U.S. conservatives going all progressive?
If Justice Minister Peter MacKay announcing that the Conservatives may soften marijuana laws came as a surprise, the change of heart among some conservatives in the U.S. is nothing less…
Bill Longstaff
Ukraine and American arrogance
The New York Times ran an intriguing headline earlier this week. It read “Debate Over Who, in U.S., is to Blame for Ukraine.” Apparently American politicians are debating which among…
Will Homo sapiens evolve itself into extinction?
The notion that eventually we will create an artificial intelligence superior to our own has been around for quite a while. Now someone has boldly, perhaps foolishly, predicted a deadline.…
Andrew Leslie’s troubling views on defence policy
Andrew Leslie, former Canadian forces commander in Afghanistan, now adviser to Liberal Party chief Justin Trudeau, has been busy recently defending his $72,000 moving expense, particularly from attack by the…
The brutal costs of the World Cup
As the scandal over Vladimir Putin’s $50-billion Olympics begins to fade, equally sordid scandals about the World Cup come to the fore. Brazil, which has won more World Cups than…
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…
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…