Or, The Big Picture: Economic Strength vs Economic Insolvency: US, Canada and Uruguay compared Uruguayan national debt in 2023:$40 billion USD(52% of GDP) Canadian national debt in 2023:$1.4 trillion USDOr$1,400…
By J. Todd Ring Preface: I wrote this essay in January of 2020, then the covid crisis hit, and it was shelved for over a year. The macro-scale patterns have…
Back in 2014, the USA-based Strong Towns group posted a test to “measure a successful Strong Town.” The ten questions or conditions posed include: Take a photo of your main…
Half of the world’s people live in the countryside. Three quarters of the people living in poverty live in the countryside. Two-thirds of the income of the rural poor comes…
A story in CollingwoodToday notes that council will hold a meeting on May 31 to consider exceptions to their job-and-revenue-killing interim control bylaw (ICBL). That bylaw abruptly ended all growth,…
James Madison, one of the US’s Founding Fathers said that a government “…without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a tragedy or a…
A blunder of epic proportions? A sobering display of supreme incompetence and ineptitude? A total failure of communications, direction, and leadership? An underhanded excuse to hand our municipal water services…
More than one million people marched in Santiago on October 26 to protest the Government’s security response to Chile’s current political crisis and to demand structural economic reforms to reduce…
I had been waiting for last month’s publication of the book “Confronting Inequality” before preparing my annual update on income inequality and redistribution in Canada. I am glad I did…
On January 15, Councillor Bob Madigan made a motion (seconded, of course, by his puppetmaster, Deputy Mayor Saunderson) to limit the progress of the Indigo/Eden-Oak/McNabb development at the south end…
Soon after the 2015 federal election, Prime Minister-designate Justin Trudeau affirmed that Canada was “back” as a “compassionate and constructive voice in the world” after a decade of Conservative governments.…
The saying goes…men and woman cannot be friends, they are bound to become lovers or fall apart. While it may seem like this has nothing directly to do with today’s…
In this guest post Tom Webb gives a summary of the pitch in his new book, that co-operatives are the answer to the problems of the global capitalist agenda. At…
Here’s a neat idea: save the planet using the research and development practices used during the space race. The state-lead push for advanced science led to really fun things like…
I’m not a big fan of gated communities, but even if I don’t personally want to live in one myself, I understand the reason for them, and sympathize with homeowners…
Never In Living Memory Richard Hughes-Political Blogger Veteran councillor Sharon Jackson appears to have been on the warpath lately regarding the proposed development on the empty lot at Canada Avenue…
There is some discussion in Nova Scotia about the possibility of the government introducing a carbon tax in the next budget. In this blog post I will introduce the context…
The old bowling alley on De l’Eglise was turned into condos a few years ago and these people appear to have really nice big galdrys (balconies) and while the view…
My guests today help take a fresh look at two issues where British Columbia is on the front lines of bigger social conflicts: that over the future of public education…
Population Growth & The Environment
There has been a debate going on for over 50 years as to whether the primary cause of the growing environmental crisis is over-population or over-consumption. The debate still continues,…