Sunday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your weekend. – Will Hutton discusses how the increasing gaps in economic equality are leading to radical differences in opportunity – with the U.S./U.K. push toward…
Privatization
Lying about telling lies is Liberal truth
Margaret MacDiarmid was pushed onto the BCLDB platform by Christy Clark and Rich Coleman and the puppet masters behind them. Standing alone in the spotlight, the ironically named minister of…
Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Ed Broadbent discusses the connection between unions, democracy and equality: In democratic societies, there are two principal arenas of non-violent conflict over…
Blaming the People
Whenever social and economic crises develop, those in power always try to blame somebody else. For example, what caused the recession in the U.S. in 2008? Simple, it was the…
Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Jeffrey Simpson criticizes the Cons for killing off the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy as punishment for telling the…
Ontario Budget Attempts to Privatize Public Transit and other Public Services
From TTC Riders site: Just as we savour our victory in winning back four Light Rail Transit lines for Toronto, an even greater threat is presenting itself—two provincial government initiatives…
Canada’s Self-Imposed Crisis in Post-Secondary Education
On June 7, I gave a keynote address to the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees Education Sector Conference. My PowerPoint presentation (with full references) can be found at this link.…
Book Review: “The Accumulation of Freedom: Writings on Anarchist Economics”
Now Available from AK Press & your local Infoshop! The touchstone for many of the struggles currently enveloping us—from the Arab Spring to the Occupy Movement to the events in…
Saw one of the deer tonight
The bigger one, the one without the white fur. Other fascinating observances:
Brampton is not the sleepy Bill Davis, greenhouse town of my youthful remembrance
It’s huge. Massive sprawl. Lots and lots of subdivisions, wide roads and shopping malls. On our way up to the farm we’d drive right up main street and someone in…
How To Resolve The Transit Fare Evasion Problem
Transportation Minister Blair Lekstrom is bringing in new legislation to crack down on fare evaders, allowing collection agencies to go after people who don’t buy tickets. If Lekstrom really wants…
A Healthy Society – Chapter 4 Discussion
In my discussion of Chapter 3 of Ryan Meili’s A Healthy Society, I mused that social housing might be an area where public-sector purchasing power could be put to its…
Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – The Cons’ move to suppress Canadian wages by encouraging the use of disposable, temporary foreign labour is receiving plenty of due outcry.…
“Differentiation:” The à-la-carte Way to Hire More Course Instructors
I’ve written before about attempts in Canada to create more separation between university teaching, on the one hand, and university research, on the other. In 2009, I wrote this opinion…
The Real Bev Oda Scandal: Politicizing (& Corporatizing) Canadian Foreign Aid
That now-infamous taxpayer-subsidized luxury hotel switcheroo in Mother London? Small potatoes. Don Cayo: nalysis by Fraser Reilly-King, a policy analyst at the non-profit Canadian Council for International Co-operation, shows substantial…
Discussing Quebec Student Protests on Talk Radio
Last Friday, I blogged here about the Quebec student protests. Subsequently, I was invited to appear on 580 CFRA News Talk Radio, with hosts Rob Snow and Lowell Green. I…
Deconstructing the Wildrose Effect
So what happened in Alberta’s election yesterday, other than people telling pollsters that they want change, then chickening out when it came time to mark an X. The Politics, Re-spun…
Vic Toews’ Prison Shock Doctrine Recipe
Closing prisons from the 19th century is surely a good idea, but I have no faith that the Conservative Party cares to replace them with anything progressive based on research…
When a University Recruits Abroad, Who’s in Charge?
A few years ago, I wrote an opinion piece on “pathway colleges”—i.e. private companies that recruit students from other countries and then ‘bridge’ them into Canadian universities by providing pre-university…
Why do the Progressive Conservatives exist?
If you wanted a honest conservative choice it’s obviously the Wildrose you should vote for. They’re forthright in their view on conscience rights, creating competition in the health care industry…