COLUMN: A troubling attitude to extinction of species and the web of life
News that Environment and Climate Change Canada is considering “priority threat management” to assess endangered species is troubling. The method is often used to inform a “triage” approach in which some species are abandoned to focus resources on others ranked higher priority. The federal government is legally required to ...
COLUMN: Nature Deficit
Renowned biologist Edward O. Wilson says to protect nature, people must regain their innate love for it. That means spending time in nature. While the concepts in Wilson’s book Biophilia have gained widespread acceptance since its publication more than 30 years ago, we’re still facing serious problems based on a lack of...
Op/Ed: What do we have a right to believe? A counter-argument
Having read the challenging piece on May 14, 'You don't have the right to believe whatever you want to', I feel that since the piece was intended to be challenging, perhaps it should be challenged. The basic premise of the text by Professor DeNicola was that some beliefs are too toxic for people to be allowed to hold them. ...
COLUMN: From the Hill -- the new trade agreement
After months of negotiations and a seemingly endless series of false deadlines, negotiators have hammered out a new trade agreement between Canada, the USA and Mexico. The new agreement (called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA for short) will create winners and losers, of course, and the general consensus...
Op/Ed: Religion is very good at managing emotion
By Stephen T. Asma, from Aeon Religion does not help us to explain nature. It did what it could in pre-scientific times, but that job was properly unseated by science. Most religious lay-people and even clergy agree: Pope John Paul II declared in 1996 that evolution is a fact and Catholics should get over it. No doubt some ...
Electoral Reform: Checking the facts -- Part one
Electoral reform fact check: the series -- #1 Both sides of the Proportional Representation (“ProRep”) debate have made claims about what the effects of a ProRep system would be. What should voters believe? Here, two Political Science specialists delve into the major claims made about ProRep by both sides, to distinguish...
COLUMN: Observations of Chaos from my Watchtower
“All along the watchtower…There's too much confusion, the hour is getting late... Bob Dylan “Here we are in the years… Children cry in fear, ‘let us out of here.’” Neil Young By Charles Jeanes So much food for thought, and limited space on the plate...
Report: Analysis of BC's media coverage on electoral reform
By Fair Vote Canada BC citizens are being asked to pronounce themselves on the subject of electoral reform in this fall’s upcoming referendum. This is an issue of significant importance and interest to all of us and if citizens are to vote wisely, they need to be as well informed as possible. “Many citizens place a great deal...
Gold seekers are flooding into the Yukon and wreaking havoc on its rivers
By Jimmy Thompson; republished from The Narwhal Digging and scraping their way along river beds, a growing gold rush of placer miners is disturbing the territory of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation — all under the rules of a bygone era that leave both Indigenous and colonial governments out of ...
Column: Disposable Culture
My parents married during the Great Depression. After the 1929 market collapse, people had to learn to make do, help each other out and live on meager incomes. Those times were seared into my parents’ attitudes and values. Although we were all born and raised in Canada, my family was seen as the enemy during the Second World...