The Trudeau Liberals and the Monarchy: A Retrospective on Four Years
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Canada is well into a federal election and I wanted to take this chance to look back at what the government has done Vis-à-vis the monarchy.…
Education
Little Robot Friends: Kids Should have Fun with Code
Little Robot Friends is a Toronto-based startup that wants kids to not only be comfortable with code, they want kids to have fun playing with it too. The company runs…
Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Taylor Scallon discusses how GDP numbers fail to capture the precarious circumstances facing far too many Canadians. Kerri Breen reports on Ipsos’ polling…
The Magical Ms M and the Blue Ribbon Panel on Finances
When Jason Kenney asked former finance minister Janice MacKinnon “to conduct a deep dive into Alberta’s fiscal situation” he told her to deliver recommendations to balance the budget by 2023…
Questions asked
Available evidence demonstrates that, despite the province’s financial affairs being in good order, the NDP Government is satisfied to keep school teacher salaries close to the lowest paid of any…
Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Kate Aronoff asks how much destruction is needed before we’ll start taking climate change seriously – though the answer at this point looks…
Names & Titles Given to Members of the Royal Family by Canada’s First Nations
The Canadian Monarchy has a long history with the original inhabitants of Canada. And despite the failures of successive elected governments to uphold promises made to these First Nations, the…
Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Nicholas Kristof writes about Donald Trump’s choice to put the most virulent anti-worker cronies imaginable in charge of U.S. labour policy. David Climenhaga…
Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Robinson Meyer writes about the latest IPCC report on how our climate crisis endangers the land we rely on. And George Monbiot responds…
The Mother of Confederation
Recently a preposterous letter was printed in the editorial section of the local newspaper. The author stated that the reason you don’t hear about Canada’s ‘founding mothers‘ is because there…
On denialism
Others have already pointed out the substantive recklessness of Brian Pallister’s refusal to accept federal funding for climate projects in the education system. But Pallister’s choice of wording – that…
Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Erika Beauchesne discusses the benefits of a wealth tax as both a means of reducing inequality, and a source of revenue for…
The Royals Who Wrote
Recently I’ve been in the process of de-cluttering my bookshelves of some of the hundreds of magazines I’ve bought overthe last few years. After keeping a few stacks of the…
Monday Morning Links
Assorted content to start your week. – Cédric Durand and Razmig Keucheyan highlight the return of economic planning as a widely-recognized public policy option – while pointing out the need…
Alberta must find alternatives to cutting social spending
I have an opinion piece in today’s Edmonton Journal about Alberta’s current fiscal situation. Points raised in the blog post include the following: -The Jason Kenney government will almost certainly…
Ten things to know about this year’s Alberta Alternative Budget
The Alberta Alternative Budget (AAB) is an annual exercise whose working group consists of researchers, economists, and members of civil society (full disclosure: I’m the Editor). Our general mandate is…
MEDIA RELEASE: Alberta should increase social spending; cuts are not the way to go
(June 24, 2019-Calgary) With Alberta’s economy still facing challenges and vulnerabilities, the Alberta government should not be doling out tax cuts or cutting social spending, according to the Alberta Alternative…
Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Lawrence Mishel points out that Donald Trump’s giveaways to the rich actually resulted in a sharp decline in bonuses paid to workers. –…
The Economic Pay-Off from Public Education
On a trip back to Toronto this week I attended the launch of a new report commissioned by the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, and written by Aimee McArthur-Gupta from…
GSAs in Alberta (Even Doug Ford Does It Better)
It started when the Kenney government introduced Bill 8, the Education Amendment Act which they said would provide “the strongest statutory protections” for gay-straight alliances (GSAs) in the country. It…