Editorial Rant: Lying in politics -- so common, so corrupt
Politics. Election campaigns. Lies. Is anyone else out there infuriated by how closely those three things are linked? Why should politicians have some sort of 007-like “License to Lie”? I say they shouldn’t. In Canada, people are given some protection against false or misleading advertising. There’s the voluntary “Canadian...
Opinion: What Canada can learn from New Zealand on electoral reform
By Dominic O'Sullivan -- Associate Professor of Political Science, Charles Sturt University The results of the recent Canadian election don’t reflect the will of the people, and the situation is reigniting calls for proportional representation. Some have outlined what Canada’s House of Commons would have looked like under ...
Opinion: We are heading for a New Cretaceous, not a new normal
By Peter Forbes, for Aeon A lazy buzz phrase – ‘Is this the new normal?’ – has been doing the rounds as extreme climate events have been piling up over the past year. To which the riposte should be: it’s worse than that – we’re on the road to even more frequent, more extreme events than we saw this year. We have known since...
Column: We owe Greta and the world's youth more than a Nobel Prize
Many people, including me, expected Greta Thunberg to win this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Instead, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali was deservedly awarded for ending more than 20 years of conflict with neighbouring Eritrea.Greta and the young people worldwide urging adults to care about their future don’t need a Nobel....
Opinion: The benefits of gratitude
Editorial note: Thanksgiving is coming up; contemplating gratitude seems especially appropriate. This article suggests that conscious gratitude is an easy way to improve one’s quality of life, and discusses how that works. By David DeSteno, for Aeon For the Ancient Greeks, virtue wasn’t a goal in and of itself, but rather a...
Column: Choose your government: Canadians and a perilous future
The moment, the prospects, the significance This is my second and final column on the federal election at hand. I write this feeling very uncertain about what Canadians want from politics. I have just recently told a friend in a conversation about the election – one of many – that I think conservatism in Canada is weak. But...
Editorial Opinion: Ruminations on voting, party platforms, promises and so on
Mainstream media coverage to date of the federal election campaign has led CBC pundit Neil Macdonald to declare, “I can’t get little enough of it.” No wonder. Irrelevant distractions, insults, inaccurate accusations, fake videos, false social media memes, a flood of promises that few voters put much faith in anymore, and ...
LETTER: Kudos to striking kids, federal parties need to step up
To the Editor, The Fridays For the Future youth strike last Friday was inspiring. Around the world, millions of youth and their supporters marched and demanded real climate action from the adults. By ‘real action’ I assume the youth mean action that avoids the forecasted global catastrophe and delivers the Paris Accord goal...
RANT: On cops, Crown, courts and criminalty - a wake-up call is required
I just published an article about prolific offenders that is going to have many locals feeling furious, and justly so. It’s about two local prolific offenders who, between the two of them, are facing 40 separate charges for crimes committed within a two-week span. Both have been arrested – within that time frame – at least ...
COLUMN: We must purge privilege from politics
Tackling climate change means purging privilege from politics Our national political arena often seems dominated by unproductive partisan potshots and misplaced accountability, with corporate interests prioritized over people’s. Behind the noisy partisan sniping, a quiet majority — 70 to 75 per cent of Canadians — is largely disengaged from politics, according to McAllister Opinion Research. […]
