The B.C. budget will be released tomorrow (February 19) and we’re waiting with bated breath to see the investments in B.C.’s first poverty reduction strategy! Given that the provincial government has been talking about this since they came into power, this is really the time for it to put its money where its mouth is. The...

Pulling together the annual City budget is one of the most complex duties that staff and council performs each year and one that I take very seriously. As a result, at the last council meeting on Feb. 4 – I voted against staff preparing the draft 2019 budget inclusive of an Infrastructure Levy that would be phased in over...

A new book by author and photographer David Moskowitz documents the spectacular inland temperate rainforest shared by Canada and the U.S., in the hopes that the ‘caribou rainforest’ will become a household name like the Great Bear Rainforest or the Serengeti. By Sara Cox, for The Narwhal In mid-January, B.C....

Summer 2018 was Sweden’s hottest since record-keeping began more than 260 years ago — marked by drought, wildfires and extremely low reservoir levels. That was too much for 15-year-old Greta Thunberg. She heard politicians talking about climate change but didn’t see them doing enough about it. So she refused to go to school...

OPEN LETTER: The discriminatory, sexist comments about Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould being spread by government officials and staff are appalling and condemnable   Dear Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, We demand that you immediately and categorically publicly condemn the racist and sexist innuendo about Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould...

First, let’s straighten out that “world of politics” reference; politicians do not, and should not feel entitled to, occupy some separate sphere from the rest of us on this planet. But in some ways, they seem to: politicians seem to have some special license, à la James bond, to kill – to kill truth with words. The advertising...

Weather and climate aren’t the same. It’s one thing for people who spend little or no time learning about global warming to confuse the two, but when those we elect to represent us don’t know the difference, we’re in trouble. For a U.S. president to tweet about what he referred to as “Global Waming” because parts of the country...

By Stuart Parker In 2001, I decided to give progressive politics a try and for the next seventeen years, I subscribed to a utilitarian political project. By that, I mean that I stood behind organizations, electoral and non-electoral, that made sense in what is called the “hedonic calculus.” Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill,...

Internal documents released via Freedom of Information laws show that, while the B.C. government was publicly apologizing to the Fort Nelson First Nation for exempting natural gas plants from environmental assessments without consultation, the province quietly used a loophole to allow the exemptions to continue — a...

Imagine a land where drivers pay 55 per cent more for auto insurance than other drivers in Canada, a land where an insurance company may not cover you because of the city you live in, a land where your automobile insurance premiums isn't based on your driving record but your postal code. That land is Ontario. It's a land that...