On Nov. 13, 2020, just as the vaccine was being rolled out (surely a sheer coincidence that it was just after the election), the World Health Organization (WHO) made a hugely significant change to its website. It pertained to the section on herd immunity—the concept...
COVID-19
Peckford: A New Emergencies Act for Canada – An Open Letter to Our Federal Parliamentary Leaders. The People Must Be in Charge.
It must be clear to all serious political leaders in Canada today that the Emergencies Act has not worked. The main reason for that, I submit, is that it was poorly constructed in the first place. Parliament made a grave error when it allowed the Government of the day...
The Strange Conclusions of Justice Paul Rouleau
Justice Paul Rouleau released his Report on February 17, and “concluded that the very high level threshold required for the invocation of the (Emergencies) Act was met.” He insists “cabinet had reasonable grounds to believe there existed a national emergency arising...
The Ardern Legacy
Appointed as New Zealand’s Prime Minister in 2017, Jacinda Ardern has been described as an iron fist in a velvet glove. She wooed the world with talk of kindness and compassion, while at home ruling like a dictator. No friend of free speech, she had little regard for...
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Global Fragmentation: The False Hope and Unrealistic Promises of Global Development Goals
In September 2000, one hundred and ninety-one member states established the United Nations Millennium Development Goals:1 Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; Achieve universal primary education; Promote gender equality and empower women; Reduce child mortality;...
What is the end Goal of Protests Over Residential School Graves?
In July, the Canadian prime minister denounced the arson and vandalism of Catholic churches across the country in the wake of the discovery of unmarked graves at former residential schools. After more than 1,100 unmarked graves were discovered at schools previously...
Fractured Beacons of Idealism and the Neglect of Moral Obligations
The largest democracy and the most powerful nation have been left disrobed of their pageantry and power - shamefully failing their own citizens, revealing their disintegrating moral façade. It is said that the measure of a person is not what they do when things are...
Five ways the Surveillance State is in Hyperdrive
Pandemic Gives Government Perfect Excuse to Monitor Citizens Crises are the perfect breeding ground for authoritarians and social engineers. The extreme measures governments have rolled out to contain the COVID-19 pandemic remind us that fear often trumps any...
Contextualizing the Cost of COVID: Will Canada Ever pay it Off?
It has become routine, every morning around 11:15 a.m. EDT thousands of Canadians gather around their television sets to hear the daily national briefing. Closely watching as our national leaders soberly descends down the stairs and step up to the microphone. Citizens...
Let’s use COVID-19 to Improve our Health Care and Legal Systems
In the time of the 1918/19 Spanish flu, the world was a very different place. Of course, there was no internet, TVs, or social media. In fact, there wasn’t even any radio until a few years later. All the news was provided by the newspaper - and almost all...
The Coming war on the Elderly
The Great Plague of 2020 has revealed some interesting things about Western societies’ attitudes toward old people. In Italy, the shortage of medical equipment to treat patients suffering from the coronavirus has led to hospitals ruling that anyone over the age of 60...
The only Thing we have to fear is fear Itself
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Those were the famous words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, spoken at his first inauguration on March 4, 1933, at the height of the Great Depression. Unemployment had hit 25 percent and there was panic in the land....
Rising Unemployment Poses a Threat to CMHC, Mortgage Insurer to High-Risk Home Buyers
The shutdowns ordered by governments in Canada to slow the spread of the Covid-19 novel coronavirus have caused unemployment to leap. Most of the millions of workers laid off thus far have been low- and lower-middle-income wage earners, just the sort of people who may...
Pandemic Lockdown: Are We Just Delaying the Inevitable?
Most Western countries have been in lockdown for more than a month to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. Schools have been emptied and all businesses deemed nonessential have been closed by government order. This is an enormously expensive strategy. Our...
This Pandemic has been Rooted in Politics from the very Beginning
There are those who believe we shouldn’t criticize our political (and other) leaders during a crisis. The Canadian way is to get through it first, then hold inquiries and, many years and millions of dollars later, we will know who failed in their leadership tasks and...