Liberty of expression is the oxygen of democratic arrangements. As journalists exercise their craft independently and unencumbered, they are canaries in the political coal mine. By this gauge, if left untreated, Nicaragua’s polity will be eroding towards...
How can we achieve Indigenous economic reconciliation when the legal system perpetuates endless legal grievances and challenges? Case in point is a recent court ruling in British Columbia that could have serious negative effects on developments in provinces that...
The Manitoba government recently released its back-to-school plan. As with all COVID-related things, people are bitterly divided on the merits of this plan. Before jumping into this debate, I propose we accept two premises. First, everyone wants students to be safe,...
Do people bend over backward to hide things if they have nothing to hide? If the answer is no, Canadians have every reason to wonder why the government has gone to such great lengths to hide why two Chinese scientists were fired from a Winnipeg lab. For months,...
The Trans-Pacific Partnership was one of the world’s most ambitious trade deals. The agreement between Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam and the United States was signed on February 4, 2016. Its goal was...
Societies today are in a state of flux influenced by myriad factors—globalization versus nationalism, liberalization versus traditional values, and immigration versus closed borders. Some people perceive that an injustice has been committed against them while others...
Freedom of speech is not just an ideal to admire, it is a fundamental cornerstone that is required for democracy to survive. However, it appears that the majority of the population in Canada and the United States does not understand what free speech actually means and...
Good news has many fathers, the saying goes, while bad news is an orphan. So it was when the Covid-19 case numbers and casualty counts began to recede late last spring. Even faster than dandelions sprouting, variations on “We have flattened the curve” became among the...
Censorship is typically considered to be the removal or blocking of information, speech, or expression. It includes self-censorship, which is when individuals or organizations limit what they say for fear of repercussions. Historically, repressive governments have...
And so it continues: the ongoing, antagonizing relationship between the government of Alberta and the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA). This saga could be chalked up as entertaining if it were not for the thousands of Alberta students and teachers caught in the...
For a long time, the discussion about Big Tech has focused on whether a private good can be transformed into a public good, and whether social media platforms constitute an online public square. It’s an important principle and a discussion we need to have as these...
The new year is an excellent opportunity to resolve ongoing problems surrounding Indigenous access to the lobster fisheries in Atlantic Canada. Near the latter part of last year, rising tensions between Indigenous communities and non-Indigenous commercial lobster...
“You know the notion of non-taxation for Indians is a, is a fraud essentially, played on 95% of Indians since they have no income to tax. But it greatly benefits the system, the chiefs and councillors, the rich Indians, and what is happening is that it’s a very close...
Manitoba is at a pandemic low - not in infections, they are high - but in the government’s response. We are now encouraged to rat out fellow citizens on a “snitch line”. Officers have been hired to hand out tickets carrying hefty fines to business owners and...
John Thomas Peters Humphrey, OC (1905-1995) was a lawyer, diplomat, and scholar. He directed the United Nations Human Rights Division from 1946 to 1966. He was instrumental in drafting the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and received the U.N. Prize...