Judge questions witnesses – a series of guidelines
Trial judges are entitled to question witnesses. Indeed, sometimes they are duty-bound by the interests of justice to ask questions. They are not required to remain silent, passive observers of…
February 2015
Inflammatory language in Crown closing argument
R v. A.T., 2015 ONCA 65: The Crown occupies a special position in the prosecution of criminal offences, which “excludes any notion of winning or losing” and “must always be…
Best Canadian Essays 2014
A couple of weeks ago I had the honour and privilege to be invited as a guest to a book launch in Toronto for a yearly anthology published by Tightrope…
Political football – winners and losers
Senior governments download responsibility for delivering services but seldom include taxing authorities adequate to match spending demands. The download trend is demonstrated in a report by The Columbia Institute: British…
Edward Snowden and His Ideological Allies Are Winning
Richard Hughes- Political Blogger The War on Ideas is losing ground. This was clearly demonstrated through two clashing films recently. American Sniper and Citizen Four. They could not be more…
PEI Update
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/rob-lantz-celebrates-progressive-conservative-leadership-victory-1.2977350 Rob Lantz, who I indicated would be the only other possible winner (beyond Aylward) has managed to win. I am still honestly surprised, but, listening to some of the…
Oil Tankers Pose Serious Risk to Under-Studied Minke Whales Off B.C. Coast, New Research Shows
A small, shy whale, may be one of the rarest marine mammals along the coast of B.C., but remarkably little is known about minke whales and the threats they face…
Oil Tankers Pose Serious Risk to Under-Studied Minke Whales Off B.C. Coast, New Research Shows
A small, shy whale, may be one of the rarest marine mammals along the coast of B.C., but remarkably little is known about minke whales and the threats they face…
Feb. 28: That’s quite a headline…
“Dieppe’s Lapierre challenges Fredericton mayor over duality”. (This won’t mean much to the majority of readers of this blog because the majority live in the US, Germany, Russia, France, Ukraine…and…
On Last Night’s News: My thoughts on the TTC fare increase
I appeared on Global News Toronto last night on behalf of TTC Riders to offer a few comments on the TTC fare increase coming into effect this weekend. Even though…
Republished: Religion poll is a waste of paper
My second (and last) editorial in The Gateway while at the University of Alberta, salvaged via the Web Archive. The paper had a policy where writers were forbidden from submitting…
Nestor does it again!
Daniel Nestor and Rohan Bopanna have won the Dubai doubles championship in straight sets, 6-4 and 6-1 Canada is always proud of you, Daniel!
Republished: There’s no ‘God’ in graduation
This was the first article I wrote for a student newspaper and in a way it’s somewhat historic. In 2008, the University of Alberta Atheists & Agnostics started campaigning for…
Republished: The Christians are coming!
Another old article, this one a review of Marci McDonald’s 2010 expose on the influence of the Christian Right in Canadian politics. Still relevant given that Harper has since gained…
"He’s Acting Like Someone Who Has Nothing to Lose"
The editorial board of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz looks at the country’s prime minister and sees a one-man wrecking ball winging his way to Washington. The paper concludes that Israel…
Republished: Let’s bring reason back to politics
As part of my attempt to get back into writing this blog, I’ve been going back through my list of published articles and making sure they’re all still live. Many…
Burning question
What exactly do we expect CSIS to do with a possible data dump of every piece of information held by every federal government agency when at last notice, it was…