The government of Premier Jason Kenney has decided to end a 44-year moratorium on open-pit coal mining in southern Alberta
Desperate times sometimes lead to catastrophic measures. In Alberta, the beleaguered provincial government is in a financial situation that could be characterized as desperate, suffering from the double-whammy of collapsed resource revenues and, of course, the massive spending required to address the social wildfire known as the COVID-19 pandemic. The desperate measure that the United…
If the Conservative Party of Canada truly wanted to turn its party-of-angry-old-white-men image on its head, to herald a new era or principled conservatism, and to reach out to voters who have not considered them in the past, then members would choose Leslyn Lewis as their new leader. But they should not do that. This…
Adding more weapons, equipment and officers doesn’t provide a straight line to happier and safer communities
Putting more force into our police forces might seem intuitively like a logical way to more effectively fight crime. Real-life experience suggests that’s not necessarily so. Experts say when using force is available, then it’s human nature for a trained police officer to fall back on that option when the going gets rough. Too often,…
The WE mess shows sunny ways have been replaced with dark days of the same old cronyism in the halls of power
Just when you think our prime minister may actually be growing into his job, he does something so ill-considered, so tone-deaf and so contrary to generally accepted political convention that all the confidence he has earned in the past few weeks evaporates in a flash. Such was Justin Trudeau’s foolish and inexplicable attachment to the…
Referendums have been the source of high anxiety and popular uprisings in recent years. Whether they’re a truly democratic way to make vital decisions that best serve the public interest is a matter of great debate. However, there really should be no debate – nine times out of 10, they’re a bad idea. Alberta Premier…
It’s time to reduce funding to police and reallocate those dollars to more proactive ways to reduce crime
Here’s a couple of questions that might have seemed crazy to many people just a few short years ago but are gaining purchase today. Do we really need as much policing as we have? Or are the ever-growing police budgets actually inadvertently leading to greater violence? A lot of us have believed that police exist…
First in a series on the crisis in policing. Routine traffic law offenders like myself are often struck with the arrival of each new ticket about how a lot of police enforcement is built around the model of ‘force.’ The point of issuing a ticket doesn’t really seem to be about changing behaviour but rather…
There are people behind the scenes working hard to provide answers to hard questions, even if they’re hard to unravel
There’s been a lot of chatter over what was behind Justin Trudeau’s pregnant pause during a news briefing on June 2. Now, stopping to think before answering is not something politicians are known for. But in this case, it wasn’t a bad idea. After all, the prime minister had just been asked a very tricky…
We must be prepared to stand our ground and face whatever economic and political consequences that may follow
Diplomacy is a dirty business. When two countries are trying to build or repair a relationship, they often resort to tactics that are illegal, immoral, mendacious or just generally offensive to our sense of what’s right and wrong. Just ask the two Michaels. Diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor have been in prisons in…
The notion that we can pile on debt ad infinitum is at the very least counterintuitive. In fact, it just seems reckless
Canada’s federal and provincial governments have rightfully focused on doing all they can to support people and businesses idled by the COVID-19 pandemic, and to keep people working where possible. But most advocates of aggressive spending always knew there would come a day of fiscal reckoning, in which we’d have to figure out how to…
It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out we’ve been had on this whole pandemic thing
A video goes viral, and the next thing you know it’s yanked off YouTube. It’s also pulled from Vimeo, and all the other popular platforms. In fact, it’s pretty hard to find. I’m talking about Plandemic, a 28-minute documentary that tells the truth about COVID-19. About the heroic Dr. Judy Mikovits, who had the courage…
Trudeau, for example, has learned that just standing in front of a mic and sounding sincere is about all he needs to do to emerge a political winner
A lot of us are finding we have the luxury of unexpected spare time while we wait to bust out of COVID jail. I am happily using some of my newfound time to slog my way through Churchill: Walking with Destiny, Andrew Roberts’ brilliant and exhaustive examination of one of the greatest leaders of the…
Governments are run by politicians and bureaucrats who think they can manage our affairs better than we can alone. Sometimes they’re right, if you think about something like pooling our tax dollars to build roads we can all use or building a health-care system accessible to all. But sometimes they’re wrong. They’re particularly wrong when…
Most springs, Canadians are overjoyed just to hear the words “sun” and “temperatures in the pluses.” But this year, they’ve been supplanted by one simple phrase: “We’re flattening the curve.” We are feeling cautious optimism that the very worst of the COVID-19 threat has passed, and that our country is beginning to gain some ground…
Canada has shunted vulnerable people to nursing homes where staff slave in sometimes filthy, and now dangerous, conditions
I hadn’t really thought of moving to Norway until the last week, when I began to pay attention to how that country cares for its elderly citizens. While North Americans warehouse aging people, who have spent lifetimes contributing to society, there are cultures around the world that take a completely different approach. And Norway, it…
Desperate times sometimes lead to catastrophic measures. In Alberta, the beleaguered provincial government is in a financial situation that could be characterized as desperate, suffering from the double-whammy of collapsed resource revenues and, of course, the massive spending required to address the social wildfire known as the COVID-19 pandemic. The desperate measure that the United…
