Paying a high price for insulting Mexico
In 2009, our government in its wisdom imposed stringent visa requirements on Mexicans visiting Canada, the harshest on any country. claiming this was necessary to deter increasing numbers of bogus…
Bill Longstaff
The human legacy—one of the world’s six greatest catastrophes
I was watching with interest the other night Jon Stewart’s interview of Elizabeth Kolbert, author of a new book, The Sixth Great Extinction. There have been five great extinction events…
Our dangerous dependence on the tar sands
It sounds like good news. A new study, “Oil Sands Economic Benefits: Today and in the Future,” states that tar sands production supported more than 478,000 direct, indirect and induced…
From the Wildrose, an interesting idea
Alberta’s Wildrose Party Leader Danielle Smith has offered what on the surface sounds like a good idea. Her party is proposing the province transfer 10 per cent of all its…
Flaherty bribes automakers—globalization at work
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s $500-million handout to the auto industry has engendered a bit of controversy. Dino Chiodo, president of the union representing hourly workers at Chrysler’s Windsor assembly plant,…
Electoral reform—PR is not a voting system
Observing debates about electoral reform online and elsewhere, I notice one error cropping up consistently: the notion that proportional representation, like first-past-the-post, is a voting system. It isn’t, of course.…
Is the CRA reacting to political pressure?
Not being a conspiracy theorist and having great faith in the integrity of our civil servants, I find it hard to believe that the current spate of audits of environmental…
Supporting Keystone is supporting the Kochs
Criticism of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline focuses, understandably, on the threat it poses to the environment, both in its construction and in its enabling more production from the tar…
The Senate as citizens’ assembly?
The best idea I’ve seen yet about what to to do with our constitutional albatross, the Senate, short of abolishing it, appeared in a recent issue of The Tyee. The…
Prostitution—keeping the state out of our bedrooms
“There’s no place for the state,” a prime minister once said, “in the bedrooms of the nation.” I hope Justice Minister Peter MacKay and his colleagues keep that sage advice…
Speak up for science
Our federal government’s lamentable attitude to science, or at least any science that doesn’t benefit business, is one of its key features. Nonetheless, Industry Canada is giving us a chance…
Wealth gap—the greatest ever?
A couple of items I encountered recently demonstrated perfectly the extremes of the now much talked about wealth gap. First, was a report by Oxfam entitled “Working for the Few”…
Crime—a criminal justice problem or a health problem?
Place your finger on your forehead, just above the eyebrows toward the right side. It is now within centimetres of your conscience. Our conscience is not, as long thought, a…
Inheritance—the ultimate free lunch
Watching Jon Stewart the other night brilliantly satirizing American right-wingers’ laments about the poor exploiting social justice programs for a “free lunch,” I was disappointed that he failed to mention…
Capitalism—an irrational system in an age of climate change
Capitalism is generally recognized as having one great strength. That, of course, is as a creator of wealth. Aided by the remarkable advance of technology (some would say inspired and…
Mr. Harper’s pilgimage to Israel—more Canterbury Tales than trade mission
Trade missions have always been questionable vehicles for boosting the Canadian economy. Nonetheless, some can be justified by, if nothing else, the trade potential of the host country. For example,…
Our 150th birthday bash … all about war
If there was any remaining doubt that the Conservative government has a militaristic view of history, check out Canada 150, the website for Canada’s 150th anniversary. Note that the only…
Religious persecution on the rise
The Pew Research Center recently published a study of religious persecution over the period 2007-12 and the results aren’t pretty. Of 198 countries and territories included in the study, 29…
World Economic Forum backs the Pope on economic inequality
Every year the World Economic Forum hosts a confab of the world’s elite at the Swiss resort of Davos to discuss the state of the world. The Forum is funded…
The Conservatives turn on PR
It’s not that all Conservatives are opposed to proportional representation. Senator Hugh Segal is onside and Conservative MPs Peter Braid, Stephen Woodworth and Scott Reid have presented Fair Vote Canada…