One clear takeaway from the convoy protest is the realization that pandemic restrictions and mandates are not affecting everyone equally. Liberal MP Joel Lightbound’s clever retort of, “Not everyone can still earn a living using their MacBook while at the cottage”...
Things have taken a strange turn in Canada on the genocide front. Genocide? Canada? Those are words that you would not normally see together. Words like “polite” or “peaceful” might come to mind. But “genocide”, not so much. In fact, the picture of placid Canadians as...
The pandemic is showing us the consequences of not adequately addressing housing and health care issues on Indigenous communities in Manitoba. Back in April 2020, I wrote an editorial that showed how Indigenous communities – while protected at first from the pandemic...
After a press interview several years ago Tomson Highway, author of Permanent Astonishment (Doubleday Canada, 2021) found himself sidelined by Indigenous and media elites for his apostacy in saying that some good things came out of residential schools. He said: Nine...
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....
Travel and work over the past two years have brought me to many different jurisdictions. What continues to strike me is the way the responses to COVID-19 have been varied, arbitrary and often draconian. I look back at Canada and see raging debates over mask mandates,...
Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) did not become as stand-alone federal government department until 1966. Since then, it has ballooned in size to become a vast department with jurisdictional reach over 90 percent of Canada’s land mass. INAC, which is in...
Last year, a geological survey made a promising discovery of diamonds in northern Manitoba. The province should move quickly to enhance the potential for revenue by involving industry partners, First Nations and municipalities in the region. Other areas have fumbled...
Luke Briscoe, 39, is an Indigenous Australian business leader on a mission to expand Indigenous involvement in the national economy, especially through STEM (STEM is an acronym for the fields of science, technology, engineering and math). Over the last few decades,...
Terri-Lynne McClintic, convicted of the abduction, rape and murder of eight-year old Tory Stanford, was recently moved from federal prison to a healing lodge. Canadians were surprised - to say the least - that the transfer of a convicted child murderer to a healing...
Mark “Dion” Devow, 47, an Indigenous entrepreneur and business leader from Australia, said his Indigenous clothing line could have done better financially at the start if he had chosen a different name, but he deliberately chose it to make a point. Devow established...
A First Nation community about 70 kilometres southeast of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, hopes to generate profit within five years from a private MRI clinic. The James Smith Cree Nation could create what would be the province’s first private-pay MRI facility. This...
In his new book, There is no Difference, Ontario lawyer Peter Best begins a long-repressed national conversation about Canada’s legal and social relations with its Indigenous peoples. Mr. Best asks: Why can not Nelson Mandela’s goal and vision of “one set of laws for...
The Māori people of New Zealand have always been entrepreneurial to some degree. They have had to adapt to the circumstances they were forced into. In the 2013 New Zealand census, there were approximately 600,000 people in New Zealand identifying as Māori, making up...
Rural crime has received a lot of attention lately. For Douglas Cuthand, an Indigenous Saskatchewan columnist, the phrase ‘rural crime‘ is code for crimes committed by Indigenous thugs. In Saskatchewan, and likely for Alberta and Manitoba as well, an Indigenous man is...