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Currently viewing articles tagged with Canadian Politics.
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Web exclusive: An interview with Nino Ricci
As part of Penguin Canada’s ongoing Extraordinary Canadians series—which just saw a handful of releases this April—Nino Ricci’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau marks the Montreal novelist’s first foray into non-fiction. “However mistaken some of Trudeau’s policies might have been, none the less there was this sense of grandeur to him and this sense of vision, and we’ve really lacked that since then,” said Ricci.
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Hughesgate: The Ugly Truth
Does it surprise us that some blogger deliberately distorted a column Lesley Hughes wrote in 2002 in his zealous efforts to embarrass her by proving that she is an anti-Semite? Hardly. Bloggers can lie. Some are desperate to be noticed. And they are unaccountable to any publication or organization.
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Wall Street’s Killing Fields
The pundits are very busy these days looking for scapegoats among the swindlers, liars and manipulators who by their greed and excesses have caused the meltdown that led to this mother of all stock market crashes. Now it’s true that in the midst of every economic boom some masters of the universe exercise no scruples in grabbing their share, and then some, of the profit bonanza; and when conditions sour, find novel ways of hiding their true bottom lines to keep investor capital coming their way.
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Sewing the Seeds of a New World Agriculture
Tony Weis is an assistant professor of geography at the University of Western Ontario, and he’s really stepped back to look at the big picture. His book, The Global Food Economy: The Battle for the Future of Farming is a lively, detailed, very readable survey of the global food economy. Ranging from the rich world to the majority world, his book is a scathing indictment of the “problems and iniquities of the world food system.”
Kuyek’s short history (just 125 pages) covers one hundred years of Canadian agriculture centred on seeds. Seeds are profoundly social, he writes: “they reflect and reproduce the cultural values and social interests of those who develop them.”
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There Is No Honour in the Crown
On May 28, after more than two months in jail, six members of the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) First Nation in northern Ontario were released following a decision by the Ontario Court of Appeal. On March 17, KI Chief Donny Morris, Deputy Chief Jack McKay, councillors Sam McKay, Darryl Sainnawap and Cecilia Begg, and band member Bruce Sakakeep had been sentenced to six months in jail after they interfered with drilling for platinum on their traditional lands.
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Something Is Happening in Indian Country
Is the movement for Indigenous rights and self-determination reaching a tipping point in Canada? Recent events give grounds for optimism. This spring in Ontario, the Indian Act chief-and-council from Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug, grassroots traditionalists from Grassy Narrows and non-status Ardoch Algonquins joined environmentalists, urban radicals, unions and students in an unprecedented coalition to pressure the Ontario government for First Nations’ right to say no to unwanted development on their traditional territories.
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Canada’s Deadly Secret
From his student days in the late fifties campaigning for nuclear disarmament to representing the International Uranium Congress in hearings on nuclear-waste disposal in the nineties, Jim Harding has been holding Saskatchewan nuclear proponents to account.
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Big Soy
Soy consumption in North America and Europe is increasing exponentially, these days, for reasons ranging from health consciousness to animal rights to a more mainstream acceptance of tofu. The incredible landmass devoted to soy, however, won’t make the hippies happy. While soy is increasingly promoted as a healthy alternative to animal products in the North, the soy industry is destroying homes, livelihoods, health and the environment across South America. In the context of a global food crisis, in both the North and South large-scale agribusinesses are tightening their grip and local alternatives are espoused as the only saving grace.
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Hot Air
Jeffrey Simpson, Mark Jaccard and Nic Rivers belong to the second group. In Hot Air: Meeting Canada’s Climate Change Challenge, they show convincingly that, if government doesn’t act, this country’s appalling record on greenhouse-gas emissions will get much worse.
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May ‘68: An Appreciation
The earth moved. It was one of those rare moments in history when all that had been solid (and stultifying) seemed to melt into air. As William Wordsworth wrote of the epoch of the French Revolution, in 1805 — verse that also captured something of the spirit of the ‘68: “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,/ But to be young was very heaven!”
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