Editorial Rant: RCMP Surveillance of Social Media -- to What End?
Recent articles in The Tyee discuss the revelation that the RCMP have been engaged in monitoring social media – characterized in the article as “ongoing wide-scale monitoring of individuals’ social media use [that] could pose a threat to Canadians’ privacy and charter rights, say experts.” But ...
Op/Ed: It's Wrong-headed to Protect Nature with Human-style Rights
By Anna Grear, for Aeon How can the law account for the value of complex, nonhuman entities such as rivers, lakes, forests and ecosystems? At a time of runaway climate change, when the Earth’s biosphere is on the brink of collapse and species extinctions are accelerating, this has become a vital question. Some theorists argue...
Open Letter: Support for the Immediate Passing of Bill C-262
To The Editor: Dear Senators, The First Nations Leadership Council (FNLC) is calling on each Senator of Canada to support the passage of Bill C-262, An Act to ensure that the laws of Canada are in harmony with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, without delay. The Truth and Reconciliation...
In-Depth: Sprawling clearcuts among reasons for B.C.’s monster spring floods
Wildfire, drought and a pine beetle epidemic are piling on top of a long history of logging, pushing the province’s forests to a dangerous tipping point that experts say will make bad flooding worse By Ben Parfitt for The Narwhal Every spring and typically in May the Kettle River hits peak flow. A gauge placed in the ...
Editorial: We aren't enlightened, we're just short of workers
Will the new Builders Code help women and other minorities survive in the trades? Time will tell. Race and gender still provoke ostracism, bullying, harassment, hazing … call it what you will, it is all too common, and it creates a toxic workplace, especially for those at whom it’s directed. In some cases,...
COLUMN: Part Three: The West is Best, What do we Owe the Rest?
Part Three In the two previous editions of the Arc, I have been writing about the recent history of Western global dominance, about reactions to that past, and what it reveals about human consciousness expressed in culture. Two main authors are my resource for conversation about culture and consciousness in evolution: Robert...
Opinion: Opportunity costs: can carbon taxing become a positive-sum game?
By John Quiggin, professor of Economics at Queensland University in Brisbane, for Aeon Climate change, caused by human activity, is arguably the biggest single problem facing the world today, and it is deeply entangled with the question of how to lift billions of people out of poverty without destroying the global environment...
$50,000 to save forest above Cottonwood Lake may be too little, too late
Caught off guard by a plan to log more than 600 hectares of treasured local forest, residents near Cottonwood Lake discovered that privately owned lands can be clearcut without public notice, consultation with neighbours or the requirement to replant logged areas By Judith Lavoie, for The Narwhal Against a dramatic backdrop...
Column: on SNC-Lavalin and our government
Last Wednesday we heard riveting testimony from former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould on her account of events in the SNC-Lavalin story. This is a long and sordid tale of corruption both abroad and here in Canada. As the SNC-Lavalin scandal rolls out, I’m reminded of Tommy Douglas’ political fable “Mouseland”. In it,...
Column: Renewable power renewing communities
Energy is inextricably linked to a range of community issues, from health to housing. That was one message that emerged from a four-day gathering in Calgary of more than 200 young Indigenous leaders from every province and territory, organized by Disa Crow Chief of the Siksika Nation and Cory Beaver of the Stoney Nakoda Nation....
