First came 50 years of progress. Then came 50 years of dead fish, stagnant water, methylmercury poisoning, silt buildup and dams collapsing
What goes around comes around, they say. The oblique turn of a phrase may apply to the news that a 100-year-old dam will be demolished in Fredericton, N.B. Things fall down and are torn down all the time, so why would this story be of interest? I was a reporter in New Brunswick when the…
The game is up: Oil and gas companies can no longer mask their financial frailty
The decline in oil demand accelerated by Covid-19 may be a sign of the future. Forty publicly-traded U.S. oil producers wrote down a collective $48 billion worth of the value of their assets in the first quarter of 2020, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported. Quoting Deloitte, Oilprice.com points out that the collapse in crude…
Early newspapers were often more interested in expressing the opinions of the owners than the facts
Fake news is a popular term these days. It’s hard to imagine why. Much more inflammatory and even manufactured ‘news’ has been with us all through history. Pamphleteers of the French and American revolutions may be the most famous. Among the best was Thomas Paine. But the average person with an axe to grind and…
There’s no place for cowards, racists, sociopaths or murderers in a police department. And yet such officers are detected with alarming regularity
The wave of protests across the United States in response to the death of George Floyd follows a lengthy list of protests against police misconduct. The list of misconduct includes: Rodney King, beaten by police on a freeway after a high-speed chase in Los Angeles (1991); Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant sodomized in a New…
Talented, ambitious and resourceful Indigenous people continue to face systemic obstacles to start businesses
A Winnipeg-area Indigenous entrepreneur might hold the key to Indigenous peoples controlling their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. His experience also underscores why it’s so important to unshackle the Indigenous business community and entrepreneurial sector from restrictions imposed by the Indian Act, as well as other non-legislative barriers. Josh Giesbrecht is president and co-founder of…
Or was Trudeau just trying to buy the votes of young Canadians
Conflict of interest revelations surrounding the selection of WE Charity to administer the Canada Student Service Grant have dominated recent media coverage and led to investigations by parliamentary committees and the federal ethics commissioner. While getting answers on how WE was selected is essential, there’s been scant focus on the more fundamental question: why was…
Attempting to fight high deficits while maintaining high tax rates will reduce the province’s economic growth prospects
By Alex Whalen and Tegan Hill The Fraser Institute Due largely to COVID-19, the big banks project negative growth for Nova Scotia’s economy in 2020, ranging from -5.5 per cent to -7.4 per cent. Without a strong rebound, such a steep recession could have a lasting impact on living standards in the province and Maritime…
The lockdowns, and the economic wrath that followed, will leave a definite scar on the lives of many young people
People under the age of 30 will pay a dear price for the global pandemic and could even be renamed the COVID-19 generation. After almost five months, most would agree that the older generations – although perhaps medically affected by COVID-19 – have been largely unscathed economically. Baby boomers and older generations have lived long…
She played two off-screen roles that took courage and independence. She was, to put it simply, a woman of genuine substance.
Olivia de Havilland died last weekend at the age of 104. She was often described as the last survivor of Hollywood’s golden age. Making theatrical movies from the mid-1930s to the late-1970s and continuing in television until 1988, de Havilland earned five Academy Award nominations and won Best Actress twice. Not bad going by anyone’s…
Local responses to pandemic are a necessity to protect people at higher risk of infectious diseases – and a strong assertion of sovereignty, says U of A expert
On the federal government’s Indigenous Services web page, the first piece of information about COVID-19 is advice on how to wash your hands if you’re under a drinking water advisory. This highlights the multiple factors that influence Indigenous health outcomes in times of disease, said Jessica Kolopenuk, a researcher in the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Native…