Canada

Will Stephen Harper’s “a carbon tax is crazy economics; it’s crazy environmental policy” turn out to be the 2008 election’s version of “Zap! You’re frozen”? During the 1974 federal election campaign, earnest, awkward Progressive Conservative leader Robert Stanfield—the Stephane Dion of his day—proposed a policy of wage and price controls to put a lid on […]

Is a carbon tax a good idea? What the f*&^ is a cap-and-trade policy anyway? And why has the media—for the most part—abandoned its traditional role of trying to make sense of it all for us? Perhaps the simple, unhappy answer is that our journalists are so busy reading the leavings in the bottom of […]

I happened to be in Boston last weekend for a conference, which is how I ended up watching the first U.S. presidential debate Friday evening (September 26) on a big-as-my-house widescreen TV with several hundred of my new closest friends in the atrium of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. It was fascinating, […]

Still puzzling over how to cap carbon, or trade a tax, or emit a greenhouse gas, or… The Ecology Action Centre will host a primer entitled “CARBON JARGON: MAKING SENSE OF CAP & TRADE AND CARBON TAX” on Monday, October 6 at the Dal Law School (Room 105) from 6-7 pm. Meinhard Doelle, who teaches […]

So Gerry Ritz a made stupid, tasteless, offensive joke. Two actually. Is that any reason for Stephen Harper to fire him? My answer would be no. Most of us—well, me at least; thee may be more pure—have, in the heat of an overheated moment, or in a moment of frustration, or in the inevitably mistaken […]

How many thousands (millions?) of dollars will Canadian news organizations spend polling public opinion in the leadup to the October 14 federal election? How much of that would have been better spent explaining the concepts and relative merits of competing environmental policies like the carbon tax or cap-and-trade emissions policies so the public opinion they […]

Given the number of candidates in this upcoming federal election who’ve already had to suddenly slink off in disgrace because videos had surfaced showing them driving while doping, or skinny-dipping while (or while not) erect, or blathering mindlessly in their blogs about how gays and women must begin packing heat to protect themselves from predators…; […]

It seemed like a good idea at the time. According to various news reports, Halifax Liberals planned to gather Wednesday evening (Sept 10) to officially crown Catherine Meade as their candidate in Halifax. I should go, I thought. I first checked out the Liberal party’s provincial and national websites, but there was no information on […]

Thirty-eight reasons not to vote for Stephen Harper… one for every day of the campaign. Feel free to add your own: 1. The Accountability Act that isn’t 2. Negative advertising (puffin poopers unite) 3. Afghanistan… Do you trust the man who unfixed his own fixed-date election legislation to bring the troops home in 2011? 4. […]

The pollster who once claimed Haligonians were eager to have the 2014 Commonwealth Games now wants us to believe Nova Scotians want to elect more Stephen Harper’s Tories. Don Mills of Halifax-based Corporate Research Associates told Halifax’s Metro newspaper that his company’s latest public opinion poll showed “a big positive change” for the ruling Tories […]