To subsidize or not
May 16, 2012 | 1 Comment
Amid all the chaos in Quebec over the government’s decision to hike tuition fees, there lies an essential debate that has been lost. Affordable education is something worth discussing. Too bad this debate has been lost after months of protests, bull-headedness and now violence. From what I’ve read in the English media, and in some [...]
Talk about the issues, please. No, really.
April 20, 2012 | 1 Comment
Apparently, the Canadian media just refuses to learn from its own mistakes. The Alberta provincial election seems like a recurring nightmare. In this case, a lot of people are talking but no one is really saying anything. And, no, I’m not talking about the party leaders. In this case, the media is just as guilty. [...]
Competing priorities
March 7, 2012 | No Comments
Regular readers of this blog might have picked up on my penchant for writing about the importance of voting. It’s boring or irrelevant to most people, I know, but I continue to be convinced of the need to increase turnout at the polls. So naturally, the robocall scandal has captured my attention. Whether it is [...]
Robocalls robbing our right to vote?
March 5, 2012 | 2 Comments
Imagine that every morning, you buy a double double at Tim Hortons. You purchase it with a pre-loaded card so you can conduct the transaction with speed and without hassles. This has been the way for as long as you can remember. But lately, there’s a guy outside the door when you arrive. He heckles [...]
Votes and voices suppressed
February 26, 2012 | 3 Comments
At last year’s Canadian Association of Journalists’ Annual Conference, one of the panels was a post-mortem on the recently held federal election. The panelists (Chantal Hebert, Elly Alboim and Jeff Sallott and Paul Adams of the Globe and Mail) debated the question of whether it could be called “the Twitter election”. The panelists addressed this [...]
Trudeau-mania, 2012 edition
February 16, 2012 | 2 Comments
Several things are true about the latest episode of Canadian political drama involving MP Justin Trudeau and his comments on Quebec separatism. (He said the following: “I always say, if at a certain point, I believe that Canada was really the Canada of Stephen Harper — that we were going against abortion, and we were going [...]
Canada’s World
February 8, 2012 | 5 Comments
On Tuesday, the New York Times published an article on the declining influence of the United States Constitution. The article chronicled how, once upon a time, constitutional designers looked to the United States Constitution as a model for their own. As a citadel of democracy and home to world’s oldest written constitution, the United States [...]
The human cost of manufacturing our iPhones
January 26, 2012 | 10 Comments
Canada has fared relatively well during the current economic crisis. There are many reasons why, as many as why the U.S. has suffered so much. One factor shielding Canada is also something that people lament: a lack of a substantial manufacturing base. This extends to an innovation or productivity gap. So while Canada has definitely [...]
So is dual citizenship really dangerous?
January 19, 2012 | 8 Comments
The more I think about it, the more the issue of citizenship seems to beg greater discussion than the rhetoric thrown around when political parties want to attack their competitors. (Thanks to everyone for their thoughtful comments on the previous post.) And the debate is unavoidable, since globalization continues to advance it. So Andrew Coyne [...]
More than one nationality is dangerous
January 17, 2012 | 5 Comments
The question of citizenship in political office has re-emerged. NDP MP Thomas Mulcair also holds French citizenship, which he secured through his wife, who was born in France. Perhaps this is just the Sun newspaper chain agitating the issue in a slow news period, as protest is minimal. Nevertheless, the question of dual citizenship pops [...]