Today’s all-out assault by the combined forces of Canada’s powerful environmental movement on the so-called dirty oil of the oil sands has its precursor in recent history. The present environmental movement cut its teeth with its incursion into Canadian forestry, once...
Yes, the glacier of Glacier Bay is receding—as it has from time to time for centuries. When President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry visited Alaska this week, they pointed to the receding glaciers as evidence that humans are the cause of “dangerous,”...
According to The New York Times, Canada now has the most affluent middle-class in the world. This is based on a newspaper study commissioned by LIS, which maintains the Luxembourg Income Study Database. According to The Times “the American middle class, long the...
Tinkering with a system in clear need of an overhaul is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. In March, the Winnipeg lab of Intertek, a global commodities testing firm, received an unusual request. Manitoba farmer Paul Orsak brought in wheat samples from...
Those of you who are tired of my rants about the demise of our once great health system will be pleased to know that this is my last editorial. I am retiring from the BCMJ Editorial Board; currently, I am the longest-serving member (more than 20 years). I have been a...
Back in the lofty, pre-Justin Trudeau government days of 2014, back when oil was booming, pipelines were planned to east and west coasts, and Alberta and Saskatchewan were swimming in money, around $81 billion was spent in capital expenditures (CAPEX) in the Canadian...
Four years ago this month Security Council Resolution 1973 sanctioning action against Libya was effusively welcomed by many as conclusive proof of the Responsibility to Protect’s (R2P) efficacy. It was, former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans rejoiced,...
As the federal election looms, a hailstorm of criticism is being launched against the Harper government for its failure on environmental issues. Already, the media reports have informed us that we are not protecting our caribou. Canada is an international pariah when...
Greenbrier tankers have been found to be twice as safe and eight times less likely to spill Last Saturday, just outside the northeastern Ontario town of Gogama, 38 cars loaded with bitumen from Alberta’s oilsands derailed, triggering a series of fiery...
Rajendra Pachauri, one of the world's most famous climate officials, is being investigated under three sections of the Indian Penal Code relating to sexual assault, harassment, and stalking. He has resigned as longtime chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on...
In Canada, growth is moving west, but not all the way. The big growth now is in the Prairies between central Canada and British Columbia, the Canadian part of the Great Plains. Yet you can’t talk about metropolitan Canada without first mentioning the Toronto region....
Originally published for The Huffington Post. The world is rapidly becoming urban. More than half the world’s 7-plus billion people live in urban areas (urban cores, suburbs and small towns). Nearly a quarter of the population lives in “cities” of a million or more....
The Assembly of First Nations is proposing a national public inquiry to address the grave situation facing Aboriginal women in Canada. While many believe that a national inquiry is the answer, that may not in fact be the case. The issue is a serious one. Indeed,...
Today the Frontier Centre for Public Policy released a new study documenting how high public sector employment rates in the provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan have significant costs to the taxpayers of those provinces. Additional spending on the public sector wage...
Manitoba employs considerably more local and provincial public sector workers per capita than the rest of Canada. In an increasingly lower-income province facing a convergence of high debt, structural budget deficits, and flat or declining equalization payments,...