A tale of two magazines
Last month one of Alberta’s conservative icons passed away. Ted Byfield was 93. Byfield, a propagandist for social conservative causes and a promoter of conservative parties and politicians (including Premier…
Bill Longstaff
A Happy New Year for the American military
Santa was good to the U.S. armed forces. On December 27th President Biden signed a defence bill for nearly $770-billion. This was $24-billion more than he had asked for, but…
Canada will be back … eventually
Way back in 2015, flush with election victory, newly minted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced “Many of you have worried that Canada has lost its compassionate and constructive voice in…
Joe Biden’s Summit for Democracy—a timely effort
As a passionate believer in democracy, I feel compelled to comment on the recent democracy summit called to order by President Biden. Cynicism about the summit is thick on the…
Does Kenney understand Alberta?
A recent survey, conducted by Maru Public Opinion and Janet Brown Opinion Research, took a reading of Canadians’ views of Alberta. The poll measured the reaction to a number of…
Facts are not futile
At a time when rabid anti-vaxxers make noise beyond their numbers and conspiracy theorists roam the Web, this may appear to be a low point for trust in science. No-nothings…
American jurisprudence—a puzzle
Two recent criminal trials in the U.S. caught international attention. I refer to the Kyle Rittenhouse case in Wisconsin and the Ahmaud Arbery case in Georgia, the first known best…
Suzuki apologizes, Kenney rants
David Suzuki recently made some rash comments about oil pipelines, specifically “There are going to be pipelines blown up if our leaders don’t pay attention to what’s going on.” Being…
Schadenfreude, Hydro-Québec and the Maine referendum
It’s called schadenfreude, the satisfaction you get from someone else’s misfortune. Some Albertans may be feeling it this week after the referendum in Maine that rejected a Hydro-Québec transmission line…
Minister Freeland and the global tax
I first took particular notice of federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland when I read her book Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else.…
Compared to Americans, Canadians are happy campers
A recent survey by the Pew Research Center revealed striking differences in Americans’ and Canadians’ attitudes toward their political, economic and health systems. The Pew survey of 17 advanced countries…
World’s top movie not what you might think
It may come as a surprise to Canadian film fans, but the top box office movie in 2021 is not James Bond’s No Time to Die or the legendary sci-fi…
Climate shirkers gear up for COP26
The 26th UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) is scheduled for 31 October to 12 November in Glasgow. This is the 26th of the annual conferences and is special in that…
The problem of Councillor Chu
Sean Chu is the councillor for Calgary’s Ward 4. He was re-elected for his third term in the recent civic election. It now appears that Councillor Chu has a skeleton…
Why can’t conservatives win the mayoralties of Alberta’s major cities?
Alberta’s reputation as a bastion of conservatism has been belied once again by the recent municipal elections. Both Calgary and Edmonton, which together make up over half the province’s population,…
Calgary remains in good hands
If there was a natural successor to retiring mayor Naheed Nenshi it would be Jyoti Gondek. Like Nenshi she is well educated (Ph.D. in urban sociology) with a thorough grasp…
Refunding the police
How quickly the tide turns. Hardly a year has passed since the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer triggered protests that pressured cities across the U.S. to…
Kudos to David Card and the minimum wage
Good news from the world of the dismal science. A Canadian boy, David Card, has won a share of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics. Nice to see one of…
The death graph
A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. It’s true for me anyway. Maybe it’s my engineering background, but charts, graphs, etc. often make a point much more effectively…