Last month, lobbyists gathered in Vancouver for The Future of Lobbying, a one -day conference put on by B.C.'s Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists, Simon Fraser Institute's Governance Studies and Public Affairs Association of Canada (B.C. Chapter). Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there does seem to be a future for the...

Pipelines are a hot topic in Ottawa and across the country these days.  Last Wednesday the Liberals outlined their plans for a revised environmental assessment process for pipelines, and on Thursday the Conservatives put forward a motion asking the House to support the Energy East pipeline. Here is the overall picture: the ...

By David Suzuki With the December Paris climate agreement, leaders and experts from around the world showed they overwhelmingly accept that human-caused climate change is real and, because the world has continued to increase fossil fuel use, the need to curb and reduce emissions is urgent. In light of this, I don’t get the ...

Food from "away": It's becoming common knowledge that most of the food we eat here in BC comes from other places:  rice from Asia or California, oranges and orange juice from Florida, Texas or California, vegetables and almonds mostly from California, wheat and other grains from the prairies,  and convenience foods -- prepared...

Will Trudeau Take a Neo-Keynesian Approach? Place your bets. Will Justin Trudeau and his economic advisors choose a neo-Keynesian approach to the growing economic disaster facing the country or will it stick to the neo-liberal ideology that has been the stock response of Liberal and Conservative governments for the past 30 ...

Increasing corporate tax rates results in lower average wages for workers, finds a new study, released today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank. Corporate income taxes are ultimately paid for by individuals either as workers through lower wages, consumers through higher...

To The Editor: Canada drew upon its compassion during the Paris Climate Summit.  Knowing that if our carbon emissions continue unchanged, some of the earliest and most tangible consequences are to island nations in the southern hemisphere. They will be overwhelmed by the rising sea level, lives and livelihoods lost, and so ...

Changes for a new year In the past, this time of year would move me usually to make some kind of summary and prognostication about the year just passed and the one ahead, or even of a more long-term future. Typically I would be pessimistic about global politics, the world economy, war, climate, social unravelling, cultural ...

So apparently the latest trend is to declare ‘stupid’ a modern swear word. I actually heard a mom say to her toddler not to use the ‘s’ word, and had a reader call me out for cursing whenI used it. (I’m not sure where that leaves us in dealing with the other ‘s’ word, but […]

Right up to the last federal election the Canadian government held firm to the position that an inquiry on the subject of missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada was not needed.  The government believed that the problem could be dealt with by way of criminal justice reforms.  Criminal justice incorporates law enforcement,...