
A week ago, I predicted that this year’s military procurement scandal would be the National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy: the plan to build 29 new ships for the navy and the Coast Guard, most of them advanced warships, at an official cost of $35 billion but a true total cost that
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Is Theresa Spence’s Alleged Fiscal Mismanagement Serious Because She is an Indian, or Because She Is Not a Conservative Cabinet Minister?
Under the circumstances, it’s actually a little surprising that it took this long. Through a convenient leak to the state broadcaster, presumably from the government, evidence has surfaced that hunger strike chief Theresa Spence’s Attawapiskat First Nation does a terrible job of keeping their books. An internal audit which the
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Elections Canada Disappears Evidence of Election Law Violations
There are a number of disturbing implications to a new report from CBC, mainly because the individual involved is a Cabinet minister (Peter Penashue, Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs and MP for Labrador) and therefore a senior member of the government: Letters shedding light on the election spending and deal-wrangling by
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Spence Hunger Strike Victory?
As I predicted yesterday, the Harper government has seized upon the olive branch extended by the Assembly of First Nations earlier this week to hold a summit later this month as a way to extricate itself from the Theresa Spence hunger strike. Also as I predicted, Harper claims that the
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Atleo Proposal Offers Harper Way Out
For those people hoping Theresa Spence will get out of this hunger strike alive, or simply too weary of all the coverage and wanting it to be over, today’s modest proposal by Assembly of First Nations head Shawn Atleo offers an apparent way out via an olive branch to Stephen
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: True Cost of Harper Government’s Warship Construction Plan: $35 Billion, or $103 Billion?
I’ve been putting a great deal of thought recently into the likely true cost of the Harper government’s multi-billion-dollar National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy, aka the plan to shower practically unlimited military construction dollars into Halifax and Vancouver in the hopes that they magically morph into votes for the Conservative Party.
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