Canadians of a certain vintage will clearly remember “the Canadian Caper,” that dangerous moment in 1979 when our diplomats put their lives on the line to smuggle six of their American colleagues out of revolutionary Iran. Given the situation in Iran – revolutionaries storming the U.S. Embassy, diplomats held hostage,
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Alberta Politics: Alberta separation: Are Russian bots messing with our province, or just homegrown right-wing agitators?
Are Russian bots behind the recent busy social media campaign to persuade Albertans they want to separate from Canada, a la Brexit? Or is this just the work of right-wing Canadian agitators using well-tested digital agitprop techniques to undermine the Liberal Government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau? You can’t rule
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Think rail cars, guns and Liberals, this stuff will hit the fan!
Having bought Canada a pipeline it may or may not want at considerable expense, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continues to spend political capital on Alberta as well, now saying the federal government is prepared to help the province finance the purchase of additional railroad tanker cars to raise the volume
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Doug Ford for the People? More Like For Big Business (Bill 66 discussion)
So, the Ontario government released or introduced Bill 66 today in the Legislature. It does many appalling things under the guise of “opening Ontario for business”. It may open Ontario for business but it strips the public of protections for clean water, health and safety regulations for wastewater and food
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Seriously, what’s the good of an effective carbon tax if it’s politically impossible to implement?
Recent political developments in France and Alberta, though quite different in tone, suggest carbon taxes may not be a viable way to address climate change – leastways not without reaching an unlikely consensus they must be imposed. You may not believe me yet, but you can count on it, politicians
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Hamilton’s Power Couple
I’m being slightly facetious.. but a big congrats to my cousin and cousin-in-law JP Danko and Dawn Danko for being elected to Hamilton City Council and School Trustee respectively. Dawn was just named vice chair of the Hamilton District School board as well. Everyone in the family is very proud
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Ontario Conservatives present a “climate change plan” that has been shown to fail.
A follow-up to my last post: The Ontario Conservative government has finally presented its plan for mitigating climate change. No carbon tax! No cap and trade! Sounds great.. until you see the details: “Rather than imposing a price on carbon pollution as a cost of doing business, the Tories are
Continue readingCowichan Conversations: Friends Don’t Let Friends Smoke Corporate Weed
Canadian’s are going to be in for quite the ride as the greed driven governments and corporate opportunists manage to screw up one of the things that we were famous for, BC Bud. These massive Read more…
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Professors protest Moe Government plan to shutter archives in four locations, including University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon
SASKATOON, Sask. No sooner did the government of Saskatchewan oh-so-discreetly announce it is about to close four branches of the provincial archives and consolidate it all in one location in Regina than more than 30 Canadian scholars had an open letter of protest circulating on the Internet. When the branch
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Alberta politicians need to tread carefully when they comment on the coming job losses at GM Canada in Oshawa
We don’t yet know why General Motors Corp. has decided to walk away from its last auto-assembly plant in Oshawa, Ont., which CTV reported last night the Detroit-based company will announce it is doing at 10 o’clock this morning. I’m sure there will be plenty of suspects. I have one
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Brexit Redux: Looking back at Jason Kenney’s strange comments when the U.K. shot itself in both feet
Back in June 2016, hours after Britons had narrowly voted to leave the European Union, a lot of Albertans scratched their heads at Jason Kenney’s bizarre Brexit commentary on social media. At the time, Mr. Kenney was still drawing a paycheque as the Conservative MP for Calgary Midnapore. He was
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Big Oil wants a milk break … and supply management’s foes are all over the media – except when they’re not
On Tuesday, the president of Cenovus Energy Inc., one of the Big Five players in the Alberta oilsands, called for temporary production cuts across the Canadian oil sector to push the sinking price of oil back up again. It’s all about supply and demand, as the well-educated readers of this blog
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Edmonton Conservative MP Kerry Diotte threatens defamation action against young people who criticized him on Twitter
Edmonton Griesbach MP Kerry Diotte has threatened a young writer and former constituent with a defamation lawsuit for tweeting critical comments about his appearance in photos with Faith Goldy, an unsuccessful candidate for mayor of Toronto who is widely viewed as a white nationalist. Bashir Mohamed, 23, who has written
Continue readingAlberta Politics: While Albertans panicked about state of the oilsands, the Big Five bitumen-extraction corporations made billions
While Albertans have been in flap over the state of the province’s oilsands industry, the Big Five Oilsands extraction corporations have been raking in billions. “Despite the 2014 oil price crash and the ongoing hand-wringing over pipelines and the price differential, the reality is the Big Five oilsands producers have
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Want to know how to deal with Steve Bannon? Oddly enough, Jason Kenney has the answer!
Want to know how to deal with the irresponsible refusal by the organizers of the so-called Munk Debate to cancel their invitation to former Trump election strategist Steve Bannon to come to Canada and spew his racist dreck around our country? Follow the example of Jason Kenney! In most circumstances,
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Election 1 yr away; Battle on Carbon Pricing Favors Liberals
We have seen Conservative Governments in Ontario and Saskatchewan balk at carbon pricing and the Federal Conservatives basically trying to use the old “tax on everything line” they used with success against Stephane Dion’s Green Shift a decade ago, cancelling climate change fighting programs and/or failing to offer (viable) alternatives.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Message to my American Cousins: It’s mellow up here; there is no communist revolution yet; no one wants to take Manhattan
Dear American Cousins, literal and metaphorical: The day before yesterday, medical and recreational cannabis became legal in Canada. The Canada correspondent for the New York Times reported excitedly that we Canadians were calling this C-Day. We were? Beats the hell outta me where she got that idea. I’m pretty sure
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Highly concentrated ownership of Canadian fossil fuel sector leaves little incentive for change, study indicates
Highly concentrated corporate ownership of Canada’s energy sector and lack of government influence means there’s very little incentive for the fossil fuel industry to pay attention to the dangers of global climate change or worry about the communities and workers that depend on it. That’s the tough message behind a
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Unfazed by Donald Trump, what will Stephen Harper make of far-right revival in Bavaria?
I wonder what former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper will make of the success of the scary far-right Alternative für Deutschland party in Sunday’s elections in the South German state of Bavaria? Apparently, significant numbers of Bavarian voters have concluded nothing could possibly go wrong if they elect a bunch
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