politics
Solving Christmas conundrums with New Year’s resolutions
I know I promised to not post until the New Year. Clearly the holidays have gotten the better of me. This, however, will be a short reflection and at once…
Canadians get lots of coal, oil and gas in holiday trash dump
The Friday night trash dump is a well-known trick of governments looking to dispense with bad news as quietly as possible. Controversial announcements are made in the last hour of…
The brutal lessons of 2013.
2013 has been a rather tough year for this blogger. I ran for the Vice Presidency of the Alberta Liberal Party and was unsuccessful. Quite quickly I found I had…
Predicting Politics in 2014
Omar Ha-Redeye shared a panel on Newstalk 1010 with John Wright of Ipsos Reid and Cal Bricker of Waste Management to discuss the future of federal, provincial and municipal politics.…
I never wait longer than ten minutes for a taxi.
This past two weeks I have never waited longer than ten minutes for a taxi. No, I don’t call six cab companies at once. No, I don’t have the personal…
Supreme Court strikes down Canada’s prostitution laws
A few weeks ago I did a “mini-cruise” to Amsterdam. We spent two nights on a ferry (which was really a small cruise ship) and had about 6 hours to…
PMO: Anger Betrayal Deception; Oil
Our lying Prime Minister felt betrayed and angry, and … deceived? The scheme only became public after a CTV news report on the evening of May 14. The next morning,…
Vindication for Snowden? Obama Panel Backs Major Curbs on NSA Surveillance, Phone Record Data Mining
Richard Hughes-Political Blogger Hardly a day goes by without learning about further intrusions into the privacy of citizens in both the US and Canada. Edward Snowden’s handling of the damning…
Still not listening to cities.
The Redford Conservatives may have changed Municipal Affairs ministers but they have not changed the way they’re engaging with cities. One of the key complaints of Nenshi and urban dwellers…
No Federal Childcare Program: An Exercise In Strengthening Hegemony
Canada, a nation among the wealthiest in the world, cannot meet its daycare needs. The problem has grown to crisis proportions in the country’s largest cities. In Toronto there are…
Obama’s NSA is the East German Stasi of our time
German leader flat out states that Obama’s government is little better than the East German Stasi. “In an angry exchange with Barack Obama, Angela Merkel has compared the snooping practices…
Canada Post writes its own obituary
Headline news this week: Canada Post moves to end home delivery. End home delivery? For me, both as a writer, a lay historian, and growing up in an era where…
2015.
You care passionately about your city, your community, and about Canada. And you’re thinking about running to be on Justin’s team in 2015. With the open nominations (read: anyone can…
Inside the mall or outside: thoughts on the allegiance to capitalism.
It was bitterly cold today but I joined with others in handing out candy canes and holiday themed postcards in support of the campaign to raise the minimum wage in…
Dagenais illustrates why women avoid politics
“If you can’t stand the heat, etc.” … the usual justification when one politician objects to the boorish behaviour of another. And no doubt MP Charmaine Borg heard a lot…
On Driving Into a Wall
Have you seen Inside Job? It’s a great film about the ins and outs of the mortgage crisis all in layman’s terms so even I could get my head around…
Driving a Nail into the Foot of Tourism
Canada shouldn’t bend to the American desire to insulate the continent from people outside our borders. Stop harming our tourism industry by making travel here even more difficult. If people…
Huffington Post: Big Brother is Unstoppable……
I don’t think I’m alone in this..I hate Facebook and the site has morphed into..a crassly capitalist commercial, 24/7…and after telling us that they would use whatever images we had…