The end of the year features a variety of excesses: people eat too much yummy food, drink too many intoxicating beverages, engage in unseemly displays of lawn, home, and garden kitsch, and in general, try to relax and celebrate the end of a tough year and the promise...
Calgary has sworn in its first female mayor. A week earlier, less than 24 hours after winning the mayoral race, she gave her first post-election talk-radio interview to Ryan Jespersen, mostly involving a series of softball questions. He asked her the obligatory woke...
The hasty, defeatist and craven withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan in August has compelled the so-called “civilized” Western nations and their leaders to confront the failures and errors of the past 20 years, which resemble those of earlier conflicts....
In September 2021, the U.S., the United Kingdom and Australia formed an alliance to improve their defence capacities. The goal of this alliance, whose acronym is AUKUS, is to bolster the presence of Western countries in the Indo-Pacific and to counter China’s...
At the time of Confederation, Canada’s Plains Indians were in a desperate situation. The same European-introduced guns and horses that resulted in a briefly glorious golden age for them had also resulted in constant inter-tribal warfare and the rapid disappearance of...
Political attacks on the Indian Act are back in the news, and that is a good thing. However, Canadian politicians, including First Nation politicians, need a credible plan about what to do before we pull out the champagne. Attacking the Indian Act is not a big deal...
The Alberta premier’s plan to treat the coronavirus as endemic was the way out of the COVID crisis. That he is once again adopting restrictions for the province, for the fourth time, does not negate the endemic approach. But his declaration, paraphrasing President...
(Editor's note - The federal government committing to net zero policies at the November 2021 UN Climate Change summit in Scotland, effectively requires the eventual phase out of western Canada's hydrocarbon producing sector. This essay, though from a year ago,...
Once again, the world’s climate warriors are engaging each other during this week’s COP26 Climate Change Summit, aka the United Nations Conference of the Parties, in Glasgow, Scotland. Peddlers of alternative energy schemes strive to try to plunge their dippers into...
In the year 2000, the U.S. government's Global Change Research Program produced the first in a series of National Climate Assessments that made a number of projections based on computer models it insisted were ready for prime time. But as Dr. John Robson explains in...
The average age of Canadians who died of COVID-19 in 2020 was 83.8 years and typically they had 2 to 3 co-morbidities. Yet governments chose to deal with the pandemic with catastrophically damaging lockdowns of the economy instead of focusing protection on the...
Carbon taxes at the borders are becoming a popular idea among some countries and world regions. For example, the European Commission, the EU executive institution, is proposing environmental tariffs “on imports from countries with less stringent climate-protection...
In 1991 I joined the amazing world of the internet for the first time. In those days, before webpages and online graphics, it was a world of text and information. We were the select few, who were often regarded with scorn by society for wasting our time online. Many...
Minimum wages are on the rise again in Ontario. As of October 1, the province’s incessant central planners have not one but six higher price controls for labour. These hurt the most vulnerable Canadians and do the bidding of unions. However, vociferous proponents...
In his novel 1984, George Orwell envisioned a future that is arguably unfolding before our eyes where government authority was supreme and truth and freedom were not to be found. Perhaps he should have named his novel 2021 because our times seem more like his novel...