Plug pulled on PowerBC
Before John Horgan was sworn in as Premier, BC NDP promoted a wise alternative to construction of Site C, a dam that would cost many billions of dollars and had…
March 2018
Wednesday Evening Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Andre Picard notes that contrary to our self-image, Canada actually lags behind international peers in health and social spending. And PressProgress points out…
Trudeau’s Jeeps
Taxi, Taxi! Justin Trudeau has something in common with Donald Trump. They’re both bullshitters. That’s the term Obama used to describe his successor, “he’s just a bullshitter.” But our prime…
Found in translation
Language translation fascinates me. It’s a mix of language skill, art, interpretation, science and, apparently, divination. Maybe even magic. Going from one language into another is far from a simple…
AggregateIQ Falls Under the Scrutiny of Sinn Fein
Sinn Fein wants to know what role Victoria-based psychographics firm, AggregateIQ played in Northern Ireland’s Brexit vote. Mid Ulster MP Francie Molloy has written to the Information Commissioner’s Office asking…
This Should Shock You. It Won’t.
It seems like every week there are two or three new studies that we ought to find jarring – but we don’t. A report by the European Academies’ Science Advisory…
Big trouble. Big.
Uh-oh. This is a big, big change in a big, big story. Big, big trouble for #LPC. #cdnpoli https://t.co/jMe5detPJS — Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) March 21, 2018 The Liberal’s just clarified…
Indigenous Rights Canada’s Biggest Human Rights Challenge: Secretary General of Amnesty
Both Canada and British Columbia have vowed to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). And yet recent natural resource decisions — like the approval…
Trudeau on the wrong side of environmental history in B.C.
Photo by William Chen And so it begins. In the last few days, approximately 30 Canadian citizens have been arrested for opposing Kinder Morgan’s pipeline extension in British Columbia. The…
99 reasons why balloons suck
Last fall when I introduced my motion to ban balloons from public parks, some people thought I was full of hot air. Well, here are 99 reasons why balloons are…
The Bank of Canada Should Be Reinstated To Its Original Mandated Purposes
Photo by Bank of Canada Few people understand the Canadian government’s relationship with the Bank of Canada or the nature of the Bank’s original raison d’être. Back in 2011 a…
Political parties and data mining: a whodunit
Young Canadian Christopher Wylie has been much in the news lately – among other things, for single-handedly hammering Facebook’s market value, and causing lots of political earthquakes in the U.S.…
European Left Divided Over Brexit
A panel of progressive parties of Europe discuss the UK’s plan for Brexit, with reps from the UK’s Labour Party, Spain’s Podemos, Greece’s Syriza and Germany’s Dei Linke — Read…
The Mad King
Robert Reich is a little guy who speaks with a big voice. He wrote two days ago that Donald Trump has become a mad king: Before, he was constrained by…
LawFact of the Day: Family Law
Here is your daily LawFact from Wise Law for Wednesday March 21, 2018. Today we are talking about Family Law. A post shared by Wise Law Office (@wiselaw) on Mar…
Lisa and the Senate in today’s Hill Times
Senate among top lobbied institutions in February February fillings show Senate lobbying in 2018 is keeping pace with 2017’s record-breaking year, which tripled historic averages for influencers focused on the…
Don’t Give up on Desalination
How we manage local water sources drastically alters how we grow crops and get drinking water. Cape Town is currently experience a water crisis that was in the making for…
Ten proposals from the 2018 Alberta Alternative Budget
The 2018 Alberta Alternative Budget (AAB) was released yesterday—it can be downloaded here. An opinion piece I wrote about the AAB appeared yesterday in both the Calgary Herald and the…
Fish where there’s fish
…that’s something I say so much about campaigns that my staff have heard it a billion times. Talk about the stuff voters want you to talk about. Manage the dialogue.…
The conflicts of Jagmeet Singh.
New Democratic leader Jagmeet Singh has a problem. He appears to want to be a separatist in India but a nationalist in Canada. Perhaps it is his devout Sikhism and…