Recently evidence surfaced, quietly and unobtrusively, of the ways in which other inspection regimes suffer from the same sort of lackadaisical approach that the Harper government has applied to food…
I view the rise of so-called “fact-checking” in the mainstream corporate news with mixed emotions. First of all, it is nice to see them, you know, doing their jobs for…
Here’s a puzzle for my readers: try and guess which one of the following two editorials, each of them discussing a slight bump in the tax rate for the wealthiest…
In a way it’s a sign of how sick our democracy is, and how pliant our national media has grown, that the future of the Parliamentary Budget Office (and especially…
Yesterday, the media fell all over a new report from Statistics Canada which found that since 1982 Canada’s wealthiest 1%, and especially Canada’s wealthiest 0.01%, have enjoyed massively disproportionate increases…
Well, at least they’ve come out and said it: income inequality is a growing problem in Canada. The Globe & Mail said it. The Toronto Star said it. CBC said…
Even when it doesn’t matter. Recently an Ottawa botany professor has suggested that the Bank of Canada erred by using a Norwegian species of maple tree as the basis for…
It’s Christmas time, and even Margaret Wente was feeling unusually charitable in Saturday’s column (and pretty much plagiarism free, for the time being). So if you’re hoping to get your…
Well, try that on for size. Let me be clear, says Stephen Harper: “Canadians have not spent years reducing the ownership of sectors of the economy by our own governments,…
As I pointed out in my last post, the fact that the Conservatives have admitted they will miss their budget projections next year isn’t news. There hasn’t been a single…
Last week, the media delivered its resounding judgement on the Conservatives’ fall budget update. Jim Flaherty, they say, has unfortunately allowed the projections to slip. The deficit has grown. Canada…
Try this one on for size. The Canadian media, which for the most part hasn’t met a Canadian corporation they think shouldn’t be sold to foreign interests, has latched on…
For those of you who don’t know, retired Harper Cabinet minister Stockwell Day now has two jobs: political “counseling” and journalism. Mr. Day has taken a position as occasional contributing…
Last time, in my new Hollowing Out series, I began taking a look at the Globe & Mail’s list of Canada’s largest 1000 companies back in 1996. (This list is…
In the wake of the recent Ted Opitz case, in which the Supreme Court of Canada issued a bizarrely partisan split ruling, written by two Harper appointees to the nation’s…
In honour of the recent controversy over the proposed takeover of Nexen by the government of China (since only foreign governments are allowed to make money off of Canada’s oil…
Being neither a lawyer nor an accountant, I have to stress I may be missing something here. I do invite correction. However, I don’t think I’m wrong here. Here’s a…
A few years ago, when the Harper regime was young and idealistic, they had a grand plan for the future of regulatory inspections in Canada — inspections of meat processing…
In recent months the Canadian airline industry has been pushing, hard, for lower costs. Not content with having the Harper regime order its employees to work under threat of legal…
… Although given how readily they swallowed it, it might be a bit of a stretch to call it bait in the first place. Apparently one of the items in…
