A grassroots performance check on MPs and a way to axe poorly thought out policy
Politicians spent the last two years giving themselves pay raises while the rest of us suffered through pay cuts, tax hikes, inflation and restrictions. The insult to injury? It’s the increasingly well-heeled politicians who are responsible for the pain many everyday Canadians are going through. Folks can’t afford to fill their vehicles, they’re struggling to…
Activists like to trumpet the narrative that the world is rapidly transitioning away from fossil fuels, but the reality is different
An activist group called Oil Sands Divestment is trying to convince the British Columbia Investment Management Corp. (BCI) to get out of fossil fuels by the end of this year. The campaign says oil and gas is not a sound investment and that projects are increasingly “stranded assets.” Neither is true. Amid what the International…
The Biden administration has done Canada a solid with its buy-North-American awakening. We would help ourselves by reciprocating
Canada’s auto sector got a boost this week – from U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration. Will we be good neighbours and return the favour? After a marathon voting session, the U.S. Senate finally passed a slimmed-down version of Biden’s landmark climate and economic renewal legislation. The U.S. House of Representatives is set to okay the…
Taxpayers could get soaked with higher taxes and reckless government spending
Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s promise to hand the mayors of Toronto and Ottawa more powers could be a dangerous gateway to higher taxes and runaway government spending. Hardworking taxpayers wouldn’t trust one person selected by someone else to unilaterally manage their household expenses and retirement savings. Yet, that’s essentially what Ford might have up his…
Government has been changing the nature of the country for many years without any constitutional amendment being enacted
The federal and provincial governments of Canada have allowed the Constitution’s separation of powers outlined in Section 92 of the British North American (BNA) Act to be blurred – disfigured even. Section 92 (7) outlines exclusive jurisdiction over health to be provincial. But since the introduction of the Canada Health Act, the federal government –…
Could the Liberal-NDP agreement actually collapse if a proposed national dental plan for low-income Canadians isn’t implemented by year’s end? That’s what NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh reportedly threatened to do. The national dental plan was one of the centrepieces of the three-year agreement when it was signed by Singh and Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau…
Spot-treating soil with lime could give farmers another option to stem the costly disease and improve soil health
Lime is showing promise as an additional way to help manage clubroot, a deadly disease in canola crops, University of Alberta research shows. Spot-treating soil with the mineral reduced the overall occurrence and severity of the disease by 35 to 91 per cent, growth experiments showed. The finding, published in the Canadian Journal of Plant Pathology,…
The prospects of a global economic slowdown are beginning to hit oil demand
The much-awaited ministerial meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, including Russia, in the expanded OPEC+, opted to increase its September output by just 100,000 barrels per day (bpd). Despite the urgings of U.S. President Joe Biden to open Saudi Arabia’s crude oil taps during his visit there, the announced output…
Free nations must devote more resources to defence. Denialism and appeasement deliver death and destruction
On Nov. 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. East Germans streamed from communist East Berlin into democratic West Berlin. At the 1991 royal review of the Royal Observer Corps (ROC), Queen Elizabeth II announced “the end of the Cold War.” Amid talk of a peace dividend in 1995, the ROC, vital to Britain’s home defence,…
When it comes to scrapping the Trudeau government’s carbon tax, the hardest decision Conservative leadership hopefuls have to make is whether they would scrap it before or after lunch on their first day if elected prime minister. The bigger question is whether a Conservative government would scrap the impending second carbon tax. All candidates are…
The Jay lives and breeds from coast to coast to coast
My friend and colleague Dr. David Bird, formerly of McGill University, has been driving a movement to have a national bird declared for Canada. Although many thought it was a done deal already and we had affirmed the Canada Jay as our national bird, Canada has not yet done so. Starting in 2016, the community…
But building LNG infrastructure like long-haul pipelines in Canada is "challenging"
Canada’s potential to supply natural gas to Europe as liquefied natural gas (LNG) has gone from an afterthought to a critical part of the discussion on how to replace gas from Russia, according to analysts with Norway-based Rystad Energy. European countries are facing emergency measures to reduce energy use to ensure enough natural gas is…
There’s a way to reduce fertilizer use and make all agricultural production much more environmentally friendly: controlled environment agriculture
When we look at climate change, the future for many seems to hold only short-term despair and long-term disaster. Will humans be able to survive, let alone prosper? Before we let today’s doomsters depress us, let’s look at an earlier apocalyptic forecast. Around the turn of the 19th century, Thomas Malthus predicted the end of…
Detailed data will help community organizations in Alberta develop effective injury prevention programs
A new report from the Injury Prevention Centre is the first in Alberta to provide data on injury-related emergency department visits by people experiencing houselessness – information that will help community organizations deliver injury prevention programs tailored to the distinct health-care needs of this population. “This is the first step in understanding what the injury issues are,” says…
Ottawa must bring in legislation to ensure the project gets built now more than ever
Ottawa needs to finally declare through legislation that the Trans Mountain Expansion Project is to the national advantage of Canada. Doing so would prove to the Canadian public and Indigenous communities that the federal government is serious about seeing it completed. Make no mistake, killing the project would be devastating for many Indigenous communities along…