Why don’t we set up our own employment insurance system in the west?
Les Routledge
The Buffalo Commons…Revisited
The concept of settling on the prairies was a failed experiment…..NOT!
Alberta Fracking Regulation
Alberta is looking at updating its regulatory framework for hydraulic fracturing practices. As a farmer and rural land owner, I particularly like the idea of having baseline studies of ground water quality done before development occurs. This is an essential...
Audit and Review Required
It is time to review the role of Canada Mortgage and Housing in the Canadian economy
Featured News
What Must Be Done to Curb Canada’s Household Debt
Canada is struggling economically. From inflation and deficits to investment and employment, everything that should be up is down, and everything that should be down is up. One striking symptom of economic rot is household debt, which is rising faster than incomes....
Crown Utilities’ Unfair Advantages Reduce Competition, Innovation
Largely unique among state-owned enterprises, ‘SEOs’, worldwide, Canadian Crown corporations have two key advantages over current and future private sector competitors: non-taxable status and access to low-cost public sector borrowing rates. Other implicit edges...
Net Neutrality in Europe
BBC reports that the European Union is to investigate whether internet service providers (ISPs) are providing fair access to online services. Announcing the action, the EU's commissioner for the digital agenda, Neelie Kroes, said: "I am absolutely determined that...
Regulating GMO Seeds
Tom Philpott over at Grist has written a post complaining about the USDA allowing proponents to fund environmental assessment studies required to satisfy Environmental Impact Assessment regulations.
In early April, the USDA made what I’m reading as a second response to Judge White, this one even more craven. To satisfy the legal system’s pesky demand for environmental impact studies of novel GMO crops, the USDA has settled upon a brilliant solution: let the GMO industry conduct its own environmental impact studies, or pay other researchers to.
His complaint makes for a nice sound bite. However, if he is going to prevent
GMO technology developers from sponsoring environmental impact analysis, is he proposing to prohibit that practice in the pharmaceutical sector? Should new drugs be held off the market until government researchers get around to conducting their own research on the safety of new medications?
Cruel and Unusual Punishment
The Province of Ontario announced plans to limit television offered in prison to basic cable.
Environmental Police State
The number-one threat to the health, safety and future of our planet is the assortment of fanatics who are proposing to save it.
Electricity – Reliability, Availability & Redundancy
Intermittent sources of power production such as wind, solar, and bio-gas are frequently criticized as being too intermittent and unreliable to be of value to the electrical grid. The argument is often put forward that every megawatt or wind energy capacity has to be backed up with another megawatt of production capacity somewhere else on the grid so power is available 7-24.
On one level, that criticism ignores that the direct variable operating cost of wind and solar energy is nearly zero unlike thermal energy plants like gas, coal or nuclear which must pay for fuel to produce energy.
Nuclear – Dueling Commentaries
Lawrence Solomon and George Monbiot face off over nuclear power.
Thermodynamics Tutorial
Both Grist and Watts up with That have posted the following chart that provide a graphical illustration of energy use in the United States. The comments after the primary post at the Grist site are worth a read.
While the first impression is that the amount of “rejected energy” suggests there is substantial room for improvements in efficiency, some deeper analysis and commentary is required about the fundamental limits presented by the laws of thermodynamics. In addition, the assumptions used to produce the charts are quite broad brush and border on being simplistic.
Election – No Time to Discuss Serious Issues #2
Already Greg Selinger is pulling out the bogyman of privatization of Manitoba Hydro to scare the voters into supporting the status quo.
The Conservative attacks on Hydro are a prelude, the premier said, to selling the Crown corporation if they gain power, just as they did with the Manitoba Telephone System in 1996.
Canadian Federation of Ag on the Election
The CFA calls for all federal parties to make agriculture a platform priority in 2011.