PHOTOS: Canada’s newspaper publishers are finally getting a grip on how to deal with this new-fangled technology stuff, like that Internet thing. Just pick up the phone and get the federal government to give you money! Below: Postmedia columnist Andrew Coyne, Postmedia CEO Paul Godfrey, former Globe and CBC journalist
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Montreal Simon: Is Andrew Scheer a Ghastly Con or a Reagan Republican?
We already knew that Andrew Scheer is a sinister religious fanatic, who doesn't believe in women's rights, and believes that gay Canadians are "abhorrent."We knew that he likes to smile a lot, even when he's talking about child rape and other dirty sex stuff in the House of Commons.Except when he
Continue readingMontreal Simon: LGBT Rights and the Trudeau Legacy
After fighting for years for their human rights, and having to endure the most disgusting discrimination and violence, this was a good week for transgendered Canadians.A few days ago at a ceremony to mark Pride Month, they saw their flag raised on Parliament Hill for the first time.And yesterday they finally
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Sarah O’Connor examines the inconsistent relationship between job quantity and quality as another example of how it’s misleading to think of policy choices solely in terms of the number of jobs generated. Angela Monaghan discusses how wages continue to stagnate in the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Martin Lukacs contrasts Justin Trudeau’s hype machine against the genuine hope offered by Jeremy Corbyn, while Paul Mason sees the election result as just a first battle against the UK’s ruling elite. And Thomas Walkom discusses how left populism is the real
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Owen Jones writes that UK Labour’s bold and progressive platform was crucial to its improved electoral results. Bhaksar Sunkara rightly sees Labour’s campaign – in both its firm defence of the common good, and its determination to reach young and marginalized voters rather
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Michal Rozworski highlights how UK Labour’s platform provides for a needed move toward the democratization of economic activity along with an end to gratuitous austerity. And a distinguished group of economists has signed on to support the plan. – Charlie Skelton examines how
Continue readingAlberta Politics: David Khan elected to lead Alberta Liberals 100 years less a day after party’s last election victory
PHOTOS: New Alberta Liberal Leader David Khan, at left, in a hopelessly self-referential photo with your blogger. (Photo: Dave Cournoyer.) Below: Liberal leadership candidate Kerry Cundal, leadership dropout Nolan Crouse and would-be centre uniter Stephen Mandel. CALGARY Members of the Alberta Liberal Party elected David Khan to what has to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Armine Yalnizyan writes that a $15 minimum wage is ultimately good for businesses as well as for people: When higher income households see wage gains, some of it goes to savings. Additional consumption also often flows to vacations and luxury goods, often
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Meagan Gilmore examines how an increased minimum wage is good for business. – Hannah Aldridge offers some suggestions to keep a poverty reduction strategy on target. And Make Poverty History notes that Brian Pallister is offering a textbook example of how not to
Continue readingCuriosityCat: How Globalization hammers France
Worth reading is this article: Guilluy doubts that any place exists in France’s new economy for working people as we’ve previously understood them. Paris offers the most striking case. As it has prospered, the City of Light has stratified, resembling, in this regard, London or American cities such as New
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Genial and in control, Alberta premier fields questions about B.C. politics with aplomb at hospital announcement
PHOTOS: Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and Health Minister and Deputy Premier Sarah Hoffman announce a new hospital on Edmonton’s south side. Alberta Health services CEO Verna Yiu is visible on the right. Below: Infrastructure Minister Brian Mason, controversial B.C. environmentalist Tzeporah Berman and some of the crowd at the hospital
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Assorted content to start your week. – Rhys Kesselman challenges the Fraser Institute’s grossly distorted conception of “tax competitiveness”: Even with lower overall tax burdens, many Americans bear much heavier non-tax burdens than their Canadian counterparts. These costs can be so large as to swamp any tax-rate differentials between the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Corporate media have reached consensus about Andrew Scheer: He’s Stephen Harper with a human face!
PHOTOS: Andrew Scheer, demonstrating his vaunted smile. (Photo: Rabble.ca.) This fills corporate media with hope. It shouldn’t. In Canada, with or without a smile, social conservatism is ballot-box poison. Below: former prime minister Stephen Harper, who really doesn’t have a very nice smile at all. Below him, former PM Joe
Continue readingIn This Corner: The Return of Stuff Happens, week 19: Will there be ‘Scheer madness’?
At long last, the federal Conservatives have a new leader … and it’s NOT Maxime ‘Mad Max’ Bernier, who would have been the first deeply libertarian leader of a major Canadian political party. After a vote counting process that was only slightly less difficult to understand than watching Game of Thrones
Continue readingAlberta Politics: ANDREW WHO? Oh, wait! I grabbed the wrong picture from the file cabinet!
PHOTOS: Andrew Scheer … I mean Joe Clark, a then-almost-unknown MP from Alberta, celebrates his victory in the Tory party leadership contest with his wife, Maureen McTeer, on Feb. 22, 1976. (Photo: Toronto Public Library.) The real Andrew Scheer, seen below, an almost-unknown MP from Saskatchewan, was doing the same
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – David MacDonald studies the federal government’s loopholes and giveaways targeted toward those who already have the most – noting that there would be plenty of revenue to fund the programs we’re told are unaffordable if that preferential treatment was ended. And Felicity Lawrence
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Rona Ambrose and the Bleak Future of the Cons
With just three days to go before the Cons choose a new leader, I see that Rona Ambrose is still trying to whip up some interest in the event.Still claiming that she was always planning to leave. “If I was going to stay in politics, I would have run for the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: ‘Foreign influence’ had nothing to do with Tory Joan Crockatt’s Calgary Centre election defeat in 2015
PHOTOS: Joan Crockatt, during her brief spell as Conservative Member of Parliament for Calgary Centre. Below: Liberal Veterans Affairs Minister Kent Hehr, who beat Ms. Crockatt in 2015; environmentalist Chris Turner who ran against her for the Greens in 2012 and did very well; and environmentalist Harvey Locke, who ran
Continue readingAlberta Politics: There’s no life like it! Alberta’s right-wing troll army is recruiting
ILLUSTRATIONS: Poster thanks to the U.S. Army, circa 1941-42 or whenever they finally got around to joining the fight, with a little help from PhotoShop. Below: Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi – is he the target of the Troll Army’s latest Alberta campaign? The ad in question. Alberta’s right-wing Troll Army
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