Calgary, I’m forced to admit, is a world class city
I have always been inclined to ignore talk about making my city—Calgary—world class. It sounds rather desperate, a sad sort of social-climbing by civic boosters. But now it appears that…
Bill Longstaff
Dying with dignity in Quebec
Quebec’s new Liberal government has decided to reintroduce Bill 52, the end-of-life care bill first tabled by the PQ in June 2013. The legislation will allow terminally ill patients to…
Hookers to be part of Italy’s GDP
Italy’s National Institute of Statistics recently announced that next year it will start including activities such as prostitution and illegal drug sales in the country’s Gross Domestic Product. And why…
Why is the environment considered primarily a left-wing concern?
Conservative and conservation are almost the same word, both deriving from the Latin conservare, “to preserve,” and differing only by two letters. We might expect, therefore, that conservatives would be…
Voting—the opiate of the people?
A letter to the Deseret News, a Salt Lake City, Utah, daily paper, suggested rather unkindly that the rite of voting in the U.S. is nothing more than “the opiate…
Going … going … gone … Western Antarctic ice sheet slips into the sea
It seems the planet is running out of ice. The latest news on that front came with two reports last week that said the Western Antarctic ice sheet is collapsing.…
Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and déjà vu
That Egyptian general Abdel Fattah el-Sisi intends to return the country to military rule becomes increasingly clear. Leader of the July 2013 coup against then President Mohamed Morsi, Sisi is…
Conference Board illustrates folly of conventional economic metrics
Once again conventional measurement has painted a warped view of our economic well-being. Relying principally on growth in the GDP sense, The Conference Board of Canada applauds the oil and…
Is Putin playing to the gallery?
That Vladimir Putin laments the loss of the Soviet empire is well known, so adding a few bits back in no doubt appeals to him. He also has a perfectly…
Students instruct teachers to bring economics into the real world
Following the Second World War, Western nations embarked on securing the welfare state as a balance to the capitalist market economy, the result of which was the most prosperous and…
Are the little swimmers in trouble?
The world is full of endocrine disruptors. Chemicals that mimic natural hormones in the body are found in a host of products from food packaging to toothpaste to toys. Now…
From Ukraine—"Basically we’re screwed"
A young eastern Ukrainian philosophy student, commenting on the weekend referendum in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, summed up his country’s condition rather neatly: “I haven’t voted,” he said, “and…
April 28—National Day of Mourning
In 1984, the Canadian Labour Congress declared April 28th a National Day of Mourning for workers who have been killed, or suffer disease or injury as a result of work.…
Are we gambling our economy on the tar sands?
Depending heavily for jobs, profits and taxes on our most rapidly increasing source of greenhouse gas emissions is environmental folly. It may mean more economic prosperity in the short term,…
Don’t give up on the Senate, Mr. Harper
It wouldn’t be surprising if Prime Minister Harper was in a bit of a funk over the Supreme Court’s decision on the Senate this week. The Court unanimously rejected his…
The Great Game—did Putin outplay the West in Crimea?
In the 19th century, the British and Russian empires’ strategic rivalry for supremacy in Central Asia was referred to as the Great Game. The game has never really ended as…
UK PM claims Britain is a Christian country—it ain’t
British Prime Minister David Cameron has put the cat among the pigeons claiming, perhaps unduly influenced by the Easter season, that Britain is a Christian country. In fact, he suggested…
Common sense in Kitimat
Good news over the weekend. The citizens of Kitimat B.C. had their say on the Northern Gateway pipeline, and they said NO. In a referendum on Saturday, they voted 1,793…
The United States—democracy or oligarchy?
Last year, Iran held an election to choose its president. Many in the West mocked the election because the candidates were vetted by the Guardian Council (a group appointed largely…
$36-million for a cup? Some people are just too rich
It’s called the chicken cup because it’s got chickens painted on it. The world’s highest priced birds, in fact. The cup fetched $36.1-million, including commission, at Sotheby’s spring auction in…