Shoot thy neighbour
March 26, 2012 | 1 Comment
A friend of mine recently shared an observation about the tragic death of Trayvon Martin in Florida that revealed a much deeper truth about American justice. This friend, who has travelled for business in the United States for years and lives on the Ontario-Michigan border, is a keen observer of American culture, to put it [...]
You can’t legislate docility
March 23, 2012 | 1 Comment
The Tories struck a blow for vacationing upper middle class families when they decided to step in and take some fundamental rights away from the workers at Air Canada. The assumption was, I guess, that if they bullied the unions quickly and swiftly, the unions would just roll over and take it. But, that’s not [...]
Vigilantes – all of them – are a threat [Updated]
March 23, 2012 | 5 Comments
This is why I think the Conservative government’s fetish for protecting vigilantes* the fetish for protecting vigilantes by all federal parties is more than just foolish, it’s deadly: What we have in Florida–and doubtlessly in other parts of the country–is the state relinquishing a crucial aspect of meting out justice. The logic here militates toward [...]
Big Brother is watching you riot
March 19, 2012 | 1 Comment
My inner grumpy old man was seething last night and this morning as I watched the disturbing images of a St. Patrick’s Day student riot in London, Ont. I’m sure many a Londoner is probably thinking along of the lines of what’s-wrong-with-kids-these-days and I can’t blame them. I actually wrote an editorial for this blog [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Liberals and marijuana
January 17, 2012 | 3 Comments
Allow me to echo the general sentiments of my colleague, Charles Anthony, and give the Liberal Party a quick cheer for their policy resolution to legalize and regulate marijuana (though we might disagree about the regulation part). I may peruse the rest of the rump party’s policy resolutions (or I may not – I don’t [...]
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 [...]