Last Monday I travelled to Washington, DC with Tracey Ramsey, the NDP critic for International Trade.  I was there in my role as NDP critic for Natural Resources, and we were both there to talk about softwood lumber with senators, congressmen and their staff. We had a full day of meetings on Tuesday, going from office to...

By Gaelle Gourmelon; article from WorldWatch Institute You’re standing at the store, a bottle of shampoo in each hand. Your gaze circles from one label to the other, and your mind runs 10 simultaneous comparisons to decide which bottle you’ll bring home. Blue is, after all, your favorite color. And this label does...

By Carol Linnett.  This article is from DeSmog Canada. While news of Saskatchewan’s plan for a small geothermal power plant was met with excitement by renewable energy advocates,  experts say British Columbia is far better situated to capitalize on the technology yet has failed to do so. “It should be a little bit of a shock...

Editor's Note:  Last year, some of us were privileged to hear Sachi Komura Rummel, a survivor of the 1945 Hiroshima nuclear bomb, speak about her experiences. In choosing an illustration for this column by our Member of Parliament, I could have chosen a splendid, colourful shot of an incandescent nuclear-bomb mushroom cloud...

Do you remember Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak? It turns out wizards aren’t the only ones who can vanish from sight with a special coat. Marine researchers have discovered shrimp-like crustaceans called hyperiids that can hide in the open using internal nanotechnology to cloak themselves in invisibility. That’s just one ...

The Broadbent Institute and the Fraser Institute come up with different figures when analyzing the "tax burden" of Canadians.  There's a report produced by statistitian Richard Shillington and economist Robin Shaban for the Broadbent Institute that explains the differences: "The Brass Tax: Busting Myths About Overtaxed...

The notion that we must conquer or dominate nature has governed human behaviour for a relatively short period of our 150,000-year history on this 4.5-billion-year-old planet. It’s an understandable impulse. Our intelligence and foresight allowed us to develop complex societies, and gave us a sense of control over our existence...

Children are beautiful.  They embody our hopes for the future. Does that mean that girls and women should be forbidden access to sex education and family planning?   Following the Women's March on Washington and supporting marches in thousands of centres internationally, women's rights and their health and well-being globally...

Those over a certain age know that "Cliffhanger" is a 1993 action/suspense movie starring Sylvester Stallone, and as in all such entertainments, the big question is "will the good guys win?"  Well, of course.  The entertainment lies in watching how they do it (Gasp! -- skinny ropes over terrifying chasms! Skinny ledges and ...

In 1926, U.S. automaker Henry Ford reduced his employees’ workweek from six eight-hour days to five, with no pay cuts. It’s something workers and labour unions had been calling for, and it followed previous reductions in work schedules that had been as high as 84 to 100 hours over seven days a week. Ford wasn’t responding to...