So, normally, I flog this dead dying horse about once a year when the veterans' lobby ~ the Royal Canadian Legion and Veterans Affairs Canada and so on ~ decide that we should make the hours and days and even weeks around November 11th all about veterans. That is a lame notion that ignores why …
The problem of absolutes
Bill C-7, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (medical assistance in dying), is in the news, again, as the government seeks another legal delay while it tries to make a law that does not offend someone's Charter rights. Back in September of 2019 a Québec judge ruled that the existing Canadian and Québec laws …
Adding fuel to the fire
I see, in an opinion piece in the Globe and Mail, that Konrad Yakabuski says that here, in Canada, "The ideal of a country in which French and English can co-exist on an equal footing without one overpowering the other has never come close to being realized. Francophones employed in the federal public service know …
Justin Trudeau is a fool
In 1948 the United Nations formally codified genocide as a great crime against humanity. The concept was new, even the word was new, it was "first coined by Polish lawyer Raphäel Lemkin in 1944 in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. It consists of the Greek prefix genos, meaning race or tribe, and the Latin …
It’s simple
In a recent column in the Globe and Mail, John Ibbitson writes that "Our immigration system is geared to attracting high-skilled workers in the professions and trades. But our economy also depends on people whose work we undervalue, and they too should be welcomed to Canada as permanent residents ... [because as Usha George, director …
Bad news
So, there is a new Angus Reid Institute poll out, and it has a boat load of bad news for everyone. First, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau remains mired in minority territory: Experience with Canada's five party system, starting from 2006, says that a party needs something slightly in excess of 39% of the popular vote …
Votes
If there is going to be an election in 2021, and many experts predict that there will be, then I hope that all my readers will go out and vote. It is our civic duty to do so. I fully understand that a few million Canadians can never bring themselves to vote for a Conservative …
Not so fast
The cover of the current edition of Foreign Affairs says it all: America, many pundits, including many in America, Britain and Canada, say is in irreversible decline. The impact of Donald J Trump, they say, is greater than the fabled US Constitution and almost 250 years of history can overcome. America is doomed to decline …
It’s not funny …
I was really not laughing when I saw, a few days ago, on Fox News (but it was the same story everywhere) that "The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) told the Austin American Statesman that roughly 12,000 megawatts of Texas' wind generation capacity had been hampered as of Sunday due to frozen wind turbines." I've spent a …
Wayne Easter is right
Steven Chase and Robert Fife, writing in the Globe and Mail, tell us that "Liberal MP Wayne Easter ...[Malpeque, PEI] ... who also served as solicitor-general under Jean Chrétien ... and was, therefore, the minister] ... in charge of Canada’s security agencies ... [which means he might actually recognize threats to national security] ... told …