National Citizens Inquiry, Red Deer, Day 3
COVID-19
After Covid: Twelve Challenges for a Shattered World
Three years ago, in the depths of lockdowns, it became obvious that we desperately needed a new citizen movement with a different focus. Prevailing ideological forms were simply not adapted to the enormous exogenous shock to the system that lockdowns implied. It was...
Creating a ‘New Normal’ for Science: Should We Really Leave That ‘Mission’ to the Feds?
Canadian science deserves much better.
Canada Deviated From Strategic Pandemic Response Lt. Colonel David Redman
National Citizens Inquiry, Red Deer, Day 2
Featured News
How the Prairie Provinces Can Benefit from an Improved Trans-Pacific Partnership
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...
Social Conflict Abridged: From Unperceived Injuries to Claiming—What is Conflict?
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...
Using COVID-19 to Advance Radical, Partisan and Racist Policies
In his first days in office, President Joe Biden rescinded a Trump-era order that restricted the federal government’s use of diversity training to examine issues around race and gender bias and systemic racism. In doing so, he will be advancing radical and divisive...
Holding Back the Pandemic Tide and Other Government Delusions
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...
The Snitches vs. The Scofflaws
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...
Travel Restrictions … Do as I Say Not as I do
The Alberta Premier initially declined to punish members of his party and staff after news of their travel was revealed, pointing out that his government’s pandemic approach to protecting “lives and livelihoods” included the travel sector. The premier said he took...
Rethinking Lockdowns
Vaccinations are happening, and lockdowns will finally end. Politicians, and supportive media, will tell us that their lockdown policies saved us. The public will be praised for enduring all of the hardships, including school and business closures, an almost complete...
COVID-19 is Endemic: What Now?
Recent pronouncements by the World Health Organization (WHO) suggest its view of COVID-19 seems to be evolving from a “pandemic” threat that is novel and spreading, to an “endemic” threat that has established itself as just another new contestant in the vast ecosystem...
Is the COVID-19 Pandemic an Existential Crisis?
Since we’ve recently celebrated Christmas, I decided to approach a poignant topic from a religious and philosophical perspective. In this vein, I recalled a great theologian whose work I studied as an undergraduate at Lutheran College, and marked its application to...
COVID Hypocrisy: Heavy Rules and Weak Apologies
“For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit,” Noam Chomsky once said. Emergency orders and the moralizing pronouncements of politicians have put heavy burdens on people. But in some cases, these were the mandates of hypocrites. “As we all make sacrifices...
Coronaphobia
Coronaphobia may not have entered our official vocabulary, but it deserves to. Virus fears have affected public policy and our daily lives. The condition is held by a great number of people. It is understandable why the elderly and immunosuppressed are worried. What...