“We don’t serve your kind,” is the last thing a customer wants to hear. It should also be the last thing a service provider would want to say. But Jessica Yaniv might have just proved us wrong. The male-to-female transgender activist may have provided the otherwise...
Year: 2019
FIDO – Forget It, Drive On
Winnipeg’s Bear Clan has expelled its Thunder Bay sister group. While the mainly Indigenous volunteer group works closely with police, the collaborative relationship has broken down in Thunder Bay. The Thunder Bay chapter began in 2016 - inspired by the success of...
Missing a Post-Brexit Trade Opportunity
Brexit uncertainty is no more, following the election of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom with the largest Conservative majority since 1987. Johnson’s Withdrawal Agreement will be passed in the House of Commons and the United Kingdom will leave...
Can We Talk About Racism?
Doug Cuthand, a columnist who writes on Indigenous issues for the Saskatoon Star-Pheonix, once wrote a piece that apparently bothered many non-Indigenous readers, excoriate as it did the treatment of First Nations people by “white” society. Among other things, he...
Featured News
Alberta Politics and Empty Promises of Health-care Solutions
The writ has been dropped and Albertans are off to the polls on May 29. That leaves just four weeks for political leaders and voters to sort out what is arguably the most divisive, yet significant, issue for this election - health care. On Day 2, NDP leader Rachel...
There’s Nothing Fair About Canadian Health Care
For the past 14 years, Vancouver surgeon Dr. Brian Day has led the charge for health-care reform, pushing for the right of patients to pay for private care if their health and well-being are threatened as a result of waiting in a stagnant and overburdened public...
Transformers: More than Meets the Eye
The path to net zero, based on the much disputed belief that carbon dioxide is a pollution, is more steep and impractical than most people realize. Replacing fossil fuels with clean electricity will require much more power generation and a greatly upgraded grid to...
Canada’s Federal Debt Will Soon Be out of Control
During the 2015 federal election, the Prime Minister promised that the Liberals would have temporary deficits not exceeding $10 B per year and would return to balanced budgets by 2019. The Canadian voters drank this kool aid. However things have turned out to be even...
UNDRIP – Behind Closed Doors
British Columbia has become the first province to adopt the United Nations Declaration on Aboriginal Peoples (UNDRIP). Except for the opposition of a determined group of Conservative senators, the federal government would have adopted UNDRIP as actionable law before...
No Chains Required—Just Canadians Who Value Reconciliation
The origin of a potentially groundbreaking step towards meaningful reconciliation between Canada’s first people and settlers can be laid at the feet of Métis leader Louis Riel. Literally. In 1994, Métis activist Jean Allard had lots of time to think after he chained...
CRA Plan for Cryptocurrency Spells Death by Taxation
Canada has a bipolar history with cryptocurrencies. In 2013, she saw both the world’s first bitcoin ATM and the federal government rushing to tax crypto-assets. Now, Canadian accountants (CPAs) have issued a warning that onerous tax rules will scare away...
Canada’s Culture Is Changing and Not for the Better
It’s becoming frighteningly clear that Canada’s culture is not the culture I grew up in. When I was born the average family had three or more children. Today the average family is having no more than two children (if they are having children at all), creating a...
Medical Associations Offbase with Conversion Therapy Ban
Pushed by its student wing, the American Medical Association called for the ban of conversion therapy1 during mid-November meetings in San Diego. The decision will add force to the political movement to ban conversion therapy—the turning of someone away from...
Maximum Pain for Minimum Gain at City Hall
We have all seen this movie before. The theatrics now underway at city hall over the city’s ongoing budget “crisis” is just too predictable. Taxpayers have seen this movie so many times before that we know the plot. City bureaucrats float various dire scenarios,...
The Campus Tendency to Extremism
There is a common cultural dynamic in which competition among members of a social or political movement for the prestige of ideological purity and group leadership leads to more and more extreme substantive positions. Examples are countless: Christianity, based on a...