Gas Pains: B.C.’s gas plan is a short-sighted pipe dream
B.C. appears to be pinning its economic hopes on natural gas – much of it obtained by fracking. While the world should be turning from fossil fuels to cleaner energy…
Common Sense Journalism
Rise of the Electric Automobile
There’s a battle rumbling south of the border. And it’s one Canadians aren’t hearing a lot about unless they plumb the news feeds online. It started for Tesla Motors during…
BC’s Crushing Debt Absent From Election Discussion
At the end of fiscal 2012, total provincial liabilities reported by the provincial government were $70.358 billion, or 100% greater than when the Liberal government first came into power. What…
Dix Takes ‘Full Responsibility’, Learns Nothing from Defeat
BC NDP Leader Adrian Dix issued a statement Tuesday, offering an explanation and form of apology for the surprise provincial election loss he presided over recently. In the letter, published…
Ontario’s wildlife needs continued protection
Despite the evidence that endangered species laws are effective, governments in Canada are proceeding with deregulation and abdicating their responsibilities for wildlife habitat protection, often quietly. After all, only a…
Harper’s War on Science
If Canadians knew the full extent of the Harper government’s war on science, they would be clamouring for the reinstatement and full funding of dozens of federal scientific programs and…
Province, Public Opposition Halt Raven Coal Mine Proposal
Having gone through the early stages of environmental assessment, the Raven Coal Mine – proposed amid a thriving shellfish industry in Vancouver Island’s Fanny Bay – was stopped in its…
Rafe Remembers Elijah Harper, Constitutional Stand-off
Brian Mulroney needed political help in Quebec and persuaded all the premiers to support a set of constitutional reforms – labelled the Meech Lake Accord – whereby all the other…
Spinning out of control?
It can hardly come as a surprise to anyone that governments – like corporations – employ spin to portray their actions in the best possible light (and to cast their…
Bean Leaves, Bedbugs and Biomimicry
Scientists often come up with new discoveries, technologies or theories. But sometimes they rediscover what our ancestors already knew. A couple of recent findings show we have a lot to…
Rafe: Clark Will Break Up BC Hydro
Within the next four years, BC Hydro, once as good a power utility as there was in the world, will be broken up. It is, you see, presently bankrupt by…
Piscine Reovirus Pt. 2: Evolution of a New Salmon Virus
Strange things can happen when salmon eat chickens. Such a diet is unprecedented and bizarre, a violation of the biological order that has occurred over millions of years of evolutionary…
Rafe: Dix Let Liberals Get Away with Murder
With over two weeks to go in the election, I wrote in thetyee.ca and on this website: “It surprises me that Adrian Dix is playing softball with these issues. This…
It’s the Economy, Stupid NDP
The annals of contemporary political history make one thing clear: Elections are invariably won and lost on a single issue – and that issue is most often the economy. The…
Polls Apart: Making Sense of Surprise BC Election Outcome
Premier Christy Clark was right when she told the Canadian Press it’s, “the people of British Columbia that choose the government.”…Politicians have known for a long time that the news…
Alexandra Morton: NDP Hold Best Chance for Wild Salmon
Independent biologist Alexandra Morton has been busy during the BC election campaign, traveling the province to raise the issue of protecting wild salmon from fish farms and viruses. Here, as…
Rafe Mair Video: Liberals Bankrupting BC with $171 Billion Debt Legacy
Watch Rafe Mair’s powerhouse speech on the upcoming BC election: “Christy Clark has on the side of her bus,’Debt Free BC’. We owe $171 Billion dollars! Since the Liberals came…
Can Political Polls be Trusted?
Following a polling debacle in last year’s Alberta election and troubling signs in BC as voters prepare to cast their ballots, John King questions the motives and methods of pollsters…
Damien Gillis Talks BC Election on SFU Radio
Listen to this half-hour interview by CJSF 90.1 FM’s Sylvia Richardson of The Common Sense Canadian’s Damien Gillis on the eve of the provincial election. The two compare the Liberals’…
Independent MLAs, Candidates Shake Up BC Politics
Throughout the past term, BC’s three sitting Independent MLAs – Bob Simpson from Cariboo North, Vicki Huntington from Delta South, and Abbotsford South’s John van Dongen – have proven the…