Governments need to get their acts together before Indigenous communities in northern Saskatchewan experience a serious COVID-19 outbreak. This new development also places northern Saskatchewan as a unique phenomenon among northern regions in Western Canada; thus, the...
As of now, Indigenous communities have been spared from the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, although some health officials cautioned that the next two weeks will be important to see the extent of the outbreak in Indigenous communities. Unless that state of affairs...
In his policy paper “Learning from the Nordic Sami Model”, Joseph Quesnel asks whether the current approach to solving the serious problems faced by Canadian Aboriginals is the right one. For the last half-century, courts and governments in this country have...
In his paper “Successful Integration Experiences From Around the World”, Joseph Quesnel examines the response of three diverse countries to the economic and social challenges facing their Indigenous populations: Mexico with its Meso-American peoples, the Japanese with...
The heartbreaking death of Nathanael Spitzer, the cancer-stricken boy from Ponoka, exposed a most callous streak in Alberta’s medical bureaucracy. There is no forgiving how Alberta Health Services appallingly used a child’s death to promote yet more COVID-19 fear. ...
In October, Apple Inc. warned that draft rules from the European Union that would require the technology company to open up its mobile operating system to third-party apps would pose a security risk to its users. Expanding on comments already made by CEO Tim Cook, a...
As we enter the year 2022, most Canadians will have lived their entire lives under the shibboleth that says we have the best health-care system in the world. Our beloved medicare is universal in scope, free of charge and offers equal access to all. What country could...
The free market economy is beautiful in its simplicity: offer a service people want at a price people will pay for, and you will get your reward. For decades, cab drivers offered what buses could not—a ride on request from any location to anywhere else in a reasonable...
Universities in the 20th century were dedicated to the advancement of knowledge. Scholarship and research were pursued, and diverse opinions were exchanged and argued in the “marketplace of ideas.” This is no longer the case. Particularly in the social sciences,...
Fifty-one years ago, he was a young boy who came to a tragic end. Today he's a symbol for all that was wrong with this country's treatment of Indigenous people. So why is the story of Chanie Wenjack so full of imaginative fabrication? At age nine, Chanie, from Ogoki...
Like post-secondary institutions in colonialized countries, the first Canadian universities had strong ties to religious institutions and to the alma maters of what their academics saw as their mother countries. By the late 1960s, secularity had become the norm, but...
The Assembly of First Nations is proposing a national public inquiry to address the grave situation facing Aboriginal women in Canada. While many believe that a national inquiry is the answer, that may not in fact be the case. The issue is a serious one. Indeed,...
The federal government has begun intensive consultations in preparing a First Nations Education Act. Right now, the Indian Act is silent on educational standards, or even any kind of educational system for that matter. The federal government aims to fill that gap by...
In “Climate scientists’ “consensus” based on a myth” I described how one of the sources of the idea that 97% of climate experts agree there is a human-induced climate crisis—“Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change” by Doran and Zimmerman—was not a...
National Chief Shawn Atleo Shawn Atleo of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) opened up the first session of the AFN's Special Chiefs Assembly on Education today. There were plenty of speeches and even some grandstanding vis-a-vis the federal government. But, let's...