The New Democratic Party, the Opposition in the Manitoba legislature, has proposed the creation of a new Crown corporation to provide high-speed internet service to rural and remote communities, particularly First Nations communities, in that province. This idea is...
My landlord friend had a problem and the solution was so novel he had to tell me about it. He lives in Winnipeg, but his house tenant in Regina couldn’t remove snow from the property. Not long ago, finding someone to deal with that might have been difficult or...
Freedom of speech is not just an ideal to admire, it is a fundamental cornerstone that is required for democracy to survive. However, it appears that the majority of the population in Canada and the United States does not understand what free speech actually means and...
For a long time, the discussion about Big Tech has focused on whether a private good can be transformed into a public good, and whether social media platforms constitute an online public square. It’s an important principle and a discussion we need to have as these...
Those of you who are tired of my rants about the demise of our once great health system will be pleased to know that this is my last editorial. I am retiring from the BCMJ Editorial Board; currently, I am the longest-serving member (more than 20 years). I have been a...
Back in the lofty, pre-Justin Trudeau government days of 2014, back when oil was booming, pipelines were planned to east and west coasts, and Alberta and Saskatchewan were swimming in money, around $81 billion was spent in capital expenditures (CAPEX) in the Canadian...
The age of driverless automobiles is almost upon us. Most of the world’s car makers are working on prototypes and it is expected that by 2030 the autonomous vehicle market in the US alone will be worth approximately $87 billion. How will Canada deal with this...
The Sharing Economy: A story of creative destruction and the erosion of barriers to entry. It was a most unusual funeral. On April 29, 2017, 20 people walked mournfully through Toronto’s Kensington neighbourhood. Incense wafted from the front of the procession,...
Canada's spy agencies want access to your encrypted communication, and they have a ploy to get it without going through Parliament. Australia is where the action is taking place since she has fewer constitutional protections for privacy. The 2018 Assistance and Access...
The US government is pressuring Canada to block telecommunications companies from using equipment provided by Huawei, a Chinese company, when building our 5G cellular network for smartphones. Their logic is along the lines of “we don’t have actual evidence that China...
Within the traditionally-sacred walls of our homes we felt secure that we were hidden from the prying eyes of peeping Toms. Once your curtains were drawn and the door shut, you feel a sense of quiet and a feeling that you were now in your own space, saying and doing...
State digital currencies, those that attempt to emulate private cryptocurrencies, are doomed to fail. Not only will they fail in terms of adoption, despite having the state behind them, they will fail in terms of the objectives that drive alternative currencies. The...
Scared of superintelligent AI? You should be, says neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris -- and not just in some theoretical way. We're going to build superhuman machines, says Harris, but we haven't yet grappled with the problems associated with creating...
GDPR. General Data Protection Regulations sounds like something that the average person needs to know nothing about, but on the contrary, they affect us on a day-to-day basis. There was a time, for the last 20 years, where most jurisdictions had similar requirements...
In 2012 two brothers left good jobs to pursue a business idea. They knew that most restaurants do not deliver, and that consumers increasingly order goods and services on-line. They suspected that car owners might want to earn extra income. They connected these dots...